agreeing to pay a fine of US$61 million for illegal conduct related to fuel surcharges in the international air cargo market

The catalyst maker reports a 15 per cent increase in first half profits and predicted similar levels of growth for the rest of the year

China's leading heavy truck maker, Sinotruk, saw its shares fall more than 15 per cent on their market debut in Hong Kong

House prices in Britain are overvalued by about 30 per cent, the HSBC said yesterday, sounding the alarm that the property market could suffer a similar slump next year to that experienced in the US.

Memo to Messrs Hicks and Gillett: That, gentlemen, is what you pay the money for. Sincerely, Rafa.

A programming lesson I keep relearning. The design of the central data structure of an app determines the quality of the app, in every way. Any extra thought that goes into this, will pay off in: 1. Maintainability of the code. 2. Size of the code (you'll write less code with a well thought-out central data structure). 3. Simplicity of the user interface (the structure inevitably shows through in the UI). 4. Ability to respond to feature requests. 5. Adapt to new hardware, OS changes, other apps. 6. More "it just works" experiences. This is why it's sometimes the right thing to start over from scratch. Programmers often want to start over because they look at the code and it looks complicated, and they think they can make it simpler if they start over. They're right, of course, it will be simpler when they start over, because it won't do nearly as much as the mature product does. Once they finish building out the feature set, it may well be just as complicated. It's a judgement call. I remember looking at the source of Unix kernel for the first time as a grad student in Wisconsin, and being amazed at the simplicity and obviousness of the code. I couldn't believe something so simple actually worked. Your code at its kernel level must have this simplicity. But at the edges, where you're accomdating the minds of users, inevitably it gets a little messy. The key thing to look for is how hard is it to add a completely new feature. It should be easy to do that. If it's not, it's likely because of a poorly organized (and therefore not well-understood) central data structure. I've rewritten apps many times, over many years, because when I wrote the first or second versions, I didn't understand the problem well enough, and the code had turned into a morass of patches and workarounds. Right now I'm recoding the internals of a special-purpose aggregator. I've written many of these, over the years, always quickly, trying to get something running fast, and then lived with data structures that resulted. This time I'm going slowly and carefully, with an installed base of one (me) and ripping up the pavement whenever I find even a slightly better way of doing something. I have other users who are waiting, but that's life. 5/7/97: "When a programmer catches fire it's because he or she groks the system, its underlying truth has been revealed."

For all those taking part in the One Laptop Per Child "Give One Get One" program, ever wonder where those donated laptops are going? I wondered the same thing. Here's what I found out.

Memory maker Micron Technology on Wednesday introduced a line of solid-state drives (SSDs) and said it would plug the technology into portable storage devices by mid- to end 2008.Micron's new RealSSD hard drive, announced at an event in San Francisco, will come in sizes of 1.8 inches and 2.5 inches with storage capacities of 32GB and 64GB. Micron also announced embedded SSD modules for blade servers with storage capacities of 1GB to 8GB.Purported by many to be the future replacement of hard drives, the growth of SSDs has been stymied by high pricing, longevity, and storage issues. However, the power-efficient and ruggedness of SSDs may attract users, said Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development at Micron.RealSSD is 50 percent lighter than standard hard drives, and at under 2 watts of power consumption, the drives will be ideal for laptops, Klein said. The drives also support the SATA II interface, a standard typically used to connect hard drives to computer systems.With no moving parts, RealSSD drives also have a rugged design and store data reliably. They handle vibrations and resist shock better than rotating media, Klein said.Despite multiple advantages, SSDs may not replace hard drives as storage devices in the near future, he said. SSD technology is under development, and some markets are sensitive to price-per-gigabyte of SSDs, Klein said.SSDs currently cost between $7 and $10 per gigabyte, making them much more expensive than hard drives, which cost $0.20 to $0.30 per gigabyte, according to data from research firm iSuppli.Initial consumers for RealSSD could be OEMs or enterprises, which look for reliability and high data throughput, and laptop consumers, which require portability and power efficiency, Klein said.RealSSD drives could reach consumers in the form of portable storage devices or ExpressCards by mid- to end 2008, depending on consumer demand, Mark Adams, Micron's vice president of digital media said in an interview. An ExpressCard fits in a laptop's PCMCIA slot.Sending SSDs to consumers immediately is questionable as the emerging technology hasn't proven itself yet, Adams said. There is a risk in being first-to-market if the product doesn't sell, which will build up unnecessary inventory of SSDs. Instead, Micron will try to get feedback from OEMs that include SSDs in their products and develop devices accordingly, Adams said.Micron sells portable consumer storage devices through Lexar Media, which it acquired last year.There are already a few vendors that include SSDs in their hardware. Aurora, a gaming systems manufacturer, includes them in its Area-51 ALX and Aurora ALX desktop PCs, and Toshiba includes SSDs in its laptops.

IBM is suing Shentech for selling laptop batteries that catch fire and sport allegedly fake IBM logos.The suit, filed Nov. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, accuses Shentech of trademark infringement, false advertising, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices.IBM says that a consumer in Ohio bought a battery from Shentech for a ThinkPad laptop. The battery overheated and caught fire, causing damage to the laptop, IBM said. The user reported the problem to Lenovo, which licenses the IBM trademark. After examining the faulty battery, IBM discovered that it was not a genuine IBM battery, the company said in the suit.IBM then ordered 12 batteries from Shentech and found them all to be fakes, IBM said.IBM asks the court to require Shentech to turn over all of the batteries so that IBM can destroy them. IBM also asks for all the profits that Shentech earned from the sale of the batteries. In addition, IBM wants treble damages or $1 million per counterfeit mark per type of item sold.The Shentech.com Web site continues to list ThinkPad batteries for sale as well as a host of other electronic devices and components. Shentech appears to be a Web-only operation with a mailing address in Flushing, New York. It describes its secret to success as its "ability to provide cutting edge computer technology parts at bargain prices."No one from Shentech could be reached immediately for comment.

A federal appeals court has upheld a district court's ruling that ordered Microsoft and Autodesk to pay millions of dollars to a Michigan company for patent infringement.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit earlier this month affirmed an August 2006 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which upheld a jury decision in another district court awarding z4 Technologies $115 million from Microsoft and $18 million from Autodesk to settle a patent-infringement suit.The Eastern District of Texas court also awarded $25 million more from Microsoft to z4 to settle the case, originally filed in September 2004, and denied Microsoft's request for a new trial.The jury in Texas found that both Microsoft and Autodesk infringed on two patents held by z4 -- U.S. Patent No. 6,044,471 and U.S. Patent No. 6,785,825. The patents are for product-activation technology aimed at preventing unauthorized use or piracy of software.Z4 Technologies, a private company founded by David Colvin and based in Commerce Township, Michigan, develops digital rights management technology.None of the companies could be reached for immediate comment Wednesday.

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