IBM is rolling out the latest server based on its X3 architecture, a system that can scale from four to 32 processors. The x460, announced Wednesday, is powered by Intel’s Xeon processors that can run both 32- and 64-bit applications. The system will enable customers to build the system as their needs grow and to pay only for what they need, said Jay Bretzmann, vice president of eServer products for IBM.

Veritas is putting Web-based file recovery and retrieval directly into the hands of users with the public beta of its new "Panther" data protection software, built using re-architected Backup Exec technology. Panther will enable the convergence of data and email discovery and filtering, security, and data management–all woven together at the storage and policy level. According to Veritas officials, another version of Panther, due next year, will allow users to index and search data and emails by keyword.

A bunch of new variants of the Bagle virus and Mytob worm are spreading, but they won’t pose a major threat if people take the usual precautions, security companies say. Three new iterations of Bagle, released at one-hour intervals, popped up according to Maksym Schipka, a senior antivirus researcher at MessageLabs. About 70 variants of the mass-mailing computer virus have been reported since it first appeared in January 2004.

Most American consumers don’t realize Internet merchants and even traditional retailers sometimes charge different prices to different customers for the same products, according to a new survey. The study, "Open to Exploitation," found nearly two-thirds of adult Internet users believed incorrectly it was illegal to charge different people different prices, a practice retailers call "price customization". More than two-thirds of people surveyed also said they believed online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible. The study, expected to be released Wednesday by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, is the latest to cast doubt on the notion of sophisticated consumers in the digital age.

Several anti-spyware firms, including Aluria, Lavasoft, and PestPatrol, have quietly stopped detecting adware from companies like Claria and WhenU–a process called delisting. Those adware companies have been petitioning anti-spyware firms to delist their software; other companies have resorted to sending cease-and-desist letters that threaten legal action. In most cases it’s difficult for customers to determine whether their anti-spyware tool has delisted anything and, if so, which adware it skips.

The Mozilla Foundation is preparing to release the first alpha version of its next Firefox Web browser within the next few days. The release, called Deer Park Alpha 1, is targeted to Firefox’s base of testers and will include developer-focused features such as support for additional Web standards, extensions improvements and a way to report incompatible Web pages, Mozilla officials said. Deer Park also serves as a sneak peek into Mozilla’s plans for the full Firefox upgrade, due for a broad public beta later this summer.

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has rejected 41 applicants who tried to access an admissions Web site earlier this year in hopes of learning their fate ahead of schedule. School officials said the applicants were given the opportunity to explain why they attempted to gain access to their admissions files before the date when the university was to tell them if they were admitted. Admissions sites of at least six schools were accessed by applicants for about 10 hours in early March after a hacker posted instructions in a BusinessWeek Online forum.

The database market grew by 10.3 percent in 2004, fueled largely by hunger for business intelligence and analytics, according to numbers released by the Gartner Group. With 34.1 percent of the overall market, IBM holds a slim margin over its closest competitor, Oracle Corp., which maintains 33.7 percent of the overall market. Microsoft Corp. follows up with 20 percent of the market.

In one of the few instances of an individual taking a spam fight to the courts, a New York lawyer has filed a lawsuit alleging that his email address was hijacked and used to send messages promoting a company’s stock. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges that China Digital Media, a Nevada corporation with operations in China, and its unknown promoters, named in the suit as "John Does 1-10," used lawyer Scott Ziegler’s email address as part of a spam campaign. The suit seeks millions of dollars in combined damages.

Security experts are warning Internet users about a new piece of software that poses as a spyware-removal tool but is actually being used to persuade unsuspecting Internet users to download spyware programs and Trojans. The program, SpywareNo, is installed on Internet users’ computers without warning, can be difficult to remove and may be accompanied by malicious programs that hijack victims’ Web browsers, according to interviews with spyware experts. The company behind the new tool claims that it is the victim of unscrupulous online advertisers who bundle the product with noxious wares. But at least one spyware expert says the new application is just the latest example of so-called "rogue anti-spyware" programs that exploit user naivet