Computer Chips

A congressman from Massachusetts raised questions Thursday about how the Walt Disney Co. will use information it collects when if offers parkgoers new wristbands embedded with computer chips. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), co-chairman of a congressional panel on privacy, wrote to Walt Disney Co. Chairman Robert Iger, asking what information the park will collect with the so-called MagicBand and how it will be used. “Widespread use of MagicBand bracelets by park guests could dramatically increase the personal data Disney can collect about its guests,” he said, adding that he is particularly concerned at the prospect of Disney collecting information about children.

A congressman from Massachusetts raised questions Thursday about how the Walt Disney Co. will use information it collects when if offers parkgoers new wristbands embedded with computer chips. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), co-chairman of a congressional panel on privacy, wrote to Walt Disney Co. Chairman Robert Iger, asking what information the park will collect with the so-called MagicBand and how it will be used. “Widespread use of MagicBand bracelets by park guests could dramatically increase the personal data Disney can collect about its guests,” he said, adding that he is particularly concerned at the prospect of Disney collecting information about children.

U.S. and European Union authorities seized more than 360,000 counterfeit computer chips in their first joint operation to crack down on what they call a rising economic and safety threat from Asia. U.S. and EU officials said a probe in five countries last November and December uncovered a pattern of trade in chips passed off as products of makers including Cisco Systems Inc., National Semiconductor Corp. and Royal Philips Electronics. Most came from China.

A congressman from Massachusetts raised questions Thursday about how Walt Disney Co. will use information it collects when it gives parkgoers new wristbands embedded with computer chips. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), who co-chairs a congressional panel on privacy, asked Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger in a letter what information the park will collect with the so-called MagicBand and how it will be used. "Widespread use of MagicBand bracelets by park guests could dramatically increase the personal data Disney can collect about its guests," he said, adding that he is particularly concerned at the prospects of Disney collecting information about children.

Woodland Hills homemaker Allison Aries was hoping to see green traffic lights in front of her Thursday as she hurried along busy Ventura Boulevard on a shopping errand. In the basement of Los Angeles City Hall, 26 miles away, traffic engineer Kang Hu was hoping to see the same thing. Hu was sitting before a king-sized computer screen that showed a map of nine of the boulevard's intersections in Woodland Hills. Green arrows appeared on the screen when traffic was flowing smoothly.

Irvine police today were looking for several men who allegedly broke into an Irvine electronics firm Tuesday night and escaped with an undisclosed amount of computer chips (See earlier story, B1.) Four or five men wearing masks and hoods entered the Centon Electronics Inc. building on Morgan Street about 8:30 p.m. and handcuffed and bound three employees, Irvine Lt. Vic Thies said. The men were armed with handguns and shotguns, he said.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Monolithic Memories Inc. today announced plans for a merger that will create the world's largest company devoted exclusively to the manufacture of computer chips. Under the terms of the agreement, Santa Clara-based Monolithic would become a subsidiary of AMD, the nation's fifth largest semiconductor manufacturer. The merged company said it expects to have annual sales of about $1 billion. The merger is expected to be completed this summer.

Five armed robbers who bound and handcuffed three employees at Centon Electronics Inc. were thwarted when the workers didn't have access to a warehouse where computer chips are stored, police said Wednesday. "Their purpose was to get into the warehouse," Police Lt. Mike White said. "And when they determined these people didn't have the access code (to unlock the warehouse), they went on their way." The 8:30 p.m.

If the Chicago Board of Trade gets its way, computer chips will join pork bellies and soybeans as commodities on which futures contracts are traded. The Chicago futures exchange has the idea "under study and is trying to design a contract" to submit to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, spokesman Mark Prout said Wednesday.

In the most comprehensive study to date of reproductive hazards in the workplace, UC Davis researchers found that women who work in fabrication areas of computer chip plants are 40% more likely to suffer miscarriages than other women working in the semiconductor industry. The four-year, $3.

The race to decode a person's genome on the cheap got tighter this week. The sequencing company Ion Torrent announced this week in Nature that it used a $49,500 machine, based on computer chip technology, to unravel a full human genome - aptly, using the DNA of Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. The same machine decoded the E. coli strains from a recent outbreak in Germany in a matter of hours, and is drawing praise for its novel approach to reading DNA. But in the goal to bring the price point down to $1,000 per genome, some caution not to get too excited - yet. Unlike some of its other competitors, the Ion Torrent machine uses semiconductor chip technology to read DNA - this Nature News article explains how DNA is washed across a $99 computer chip with more than a million tiny wells (the chips were $250 not too long ago)

Intel Corp., the world's largest chip maker, is buying its way into the security software market by paying about $7.7 billion to acquire one of the biggest players in the cyber-protection field, McAfee Inc. Intel of Santa Clara, Calif., said the acquisition, one of the year's largest technology deals, could allow it to build McAfee's anti-virus technology directly into its chips. Intel said this would help shield computers, wireless devices and embedded systems in vehicles and ATMs from online crime.

Six makers of computer memory chips have agreed to pay $173 million to settle accusations made by the attorneys general of California and 32 other states that they conspired to fix prices globally, officials said Thursday. The attorneys general alleged that the companies had schemed to keep prices of dynamic random access memory chips from falling. The companies included in the settlement, which must be approved by federal and state courts in California, included U.S.-based NEC Electronics America Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. Others were Infineon Technologies of Germany, Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in South Korea, Elpida Memory Inc. of Japan and Mosel-Vitelic Corp.

Intel Corp. and the Federal Trade Commission are in talks to settle an antitrust lawsuit in which the Santa Clara, Calif., company has been accused of strong-arming clients into buying its computer chips. According to a statement from Intel, the company has until July 22 to "review and discuss a proposed" settlement. Intel said it could not comment because the terms of the proposed consent order were confidential. If the two parties do not reach an agreement by that date, the case could go before an administrative law judge in September.

Another day, another takeover in the works. But this one's different: It's a hostile bid. Broadcom Corp. launched an unsolicited offer Tuesday to buy nearby networking chip maker Emulex Corp. for $764 million in cash, marking the second major technology deal announced in as many days as cash-rich companies see big discounts in the slumping stock market. The bid adds to the signs of life the mergers-and-acquisitions market is showing in harsh economic times.

Is Wall Street still in a bear market, or beginning a bull market? Either way, it's probably due for a major pullback. And this week, the market's hurdle is a big one: A flood of quarterly results and outlooks from companies as varied as banks, toy sellers and computer chip makers. Stocks have been on a tear, gaining 23% over five straight weeks from 12-year lows. The Dow Jones industrial average finished last week at 8,083, a two-month high.

In the second such robbery in Brea in 10 months, armed intruders took over a high-tech firm Tuesday, bound employees and stole computer chips, police said. Just after 4 p.m., a least five armed men entered Aten Research, Inc., in the 300 block of North Thor Place, according to Detective Grant Gullickson. They bound seven employees, assaulting three of them with blows to the head and stomach.

In a discovery that could greatly reduce the size and cost of computer chips, Princeton University researchers have found a fast method for printing ultra-small patterns on silicon wafers. Electrical engineer Stephen Chou and his colleagues reported in Thursday's issue of Nature that they could make patterns with features measuring only 10 nanometers--10 millionths of a millimeter.

California regulators Thursday adopted the world's first mandatory measures to control highly potent greenhouse gases emitted by the computer manufacturing industry. The new rules would cover 85 plants, mostly in Silicon Valley. They require most computer chip makers to slash releases of sulfur hexafluoride and other fluorinated gases by more than half over the next three years.

The last two years have seen an exponential increase in the rate of gene discovery, thanks in large part to the advancements in so-called genotyping chip technology. These small glass or silicon platforms have made quick and easy work of simultaneously analyzing hundreds of thousands of genetic variations that exist in the human genome. The screens detect single-letter changes in the DNA code known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced "snips").