Hector Ruiz has stepped down from his position as Chief Executive Officer of AMD, the rival of Intel, in favour of President and COO Dirk Meyer after being elected by the board of directors.

While he was instrumental in elevating AMD to become a rival to Intel’s stranglehold on the chip manufacturing market, he also admitted that he was the reason why the company was in financial distress after racking up billions of dollars in losses after an ill-timed acquisition of ATI.

Ruiz, however, will remain on the Board of Directors, serving as executive chairman. Previously, he had been chairman of the board.

The ex-chairman and the son of the founder of South Korean-based company Samsung, Lee Kun-hee has been found guilty of tax evasion by the Seoul Central District Court; however, he will not serve three years at prison after the court handed down a suspended sentence.

He was charged for not paying about 47 billion won (or US$46 million) in taxes, and fined him 110 billion won (US$109 million). Prosecutors wanted him to serve seven years in jail and pay a 350 million won (US$347 million) fine.

However, the judge refused to give him the sentence, saying that the crime was not enough to serve prison time that the prosecutors wanted, and gave him three years of prison time and five years on a suspended sentence.

”The extent of his crime is not serious enough to sentence him to prison,” the presiding judge, Judge Min Byung-hun, said.

This is his second conviction. In 1996, he was found guilty of making payments to the former president Roh Tae-woo, who served as the South Korean President from 1988 to 1993. He was not the only chief that was convicted, many South-Korean family-run conglomerates, also known as chaebols, were also found guilty.

Intel is expected to face new antitrust charges from regulators in Europe after focusing on the marketing and sales practices on the chip giant, according to the Wall Street Journal’s website and citing unidentified people that are claimed to be familiar with the matter.

The new charges allege that Intel offered inducements to retailers in Europe in return of selling Intel and not from its rival Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD. These charges come after several months of being investigated by antitrust regulators around the world, including the US and Japan.

It has faced little objections to its practices, however, in its home in the United States, except for the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation and one investigation done by the New York Attorney General.

Sooo, you want to smash your iPhone open? Well this is exacly what two guys done on youtube. Really all you have to do is get a big hammer and break it. So why don’t you try it yourself? Link.

The US Justice Department has ended its two-year criminal probe of backdated stock options at Apple, and have not filed charges against current and former executives, including Steve Jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Apple, along with other companies, have admitted that they backdated certain option grants, including two awarded to Jobs, in order to take advantage of more favourable prices for the grants. It is not illegal, so long it is disclosed, but many have failed to do so.

Jobs has maintained that he knew that the options were backdated, but he was not aware of the accounting implications. Both Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment.

It is not over yet, as Apple is in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that several executives committed securites fraud in failing to disclose the company’s practice of backdating.

For animation studios, computers need to contain high quality chips and high quality components or else your animation would look crap. Upgrading, however, is a different story - as they want to get the “next-big” thing.

And taking that up is Dreamworks Animation and the have signed a deal to replace their AMD-powered computers to brand new Intel-powered computers from HP. HP provided the now-obsolete computers powered by AMD chips.

The chips will be used to help the studio to produce films n stereoscopic 3-D. The first film that will be using the new computers will be “Monsters vs. Aliens”, who will make its debut on March 27, 2009. The financial deal were not disclosed.

The battle of the DVRs has begun, with Seven bringing out the TiVo to compete with the Foxtel’s iQ - claiming it would help bypass pay-TV subscriptions - whatever that means.

But the new machine, which has a RRP of $699, will have limited content due to the fact that we don’t have enough content on the free-to-air channels. TiVo’s main success is where that channels from FTA, Cable and Satellite TV users can use TiVo and not the selection of the provider.

As well, users will now have to have a broadband connection to access certain features.

The device will come with two high-definition tuners - allowing users to record two programs while watching a pre-recorded show. The device will also store the last 30 minutes of TV programs, and would allow viewers to catch up to shows that they missed if they arrived home late.

Sadly, you won’t be able to skip advertising - which was one of the reasons that the TiVo became so popular.

Currently on FTA, you can get ABC1, ABC2, ABC3 (which is basically the same as ABC1), SBS, SBS World News, Seven, Seven HD, Ten, Ten HD, Nine and Nine HD. But expect more SD services coming soon after it was deregulated just this year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some of the IT giants are teaming up to stop potential patent-infringement lawsuits against them.

Their plan is to buy up key intellectual property before it falls to other parties who could use it against you. They claim, from their sources, that Verizon, Google, HP, Ericsson and Cisco have joined a group known as the "Allied Security Trust".

The companies will pay $250,000 to join and will put in $5 million into the organization to buy patents. Not one of the companies mentioned commented about the story.

Intel, the world’s largest microchip maker, had announced on Friday that it had received a civil subpoena from the Federal Trade Commission, which has been examining informally its pricing and sales rebates for more than a year.

This investigation follows the assault by regulators in Europe and Asia, and the subpoena sees Intel forced to comply with the investigation, while it wasn’t forced to comply before the subpoena was issued.

All three investigations are looking at the same issue: the practises it used to computer makes that have prevented AMD expanding its sales.

The South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission fined Intel for US$25 million after finding that it had violated antitrust laws in South Korea. In 2005, Japan found that Intel had violated antitrust laws, and Intel agreed to change its practises.

AMD is also pursuing a private antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware in 2005, but the trial date has been pushed back to 2010.

As well, it is understood that many PC makers received subpoenas last week.

South Australia will follow New South Wales and Victoria in the cashless smartcard ticketing for its public transport with $29 million over three years to kick start the system.

The system will include its 812 buses, 99 trains and 15 trams; with the new system to be implemented in 2009/10 but to be operational until 2013. As well, it has been working on the specifications for the project for about a year, and it should be finalised in another three months, when the tender process.

However, the South Australian goverment will choose its supplier with caution, after seeing their state-wide counterparts battling their ticketing systems; with the NSW cancelling their Tcard project after giving a fourth extension to have the ITSL to implement the system.

Victoria’s myki is also suffering, with another funding increase and won’t surface until 2012.