News

Quote

Four major broadcast companies would pay the government $12.5 million and provide 8,400 half-hour segments of free airtime for independent record labels and local artists, The Associated Press has learned. The agreement is aimed at curbing payola - generally defined as radio stations accepting cash or other consideration from record companies in exchange for airplay. The practice has been around as long as the radio industry and was made illegal after scandals in the late 1950s. Two Federal Communications Commission officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because final language has not been approved by the full commission, said the monetary settlement is part of a consent decree between the FCC and Clear Channel Communications Inc., CBS Radio, Entercom Communications Corp. and Citadel Broadcasting Corp.

Quote

In the case of Langdon v. Google, et al, the plaintiff sued Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for their failure to run advertisements. These related to the plaintiff's Web sites, which purportedly exposed fraud perpetrated by North Carolina government officials and reported atrocities supposedly committed by the Chinese government. The plaintiff argued that the refusal of the defendants violated his First Amendment and other legal rights. What's more, the plaintiff claimed that even though Internet search engines are maintained by private companies, they essentially are public forums, like malls and shopping centers, and so are subject to the First Amendment. The judge blew that argument out of the water, holding that the plaintiff failed to properly state a claim for violation of his free speech rights under the First Amendment, precisely because the defendants "are private, for-profit companies, not subject to constitutional free speech guarantees." The court deemed "specious" the plaintiff's argument that somehow the defendants were governmental "state actors" who were required to protect the plaintiff's freedom of speech.

Quote

Scientists have attempted for years to create materials that can eliminate unwanted reflections, which can degrade the performance of various optical components and devices. “We started thinking, there is no viable material available in the refractive index range 1.0-1.4,” Schubert said. "If we had such a material, we could do incredible new things in optics and photonics." So the team created one. Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.

Quote

To counter these new threats, technology exists, or could be developed, to provide new levels of spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution and diversity. Furthermore, the ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.

Quote

Thanks to back-to-back, fall-season releases of three next-generation video game consoles--Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2005, Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 in 2006--the industry no longer needs to use GDC to hype the eventual emergence of those machines. The era of the development for consoles is maturing. And in that context, the theme of this year's GDC is "taking control." To Moledina, that means two things. First, it's a literal reference to the new era of game console input devices, such as the Wii remote and the PS3's Sixaxis motion-sensitive controller.

Quote

Sony's video game unit and Immersion have ended their patent fight and signed a deal that opens the door to putting the latter's Rumble technology into the former's PlayStation 3, the companies said Thursday.

Rumble technology makes a video game controller vibrate so that action on the screen seems more real--for example, when a race car is off the track--and has been a key feature in controllers for Sony's market-dominating PlayStation 2 console.

Quote

" It is a simple brute force attack, dumb as a rock that just tries keys. If it gets one, you manually have to check it and try activation. Is is ugly, takes hours, is far from point and click, but it is said to work. I don't have any Vista installs because of the anti-user licensing so I have not tested it personally. The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people. It won't take long for boxes bought at retail to be activated before they are bought, and the people who plunk down money for the mal^h^h^hsoftware, for real, get 'you are a filthy pirate' messages."

Quote

Arctic Cooling steps up to the plate to show off their Freezer 7 Pro LGA 775 style CPU cooler. It is a quiet cooling solution that performs very well. Read the full review.

Quote

What do normal PC users think about Microsoft's decision to lock out its own older operating systems from using their latest API? It is horrible! Read more for the full opinion.

Quote

Has it become cool to be a geek? Tech has become such a large part of our lives that it has become almost unavoidable. The cell phone and digital media player market has become one of the most profitable markets to hardware manufacturers. Why? Because it has become extremely important for us to have the newest, high-tech trendy gear available. Has tech become one of the latest fashions? I think so...

Quote

The bill was introduced on Friday by Assemblyman Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, and read on the floor of the state Legislature on Monday. The bill is not yet scheduled for a vote, according to Leno's office, but if passed could go into effect as soon as January 1, 2008. AB 1668's wording particularly excludes the use of proprietary file formats used only by one application, such as those found naturally in Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

Quote

"Dell has dashed the hopes of Open Saucers who wanted the maker of tin is to install the operating system in some of its computers. Open saucers hopes were raised when Dell posted a note on its online suggestion box, IdeaStorm Web site saying it was “listening to its customers” and certifying three of its corporate hardware lines -- OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations -- for use with Novell SUSE Linux. The move was clearly an attempt to put some spin on the fact that open saucers had flooded IdeaStorm with a Linux request and Dell hoped to show its Linux credentials by talking up its SUSE testing. According to ComputerWorld, the news was interpreted that Dell is thinking of issuing hardware with Linux onboard something that indicated the spin on the story was a bit out of hand. Dell issued a statement today saying that it was not even close to installing the OS into any of its product ranges and that certifying the hardware for being ready to work with Novell SUSE Linux, was not the same thing."

Quote

"Advanced Micro Devices will announce today the first fruits of its $5.4 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies -- a new graphics chipset. The development is an initial step toward the ultimate goal of the merger: combining onto a single chip the functions of the microprocessor, the brains that orchestrate a computer's operations, with those of the graphics processor. AMD said the new graphics chipset, the AMD 690, can be placed onto the main motherboard of the PC, eliminating the need for an add-in graphics card to handle three-dimensional graphics. Sunnyvale-based AMD said the new chipset, available in March, should help lower the cost of graphics-capable computers. More than 30 motherboard makers plan to work with the new chipset, AMD said."

Quote

Until now, Second Life users wanting to communicate with each other have had two basic choices: text chat--either personal or in a group setting--or employing a third-party voice application like Skype. But starting March 6, a limited number of users will be able to try out the new integrated voice chat, either in group mode--in which anyone with the feature enabled will be able to hear voice conversations in their immediate proximity--personal voice chat, or group voice chat.

Quote

The people who think about the price of Windows are those who actually go to a retail store and buy an upgrade copy, Cherry said. So far, sales of boxed copies of Vista have trailed initial sales of Windows XP, according to NPD data. Cherry anticipates that most people will buy a flavor of Vista that corresponds to the version they have of XP. But some will want to move up to a heftier-featured edition, and that will add further to the perceived cost. That's particularly true if a consumer opts for Vista Ultimate, which sells for $259 as an upgrade and $399 for the full product.

Quote

"As Symantec Corp. launched its new Norton 360 consumer security suite today, the company acknowledged that some users may be put off by the price, which is nearly double the list price of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live OneCare. Norton 360, which includes a firewall, antivirus and antispyware scanning software, rootkit detection, antiphishing protection, online and local backup and restore, and computer diagnostics tools, goes on sale today for $79.99 for a one-year subscription. Like Microsoft's OneCare, which lists for $49.95, it can be installed on up to three PCs. The Symantec suite has been touted by the Cupertino, Calif.-based company as both its next-generation consumer security product and a competitor to OneCare, which Microsoft launched in 2006 to much fanfare, primarily because of its price and three-PC license."

Quote

KVM's approach differs from that of Xen, which governs access to hardware using a combination of a lightweight "hypervisor" foundation and a privileged operating system, which is typically Linux. KVM's method is conceptually closer to one of two approaches used by VMware--the "hosted" model used in the free VMware Server and Player products. In that model, guest virtual machines run atop a copy of the operating system. In the second VMware approach, used in the higher-end ESX Server product, a full-featured, heavyweight hypervisor governs access to underlying hardware.

Quote

"Cracking down on college students, the music industry is sending thousands more complaints to top universities this school year than it did last year as it targets music illegally downloaded over campus computer networks. A few schools, including Ohio and Purdue universities, already have received more than 1,000 complaints accusing individual students since last fall — significant increases over the past school year. For students who are caught, punishments vary from e-mail warnings to semester-long suspensions from classes. The trade group for the largest music labels, the Recording Industry Association of America, identified at the Top of Forrequest of The Associated Press the 25 universities that received the most copyright complaints it sent so far this school year. The trade group long has pressured schools to act more aggressively against online pirates on campus. "It's something we feel we have to do," RIAA President Carey Sherman said. "We have to let people know that if they engage in this activity, they are not anonymous."

Quote

"Google Inc. will begin selling corporate America an online suite of software that includes e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and calendar management, escalating the Internet search leader’s invasion of technological turf traditionally dominated by Microsoft and IBM. The expansion announced late Wednesday threatens to bog down Microsoft Corp.’s efforts to persuade corporate customers to buy the latest version of its market-leading Office suite, which was developed along with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system. Google’s software bundle, to be sold for a $50 annual fee per user, also poses a challenge to International Business Machines Corp. and its Lotus suite. While Google’s latest foray into the corporate software market seems unlikely to topple the status quo right away, AMR Research analyst Jim Murphy said it’s only a matter of time before the Mountain View-based company becomes a major player. “This is just the beginning,” Murphy said. “The real impact of what Google is trying to do probably won’t be evident for another five years.”

Quote

"Leaving Google out for a moment, the deal implies that Apple and Cisco will work together on something or in some way in the future, which in the rapidly changing digital media, computing and entertainment landscape could be a useful bit of insurance to have, although it does ultimately depend on Apple and Steve Jobs wanting to play ball. So now we bring Google back in where we started. With Google and Apple very good friends, with Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt on Apple’s Board, how might Google have reacted to an intransigent Cisco willing to go to court with Apple over the iPhone name, no matter what? From Cisco’s point of view, it’s all a bit too scary to think about. Cisco got to put out the ‘nobody messes with us or we sue’ message out there lest anyone else think they can similarly outsmart Cisco. While Cisco have ‘lost’ to Apple, Cisco’s new ‘iPhone’ range has had the best free publicity in the global press ever, with the hope that anyone looking for a wireless VoIP phone that works with Skype and other VoIP providers – with that market growing quite nicely - might have had so much Cisco iPhone exposure that the Cisco/Linksys iPhone range proves to be a success all of their very own! That, and keeping Google, one of your biggest customers on side, just may have made pressing the whole iPhone issue one of the smartest moves Cisco have made in a while."

Quote

"Leopard Server is a single product targeted in two main directions:

1. smaller business workgroup users, which are often run by non-technical users who expect things to just work
2. large installations in education and special purpose environments such as scitech and video production"

"Leopard Server’s features complement each other and work together to provide a compelling product for both small office workgroups as well as larger deployments, providing a much wider potential for Apple’s servers."

Quote

"The consumer technology universe has evolved to a point where it is, in essence, a fully functioning, alternative IT department. Today, in effect, users can choose their technology provider. Your company’s employees may turn to you first, but an employee who’s given a tool by the corporate IT department that doesn’t meets his needs will find one that does on the Internet or at his neighborhood Best Buy."

“Never use security and compliance as an excuse for not doing the right thing. Never use these as sticks or excuses for controlling things. When you find that people have broken rules, the best thing to do is try to figure out why and to learn from it.”

"Successful companies will learn how to strike a productive balance between consumer IT—and the innovative processes for which employees are using these tools—and the need to protect the enterprise. This will require CIOs to reexamine the way they relate to users, and to come to terms with the fact that their IT department will no longer be the exclusive provider of technology within an organization. This, says Smith, is the only way to stay relevant and responsive. CIOs who ignore the benefits of consumer IT, who wage war against the shadow IT department, will be viewed as obstructionist, not to mention out of touch. And once that happens, they will be ignored and any semblance of control will fly out the window."

"IT needs to learn how to strike a similar balance. Corporate IT isn’t going to go away, and neither are the systems that IT has put in place over the years. But a CIO who doesn’t develop a strategy to accommodate the shadow IT department will be employing an outdated and (more important) an inefficient business model. And, like the HR department that ignores the informal relationships in a company, the CIO might lose sight of how his users actually work. Corporate IT thereby loses its authority and, eventually, the CIO loses his job. It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. As Anderson puts it, “It will be like getting nibbled to death by ducks.”

Quote

"It's go to Canada, go to wherever you're going to go, so that your conduct--shipping software around the world in a global economy--is not being subjected to this United States rule," said Joseph Miller, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College who filed a brief in support of Microsoft at an earlier stage of the litigation. Microsoft petitioned the Supreme Court to weigh the issue after a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit both found the company liable not only for violating AT&T's patent in U.S.-assembled computers but also in those abroad. The software giant has conceded that Windows software object code, after being supplied to manufacturers and installed on computers, gave users the ability to record, store and play back speech in a way that violated AT&T's patent.

Quote

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86); Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Business 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition; Windows XP Professional Edition ; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition ; Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

An x64-based or an x86-based computer with a 400 MHz or faster (1 GHz recommended) processor with L2 cache

Quote

Interest, nonetheless, is beginning to percolate, said Alex Winch, president of Mondial Energy. Mondial installs solar thermal systems in large buildings and then makes its money by reselling the heat generated by them back to the building owner. The Toronto-based company has put systems in 100-unit senior living centers in Canada, and it recently signed letters of intent for installations in a couple of U.S. hotels. Solar thermal systems can offset gas consumption even in places not known for sunshine, Winch noted. His first project was the Beach Solar Laundromat in Toronto. It's snowy in that city right now, but the system at Beach Solar has generated 382 kilowatts in the past week, according to its online energy meter.

Quote

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff's Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were "prepared for the worst." They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people’s arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs. Two of the three owners of the studio, Tyree Simmons, who is 28, and Donald Cannon, who is 27, were arrested and held overnight in the Fulton County jail. Eight employees, mostly interns from local colleges, were briefly detained as well.