Thursday, December 13, 2007

Byte Into It - 12 Dec 07

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Here comes the supercomputer on a chip - Technology - theage.com.au
IBM says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip. Using light instead of wires to send information between
the cores could be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times
less power than wires.

Nokia wants to ape Apple, get cut of wireless contracts
How much Nokia wants out of each contract and what happens when wireless carriers don't play along is unclear. Part of the leverage Apple surely uses to score its deal is the iPhone's buzz-worthy appeal, as up to 50 percent of iPhone buyers in the US, UK, France, and Germany are new contracts. That translates into a massive boost to wireless carrier revenues, out of which they can afford a percentage to scratch Apple's back with. Nokia, however, makes both high-end phones that are on par with the iPhone's profit margins, as well as bargain-bin or "free with contract" phones that might not rake in as many customers or offer as much negotiating headroom for the wireless carriers.

Nokia's unlimited "Comes With Music" plan misses the boat due to DRM
Universal announced a promising new business model last month that will allow
device manufacturers to offer an all-you-can-eat music subscription
service with devices. Called Total Music by Universal, the label's plan
is to charge manufacturers or wireless carriers a subscription fee of
about $5 per month for each device sold, which then gets rolled into
the cost of a device or any accompanying service charges, thus
appearing as a free one-year music subscription to the consumer. Today,
Nokia announced that it has become the first device manufacturer to hop
on board this new plan, branding it "Comes With Music." The only
problem is that the potential for a revolution has been deflated by the
same recurring villain: DRM. Ars learned that Nokia's Comes With Music
implementation will still be handicapped by DRM. In fact, Nokia chose
Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM, a system even the Redmond software maker
itself has chosen not to support on its Zune and Zune Marketplace DRM
ecosystem. This means that even though users can keep tracks after
their subscription runs out, Comes With Music tracks won't be
compatible at all with the iPod and Zune.Tracks can be downloaded via Nokia's phones or PCs, and the DRMed
tracks will remain playable even after the one-year subscription period
finishes. Here's the kicker though: In order to renew the subscription
and regain access to new music for another year, Nokia says consumers
can purchase a new device. Burning a CD of any track(s) will require an
upgrade purchase for each track.

Nokia wants W3C to remove Ogg from upcoming HTML5 standard
The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, a group devoted to publishing web
standards, recently moved to approve the Ogg video and audio formats
for inclusion into the forthcoming HTML5 standard. Nokia, maker of
mobile phones and mobile multimedia services, has taken exception to
this proposal, writing a position paper (PDF) and raising a formal
issue at the W3's web site, claiming that Ogg support should be
"deleted" from the spec in order to "avoid any patent issues."
Most people, if they recognize Ogg at all, would consider it to be an
open-source counterpart to proprietary multimedia technology, so what
exactly is going on here?

Western Digital network drives crippled -- no serving any multimedia files - Boing Boing
Western Digital is disabling sharing of any avi, divx, mp3, mpeg, and many
other files on its network connected devices; due to unverifiable media
license authentication'. Just wondering -- who needs a 1 Terabyte
network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media
files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need
to share?

Drive cradle makes it easy to swap around SATA drives - Boing Boing
StorageDepot's SATA Hard Drive Cradle lets you plunk drive in it, write/read with
them, unmount them and yank 'em out, then stick in the next one. The USB SATA cradle is an
external hard drive cradle, for hot swapping 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard
drives. It works with both types of hard drive, and both SATA I and
SATA II hard drives.

ClearPlay DVD player censors sex scenes - Hardware - www.itnews.com.au
US firm ClearPlay has launched a content-filtering DVD player which can
automatically remove 'objectionable' scenes from movies..
The ClearPlay DVD player allows parents to edit out content such as
profanity, violence, sex and nudity during DVD playback.
The device creates filtering information on a movie-by-movie basis, and
parents can load the filters into the DVD player using a USB stick.
Filters for the latest DVD releases can be constantly updated,
providing adults with control over what they and their children watch.
The ClearPlay DVD player includes more than 2,500 ClearPlay movie
filters and a subscription to 12 months of unlimited updates as new
titles are released.

Microsoft says Vista SP1 won't fix compatibility issues - Operating Systems - www.itnews.com.au
"Applications that have compatibility issues with Windows Vista today will most
likely continue to have the same issues with Windows Vista with SP1,"
Microsoft warns in a new whitepaper on Vista Service Pack 1.
As a result, Microsoft says businesses needn't bother waiting for SP1's
final release -- slated for early next year -- to test new applications
on Vista, because the results won't change much.

Microsoft's changes to how WGA handles flagged installs don't go far enough
Microsoft has announced some much-needed changes to how Windows Genuine Advantage
will handle PCs suspected of running pirated software. Beginning with
Vista's first Service Pack, due during the first quarter of 2008,
failed WGA checks will no longer result in having the PC's
functionality disabled. Instead, users will get what Microsoft
describes as "clear and recurring notices" that they're using
counterfeit software.It's great to see Microsoft making changes to how WGA works, but the
fundamental problems arising from forcing users to undergo periodic
checks to ensure that they're running legitimately-acquired software
are still there. Despite the name, there's no Genuine Advantage for
users who pass WGA's tests—that clean bill of health for your Vista
install can still be erased by what should be innocuous hardware
upgrades.

Wireless keyboard encryption easily broken, say researchers
Security researchers at Dreamlab Technologies AG and Remote-exploit.org have documented a method for eavesdropping, decrypting data, and
sniffing keyboard strokes when using a wireless keyboard transmitting
at 27MHz. The team validated its test results using Microsoft's
Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 and Wireless Optical Desktop 2000, and
believes the same method would work on the Wireless Optical 3000, 4000,
and the Wireless Laser Desktop series. Logitech models are still under
investigation, but the general—and troubling—implication of the paper
is that such vulnerabilities are likely to be widespread. When the keyboard transmits a data packet to the base receiver, only the actual keystroke data is encrypted—both the metaflag (use of Alt, Shift, or Ctrl) and identifier bits are sent in the clear. As for the keystroke data, it's encrypted in a one-byte USB Hid code and a single byteof random data generated when the k eyboard synchronizes with the receiver. Encryption keys are not changed at any time interval, save when an end-user reassociates the keyboard. Because there are only 256 possible key values, intercepted keystrokes can be translated by brute force without any need to actually break the encryption key; the research team was able to decrypt the transmitted data and recover the encryption key within only 20-50 keystrokes. This has the practical effect of rendering keyboard encryption meaningless—it's literally simpler to ignore it than it is to break it.

Microsoft's Office Live Workspace nets mixed reviews
Microsoft has finally tossed its hat into the ring with Office Live Workspaces. Marketed towards home, small business and educational users, Office Live Workspaces more or less endows Microsoft's cash cow Office suite with a free hosted service for sharing and collaborating on Office documents.

Microsoft feeling heat from Linux in budget flash PC market
Microsoft announced plans today to expand support for Windows XP on budget
flash-storage computing devices with an eye towards getting Windows XP
running on the OLPC. Microsoft's newfound interest in this space is
largely a response to growing demand for inexpensive subnotebook
hardware that uses flash-based storage. Manufacturers of such devices
are increasingly adopting Linux instead of Windows because Linux is
free and easier to adapt for use on systems with limited computing
power and storage capacity. Microsoft likely views the rising
popularity of Linux-based budget mobile hardware in the developing
world as a significant competitive threat.

Adobe's PDF now an ISO standard
At the end of January 2007, Adobe submitted its Portable Document Format
(PDF) to the ISO. Now, as the year winds to a close, Adobe has
announced that PDF 1.7 has been approved by the ISO and will become the
ISO 32000 standard (DIS). According to a blog post by Adobe PDF
architect and senior principal scientist Jim King, the standard was
approved by a vote of 13:1From
this point forward, the ISO, rather than Adobe, is in charge of the PDF specification and any changes that are
incorporated into it.

LinkedIn Opens Up - Business - www.itnews.com.au
LinkedIn, the networking site for business professionals, has opened its service
to outside developers to create business applications.
It hopes to attract developers through a new program called its
Intelligent Applications platform. The program will let outside
developers create software for LinkedIn as well as embed features of
LinkedIn, such as finding business contacts, directly from partner Web
sites.
LinkedIn is also participating in Google's OpenSocial developer network
that seeks to create a way for all developers to write software that
will work on all platforms. MySpace is also a member of OpenSocial.

Lifehacker Gift Guide 2007 | Lifehacker Australia
It's not easy finding the right gift for everyone on your list, especially
if you've got a lot of people to buy for, so today we're taking a look
at gifts small and large—from under $10 to the over $50 set—perfect for
the life-hacking loved one on your list (even if that's you).

Avoid signing your rights away with EULAlyzer | Lifehacker Australia
It's a little app which you can use to scan End User License Agreements (you
know those things that most people just scroll through and hit
'agree'). Simply cut and paste the EULA into the program, and it will
flag any suspect phrases for you to check.

IFPI's European Christmas list: content filtering and P2P blocking
In a recent memo to European legislators, the worldwide music lobby laid out its vision of a world in which all ISPs adopted three "feasible and reasonable options" to help address copyright infringement on their networks.It's a familiar troika: content filtering of audio files using fingerprinting technology, protocol blocking of "specific P2P services that are known to be predominately infringing," and blocking access to specific web sites such as AllOfMP3 (as in Denmark) and The Pirate Bay. The plan is neither "burdensome or expensive," says IFPI, and it doesn't cause any problems for "regular service." Sadly (and shockingly!), ISPs in question haven't warmed to the plan voluntarily. As IFPI so delicately puts it, "This cooperation has not been sufficiently forthcoming from ISPs in Europe so far."

Fark.com trying to get trademark on "Not Safe For Work"
Abbreviations, acronyms, and memes fall in and out of fashion on the Internet all of the time. Some stand the test of time, including phrases like "not safe for work" (NSFW), which is used in forums, chatrooms, and blogs across the world to warn folks that something they're about to see could give the boss fits. Late last month, offbeat news site Fark.com filed for a trademark on the phrase with the US Patent and Trademark Office.Fark is seeking exclusive rights over the phrase as it's currently used across the Internet.

Verizon hit with GPL copyright lawsuit over router software
Open-source software is very attractive for companies looking to expand their services or quickly get new offerings to market, in part because it's free. Unfortunately, some companies tend to overlook the software license commonly attached to open-source software, the GPL. Verizon is the latest company to do so, and its use of an OSS package in a wireless router has led to a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Software Freedom Law Center.

Congress' copyright reform: seize computers, boost penalties, spend money
A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) introduced a major bill aimed at boosting US intellectual property laws and the penalties that go along with them. While much of the legislation targets industrial counterfeiting and knockoff drugs, it also allows the government to seize people's computers. In addition to strengthening both civil and criminal penalties for
copyright and trademark infringement, the bill
proposes creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual
Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). This is a new executive
branch office tasked with coordinating IP enforcement at the national
and international level. To do this work internationally, the bill also
authorizes US intellectual property officers to be sent to other
countries in order to assist with crackdowns there. In addition, the
Department of Justice gets additional funding and a new unit to help
prosecute IP crimes.

Judge refuses to entertain Lime Wire conspiracy theories against RIAA
P2P provider Lime Wire found itself on the receiving end of a judicial beatdown yesterday as a federal judge tossed the company's claims against the RIAA.The case began back in 2006, when the RIAA sued Lime Wire just days after the music and movie businesses settled with Kazaa. Lime Wire decided to fight the case, and as part of the resulting legal battle, countersued the music industry for a host of antitrust violations

Facebook's Beacon was illegal as well as dumb - Boing Boing
James sez, "Everyone knows that Facebook's Beacon application was a privacy disaster. But it was also probably illegal. I've written up an analysis of Beacon under a 1988 law that flatly prohibits video stores from telling people what their customers rented. Every time Blockbuster spammed your friends list with an announcement about your latest online video purchase, it was violating that law. At a minimum $2,500 fine per violation, this could be a pretty serious legal problem for Blockbuster and Facebook

Patent Office upholds key TiVo patent at issue in EchoStar lawsuit
TiVo sued EchoStar in 2005 over the DVRs the satellite company manufactures and sells for its Dish Network. In April 2006, a jury found EchoStar liable for patent infringement and awarded TiVo $73 million in damages. In August of that year, TiVo obtained an injunction against EchoStar, ordering it to stop selling DVRs and disable the DVR functionality on its products within 30 days. The judge also upped the damage award to $90 million.

College sues Google for patent infringement over distributed search
The patent in question covers technology developed by Dr. Kenneth Baclawski, a computer science professor at Northeastern. Baclawski's patent was filed back in 1994 and was approved in 1997, and it described as "a distributed computer database system including a front end computer and a plurality of computer nodes interconnected by a network into a search engine."The system's "home node" accepts search queries and breaks each query down into fragments that are sent out to various other backend nodes for processing. Each node runs a search on its particular fragment and then sends the results upstream to the home node, which reassembles them all and returns a result to the user.

Why the RIAA may be afraid of targeting Harvard students
Factor in hostility towards the RIAA's campaign on the part of Harvard Law School
professors Charles Nesson and John Palfrey, who run the law school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Responding to the RIAA's claim that its litigation strategy has
"invigorated a meaningful conversation on college campuses about music
theft, its consequences and the numerous ways to enjoy legal music,"
the profs called on Harvard to not betray the "trust and privacy" of its students.Should the RIAA decide to send prelitigation settlement letters to Harvard, chances are good that 1) the letters will not be passed on, and 2) some of the best and brightest at Harvard Law School will get involved in a big way. That doesn't look too appealing, especially when the campaign isn't going as smoothly as the RIAA would like.

RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still "unauthorized"
Those
MP3 and AAC files that you've ripped from your CD collection are still
"unauthorized copies" in the eyes of the recording industry. In a brief
filed late last week, the RIAA said that the MP3 files on a PC owned by
a file-sharing defendant who had admitted to ripping them himself were
"unauthorized copies."

Report: EMI looking to slash funding for RIAA, IFPI
One of the Big Four labels is apparently unhappy with its return on investment when it comes to funding industry trade groups such as the IFPI and RIAA. British label EMI, which was recently purchased by a private equity fund, is reportedly considering a significant cut to the amount of money it provides the trade groups on an annual basis.

Cover-up? Special investigator "cures" virus with 7-stage hard drive wipe
The head of the Office of Special Counsel who is currently leading an investigation into allegations against Karl Rove is taking fire over allegations that he improperly and illegally disposed of documents and files. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an independent federal agency
tasked with protecting the rights of whistleblowers or other
complainants that work for the federal government, investigating
whether or not government employees have properly followed restrictions
on their political activity, and defending the reemployment rights of
returning war veterans.On April 23, 2007, Scott Bloch, the head of the OSC, launched a wide investigation into the political activities of Karl Rove. Scott Bloch, however, hasn't risen to his current position without
controversies of his own. Although no findings of fact have been
released as of this writing, Bloch has been under investigation since
2005 for improperly dismissing issues brought to the OSC's attention by
whistleblowers and then failing to protect said employees from
retaliation.

FCC asked to bar cellular carriers from blocking SMS traffic
In September, Verizon caused an uproar when it refused to provide short codes (used to send messages to multiple subscribers at once) to NARAL Pro-Choice America so that the group could send out opt-in alerts. Verizon initially cited its policy prohibiting "highly controversial" messages from being distributed on its network, but quickly reversed course in the wake of massive public outcry. A Verizon spokesperson called it an "isolated incident."

SneakPeek Pro: a Quick Look plug-in for design types
SneakPeek Pro opens Quick Look's eyes by adding support for Illustrator, InDesign, and EPS files, but it also adds some useful metadata for those who need to see more than just a pretty picture. Users can choose to view what fonts, swatches, and images are used in the document, and SneakPeek Pro even brings simple file icon previews for these formats to the rest of the Finder.To make all these features easy to adjust, SneakPeek Pro installs as a System Preferences pane and allows you to toggle just about every feature, including which file types it previews and whether to include all the extra file info in Quick Look. One drawback, however, is that SpeakPeek Pro requires files to be made with CS3 apps if you want to view things like fonts and swatches in Quick Look.

That said, SneakPeek Pro comes with a 15-day unlimited demo period, and a full license can be had with a $5 discount during its introductory period for $14.95.

Win a Wii to go with your Wii Transfer for Mac
Wii Transfer, made by Riverfold Software allows Wii owners to view pictures, and listen to music and videos stored on their Macs from their Wii console. The software also allows users to convert video for playback on their Wii directly from an SD card. For those obsessive savers, the software also allows users to back up their saved game files.

Google thinks different by opening Mac Developer Playground
Google unveiled its officially unofficial sandbox for Mac developers today. Dubbed Mac Developer Playground, it's more or less a specific section of Google Code at which various projects from Google's Mac-oriented developers are highlighted. The company is clear, however, on just what is going on here: save for the mature and supported MacFUSE file system project by Amit Singh, this truly is just a playground; everything else is unsupported experimentation and needs to be approached as such.

Coolest IPhone App Ever: ProRemote Pro Tools Controller May Be Coolest iPhone App Ever (UPDATED)
ProRemote converts the iPhone or the iPod touch in a wireless control for Pro Tools LE with realtime feedback. While this may seem limited to the audio world, it shows that having this kind of power in such a tiny package could solve the problems of many users.

RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still "unauthorized"
Those MP3 and AAC files that you've ripped from your CD collection are still
"unauthorized copies" in the eyes of the recording industry. In a brief
filed late last week, the RIAA said that the MP3 files on a PC owned by
a file-sharing defendant who had admitted to ripping them himself were
"unauthorized copies."

Exclusive Lifehacker Interview: Quicksilver's Creator on the Future of QS
Quicksilver as an Open Source Project and Its Roadmap

Apple’s secret weapon: Apple TV 2.0 | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com
Apple is rumored to be close to announcing movie rentals via the iTunes Store and Apple TV is perfect platform. Add a 1TB hard drive and BitTorrent downloading technology and you have the beginnings of a great living room experience. Enable the iPhone and iPod touch as a remote control for Apple TV 2.0 to replace the bogus “gum stick” remote and they’ll surely have a hit on their hands.

8 Predictions for Macworld 2008
Predictions are fun

Mac Rumors: Apple Ultra-Portable MacBook Rumor Roundup
As rumors start to build for Macworld San Francisco 2008, the most consistent rumor appears to be one of an ultra-portable Apple notebook computer.

Apple crowned “Best PC” in Australia’s biggest tech survey - Hardware - www.itnews.com.au
Apple has edged out PC stalwarts Dell and HP to take the “Best PC” award in Australia’s biggest ever consumer technology survey.

Featured Mac Download: Anxiety Task Manager Integrates with iCal and Mail
Despite its unfortunate name, task manager Anxiety is a slick, good-looking, lightweight way to keep track of your to-do lists. Since Leopard now includes a "calendar store," or central repository of tasks from both iCal and Mail.app, Anxiety taps into those lists and displays the items on your desktop. Add, change or check off a to-do in Anxiety, iCal or Mail? And the info updates across all three applications. Neat. Anxiety is a free download (donations encouraged) for Mac OS X Leopard only.

Featured Mac Download: Speed Up iCal Entries with Do-It
Do-It provides a quick and simple way to create new iCal appointments without the clicking frenzy required with iCal's default interface. Just launch it whenever you want to add a new appointment, fill out the details (the form is completely Tab-friendly), hit enter and go back to whatever you were doing. It's a simple but wonderful improvement to iCal if the default behavior has ever gotten on your nerves. Do-It is a free download, Mac OS X only.

Mac OS X Leopard
Undocumented code in Leopard looks like it's set up to load Windows application files—prompting rumors that that Mac of yours will be able to run Windows programs natively someday.

Featured Mac Download: Sync Your Windows Mobile Device and Mac with SyncMate
Sync Your Windows Mobile Device and your Mac with freeware application SyncMate. In addition to syncing (which includes Address Book, iCal, bookmarks, notes, music, and photos), SyncMate boasts application installing, SMS management, and video and image conversion when copying to the device. Previously the go-to software for a Windows-Mobile-to-Mac sync was an application called Missing Sync, and despite its great features and interface, it costs a hefty $39.95. SyncMate—though still in beta—promises most of the same features but won't cost you a dime.

Digg - New VLC 0.8.6d Looks Awesome in Leopard
If you aren't using VLC to play video files, you should be, and if you are, you need to check out this update! The transition to and from full screen playback is also a nice touch.

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