Byte Into IT - 23 Jul 08

Registration opens for .me domains - Internet - iTnews Australia

Registrations for the .me top level domain started yesterday afternoon, giving users a new crack at getting a personalised web address.

Unlike the recent staggered rollout of the .asia domain, the .me registrations are open to everyone from day one.

The .me domain name was previously assigned to Montenegro after the country gained independence in June 2006.

However, owing to the widespread potential appeal of the name it is now available for general use.

Beware of 3G bill shock - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is warning consumers to be wary of the high charges that come with excessive data usage on new 3G mobile devices.

With the nationwide popularity of the recently released 3G iPhone, the ACCC said it wants to make sure consumers know the risks of usage caps and excess charges that come with data usage.

"In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges,” said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Say goodbye to the computer mouse

It's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

Every show an infomercial? TiVo, Amazon ink purchase pact

TiVo plans to introduce a new feature to its popular DVRs that will allow TV viewers to buy products on-screen directly from Amazon when they are shown on various TV shows—the ultimate form of product placement. TiVo hopes that the new venture will not only help the company offer new ways for users to interact with their DVRs, but also help shed its reputation among broadcasters for devaluing their advertising by enabling users to skip ads.

.org first top level domain to adopt DNS security protocol

ICANN has unanimously approved a request by the Public Interest Registry (which handles .org domains) to become the first generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) to switch to the DNS security protocol DNSSEC. As part of the agreement, PIR will trailblaze DNSSEC, while simultaneously developing an education and adoption plan that can later be disseminated across the Internet's infrastructure, PIR's use of DNSSEC is a significant step forward, but a mixture of contentious political and technological issues have slowed the worldwide development and deployment process.

DNSSEC is intended to fix fundamental flaws in the original DNS protocol that leave it vulnerable to several different attack vectors, including cache poisoning. This is accomplished in part through the use of digital signatures. By using such signatures, the DNS resolver can check to see if information it is receiving is actually from the appropriate address; the digital signatures effectively act as a password (the analogy is not exact).

The DNS flaws themselves aren't anything new—they were discovered back in 1990—but the solution to the problem has been no less than eleven years in the making, putting the length of its development cycle almost on par with Duke Nukem Forever. DNSSEC development lasted from January 1997 to the present day, or roughly 11 years and six months. DNF was announced in April of 1997, and, assuming 3DRealms makes good on its 2008 projection, must ship no later than December 2008, for a total development time of 11 years, eight months. Hail to the king, indeed.

iPhone 3G tethering possible with jailbreak and proxy app

Although Mobile Safari on the iPhone is a reasonably good way to surf the web, there are also times when that screen is a little small, and you'd rather be using your laptop. WiFi is one option, but free, public WiFi isn't a given in many areas. Depending on which mobile phone you have, you may be able to tether the device to your laptop and browse using a cellular data network. Now, the iPhone doesn't normally have this functionality (much to our frustration), but thanks to the recent iPhone 3G jailbreak and a third-party proxy application, cre.ations.net has figured out a way to (sort of) tether your iPhone 3G and use your laptop via the 3G network.

Open Tech offers a different twist on the Apple clone

Just one week after news broke about a lawsuit pitting Apple against "clone" manufacturer Psytar, another company has announced that it will be throwing its own hat into the ring. Open Tech Inc. has announced it will begin selling Mac OS X-compatible PCs in the coming days, offering two models to choose from: the Open Tech Home, and Open Tech XT.

The Open Tech Home, clearly marketed for home use, features a 3.4GHz Pentium D processor, 500GB of storage, 3GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, a 500-watt power supply, built in WiFi, a GeForce 8600 GT (512MB), and a DVD burner for a total of $620. The XT, however, seems to be more of a pro workstation with a Intel Core 2 Quad running at 2.40GHz, 4GB of 800MHz DDR2, a 800-watt power supply, built-in WiFi, a GeForce 8800 GT (256MB) and a DVD burner for $1,200.

If we are looking at pure bang for your buck (and operating system aside), neither the Home nor the XT offer an outstanding ratio. You could build pretty much the same machine for cheaper elsewhere, but this is all about the operating system.

So how is Open Tech shipping its non-Apple computers with OS X installed? The answer is that it isn't. While the company will preinstall Ubuntu 8.0.4 or Windows XP, the computer the company claims to be Apple-compatible won't actually be able to do so with Mac OS X.

How To: Create Your Own Linux Recovery Disc

Linux.com writes up a helpful guide to creating your own custom system recovery boot disc using an Ubuntu 8.04 CD image, a little command line work, and a few recommended emergency tools, including the partition format/restore tool GParted, e2undel, a file recovery tool, and anything else you might need if your hard drive, RAM, or anything else on your system suddenly decides it doesn't want to work. The guide requires a good bit of command line work, but it also lets you add whatever programs you'd like to have when you come back from the brink, and helps you strip out programs you don't to boot faster. For a similar (but pre-compiled) hard drive-fixing tool, check out Gina's guide to using the System Rescue CD.

Virtualization: VeeDee-Eyes Offers Pre-Configured Linux Distros for VirtualBox

If you've been checking out the newest VirtualBox beta for Mac OS X, or you're intrigued by Linux but not ready to deal with virtualizing it, the Sun xVM VirtualBox VDI Index—or, as it's skeevily nicknamed, veeDee-Eyes—has a host of pre-compiled, pre-configured images for you. No need to set up space, "boot" from a live CD and mess around with hardware config, as copies of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and others are ready to run. Not all of them are free, with a few of the multi-GB distros asking for a buck or two to cover server costs, but a good number of interesting variants and betas are there for the taking. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and is a free download.

Linux Tip: p7zip Adds Built-In 7-Zip Tools to Ubuntu

The Tombuntu blog points out a seriously helpful package available in Ubuntu's extended repositories that make creating super-efficient 7-Zip archives simple and fast, whether you're right-clicking or working with a command line. Run this command to install it:

sudo apt-get install p7zip

Users of other Linux distros should find a similar package in their own sources. Once installed, creating compressed archives for storing or emailing is as simple as selecting the files, right-clicking, and choosing "Create Archive," and de-compressing just as simple