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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 9 declined, 4 accepted (13 total, 30.77% accepted)

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Education

Submission + - Al Gore's 'nine Inconvenient Untruths' 1

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "In a news story carried by Telegraph.co.uk, the High Court in the United Kingdom has ruled that Al Gore's famous feature-length film on global warming is a 'political film' and therefore can only be shown to school children with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. He reinforces this with 9 key points in the film where specific points of view are raised with little to no evidence to support them. From the article: "Judge Michael Burton ruled yesterday that errors had arisen "in the context of alarmism and exaggeration" in order to support Mr Gore's thesis on global warming [...] the judge ruled that the "apocalyptic vision" presented in the film was politically partisan and thus not an impartial scientific analysis of climate change."
Communications

Submission + - O2 lays groundwork for iPhone deal

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "TimesOnline notes that O2 have laid the groundwork to announce that they have gained the rights to distribute the iPhone in the UK, with Peter Erskine (the O2 chief executive) defending Apple's revenue-sharing model. When asked about the revenue-sharing deals that Apple is expected to adopt with European mobile operators, Mr Erskine said: "If sharing revenue brings a bigger pie to the table, then we'll be happy to share that pie . . . The revenue-sharing model will play an increasingly important role in the future of converged communications.""
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - iPhone Price Cut - Planned All Along? (pbs.org)

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "A blog entry by Robert Cringely relates a story from several years ago with some relevance to the recent iPhone price drop — surmising that Job's personality and other miscellaneous factors show that the iPhone pricing fiasco was planned from the start. From the article: "Had nobody complained, Apple would have left it at that. But Jobs expected complaints and had an answer waiting the $100 Apple store credit. This was no knee-jerk reaction, either [...] most importantly, those who bought their iPhones at an AT&T store will have to make what might be their first of many visits to an Apple Store. That is alone worth the $50 per customer this escapade will eventually cost Apple""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft pledges conditional support for ODF

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft have announced in a letter that they will support ODF if it doesn't 'restrict choice among formats'. Citing their lack of opposition to the ratification of ODF as a standard, they go on to say: "ODF's design may make it attractive to those users that are interested in a particular level of functionality in their productivity suite or developers who want to work that format. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality [...] This is not to say that one is better than the other — just that they meet different needs in the marketplace.""
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Microsoft Extends Xbox Warranty

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "Accompanied by an open letter from the Corporate Vice President of Entertainment and Devices, Microsoft have extended the warranty on all Xbox consoles by 3 years to cover all of the so-called 'red ring' failures that have plagued the console since launch. Peter Moore elaborates:

We don't have 10 million broken Xbox 360s, but we haven't done a good job, in recent months in particular, of taking care of the people that have taken care of us[...] We've made a pretty bold step today — as you said, "ouch" — that has some pretty far reaching consequences financially, but as a company think is the right thing to do, and we're going to take care of you whether you bought one on launch day or yesterday and protect you against those problems that are indicated by the three red rings on the console.
"
Security

Submission + - A Mac Gets Whacked

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "The Register is reporting that a MacBook Pro has been sufficiently compromised to give a remote user complete control of the computer, with the flaw discovered as part of TippingPoint and CanSecWest's pledge to reward the first two such exploits found. The prize was shared by two people, with Shane Macauley walking away with the compromised MacBook for executing the exploit and Dino Dai Zovi taking the $10,000 bounty for finding the flaw and successfully exploiting it.

Dino Dai Zovi, a self-described 'Mac fanboy', explained: "It works. It is real. This is not something that I have made up... It seems that a lot of people harbour the belief that the Mac doesn't have these problems, but it does.""
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - EU Launches Antitrust Probe Into iTunes

Submitted by Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: ABC News is reporting that the EU have started an antitrust probe into the way that Apple sells music on iTunes. As you can only purchase from the store of the country where your credit or debit card is registered, the price differences and availability differences between iTunes stores for different EU countries constitute a violation of EU competition laws which forbid territorial sales restrictions.
iMac

Submission + - Dual Quad-Core Mac Pro Around the Corner?

Submitted by
Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: "DailyTech is reporting an error in Apple's UK website which gave customers a glimpse of the new Mac Pro — boasting Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeons. From the article: "The listing, which Apple promptly found and removed, revealed the quad-core Mac Pro in search results when users searched for 'Mac.' The quick description listed the Mac Pro as 'Now quad-core or 8-core processing power. Configure yours today.'""
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple Bullies Bloggers (again)

Submitted by Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: Everyone, of course, having heard of Apple's lawsuit against Think Secret and numerous other minor actions against other blogs, TechCrunch have reported that Apple has been bullying bloggers yet again in the wake of their iPhone announcement. Apparently, some enterprising individuals have seen fit to create a Windows Mobile skin that directly imitates the iPhone layout, but in addition to pursuing the creators of the skin, Apple have been leaning on the bloggers to stop reporting on it.
Music

Submission + - iTunes copy protection 'cracked'

Submitted by Macthorpe
Macthorpe writes: The BBC is reporting that the FairPlay copy protection software that prevents users playing iTunes downloads on other players has been 'cracked', and can now be removed with relative ease. From the article:

"Mr Johansen first distributed a program to bypass the Apple system, called QTFairUse, in 2003. Since then several versions of the program have been distributed to keep up to date with new versions of iTunes and FairPlay. These were distributed on the web for free but were difficult to use without technical know-how.

Now, Mr Johansen and DoubleTwist plan to commercialise the technology."

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