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The Courts

Submission + - Nokia gets fire investigator to flip-flop

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "One mystery solved, and more burning questions arise. After days of having the information shielded by officials, we now know that it was Nokia that made the cell phone at the center of a residential hotel fire in California that left a man critically injured and sparked worldwide media attention. However, the investigator who originally fingered the phone as the ignition point now says that Nokia engineers have shown him the error of his ways. Meanwhile, the fire victim has an attorney and there could be a press conference as early as today. Seems unlikely that the lawyer will be as easily sold as the fire investigator.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1053 1"
Displays

Submission + - Sony LCD Quality - or lack of

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sony sells a monitor (SDMHS95P/R) with advertised contrast ratio of 1000 but Consumer Organization in NZ has determined that actual contrast ratio is 252. The worst discrepancy I have ever seen in such a product. You need to visit http://www.consumer.org.nz/ and maybe pay full $15 for 3 month access, but they do some excellent reviews, and they appear to be quite unbiased. And, coming from an Australian, a compliment to a NZ institution is ... well ... brave so say the least!
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun beefs up its Niagara series

Submitted by
Aryabhata
Aryabhata writes: "Sun is trying to reinvigorate its Sparc processor line, with chips that aggressively embrace the multicore technology to squeeze multiple processing engines on one slice of silicon. Current T1000 and T2000 servers use 1GHz or 1.2GHz Niagara processors, but the new models' chips run at 1.4GHz. In addition, the maximum memory has been increased to 64GB from 32GB, which in combination with the faster chips mean overall performance increases 30 percent.
Niagara has eight cores, each able to simultaneously execute four independent instruction sequences called threads, and Niagara II servers due in the second half of 2007 will support eight threads per core."
Privacy

Submission + - Do banks want your identity to be stolen?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Do your banks' new security features make fraud even easier? Logging into my citicard account reveals non-standard ssl use, with unverifiable security (no https or even a certificate). Logging in takes you to a different site without the word "citi" even in its url. My old MBNA account used to send emails from "cardsatisfaction.com" and I still can't tell if the emails from "customercenter.net" were actually legit.

Why do banks actually expect customers to not fall for phishing attempts when they make it so easy? How do you protect your identity when you can't verify your connection is actually encrypted? How good are your banks at protecting your identity?
Businesses

Submission + - Verizon spins off rural lines

Submitted by ffejie
ffejie writes: Verizon has announced that it will be spinning off rural assets to FairPoint Communications. The deal will close sometime in 2007 and is worth $2.7 Billion. 1.6 Million phone lines, 234,000 high speed (DSL) subscribers and 600,000 long distance customers will be moved to FairPoint in an effort for Verizon to shed it's low margin lines in rural areas. The sale has been rumored since at least the summer. With Verizon offering high speed FiOS (FTTP) to only it's local service areas, what will happen to the consumers stuck with a smaller telco like those moving to FairPoint? In the future, will there become an even deeper digital divide between the rural users and the high revenue areas?
Sony

Submission + - Sony Reaches 2 Million PS3s Shipped Worldwide

Submitted by
njkid1
njkid1 writes: "Sony has announced that one million PlayStation 3 units have been shipped in Japan, bringing the global total to 2 million, albeit about two weeks later than Sony's Ken Kutaragi had forecast. Software and PS Network figures inside also...&ncid=AOLGAM000500000000016"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun to GPLv3 OpenSolaris

Submitted by uservoid
uservoid writes: Sun Microsystems is set to license OpenSolaris under the upcoming GNU General Public License Version 3 in addition to the existing Common Development and Distribution License, sources close to the company have told eWEEK. OpenSolaris currently is licensed only under Sun's CDDL, but company executives have previously floated the idea of a dual license with GPLv3. Sources told eWEEK that this is very likely to happen after the release of that version of the GPL, which currently is being rewritten and is expected to be made final soon. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2084284,00.as p?kc=EWEWEMNL011507EP28A
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft Forces you to use UAC

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's not enough for Microsoft to make UAC the most user-protection implementation on the planet, now they're also forcing Administrators to use it. Windows Vista makes it impossible for Administrators to add network printers to a local machine if UAC is disabled. Instead: "The only workaround available to date is to re-enable UAC, restart the PC, add the printer, go through the UAC prompts, disable UAC, and then restart once more."
Security

Submission + - PayPal offers password key fob

Submitted by
superwad
superwad writes: "The device displays a new one-time password in the form of a six-digit code about every 30 seconds. PayPal clients who opt to use the device will enter this password along with their regular credentials when signing into the service. The key fob is meant as another weapon in the battle on data-thieving phishing scams."
Data Storage

Submission + - ODF or Office OpenXML?

Submitted by frdmfghtr
frdmfghtr writes: After getting frusterated for the last time with MS Word corrupting documents with embedded objects (pictures, tables, equations, etc.) I started using NeoOffice and saving everything in the OpenDocument format. With the upcoming release of Office 2007 (and later, 2008 for Mac) and support for Office OpenXML, which format does the community see as better from a technical and licensing perspective? I've read some Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDo cument_and_Microsoft_Office_Open_XML_formats#_note -0) and Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051125 144611543) articles on the topic, but I'm really not sure what to make of most of it, yet. Please try to put pro- and anti-MS biases to the side; think of it as a VHS vs. Betamax question. The goal is some reassurance that whatever format I use, it's not going to become useless should I choose to stick with NeoOffice, use MS Office 2008 for Mac, or even both and swap back and forth.
Handhelds

Submission + - Apple threatens lookalike iPhone skins

Submitted by BillGatesLoveChild
BillGatesLoveChild writes: It's happening again! Tremendous excitement amongst the public seems to have followed Steve Job's announcement of the new Apple iPhone. People can't wait to get their hands on one, literally, so they've been turning to lookalike "iPhone skins" for their Palm and Windows PDAs. Apple isn't happy about this, and has threatened developers with violating their look and feel. Apple even threatened journalists who have printed pictures of the screens, warning them "the icons and screenshot displayed on your website are copyrighted by Apple."

What happened to "fair use"? Has Apple learnt nothing from their failed Look and Feel Law Suit against Microsoft? Is Apple risking it's cool image by repeatedly legally threatening anyone who looks sideways at them?
Software

Submission + - Forced hardware retirement

Submitted by
AlonzoTG
AlonzoTG writes: "I have been informed that I must upgrade my motherboard to a newer and more common type in order to maintain linux compatibility. In my enthuseasm to buy a SMP machine in 2003 I overlooked the fact that my Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466) wasnt very popular as a workstation and would develop serious compatibility issues only four years in to its fifteen year useful life span. Fedora Core cannot be installed on the machine, nor can my existing installation support OpenGL graphics without crashing. (an issue with the GART chip which the kernel still claims to support — it stopped working about eight months ago). If I were to accept this loss, which workstation class boards can I choose which will remain operable under Linux for the entirety of their useful lifespan? Is it possible to obtain a guarentee with respect to a specific board that it will continue to be supported?"

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