240 dollar Laptops may be on their way
Monday, June 11, 2007 At 11:21 By Darren Chew
When you think of buying a laptop, you think of spending at least five or six hundred on one, right?
Well, think again!
Intel has very detailed plans to team up with Asustek Computers – who, if you don't know, is the world's largest maker of motherboards – to make a notebook PC that would cost as little as $240 or approximatly £120. This uniquely cheap laptop will be mass marketed, and targeted to developing countries.
Intel has always had a gentle heart – even being the worlds largest chipmaker, they have given laptops to children in developing countries for years. However, they have yet to do the kind of mass production that is seen by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.
Intel's notebook will be a low-end, fully fledged notebook, while the toy-like green and white plastic notebooks produced by One Laptop Per Child use a hand crank when electricity isn't available.
This could be the start of something big – if Intel and Asustek can do it, maybe we'll see other companies joining in. You never know; maybe there will be one laptop per child, someday after all.
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| Related Articles: |
 Brits Are Busiest Surfers(11/06/07) |
| Web Browser Security Flaws Stack Up (11/06/07) |
| Apple iPhone launch date is set(07/06/07) |
| Internet Spam King Robert Soloway Arrested(05/06/07) |
| Mistaken view on WiFi(05/06/07) |
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Brits Are Busiest Surfers
Monday, June 11, 2007 At 11:18 By Darren Chew
According to a recently released study, web surfers in the U.K. spend more time online than the rest of Europe and the United States. At 34.4 hours on the Web each month, the U.K. beats the runner up, Sweden, who only had 31.7 hours. The U.S. trailed shortly behind Sweden with 31.4 hours online each month.
One reason for the high internet usage in the U.K. was given by Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, who suggested it was attributed to an increase in broadband usage and of course the poor weather.
A warning, however, before taking the figures literally. The study does not include anyone under the age of 15. Also, the data was based on 16 of Europe's biggest markets.
Those numbers were extrapolated to the rest of the continent. Also, it does not include internet usage from mobile phones or internet cafes.
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| Web Browser Security Flaws Stack Up (11/06/07) |
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| Mistaken view on WiFi(05/06/07) |
| YouTube Finally Gets EMI(05/06/07) |
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Web Browser Security Flaws Stack Up
Monday, June 11, 2007 At 11:14 By Darren Chew
Michal Zalewski, a polish security researcher, is known for his impressive detection of browser flaws. He has found more, well another four to be precise.
The most serious of the four vulnerabilities he has found would make it possible for 'cyber punks' to steal your browser's cookies, and extract personal information – like bank numbers and passwords – and possibly execute extremely harmful scripts.
Two of the four vulnerabilities were found in IE – the others were in Mozilla FireFox. The cookie's flaw found in IE is being called a critical vulnerability, and it resides in the 'page update race condition'. What does that mean, you ask? Well, it means that there's a very brief – but still there – window of opportunity when IE goes from a sensitive website (Say, your bank) to a normal website (Say, Starbucks). During this time, an attacker can execute a string of JavaScript that will read the content from the old site and the content in the new site. It's a slightly obscure attack, mind you, but it is a very real threat.
The other three flaws found by Zalewski aren't nearly as critical – however, we do hope that they will be fixed as soon as possible, because no matter how small, a security hole in your browser can bring serious havoc to your computer.
These latest findings make people question – will we ever be safe online?
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| Apple iPhone launch date is set(07/06/07) |
| Internet Spam King Robert Soloway Arrested(05/06/07) |
| Mistaken view on WiFi(05/06/07) |
| YouTube Finally Gets EMI(05/06/07) |
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Apple iPhone launch date is set
Thursday, June 07, 2007 At 10:09 By Darren Chew
The much anticipated Apple iPhone has finally gained a release date. The date is set for June 29th, however this is only for the initial American release; a European launch date has not been set.
Verizon turned down the chance to carry the iPhone. As such, it will be an AT&T exclusive product for five years. It should also be noted that at the end of the commercials for the iPhone, the small print reads "Use requires minimum new 2 year activation plan."
Supposedly, Apple has developed a new method of subscribing customers to AT&T. It will greatly decrease the time it takes to sign up, unlike the long process that other cell phone carriers require.
The release of the iPhone spells a lot more work for the employees in Apple Stores. They have to clear off space for demos of the new product, train to become familiar enough to be able to assist customers, as well as lacing each store with cellular repeaters to preserve phone call quality. This last point is a result of Apple's policy of enabling every product feature available to the phone.
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| Internet Spam King Robert Soloway Arrested(05/06/07) |
| Mistaken view on WiFi(05/06/07) |
| YouTube Finally Gets EMI(05/06/07) |
| Last fm Music Site Bought by CBS(31/05/07) |
| Privacy fears over Google Personalisation(25/05/07) |
| Apple lawyers hot under the collar over iGasm(25/05/07) |
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Internet Spam King Robert Soloway Arrested
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 At 17:29 By Simon Spicer
The man known as the Spam King, Robert Soloway, was arrested after being indicted by a federal grand jury on ten counts of mail fraud, five counts of wire fraud, two counts of e-mail fraud, five counts of aggravated identity theft, and thirteen counts of money laundering.
Robert Soloway is the first spammer to be charged with aggravated identity theft under CAN-SPAM, an act that set national standards for sending commercial e-mail. The act also requires that the FTC enforce it.
Robert Soloway is the owner of Newport Internet Marketing. The spam sent out by him was used to promote the products and services sold by his company. When a legitimate businesses buy one of these products, it frequently turns out to be a spam tool.
If Robert Soloway is convicted as charged, he will face of maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 (£126,307). Prosecutors are also trying to seize $773,000 (£390,542) that they claim was generated through spamming-related activities.
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Mistaken view on WiFi
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 At 12:49 By Darren Chew
Recently, on a BBC journalism program - Panorama, an episode aired which featured a large of amount of very bad science.
One of the experts featured on the show, Alasdair Philips, took a measurement of a mast from a distance and compared it with a peek reading of a laptop that was downloading a large file so that the WiFi signal would be at its strongest.
Alasdair's independence is in question because he runs Powerwatch, a group that campaigns against mobile phones. Powerwatch also sells 'shielding' of various types, such as the shielding paint at £50.99 per litre. Approximately, ten litres of paint would be required to cover an eleven square foot bedroom.
Another issue brought up by the show is electro sensitivity. However, the symptoms reported by these sufferers are generally very non-specific and are generally considered to be a psychosomatic disorder; many people are incapable of detecting an electromagnetic field.
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| YouTube Finally Gets EMI(05/06/07) |
| Last fm Music Site Bought by CBS(31/05/07) |
| Privacy fears over Google Personalisation(25/05/07) |
| Apple lawyers hot under the collar over iGasm(25/05/07) |
| Help Make Duke Nukem Forever(25/05/07) |
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YouTube Finally Gets EMI
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 At 12:33 By Darren Chew
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Last fm Music Site Bought by CBS
Thursday, May 31, 2007 At 14:46 By Darren Chew
Last.fm is a social music site. It not only creates automatic playlists, but also allows users to interact with each other socially, connecting users based on their music preferences. The site was founded five years ago, and has an estimated 15 to 20 million active users.
Although the company was valued to be worth around £226m ($450m), CBS purchased it for £140m ($280m). It is the largest UK Web 2.0 acquisition, even though larger purchases have been seen in the US, such as Google's purchase of YouTube for £883m ($1.65bn).
Last.fm also stands to benefit from this deal. The team have managed to retain their places and keep the sites identity untouched. Even with over three million music tracks available to listen to, it is no where near the number of songs they aim to have. This purchase by CBS means they now have a much better chance at expanding that number greatly and acquiring even more artists and there tracks.
The site is also quite useful for finding new artists and new styles of music, with its 'Discover new artists' section. It also offers new artists and labels an easy free way of potentially getting there music to the masses.
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| Privacy fears over Google Personalisation(25/05/07) |
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| Help Make Duke Nukem Forever(25/05/07) |
| MySpace Shares Sex Offender Data(24/05/07) |
| IBM Launches First Power6 Based Server(24/05/07) |
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Privacy fears over Google Personalisation
Friday, May 25, 2007 At 19:58 By Peter Smith
Google is gathering more and more personal information on its users. Eric Schmidt, the Chief Executive of Google, hopes that one day Google will have enough information on users to be able to provide answers to personalised questions, such as “What job should I take?”
Personalisation would indeed make a search much easier for a user. If the search engine knows what you're trying to find, then it will give the most relevant information first. Personalisation would also be easier for advertisers. If they know what you are going to buy, and what you won't, they'll be able to find it easier to advertise. Google will also stand to profit if companies are more successful with their advertising. So why are people afraid?
There are many people who are very alarmed by the possibility that a user's personal details may be used for purposes other than what Google has announced. It is often mentioned how Google bowed to privacy activists and now only stores information about searches made by its users for two years.
Despite this, Google has made it plain that the personalisation is an optional service and if you don't like it, you may discontinue it at any time.
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| Google Home Page Problems(30/04/07) |
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Apple lawyers hot under the collar over iGasm
Friday, May 25, 2007 At 15:02 By Simon Spicer
Anne Summers, an adult retail chain, was recently sent a letter requesting that they remove the ad used to promote the iGasm. A pair of headphones and a vibrating unit that will vibrate in time to the tune playing on the media player that it is plugged in.
The reason for Apple to take such legal action is the advertisement that Anne Summers is using. It is very similar to Apple's own advertisements in that it features a similar silhouette figure. However, unlike in Apple's , there is a white cord leading into the figures underwear. Apple has threatened further action if the ad is not removed.
Jacqueline Gold isn't taking Apple seriously, having jokingly offered “Perhaps I can send them an iGasm to put a smile back on their faces!”
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Help Make Duke Nukem Forever
Friday, May 25, 2007 At 14:58 By Simon Spicer
The fourth game in the Duke Nukem series, Duke Nukem Forever will be the most recent game in the popular first-person shooter series. However, development has been very slow. The game was officially announced in 1997 on April 27. It has even received a Vaporware (software that has been officially announced, but never released) Award from Wired News on more than one occasion.
Regardless, the game is still in development. And due to the loss of several employees over several months, they are looking to hire. For the second time this year, a job ad has been posted on Gamasutra with an in-game screenshot. Another had been posted in January with another in-game screenshot. Both screenshots were confirmed by George Broussard, one of the creators of the original game and director of the current one.
http://www.3drealms.com/duke4/
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MySpace Shares Sex Offender Data
Thursday, May 24, 2007 At 17:43 By Peter Smith
Although the social networking site originally refused the demand from North Carolina Attorney General, as well as several others from different states, MySpace is now agreeing to release information on registered sex offenders who used the site. 7,000 profiles have already been removed from MySpace.com, the popular social networking website.
Last Monday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper sent a letter to MySpace. The letter was an attempt to request information about sex offenders on the website. However, due to the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, MySpace couldn't provide that information without a subpoena.
The information on the sex offenders was obtained from Sentinel Hold Corp., the company that MySpace chose to partner with to develop Sentinel Safe, a means to weed out the sex offenders on the site.
The executive vice president and general counsel of MySpace, Mike Angus, has stated that arrangements have been made that will even allow law enforcement to use the software directly.
Many officials realise that this is just one small step. A large number of people who do commit crimes against children are not known sex offenders. Larry Magid, the found of SafeKids.com believes that identifying the high-risk kids and doing more in terms of education and counselling will be far more effective on a larger scale.
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| Teenager arrested for sending Spim(22/02/05) |
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IBM Launches First Power6 Based Server
Thursday, May 24, 2007 At 17:39 By Peter Smith
At the Four Seasons Hotel, IBM displayed its first machine to make use of the Power6 processor. It was a System p 570 server that used Power5 and Power5+ chips, previously.
One of the major changes that IBM is doing with this most recent generation of Power chips is shifting to smaller manufacturing techniques, having shifted from 90 nanometres down to only 65 nanometres. The shrink is allowing them to add even more components, like a decimal floating point unit and vector math unit. Not only that, but they can increase the speed without the processor generating more heat stating that the Power6 chips, along with the new memory and I/O subsystems, are within five perfect of those of the Power5+ running at 2.2 GHz.
The Power6 has almost double the clock speed of the Power5. This is thanks to IBM's engineers. Instead of shrinking the length of the instruction pipeline, as is what is commonly done with an increase in clock speed, they found a way to keep it the same length, but to make it more efficient.
The added math units are also going to give significant improvement. With the vector processor math unit, the Power6 will have a marked effect on performance while performing floating point calculations. The decimal floating point unit, is said to boost base 10 operations by 2 to 7 times what they were without it.
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| IBM's $100 million Linux desktop boost(19/02/05) |
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Sony Confirms 80GB PS3
Thursday, May 24, 2007 At 17:13 By Peter Smith
An 80GB version of the PS3 is set to be launched on June 16. However, you're not likely to find one of these PS3s on the shelves anytime soon where you live*. This 80GB PS3 is only set to be released in Korea, and Sony denies any plans to ship it to elsewhere.
Other than the increased hard drive capacity this PS3 is identical to the version that has been released in other PAL TV territories. Unfortunately for Koreans, this results in the lack of the Emotion Engine chip, preventing full PS2 and PSOne compatibility.
Although, it is already possible for an owner to simply swap out the hard drive that is already in their PS3 with a new one. The PS3 is compatible with any stand 2.5 inch hard drive, which means that you could grab a 500 or 800gig hard drive from anywhere that sells them, and pop them into your PS3, blowing all other consoles out of the water.
* unless you happen to live in Korea ;)
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| PS3 chip details emerge(30/11/04) |
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HP Garage is a Landmark
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 At 17:11 By Simon Spicer
The garage that spawned Silicon Valley has officially become a national historic landmark, the same garage where HP was founded.
70 years ago Hewlett and Packard set up shop, and developed their very first project. Both lived on the property – Hewlett in the shed next to the garage, and Packard with his wife in the home.
HP purchased the property in 2000 for $1.7 million, under Chief Executive Carly Fiorina.
The garage isn't the only thing that has a great significance for the company, after all – Packard's wife did the company's books on the dining table, and the two men used the stove to bake paint that were used on the products they created.
To become a registered state and national landmark, buildings must be preserved to resemble their original state.
Historians have praised HP's restoration of the garage which is in near perfect detail – even including old coffee cans on the workbench, and the vintage Fiesta dinnerware. Old paint chips were used to determine the exact color of the trim, bringing the home to mint condition.
The garage was registered as a California landmark in 1987.
HP will only open the home and garage for special tours, and visitors on certain occasions.
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Zango is at it again
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 At 17:08 By Simon Spicer
Zango is once again suing a desktop-security firm. This time their target is PC Tools for classifying their software as an ‘elevated threat'. Zango claims that Spyware Doctor removes their software without the users expressed permission.
Zango has filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court in Seattle against TC Tools and it's free Spyware Doctor, asking for $35 million in damages for the “irreparable harm” that's been caused by the classification of Zango's software.
Zango took similar legal action against Zone Labs in 2005 because their personal firewall software was labeling Zango as spyware.
In 2006, US Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Zango, and the company agreed to ensure their software would only be installed with the direct consent of the user.
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Microsofts Popfly Rears Its Alpha Head
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 At 17:07 By Simon Spicer
Microsoft has recently released a program in alpha testing called Popfly. Popfly lets nearly anyone create websites or mashups, or add onto them, using their building blocks, so anyone can create interesting web pages.
It also includes a ‘builder' tool that will allow people to create applications by simply dragging and dropping icons that are ‘block-like', which represents tasks or services – like a widget that displays photos.
Behind the block icons are JavaScript XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Silverlight, Microsoft's new plug in. Anyone can modify these blocks to suit their specific needs, making it easier than ever to build unique applications.
The reason for Microsoft's new program, Popfly? They wanted to open the doors for non-techies, and allow them to breathe in the world of applications and web pages, without sacrificing lots of time to learn the ins and outs of programming these languages.
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Amazon to Launch DRM Free Music Store
Friday, May 18, 2007 At 17:09 By Peter Smith
Many have speculated that Amazon.com is trying to play 'catch-up', and even rival Apple. Wednesday the website announced that it will indeed launch a digital music store offering millions of songs. Expected to open sometime later this year, many iPod enthusiasts are looking at it as a direct challenge to iTunes, Apple's popular music database.
The store will contain literally millions of songs in the DRM-free MP3 format, including over 12,000 record labels. That's right, every song in the virtual store will only be available in the MP3 format, with no digital rights management software to be seen.
With such music, you could listen to it on nearly any player – PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes – and burn it to a CD to take with you in your car, or anywhere else.
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was quoted saying "Our MP3-only strategy means that all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,"
Is Amazon.com trying to 'go after' Apple, and if so, will they be successful? iTunes has a nearly cult following, and many iPod lovers wouldn't use anything else.
However, all fans of great music on the computer are looking forward to the outcome - one way, or another.
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| Free mp3 players from Napster(17/06/04) |
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Apple Patent for Theft Free Mobiles Approved
Friday, May 18, 2007 At 12:56 By Peter Smith
Apple's U.S. patent, filed in 2004, has officially gone through, making way for new theft-free mobile devices from the company.
The idea behind this is to make mobile devices detect the motions – experts say that during a theft, there are many 'unusual' movements, such as bumping and shaking. If the device, like an iPod or Mac, can detect these unusual movements, it can lock the system, or even set off an alarm.
Theoretically, it is possible - however, if it would work with the average person is yet to be seen. With the bumping and shaking that a college student deals with when riding a bus, or running, is the idea of an alarm on their laptops that goes off a great idea?
Apple's fans are hoping that long-term studies will be done before they implement it fully.
One element of the patent also points out that the software to control this could be adjusted, or even turned off - you could set the sensitivity so that every day activities (like riding a bus) wouldn't set off the alarm.
The real question, of course, is this – what does this mean for mobile security everywhere? Will cell phones too someday have such security, and will we see a decrease in the theft of mobile devices?
Thanks to Ashley at Core Solutions for the heads up.
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Half of Children Online Deal With Virtual Abuse
Thursday, May 17, 2007 At 13:30 By Peter Smith
A recent poll involving 2,053 children from the UK found that 50.4% of them experienced problems online, such as bullying, being threatened, and even sexual harassment.
Many, including the NSPCC who conducted the study, worry that the high use of social networking sites could be seriously contributing to these numbers. 52% of the children polled between the ages of 11 and 16 used social networking sites like MySpace.com and Bebo at least once every day.
The poll states that most children use the websites to connect with friends and meet new people – it suggests that 60% of children use these website to combat loneliness, while 53% use them to simply share their feelings.
The director and chief of NSPCC said that, "Children face real threats on the internet such as sexual grooming, cyber-bulling, exposure to violent, pornographic, and other unsuitable materials."
NSPCC advises all children to never give away any personal details to those they've met online, including their real names, pictures, and especially phone numbers.
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