It seems that Microsoft support will allow anybody with a copy of Vista Ultimate or Business to call and request a downgrade disc themselves, just like it says in the licence terms. So there you have it, anyone can pick up a Vista downgrade disc as long as they have a nice enough version of Vista — via Gizmodo Australia
Random House and eMusic have begun to sell DRM-free audiobooks on their site. This is pretty big news, since iTunes has an exclusive deal with Audible for ebooks, and Audible won’t sell non-DRM ebooks (though they have other non-DRM products), even when the author doesn’t want any DRM
A method developed at Colorado State University for crafting solar panels has been developed to the point where they are nearly ready for mass production. Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity — via Slashdot
The Pirate Bay has been digging through the enormous chunk of leaked email from MediaDefender, the sleazy enforcers used by the entertainment industry to fight P2P, and they’ve discovered evidence of illegal sabotage. So they’re suing all the big movie and record comapnies in Sweden — via Boing Boing
While Microsoft is still pushing Vista hard, the company is quietly allowing PC makers to offer a downgrade
option to buyers that get machines with the new operating system but want to switch to Windows XP. The program applies only to Windows Vista Business and Ultimate versions, and it is up to PC makers to decide how, if at all, they want to make XP available. Fujitsu has been among the most aggressive, starting last month to include an XP disc in the box with its laptops and tablets
Google is planning to span the Pacific Ocean with its own undersea fibre optics cable
The Open Mobile Terminal Platform — a forum dominated by operators but including manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG — announced that its members had agreed on micro-USB as the future common connector
London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost ¬£200 million but an analysis of the publicly funded spy network has cast serious doubt on its ability to help solve crime. In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average. The study found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any — via Slashdot
Former defence minister Kim Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes in the 1980s to enable the shooting down of enemy aircraft. The radar on Australia’s US-made Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region — they were set up for European threats — but despite many requests, the codes were not provided, so In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves
. The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made — via Slashdot
Google has quietly introduced a new app of sorts called Shared Stuff, a social bookmarking service offering a strange balance of Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us, and Google Reader shared feeds with a heavy dose of Gmail integration
Mozilla has announced a new initiative to overhaul email and internet communications in general. The new company, MailCo, will be given $3 million in startup capital from Mozilla to start with the Thunderbird code and work from there. MailCo will be led by David Ascher of ActiveState fame and, according to him, will be a for-profit venture without the emphasis on profit — via Slashdot
Intel and others plan to release a new version of the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus technology in the first half of 2008, a revamp the chipmaker said will make data transfer rates more than ten times as fast by adding fibre-optic links alongside the traditional copper wires
Google adds a PowerPoint clone called Presentation to its stable of online Word and Excel clones. Whether an online-only, browser-based presentation suite will be nearly as powerful as a native application is yet to be seen — via Gizmodo Australia
IBM’s Lotus-branded proprietary programs already compete with Microsoft products for e-mail, messaging and work group collaboration. But the Symphony software is a free alternative to Microsoft’s mainstay Office programs — Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office business is huge and lucrative for Microsoft, second only to its Windows operating system as a profit maker
The New York Times said it will end its paid TimesSelect Web service and make most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue
Apparently, SCO’s lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO’s finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what’s about to happen to SCO — via Slashdot
The Federal Government recently began an unsavoury campaign to win votes by abusing parents’ concern for their children. It is trying to whip up fear about the largely non-existent threat of online sexual predators
Warner, who currently support both HD DVD and Blu-ray high definition disc formats, had also been working on a hybrid disc format — Total HD — which was originally due to debut this year, was delayed, and is now on hold indefinitely
Yahoo is buying e-mail service Zimbra for $350 million in an all-cash deal that may open a new revenue channel for the slumping Internet icon. The acquisition announced Monday represents Yahoo’s second significant expenditure this month as co-founder Jerry Yang spearheads an effort to breathe new life into the company
In one of the bolder experiments to date, SpiralFrog.com, a service scheduled to open today, will let Web surfers download songs by U2, Timbaland, Amy Winehouse and other Universal Music Group artists free. The catch: Consumers have to wait 90 seconds for each track to download, and they must answer questions each month about their buying habits. In addition, the songs can’t be played on iPods or burned onto CDs as they can with 99-cent downloads from the dominant online music store, Apple’s iTunes
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