Top electronics retailers are lining up behind a new universal DVD format created by Warner Bros to bridge the gap between the competing HD DVD and Blu-ray camps. The new DVD media, dubbed Total HD, is the latest solution in the problem over dueling next-gen DVD standards: Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD
News emerged this week that top cryptologists at the US National Security Agency had a hand in some of the security features in Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista. The NSA, best known for its code-breaking capabilities and covert-spying operations, loaned a team of cryptologists to the software giant for reviewing some of the security features in Vista, which is expected to be used, eventually, by hundreds of millions of computer users around the world. Microsoft has confirmed the agency played an active role in the software’s development
The past few years have seen a clear trend toward ridding desktop PCs of wires. But the VGA cable connecting your system to your monitor has been a stubborn holdout. Now a company called Quartics is looking to sever that tie, using technology that will allow monitors to link via wired or wireless USB connections
Office for Mac users who’ve been wondering about a new version — and Office 2007 compatibility — got some answers today as Microsoft said it will ship Office for Mac 2008 by year’s end. At MacWorld in San Francisco, officials of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit also announced plans for spring delivery of beta versions of converters that will allow the current version of the popular suite, Office for Mac 2004, to open, edit, and save files in Office 2007’s new default XML formats for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The final converters will appear six to eight weeks after Office for Mac 2008 ships
Sony has been convicted of misleading the French public and told to pay damages to a consumer watchdog for selling downloadable songs that only run on its own music players
An international team of researchers has discovered a new generation of optical molecules which interact 50% more strongly with light than any molecules ever tested. These organic molecules, known as chromophores, have been theorised by physicists at Washington State University, synthesised by chemists in China and tested for their actual optical properties by chemists in Belgium. But if they’re excellent candidates for being used in optical technologies such as optical switches and Internet connections, these new materials should not be used before several years — if ever
A blogger named Spocko had his blog shut down by ABC/Disney lawyers because he had posted clips from an ABC Radio-affiliated program and commented on their content, as well as informed show advertisers of what exactly they were paying for. Spocko merely pointed out the content that station KSFO was broadcasting, and as a result Visa pulled their advertising from the station. More companies were reportedly considering pulling their ads
Google has struck a partnership with a Chinese peer-to-peer file downloading service, Xunlei Networking Technologies. The partnership will give users of the Xunlei service easier access to Google search services and multimedia content via a search link on Xunlei’s home page, the companies said Friday. The deal also involves marketing development and product co-operation
Hitachi Introduces 1-Terabyte Hard Drive
Hitachi is first to the mat with an announcement of a 1-terabyte hard disk drive. Industry analysts widely expected a 1TB drive to ship sometime in 2007; Hitachi grabbed a head start on the competition by announcing its drive just before the largest US consumer electronics show. According to Hitachi, the drive ships in the first quarter of 2007, and will cost $399 — less than the price of two individual 500GB hard drives today
We can expect 3.5-inch 300-terabit hard drives within a matter of years. Currently Seagate is using perpendicular recording but in the next decade we can expect heat-assisted magnetic recording (HARM), which will boost storage densities to as much as 50 terabits per square inch. The technology allows a smaller number of grains to be used for each bit of data, taking advantage of high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum
Movie studios have approved Sonic Solutions’ technology Qflix, which allows people to download movies and burn them to DVDs that include CSS, the method of encryption that protects all pre-recorded DVDs sold today. Apparently the DVDs will also be subject to DRM restrictions placed by download services such as limiting the times a movie can be played back and how many times the movie can be burned
Google has announced its partnership with the University of Washington, the University of Arizona and others to create the world’s largest database — a moving picture of the universe
Samsung’s new dual-sided LCD, which is 2.22 inches wide and offers QVGA resolution at 240 x 320 pixels, might help reduce the thickness of cell phones that sport clamshell designs. Or it could give those handsets more room to add features that consumers want. Today’s clamshell designs use two screens — one on the outside, one on the inside — that take of up much-needed real estate in a tiny handset
Five leading hardware makers have come together to push for a new storage component that incorporates NAND flash memory onto a computer’s hard drive to allow for faster start-up speeds. The hybrid technology is designed to work hand-in-hand with advances in Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, which will become available to consumers later this month. The technology helps to shorten a Vista-based machine’s startup time by booting the system straight from the flash memory chip instead of waiting for the system to turn on and start spinning the platters on the hard drive
Smaller. Safer. Faster. That’s how SanDisk describes its new hard drive for notebook computers, a drive that does not use the spinning plates of standard hard drives but the same Flash technology found in MP3 players and digital cameras. Consumers can’t buy the drive yet, and SanDisk has not announced a price. But in a written statement, the firm’s CEO and founder, Eli Harari, said the drive will add a hefty $600 to the price of any notebook using it
Adobe has become the latest software giant to see its applications exposed to hack attacks, but experts suggest the problem might not be grave, even though its potential reach is vast. Because Acrobat is a nearly universal application in both corporate and consumer worlds, Symantec security researcher Hon Lau called the Acrobat hack breathtaking
. The Acrobat flaw does not occur in Acrobat or the Acrobat reader directly, but in the Web browser plug-in that lets PDF documents be read directly over the Internet in programs such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox
Warner Brothers, which helped popularise the DVD more than a decade ago, plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD
Google has quickly fixed a flaw that reportedly exposed the contact lists of Gmail users to spammers, giving them, at least in theory, a new source of e-mail addresses for hawking their wares
British travelers using a credit card to purchase their ticket may now have their credit card and email accounts inspected by US authorities. This has been true since October, when the US and the EU agreed about what information the US could demand from airlines and how this information would be handled. But details of the agreement only recently came to light following a Freedom of Information request. The US says it will encourage
US carriers to reciprocate to any requests by European governments
Wikipedia has inadvertently blocked Qatar from editing pages thanks to the technical workings of an automated censor imposed by the sole national high speed ISP. The temporary 12 hour autoban was due to spam-abuse coming from the IP address in question, but the fact that this belongs to the country’s sole high-speed internet provider had the unintended consequence of stopping Qataris from editing the wiki. Wikipedia has since narrowed the ban down to anonymous users from the affected IP, meaning existing accounts from Qatar should now be back online. This raises a number of issues about internet connectivity in small countries and any company allowed to run ISPs in a monopoly situation — via Slashdot
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