All Things News

Straight from Ars Technica: “What gets people so worked up about the whole situation is that Verizon pitches their service as “unlimited.” If you read the fine print, though, the EVDO service is “unlimited” only for certain things. Those things are spelled out in the user agreement, and include “(i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force and field service automation).”Verizon prohibits most other activities, saying that its service cannot be used “(1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games, (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, or (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.”"

Straight from Ars Technica: “Stuart Romm boarded a plane in Las Vegas on February 1, 2004. When he got off the plane in British Columbia, Canada’s Border Services Agency stopped Romm for questioning. After learning that Romm had a criminal background, Agent Keith Brown searched his laptop and discovered child porn sites in Romm’s Internet history list. Canada then bundled Romm back onto a plane to Seattle, where US Customs agents had a chance to question him further.They also conducted a forensic scan of his hard drive and turned up images of child pornography in Romm’s browser cache. The images had been deleted (intentionally, it appears), but were recovered by an agent using software called “EnCase.” Romm then admitted to investigators that he used Google to search for child pornography, and that his “therapy” had failed to help him quit.”

Straight from Techdirt: “For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorized files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network. In fact, this even had some people suggesting that, if you want to win a lawsuit from the RIAA, you’re best off opening up your WiFi network to neighbors. It seems like this strategy might actually be working. Earlier this month the inability to prove who actually did the file sharing caused the RIAA to drop a case in Oklahoma and now it looks like the same defense has worked in a California case as well. In both cases, though, as soon as the RIAA realized the person was using this defense, they dropped the case, rather than lose it and set a precedent showing they really don’t have the unequivocal evidence they claim they do. The RIAA certainly has the legal right to go after people, even if it simply ends up pissing off their best fans and driving people to spend their money on other forms of entertainment — but, if they want to do so, they should at least have legitimate evidence. It’s good to see that some are finally pointing out how flimsy the evidence really is.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Spyware and malware authors have been busy creating malicious browser extensions and disguising them as legitimate. According to security software firm McAfee, the trojan known as FormSpy has been spammed as an e-mail attachment that pretends to be from a legitimate source. When the attachment is opened, it installs a Mozilla Firefox extension known as “NumberedLinks 0.9.” Unlike the real NumberedLinks 0.9, which is an open-source Firefox extension that allows web navigation by unique numbers attached to web page links, this doppleganger instead silently downloads a suite of keylogger applications that spend their time looking for credit card numbers, PIN numbers, passwords, and other user data from web, ICQ, FTP, IMAP, and POP3 traffic. This information is then sent back to the spammer’s web site.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “European Commission antitrust officials are conducting a probe into the licensing practices of the groups backing HD DVD and Blu-ray. Without revealing the cause for the probe or even its aims, a Commission spokesperson indicated that a review was under way. “We have sent a letter earlier this month to the makers of HD DVD and Blu-ray to request information about licensing,” the spokesman told Reuters. According to a statement released by Sony,  “There are no indications of any complaint, nor of any antitrust concerns on the part of the Commission or anyone else.”"

Straight from Gizmodo: “Intel launches its Core 2 Duo processors today, 10 in all, including the 64-bit Conroe (Core 2 Duo) and Conroe XE (Core 2 Extreme) for desktops. and 32-bit Merom for laptops All are dual-core processors that will initially be available in single socket configurations, which means that at first there won’t be dual processor/dual core systems using the chips yet.”

Straight from Slashdot: “TG Daily has posted an interesting interview with Intel’s top mobility executive David Perlmutter. While he sideswipes AMD very carefully (‘I am not underestimating the competition, but..’), he shares some details about the successor of Core, which goes by the name ‘Nehalem.’ Especially interesting are his remarks about power consumption, which he believes will ‘dramatically’ decrease in the next years as well as the number of cores in processors: Two are enough for now, four will be mainstream in three years and eight is something the desktop market does not need.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “For years, the names Dell and Intel went together like chocolate and peanut butter. The former rose to the top of the PC heap exclusively selling chips from the latter, and despite the ground AMD made up on Intel when it came to CPU performance, the two companies hung together until earlier this summer. That’s when Dell was forced by market realities to begin offering servers powered by Opteron CPUs.Since then, interested observers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop: Dell desktops with AMD inside. Those should be coming soon. Dell CEO Kevin Rollins says that the newly formed relationship between the two companies will “expand.” He didn’t offer any additional details on products that might use AMD CPUs and when we might see them, but his comments corroborate what we have been hearing for some time from our sources inside Intel.

Make no mistake about it: the days of the cozy Dell-Intel partnership are gone forever. The Austin, TX-based company will still sell a large number of laptops, desktops, and servers with Intel CPUs, but expect to see AMD play a significantly larger role in Dell’s product lineup.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Seems like Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child program has been rejected by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India. Among the objections are concerns about the effect of extensive laptop use on children’s health. Better uses for the monies, which would be required to roll out the OLPC project, are also named. Most insightful however is the observation that not one industrial country has so far implemented a similar program for its children, which casts doubt as to what the pedagogical use for notebooks in class really is.”

Straight from LGF News: “Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie was interviewed on CBC radio, and had some very interesting news about the UN observer post hit by Israeli shells; the Canadian peacekeeper killed there had previously emailed Mackenzie telling him that Hizballah was using their post as cover.”

The radio interview is available via a link on the LFG News website, and I strongly recommend you listen to it in its entirety. Unlike Reuters, Major General Mackenzie isn’t afraid to call Hizbollah a terrorist group much like Hamas.

Straight from Reuters: “DUBAI (Reuters) – Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al Zawahri warned his group would not stand by and watch Israel bombard Lebanon and the Palestinians, calling on Muslims in a video aired on Thursday to fight attacks on their countries.Zawahri, in the tape aired by Al Jazeera television, did not say how al Qaeda would respond to the fighting.

“How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people,” he asked. “Oh Muslims everywhere, I call on you to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the Crusaders,” Zawahri said in the statement which was entitled “The Zionist-crusader war on Lebanon and the Palestinians”.

Zawahri’s statement was the first comment by the Sunni Muslim-dominated al Qaeda against Israel’s war on Lebanon which was sparked by the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Shi’ite Muslim guerrilla group Hizbollah.”

Thanks for being ever so politically correct at the end of the article Reuters. “Shi’ite Muslim guerrilla group Hizbollah?” Erm, how about “terrorist group Hizbollah?” It’s shorter and has a nice ring to it.