What does the Sarah Palin e-mail hack say about Yahoo?
There's an underlying issue in the debate raging about the reported hack into the Yahoo e-mail account of VP nominee Sarah Palin, and it actually has very little to do with the governor: Is there an e-mail vulnerability we should know about?
Though a Fox News report from commentator Sean Hannity yesterday credited anonymous individuals who regularly post to a massive random image posting site called 4chan, with the revelation of screen shots of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's private e-mails -- including some that may play a role in an ongoing investigation -- the existence of the account's location may actually have been first publicly disclosed by, of all places, the Washington Post. A September 10 article by reporter Karl Vick reported that Palin had apparently been using one or two Yahoo e-mail accounts to conduct state business, with concern being cast upon the relative security of any private transactions that took place there.
Latest IBM innovation could accelerate the 22 nm era
A costly technique for using two masks to produce one semiconductor wafer etching at the 22 nm level may be minimized, thanks to a process that IBM announced today, though for obvious reasons has not completely explained.
The need for devices to reduce power consumption is the chief motivator behind the drive to shrink the size of components. It's not like we need more space anymore; smaller components are simply, by design, more efficient. But it takes a tremendous array of new efficiencies along the way to yield that power efficiency at the end, and one of the problems facing chip manufacturers has been, how to implement these new processes without completely overhauling factories.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 launches next week, could only help earnings
During a conference call with analysts late yesterday, executives from Adobe confirmed that the company is sticking to its schedule of launching its final editions of Creative Suite 4 next week.
Final builds of Adobe CS4 beta components were being discussed on its testers' forums as late as last weekend, and one problem that may not yet be completely resolved even on the launch date -- now expected to be next Tuesday -- concerns the compatibility of extensions made for CS3 with CS4. On testers' forums this week, Adobe claims its development partners have been given plenty of time to make the changeover, though at least one such partner claims it hasn't been given the help it needs from Adobe.
Zune to make McDonald's into a virtual radio network
It's no secret Microsoft's Zune player has Wi-Fi built-in, but besides a feature that the company had originally intended to call "dee-jaying," there hasn't been much else you could do with it. Zune owners, you deserve a break today.
With the latest firmware update to Microsoft's Zune music players, the company disclosed last week, listeners will be able to stream music directly from the Zune Marketplace Store without having to download and purchase it first. Today, we learned more about how that streaming capability will be put to use: Wi-Fi services provider Wayport will be working with long-time partner McDonald's Restaurants to implement streaming capacity directly with customers' Zunes over 802.11.
Official: T-Mobile to premiere Android on Sept. 23
An independent Android developers' blog reports having received an official invitation from carrier T-Mobile to cover a press conference in New York City Tuesday morning, where the first Android-powered phone will be unveiled.
A screenshot of the invitation appears on Android Authority this afternoon.
Mozilla in hot water over use of EULA in Canonical Ubuntu Linux
The definition of just how free is "free" is once again the subject of debate, triggered this week by the inclusion of a typical-looking end user license agreement from Mozilla Corp. amid the setup for recent builds of Ubuntu Linux.
At issue, for the most part, is this: Can a private interest claim intellectual property rights to certain trademarked elements of code that are distributed as part of an open source package protected by the General Public License?
Dell releases external burn-on-demand DVD for Qflix
3:10 pm EDT September 16, 2008 - A spokesperson for Sonic Solutions told BetaNews this afternoon that DVD videos burned with Qflix drives, including the one sold by Dell, may very well be readable in other brands of console- and PC-based DVD players, although the one way to know for sure is to check for a Qflix logo.
According to Qflix literature, the presence of the logo on a device means it has been Qflix-certified. A warning posted on Dell's Web site yesterday, on the day its external Qflix DVD burner was released, explicitly says that discs burned on that device may not be viewable through players that don't have the Qflix logo.
Latest Mac OS X security update addresses 26 vulnerabilities
With greater market share comes greater responsibility; and now the maker of the operating system that analysts believe put Apple back among the US' top five PC producers, finds itself busy addressing some very old-style security holes.
An issue with null pointer dereferencing is among 26 security holes addressed by Apple in its latest Mac OS X 10.5.5 update package, and the details of that little problem are being revealed just today. Usually programs that are terminated clean up after themselves, but if you can find a way to terminate a program cold, it leaves behind pointers to memory that can be abused by malicious users.
Microsoft to drop Xbox 360 UK prices by 30 GBP
In a highly anticipated move given that Japan and North America have already been treated to price cuts, Microsoft UK is relieving the burden for British gamers, dropping the basic 60 GB HDD-equipped Xbox 360 to £169.99.
Microsoft confirmed to BetaNews this morning that a wave of price cuts that began two weeks ago in Japan and then followed up the following day in the US and Canada, has now officially reached Europe. Beginning this Friday, customers should expect to see price drops of about 15%.
Napster to be absorbed into Best Buy in $121 million deal
A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday confirms that retailer Best Buy has entered into a deal to completely purchase online music service Napster, for $121 million including $54 million up front.
According to the SEC filing (HTML copy available here), Napster will have 20 days to reach a firm decision on the deal, although a definitive merger plan has already been agreed upon. Conceivably, opposing bids could be considered during that time, assuming any are forthcoming.
Newspaper group warns Google / Yahoo deal could tighten ad supply
In countries that know full well how the effects of a cartel can stifle an economy, newspaper editors are raising concerns that a deal between Yahoo and Google could cause the prices of online ads to become prohibitively high.
Though the current agreement between Yahoo and Google calls mainly for Yahoo to open up portions of its search results pages to ads supplied by Google, another press organization is warning this morning that the deal threatens the independence of the world's free press.
Interview with Aza Raskin, Part 2: Making Ubiquity ubiquitous
Continuing BetaNews' interview with the user experience chief of Mozilla Labs, we discuss whether it's possible, even with an estimated quarter-billion Firefox users, to build a semantic functionality network on the strength of volunteerism.
Of the billions of people linked together through the modern Internet, and the tens of thousands of services available to them -- a great many of which are operated by folks who believe they have the capability to serve the Web's principal application -- the number of institutions formed among them that we talk about on a daily basis, that command Web users' everyday attention, and that promise "solutions" to these users' needs, can be counted on two hands.
Google releases a cleaned-up Mobile App for BlackBerry
Though the Web browser has become a popular BlackBerry feature, users on the go don't have time to fiddle with browsers. For them, Google has released a mobile version of its basic services that skips the formalities and gets down to basics.
If you're a BlackBerry user, chances are that you've already noticed Google's classic, plain vanilla screens and menus often seem more suited for the PC than for the handheld. There's a much greater chance that a mobile user will need to see a map of nearby restaurants or a list of incoming e-mails than, say, the proper spelling of "esophagus."
US gov't cannot use cell phone IDs without a warrant, court affirms
How much does your cell phone say about who you are and where you are? Last year, the US government wanted the authority to use the information cell phones put out naturally in its own investigations. Yesterday, a judge said no.
Pennsylvania US district court judge Terrence McVerry late yesterday denied the US government's appeal of a federal magistrate's order last February, that effectively prohibited the government from acquiring location information from individuals' cell phone location tracking devices without a warrant.
Opposition mounts to bill enabling US to prosecute suspected IP thieves
With the recording industry reportedly prosecuting tens of thousands of cases of intellectual property theft, the federal government is considering whether it should appoint a new agency head to take care of that job instead.
As the US Senate prepares to debate a bill introduced last July that would enable federal law enforcement agencies to seek, arrest, and prosecute suspected traffickers of intellectual property -- including unauthorized file-sharers -- a cavalcade of trade, industry, and advocacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, and Consumers Union, began a joint counter-offensive against the legislation.
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