AT&T Cuts DSL Prices to $12.99
AT&T has lowered the cost of its entry-level DSL service to $12.99 USD per month, the lowest price for high-speed Internet offered by any carrier. Speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second would be standard, but for an additional $5 per month users can upgrade to a speed of 3 Mbps.
There are some catches, however, as customers must sign up for the service online, and the pricing only lasts one year. After the year is up, the monthly pricing jumps to $29.99 and $34.99 USD, respectively. Additionally, new subscribers must also be local phone service customers of AT&T.
Kama Sutra Virus a Dud So Far
Reports indicate that damage from the Kama Sutra virus appears to be minimal thus far, however at least one security firm warned that the real results from the worm may not be known until later in the weekend.
The virus, which is also known as "Nyxem," "MyWife" and "Tearec," compromises files and was designed to activate on Friday, February 3. It will attempt to stop antivirus software and delete all Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, ZIP, RAR and PDF files from a user's PC.
VMware to Give Away Server Software
VMware, a company that specializes in products that allow users to run more than one operating system on their machines, is expected to announce next week that it will give away its GSX Server software for free. The company also offers ESX Server, however that will remain a for-pay product.
Users were previously able to purchase GSX Server for $1,400 USD for dual-processor and $2,800 USD for multi-processor machines. VMware ESX is more expensive based on the user's need, and can performed more advanced functions.
USPTO to Reconsider JPEG Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed earlier this week to a request by the Public Patent Foundation to review a controversial patent that Forgent Networks has been attempting to enforce through lawsuits with dozens of companies, including Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, RIM and Google.
Forgent acquired the rights to the JPEG compression patent through a 1997 purchase of Compression Labs, however it did not start asserting its ownership and demanding licensing for the patent until a year ago.
Apple Sued Over iPod Hearing Loss
An iPod owner who says he suffered hearing loss as a result of the device filed a lawsuit against Apple in federal court earlier this week, and is seeking class action status. However, experts say the effort has little chance of success.
According to the suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, iPods are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss." It asks the court to order Apple to pay compensation and make upgrades to the device to make it safer.
Ex-RIAA Chiefs Start Anti-Piracy Firm
Two former RIAA leaders, Jay Berman and Hilary Rosen, announced Thursday that they were partnering to form an anti-piracy consulting agency. The two plan to focus on intellectual property protection, digital media technology, international trade issues and anti-piracy strategies.
Rosen is probably most well known for her stint as the chief of the RIAA during the height of the Napster battle, while Berman, also once chief of the RIAA, headed the IFPI during that same time. The combined effort would be called Berman Rosen Global Strategies, but the two said that it would act as a consultancy rather than a lobbying firm.
Verizon Wins Against SMS Spammer
Verizon Wireless, the second largest cell phone carrier in the United States, announced Wednesday that it had won a permanent injunction against a Florida company that had been spamming its users with unsolicited text messages.
According to the suit, Passport Holidays of Ormond Beach, Florida had sent some 98,000 messages. The text messages claimed that the recipient had won a cruise and instructed them to contact the company to claim their prize.
iMesh Opens P2P Doors in Canada
iMesh said on Thursday that it had launched its legal peer-to-peer download service in Canada. The expansion is the first for the company since it relaunched in the United States in October of last year, and it remains the only legal P2P service available in North America.
iMesh says it offers the largest catalog of authorized music consisting of over 15 million tracks. This includes more than two million authorized tracks from the major record labels and 40,000 independents. The content is gathered from the Gnutella network.
USPTO Rejects Another Key NTP Patent
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dealt a major blow to NTP on Wednesday by rejecting a key patent at the center of the company's dispute with Research In Motion. The non-final rejection covers five of the seven patent infringement claims against RIM, which could be forced to shut down its BlackBerry service.
A separate patent covering the other two infringement claims has also been preliminarily rejected by the USPTO. The rulings give RIM a legal basis to challenge NTP's push to have a judge enforce an injunction against the company. However, final decisions from the USPTO could be months away.
Pandora Sees the DNA in Digital Music
Although we may not realize it, our musical preferences can be easily analyzed. Whether it's the soothing sounds of Enya or the guitar of heavy metal, an Oakland, California-based company thinks it knows how to figure out what you like, and in turn expose you to new music based on these tastes.
Enter the Music Genome Project, a six-year initiative undertaken by Pandora Media. A team of thirty musical analysts makes up the core of this effort, and they have listened to hundreds of thousands of songs from over 15,000 artists, individually analyzing each on some 400 distinct musical attributes.
EarthLink Runs VoIP Over Phone Lines
The VoIP market is one of the fastest growing Internet industries. While it only had less than two percent penetration in 2004, research firm IDC predicts that number will rise to 22.1 percent by 2008. Furthermore, JupiterResearch projects that as many as 20 million US households will subscribe to a VoIP service.
However, there is one issue that plagues the technology: bandwidth. By nature, VoIP both transmits and receives a large amount of data that leaves little wiggle room for other services. If the VoIP data stream does not have enough bandwidth, it can result in a noticeable quality degradation.
Mass. Papers Expose Customer Credit Cards
The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette admitted Wednesday that the credit card data of up to 240,000 subscribers might have been inadvertently compromised due to a computer glitch. The credit card numbers were printed on routing slips attached to over 9,000 bundles of newspapers sent out to carriers and retailers last weekend.
The error came from the fact that the packing slips were printed on recycled paper containing internal reports with credit card numbers on them. The papers say they have stopped the practice of reusing paper.
IBM Spearheads AJAX Development Org
Looking to further AJAX, a Web-based technology that allows for the streaming of information to a Web browser without the need to refresh, IBM along with over a dozen companies have formed Open Ajax. The group intends to promote the technology's use and its universal compatibility with any application or operating system.
AJAX is short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It has several possible applications, including its ability to update a Web page without refreshing the browser. This would allow for alerting a user if incorrect information is typed into a form as it is entered, dragging and dropping within a Web application, and rich navigational tools.
European Papers Threaten Google News
Google may soon have to fight another legal battle, as the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers (WAN) announced that it was looking into ways to challenge sites like Google News. The problem lies in the fact that these sites aggregate news content, but in most cases do not pay for access.
The members of the organization feel as if they are due compensation for access to to their content. "The search engines are increasingly aiming their strategic efforts at traditional content originators and aggregators like newspaper publishers," WAN President Gavin O'Reilly said in prepared remarks.
MSN Speaks Out About Censorship
Microsoft on Tuesday set guidelines for the removal of content on its MSN Spaces blogging platform, saying a broader discussion on the topic was needed to provide a basis on which other services could form their own content policies when faced with demands from local governments.
The company reaffirmed its position at a meeting of government officials in Lisbon, Portugal. The meeting comes after a firestorm over Google's recent censoring of search results on its Chinese Web site, a move that contradicted its philosophy of offering the most open, unadulterated search results.
Ed's Bio
Ed Oswald is a freelance journalist from the Reading, PA area. Although he has written across a variety of subjects, Ed’s passion and focus has been on technology and gadgets. His work regularly appears on tech news sites BetaNews, PCWorld, and Technologizer, and has been syndicated to eWeek, Time’s Techland blog, VentureBeat and the New York Times.
Ethics Statement© 1998-2024 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.