Ed Oswald

Facing increasing criticism from the open source community, Linux founder Linus Torvalds defended his lawyer's actions in an e-mail to the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

In July, the lawyer contacted 90 Australian companies serving them with a cease and desist letter over the Linux trademark. The notices were sent with Torvalds' blessing. The companies could choose to sublicense the Linux name for a fee of anywhere from $200 to $5,000, the letter stated.

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AMD on Monday added two new mobile gaming processors to its 64-bit lineup, the Turion 64 Mobile MT-37 and MT-40. The new processors will first be available from VoodooPC, a manufacturer of high-end laptops.

The MT-37 and MT-40 feature a thin and light design, and consume 25 watts of power. They are slower than the "ML" line of chips, AMD's second other mobile processors that consume up to 35 watts.

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Researchers on Friday said that evidence is mounting that prolonged exposure to violent video games does increase violent behavior in children and young adults, most commonly in males. The announcement culminates some 20 years of research on the topic.

The results of the research were unveiled at an annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. The study even caused the group to pass a resolution condemning violence in video games and asking for a reduction in the amount of violent content.

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Sun Microsystems has called on the industry to rally around a single standard for digital rights management and is touting its latest project DReaM, or DRM Everywhere Available, as a possible solution.

Dubbed the Open Media Commons, Sun will offer its DRM to any interested party free of royalties. Company president and COO Jonathan Schwartz debuted the initative at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit.

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Symantec, creator of the popular antivirus software Norton, purchased security firm Sygate earlier this week in a deal that will add to the software maker's already impressive line of acquisitions in the past year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Previous to the Sygate acquisition, Symantec acquired TurnTide, Brightmail, On Technology and SafeWeb, as well as storage-software maker Veritas. Sygate makes software that ensures compliance with security regulations, as well as software to govern access to network devices.

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It might seem like something right out of the Jetsons, but Japanese researchers are hoping to have a commercially available 3D television on the market by the year 2020.

The television would not only show the scenes in three-dimensional virtual reality, but would also let you experience the smells and "touch" the images on the projection. The images would be projected upwards from a screen that lies on the floor.

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In the end, the much-feared Zotob worm became more of a localized nuisance than a widespread problem due to the design of the code itself. Mistakes by the coders of the worm in variants caused infected machines to reboot continuously, not giving most machines enough time to spread the worm to other vulnerable PCs.

The flaws gave IT personnel time to fight Zotob with patches provided by Microsoft, helping to prevent its spread. Thus, the overall damage caused by the worm was minimal.

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A brighter picture and less wires are some of the advantages to a new display standard for PCs, TVs and projectors being reviewed by the Video Electronics Standards Association, or VESA. Called DisplayPort, it allows for more colors, better resolution and refresh rates, and connections involving fewer cables.

In the new standard, audio travels over the same cable as the video signal. Also, more bandwidth is available, allowing for a crisper and fuller picture and sound.

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Intel on Thursday announced it was launching a pilot program in 13 communities worldwide to look into how wireless technology and innovations in computer applications could enhance the quality of services for governments, businesses, and citizens.

The cities to be included in the test are: Cleveland, Corpus Christi, Philadelphia and Portland in the United States. Worldwide, the test would include Taipei, Taiwan; Mangaratiba, Brazil; Dusseldorf, Germany; Gyor, Hungary; Jerusalem, Israel; Principality of Monaco; Seoul, South Korea; Osaka, Japan; and Westminster, United Kingdom.

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In an interview with IDG, Microsoft technical evangelist Robert Scoble said that Microsoft has never had plans to rebrand RSS, and was trying to work with the community to build some consensus on how RSS should be referred to within Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.

The spat over RSS began following the release of IE7 Beta 1, in which Microsoft dubbed the technology: "Web feeds." The move sparked an outcry from a number of technology enthusiasts, including RSS co-creator Dave Winer.

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Mozilla put out a call Wednesday afternoon to seek out beta testers interested in testing out the basic functions of Thunderbird, the group's open-source e-mail client. The quality assurance arm of the organization has asked that all interested persons subscribe to the Tbirdtesters mailing list.

"We are planning a testing day soon, stay tuned to the mail alias for more information," Mozilla's Marcia Knous wrote in the Quality Assurance Web log. Knous also recommended that testers visit the Web log regularly for updates on the test.

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Samsung thinks more is better. At least, that's the stance it will take through the holiday season and into the New Year with its line of digital music players. A company official said on Thursday that Samsung plans to introduce six new players this year and as many as ten new players in 2006. This follows six other players introduced earlier this year.

Samsung is aiming for sales of 5 million units - a sixth of the iPod's expected annual sales. However, Samsung may want to take a cue from fellow Asian electronics maker Creative. Including it's latest player, the Zen Vision, Creative offers 27 different models, yet the company is only expected to sell around 8 million players this year.

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Nokia quashed rumors of a deal with Apple Computer on Thursday by saying its forthcoming N91 phone would be shipping sans-iTunes. Finnish paper Taloussanomat had reported that the phone would soon ship with Apple's popular digital music software.

According to Nokia, there is no current agreement between the two companies. However, it did say that because the N91 has an open development platform, anyone, including Apple, could develop applications for the device.

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A new vulnerability has been discovered within Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP that could open up computers to attack through the execution of arbitrary code from a malicious Web site.

What's worse is that code to exploit the vulnerability is already available on the Internet, according to the French Security Incident Response Team. The group discovered the flaw and disclosed it on Wednesday.

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Yahoo on Wednesday unveiled a local version of its search engine that will allow the user to search based on a certain geographical location to find restaurants, movies and events, and even include user reviews among the results.

Yahoo's Paul Levine said that the future success of local search services does not only depend on the quality of the results, but also "in combining those results with community-generated content."

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