Second Night of Outages Hit Comcast
Comcast High Speed Internet subscribers again found themselves without Internet service for the second night in a row and the third time in two weeks as "server problems" plagued the cable provider once again.
The latest round of troubles is causing several subscribers to begin to look elsewhere for broadband Internet service, or ways to get around Comcast's broken servers.
Credit Card ID Theft Affects 180,000
180,000 individuals that used their MasterCard credit cards at Polo Ralph Lauren stores are being informed that they may have had their personal information compromised, British bank HSBC revealed on Wednesday. In particular, the theft seems to be limited to those carrying GM-branded MasterCards.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the theft occurred last month. Other banks may have been affected by the security breach, however none have stepped forward publicly. Laws as they are currently written do not make it mandatory for banks to immediately alert customers to fraud.
Apple Posts Record 2nd Quarter Sales
Apple blew past expectations, announcing record second quarter earnings and a net profit of $290 million, according to data released late Wednesday. But the good news did not end there for the Cupertino-based company; 1 million Macs and an astounding 5.3 million iPods were shipped during the quarter.
Pete Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, told analysts in a conference call Wednesday that much of the demand behind the iPod came from "strong response to the iPod Shuffle," and data showed that in February the Shuffle had a 43 percent share of the Flash-based market.
Security Flaw Confirmed in OpenOffice
The makers of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite confirmed late Tuesday that a buffer overflow flaw does indeed exist in both the latest stable and beta versions of the software. The issue could potentially make its users vulnerable to code execution attacks.
Community manager, Louis Suarez-Potts, confirmed to eWeek Tuesday that the flaw did indeed exist and said it was caused when the program handles a specially written .doc file. "We learned of this March 31 and will be working on it immediately. A patch is ready but it is still going through [quality assurance] testing," he said.
Sony Wants Single Standard for HD DVD
Sony said Wednesday that it sees "no visible progress" towards a standard for the next generation of DVD discs, but the company is open to working on one to prevent an inevitable format war.
Sony is the creator of Blu-ray, one of two formats that the industry has thrown its support behind to move DVD into true high-definition.
New Outage Hits Comcast Subscribers
For the second time in less than a week, Comcast High Speed Internet customers found themselves without Internet service due to a nearly nationwide failure of it's domain name servers. According to posts on Comcast's own help forums, problems began shortly after 10:30pm Eastern Time Tuesday and quickly spread across the country over the next several hours.
BetaNews received reports of connection issues from Comcast subscribers in the Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco areas; however, according to user forums, there were reports of problems in several other areas across the country.
MS Database Engine Flaw Discovered
Security firm Secunia on Tuesday announced that it had uncovered a vulnerability within Microsoft's Jet Database Engine that could possibly compromise a user's system by allowing the attacker to excute malicious code hidden in an Access database (.mdb) file.
The firm labeled the flaw "highly critical," and said it affects Windows 2000 and XP Home and Professional operating systems, along with Access 2000, 2002, and 2003 databases.
Wi-Fi Hot, TV Not for Cell Phone Users
Cell phone users think a handset with Wi-Fi access is important, but scoff at features such as the capability to watch TV on their phones, according to a study on future cell phone features by research firm InStat.
InStat found that Wi-Fi, mapping features and traffic alerts, and voice activated text input scored highest with users. However, when asked about features such as using their phones for watching TV -- as some phones in Asia are beginning to include as a feature -- or using the phone as a wallet, which some Scandinavian countries already offer, users showed little interest.
New Xbox to Debut on MTV Ahead of E3
Xbox fans will want their MTV come May 12. Microsoft on Monday announced a deal with the music channel to promote its next-generation Xbox across MTV's worldwide channels through a one-hour show on the network. The debut will come 4 days before the console's official press unveiling ahead of E3 in Los Angeles.
Elijah Wood, more commonly known for his role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, will host the show alongside the popular rock group The Killers, who will perform. The Xbox special will first be seen in North America at 9:30pm, and then air Friday evening on MTV's other worldwide channels.
Voom HD Satellite TV Shuts Down
Cablevision late Friday announced that Voom, its high-definition satellite television service, is shutting down. The announcement ended a standoff between Charles Dolan, chairman of Cablevision, and his son James Dolan, CEO of the company. The board agreed that it was time to drop the venture as it was losing money.
Despite 40,000 customers, Voom lost almost a billion dollars since its inception in 2002, and the company failed to find a buyer for the service when it attempted to do so earlier this year. A message on the Voom Web site says that the service will shut down on April 30.
Survey: Users More Accepting of Spam
A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests that people may be getting used to dealing with spam in their inboxes these days. Spam is also being cited as a cause for a marked decline in the number of people who trust that what comes into their inbox is genuine e-mail.
53 percent of users trust their e-mail, down from 62 percent last year. However, a smaller portion of Internet users, 22 percent, are spending less time online due to spam, versus 29 percent last year.
Windows Update Scam Fooling Users
A new scam by hackers has some people believing they are receiving an e-mail about a critical update to Windows when in actuality they are installing a Trojan horse, Sophos said on Friday. The e-mail directs victims to a fake version of the Windows Update site, where there are links to download the malicious "patches."
"The email uses the Microsoft branding and style so to the casual observer it appears to be legitimate," Gregg Mastoras, Senior Security Analyst at Sophos, told BetaNews.
Microsoft Completes Groove Buyout
Microsoft announced Friday that its $120 million acquisition of Groove Networks had completed, just days after a Delaware court threw out a lawsuit by a former Groove executive to prevent the merger. Michael Matthews sued because he claimed the deal was unfair to the employees of Groove Networks.
As planned, Groove will join the Information Worker unit of Microsoft, which develops Office. "While Groove and Microsoft technologies already work together in very powerful ways, we've only just begun to realize opportunities to better address the needs of information workers at a time when the very nature of work itself is changing," said Groove founder Ray Ozzie, now Microsoft's Chief Technical Officer.
MS Opens Source to Catch Pedophiles
An open source system that helps find connections between cases of child exploitation, known as the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), was officially launched Thursday. Jointly developed by Microsoft Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Toronto Police Service, the system has already helped to catch criminals.
In November 2004, while the project was still in beta, it found a link between a case in Toronto, as well as two separate cases by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in the United States. This allowed Toronto police to charge a man for taking inappropriate pictures of a child and distributing them online.
Philly's Wi-Fi Plans Move Forward
Philadelphia unveiled its plan Thursday to provide low-cost wireless Internet access throughout the city's 135 square-mile area. The city will build the network, although it will resell access to ISPs, communications companies and non-profit organizations that will handle the billing and supplying of equipment for customers to access the service.
The city itself plans to "buy" access from the network to use for communication between city offices. The city was one of the first major metropolitan areas to throw its support behind the technology, and started a trend among cities to bypass telecommunications companies and build the networks themselves.
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.
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