Governor Warns of Crisis in Wake of Diebold 'Repair' Revelations
A so-called "technical refresher" which purportedly involved everyday maintenance procedures conducted on Diebold Election Systems electronic voting equipment in Maryland during the summer of 2005, included the replacement of motherboards on account of their ability to cause systems to freeze without warning, the Baltimore Sun reported yesterday.
But state voting officials were never apprised of the equipment replacement, said Giles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, in an interview with the Sun, nor were they told that the cause of such freezes had been discovered by Diebold three years earlier.
Xbox 360 to Double Holiday PS3 Sales?
UPDATE October 27, 2006, 5:35 pm ET: Late this afternoon, a spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed to BetaNews that CFO Chris Liddell's prediction of four million more Xbox 360 consoles sold between now and the end of the year, is an accurate one. The spokesperson did clarify the meaning of "sell:" Liddell was referring to sales to retailers and distributors (wholesalers and resellers), not to end customers. If NPD were to make an assessment of Xbox 360 end customer sales next January, we were told, that number could be different.
Liddell did not mean "ship" instead of "sell," we were assured. Conceivably, the company could ship fewer units than it sells, though with inventory windows narrow, the book-to-bill ratio in this case is probably fairly even.
Pro-democracy Journalist Sentenced in China
Freelance journalist Li Jianping, who made his pro-democracy viewpoints known to the world from his Internet-based post inside China, was sentenced today in a court in Shandong province to a three-year prison term for "incitement to subvert state power."
As a participant in the 1989 demonstrations at Tiananmen Square -- an event which much of the world has forgotten in the wake of China's economic expansion -- Li became the unfortunate subject of a government campaign to quash dissident opinion.
Red Hat Accuses Oracle of Forking Linux Code Base
In an almost self-contradictory response on its corporate Web site today, Linux producer Red Hat attempted to demonstrate that it was still partnered with its leading database producer, Oracle, while at the same time pummeling it with criticism over its plan announced just this morning to offer competitive product support contracts for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Red Hat's semi-padded counter-offensive leads off with the phrase, "Unfakeable Linux," plastered over its home page - a clear shot across the bow at Oracle's new "Unbreakable Linux" program, if not an all-out broadside.
Retailers Brace for Lackluster Holidays
It could be the perfect storm: With Sony and Pioneer delaying their Blu-ray Disc players, Sony limiting availability of PlayStation 3 consoles next month, and Apple having delayed its "iTV" rollout until at least January, there may not be any one single "must-have" CE device driving consumers to the stores this holiday season. That's the opinion of electronics industry analyst firm iSuppli, in a report published yesterday.
The firm is trimming its already-trimmed forecast growth rate for US consumer electronics industry revenues for this year to a mere 2.4%, down from 13% the previous year.
Oracle Makes Play for Red Hat's Support Contracts
In a strange twist on its existing customer support arrangement with leading Linux producer Red Hat, Oracle today made good on pledges -- which many interpreted as threats -- by its CEO, Larry Ellison, last summer. This morning, his company is inviting Red Hat's existing contracted support customers to switch to Oracle's new "Unbreakable Linux" support, in some cases for substantially lower fees, plus credit for remaining time on their Red Hat contracts.
Customer support, rather than software license fees, provides the basis for a Linux provider's livelihood. Over the past four years, as Red Hat has shuffled its various support tiers, some customers have seen increases in their annual fees as much as sixfold.
Firefox 2.0 vs. IE7 in Vista: How Close?
PERSPECTIVE With Microsoft not having launched a new Web browser since 2001, nor a new service pack since August 2004, Internet Explorer arguably had the longest road to travel to be ready for Windows Vista. Firefox, on the other hand, has had much more frequent point releases, with version 1.5 made available in November 2005.
But users have been anticipating major new releases for both brands in time for Vista. IE7, which entered beta in July of last year, struck first, surprising many with a bold and distinct new approach to arranging functionality. The new Microsoft browser would be as different from IE6 as Nissan's 350Z is from the 300ZX.
AMD Drops Prices Ahead of '4x4' Debut
Finally making the move analysts have long anticipated, AMD released an updated price list this week, dropping the processor-in-a-box (PIB) price for its premium FX-62 high-performance processor by 14%, to $713.
As a result, street prices for the FX-62 have fallen to as low as $679.50, based on data collected this afternoon from PriceWatch CPU, which is 4.4% lower than its street price at this time last month, and over one-third lower than just prior to Intel's release of Core 2 Duo last July.
AMD-ATI to Offer CPU/GPU Combo
If there was any doubt that CPU maker AMD’s principal reason for acquiring graphics chip powerhouse ATI was to build a mobile computing platform that would rival Intel’s Centrino, it was erased this morning with AMD’s announcement of a platform project it’s currently calling “Fusion.”
Ostensibly, the purpose of this morning’s AMD statement was to announce that it had completed its merger with ATI. As a visit to ATI's Web site will also make clear, AMD is clearly in the driver’s seat, although the ATI brand will apparently continue to adorn Radeon graphics cards for the near future.
Microsoft Counters Security Critics with 'Trust Ecosystem'
This morning in Nice, France, in the heart of the controversy over Windows Vista's security architecture, Microsoft helped open Day 1 of RSA Conference Europe 2006 with a demonstration of what the company is calling its "trust ecosystem." It's a marketing offensive strategy as well as a politically defensive strategy, selling both customers and legislators on the idea that the company's entire security architecture, from here on out, is predicated on partnership.
Every year, information technology becomes besieged with more and more "ecosystems." Originally, the term was borrowed to refer to an environment whose components are capable of sustaining themselves by nurturing each other. Today, it is that to which all systems of market partnership aspire.
Sony Importer Lik-Sang Shuts Doors
In what can only be perceived as an official raising of the white flag, the Hong Kong-based retailer Lik-Sang, which had earlier made promises on its Web site that European customers would be able to order Sony PlayStation 3 consoles this November instead of having to wait until February or later, has ceased business operations, effective immediately.
Last Thursday, a British High Court ruled that Lik-Sang's sales of Sony's PlayStation Portable to the UK were unlawful, but surprisingly not because they violated global shipping laws or regulations. As the Financial Times reported, Judge Michael Fysh ruled that Lik-Sang had no legally established "trading presence" within Britain or anywhere else in the European Economic Area. As a result, it might not have been legal for Lik-Sang to do any kind of business there, let alone sell a game console to a country without Sony's license.
While World Waits for 802.11n, Broadcom Advances 11g
Last May’s failure of the IEEE to ratify a high-bandwidth wireless networking standard for 802.11n left the networking market fractured. While some companies are plowing ahead with production of “pre-N” equipment, despite disillusionment among buyers in all market segments, others are trying to eek out all the bandwidth they can get from the latest standard there is, 802.11g.
To that end, Broadcom may have found pay dirt: This morning, the company announced it has miniaturized its 11g chipsets for use in very, very small networking devices. The goal is to empower not only handsets but smaller components still, with the capability to receive 54 Mbps – which is as high as wireless networking is going to get prior to 11n (135 Mbps) ever being adopted.
Microsoft 'Opens Up' Sender ID Spec
In its continuing efforts to re-ingratiate itself in the hearts and minds of Internet developers, Microsoft today announced that the specification it had advanced two years ago to the IETF as a standard for e-mail sender authentication, will now be released for license-free use under the “Open Specification Promise” terms it devised last month.
In February 2004, before an RSA security conference, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled what the company was then calling "Caller ID for E-mail." As it was proposed, DNS servers would maintain an ongoing list of authenticated e-mail senders. When recipients receive a message, before it gets posted to the Inbox, its header would be opened, and its authentication data would be checked against this list. If there was no match against the list, the e-mail would simply be deleted.
Diebold Source Code Disks Mailed to Maryland Democrat
The Baltimore Sun is reporting that a former delegate in Maryland's state legislature, who is also both a well-known local philanthropist and critic of the state's election system, received an anonymously mailed package appearing to contain original source code diskettes used by Diebold Election Systems for machines used in that state's election in 2004.
The version of the election software on those diskettes, as well as its markings, appear to indicate that they do not contain programs used in this year's statewide elections, but instead a version used during a testing session by an independent firm in November 2003, according to the Sun.
Sophos: Microsoft Doesn't Need to Open Up PatchGuard
In an interview with BetaNews on Friday afternoon, Sophos senior security analyst Ron O'Brien suggested that, even though his company plans to participate with Microsoft's program to build a security services API for Windows Vista SP1 -- and perhaps because of that fact -- Microsoft does not need to create a bypass mechanism for its upcoming PatchGuard kernel lockdown service, as other vendors have recently insisted.
"Two of our largest competitors, McAfee and Symantec - which clearly have anti-virus products that compare to Sophos - have publicly complained that being locked out of the Vista kernel somehow prevents them from being able to innovate," O'Brien noted.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.