HP sets fire to Voodoo DNA with sleeker Firebird desktop
If the venerable desktop PC platform has any real "homebase" of customers left, it's in the enthusiast market where "cool" refers more to looks and performance rather than, say, CPU temperature.
Laying down the gauntlet ahead of CES 2009, whose first official day is tomorrow, HP this morning unveiled a slew of PCs, including a slimmed-down version of the power-packed Blackbird 002 that we profiled in September 2007. The new Firebirds will be available in two configurations, though whereas choice and extensibility were the themes for the Blackbird, the Firebird clearly appears geared toward a more budget-conscious enthusiast who may be just happy enough to be able to enter the "coolness" bracket.
RIAA: MediaSentry relationship had already ended
In the second "deflation" of a Wall Street Journal story in as many months, an RIAA spokesperson confirmed to BetaNews this morning that the termination of its use of the MediaSentry service had already happened.
Among some of the more controversial aspects of MediaSentry -- a full-service protection system for media formerly used by members of the Recording Industry Association of America -- was its use of spoofing to fool unsuspecting users into visiting Web sites and downloading MP3s without authorization. Last year, a multitude of states reportedly revoked the licenses of MediaSentry to operate in their state, with some law enforcement agencies providing RIAA members with cease and desist notices. As it turns out, for the service to investigate unsuspecting users' computers as it does, it requires a private investigator's license in these states, reportedly including Massachusetts and Michigan.
CES Countdown #6: Can the PC adapt to the commodity business model?
With the consumer economy changing radically and rapidly, Microsoft and others are experimenting once again with applying the pay-as-you-go model to computing, since it seems to work well enough for other industries.
In an industry where everything old is new again, only sooner, the information technology community took notice of an Ars Technica story last Monday revealing that Microsoft had, yet again, made an effort to obtain an US patent on the concept of doling out metered computing services from a centralized server complex.
Top 20 BetaNews stories of 2008
What were the stories that gathered BetaNews readers' attention, got them talking, made them think more about the meaning behind the technology? Our space-age statistics generator has provided us with the final tally.
CES Countdown #8: Can smart HDTVs bypass the 'media PC' altogether?
If you don't own a media PC yet, do you actually want one? Now would be a good time for anyone who makes media PCs to step up to the plate and deliver an updated value proposition...Any volunteers?
It was supposed to be the breakthrough product of CES 2006: a personal computer platform designed for incorporation into the living room entertainment cabinet, that would serve as the centerpiece of a component-rich environment full of choice and diversity. It was an idea touted by both AMD and Intel, and backed up by Microsoft. And if you ask consumers directly, the media PC isn't all that bad an idea.
Microsoft denies the severity of a Media Player exploit
The proof of concept for a Windows Media Player exploit does exist, and it has been shared. But it's not a vulnerability, Microsoft said, because it would need to trigger remote code execution...and this one doesn't.
Coder Laurent Jaffié recently posted to some "security" sites (at least one of which clearly deserves the prefix "in-") a Perl script that literally does nothing more than create a malformed .WAV file. If you play that WAV file in Windows Media Player, well, it evidently crashes. And Jaffié's description of the file in his comments actually does not claim to do more than that -- specifically, he calls it a "remote integrer [sic] overflow."
AMD to terminate 100 more than planned
In an SEC filing yesterday, the CPU maker disclosed that it will incur a slightly larger restructuring charge than earlier estimates, due to its need to trim about 600 employees from its roster starting this quarter, rather than 500.
At some point, there should be a turnaround for struggling AMD, but it's not here yet. Last month, the company announced it would have to trim 500 positions worldwide from its corporate payroll, in a restructuring effort connected to its workforce reduction plan of 1,600 announced last April.
AnyDVD claims it defeats protection on latest BD+ discs
Download AnyDVD HD 6.5.0.3 from FileForum now.
With its usual ostentatiousness, the makers of the media disc backup program AnyDVD HD released a new version that it claims decrypts "all commercial Blu-ray releases," including those which feature the latest BD+ copy protection.
HP premieres its $600 home server before CES
Rather than wait a week, Hewlett-Packard is hoping the post-Christmas bargain hunters are out an about this week, as it unveils its latest MediaSmart home server at a potentially attractive price.
There's no question that there's a respectably healthy niche market in the field of home servers -- computers that fulfill the function of a small business server, only with a more turnkey-style management approach. They're a way of leveraging another high-power CPU and high-capacity hard drive (maybe more than one) into a household that already has at least one of each, and probably more. And since home servers don't require monitors, their package price doesn't have to be "rounded up" by two hundred bucks or so.
Mozilla updates its Fennec mobile browser alpha
Download Mozilla Fennec Alpha 2 for Windows from FileForum now.
Apple's Safari for iPhone truly did raise the bar for the Web browsing experience for mobile devices, though it may not have redefined the way browsing should work there. Mozilla Fennec continues its work on that goal.
Microsoft acknowledges a long-standing SQL Server flaw
It wouldn't be the Christmas season without the tinsel, the holly, and the zero-days. Since early this month, an exploitable buffer overflow has been known to exist in SQL Server, and today Microsoft is acknowledging its existence.
In a security bulletin released yesterday, Microsoft is saying a somewhat simply exploitable vulnerability exists in all presently used versions of SQL Server dating back to SS 2000 Service Pack 4. It has to do with a Transactional-SQL (T-SQL) statement which apparently uses a parameter that isn't checked for type.
Psystar throws the 'kitchen sink' defense at Apple
In its latest defense filed in US District Court in San Francisco last week, Mac clone-maker Psystar buffered its well-reasoned claim that it didn't violate the DMCA as Apple has charged, with no fewer than 41 other claims, some unexplained.
Among the single-sentence defenses that Psystar's attorneys have added to the company's defense are some which appear on the surface impossible to be true simultaneously. One states that Apple can't claim copyright infringement since it failed to file proper claims with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Another states that Apple's copyrights (which apparently include the non-existent ones) may be invalid on the grounds that 1) the covered material isn't original enough to merit copyright; 2) Apple may not have been the original creator of the copyrighted material.
CES Countdown #11: Are the desktop PC's days waning?
Is there anyone you know whose holiday wish list includes a computer weighted down, by design, to his desk? Lack of portability may be becoming a real liability for the desktop PC, but that doesn't mean it'll disappear anytime soon.
It should come as no shock to anyone that general demand among consumers for the desktop PC form factor is at its lowest point in years. The exceptions are at the very bottom of the value chain; but even there, as notebook PCs start to make a respectable value proposition for themselves at $500 and under, it's more and more difficult for their desk-bound competition to compare.
The Dark Knight may yet save Blu-ray from the lair of the PS3
Those bells you hear aren't all just about the holidays. They're signals that BetaNews is publishing a positive story about Blu-ray. Mark the date in your calendars.
In an effort to restore consumers' enthusiasm in the high-definition disc format that, after all, won the format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association is emphasizing some positive statistics from recent weeks' sales worldwide: Some 462,500 BDs were sold in the UK during the month of November, which the Association claims is a 165% jump from just the previous month.
In another tease, Sony promises to redefine the laptop
Let's make a list of the features we really need in a 2010-generation notebook. We'll start with solid-state storage at 500 GB. From there...You know, we might be satisfied with just that.
It's one more indication that PC manufacturers could very well be ready to implement a breakthrough that changes the nature and profile of typical laptop computers: Over the weekend, a giveaway promotion on Sony's New Zealand Web site clearly states the company plans to unveil new, and probably vastly improved, Vaio notebook computers during CES week next month.
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