Dying for an iPhone: Questions raised by the Foxconn suicide
If you've got your cell phone or smart phone handy, I'd like to ask you to pull it out of your pocket or off your desk and give it a long, hard look.
By any definition, it's a pretty impressive piece of technology. You can call anywhere in the world, surf the Web, IM your parents, and even orchestrate meetings with far-flung team members you'd rather not meet in person. When you're done working, toss a stereo Bluetooth headset on and take in a movie without the hassle of overpriced theatre popcorn or whining kids kicking the back of your seat.
US DHS advises users to turn off Flash pending Adobe security fix
In the wake of reports that malicious users have found a way to trick Adobe Reader 9 into triggering an exploitable crash in Adobe Flash 9 and 10, the US Dept. of Homeland Security's CERT cybersecurity team is asking users and administrators everywhere to turn off Flash video in their Web browsers.
This prompted Adobe, which has recently been seeing perhaps the onset of a deluge of security issues, to update its security advisory, now rating the exploitable issue as "critical." Adobe is not advising users to take such drastic measures as disengaging Flash in their browsers (which would make it very hard to watch YouTube). What it's suggesting instead is that users manually delete the file %ProgramFiles%\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll, which is a library that Adobe Reader and Acrobat use to trigger embedded Flash and Shockwave videos.
Apple updates Final Cut, Logic
Today, Apple's professional video and audio production suites entered their next generation, with Final Cut Pro 7 and Logic Pro 9.
In keeping with Apple's latest price-cutting trend, the newest version of Final Cut Studio is $300 cheaper than its predecessors, and includes more than 100 new feature upgrades and support for more high quality output formats, including AVC-Intra, XDCAM 422, and ProRes 4444.
What's Now: Apple covers up its 'FirePod' problem, backs off its Bluwiki threats
Apple flambé? Exploding iPod reports hushed up
July 23, 2009 • They got that boom boom OW! -- After years of trouble and seven months of investigation, a report by KIRO-TV reporter Amy Clancy unearthed an 800-page Consumer Product Safety Commission report detailing a disturbing number of iPods that overheated and either burst into flames or started smoking.
Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD
Move over Microsoft. Apple can claim big, big market share numbers, too. According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple. Mac revenue market share in the "premium" price segment was 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May.
By the way, Apple's command of the premium market is way up from first quarter 2008, when, according to NPD, Mac revenue share was 66 percent. Gee, and it seemed so high when I broke that story.
Security jujitsu, or, How to improve your odds despite your users
A friend and I were talking the other day about how people are by and large not just oblivious to, but downright hostile about, the simplest security practices -- in fact, the simpler the request, the greater the level of grumbling. What to do, besides don a bandolier of tasers and a t-shirt that says "GO AHEAD, ASK ME AGAIN WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR PASSWORD THE SAME AS YOUR USERNAME?"
To cheer me up (yes, I have been troubleshooting a family member's computer; how did you guess?), my friend told me about a corporate-cultural tradition at a firm at which he recently consulted. The rules around that office require that anyone leaving their desk log out of the system. And if they don't? Their machine is fair game for co-workers, who by tradition go into the culprit's e-mail and send out a "cc:all" message announcing that they're going out for tacos, and would anybody else like some?
Amazon buys customer-focused Zappos for $880 million
Today, Amazon announced that it will be acquiring popular Internet clothing and footwear store Zappos.com for approximately $807 million. The closing price of Zappo's stock will actually drive the deal up to around $880 million when it closes this fall. Additionally, Zappos employees will receive $40 million in cash and restricted stock. The company was voted #23 in Fortune's Hundred best companies to work for in 2009 poll.
Zappos will retain the same management team that's helped the brand get as popular as it has. The company's CEO, Tony Hsieh issued a statement today saying, "Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say 'Amazon acquires Zappos' or 'Zappos sells to Amazon'. While those headlines are technically correct, they don't really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline 'Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree...') We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos -- continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different."
Intel appeals massive EC antitrust fine
In a statement to Betanews this afternoon, a spokesperson for Intel confirmed that the company has filed an appeal of last May's European Commission ruling, in which the company was fined the equivalent of $1.4 billion for what it found to be antitrust violations. According to spokesperson Chuck Mulloy, Intel's theory for its appeal is that the EC was prevented from seeing critical and possibly exculpatory documents, on account of an order of the court trying AMD's civil case against Intel in Delaware.
"As we said in the fall of 2008, we had asked the Court to require the Commission to get evidence from AMD that would be exculpatory," Mulloy told Betanews. "The Court said it was premature to rule on that and said we could bring it up on appeal. The documents [in question] are AMD documents that exist in the Delaware litigation, but we are not allowed to give them to the Commission because of the protective order in Delaware."
It's done: Windows 7 releases to manufacturing
The final validation checks for build 7600 of Microsoft Windows 7 were met today, reports Microsoft blogger/evangelist Brandon LeBlanc. Yesterday may have been the day that the marketing team was planning for release to manufacturing (RTM), since the text of Microsoft's code rollout announcement went live anyway about 24 hours ago.
This officially means that the development of the latest installment in the sixth generation of Microsoft's Windows operating system (the first installment having been Vista) has now concluded.
AMD foresees strength in server CPUs, big market opportunity for ATI
In the PC industry, it's the OEMs that are the first to feel the effects of a recovering global economy, as demand for PCs from four of the world's top five producers has picked back up. It could actually be a good holiday quarter for HP and Acer. So if Dell or anyone else is still feeling negative impact, analysts are coming to the conclusion that the economy isn't to blame this time.
For CPU manufacturers, the economy works a little differently. With parts inventory having built up already, PC manufacturers have to sell through their existing product lines before they start ordering new replacement parts. Those "new" parts may actually be a little old, which is why AMD has a few more 65 nm parts on hand than it had planned. Getting rid of those parts means cutting prices, which is one reason why gross margins -- today's key indicator of a producer's relative health -- came in at lower than expected for AMD's second quarter of 2009.
Microsoft releases Expression 3
When Silverlight 3 debuted nearly two weeks ago, Microsoft also premiered the release candidate of Expression Blend 3 with SketchFlow, a new interface prototyping tool, and one of the premier features of Expression Studio. Microsoft promised that the rest of the Expression family would be delivered in 30 days.
Just ahead of schedule, Microsoft today announced that all of its Expression 3 products are now available for download, including updates to Expression Web, Design, and Encoder.
Pakistan: Send an 'indecent' text, go to jail
Pakistan's new Cyber Crime Act has come into force and includes provisions that make "indecent, provocative and ill-motivated and concocted stories through e-mails and text messages against the civilian leadership and security forces" a criminal offense.
The Act is very similar to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance (PDF available here) introduced by the Musharraf regime in 2007, which put the country's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in charge of investigation and enforcement of electronic fraud, forgery, data theft, cyberstalking, and cyber-terrorism.
Ten-finger multitouch headed to mobile gadgets this year
Synaptics, the creator of touchscreens already embellishing the iPhone and G1 Android phone, today rolled out new multitouch technology for mobile gizmos which rivals that of Microsoft-'s table-sized Surface.
The "Three-Finger Crumple" and "Two-Player Tennis Lite" are just two of the new offerings likely to show up on new mobile devices at year's end through Synaptics' introduction of the ClearPad 3000 Series touchscreen solution.
Seven years later, 802.11n approaches finalization
Wireless-N draft users, get ready for a router firmware update because rumor has it that the IEEE has sent its latest 802.11n draft standard off to the Standards Board Review Committee (RevCom), which reviews draft proposals for their final vote on standardization. If this were a roller coaster, this would be the slow hill climb before the final drop. RevCom's quarterly meeting will be from September 9 - 11, and if approved, the final vote could take place in November.
The first draft of the multi-antenna wireless standard took nearly two years to complete, and it was promptly shot down in the first vote. While it is typical for the earliest versions of a standard to not make it far in the standardization process, IEEE hadn't anticipated the flood of almost 12,000 comments on the first ballot, meaning the process of revision had the potential to be long and arduous.
Stalemate for Web standards continues with no open video for HTML 5
The dream of a completely free platform for online video has run up against a significant roadblock, and it's another drama that Microsoft appears happy to watch play out from the sidelines. That dream is that Web developers can embed video into their sites using the <VIDEO> element of HTML 5, without being encumbered by anyone's proprietary technology. If it works, those sites can be assured of being able to stream to browsers' native codecs, rather than requiring users to install usually proprietary plug-ins like Adobe Flash or Apple QuickTime.
The problem with online video is that the technology behind it -- encoding, decoding, streaming and distribution -- is typically owned by somebody. That means it can't freely be distributed in an open source package. The exception here is Ogg Theora, the leading open source codec, and the hope of the community for a royalty- and penalty-free Web video platform. Yet its underlying technology may not only be outmoded, some are arguing, but may also actually still be owned by someone who has yet to assert patent rights.
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