DHS proposes funky 'fix' for RFID security
A proposal by the Department of Homeland Security attempts to address one potential security problem with RFID-chipped passports, but leaves more obvious problems hanging fire.
In an effort to detect attempts to clone the data stored on RFID chips used on US Passport Cards, DHS on Wednesday announced that it is recommending that manufacturers supplying these RFID chips include a "unique identifier number," or Tag Identifier (TID).
Sun to lay off 15% of its workforce
Today, Sun Microsystems announced a restructuring plan that involves reducing its global workforce by 5,000-6,000 employees, or 15%-18% of its total staff. Under this plan, the MySQL division may be more protected.
When Sun reported its first quarter 2009 earnings, it said diminished hardware sales to the financial sector had an unmistakable effect on the company's North American and European revenue. It posted a loss of $1.67 billion and did not even announce its guidance for the next quarter.
Malware, mayhem, and the McColo takedown
The takedown of the McColo hosting service led to a gratifying, if temporary, decrease in spam this week -- but it could also portend a rise in malware infections.
As with the September takedown of Atrivo (nee Intercage), users around the net are currently enjoying the kind of respite from spam that comes when a major "evil ISP," as MessageLabs senior anti-spam technologist Matt Sergeant puts it, bites the dust.
Update to Safari browser contains 11 patches for Windows
Download Apple Safari for Windows from FileForum now.
Today's round of updates to Apple's Safari contains just four patches that affect the Mac OS X edition, but eleven for Windows Vista and XP, several of which would forestall some very familiar sounding exploits.
T-Mobile to sell picture frames with their own phone numbers
NEW YORK, N.Y. - On November 19, nationwide wireless carrier T-Mobile USA will get into the picture frame business. Specifically, the carrier will be offering a digital picture frame, dubbed the T-Mobile Cameo, that comes with its own phone number.
T-Mobile customers will be able to send photos snapped with camera phones such as the Motozine ZN5 directly to the new Cameo frames, created for the carrier by Parrot, Inc.
Second World of Warcraft expansion released
Blizzard Entertaiment today has released the second expansion pack for its indomitable World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Naturally, it's an excuse to throw a big party.
Called Wrath of the Lich King, the game pack adds new zones, dungeons, skills and abilities to the nearly five-year old World of Warcraft realm. Last year, Blizzard announced that the game had more players than the entire population of New York City after the first expansion pack Burning Crusade, was released. In a single month, it sold 3.5 million copies.
Netflix to officially phase out HD DVD on December 15
Subscribers to the online movie rental service Netflix this afternoon found a not-entirely-unexpected message in their e-mail, informing them that HD DVD-based movie titles would not be available in one month's time.
"Effective December 15, 2008, we will no longer carry HD DVDs," the message from Netflix reads. "At that time, we will automatically replace any HD DVD titles in your Queue with standard DVDs when available. You don't have to do anything...Last February, we announced that since most of the major movie studios had decided to release their high-def movies exclusively in Blu-ray, we were going exclusively Blu-ray as well and would be phasing out our HD DVDs."
AOL, if you can believe it, breaks traffic records
The service formerly known as America Online is, to be blunt about it, more popular than you are. Yes, this is still 2008.
AOL may have driven off some very loyal users with the announcement last month that it was ditching its Journals and Hometown properties, but blog-style sites are still clearly working for the service. Its "programming sites" are breaking their own traffic records, and the company overall reports its 21st quarter of year-over-year growth in unique visitors.
At last, AMD inaugurates the 45 nm quad-core Opteron era
In perhaps the most difficult period of its history, the company that re-introduced value and performance to the CPU market finds itself having to do the same thing all over again.
On the heels of Intel's announcement that it is beginning the phase-out period for the 45 nm generation of quad-core processors that it introduced only in March 2007, AMD is announcing the immediate availability of its "Shanghai" class quad-core 45 nm processors. With frequencies capped well below 3.0 GHz, just as AMD did with the "Barcelona" class, its marketing emphasis will continue to be on low-power performance.
Alcatel-Lucent reorganizes again under former BT head
In September, networking technology joint company Alcatel-Lucent named Ben Verwaayen, formerly of British Telecom, its new CEO. The company today announced its completed leadership team that will take office on the first of the new year.
Alcatel-Lucent has been in a protracted transitional phase where it has not yet become profitable. As such, it has taken on an all new leadership team and a new business model. The new model breaks operations into three regions: the Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia-Pacific (APAC).
Games for Windows Live to get Marketplace, full title downloads
Microsoft Today unveiled upgrades to its Games for Windows Live service -- the PC equivalent of Xbox Live -- that immediately updates the interface, and promises a Games for Windows Live Marketplace in early December.
The re-design optimizes the Live interface for Keyboard and Mouse, John Schappert, VP of Live Software and Studios said, "This new release was designed specifically with our community of PC gamers and game developers in mind. It's a natural next step in delivering a world-class online service for Windows gamers."
BlackBerry unleashes Storms and Javelins upon the world
Research in Motion's first touchscreen BlackBerry, the Storm, will be coming to Verizon on November 21 for $249.99. Germany will be getting the Curve 8900 (a.k.a. "Javelin") by the end of the month.
Officially announced in October, the 3G touchscreen Storm offers tactile feedback, accelerometer-driven portrait/landscape layout swapping, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and BlackBerry's famous productivity application lineup.
Newber plans 'second number' app for iPhone, possibly Android
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Pending Apple's approval, an iPhone app will let you redirect business calls to voice mail when you're out with friends, while letting personal calls through. But the manufacturer is also eyeing Android and Windows Mobile.
Instead of depending completely on whichever mobile phone is in your pocket, what about making the phone number itself "mobile"? An application first built to do just that is still being considered by Apple's App Store -- and start-up FreedomVOICE Systems is now thinking very seriously about versions of its Newber software for other mobile platforms.
Windows Live gets upgrade, final Essentials release
Microsoft's Windows Live team today formally announced a number of upgrades to the Live platform that constitute its "next generation," a more unified experience across all the services within Windows Live.
Beginning in the coming weeks, existing Windows Live users' home.live.com page will change from the current straightforward (read: Google-ish) list of services to a social, profile-based (read: Facebook-ish) setup where all the existing Windows Live services are tied together with a central update feed.
Intel's profit warning follows a profit warning
It's being called the "economic Katrina," and now there are signs that it has officially made landfall. After already preparing investors for bad news, Intel yesterday took the unusual step of proclaiming the news will actually be worse.
The first clear signs of an approaching financial maelstrom for Intel came as early as last April, when the typical seasonal downturn in revenue extended into double-digit percentages. Something was wrong -- demand from businesses and consumers alike was falling demonstrably, and low-margin businesses such as flash memory were already feeling a serious squeeze.
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