TiVo to Transfer Video to iPod, PSP

TiVo on Monday announced plans to enable customers to transfer video recorded on its popular digital video recorders to Apple iPods and Sony PlayStation Portable devices. Previously, the company only supported devices that ran Microsoft's Windows Media Video format.

At CES 2005, the DVR maker rolled out TiVoToGo to allow users to transfer TV shows off of its players and onto their laptops or desktops. To prevent piracy, TiVo implemented DRM technology from Macrovision that required the use of a password set by TiVo.

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NBC Universal Licenses Content to P2P

Marking the first time a major studio has agreed to work with a peer-to-peer service, NBC Universal on Friday announced a deal with Wurld Media, creator of the legal Peer Impact P2P service. The agreement would allow users to download Universal movies and NBC TV events for a fee.

Customers would be able to "rent" movies from the service and view them within a 24-hour window. NBC said that it wanted to give its viewers another way to access the studio's content in a way that protects it from illegal distribution.

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Alltel Acquires Midwest Wireless

Rural cellular carrier Alltel said on Friday it would acquire Midwest Wireless in a deal worth just over $1 billion. The purchase would give Alltel another 400,000 customers, and help it better compete with the four major carriers. Midwest would add to Alltel's network across the states of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.

The Midwest merger is Alltel's second this year. In January, the company merged with Western Wireless in a $6 billion transaction. Analysts say they expect more consolidation in the industry. Possible buyout targets include local GSM operators Centennial and Dobson, mixed network operator Rural Celullar, and CDMA provider Leap Wireless.

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Critical Flaw Found in Apple's iTunes

Security firm eEye Digital Security on Thursday warned of a critical flaw in Apple's iTunes software that could allow for remote code execution, and has rated it as a high-risk vulnerability. The flaw affects both iTunes for Windows and Mac OS X on "various" versions of the software.

According to the advisory, a flaw exists "that allows arbitrary code to be executed in the context of the logged in user." The discovery comes just a few days after Apple patched another security hole in the Windows version of iTunes. That vulnerability involved using the iTunes 5 helper application to launch a potentially malicious program.

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Google Renames 'Print' to Book Search

Google has decided to rename its controversial Google Print service, in part to reassure authors and publishers that it's not trying to infringe on copyrights. The service is now known as Google Book Search in order to clarify that the company wants to search the full text of books and inform users of where to buy or borrow them.

"One factor was all the comments we got about how excited people were that Google Print would help them print out their documents, or web pages they visit," explained Google marketing manager Jen Grant. "We want to make all the world's books discoverable and searchable online, and we hope this new name will help keep everyone focused on that important goal."

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Exploit Puts Windows 2000, XP at Risk

Microsoft warned on Thursday that exploit code had been published that would allow attackers to take advantage of vulnerabilities in both Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000. The flaw has been given a "moderate risk" by the French Security Incident Response Team.

According to researchers, someone could launch a denial of service attack on Windows 2000 machines as long as he or she had access to the RPC port. The flaw is harder to exploit on Windows XP SP1, as the attacker would have to authenticate themselves in order to launch the DoS.

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EarthLink Continues Spam Legal Battle

EarthLink continued its legal battle against spammers on Friday, announcing that evidence it provided federal authorities had led to a one-year prison sentence for one spammer, and that it had won a multi-million dollar judgment in another case.

The ISP provided evidence in the suit against Peter Moshou, known as the "Timeshare Spammer." EarthLink claimed that in 2004 and 2005, Moshou sent millions of e-mails seeking personal information by offering brokerage services for timeshare owners.

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Nokia N90 Begins Shipping in US

Nokia's N90 multimedia phone that sports a Carl Zeiss lens for capturing photos and video has finally reached the States. Highlighting the focus on convergence, Ritz Camera will be the first to offer the N90 for an estimated retail price of $399, Nokia said on Friday.

CompUSA and Neiman Marcus will stock the phone beginning in December. Along with its 2-megapixel camera, the N90 includes an integrated flash and support for USB 2.0 and Bluetooth. Nokia launched the N90 in Europe earlier this year as part of the company's new N-series multimedia phones that boast advanced capabilities such as music playback and video recording.

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Novell Attacks Microsoft Linux Study

Microsoft went on the offensive earlier this week, announcing a study in which Windows Server trounced Novell's SUSE Enterprise Linux in both reliability and ease of use over a period of one year. Novell says the report simply "aims to confuse the market."

In a company blog posting, Novell PR manager Kevan Barney notes that Microsoft funded the Security Innovation study, and says, "Independent studies regularly credit Linux in general, and SUSE Linux in particular, as secure, reliable, supported platforms."

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NYT: Cisco Acquiring Scientific-Atlanta

Networking equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems is expected to announce Friday that it has acquired cable set-top box manufacturer Scientific-Atlanta for $7 billion, the New York Times reports. The deal would give Cisco a foothold in the burgeoning digital television industry.

According to reports, the company's management would remain intact. No details were provided as to whether Scientific-Atlanta would stay in its Lawrenceville, Ga. headquarters.

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Sony Discloses List of Rootkit CDs

The initial count of 20 CDs that bundled Sony BMG's now infamous XCP copy-protection software has grown. The label has issued a list detailing 52 CDs dating back to early 2005 that include the controversial rootkit.

2.1 million copies of the discs made their way to consumers and, according to security expert Dan Kaminsky who analyzed DNS requests for Sony's update servers used by the DRM software, they have infected more than 500,000 different PCs. Another 2.4 million CDs were being pulled from store shelves.

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EMI, Apple Disagree on Copy Protection

EMI said Thursday that its copy-protected music CDs would soon play on Apple iPods, but the maker of the best-selling portable player denied that was the case.

Copy-protected CDs are the industry's latest move towards combating music piracy, however the technology employed often makes discs only compatible with Windows-based computers and players. The industry has attempted to push Apple to support Windows Media DRM on the iPod, but to no avail.

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Kazaa CEO's Assets to be Examined

If you believe the ruling of the Australian Court, Nikki Hemming made her money by taking advantage of thousands of Internet users' apparent careless attitude towards piracy.

On Thursday, an Australian judge ordered Hemming, the Sharman Networks CEO, to face cross-examination on her assets from record industry lawyers.

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Sun Offers Free Development Studio

Sun Microsystems on Wednesday released version 11 of its Sun Studio development tool, which is now available free of charge to all users. The Java-based IDE includes a graphical debugger and performance analysis tools, along with support for C, C++, and Fortran.

According to Sun, Studio 11 optimizes applications for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, and has "contributed to 13 performance world records announced in 2005." An English version is available for download now, with a multilingual release coming in the next 60 days. Sun Studio 11 runs on Linux and Solaris operating systems.

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PUBPAT Fights Against JPEG Patent

The Public Patent Foundation has set its sights on a compression patent owned by Forgent Networks, saying it has proof of prior art that would invalidate the company's rights to the technology. The group has asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to revoke the patent.

Forgent acquired the rights to the data compression patent through a 1997 purchase of Compression Labs. It did not start enforcing the patent until about a year ago. At that time, it filed several lawsuits against various companies including Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, RIM and Google.

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