Microsoft cuts Vista price to $66 in China ... Man sentenced to two years on copyright violations

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Microsoft cuts Windows Vista price to $66 in China
News: Open source going mainstream
News: U.S. man sentenced to two years on copyright violations
News: Nissan turns to high-tech to stop drink driving
News: Diebold voting machines vulnerable to virus attack
Opinion: Vista Update
ITwhirled: Washingtonians' spirits lifted by 'compliment machine'


NEWS UPDATES

Microsoft cuts Windows Vista price to $66 in China
Microsoft Corp. has dramatically cut the price of Windows Vista in China in a bid to boost sales of its new operating system. The new prices, which were introduced Wednesday and outlined in a statement from the company on Friday, represent a steep discount compared to what users in the U.S. and elsewhere are charged for the software.

LINUXWORLD SF: Open source going mainstream
As more than 11,000 attendees prepare to converge on San Francisco for the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo next week, one industry analyst says customers are evaluating open-source software the same way they evaluate proprietary software: It has to be priced right and work well.

U.S. man sentenced to two years on copyright violations
An Illinois man was sentenced to two years in prison for violating copyright law through the unauthorized sale of video games on his Web site, the U.S. Department of Justice announced late Thursday.

Nissan turns to high-tech to stop drink driving
As part of its drive to reduce road deaths and injuries, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. has installed in a car three prototype high-tech systems designed to stop drink driving.

Diebold voting machines vulnerable to virus attack
Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using viruses, according to a review of Diebold's source code.


OPINION

Vista Update
By James Gaskin, ITworld.com

How goes your Vista upgrade? Many people who called me stupid for my Vista Budget Vacuum column in October now need to find a new reason to call me stupid, because no one counts Vista as a bell- ringing success.

Read the full article here


ITWHIRLED

Self-loathing Washingtonians have spirits lifted by soulless machine
Thousands of residents of the United States capital were expected to have their self-esteem boosted by the "Compliment Machine", a new piece of public art that will soon hit Washington's streets. The device includes an iPod Nano loaded up with a number of affirmations and compliments, which it will chirp out at random at passersby. Experts expect the inanimate collection of electronics to make listeners feel better about themselves than they have in years.

CA files $200 million lawsuit against Rocket ... Dell buys software license

HIGHLIGHTS
News: CA files $200 million copyright lawsuit against Rocket
News: Dell buys software license management company
News: Nokia posts big Q2 profit on one-time gain
News: After complaints, Adobe axes link to Kinkos
News: Google's AP deal passes 1-year mark, yields nothing
News: Web browser attack skirts corporate firewall
Unix Tip: Taking advantage of trust in a script
ITwhirled: Elderly Swede wastes world's fastest Internet connection


NEWS UPDATES

CA files $200 million copyright lawsuit against Rocket
CA Inc. has filed a $200 million copyright lawsuit against rival developer Rocket Software Inc., alleging that the company hired away developers and stole source code.

Dell buys software license management company
Dell Inc. has agreed to acquire ASAP Software Inc. in a move to meet demand from large customers for tools and services that help manage their software assets.

Nokia posts big Q2 profit on one-time gain
Second-quarter net profit soared at Nokia Corp. thanks to a large one-time gain from the company's new telecommunications equipment manufacturing venture with Siemens AG.

After complaints, Adobe axes link to Kinkos
Adobe Systems Inc. will remove a menu option in its Acrobat and Reader programs that lets users send documents over the Internet to FedEx Kinkos for printing, the company said on Thursday.

Google's AP deal passes 1-year mark, yields nothing
One year after Google Inc. acknowledged signing a licensing deal with The Associated Press to launch new Google features and services, the promised offerings haven't been delivered.

BLACK HAT: Web browser attack skirts corporate firewall
A 10-year-old security problem has come back to haunt corporate IT, security researcher Dan Kaminsky told an audience at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas Wednesday. Kaminsky showed how problems in the way browser software works with the Internet's domain name system could be exploited to give attackers access to any resources behind the corporate firewall.


UNIX TIP

Taking advantage of trust in a script
By Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

If you Google the terms "ssh" and "password", you will come up with a generous number of hits on how to set up SSH so that you can log in to a system or run commands remotely on that system without entering a password. While representing something of a security risk (anyone who breaks into your account on one system can access your account on the other as well), this configuration is extremely handy if you need to collect data from the system using a script. For example, you could type "ssh bandana uptime" to find out how long bandana has been running since its last reboot.

Detecting whether a command run via ssh within a script required entry of a password or made use of public key authentication, on the other hand, is more than a little tricky.

Read the full article here


ITWHIRLED

Elderly Swede wastes world's fastest Internet connection
The Swedish city of Karlstad installed an experimental Internet connection in Sigbritt Lothberg's house. She can download data at 40 gigabits a second -- fast enough to download a full-length movie in two seconds. Of course, since the 75-year-old Lothberg has never had an Internet connection, she's not necessarily impressed by the speedy link: she apparently mostly uses it to read newspapers online.

Symantec's 'Dark Vision' mines carder sites

Mozilla rushes out second Firefox patch this month ... Google Analytics in data blackout since Saturday ... Top 10 GMail tweaks

HIGHLIGHTS

News: Mozilla rushes out second Firefox patch this month
News: Sharp planning major LCD, solar plant in Japan
News: Google Analytics in data blackout since Saturday
News: Merger costs dog Alcatel-Lucent in Q2
News: Web-based development platform goes open source
News: SF Wi-Fi wait grows
News: Symantec's 'Dark Vision' mines carder sites
News: Microsoft comments support reports of new Zunes
ITwhirled: Top 10 GMail tweaks
Podcast: Today's IT news audio update


NEWS UPDATES

Mozilla rushes out second Firefox patch this month
Mozilla Corp. has patched a pair of nasty flaws in its Firefox browser, two weeks after security researchers first started posting code that showed how the flaws could be exploited in attacks.

Sharp planning major LCD, solar plant in Japan
Sharp Corp. is to build an LCD (liquid crystal display) manufacturing plant in west Japan that is likely to be the most advanced of its kind when it begins production.

Google Analytics in data blackout since Saturday
Google Inc.'s Analytics service stopped delivering data to users on Saturday, another in a series of recent performance and availability problems affecting this popular Web site traffic-monitoring service.

Merger costs dog Alcatel-Lucent in Q2
Merger costs, flat sales and a strong euro contributed to a second-quarter net loss at Alcatel-Lucent SA.

Web-based development platform goes open source
Australian software company Once Technologies has released what it claims is the first browser-based Web 2.0 development platform as an open source project.

SF Wi-Fi wait grows
The next crucial votes on San Francisco's municipal Wi-Fi proposal will be delayed until next month while chosen contractor EarthLink Inc. becomes increasingly skittish about building wireless networks for cities.

Symantec's 'Dark Vision' mines carder sites
Researchers at Symantec Corp. have developed a system that mines underground Web sites and chat rooms for sensitive information that is being sold.

Microsoft comments support reports of new Zunes
Microsoft Corp. hasn't divulged detailed plans for the next release of its Zune music player, but a company executive last week offered hints that seem to support reports that a flash memory-based Zune and 80-gigabyte device could be in the works.


ITWHIRLED

Top tens

> 20 companies and products that didn't deserve to die
> Top 10 GMail tweaks

See all the 10s

Intel backs specification for low-cost blade servers

HIGHLIGHTS

News: Intel backs specification for low-cost blade servers
News: Desktop on a USB drive ready for enterprises
News: Ransomware Trojans work of single group
News: UK government plans carbon offset code
News: Verizon revenue, net income up on Fios strength
News: Verizon Wireless to acquire Rural Cellular
News: California report slams e-voting system security
News: Hotmail maintenance glitch locks users out
News: Online legislation-writing effort gets good reviews
News: Virtual data center tests utility computing limits
News: RIM refutes security concerns over BlackBerry 8820
ITWhirled: Self-loathing Washingtonians have spirits lifted by soulless machine


NEWS UPDATES

Intel backs specification for low-cost blade servers
Intel Corp. expects a draft specification for blade servers to help vendors cut their development costs and push the space-saving systems into new markets.


Desktop on a USB drive ready for enterprises
Software that lets you carry your data, applications and personal desktop around on a USB-attached device is expanding into enterprises.


Ransomware Trojans work of single group
The two most prominent ransomware Trojans of recent times could be the work of the same or a closely-related Russian group, an analysis has suggested.


UK government plans carbon offset code
A U.K. government quality mark will help IT purchasers choose suppliers with valid carbon offset plans instead of untrustworthy ones, when it arrives later this year.


Verizon revenue, net income up on Fios strength
Verizon Communications Inc.reported net income of US$1.7 billion for the second quarter of 2007, up slightly from a year ago, fueled largely by increases in data and wireless revenues.

Verizon Wireless to acquire Rural Cellular
Verizon Wireless Inc. has agreed to acquire Rural Cellular Corp., a mobile telephone service provider focused on rural areas in the U.S., the companies announced Monday.


California report slams e-voting system security
Researchers commissioned by the State of California have found security issues in every electronic voting system they tested, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said Friday.


Hotmail maintenance glitch locks users out
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live Hotmail Webmail service remained inaccessible to a portion of its users for several hours on Friday, but the problem has been resolved.


Online legislation-writing effort gets good reviews
A blog launched this month has teamed with a U.S. senator in an effort to write new broadband legislation, and so far participants have given the process high marks.


Virtual data center tests utility computing limits
A pair of utility computing vendors have stress-tested what they claim is the world's largest virtual data center, including 443 CPUs, 920GB of RAM and 47TB of storage.


RIM refutes security concerns over BlackBerry 8820
Research In Motion (RIM) shot back at criticism from industry analysts that Wi-Fi security concerns would mean limited enterprise use for its new dual-mode BlackBerry 8820.


ITWHIRLED

Self-loathing Washingtonians have spirits lifted by soulless machine
Thousands of residents of the United States capital were expected to have their self-esteem boosted by the "Compliment Machine", a new piece of public art that will soon hit Washington's streets. The device includes an iPod Nano loaded up with a number of affirmations and compliments, which it will chirp out at random at passers by. Experts expect the inanimate collection of electronics to make listeners feel better about themselves than they have in years.