AMD: I want my MTV PC
MTV is building what it considers the perfect PC for 18- to 24-year-olds: a machine that has a built-in TV and radio tuner, DVD player and CD burner. The MTV-branded PCs will use processors from Advanced Micro Devices and be built by LAN Plus, the companies announced Wednesday. The first MTV PC, expected to be available in the spring, will feature AMD's Athlon XP processor, a flat-panel display, DVD and CD-rewritable drives, and cable TV and radio tuners. It will cost about $1,800, roughly the same as a high-end AMD-based PC from a manufacturer such as Compaq Computer.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01
AIM security tool opens back doors
A tool recommended by a security group to squash the bugs in America Online's Instant Messenger application actually had secret backdoor code that allowed the author to, among other things, redirect browsers to porn sites. The security group w00w00, which discovered last week's serious flaw in AOL's instant messenger software, said Tuesday that a program that could act as a temporary Band-Aid for the AIM problem had in reality been misrepresented by the person who posted it to the Bugtraq mailing list late last month.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
HP lowers cost of PCs with DVD+RW
Hewlett-Packard is lowering the price of PCs with DVD recording drives. The company's spring lineup of PCs will include a $1,599 Pavilion desktop with HP's dvd100i DVD+RW drive. The previous Pavilion fitted with the drive was priced at about $2,000. As a standalone product, the DVD+RW drive costs $599. In addition to the drive, HP's 780n desktop features a 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, a 120GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM and a high-end graphics card.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
SuSE settles trademark suit
German Linux company SuSE settled a trademark suit on Wednesday over the name "Krayon," allowing it to resume shipments of its boxed products in Germany, the company said in a statement. On Tuesday, a regional court in Munich issued a preliminary injunction halting shipments of SuSE Linux 7.3 in Germany on behalf of Crayon Vertriebs. Attorney Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth had contended that the name of an open-source program called "Krayon," which appeared in SuSE Linux, infringed on Crayon Vertriebs' own trademark, "Crayon."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Vote rigging sheds light on Web services
Microsoft's .Net Web services technology appeared to experience a sudden boost in popularity over its rival Java, according to a poll run by ZDNet UK. By December 21, more than two-thirds of the poll's respondents (69.5 percent) said they planned to deliver some applications through Web services by the end of 2002, with a large majority of those (nearly half the total sample) planning to use Java. Only 21.5 percent said they planned to use Microsoft .Net -- even less than the figure (23.5 percent) planning to use neither.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
IRS discovers missing computers
The tables have turned on Mr. Taxman. The Internal Revenue Service has been working to account for more than 2,300 computers discovered missing in a recent audit of its systems by the Treasury Department, the IRS confirmed Wednesday. The agency, known for its needle-nose style of tax collecting, itself misplaced thousands of PCs, laptops and server equipment. IRS officials said that since the audit, the agency has located about 1,600 of the missing computer systems. It added that the computers had security software installed that would protect any sensitive data.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Virus writers take an early crack at .Net
Virus writers have apparently made the early developer list for Microsoft.Net. On Wednesday, antivirus companies received a copy of the first virus capable of infecting files based on Microsoft's .Net Intermediate Language, or MSIL. Known as W32.Donut, the virus does little but infect other .Net files, but it shows that the programmers who create such code are looking ahead, said Motoaki Yamamura, a virus researcher with security software company Symantec.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd
Microsoft moves to close depositions
Microsoft filed a motion that, if successful, would bar the public from access to any future depositions in its antitrust case, but The New York Times and other media organizations will likely oppose it. The Redmond, Wash.-based software behemoth filed a motion Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to vacate a standing order in an ongoing antitrust case maintained by 10 states and the District of Columbia. The case grew out of a case originally brought by the Department of Justice.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200...html?tag=mn_hd
Feds nix pact on Net radio stations
Federal copyright authorities have blocked a deal between the record industry and broadcasters that would have set royalty terms for radio-station broadcasts put online. Broadcasters, such as radio giant Clear Channel, had agreed with the Recording Industry Association of America in late December to pay for music used online. Terms of the settlement had been kept secret, however. The Copyright Office released its decision rejecting the deal Wednesday, potentially sending the two sides back to the drawing board.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
Going mano a mano with Microsoft
Ken Belanger's Pocket PC may be a gag, but his lawsuit against Microsoft is not. On Tuesday, the entrepreneur sued Microsoft in small claims court in San Francisco, claiming he created a Pocket PC 17 years ago, and therefore has rights to the name the company has given its handheld computer. Belanger's product is not a computer at all but a decidedly low-tech joke gift poking fun at tech industry hype. People who shell out $9.95 for the device receive a box slightly bigger than a deck of cards that contains a poker chip and a set of instructions telling them how to use the chip to make important business and other decisions by flipping it like a coin.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
A "Speed Bump" vs. Music Copying
Edward W. Felten doesn't look like the type to court controversy -- or to be at the center of it. But the soft-spoken Princeton University computer-science professor unwittingly became a key figure in the discussion about the future of the digital-music industry. In 1999, the Secure Digital Music Initiative, a music-industry consortium, held a contest to see if computer hackers could successfully break four digital-music copy-protection schemes, called watermarks. Felten, a celebrated cryptographer, and several students took up the challenge and soon they had cracked all four watermarks.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/...02019_7170.htm
A satellite radio field of dreams
If you build it, will they buy? That's the question the nascent satellite radio industry faces, as the two companies that comprise the fledgling market try to attract customers after spending more than $1 billion each to launch complex satellite broadcast networks. Both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio are making major pushes at the Consumer Electronics Show here, hoping to convince retailers, car-stereo manufacturers and the world at large that millions of Americans are willing to pay for a superior alternative to broadcast radio.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200...html?tag=cd_pr
States propose digitized ID cards
State and federal authorities are working to develop new identity cards that could be easily checked nationwide and contain digitized fingerprints or other features that would be difficult to forge. A group of state drivers-license agencies plans to unveil on Monday a set of standards that would enable authorities to instantly check identities and possibly criminal backgrounds across state lines. Meanwhile, Congress has directed the Department of Transportation to develop a set of standards on its own.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh
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