Latest news

HP denies sensationalist and inaccurate reports.

HP is currently working on a potential security vulnerability that affects some of its LaserJet printers. The consumer electronics firm noticed some sensationalist reports had surfaced in the media, suggesting that this vulnerability could let hackers alter the firmware of a printer in such a way that it could cause a fire.

"Speculation regarding potential for devices to catch fire due to a firmware change is false," HP said. "HP LaserJet printers have a hardware element called a 'thermal breaker' that is designed to prevent the fuser from overheating or causing a fire. It cannot be overcome by a firmware change or this proposed vulnerability."

The vulnerability being investigated by HP could let users on a private network modify the device firmware. In some Linux or Mac environments, it may be possible for a specially formatted corrupt print job to trigger a firmware upgrade.

HP is working on a fix for the issue, and in the meantime, suggests that customers and partners follow basic practices for securing devices by placing printers behind a firewall and, where possible, disabling remote firmware upload on exposed printers.

Hybrid solid-state drive aimed to laptop PCs.

Seagate announces that it is now shipping the second-generation Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive. It will enable users of laptop PCs using traditional HDDs to speed up their device by getting some benefits of solid-state storage, while keeping capacity high.

The new Momentus XT drive is being loaded into new laptops by original equipment manufacturers (OEM) now. The 750GB drive is powered by Seagate's Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access.

FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

"Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming, music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for the highest performance," said Scott Horn, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Seagate.

"Seagate is excited to answer this need with a second-generation Momentus® XT drive that delivers solid state drive (SSD) speed, greater storage capacity and easy installation at an affordable price."

Over the last several years, a wide variety of software has entered the market designed for creating discs in a multitude of multimedia formats. The problem is most of those tools don't offer any improvement over the open source software you can get for free.

For someone like me who is willing to invest a lot of time finding the best tools and putting together a collection of specialized software for various video, audio, and burning tools, the best results can usually be had using free and open source tools. But most people aren't like me. For the average person it's simply not worth the trouble to invest the time necessary.

If you are one of those people, Ashampoo Burning Studio may be worth a look. To be honest, when I was asked to review Ashampoo Burning Studio 11, I wasn't expecting to be impressed in the least. For just $49.99, it promises to perform many of the same operations as software costing twice as much or more.

What I didn't know then was that the reason for that price. That reason is some of the same open source tools I use all the time. Where bigger software companies either develop their own encoders and decoders, or more commonly buy off the shelf third party components, Ashampoo uses software like FFmpeg and LAME. Those are free products, aside from any patent licensing.

According to sources, Microsoft is planning to bring a functional version of its Office suite to the iPad next year.

The iPad controls 70 percent of the tablet market and a reasonably priced business app will likely be a hit with the intended crowd. Current rivals include the popular QuickOffice and Polaris.

Furthermore, a version for OS X Lion will hit in early 2012, as the current version, Office 2011, is only technically supported up to Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

Office 2012 for Windows is in beta and will be available next year, as well.

The app is expected to work with Office 365 and should cost $10, say the sources.

Office remains a huge seller for Microsoft, bringing in $11 billion revenue in 2011, so far.

All member states to harmonize laws related to data protection.

The European Commission (EC) is seeking bloc-wide reform of data protection to update laws that were put in place by governments long before services like Facebook or Twitter were around.

European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, said that services such as social networks need to be far more open about how they operate. She proposes that businesses (including ISPs) be endowed with new responsibilities to inform their users about data collection, what is being collected, what for, how, and so forth.

"All social network service providers active in the EU must fully comply with EU data protection laws," Reding said. "Companies have a specific responsibility when personal data is their main economic asset."

Reding is referring to the practice of using consumers' personal data in order to attract advertisers. A Eurobarometer survey conducted in the summer found that three quarters of Europeans questioned are concerned about how companies use private information they have stored about them.

Next generation Kinect will be bundled with next Xbox consoles.

Eurogamer has been talking to sources about Microsoft's next generation Kinect device, expected to be released alongside the next generation Xbox console(s). The device, which will provide motion sensing and speech recognition to the console, is so accurate is can apparently lip-read.

It can also detect if a player becomes angry or otherwise emotional by detecting the pitch of the voice input, volume changes, facial charactistics and more. It is also reportedly much better at detecting a player's orientation relative to the console.

Eurogamer sources explained that one major problem with the current Kinect models is the USB cable. The USB controller interface supports around 35MB/s but Kinect is limited to 16MB/s to allow for other USB devices attached to the console.

For this reason, when Kinect launched it was limited to 30fps and 320x240. Kinect 2 beefs up the resolution and motion data it sends back to the Xbox significantly (though no details are given).

"It can be cabled straight through on any number of technologies that just take phenomenally high res data straight to the main processor and straight to the main RAM and ask, what do you want to do with it?" a source is quoted as saying.

Facebook apologizes for its part in mix-up.

The social networking site admitted to making a mistake when it allowed American drugmaker Merck & Co take control of a page on Facebook of its German rival, Merck KGaA. The German drugmaker went to court in New York over the issue.

After World War I, Merck & Co was setup as an independent company in the United States, sharing the Merck trademark with Merck KGaA in different geographical areas. The change was part of Germany's reparations under the Treaty of Versailles.

Merck KGaA asked the court to force Facebook to explain why it lost administrative control over www.facebook.com/merck, and why the American Merck & Co was now using it. The German Merck said that Facebook had not been helpful, and even evasive, when approached for an explanation.

"The transfer of the vanity URL Facebook.com/Merck from Merck KGaA to Merck & Co was due to an administrative error," Facebook said in a statement. "We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Facebook said it will make the URL unavailable until both drug companies could come to arrangement over its use.

Developer had concerns over working conditions.

According to reports, Angry Birds developer Rovio turned down a $2.25 billion buyout offer from casual games giant Zynga. The Farmville-developer proposed a $2.25 billion cash and stock acquisition, but Rovio walked away from discussions, citing concerns over the culture at Zynga.

The New York Times reported that Zynga's successful rise has been on the back of harsh working conditions with employees complaining about overbearing managers, long working hours and stressful deadlines. This situation also reportedly prompted PopCap to turn down a $950 million bid from Zynga.

PopCap was later swooped up by EA for $750 million in cash and stock, and potentially $550 million in bonuses.

Recruitment agencies are also swirling around Zynga as it approaches its initial public offering to be traded on Wall Street, looking to snap up top talent following the sale.

"I expect a lot of game and tech companies will begin recruiting Zynga's talent after their equity becomes liquid," EA human resources head Gabrielle Toledano said. "Competitors will make the case that they offer much more compelling opportunities for creative people."

RIM aims to cash in on switch to other smartphones.

Security features offered by BlackBerry handsets have been a selling point for corporations and governments over the years. Employees have been armed with the devices, which offer encryption and other useful features, such as the ability to remotely wipe data from stolen handsets.

In recent times, there has been a shift away from BlackBerry phones to iPhones and smartphones running the Android operating system. Some hesitation remains for corporations due to security concerns with the new models, but RIM is offering a solution to that problem.

The company said today that it will offer a new Mobile Fusion device management software solution next year. The new software allows corporate IT staff to set and monitor rules for passwords, applications and software across many devices.

The software will allow the IT staff to remotely lock or wipe a stolen device and many other features that have made BlackBerry's attractive. "What our enterprise customers are looking for, and the opportunity for us, is to become the de facto platform," Alan Panezic, RIM's vice-president for enterprise product management, told Reuters.

CTIA-The Wireless Association is to announce mobile app rating system with ESRB.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) is tasked with providing content ratings to video games to help make consumers, and especially parents, more informed about what kind of content they are buying. ESRB works mostly with ratings for games released on console platforms.

Now the CTIA is to detail a partnership with the ESRB to introduce a content rating system for mobile apps. Many games are downloaded as apps by smartphone and tablet users, but information provided by CTIA so far suggests the new ratings will go beyond just games.

The wireless group said that "applications will be rated based on age-appropriateness of their content and context," saying that more details will be provided tomorrow.

Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace already provide their own proprietary content rating systems, as well as user-based quality ratings systems.

It wouldn't be the first time a shift from Blue to Red pushed through a deal involving AT&T.

As it stands, both the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are opposed to AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deustche Telekom. They are joined in opposition by public interest groups and competitors, large and small, in the wireless industry.

Essentially, both the DoJ and FCC believe that if the deal were to go through, then it would harm competition in the U.S. market, lead to job losses and potentially higher prices for consumers.

However, what would happen if the U.S. administration is removed from power by a victorious Republican candidate in 2012? Considering that the new U.S. President would make new appointments, it is not inconceivable to think that both the DoJ and the FCC would change their stance on the acquisition.

"If the Republicans win, there is a new FCC and a Republican administration will be a lot more positive toward this merger than a democratic one," said telecom analyst Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics.

Republican candidates are not shy about pushing for a reduction in regulations of all kinds; Rick Perry even suggested that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) be closed down. Herman Cain prides himself as a businessman and even Ron Paul's libertarian philosophy would be extremely helpful to AT&T.

Managing director says piracy is a "service problem."

Gabe Newell, Valve managing director, has claimed that software piracy is a "non issue" for the company's Steam gaming service. Instead, he said that the fundamental misconception about piracy is that it is motivated by price, when Value believes that its more down to problems with service.

"For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable," he said, in an interview with Cambridge Student.

Going by that, Steam itself could not be considered a perfect solution either. Still, Newell does seem to have another way of looking at piracy than most of the industry, and does appear in the interview to understand that Digital Rights Management (DRM) can have detrimental effects on legitimate consumers, especially when you consider that it barely even affects pirates.

PRIMEHPC FX10 capable of enormous computational performance.

Fujitsu announced the global availability of its new PRIMEHPC FX10 supercomputer, which is scalable to a top theoretical processing performance of 23.2 PFLOP/s (petaflop == 1 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second.)

The PRIMEHPC FX10 improves upon the technology used in Fujitsu's K Computer, which was crowned the world's fastest supercomputer back in June (up to 10 PFLOP/s).

"By leveraging the new system, it will be possible to address societal challenges?including new drug development, disaster prevention, disaster mitigation, and other measures, to bring about a safe and secure society?and to pursue cutting-edge research, such as enabling the development and manufacturing of new materials without the need to make prototypes. This has the potential to help companies enhance their competitive edge." Fujitsu said.

In its largest potential configuration consisting of 98,304 nodes, 1,024 racks, the supercomputer delivers a high-speed, ultrascale computing environment with a theoretical computing performance of 23.2 petaflops and 6 petabytes of memory.

Google shows what was behind the evolution of its search engine.

Search engines filled an obvious need in the 90s, as the amount of information accumulating in cyberspace was growing so rapidly, we needed some way to filter through it and find what we want. Many attempts were made at indexing the web, but Google co founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin seemed to have a winning solution.

Over the years Google has repeatedly expanded and changed its search services. It has posted a short video giving a brief overview of the evolution of Google search from the domain registration right up to today, and the thinking behind the changes.

Australian airline reports case of burning iPhone on flight.

Regional Express, Australia's largest independent regional airline, issued a press release on an incident shortly after a flight landed late last week. Flight ZL319 had just landed when a passenger's mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, and started glowing red.

A Flight Attendant extinguished the burning phone immediately and no passengers or crew were harmed. Regional Express reported the incident to the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

The mobile phone in question is identified as an Apple iPhone, which shows a significant amount of damage to the rear of the phone. Reports online indicate that the iPhone shows evidence that the burning came from the battery, which would explain the red glow and the release of smoke.