Intel has announced the official beta release of Moblin 2.0, the open-source operating system designed for netbooks.
Moblin 2.0 has a number of new features, including an entirely new user interface dubbed MyZone that shows the user's recent activity, calendar and to-do list.
Other changes include a new web browser based around Mozilla's technology in a Clutter shell, and a media player that allows users to zoom in on particular media pieces for more data.
"We would like to invite and encourage everyone to test the beta," said Imad Sousou, director of the Intel Open Source Technology Center.
"We feel the code has reached a level where both developers and enthusiasts can play with it. While fine tuning, bug fixing, and polishing is ongoing, so is performance improvement, all of which you should start seeing rolled into the weekly builds."
It's Christmas in July for some Taiwanese consumers who purchased Dell monitors online at the incorrect price of $15.26
The Taiwan Consumer Protection Commission Tuesday mandated that Dell fulfill orders for 19-inch monitors that were erroneously priced at approximately $15.26. The low, low price stayed on Dell's Web site on June 25 and stayed up for eight hours before the price was corrected to $228.84.
Not surprisingly, orders rushed in -- 26,000 people placed orders for almost 140,000 displays, according to CIO.com.
Also unsurprisingly, Dell refused to ship the heavily discounted monitors, leading to 471 complaints. The commission ordered Dell to sell one monitor to each customer at the $15 price, and offer "descending discounts" on additional monitors ordered, CIO.com said.
Dell issued an apology and said it will provide "reasonable discounts," that were not specified.
A U.S. judge on Friday overruled a jury verdict and dismissed a case against a Missouri woman convicted last November in a cyberbullying case that led to a teenager's death, according to published reports.
U.S. District Court Judge George Wu granted a defense motion for a directed acquittal of Lori Drew, 50, who was convicted last November on three misdemeanor counts of unauthorized computer access. After reviewing transcripts of the case, Wu overturned the jury's verdict, saying that if Drew were found guilty then anyone who violated MySpace's terms of service could also be found guilty of a misdemeanor, according to reports in the Los Angeles Times and other news sites.
Prosecutors had argued during the trial that violating the terms of service of the social-networking site in order to harm someone else was the legal equivalent of hacking a computer.
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last November convicted Drew of taking on a false MySpace identity and taunting a 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier, who ultimately hanged herself.
Drew was convicted three counts of illegally accessing a computer system by creating a MySpace account under an assumed name. The jury acquitted her on a felony charge and a count of conspiracy.
Mozilla will patch the just-released Firefox 3.5 in the next few weeks to stamp out several bugs that went unfixed in the final version of the browser, the company said Tuesday.
Firefox 3.5.1, which Mozilla intends to deliver in mid-to-late July, will include fixes for at least three bugs and "topcrashes," the term the company uses to describe the frequently-reported crashes. Like many applications, Firefox asks users to report crashes by displaying a prompt after the browser goes down.
"[The] goal of this release should be a quick turnaround that fixes topcrashes and bugs we almost held ship for," Mozilla said in notes published after a weekly status meeting.
One of the topcrashes scheduled for a fix involves TraceMonkey, the new, faster JavaScript engine that debuted in Firefox 3.5. At least one of the bugs was fixed a week before Mozilla released the final code on Tuesday.
The quick patch is not unusual for Mozilla. The company did the same thing last year, when it issued Firefox 3.0.1 four weeks after shipping Firefox 3.0, 2008's update.
Consumers running Windows Vista Ultimate, who have blasted Microsoft for breaking promises to deliver a host of extras, are now knocking the company's upgrade plans and discount pricing for Windows 7.
Users commenting on several recent Computerworld stories about Windows 7 have let Microsoft have it, especially over the limited-time discount Microsoft is offering on pre-orders of Windows 7 Home Premium ($49.99) and Professional ($99.99).
"I think it's lousy that Microsoft is offering nothing during the current short-term promotion in terms of a discounted upgrade for Windows 7 Ultimate for customers who bought Vista Ultimate," said one of many anonymous commenters. "Nice way to take care of your customers who've already paid you the absolute most money..., folks."
"Hello everyone, my name is Dan, and I bought Windows Vista Ultimate -- the upgrade," said another user named, not surprisingly, "Dan," in another comment. "I was a fool. I not only bought Vista Home Premium, I spent additional money on what I hoped was going to be a better OS with some very unique added benefits. Fooled me once, Microsoft. Even fooled me twice. Never, ever, again. At any price."
An online ad for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that showed a woman projectile vomiting has left such a bad taste in viewers' mouths that Microsoft has decided to remove it.
The ad, which features American actor Dean Cain and shows a woman vomiting after seeing her husband's Web browsing history, is still available via YouTube. However, Microsoft has removed it from the IE8videos channel on YouTube and the BrowsefortheBetter.com site. That site is part of Microsoft's campaign to promote IE8.
The ad was meant to promote Microsoft's InPrivate browsing feature of its new Web browser, which allows people to erase their history so other people can't see where they've been on the Web. However, it instead provoked widespread revulsion from many viewers, some of whom doubted the video could have been made by Microsoft because it was so disgusting.
It's official: Jammie Thomas-Rasset intends to appeal her case, one of her lawyers told CNET News on Wednesday.
"She's not interested in settling," attorney Joe Sibley said in a brief phone interview. "She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. That's one of the main arguments--that the damages are disproportionate to any actual harm."
Thomas-Rasset has a brief period to file a notice of appeal, legal experts said. The actual appeal can come later.
What this means is that the Thomas-Rasset drama will have a third act. In October 2007, a jury rendered a $222,000 verdict against her but that decision was later tossed out.
Then, two weeks ago, a federal jury in Minnesota found Thomas-Rasset liable for willful copyright infringement and ordered her to pay $1.9 million. Since then, the blogosphere has churned with speculation about how she will proceed. The 32-year-old Minnesota resident said after her latest trial that she would refuse to pay. Still, with $1.9 million in damages strapped around her neck, many have wondered whether Thomas-Rasset would fight on--or cut her losses and settle.
The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that it had made a phone call to Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camara last week to ask whether Thomas-Rasset wanted to discuss a settlement. An RIAA representative said that its lawyers were told by Sibley that Thomas-Rasset wasn't interested in discussing any deal that required her to admit guilt or pay any money.
The Waledac worm is gearing up for a spam campaign related to the July 4 holiday, a security researcher warned on Thursday.
Researchers analyzing the code of the worm, which has been deploying updates to previously compromised PCs, have discovered that at least 18 domain names have been registered related to fireworks and Independence Day that will be used to trick people into visiting a malicious Web site, said Pierre-Marc Bureau, a senior researcher at antivirus vendor ESET.
Starting any time now and lasting through the weekend, the spam e-mails will arrive in in-boxes with a message urging the recipient to watch a July 4 video. The e-mails are expected to include a link to a site with an executable that, instead of playing a video when double-clicked, will download malware that turns the visiting PC into another bot on the botnet, Bureau said.
Microsoft appears likely to offer a "Family Pack" version of Windows 7, according to language in a leaked test version of the operating system.
This week enthusiasts started buzzing over wording in the license agreement in the test build that suggests Microsoft will have an option to buy a license for Windows 7 that covers up to three PCs in the same household.
According to blogger Kristan Kenney, the license agreement included with the recently leaked version states that "if you are a 'Qualified Family Pack User', you may install one copy of the software marked as 'Family Pack' on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there."
Microsoft would neither confirm nor deny that it plans to offer the family pack.
"We will continue to work with our partners and expect to have other great offers in the future as we lead up to and beyond general availability," a representative said. "We have nothing to announce at this time."
Microsoft on Wednesday started the expiration process for the beta version of its Windows 7 operating system.
Beginning today, users that are still running the trial version of the company's next OS will see it shut down every two hours.
The interruptions are designed to encourage early adopters to move to Windows 7 Release Candidate, a more polished preview version of Vista's successor.
"If you're still on the Windows 7 Beta you should certainly look at giving the Windows 7 RC a try!" Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a recent blog post.
Windows 7 RC will function until June 1, 2010. After that, users will need to upgrade to a full, paid version of the operating system to continue use. Microsoft plans to ship a final version of Windows 7 on Oct. 22nd.
Microsoft hopes Windows 7 helps it recover from the Vista flop. Vista failed to catch on with mainstream computer users and businesses have shunned it outright. Windows 7 is said to be lighter and easier to use than its predecessor. It also includes slick new features such as built-in support for touch-screens and tools that improve everyday tasks like desktop searches and PC-to-PC file transfers.
Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy free file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, and that it would find ways to compensate copyright owners for downloaded material. The four Swedish men behind the website were sentenced in April to one year in jail and ordered to pay damages of 3.6 million dollars for running the site, which is one of the world's largest for downloading files on the Internet.
The buyer said the website, for which it would pay 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million), was viable based on plans for a new business model that would satisfy both content providers and copyright owners.
"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya in a statement.
A top Microsoft executive today denied reports that European users will pay more for Windows 7 because of the company's wrangling with antitrust regulators.
In a statement first posted as a letter to the Financial Times Web site, Bill Veghte, the senior vice president for the Windows business group, said "nothing about this [case] will mean higher prices for Windows 7 in Europe."
Today, Microsoft's public relations firm forwarded the same Veghte statement to Computerworld.
Veghte was countering a Financial Times story last Friday that noted that because Microsoft has unilaterally decided to strip Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) from Windows 7, users would need "a fuller version of the new software when they upgrade." The newspaper, however, also made it clear that Microsoft was selling that software, dubbed "Full" or "Full Packaged Product" (FPP) to differentiate it from editions labeled "Upgrade," at the lower prices of the latter.
Microsoft has said it will price the full editions of Windows 7E -- the "E" stands for "Europe" -- at the lower upgrade prices until at least Dec. 31, 2009. Windows 7E is part of Microsoft's campaign to head off European Union antitrust regulators, who have charged the company with illegally tying Internet Explorer (IE) to Windows, from mandating even more drastic measures.
Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player thirty years ago this week, kicking off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry by changing the way people enjoy music.
Until its introduction, the only way people could enjoy their own choice of music while on the go was to lug around a larger, heavier cassette player, but the Walkman brought music to the belt-clip, purse or pocket.
The first Walkman, the TPS-L2, cost $200 in the U.S., but despite the relatively high price tag the reception was enthusiastic. In 1980 The Wall Street Journal called the Walkman "one of the hottest new status symbols around" and noted that prospective U.S. owners faced a month-long wait because of a backlog in orders.
The player had several features that were innovative for the time including dual headphone sockets, independent volume control for the left and right audio channels and the distinctive orange "hotline" button on the top that faded the tape output and engaged a microphone so the listener could talk to someone nearby without stopping the music or taking off their headphones.
The design and much of the mechanics of the TPS-L2 was based on a model that came out in 1978 but was never branded as Walkman. The TCM-100 was a portable cassette recorder aimed at people who needed the ability to record audio clips on the go, such as business people and journalists. The TPS-L2 brought the technology to the mass-market.
Microsoft will begin pushing Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) to enterprises next month, the company announced this week.
The decision to turn on IE8 updates will set businesses scrambling to either test the new browser or block the update, which replaces older editions such as IE6 and IE7 that many companies now require.
Microsoft will flip the switch for IE8 delivery via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on Aug. 25, said Eric Hebenstreit, a lead program manager on the IE team. WSUS is Microsoft's most popular tool for deploying patches within businesses.
The IE8 upgrade will be made available as an "Update rollup," said Hebenstreit in a post to the IE blog on Monday.
That means systems running Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008 will automatically grab IE8, assuming the organization configured WSUS to auto-approve "Update rollup" packages.
Hebenstreit said that companies that don't want IE8 should turn off auto-approve for "Update rollup" packages in WSUS prior to Aug. 25, then on the next sync, decline the IE8 update. They can later re-enable auto-approve.
As security researchers expected, hackers have begun to use the death of pop star Michael Jackson to infect people's PCs.
Starting late last week and continuing today, messages posing as breaking news alerts from the likes of CNN and the Los Angeles Times have been reaching users' mailboxes, said several security companies, including Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro.
Some of the messages, which have appeared only in Spanish and Portuguese so far, include links claiming to lead to video of Jackson in an ambulance, or even of his body postmortem. The links, of course, take users to nothing of the kind. Instead, they force a pop-up message that instructs the user to update their copy of Adobe's Flash.
The Flash update ploy may be a now-standard hacker tactic, but it's worked extremely well in the past. Last summer, for example, fake CNN.com news notifications led massive numbers of users to thousands of hacked Web sites that served up fake Flash software.
According to Trend Micro's analysis, the phony news e-mails try to trick users into downloading a bot Trojan that hijacks PCs, then awaits instructions from the botnet's controller.
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It's Christmas in July for some Taiwanese consumers who purchased Dell monitors online at the incorrect price of $15.26 
A U.S. judge on Friday overruled a jury verdict and dismissed a case against a Missouri woman convicted last November in a cyberbullying case that led to a teenager's death, according to published reports.
Full story: 
Mozilla will patch the just-released Firefox 3.5 in the next few weeks to stamp out several bugs that went unfixed in the final version of the browser, the company said Tuesday.
Consumers running Windows Vista Ultimate, who have blasted Microsoft for breaking promises to deliver a host of extras, are now knocking the company's upgrade plans and discount pricing for Windows 7.
An online ad for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that showed a woman projectile vomiting has left such a bad taste in viewers' mouths that Microsoft has decided to remove it.
It's official: Jammie Thomas-Rasset intends to appeal her case, one of her lawyers told CNET News on Wednesday. 
The Waledac worm is gearing up for a spam campaign related to the July 4 holiday, a security researcher warned on Thursday.
Microsoft appears likely to offer a "Family Pack" version of Windows 7, according to language in a leaked test version of the operating system. 
Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy free file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, and that it would find ways to compensate copyright owners for downloaded material. The four Swedish men behind the website were sentenced in April to one year in jail and ordered to pay damages of 3.6 million dollars for running the site, which is one of the world's largest for downloading files on the Internet.
Sony introduced its Walkman portable cassette player thirty years ago this week, kicking off a revolution in the consumer electronics industry by changing the way people enjoy music.
Microsoft will begin pushing Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) to enterprises next month, the company announced this week.