Tech's 10 Most-Hyped Product Launches
Some of this list will surprise you, others will make you laugh...

With the release of the iPhone Friday, Apple will complete what some are calling the most hyped product launch in technology history. Whether or not that's true, there's no doubt that the frenzy has reached epic proportions, with constant articles, photo galleries and commentary in this and countless other publications. But the iPhone is hardly the only tech product to launch with a high hype factor and heavy expectations. Here is a look back at some of the other high-profile launches that got the tech industry talking.

Here, Steve Wozniak, a man who knows something about changing the world, rides the Segway, the product that was supposed to change the world but didn't.

Prior to its launch, the Segway was known by its code name, "Ginger," and was expected to change the way people would get around--and even factor in to the way cities were designed. The product was hyped by people like Steve Jobs far ahead of its launch. But while it is a sophisticated product, its high price never allowed it to have the impact its inventor, Dean Kamen, hoped it would.

Read all about it here, courtesy of new.com

Eric

Fake Microsoft Security Bulletin in the Wild
Don't get fooled by this, if you see it simply delete it!


If you (or someone you know) receives an e-mail about a zero-day exploit affecting Microsoft Outlook do not, under any circumstances, click on the links embedded in the message. It’s a phishing scam folks. The Security Bulletin (MS07-0065) it points to doesn’t exist. And just because it can never be said too often, I’ll say it again here. Microsoft does not alert users to security issues via e-mail. Ever. That’s what Windows Update is for. Details from Sophos are available here.

In the closing paragraphs of their announcement, Sophos describes why this vector has become so popular for phishers and hackers – people have learned that patching their systems against exploits is part of their “job” in keeping their systems running properly but haven’t yet completely grasped the potential vulnerability that awareness creates if they allow themselves to be duped into reacting to messages like this.

“Security bulletins from Microsoft describing vulnerabilities in their software are a common occurence, and so its not a surprise to see hackers adopting this kind of disguise in their attempt to infect Windows PCs,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “The irony is that as awareness of computer security issues has risen, and the need for patching against vulnerabilities, so social engineering tricks which pose as critical software fixes are likely to succeed in conning the public.”

In examples seen by Sophos experts, the emails have contained the recipient’s full name, and the company they work for, in an attempt to lull user’s into a false sense of security.

“By using people’s real names, the Microsoft logo, and legitimate-sounding wording, the hackers are attempting to fool more people into stepping blindly into their bear-trap,” continued Cluley. “Users need to be on their guard against this kind of confidence trick or they risk handing over control of their PC to hackers with criminal intentions. They should also ensure that they are downloading Microsoft security updates from Microsoft itself, not from any other website.”

Read all about it here, courtesy of blogs.zdnet.com

Security Vendor Question Accuracy of AV Tests
A set of standards to measure anti-virus effectiveness? Imagine that!...

Symantec, F-Secure, and Panda Software design a new testing plan to better reflect the capabilities of competing products

Antivirus software is frequently tested for performance, so picking a top product should be straightforward: Select the No. 1 vendor whose software kills off all of the evil things circulating on the Internet. You're good to go then, right? Not necessarily.

The increasing complexity of security software is causing vendors to gripe that current evaluations do not adequately test other technologies in the products designed to protect machines.

Relations between vendors and testing organizations are generally cordial but occasionally tense when a product fails a test. Representatives in both camps agree that the testing regimes need to be overhauled to give consumers a more accurate view of how different products compare.

"I don't think anyone believes the tests as they are run now ... are an accurate reflection of how one product relates to the other," said Mark Kennedy, an antivirus engineer with Symantec.

Representatives of Symantec, F-Secure, and Panda Software agreed last month at the International Antivirus Testing Workshop in Reykjavik, Iceland, to design a new testing plan that would better reflect the capabilities of competing products. They hope all security vendors will agree on a new test that can be applied industrywide, Kennedy said.

Read all about it here, courtesy of infoworld.com

Eric

RIAA gets sued, yes you heard me right.
Tonya Andersen, the Oregon disabled single mother who was originally sured by RIAA, turns the tables on RIAA by leveling a lawsuit against them. Go Tonya go!

Tanya Andersen, the disabled single mother in Oregon who had been defending herself against baseless copyright infringement allgations by the RIAA for almost two years, until the RIAA finally dropped its case against her, has filed a lawsuit for malicious prosecution, Andersen v. Atlantic. Included as defendants, in addition to the record companies, are the RIAA itself, Safenet (which owns MediaSentry), and Settlement Support Center LLC.

Read all about it here, courtesy of recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

Eric

Windows XP: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Breathing new life in 'ole reliable...

Just lately it seems to be the fashion amongst writers on the internet to compare and criticise operating systems. While one user talks up the merits of Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista on her blog, another is quick to criticise Ubuntu’s lack of user friendly features and available software. In this article I am here to sing the praises of the old dog Windows XP. Once the all singing all dancing multimedia darling, XP is now the older brother of the much younger and trendier Windows Vista. While Vista can be the life and soul of the party, it is still very much a problem child for many users who are frustrated with incompatibilities, poor driver support and degraded performance in multimedia applications and games. If, like me, your Vista experience wasn't all you hoped it would be, read on as we take another look at Windows XP and find that you really can teach an old dog some new tricks.

Security

One of the biggest shocks long time Windows users had to face when upgrading to Vista was the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls. Microsoft's answer to the problem of rampant malware on Windows machines was a barrage of security checks which can quickly become daunting. While emulating this feature might seem like a bad idea, UAC is a partial solution to a very sticky problem and the alternative, allowing malware to continue to spread unhindered, is not really an option. Although you can't have Vista style user account control under XP, there are a number of alternatives. An aggressive firewall product such as Outpost firewall not only monitors internet traffic but also alerts you when programs misbehave or perform potentially dangerous operations. Outpost costs $39.95 per year and includes a regularly updated spyware scanner.

Sudown is similar to UAC and allows you to temporarily elevate the privileges on a limited account to that of an administrator account in order to run programs such as installers. Sudown is less intrusive than UAC but arguably less secure and less complete (you may find that you still have to log into the administrators account under some conditions). Sudown is a free utility and is available from sourceforge.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ezinearticles.com

Eric

Dell let's customers avoid "bloatware" on new PC's
It's about time consumers are given that choice...

Dell Inc. is allowing its customers to decline the unwanted software applications loaded on new PCs, after hundreds of users complained about such "bloatware" on a company blog.

Many software companies pay PC vendors to install their applications on new computers, hoping to gain new customers or persuade users to upgrade to a new version. But customers say it can take a savvy user hours to remove unwanted programs, and those who are less sophisticated may never be able to reclaim the wasted memory.

On Monday, Dell agreed to give buyers of certain PC models the option to avoid what the company calls "preinstalled software." Buyers of Dimension desktops, Inspiron notebooks and XPS PCs can now click a field in Dell's online order form that will block the installation of productivity software, ISP (Internet service provider) software, and photo and music software.

"Since we launched IdeaStorm, there has never been a shortage of conversation about 'bloatware' here! Well we've recently taken action on your feedback on this topic, and we're working toward giving customers more choice in the amount and type of software that is preinstalled on their systems at the time of purchase," Dell said on the blog.

The company has also loaded an extra "uninstall utility" program on Dimension and Inspiron computers sold in the U.S., making it easier for new computer users to remove software they don't want.

Read all about it here, courtesy of pcworld.com

Eric

Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now
Looks like Microsoft is feeling the ill effects from the lack of Vista love...

"Microsoft has admitted, in an email to the press, that 'some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release.' The company is now pleading with customers not to wait until the release of SP1 at the end of the year, launching a 'fact rich' program to try to convince them to 'proceed with confidence'. The announcement coincides with an embarrassing double-backflip: Microsoft had pre-briefed journalists that it was going to allow home users to run Vista basic and premium under virtual machines like VMWare, but it changed its mind at the last minute and pulled the announcement."

Read all about it here, courtesy of apcmag.com

Eric

Nvidia XFX 8800 Ultra Extreme
When that puny 8800 GTX isn't nearly enough...

So, GeForce 8800 Ultra deserves the title of today’s fastest gaming graphics accelerator. However, we have also confirmed the results of our preliminary testing that we carried out some time ago: the advantage of GeForce 8800 Ultra over GeForce 8800 GTX may vary from a few percent to 20%, but on average equals 8%-15%. We have detected only two cases when the performance gain from GeForce 8800 Ultra can bear real practical value for a gamer: F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl , both tested in 1920x1200 resolution.

In a few other games, such as Prey , Gothic 3 or Neverwinter Nights 2, we can claim that this solution features some performance reserve that may be efficient again in 1920x1200 resolution. GeForce 8800 Ultra may reveal its advantages even better in higher resolutions like 2048x1536 or 2560x1600, but there are very few monitors that can handle resolutions like that and they are pretty expensive. Nevertheless, we are going to check this out in one of our next articles.

All in all, GeForce 8800 Ultra could be a disappointment for an end-user, because it doesn’t boast any significant advantages over the GeForce 8800 GTX except for a few individual cases described above, but costs considerably more. Nevertheless, the solution is still the today’s fastest single-card gaming solution, so Nvidia did successfully strengthen its positions as the manufacturer of world’s fastest gaming accelerator. They have also demonstrated that their technical potential is sufficient to raise the frequency of such complicated chip as G80 without pushing its power consumption beyond acceptable limits – something former ATI Technologies failed to achieve with their R600. Anyway, Nvidia did attain their primary goal: to prove their technology leadership in the consumer 3D market.

Read all about it here, courtesy of xbitlabs.com

Eric

Apple's iMac overhaul tracking for mid-to-late summer
Please let it be made in stainless steel, with 2 gigs of ram, a high end Core 2 Duo and a Nvidia 8800 series card!

Apple Inc.'s hotly anticipated iPhone device will have a few weeks to bask in the limelight before the electronics maker returns focus to its Mac business with a pair of redesigned iMacs positioned to catch the tail end of the educational buying season.

People familiar with plans for the next-generation consumer desktops say Apple hopes to unveil the new systems sometime between the latter half of July and mid-August -- a timeframe well suited to garner sales from higher-education individuals and back-to-school shoppers in general. Those same people add that the Cupertino-based Mac maker may also have a few smaller surprises in store for fans of its Mac line around the same time.

As was reported exclusively by AppleInsider in March, Apple engineers have been toiling long-hour days on a pair of radically redesigned 20- and 24-inch iMacs that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today's offerings. When the project manifests later this summer, it will represent the first major industrial design overhaul to hit the flagship all-in-one consumer Apple desktops in nearly three years.

Omitted from the makeover will be Apple's 17-inch iMac model, people familiar with the project have said. The entry-level offering will reportedly become the subject of considerable neglect, and may eventually meet the same fate as the firm's now defunct 12-inch PowerBook and soon-to-be sacrificed Mac mini.

Earlier this month, the Internet was rife with unsubstantiated rumors that Apple would use its developer conference (last week) to introduce new iMacs clad in "brushed metal" enclosures. AppleInsider, however, advised against those claims, explaining that the company would instead use the annual gathering to focus on Mac OS X Leopard, third-party iPhone development, and its software strategy in general.

While Apple's current iMac line remains in relatively good availability, supplies should begin to constrain in the weeks ahead, especially through high-level dealers. The company continues to fill new orders for existing models, but checks within the supply chain indicate that it is doing so through smaller volume shipments.

Apple last updated its iMac line in September, when it upgraded each model with Core 2 Duo mobile processors and introduced a 24-inch model to the family.

Read all about it here, courtesy of appleinsider.com

Eric

ciffSolid-state hard drives will be cost effect by 2009
This is the last piece of the puzzle to get modern pcs up to speed...

Solid-state hard drives will become cost-effective for many enterprise users in 2009, a report by a US analyst has suggested.

Jack Gold, proprietor of J Gold Associates, believes that solid-state drives (SSDs) — hard drives based on non-volatile flash memory, rather than moving parts — will have a 15 percent share of the notebook market by 2011. SSDs are a relatively new technology and still command a significant premium over the cost of a traditional hard drive. However, they are faster, of higher capacity, better for battery life and far more resistant to shock than traditional drives.

"By 2009/10, we believe the premium for SSDs will be under $200 (£101) per machine," Gold said. "Given total cost-of-ownership savings of $50 (£25) per machine and the additional potential benefits, we believe many companies will deploy SSDs within this time frame. Therefore, we believe most enterprises should plan on deploying SSDs to their mobile workforce, at least in higher-end machines, in the 2009/10 time frame."

Gold's report also predicts that a decline in the price of SSDs over the next two years will result from the emergence of "many additional suppliers" of the technology.

SSDs are currently supplied by companies such as SanDisk and Samsung, which both have 32GB models. The premium that SSD technology commands is demonstrated by the fact that Samsung's 32GB SDD costs £350, while a standard 100GB hard drive costs just £65.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.zdnet.co.uk

Eric

Sony to cut the price of PlayStation 3
Even packed with all it's goodness it still is losing ground (sales) to the XBOX360...

OKYO (AFP) - Sony is trying to decide by how much it will cut the price of its PlayStation 3 console as consumers want it reduced, its chief executive said in an interview published Friday.

"That (price cuts) is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine," Howard Stringer told the London-based Financial Times.

He admitted that Sony faced tough competition from rival Nintendo's Wii video game console, which is enjoying stronger sales than the PS3 and has a lower price.

"Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours ... because it's cheaper," he said, adding there was "no question" consumers wanted a lower price.

Sony slashed the price of the PS3 by 20 percent in Japan ahead of its launch here last November as it prepared for a fierce fight against cheaper games consoles from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

Even after the price reduction, however, the PS3 is still by far the most expensive of the three main next-generation video games consoles on the market and many analysts say Sony will need to lower the price further.

Rival Nintendo is enjoying strong sales of the Wii, known for its motion-sensitive controller, outselling the PS3 by more than five to one in Japan in May, according to research from publisher Enterbrain.

Sony's video game division suffered a huge operating loss in the last fiscal year and is expected to remain in the red this year.

The success of the PS3 is considered vital to a revival at the Japanese giant, which is in the midst of major restructuring under Stringer, its first foreign boss.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.yahoo.com

Eric

ATi Radeon HD 2900XT vs. Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB part II
Frame rates get closer for ATi, but that image quality needs some work

e are going to make this evaluation short, sweet and to the point since we have already performed a major evaluation of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT. Please read that evaluation first to get the lowdown on the new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT video card and all the specifications therein.

In our initial evaluation we made comparisons with a 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS as well as a GeForce 8800 GTX. We found the performance of the 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS bested the Radeon HD 2900 XT in everything we threw at it. Our conclusion was that the 640 MB 8800 GTS was the better value, you simply get more for your money. What if there is an even better value now?

The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is closer in price to the 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS. At the time of launch we did not feel it was explicitly needed to compare the Radeon HD 2900 XT to the 320 MB version of the 8800 GTS, after all the only difference is memory capacity between the two 8800 GTS configurations. However, prices on the 320 MB 8800 GTS have fallen drastically since that launch. You can find video cards such as this factory overclocked Leadtek for $259.99 with all the rebates, or this standard clocked EVGA for $289.99 before rebate and $269.99 after rebate.

When you compare this to the lowest price we could find on Newegg of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, $409.99 you will see a very large gap in price. What is surprising though is the large gap in performance as well, and it doesn’t swing the way you would typically think. In our minds we are taught that you get what you pay for, the more expensive item will be the better item, but in this case, we might be seeing a complete reversal of that!

We know from testing that there is little performance difference between the 320 MB and 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS video cards. The GPU is exactly the same between both, same clock speeds, the only difference is the amount of RAM. With the performance of the 320 MB 8800 GTS being close to the 640 MB 8800 GTS, and prices being so low, we had to see how this compares to the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT which is more expensive.

We are going to jump straight to gaming on the next page. For system setup specifications look here. We are using the latest drivers officially supplied by ATI which are known as 8.37.4.2, these drivers have all the performance tweaks that are found in 8.38 which have been rolled up into Cat 7.5.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

Safari 3 (beta) vs. FireFox2 vs. IE7 on Windows
The browser wars are heating up, you might be surprised by the results.

At the World Wide Developer Conference this week, Apple announced the availability of Safari 3 for the Windows operating system. Today, we put the Safari 3 beta to the test to see how it compares to Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 on Windows. What we found didn't impress us very much. Although Safari offers slightly faster page loading, the beta is extremely unstable and suffers from interface deficiencies that make its value on the Windows platform questionable at best.

Windows quirks

The most glaring flaw of Safari 3 on Windows is its utter lack of stability. The prerelease beta status of Safari 3 obviously must be taken into account when evaluating the program's reliability, but the problems I faced during testing really exceed tolerable limits for beta software. The Firefox 3 alpha build I reviewed last week is far more stable and robust than the current beta build of Safari 3. Safari hangs and freezes frequently, and once it completely locked up my system, necessitating a hard reset. Unlike Firefox, Safari 3 can't automatically restore the previous browsing session after a crash. Instability makes testing a frustration, but I don't think that this problem should be interpreted as an intractable failing of Safari 3 in light of the program's prerelease status. Although I think it is likely that Apple will resolve these problems before issuing an official release, I strongly discourage users from testing the current Safari 3 beta on a production system.

Read all about it here, courtesy of arstechnica.com

Eric

Microsoft slipping errr... I mean buying into the "dark side"?
Unification of Operating System's take a step closer to reality.

Don't fool yourself into believing Microsoft has gotten all "warm and Fuzzy" cozying up with Linux. This all comes down to selling more software and the "bottom line". Think about it, if software writers and developers only have to focus on once source code, then you can do more with less people and time, while charging any price you want for that piece of software.

Microsoft has appointed a director to lead its interoperability efforts with Novell.

The two companies have been trying to sell a combined proprietary and open-source software package to businesses since they announced a deal in November. Through a jointly run Interoperability Lab, they intend to make Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 run on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. The companies will also market each other's products.

Tom Hanrahan, former director of engineering at the Linux Foundation--which was formed by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group--will head up the Interoperability Lab and take the job title of director of Linux interoperability. Hanrahan is a Linux veteran, having overseen a large team of kernel developers in a former role at IBM's Linux Technology Center.

Novell appointed Susan Heystee in December to manage its relationship with Microsoft.

Both Hanrahan and Heystee look set for a turbulent ride in what has already proven to be a controversial relationship between the companies.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.com.com

Eric

Public In The Dark About 95% of Software Bugs
Most people are too lazy, don't care or don't want to learn about this "stuff"...

An IBM security director is estimating that the 7,247 software vulnerabilities disclosed last year are a fraction of the 139,362 that actually were discovered.

By Sharon Gaudin
InformationWeek
Jun 5, 2007 11:56 AM

Most people are grossly underestimating the number of vulnerabilities in the software they're using at home and at work, according to a security director at IBM.

Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategy at IBM's Internet Security Systems, said in a blog that 7,247 software bugs were publicly disclosed last year. The issue, though, is that he estimates that there also were 132,115 undisclosed vulnerabilities discovered last year. That means only 5.48% of them were disclosed to the public.

"To be sure, 139,362 new vulnerabilities in a single year is a colossal number, but is it wrong?" asked Ollmann in his blog entry. "Too many people underestimate the number of vulnerabilities in the software they use at home and in the enterprise office. Public vulnerability disclosures provide only a small window into the total number of vulnerabilities uncovered on an annual basis."

What does that mean to the IT or security manager trying to protect their network?

"If you're basing your protection strategy upon keeping up solely with public vulnerability disclosures, you're missing almost 95% of the vulnerabilities actually out there (this year)," said Ollmann. "If your defense systems are designed to protect against specific vulnerabilities (i.e. signature-based), it probably means that it was designed to protect a subset of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Preemptive protection engines are needed for the remaining 97% of annual vulnerabilities."

Where's the disconnect between bugs discovered and bugs reported?

Ollmann said it's a multipronged problem. Sometimes, for instance, vulnerabilities discovered internally by the vendor are generally patched silently. And flaws often are reported to the vendor who then keeps quiet about them until they can come up with a fix for them. Sometimes researchers simply think a bug is too "lame" to bother reporting.

Read all about it here, courtesy of informationweek.com
Eric

Technology literacy age drops
At this rate, by the end of the decade I will be replaced in my job by someone still in diapers...scary.


Anita Frazier, an industry analyst for the NPD Group, said that one reason for the drop in adoption ages for consumer electronics devices is their increasing ease of use. Not surprisingly, the electronics device that kids use most often is the television, with parents reporting that their children turn on the TV an average of 5.8 days a week.

The long-standing joke in computer help desk circles is that the best question to ask those having trouble with their computers is "Sir, is there a child in the house?" For a particularly hilarious riff on this idea, watch Wes Borg's "Internet Help Desk" video on YouTube.

Now a new study by the NPD Group, "Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III," underscores just how early kids can start handling the household tech chores. According to the report, the average age at which kids begin using consumer electronics (CE) has dropped from 8.1 years in 2005 to 6.7 years in 2007.

While all consumer electronics devices saw an earlier age of adoption, the survey showed that the biggest age drops were in the use of DVD players and cell phones.

Read all about it here, courtesy of sci-tech-today.com

Eric

XP vs. Vista - The re-match, this time it's ATi's turn
Yup, nothing to see here, XP is still faster in frame rates than Vista *yawn*

We recently published an article that compared framerate performance between Vista and Windows XP in multiple current gaming titles. We wanted to do this because there were many claims that Vista was a poor gaming operating system, or at least that it didn’t perform as well as XP on the same hardware. Up to now, it’s been claimed that poor driver support has crippled Microsoft’s new operating system. We wanted to try to associate hard numbers to this issue and take an industry accounting of what users can expect from Vista. We even went so far as to test two different video cards and driver sets. Both were from NVIDIA, and included a 7600 GS and an 8800 GTS 320MB.

However, our scope was more limited than we realized. After the article, a consistent criticism was that we did not include ATI hardware in our evaluation, so any claims that we made were unqualified. Our readers were absolutely right. One of the reasons that our content is better than most publications is that because we have the best readership in the industry and we listen to them.

It wasn’t a conscious effort on our part to specifically exclude ATI hardware from the original article. It was merely the fact that we had NVIDIA hardware on hand at the time, so we used it. Given ATI’s track record lately, we simply did not have any ATI cards on hand in our former [H] Consumer offices in Austin. The original plan was to just use one video card, but later we thought that two would be better. Who knew that three was actually the right number? We also wanted to keep the experiment as simple as possible. We wanted the article to be about operating systems, not hardware. For this reason, including ATI wasn’t at the forefront of our minds.

Another criticism was that we used "old" drivers from NVIDIA. This was mostly very bad timing. The article was in its very last stages when the new drivers were released and had already been written and approved for publish (not a quick or easy process). That said, it would definitely have been best to include the latest drivers in the article. We simply didn’t know that new drivers would be coming out. As of late, NVIDIA has been of little help as they don’t know when their own drivers are pushing out. To address this issue in this ATI article, we contacted ATI to ask them when their next driver release would be. They did us one better – they gave us the beta drivers that were going to be released as WHQL on May 23rd, which are now known as Catalyst 7.5. In this instance, we’re dealing with the latest and greatest. And just for good measure, we took a few of the games that performed extra-poorly with our NVIDIA hardware in our last article, and gave them another run on the new 158.18/158.22 drivers to see if there was any effect.

Read all about it here courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

Dell thinks Ubuntu makes hardware more fragile
At least they back peddled and decided to honor their own warranty.

Recently, folks like Slashdot and others reported that we are no longer offering extended warranties or CompleteCare on Ubuntu-based systems. User johnnyk submitted an idea on IdeaStorm asking us to bring back warranty options for these systems. The short answer—we will soon.

Here’s the deal: due to an ordering system glitch over the weekend, we inadvertently removed the extended warranty and CompleteCare options associated with Ubuntu systems from the configurator on Dell.com We’re working to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. We expect to reinstate all extended warranty options and Complete Care service for the E1505n notebook later this afternoon. Any orders placed to date will ship with the warranty the customer ordered.

Customers who ordered systems when the extended warranty and CompleteCare option weren’t available will have the opportunity to upgrade at original price. More details soon.

Read all about it here, courtesy of direct2dell.com

Eric

RIAA accused of extortion and conspiracy
How come this just doesn't surprise me?

In a new Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, the defendant has filed the following five (5) counterclaims against the RIAA, under Florida, federal, and California law:

1. Trespass

2. Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030)

3. Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201)

4. Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523)

5. Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code §§ 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. § 559.72 et seq.

Answer and Counterclaims*

Ms. Del Cid is represented by Michael Wasylik of Ricardo & Wasylik, in Tampa, Florida.

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Read all about it here, courtesy of recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

Eric