Google, Apple, Napster target of online video patent suit

According to the New York Times, Google, Apple and Napster have been named in a patent suit filed by the now defunct Internet video service Intertainer in a federal district court in Texas. The company, which holds nine patents, alleges that the tech giants have infringed on its intellectual property covering the management and distribution of digital media. Intertainer is no stranger to the courtroom. ...more

Microsoft embraces and extends Corel

Microsoft and Corel have formed a "strategic alliance". As part of this meeting of minds, Microsoft has purchased 24 million shares worth $135m in the graphics company that has given the world CorelDraw, Ventura, and PHOTO-PAINT, and which itself recently moved into the desktop Linux arena with Corel Linux. Officially, the move represents a commitment to the joint development of projects for the Microsoft . ...more

Intel brings in desktop support for NX security protection

Intel has introduced desktop support for an important security feature in XP SP2 - a hardware defence against buffer-overrun attacks. When Microsoft issued Windows XP Service Pack 2 back in August it included a security feature to tackle such vulnerabilities, which are frequently exploited by virus writers. Essentially data is crafted to include sequences of code that will be erroneously executed and compromise the integrity of systems. ...more

Hi-Grade launches new Notino notebooks

Classing them as 'supersub' notebooks, Hi-Grade emphasises the portability and affordability of its new Notino 2200 models. The top of the range offering - the Notino 2200-1000-3 - comes with a 12.1-inch XGA TFT screen and contains a 1GHz mobile Pentium III, 320Mb RAM, a 30Gb hard-disk drive and a DVD-ROM drive. ...more

Security hole found in wireless networks

The security measures built into today's wireless networking systems are fundamentally flawed, allowing hackers access to weakly-encrypted network traffic, according to a paper published by crypto experts Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir. The security measures built into today's wireless networking systems are fundamentally flawed, allowing hackers access to weakly-encrypted network traffic, according to a paper published by crypto experts Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir. The report, entitled Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4*, says, "RC4 is completely insecure in a common mode of operation which is used in the widely deployed Wired Equivalent Privacy protocol (WEP, which is part of the 802. ...more