533 faster than 733 in Power Mac tests

In what must be, for Apple, a worrying set of speed tests for the 733 and 533MHz Power Macs, it has emerged that the supposedly slower 533 model actually outperforms its big brother in a number of comparisons. Bearfeats.com ran five comparisons of the 733, 533 and 533 dual processor models in which the dual processor Power Mac performed fastest on every occasion. ...more

Yes your Honour, the modem is connected

The Lord Chancellor's department has released plans to haul the Dickensian processes of the Civil Courts into the cyber age. Modernising the Civil Courts is a consultation paper that proposes "paperless court rooms". Evidence could be submitted electronically, and even more surprisingly, writs could be settled online. ...more

Could the end be nigh for Windows?

Microsoft will argue next week that the very future of the Windows operating system is under threat, if the nine US states that have rejected last year's anti-trust settlement have their way. Last summer a federal court ruled that Microsoft had illegally attempted to exert a monopoly over desktop computer systems by excluding rival products such as Netscape's Web browser and email client and Sun's Java programming language. Though a settlement was reached, nine states rejected the deal, which would force Microsoft to accept the installation of third-party software on PCs and restrict the extent to which Microsoft could tie-up agreements with PC manufacturers to exclude such third-party products. ...more

UK risks becoming surveillance society

The Information Commissioner has called for a public debate to draw a line on the limits of surveillance and data gathering before it gets out of control. Britain is becoming a surveillance society where individuals are filmed hundreds of times a day by CCTV and where companies data mine to build up profiles on customers, the Information Commissioner warned today. Richard Thomas, a government-appointed official who reports to parliament on matters of privacy and public openness, said more and more personal information is being collected both by government agencies and commercial organisations and that people need to be aware of the dangers. ...more

A new release at nVIDIA's Personal Cinema

nVIDIA's latest home entertainment card boasts breakout box to hook up the living room At CES, nVIDIA has announced its latest Personal Cinema graphics solution, complete with external breakout box with all the ports you'd need to receive TV signals from set-top boxes, DVD players and so on, in addition to a bevvy of ports to output content to a TV or video player. Based around a GeForce4 MX 440 graphics card, the Personal Cinema also gives users PVR (personal video recorder) capabilities with the ability to record direct to DVD or CD without saving to a hard drive first. There's a software suite that includes the NVDVD media player, which supports all standard Windows-based audio and video formats, and software from Ulead for video editing and DVD burning. ...more