| Casio Agrees to Linux Patent Deal with Microsoft Posted: 20 Sep 2011 04:36 PM PDT  Despite claiming that Linux infringes on over 235 of its patents for a number of years now, Microsoft has always promised to deal with competitors that make Linux-based products with a fair degree of restraint. Of course, this only applies as long as such competitors don't "free ride on our innovations" and refuse to sign licensing deals (case in point: Motorola). Anyways, this approach seems to be producing the desired results as more and more companies are falling in line. The latest company to sign a Linux patent-protection deal with Microsoft happens to be Casio.
The two companies announced Tuesday that they have "entered into a broad, multiyear patent cross-licensing agreement that, among other things, will provide Casio's customers with patent coverage for their use of Linux in certain Casio devices." According to the press release, this deal builds on an already strong relationship between the two companies. But we are not sure if that's how Casio truly feels about this deal. "We're pleased to reach an agreement and to see continued recognition of the value of our patent portfolio, particularly as it relates to operating systems," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property Group at Microsoft. Even though the press release did confirm that Microsoft is being compensated by Casio, the exact amount and the terms of the deal remain confidential. But for those of you who love numbers, it did go onto reveal that this deal is the latest in over 700 licensing agreements the Redmond outfit has signed since the launch of its IP licensing program in December 2003. |
| HTC Rhyme is a Phone for the Ladies, Coming to Verizon for $199 Posted: 20 Sep 2011 03:06 PM PDT  HTC and Verizon have announced a somewhat unique device today. The long-rumored HTC Rhyme has been announced and Big Red is looking to get the ladies interested in this device. The Rhyme has mid-level hardware, a few included accessories, and a glowing charm. Oh, and it's purple. Yep, HTC and Verizon have the female demographic totally figured out, right?
The Rhyme packs a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2, 768MB of RAM, a 5MP rear camera, and VGA front sensor. This phone is 3G-only; no LTE radio on board here. The software on the Rhyme is a slightly tweaked build of Sense UI on Android 2.3. Some of the more flashy visual elements have been yanked, because you know, women apparently. The Rhyme will cost $199 on contract, but comes with some passable headphones, a speaker dock, and the glowing notification charm. Users will plug the charm into the headphone jack, and it glows when a notification has been received. It's not a bad deal, but the whole lady-phone thing seems a bit contrived to us. |
| 11 Innovative Notebook Concepts Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:47 PM PDT For all its crazy improvements in speed and power, the desktop computer has had basically the same form factor for the past two decades or so. The same can't be said of the laptop computer. From its bulky, barely-portable origins to the sleek ultrabooks of today, the laptop has always been a breeding ground for innovative hardware. And while sometimes those innovations have stuck (the clamshell design and trackpads, for instance), others have been a little bizarre. We've collected 11 of our favorite outrageous laptop concepts into one gallery—read on to check it out. |
| Comcast's $10 Internet for Low-Income Families Available Nationwide Posted: 20 Sep 2011 02:45 PM PDT  Comcast has officially expanded its low-cost Internet Essentials program nationwide today. This service offers $10 per month internet access to low-income families, as well as access to $150 computers. The speeds aren't what users of the regular cable internet service will see, at just 1.5Mbps, but Comcast has agreed to keep Internet Essentials alive for at least three years.
To qualify for the program, families must have at least one child that would qualify for reduced-cost lunch in public schools. In addition the the deal on service and PCs, families would also not be charged for equipment rental or installation. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski was at the DC launch today to praise Comcast for bridging the "digital divide." Although, Comcast should not be given too much credit for the move. This program is part of the deal the cable operator struck in order to purchase NBC-Universal earlier this year. Still, Internet Essentials is a good thing. |
| Kaspersky Rolls Out Universal Protection for PCs and Mobile Devices Posted: 20 Sep 2011 12:43 PM PDT  The folks at Kaspersky just dropped us a line to let us know about its new Kaspersky One security product. As the name implies, Kaspersky's goal is to provide universal security for multiple devices with a single offering. That includes PCs (desktops and laptops), smartphones, and Android-based tablets.
The idea is simple. With Kaspersky One, you're purchasing a single license that unlocks security software for multiple devices and is available in increments of three, five, or ten. You then use the single license key to protect any combination of Windows or Mac PCs, Android smartphones and tablets, Symbian devices, Windows Mobile phones, and BlackBerry smartphones. "Each of these devices can be protected with Kaspersky One, which provides security that is optimized for each device to ensure maximum performance and protection. Since Kaspersky One provides a single universal license that works on all your devices, there is no need to juggle different subscriptions for each device," Kaspersky explains. "After Kaspersky One has been installed using a single, simple interface, customers have full access to our latest databases of threat information, which updates your Kaspersky Lab software automatically to neutralize emerging malware. Users also have free access to the latest versions of the Kaspersky Lab applications throughout their license period." A major benefit to this approach is that you don't have to spend a fortune buying separate security products for each type of device, though this is still a premium priced product. Kaspersky One will be available on October 17 for $80 (three devices), $100 (five devices), and $150 (ten devices). Image Credit: Kaspersky |
| Windows 8 Dev Tablets Up For Sale On eBay Posted: 20 Sep 2011 11:13 AM PDT  Screw the Emmys! The best gift bags of the past week came at Microsoft's BUILD conference. The Redmond crew put their money where their mouths were and provided 5,000 developers with a tablet based off of the Samsung Series 7 Slate and packing a version of the Metro-tized Windows 8 Developer Preview. Theoretically, the gift was supposed to spur on app development for the upcoming operating system; instead, some not-so-gracious recipients have turned the tablets into quick cash on eBay.
Computerworld reports that fifteen of the tablets have been sold on the site, with the most expensive fetching $4,000. The average unit is sold for $2,844, but on the plus side, most offer free shipping. There are two still available, but you'll need to pony up at least $1,500 to make the minimum bid requirement for the items. Anybody can download the Windows 8 Developer Preview directly from Microsoft, which may be why some cash-strapped devs have turned to the allure of a quick buck. The tablets given away at BUILD differ slightly from the standard Samsung Series 7 Slate in several ways, most notably in that they include a 3G radio – and a free one-year 3G contract with AT&T. |
| Fast Forward: Another x86 Growth Spurt Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:40 AM PDT Any other 33-year-old who noticed a sudden growth spurt would run to a doctor, but it seems that Intel's x86 architecture will never stop growing. New extensions appeared this year in Sandy Bridge processors, more are coming in next year's Ivy Bridge, and still more will come in 2013 with a processor code-named Haswell. Is the x86 growing stronger or fatter? 
Stronger! True, the extensions add more complexity to what is already the world's most complex microprocessor architecture—and one of the oldest active architectures, having been born in 1978. But the extensions are mostly brain cells, not cellulite. This year, Intel's Sandy Bridge and AMD's Bulldozer processors introduced the Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX). Besides adding many new programming instructions, AVX doubles the width of the 128-bit registers that Intel introduced in 1999 with the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE). Most AVX instructions perform vector floating-point arithmetic and are useful in a variety of applications, from games and graphics to scientific and engineering computing. Next year's Ivy Bridge will add a few more instructions to the Sandy Bridge design and will be the first chip manufactured with Intel's 22nm tri-gate transistor technology. The most interesting instruction accesses a new on-chip true random-number generator. True random numbers are vital for security and are superior to software-generated pseudo-random numbers. 
The big growth spurt comes in 2013 with Haswell, a next-generation CPU design. Haswell will introduce AVX2 and FMA3, which add hundreds of new or improved instructions for vector integer arithmetic and floating-point operations. As with AVX, the applications are varied, but media processing should get a boost. After studying Intel's 595-page AVX/AVX2/FMA3 programming manual, I think these extensions will bulk up the x86 with lean muscle, not flabby fat. Besides, who would want to power a 2013 computer with a 1978 processor? Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and is now an analyst for Microprocessor Report. |
| Study: A Third of American Adults Prefer Texting to Talking Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:37 AM PDT  If you end up going straight to voicemail when calling up a friend or co-worker, it doesn't necessarily mean their phone is dead or even that they're unavailable. They could be screening calls. According to a recent study, nearly a third of Adult Americans would rather text message back and forth than actually speak on their mobile device.
Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project discovered that around 8 out of 10 (83 percent) adult Americans own cell phones, and of those, 73 percent send and receive text messages. Out of that 73 percent, nearly a third (31 percent) say they'd rather text than talk. Not surprisingly, "young adults are far and away the most active users of texting messaging." Their numbers hang way above other demographic groups, with 95 percent of 18-29 year olds saying they use their phones for texting. These users send or receive an average of 87.7 text messages on any given day. The lower the age group the more text messages there are flying back and forth. Pew Research found that 18-24 year olds swap 109.5 text messages per day, or more than 3,200 per month. You can read the full report here (PDF). |
| Google+ Throws Open Its Doors, Tosses Out Invite System Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:36 AM PDT  Even though Google used an invitation system to control access to its new Google+ social network, the thing took off like gangbusters. It was the fastest network to ever reach 25 million visitors in its first month, and Facebook has been rolling out feature after feature that look suspiciously similar to offerings on the Goog's service. If you couldn't score an invite and have been wondering what all the hub-bub was about, today's your day; Google+ is now open to all comers.
Google had already made 91 improvements to Google+ prior to today. Early this morning, the company's SVP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, tossed up a blog post outlining nine new features. The new open door policy was number 100. How's that for poetic? "For the past 12 weeks we've been in field trial, and during that time we've listened and learned a great deal," Gundrota wrote. "We're nowhere near done, but with the improvements we've made so far we're ready to move from field trial to beta, and introduce our 100th feature: open signups. This way anyone can visit google.com/+, join the project and connect with the people they care about." You heard the man; feel free to go visit the site and poke around if you haven't yet. In the meantime, new adopters may want to check out our Cheat Sheet for G+ as well as the technique for disabling email notifications from the service. |
| Researchers Break Open SSL/TLS Decryption Posted: 20 Sep 2011 10:22 AM PDT  Cynics say that the world runs on money, but money wouldn't run as smoothly on the World Wide Web if it wasn't for SSL/TLS. It's the go-to encryption protocol for a lot of the Internet, and it's supported by every major browser and many of the top websites around. But how secure is it? A pair of security researchers plan on demonstrating a serious TLS security flaw at the Ekoparty security conference later this week, and they plan on doing it with a bang: by decrypting a Paypal authentication cookie.
Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo call their snippet of JavaScript code BEAST, which is a snazzy acronym for "Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS." It works in conjunction with a network sniffer. While most other SSL breaches involve spoofed authentication certificates, BEAST takes a different tactic and actually breaks the encryption spit out by the TLS protocol block by block. "BEAST is different than most published attacks against HTTPS," Duong told The Register. "While other attacks focus on the authenticity property of SSL, BEAST attacks the confidentiality of the protocol. As far as we know, BEAST implements the first attack that actually decrypts HTTPS requests." Rizzo claims BEAST can decrypt the Paypal cookiein less than 10 minutes, and plans to prove in the Buenos Aires security conference. The good news: only TLS 1.0 connections are vulnerable to the exploit, and TLS 1.1 and 1.2 were released in 2006 and 2008, respectively. The bad news: upgrading to 1.1 or 1.2 can often break applications based on the widely popular TLS 1.0 protocol, so most browsers and major websites don't offer support for the newer versions, despite the fact that TLS 1.0 is over 10 years old. Maybe Rizzo and Duong's exploit will kick browsers in the butt and increase conversion rates? |
