Lenovo to offer Suse Linux for its Thinkpad

Lenovo said that it will be offering its Thinkpad notebooks with Linux as well related support for the operating system.

According to an announcement from today, Novell will provide its Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for Lenovo Thinkpad notebooks to commercial and individual customers, beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.

The two companies had made a similar announcement about one year ago, when Suse Linux was available on the Thinkpad T60p for the first time. New this year is an apparent expansion of the availability of a pre-installed Linux in terms of models and availability to different types of buyers as well as a different support model: Lenovo will provide direct support for both the hardware and operating system, while Novell will provide maintenance updates for the operating system directly to Thinkpad notebook customers.

Pricing of the notebooks has not been announced. Last year's Linux T60p, which is currently not listed on Lenovo's web site, was almost $1200 more expensive than a comparable Windows version of the device.

Lenovo to offer Suse Linux for its Thinkpad

Lenovo said that it will be offering its Thinkpad notebooks with Linux as well related support for the operating system.

According to an announcement from today, Novell will provide its Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for Lenovo Thinkpad notebooks to commercial and individual customers, beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.

The two companies had made a similar announcement about one year ago, when Suse Linux was available on the Thinkpad T60p for the first time. New this year is an apparent expansion of the availability of a pre-installed Linux in terms of models and availability to different types of buyers as well as a different support model: Lenovo will provide direct support for both the hardware and operating system, while Novell will provide maintenance updates for the operating system directly to Thinkpad notebook customers.

Pricing of the notebooks has not been announced. Last year's Linux T60p, which is currently not listed on Lenovo's web site, was almost $1200 more expensive than a comparable Windows version of the device.

Nintendo reportedly updates Wii strap again

Preventing the risk of future problems with the Wii strap, Nintendo has reportedly made it even more secure.

Late last year, active gamers made headlines when it was shown that swinging around the Wii Remote could cause the strap to became detached, causing the controller to fly out of the user's hand. Plagued with possible lawsuits, Nintendo introduced a voluntary recall program for users to receive a new, more durable strap.

CVG Online reports that Nintendo has upped the strap safety again, and has begun shipping more secure fastenings with new controllers and consoles.

The new strap has a plastic clip that locks into place around the user's wrist, lessening the chance that the Wii Remote could fall off.

There was no recall announced in tandem with the new strap. Owners of the original Wii Remotes, which were manufactured during November and December 2006, can still request a strap replacement from Nintendo.

Microsoft DRM to hit Nokia phones

Nokia announced today that it has formed a partnership with Microsoft to add additional copy protection safeguards to mobile entertainment content.

The two companies hope the new partnership will bring a more secure, streamlined process to downloading and accessing music and video from a mobile phone.

Microsoft's PlayReady DRM technology will come to Nokia's Series 60 phones, its flagship line of smartphones. With Nokia's dominating market share and the licensing of its operating system to other handsets, the S60 platform is the most widely used mobile OS.

The deal will also include Nokia's lower tier Series 40 phones. The cell phone giant said it plans to begin shipping handsets with PlayReady technology next year.

PlayReady is a new technology from Microsoft, with backward compatibility supporting Windows Media DRM 10. Its partnership with Nokia helps Microsoft hedge its own stake in the mobile space with its proprietary Windows Mobile platform, a direct competitor of Nokia's operating system.

The news comes as speculation continues to build for a possible entry from Nokia into the digital music market. Analysts have been predicting for several months that the handset maker would create its own store as a mobile competitor to Apple's iTunes service.

Research firm Informa suggests that mobile entertainment downloads and services will grow to become a $38 billion industry by 2011. In 2006, the group estimated that associated revenues totaled around $18.8 billion.

MySpace obliterates security researcher’s profile page

MySpace gave a digital smackdown to a security researcher yesterday after he had disclosed security vulnerabilities in the popular social networking site.

Speaking at the Defcon computer security convention, Rick Deacon demonstrated a cross-site scripting attack that uses a combination of JavaScript, iFrames and a separate web server. By tricking users into clicking on a bogus link, he showed that it is possible to copy session cookies and log data into the victim’s MySpace page.

MySpace apparently had knowledge about the talk and almost immediately sent a Terms of Service violation notice via email and deleted Deacon’s MySpace profile page. “There was probably a MySpace rep in the crowd and I think he called into headquarters. By the time I got back to my room my account was deleted,” the 21-year-old Deacon told us, adding that it all happened within approximately five minutes.

According to Deacon, the email was generic, almost like a form letter that addressed having pornography or copyrighted music on a MySpace page. Hacking was not mentioned in the email, Deacon said.

“Cross-site scripting attacks are really easy", Deacon noted. He told us that the vulnerabilities have been known for months and that it only took five to ten hours of research to craft a workable attack on MySpace.

Deacon stressed that his cross-site scripting attack is not specific to MySpace and could be done to other websites. “Many of the Web 2.0 sites are vulnerable,” said Deacon.

MySpace apparently fixed the vulnerability a short time later and Deacon’s attack will now redirect to a Google page

Deacon’s MySpace page wasn’t the only high-profile page deleted over the weekend. You may remember the carnage that erupted after Michelle Madigan, the associate producer of NBC Dateline, was discovered and expelled from Defcon for secretly videotaping attendees. Coincidentally, her MySpace and LinkedIn pages were also deleted over the weekend; it is unknown if she deleted the pages herself.

Despite having his MySpace page deleted, Deacon told us that he doesn’t have any ill will towards the company. “I give them compliments for that because it shows that they can patch things quickly. I’d love to have my page back, but I don’t blame them.”

At the end of the interview, Deacon said that he would gladly help MySpace in exchange for reinstating his profile page. He apologizes profusely for disclosing the attack and summed everything up by saying, “Tell them I’m sorry.”

Tickets for Virgin America's first flight go for $5400

A seat on Virgin America's inaugural flight from New York to San Francisco did not come cheap for the winning bidder of an eBay auction that ended yesterday.

Virgin America is a new airline service that will begin operation on Wednesday, August 8. The first flight from New York's JFK airport to its hub in San Francisco was not open to the public. The invite-only flight will include live music performances, complimentary food and drinks, and will be filled with celebrities, including Virgin founder and knighted billionaire Sir Richard Branson.

In addition to two round-trip tickets, the eBay auction included an invitation to Virgin America's ground-level party in San Francisco and one night in a nearby hotel. After 64 bids, a bidder named "hppmceo" nabbed the package with a bid of exactly $5400.

Wolfenstein to smash its way to the box office

Throwing its name into the pot of video game-based slasher horror flicks, Wolfenstein is heading to a big screen debut, according to trade publication Variety magazine.

The magazine reports that writer Roger Avary and producer Samuel Hadida will team up for the film. The same duo also wrote and produced the recent Silent Hill movie based on the survival horror game series.

The picture has a tentative title of Return To Castle Wolfenstein, the same name as the most recent wave of games in the series, including an upcoming one for the PC and Xbox 360 that could potentially have a direct movie tie-in.

The flagship PC title, Wolfenstein 3D, celebrated its 15th anniversary in May. The game was introduced by Id Software, which also created the PC game Doom, inspiring the 2005 film of the same name.

Apache quickly surrenders web server market share to Microsoft, Google

Apache continues its rapid decline in web server market share. While Microsoft has reached a new record high in the segment, Apache also has to deal with advances of Google and has lost almost 10 market share points during the first seven months of the year.

According to Netcraft's August web server survey, 50.92% of the web's 128.0 million websites are currently running an Apache web server. This number is down from 52.62% last month. In the same time frame, Microsoft was able to gain almost 1.4 points from 32.84% to 34.28%, which is the highest share for the company recorded by Netcraft so far (surveys began at the end of 1995).

Since the beginning of this year, Apache has lost about 16% of its market share (9.72 points), which stood at 60.64% in January. Microsoft held 30.67% at that time. This development reveals that Microsoft gained a little less than half of the market shares surrendered by Apache. The lion's share of the other half can be found at Google, which becomes a more important force in the hosting market, mainly through its Blogger service. According to Netcraft, Google now hosts 5.70 million sites, or about 4.45% of all currently registered domains – a new record for Google. The remaining "lost" shares in this scenario were attributed to lighttpd, which is estimated to account for 1.17% of the market according to Netcraft.

Sun and Zeus hold a small portion of the market as this time. Sun has 1.72% and Zeus 0.44%, according to Netcraft.

Apache has seen several short term market share drops and recoveries over the past ten years, most notably a drop from close to 70% in May of 2001 to 57% in May 2002. The hosting market is especially vulnerable to strategy changes at large web hosting firms that can impact the web server software of hundreds of thousands of domains in a single month.

However, the current development is somewhat unusual, as Apache has been surrendering market shares over an extended period of time, a trend which began late in December 2005. In November of 2005, Apache recorded its all-time high of 70.98% (Microsoft: 20.24%). By January 2006, Apache had dropped to 67.11% and by January of this year to 60.64%. Microsoft increased its share in the same time frame to 20.64% and 30.67%.

Version 7 of Firefox Alpha 3 hits the scene

After a slightly sluggish delay, the latest preview build of Mozilla's next-gen browser is open to the public.

Expectedly, much of the update is technical in nature, adding things like cross-site XMLHttpRequest support. The big graphical change is the addition of backend support for full-page zoom. Also new is an extension for browser history from nine days to 180.

Other notes on the technical side include support for SVG lighting/tile filters and color management, and new XUL menus.

Firefox 3 Alpha 7 was originally planned for a late July release but was pushed back slightly due to development problems. The next alpha is expected to be available on September 18.

AMD increases Opteron clock-speed to 3.2 GHz

AMD has introduced two new Opteron processors with higher clock speeds and has dropped the power consumption of the preceding flagship models with 3.0 GHz.

AMD squeezes more clock speed out of its dual-core architecture as the company is putting the finishing touches on its new Barcelona quad-core processor, which is due for customer shipment during this quarter. The new dual-core top-of the line versions are the 2P 2224SE and the 4P 8224SE models are both clocked with 3.2 GHz and both rated with a thermal design power of 119 watts.

Compared to Intel's dual-core Woodcrest processors, AMD promises a performance advantage between 17 and 37%, depending on the benchmark. AMD did not provide performance comparison numbers to Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 series, but AMD's pricing model shows confidence of the company in its capabilities: The 2224SE sells for $873 in 1000-unit trays, Intel sells its fastest Xeon X5355 (2.66 GHz) for $744. Intel does not provide pricing on the 3.0 GHz quad-core Xeon, which is still produced in limited quantities.

The 4P Opteron 8224SE is listed for $2149.

Besides the performance increase on the high-end, AMD has introduced mainstream models (i.e. without the "SE" add-on in the model name) of the 1222, 2222 and 8222 CPUs. The 2222 and 8222 are now rated at a thermal design power of 95 watts and the 1222 at 103 watts.

Also, pricing of other Opteron processors has been reduced: The 1200 series is now available from $103 (1210, 1.8 GHz), the 2200 series from $172 (2210HE, 1.8 GHz) and the 8200 series from $523 (8212HE, 2.0 GHz).