Internet news, Multimedia October 24, 2006

Microsoft’s next iteration of Internet Explorer is predictably a solid contender in the browser category. A sleeker and more spare interface will have some old IE users running for the preferences, but even with fewer buttons the new IE works fine right out of the gate. The adoption of tabs is a welcome change for more efficient browsing, and the Quick Tabs feature is an especially nice touch for viewing the contents of all of your tabs in one window. The addition of a RSS feed manager is nice for news addicts, blog fans, and hobbyists, but we would like a way to search for RSS feeds beyond only adding the ones we come across. We also like the integrated search bar that offers a pull-down menu, letting you add your favorite search engines and sites quickly. (more…)

Internet news

The next year will determine if struggling Dell has hitched a ride on a comet or is catching a fading star. This week, Dell rolls out its first servers based on Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices, months after offering its first AMD-based PCs.

Dell was puzzlingly slow to partner with AMD, one of many factors that have let computer rivals catch up. Hewlett-Packard inched by it as the largest provider of PCs in the world during the third quarter, Gartner and IDC said last week. And in the second quarter, Sun Microsystems passed Dell to move into third place in worldwide server revenue. (more…)

Security news

Online banking, shopping and other transactions will soon have added security with a new dual-factor authentication product called TrustedSignins, which was introduced today by SanDisk Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of flash memory cards. The announcement was made at the RSA Conference, where SanDisk is giving demonstrations at Stand 38 in the Nice Acropolis. (more…)

Multimedia October 23, 2006

If you want something done properly, do it yourself, so the saying goes. And Microsoft has done just that when testing beta versions of the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

A product manager for Microsoft UK visited PC Advisor today and told us that the company has rolled out around 50,000 Windows Vista installs to staff globally, with the majority of Microsoft employees now using the OS. (more…)

Security news

NVIDIA told all of its partners that it simply won’t allow the overclocking of G80 cards. It doesn’t want another Geforce 7900 GT overclocking fiasco that caused a too high return rate for the cards.

Remember, Nvidia didn’t allow anyone to overclock Geforce 7950 GX2 and they all worked at the same reference 500MHz clocks as this was what Nvidia guaranteed for these cards. (more…)

Internet news

I was doing some testing with a rootkit infected machine this week and found that once IE6 is damaged by certain rootkits there’s just no getting it back.

Okay, so there’s really no new news there. (more…)

Security news October 22, 2006

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner in Canada, has gone public with her support for a new universal Internet identity system and offered her take on the 7 laws of identity, first proposed by Microsoft’s Kim Cameron. Dr Cavoukian’s vision for a safer Internet not only incorporates the establishment of a new identity metasystem, along the lines proposed by Microsoft, but also calls for “embedded privacy”. (more…)

Internet news

Oracle’s Chief Executive Larry Ellison said earlier this year the company was considering launching its own Linux operating system and had looked at buying one of the main suppliers of the technology. Now it seems that is almost imminent: analysts think as early as next week the database company will announce its move into open source.

Oracle more or less has to go into open source because there it already has strong competition. The database developer can then fight open source competitors on their own ground. It’s clear that open-source is growing in popularity and importance, because it allows customers to use applications for free, paying only for custom features, maintenance and support. (more…)

Internet news, Multimedia

Over the past few years, Google has been pumping out product after product, most of which are still in “Beta” stage at the time they are released. Eric Schmidt admits that Google has been so aggressive in introducing “a blizzard” of new products that “it’s confusing to almost everyone.”

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is leading an initiative to see fewer products launched, but with more features. The concern is that with so many new offerings, “You’ll have to search for our products before you can find them,” Brin said. (more…)

Security news October 20, 2006

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner in Canada, has gone public with her support for a new universal Internet identity system and offered her take on the 7 laws of identity, first proposed by Microsoft’s Kim Cameron. Dr Cavoukian’s vision for a safer Internet not only incorporates the establishment of a new identity metasystem, along the lines proposed by Microsoft, but also calls for “embedded privacy”. (more…)