22
February
2008
|
07:29 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Newswatch 2.22.08: Is this the new Microsoft?

FCC hearing on Comcast

[News.com] "What we're going to see on Monday is a trial of the Internet," said Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu. "Comcast is in the docket, accused of crimes against the public interest, and we'll see how well they are able to defend themselves."

GOOG's moon contest gets started

[NYT] Addressing the X Prize teams and journalists, Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, compared his company’s support of the competition with other companies’ sponsorship of yacht races. “The idea we can help spur the return to the moon and maybe even do it more quickly than some of the national plans is really exciting to me,” Mr. Brin said.

Open source wary of the new open Microsoft

[CRN] Dominick Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), said he understands the feelings of mistrust within the open source community. "There's always been a lot of language thrown around between Microsoft and the leaders in the open source community," he said. "Obviously it has not been a good relationship, but personally I think a lot of that is behind us now."

MSFT offers SP1 early - by mistake

[ZDNet] Spokesperson: 'Today, a build of SP1 was posted to Windows Update and it was inadvertently made available to a broad group. The build was intended only for our more technically advanced testers, and was meant to only be offered to those with a specific registry key set on their PC. For general availability, we are still planning to make SP1 broadly available in the mid-March timeframe.'

DoubleTwist makes Facebook P2P


[DailyTech] the client interfaces with Facebook via a Facebook Application named TwistMe, and lets you share files with users you've befriended. The Facebook application makes file-sharing as simple as a drag and drop, and once the direct transfer is complete, it will appear in your friend's desktop client. DoubleTwist has plans to interface its client with all major social networks, creating a new revolution in P2P. It’s currently working on developing an interface for the OpenSocial platforms.

Even encrypted data isn't safe


[NYT] A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks.The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover.

EMC thunders into cloud computing with Pi Corp.


[Newsfactor] Enterprise storage giant EMC has acquired a small start-up that hasn't released any products. Pi Corp. was founded by Paul Maritz, a 14-year veteran of Microsoft. EMC is also hiring Maritz as president of a new Cloud Infrastructure and Services division.