Thoughts Of A Diseased Imagination

Todays news, cool stuff and some pictures. Yesterday, I told you about Apple's Macbook. It is discussed further here: http://davie.wordpress.com/2006/05/16/macbook-first-impressions-from-a-pc-user/ at davie's blog. Today I can bring you some great photos of the black version. To see my photobucket album of the photos: http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g225/shadowoflinux/Black%20MacBook/ Continuing the topic of harddrives, Hitachi announced that it will be selling Perpendicular Recording harddrives. Perpendicular Recording is a new technology that allows more data to be stored on a disc that is based on today's Lognitudinal harddrives. Supposedly within the next few years, all harddrives will become new Perpendicular based ones, replacing today's Longitudinal devices. InfoWorld explain how this technology works

The method is similar to the longitudinal recording used in today's drives in that it relies on magnetically charged particles for data storage. In today's drives, the north and south poles of the magnetic particles run parallel to the disk, but in the new method they are arranged perpendicular to the disk. The result of this new arrangement is that each particle occupies a smaller area of the disk's surface and so more particles can be crammed onto the disk. The Travelstar 5K160 drives, Hitachi's first 2.5-inch drives to employ perpendicular recording, can hold up to 160G bytes of data, compared to up to 100G bytes on the current longitudinal recording-based Travelstar 5K100 line of drives. The 2.5-inch drives are typically used in laptop computers.

To read the rest of the story read it here: http://ww6.infoworld.com/products/print_friendly.jsp?link=/article/06/05/15/78336_HNhitachiperp_1.html

IT Observer are running a story on wireless attacks. Lots of people use wireless routers for home internet access, my school use it for their registration system, its very useful, being able to access a network and not be teathered to a network jack. But with that freedom comes a security risk, since anyone with a wireless card in their computer can capture everything you transmitt, be it encrypted or not. Not only does it describe some of the weaknesses with wireless, but it also describes how to make your wireless connection more secure. If you run a wireless network, then have a read, http://www.it-observer.com/articles/1136/wireless_security_attacks_defenses/

Opensource scored today when IBM announced that it would adopt ODF in it's Lotus Notes application. It appeard that IBM are the first adopters of the OpenDocument format after it was approved by the ISO recently. Although Microsoft have claimed that they won't be adding support for ODF anytime soon, many people are writing plugins to allow Microsoft Office to open ODF files. Im glad to see that companies are starting to see that opensource is a viable alternative to MS. http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/16/78380_HNibmodf2_1.html

Another sucess for opensource came when Sun Microsystems announced that they would be offering support for Ubuntu on their T1 server line, which is currently a Solaris only machine. However, Sun will only be providing support for Ubuntu's new server distribuntion, which is due to have it's first release on 1st June. Considering Ubuntu is relativly new, they must be doing something right for them to become certified on Sun's servers already. Well done Ubuntu, for more info: http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2156209/sun-support-ubuntu-linux

EverythingUSB have an article about IO₂ Technology's M2i display. This is so futuristic, it's plain cool, but with no mention of a price so far it's going to be pricy. There isn't much I can say on this that hasn't already been covered by Everything USB, so i'll give you a link and tell you to watch the YouTube video. http://www.everythingusb.com/io2_m2i_heliodisplay.html

Creative, Apple's closest rival have filed a lawsuit in the US against Apple for infringment of the patent Creative hold on their Zen device, which covers the menu software used to find and play music. If sucessful, Creative would recieve money for damages, and would take out an exclusion order that would prohibit Apple from selling, importing and marketing their iPod in the US. eWeek have more http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1962719,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000611

The RIAA are adding XM Sattelite radio to their list of victims they have sued. They claim "That its Inno device that can store music infringes on copyrights and transforms a passive radio experience into the equivalent of a digital download service like iTunes." They claim that XM Satteilte radio are commiting wholesale copyright infringment, and want $150,000 in damages for every song copied by XM's customers using its Inno device. XM stated their device does not allow customers to transfer recorded content and that content recorded from radio broadcasts like XM's is not on demand, in contrast to the content people buy from online music stores like Apple's popular iTunes service. All I can say is good luck XM. To find out more head over to http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060517/media_nm/media_xm_dc