Bill Lindner

Approximately 440,000 Sony Vaio TZ series laptops have been reportedly recalled worldwide to avert potential wiring problems that involve overheating and short circuiting. Approximately 74,000 of the recalled laptops were sold in the United States. ... Sony's recall involves VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300 and VGN-TZ2000 series laptops involving 19 models manufactured between May 2007 and July 2008. Improperly placed wires near the hinge connecting the body of the laptop and its display could wear quickly which could cause the computer to short circuit or overheat. The recall also involves a flaw ... (view more)

At least 51 separate civil antitrust actions against Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices/ATI Technologies (AMD/ATI) alleging price-fixing in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market received a major boost when emails from competing executives ... suggesting how to keep prices high were read during a recent hearing. The cases assert price-fixing in various types of computer chips, flat panel screens and cathode ray tubes. U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California (in San Francisco) berated defense lawyers for trying to keep what they consider trade secret documents ... (view more)

U.S. residents living in a state bordering Canada or Mexico may reportedly be given a remotely readable driver's license designed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to identify U.S. citizens as they approach the nation's borders as a way ... to save time and simplify border crossings. The DHS was created after the attacks of 9/11/01 . Residents may want to think twice before signing up for the department's new program. The licenses come equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that are readable through wallets, pockets or purses from as far away as 30 feet. Tiny ... (view more)

In the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a new breed of hacker-investigators monitoring how traffic is routed through countries where web sites are blocked and why it is happening are reportedly conducting digital espionage --- turning their ... attention to a new weapon of international warfare: cyber attacks. "Hacktivists," led by Ronald J. Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, referred to as the "NSA of operations," set out to help residents in countries that censor online content, but have ended up tracking wars. Citizen Lab researchers created a software tool called Psiphon that helps ... (view more)

Last fall, several communications companies reportedly conducted trials, in some cases lasting up to 6 months, of network-based technology designed to track a customer's Internet actions, attempting to amass refined data on web-surfer habits that ... may be sold at premium rates to advertisers. Cable One's 'trial' affected about 700,000 customers. Bresnan Communications conducted a similar 'trial' that was limited to about 6,000 broadband customers in Billings, Montana from April 1 to June 26, 2008. Knology tested it on about 230,000 of their customers from January until July 2008. WideOpenWest ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced that it is updating the anti-piracy software in Windows XP Professional, making nagging more prominent for users running counterfeit copies. It will also give future updates of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) increased ... validation powers and new forms of notifications. Microsoft announced the update, which is designed to increase the effectiveness of notifications and to 'align experiences across Windows XP and Windows Vista' via their WGA blog . The WGA update is offered to those using editions of Windows XP based on Pro code such as Tablet and Windows Media Center ... (view more)

While Apple has opened the iPhone to third-party applications, they are also reportedly keeping a very close eye on which applications are allowed to run on your phone. According to hacker Jonathan Zdziarski, the iPhone has the ability to 'phone ... home' and tell Apple what applications are installed, and if Apple doesn't like what it sees, they can neutralize the offending application. Zdziarski says this suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. He discovered this ability tucked away in a configuration file deep inside the iPhone ... (view more)

A performance and metrics researcher reportedly estimates that more than one in every three new PCs -- approximately 35% of over 3,000 PCs -- has downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer. The data was ... provided by users to Devil Mountain Software Inc's. Exo.performance.network -- which it kicked off last year and expanded by partnering with InfoWorld -- to come up with their numbers. By collating things such as the vendor and system model number with manufacturer's catalogs, machines were identified that were probably shipped within the past six months ... (view more)

A new technique has reportedly been developed by two security researchers that bypasses all of the memory protection safeguards in Windows Vista. The tactic is expected to have far-reaching implications for Microsoft the rest of the tech industry. ... Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov of VMWare Inc. will discuss the new methods they've found to get around Vista's Address Space Layout Randomizations (ASLR), Date Execution Prevention (DEP) and other functions built into Windows Vista by using Java, ActiveX controls and .NET objects to load arbitrary content into ... (view more)

As part of a "Test Your ISP" Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is reportedly releasing "Switzerland," a software tool for customers to test the integrity of their Internet communications. The idea is the result of a Federal ... Communications Commission (FCC) action against Comcast for violating the FCC's net neutrality principles. Comcast was recently caught interfering with its subscribers' use of BitTorrent, Gnutella, and other common file-sharing protocols employed by millions of Internet users. In an effort to disrupt certain protocols commonly used for file-sharing, Comcast ... (view more)