Pc News

[Rasputin]

Macho Wii Users Send Controllers Flying

Nintendo is taking a close look at the wrist-strap on the controller for its Wii console after several reports on the Internet about straps breaking, causing the controller to fly out of the hands of users, its president said today.

Within days of the Wii going on sale in North America last month, tales of broken wrist straps began appearing online. Many were accompanied by photographs of damage caused by the flying controller, which in some cases included cracked television screens. Pictures have also begun appearing in Japan after the Wii launched there on Dec. 2. Here's a YouTube video of one breaking in action.

One of the selling points of the Wii is its motion-sensitive controller. Users can swing it like a club when playing a golf game, or jab it like a fist in a boxing game.

"There have been reports, mainly on the Internet, about the strap breaking when you play the games very hard," said Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president.

Nintendo tested the durability of all the console's parts, but "people are becoming excited ... beyond our expecations" while playing the Wii, he said. The company is investigating the reports, he added.

The Wii went on sale yesterday in Australia and will hit stores across Europe tomorrow. Nintendo has sold more than a million of the consoles in the last month, and has managed to do what Japanese-rival Sony Computer Entertainment failed to pull off with the PlayStation 3 -- launch a new games console worldwide within a month.

Iwata confirmed Nintendo's plan to ship 4 million consoles by the end of the year and 6 million by the end of March 2007.

(Thanks to Martyn Williams of IDG News Service for the info.)

Has your Wii controller strap broken? Tell us about it!

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Readies Windows, Other Security Fixes

Microsoft plans to patch its Windows and Visual Studio products next week, but it does not have a fix in the works for a widely publicized flaw in Word, which hackers are reportedly exploiting in targeted attacks.

The company's security team is readying five sets of patches for Windows, and will also issue a single critical security update for Visual Studio, Microsoft said in an alert published Thursday.

How They Work
Microsoft rates the most serious of its Windows updates as critical, meaning an attacker could exploit the underlying flaw to run malware on a victim's PC with no user action, the company said.

Such security patches are usually released on the second Tuesday of each month. The company strives to publish a small number of updates in December, because IT operations are often short-staffed during the holiday season.

On Tuesday, Microsoft warned of a vulnerability in its Word software that reportedly had been used in online attacks. Security researchers have rated this flaw as critical, because an attacker could exploit it to run malicious software on a victim's PC. For such an attack to work, however, the victim would first have to be tricked into opening a maliciously encoded Word file.

The Word flaw is not scheduled to be patched next Tuesday, said a spokesperson for Microsoft's public relations firm.

There is, however, one critical Visual Studio flaw that may be addressed in the updates. That bug is in Visual Studio 2005's WMI Object Broker ActiveX object. It was first reported in late October.

[Rasputin]

HP Settles Civil Lawsuit Over Spying

Hewlett-Packard today agreed to a $14.5 million settlement in the California civil lawsuit related to the company's spying scandal.

Under terms of the settlement with the California attorney general, HP will pay $13.5 million to create a "Privacy and Piracy Fund" for law-enforcement activities related to privacy and intellectual-property rights operated in the state attorney general's office.

The company will also pay $650,000 in civil penalties and $350,000 to cover expenses of the investigation, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced Thursday afternoon.

HP executives and private investigators retained by the company still face criminal charges in the scandal, which involves the alleged use of "pretexting," or pretending to be someone to obtain that person's phone records.

In an announcement made at the same time as Lockyer's, HP detailed a number of internal reforms that it is making to its business and investigative practices.

How the Money Will Be Used
The attorney general and local prosecutors throughout California will use the Privacy and Piracy Fund to investigate and prosecute violations of privacy and intellectual-property rights. Each year, as much as $1 million will be allocated from the fund--$500,000 to the attorney general's office and as much as $500,000 to local prosecutors.

"This settlement should help guide companies across the country as they seek to protect confidential business information without violating corporate ethics or privacy rights. And the new fund will help ensure that when businesses cross the legal line, they will be held accountable," Lockyer said in a prepared statement.

The civil suit made the same allegations that the state made in its criminal filing in October against former HP chair Patricia Dunn, former HP legal counsel Kevin Hunsaker, and three private detectives HP hired to trace the source of boardroom leaks. The charges include using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy.

Since the scandal broke in early September, HP chief executive officer Mark Hurd, who succeeded Dunn as chair, has pledged that HP will clean up its act. The company said Thursday it will appoint newly named board member G. Kennedy Thompson, an independent director, to review and report to the board on compliance with legal and ethical requirements related to company investigations.

HP already met two other conditions in the agreement when it named Jon Doak as the company's new chief ethics and compliance officer and appointed former federal prosecutor Bart Schwartz as a "qualified authority" to review HP's investigative practices and suggest changes where needed.

HP has also pledged to revise its employee training to better emphasize ethics and to make sure that ethics codes at the vendors with which HP does business also specify ethical behavior regarding investigations.

Settlement of this case should have no impact on the criminal case, says Bill Keane, a white-collar criminal defense attorney at Farella Braun and Martel LLP in San Francisco. Even if HP is doing good by donating to this privacy fund, don't expect the court to go easy on the defendants.

"Law enforcement has always viewed corporate liability and individual conduct as separate and distinct issues," says Keane.

[Rasputin]

Cell Companies to Replace 1.3 Million Batteries

NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi Electric are planning to replace around 1.3 million batteries manufactured by Sanyo Electric because they may overheat and catch fire, the companies said today.

The batteries were manufactured before June 2006 and are used in NTT DoCoMo's D902i handset. Some may have also been used in two other Mitsubishi Electric models, the D902iS and D903iS, the companies said. The batteries carry the model number D06.

"In rare cases there is a slight deformation of the electrode plate which causes it to come into contact with the insulation sheet and hence the insulation sheet can become damaged," said Richard Sedgwick, a spokesman for Sanyo in Tokyo. "If the battery was also damaged through an outside side, for example if the user dropped the battery, then the problem could occur."

Possible Issue Recognized in April
NTT DoCoMo said it has confirmed one case of the battery rupturing because of the problem and knows of 17 other cases where the D06 battery has ruptured or overheated. The carrier said the battery had been subject to an "extremely strong impact" in a number of the cases.

Sanyo said it began examining ways of strengthening the electrode in April this year as a precautionary measure against possible problems, but at the time had not heard any reports about actual problems. Batteries with stronger plating on the electrode began rolling off the company's production line in June, hence today's advisory only concerns batteries manufactured until May.

Similar to Sony Problem
The problem brings back memories of Sony's battery problems of earlier this year. Around 9.6 million Sony-manufactured laptop computer batteries were recalled or voluntarily replaced by many laptop PC vendors after batteries in several PCs overheated and caught fire. The problem was traced back to metal particles that had gotten into the battery during manufacturing.

Sony estimated the problems will cost it around $444 million this financial year.

Sanyo said that it has yet to work out with NTT DoCoMo and Mitsubishi Electric the part it will play in the replacement.

Sanyo and Sony are two of the world's largest manufacturers of lithium ion batteries.

[Rasputin]

Mozilla Ships Alpha Release of Firefox 3.0

Mozilla today hit an early milestone on the road to the next version of its open-source browser, but the final product is still a year away, developers say.

The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firefox 3.0 today, giving Firefox and Web application developers an early look at the next-generation browser. This release is not intended for regular users, not even those who like to play around with early versions of a product, Mozilla said.

The software, code-named Gran Paradiso, comes just six weeks after Mozilla shipped version 2.0 of the browser, but it has already been more than a year in development, according to Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

3.0 Features
The final version of Firefox 3.0 is expected to be released by the end of 2007. Developers hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop, Schroepfer said.

Gran Paradiso features better support for a number of graphics standards, such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Canvas specification, Schroepfer said. "These are fairly major architectural changes to enable us to improve performance."

Firefox 3.0 also supports the Cairo graphics library, which aims to make Web pages look the same whether they are being printed or viewed on a Windows PC, a Macintosh, or a small-screen device.

The Firefox 3.0 plan calls for browsing, bookmarking, and privacy enhancements to be built into the browser, but Schroepfer said there is still a lot of time to work out new features. "It's a bit early to be talking about the user-facing features," he said.

[Rasputin]

Blu-ray DVD Drive Annoys Some PlayStation 3 Buyers

Gamers love Sony's new PlayStation 3 for its graphics capabilities and its firepower, but the advanced Blu-ray DVD drive is also annoying some of those same gamers with its steep cost, its production problems that have limited current availability, and its introduction of a format that they have not yet aligned with.

Sony's move to put a Blu-ray drive into the PS3 video game console is part of the Japanese giant's plan in a high-stakes next-generation DVD format war that recalls the fierce Betamax-VHS battle, which Sony's Betamax lost.

This time, Sony's Blu-ray is competing against a rival Toshiba-backed format known as HD DVD.

Strategy Backfiring?
Sony said Blu-ray is part of its long-term plan to position its machine as a home entertainment hub, but some experts say the strategy may be backfiring.

Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman said that while die-hard gamers will buy the PS3 at any cost early on, buyers who come to the product later will be more price-sensitive.

"Blu-ray is adding $150 to $200 to the product. They've created something that is not for today's market. It's not a market driver, it's only driving the price higher," he said.

Watertown, Massachusetts-based Cymfony, which culls trends from posts on Internet sites, reported that positive discussions about HD DVD were 46 percent higher than for Blu-ray in a survey of almost 18,000 posts on blogs, discussion boards, and consumer review sites from October 1 to November 30.

"Negative Blu-ray conversation indicated a lack of consumer trust in Sony, as well as gamer displeasure with selling Blu-ray in association with PlayStation 3," said Jim Nail, a spokesman for Cymfony.

Hollywood studios and consumer electronics makers are hoping that high-definition DVDs, with better picture quality and interactive features, will reignite the slowing market for DVD sales. But the format war, technical issues, and the advent of digital video-on-demand services are creating hurdles for the new DVDs and players.

Turning Point?
Andy Parsons, a spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, called the launch of the PS3 a "turning point" for the format.

"Blu-ray's here to stay. The likelihood of people using PS3s as DVD players is significant, particularly when you're talking about [the] millions of consoles Sony expects to sell," he said.

There is a good precedent for Blu-ray: Sony's PlayStation 2, currently the dominant game console with more than 106 million sold, helped push the standard DVD format. The PS2 came to market in 2000, about three years after the DVD was first launched.

"We think the same will happen with the PS3 and Blu-ray," Parsons said.

In the gaming console war this holiday season, Sony's PS3, priced at around $600, faces two main competitors in Microsoft's Xbox 360, which costs about $400, and Nintendo's Wii, costing about $250.

Microsoft and HD DVD
Microsoft recently added an optional HD DVD player and began offering full-length film and TV downloads in high-definition via its Xbox Live online gaming service.

Mark Knox, a spokesman for the HD DVD consortium, said offering HD DVD as an add-on was an important distinction.

"We know that every HD DVD drive being sold to Xbox users is being used to watch films. They're not being forced to buy it," he said. "Every PS3 includes a Blu-ray drive, but that doesn't mean every gamer wants to watch a movie on PS3."

John Davison, editorial director of 1Up Network, a gaming network with 13 million monthly unique visitors, said most gamers are not interested in viewing films on the PS3.

"PS3 will live and die by the games it plays. The fact it's a DVD player is a bonus, but not why people bought it," he said.

[Rasputin]

Security Hole Found in Windows Media Player

Users are being advised to disable a certain type of file in Microsoft's Windows Media Player software following the discovery of a new security hole in the software.

Windows Media Player versions 9 and 10 are affected by the flaw, which could allow a malicious hacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC or cause a denial of service attack, according to security company FrSIRT, which rated the problem critical in an advisory Thursday.

The flaw is due to a buffer overflow error that can occur when Windows Media Player is used to run ".asx" media files, according to a warning from eEye Digital Security.

Such files open automatically in a Web browser, meaning a hacker would need only to post an infected .asx file in a Web page and then try to lure users to visit the page, eEye Digital said. An infected file could also be sent via email, in which case users would need to be persuaded to open it.

Reduce Risk
Microsoft said an initial investigation revealed that the "proof of concept" code could allow an attacker to execute code on a user's machine. It said it was unaware of any attempts to exploit the vulnerability, and it was unclear Friday morning if the proof of concept code it referred to was in the hands of hackers.

Users can protect against the vulnerability in Internet Explorer by preventing it from opening .asx files automatically. Turning off Active Scripting would also greatly reduce, but not eliminate, the risk, Microsoft said. FrSIRT also recommended that users upgrade to Windows Media Player 11, which it said is not affected.

Microsoft was still determining Friday whether it needed to issue an "out of cycle" security fix for the problem or patch it with its next monthly software update.

Zero-Day Exploit
The flaw was originally reported on Nov. 22, when it was identified only as a denial-of-service issue.

Some discussion boards described the problem as a "zero-day exploit," although it was unclear if that was the case. Zero-day exploits occur when exploit code is released on the same day that a flaw is uncovered, giving users no time to protect themselves.

It's been another busy week for Microsoft's security teams. On Tuesday the company warned of an unpatched vulnerability in Word that had been the subject of what it called "limited attacks." And on Thursday it said it was readying several patches for Visual Studio and Windows that it plans to release next week.

The patches currently due for next week do not address the problems with Word and Windows Media Player.

[Rasputin]

IBM Sues Mainframe Company For Patent Infringement

Platform Solutions, a company that makes a system that allows IBM mainframe operating systems to run on Itanium-based hardware, is facing a lawsuit from Big Blue.

IBM filed a federal lawsuit against Sunnyvale, Calif.-based PSI alleging patent infringements and breach of contract, according to the lawsuit filed late last month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The lawsuit cites letters between the two companies disagreeing over licensing issues. The correspondence extends back several years, but IBM said the dispute came to a head when PSI began lining up customers.

Beta users include Lufthansa Systems, and general product availability is planned for early next year, according to PSI.

Antitrust Threats
PSI technology allows z/OS and OS/390 operating systems and applications to run on Itanium systems. In its lawsuit, IBM said it is refusing to license its operating systems for that use.

"IBM has a strong interest in ensuring that z/OS is not used on computer systems with which z/OS is not fully compatible or used in ways that have the potential to undermine either the reputation of z/OS for accuracy, data integrity, and reliability or customers acceptance of z/OS for mission-critical applications," the company said in the lawsuit. IBM refers to PSI's product as an emulator, a characterization disputed by the company, which calls its system an open mainframe computer.

Christian Reilly, PSI's marketing director, said what his company brings is competition on the mainframe platform. "This market is pretty much a sole source for hardware in the z/OS market -- it's a $4 billion market, and customers have expressed a strong demand for choice," he said.

IBM said in its lawsuit that at one point, PSI threatened an antitrust lawsuit. Reilly said that he couldn't comment on the specifics of the lawsuit and that the company has not filed its response yet.

Software Costs A Problem
John Phelps, an analyst at Gartner, said PSI is trying to provide an alternative hardware platform to the mainframe, but "software costs have been the biggest problem in the mainframe space, and I didn't know how they were going to solve software costs."

PSI's executive team includes former Amdahl and IBM executives. Amdahl, which was acquired by Fujitsu in 1997, made IBM mainframe-compatible hardware but didn't produce a 64-bit system for the z/OS.

[Rasputin]

Pirates Hack Vista's Registration Features

Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system get around the software's anti-piracy mechanisms.

Windows Vista must be "activated," or authorized by Microsoft, before it will work on a particular machine. To simplify the task of activating many copies of Vista, Microsoft offers corporate users special tools, among them Key Management Service (KMS), which allows a company to run a Microsoft-supplied authorization server on its own network and activate Vista without contacting Microsoft for each copy.

The software Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Local.Activation.Server-MelindaGates lets users spoof that KMS process, allowing them to activate copies of the enterprise editions of Vista, its creators say. The hacked download is available online on sites including The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites.

MelindaGates Hack
Microsoft's official KMS offering is available to customers with 25 or more computers running Vista. The machines activate the software by connecting to the KMS server, and must reactivate every six months.

KMS is not the only option that enterprises have for volume activation of Vista: they can also call Microsoft by phone or connect over the Internet to activate the software.

The MelindaGates hack allows users to download a VMware image of a KMS server which activates Windows Vista Business/Enterprise edition, its creators claim.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment on the hack.

Aimed At Reduced Piracy
Vista is the first Windows operating system that requires volume users to activate each product. The new activation processes are aimed at reducing piracy.

While one security expert said he isn't surprised that KMS has been cracked, he said the MelindaGates hack offers some insight into piracy.

"This also shows how piracy is not just about kids swapping games," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure. "The only parties that would need a KMS crack would be corporations with volume licensing."

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Readies Windows, Other Security Fixes

Microsoft plans to patch its Windows and Visual Studio products next week, but it does not have a fix in the works for a widely publicized flaw in Word, which hackers are reportedly exploiting in targeted attacks.

The company's security team is readying five sets of patches for Windows, and will also issue a single critical security update for Visual Studio, Microsoft said in an alert published Thursday.

How They Work
Microsoft rates the most serious of its Windows updates as critical, meaning an attacker could exploit the underlying flaw to run malware on a victim's PC with no user action, the company said.

Such security patches are usually released on the second Tuesday of each month. The company strives to publish a small number of updates in December, because IT operations are often short-staffed during the holiday season.

On Tuesday, Microsoft warned of a vulnerability in its Word software that reportedly had been used in online attacks. Security researchers have rated this flaw as critical, because an attacker could exploit it to run malicious software on a victim's PC. For such an attack to work, however, the victim would first have to be tricked into opening a maliciously encoded Word file.

The Word flaw is not scheduled to be patched next Tuesday, said a spokesperson for Microsoft's public relations firm.

There is, however, one critical Visual Studio flaw that may be addressed in the updates. That bug is in Visual Studio 2005's WMI Object Broker ActiveX object. It was first reported in late October.

[Rasputin]

Blu-ray DVD Drive Annoys Some PlayStation 3 Buyers

Gamers love Sony's new PlayStation 3 for its graphics capabilities and its firepower, but the advanced Blu-ray DVD drive is also annoying some of those same gamers with its steep cost, its production problems that have limited current availability, and its introduction of a format that they have not yet aligned with.

Sony's move to put a Blu-ray drive into the PS3 video game console is part of the Japanese giant's plan in a high-stakes next-generation DVD format war that recalls the fierce Betamax-VHS battle, which Sony's Betamax lost.

This time, Sony's Blu-ray is competing against a rival Toshiba-backed format known as HD DVD.

Strategy Backfiring?
Sony said Blu-ray is part of its long-term plan to position its machine as a home entertainment hub, but some experts say the strategy may be backfiring.

Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman said that while die-hard gamers will buy the PS3 at any cost early on, buyers who come to the product later will be more price-sensitive.

"Blu-ray is adding $150 to $200 to the product. They've created something that is not for today's market. It's not a market driver, it's only driving the price higher," he said.

Watertown, Massachusetts-based Cymfony, which culls trends from posts on Internet sites, reported that positive discussions about HD DVD were 46 percent higher than for Blu-ray in a survey of almost 18,000 posts on blogs, discussion boards, and consumer review sites from October 1 to November 30.

"Negative Blu-ray conversation indicated a lack of consumer trust in Sony, as well as gamer displeasure with selling Blu-ray in association with PlayStation 3," said Jim Nail, a spokesman for Cymfony.

Hollywood studios and consumer electronics makers are hoping that high-definition DVDs, with better picture quality and interactive features, will reignite the slowing market for DVD sales. But the format war, technical issues, and the advent of digital video-on-demand services are creating hurdles for the new DVDs and players.

Turning Point?
Andy Parsons, a spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, called the launch of the PS3 a "turning point" for the format.

"Blu-ray's here to stay. The likelihood of people using PS3s as DVD players is significant, particularly when you're talking about [the] millions of consoles Sony expects to sell," he said.

There is a good precedent for Blu-ray: Sony's PlayStation 2, currently the dominant game console with more than 106 million sold, helped push the standard DVD format. The PS2 came to market in 2000, about three years after the DVD was first launched.

"We think the same will happen with the PS3 and Blu-ray," Parsons said.

In the gaming console war this holiday season, Sony's PS3, priced at around $600, faces two main competitors in Microsoft's Xbox 360, which costs about $400, and Nintendo's Wii, costing about $250.

Microsoft and HD DVD
Microsoft recently added an optional HD DVD player and began offering full-length film and TV downloads in high-definition via its Xbox Live online gaming service.

Mark Knox, a spokesman for the HD DVD consortium, said offering HD DVD as an add-on was an important distinction.

"We know that every HD DVD drive being sold to Xbox users is being used to watch films. They're not being forced to buy it," he said. "Every PS3 includes a Blu-ray drive, but that doesn't mean every gamer wants to watch a movie on PS3."

John Davison, editorial director of 1Up Network, a gaming network with 13 million monthly unique visitors, said most gamers are not interested in viewing films on the PS3.

"PS3 will live and die by the games it plays. The fact it's a DVD player is a bonus, but not why people bought it," he said.

[Rasputin]

Pirates Hack Vista's Registration Features

Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system get around the software's anti-piracy mechanisms.

Windows Vista must be "activated," or authorized by Microsoft, before it will work on a particular machine. To simplify the task of activating many copies of Vista, Microsoft offers corporate users special tools, among them Key Management Service (KMS), which allows a company to run a Microsoft-supplied authorization server on its own network and activate Vista without contacting Microsoft for each copy.

The software Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Local.Activation.Server-MelindaGates lets users spoof that KMS process, allowing them to activate copies of the enterprise editions of Vista, its creators say. The hacked download is available online on sites including The Pirate Bay and other file sharing sites.

MelindaGates Hack
Microsoft's official KMS offering is available to customers with 25 or more computers running Vista. The machines activate the software by connecting to the KMS server, and must reactivate every six months.

KMS is not the only option that enterprises have for volume activation of Vista: they can also call Microsoft by phone or connect over the Internet to activate the software.

The MelindaGates hack allows users to download a VMware image of a KMS server which activates Windows Vista Business/Enterprise edition, its creators claim.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment on the hack.

Aimed At Reduced Piracy
Vista is the first Windows operating system that requires volume users to activate each product. The new activation processes are aimed at reducing piracy.

While one security expert said he isn't surprised that KMS has been cracked, he said the MelindaGates hack offers some insight into piracy.

"This also shows how piracy is not just about kids swapping games," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure. "The only parties that would need a KMS crack would be corporations with volume licensing."

[Rasputin]

Office 2007, OpenOffice.org Work Together

Microsoft and Novell have wasted little time in demonstrating there is real work being done as part of their recent Linux interoperability pact. Just a month after the historic deal between the companies, Novell said today it will support the proprietary document format in Microsoft Office 2007, Open XML, in its open-source version of the OpenOffice productivity suite by the end of January.

Novell also will release software that will bi-directionally translate word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations between its version of OpenOffice.org's productivity suite and Microsoft Office to the OpenOffice.org project so Open XML can become a part of that open-source project, the company said.

However, this does not guarantee that Open XML will be integrated into the OpenOffice.org code, said Justin Steinman, a Novell director of marketing for Linux. "We are going to release the code to the open-source community. Whether it gets integrated or not is up to the community," he said.

Novell and Microsoft worked together on the translation project, which will allow users of a new release of OpenOffice due in January to create, save and send files as Open XML documents, Steinman said.

Teaming Up
Creating interoperability between the OpenOffice and Microsoft Office suites was a goal that was part of the companies' deal, announced November 2, to make Microsoft's proprietary software work more seamlessly with Novell's SuSe Linux and other open-source software from the company.

The Open XML work will ultimately allow users to more easily share files between Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice, which support different document formats, Steinman said.

The native document format in OpenOffice is OpenDocument Format (ODF), an XML-based file format recognized as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Microsoft so far has chosen not to support ODF and instead created its own file format, Open XML, for Office 2007.

Microsoft's lack of support for ODF has been controversial, and the company further stirred up concern in the industry that it was trying to promote its own proprietary file format as an industry standard instead of ODF by submitting Open XML to Ecma International in November 2005. Ecma is a standards organization that can fast-track technology standards through the ISO.

Ecma plans to vote on whether to approve Open XML for submission to the ISO as an international standard on December 7.

Microsoft released Office 2007, which supports Open XML, last week to business customers. The suite is expected to be widely available to consumers in retail outlets on January 30.

[Rasputin]

Mozilla Ships Alpha Release of Firefox 3.0

Mozilla today hit an early milestone on the road to the next version of its open-source browser, but the final product is still a year away, developers say.

The Mozilla team released its first alpha release of Firefox 3.0 today, giving Firefox and Web application developers an early look at the next-generation browser. This release is not intended for regular users, not even those who like to play around with early versions of a product, Mozilla said.

The software, code-named Gran Paradiso, comes just six weeks after Mozilla shipped version 2.0 of the browser, but it has already been more than a year in development, according to Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

3.0 Features
The final version of Firefox 3.0 is expected to be released by the end of 2007. Developers hope that it will be a major step toward making Web applications indistinguishable from programs that are installed on the desktop, Schroepfer said.

Gran Paradiso features better support for a number of graphics standards, such as the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) language and the Canvas specification, Schroepfer said. "These are fairly major architectural changes to enable us to improve performance."

Firefox 3.0 also supports the Cairo graphics library, which aims to make Web pages look the same whether they are being printed or viewed on a Windows PC, a Macintosh, or a small-screen device.

The Firefox 3.0 plan calls for browsing, bookmarking, and privacy enhancements to be built into the browser, but Schroepfer said there is still a lot of time to work out new features. "It's a bit early to be talking about the user-facing features," he said.

[Rasputin]

Dell Adds Blu-ray to Laptop Options

Dell today added Blu-ray disc capability to its notebook PC line, making an effort to compete with Sony and Toshiba in the growing market for mobile high-definition video platforms.

In addition to showing high-end movies and games, Dell's XPS M1710 notebook could serve as a central node to support digital entertainment throughout the home, the company said. Customers can save 50G bytes of either data or video on a single Blu-ray disc.

The ability to read and write data to the discs differentiates Blu-ray from HD-DVD, the competing standard for high-definition video, analysts said. Laptops with HD-DVD capability have lower prices but cannot save data to the discs, said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis.

"You are starting to see the different camps emerge within the computing companies, with Toshiba and Acer on the HD-DVD side and Sony and Dell on the Blu-ray side," he said. Sony's Vaio VGN-AR270 uses Blu-ray discs, while Acer's notebook and Toshiba's Qosmio G35-AV650 use HD-DVD.

Background
Blu-ray and HD-DVD are improvements over standard DVD optical discs; they hold more data and let users watch high-definition video. All three techniques are optical discs, storing data in a binary form that is read by a scanning laser. But a Blu-ray disc can hold five times the capacity of a dual-layer DVD, Dell said.

Movie studios and video game producers are eager to sell films on the new media, but the flow of new titles is only a trickle so far because content providers and hardware vendors can't decide which standard will prevail.

Pricing starts at $3,699 for the XPS M1710, including an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4 gigabytes of memory and up to 160GB of storage on a serial ATA hard drive.