Diamond Age Solutions News for the IT Industry

Sat Feb 19 11:20:54 NZDT 2005

Today Index

Microsoft is recalling 14 million X-Box power leads after some have overheated and burnt. In a few cases, even caused minor burns to users:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4274035.stm

Motorola to release WiFi-enabled GPRS mobile phones that will automatically use Skype where it is available through a WiFi hotspot:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20050216053747.html

The SHA-1 secure hashing algorithm is reported to have been broken. Not just in special cases but generally. A lot of computing power is still required:
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=3156

Two out of 4 medium-level vulnerabilities remain unpatched in the Linux 2.6 kernel. All are local-only but I'm still sticking to 2.4 anyway:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21295

AMD Launch their Alchemy range of CPUs which consume less than a Watt and need no heatsink but can drive multimedia applications:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_6625,00.html

And finally. Space tethers look to be practical without high-tech nanofibre cables, as long as you use small rockets to get above the lower atmosphere:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7009

News collated from various sources by Vik Olliver for Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. The views presented in this document are the personal opinion of the collator, and should not be taken as any more than that.