Diamond Age Solutions News for the IT Industry

Wed Jan 19 11:07:06 NZDT 2005

Today Index

The French Police are switching 35,000 PCs to OpenOffice instead of MS Office to save 2M Euros by the end of January. 45,000 more will have changed by Summer:
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/55253

Azul Systems wants to add a new word to PC jargon - KiloCores, or thousands of CPU cores used in a system. They say, "Get ready to buy chips by the kilo":
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/azul_khan_comment/

Having discovered that some 3G phone handsets are now capable of receiving live TV channels, the UK Government wants their owners to pay for a TV licence:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20729

Microsoft make a fundemental mistake in encrypting Word documents, re-using the same RC4 keystream to encrypt successive versions. Decrypt with a simple XOR:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/microsoft_rc4_f.html

Garmin announces the iQue 3600a, a PalmOS-based PDA designed to sit in an aircraft's control yoke and deliver turn-by-turn navigation directions:
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=832

And finally. Willie Nelson strikes oil in Texas; Homegrown vegetable oil, and he's turning it into a biodiesel that runs in unaltered diesel engines:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66288,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6

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.