intel vPro

Things are shaping up nicely for prospective laptop buyers holding out for Santa Rosa systems before they make the plunge. Intel just confirmed that the platform will be making its way into laptops in the second quarter of this year, and clarified that Centrino Pro is only part of the action, not the whole dealio. Intel also has come forward with a welcome feature addition for enterprise types: vPro, which Intel unleashed on the desktop side last year, will be included in Centrino Pro, allowing for remote management and upgrades of systems by IT folks, and improved virtualization. Of course, it'll also involve signing up for a smorgasbord of Intel-only parts, such as the 802.11n MIMO WiFi, but that's just the way Intel rolls.

Kodak's cheap inkjet claims all talk?

We were pretty stoked to hear Kodak was planning on running full tilt at the current status quo of "loss leader" printer tactics, that has unwitting consumers picking up inkjet printers for a dime, and spending a fortune on printing supplies. Unfortunately, it looks like Kodak hasn't come upon any magical printing techniques to pull this off yet, since its new printers didn't do so good up against the likes of Epson, HP and Canon. Kodak is marketing its printers as capable of producing 10 cent prints, which would indeed be a great deal. Tests show that an $18 pack of paper and ink results in about 165 borderless prints, about 11.5 cents per print. Unfortunately, the prints were basically "draft" quality, maybe fine for certain budget-minded consumers, but hardly comparable to "lab quality" photos. To boost the quality you'll need pricier Kodak paper, which ends up at about 35 cents per print, and renders the whole exercise pointless. The testers recommend the $150 Epson Stylus Photo RX580, for super good prints and great speed. Might want to leave that $200 Kodak EasyShare 5300 on the shelf for the time being.

HP to launch new PC brand this year

We were at an HP gaming event today, presented by Rahul Sood (former CEO of Voodoo, before HP bought 'em). Rahul wanted to let the world know what HP had all their peoples working on, since not much has changed around Voodoo's business since the acquisition. The answer? HP's launching a new high-to-mid tier PC brand in 2007, which will sit beneath the Voodoo brand and above HP brand in terms of price / performance. They didn't go into much more detail than that, but it's obvious HP thinks the PC gaming space will continue to be a money-maker. Let's just hope they don't resurrect, say, Packard Bell in that slot, or some other flagging PC business. We think it's about time for some fresh blood up in here, don't you?

Install Any SATA Hard Drive Into The PS3 (Because You Can?)

Japan's Kurouto Shikou insists that the 60GB hard drive found in the PS3 is too small. (It's from Japan, of course it's small.) To that end they've designed a SATA and eSATA slot for the system that lets you install third-party hard drives. You have to remove the built-in hard drive before installing the slot, but afterward your options are limited to however much you can spend on hard drives. (They're fairly cheap, by the way.)

Will the PS3 recognize all that extra storage space (unlike the Xbox 360, which can only access 20GB per hard drive, despite the latest hacks), and does it make sense to go to all that trouble to install a larger hard drive in the first place? Maybe if you're dumping Blu-ray movies left and right, otherwise, right now, this looks to be more trouble than it's worth. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page (in Japanese) [Kurouto Shikou via Akihabara News]

How to Crack a Windows Password With a Live CD

Adam over at Lifehacker has a problem. His wife locks up all his porn on a Windows machine that only she knows the password to. That's why Adam came up with a guide to easily crack a Windows password using the Ophcrack Live CD.

It's extremely simple. All you have to do is stick in the CD, pick the account you want to crack, and it'll start churning away. Useful if you have to break into a departed co-worker/wife/child/lover's machine. Or your own machine if you're an idiot and forget your password.

p.s. I made up that story about Adam. He keeps his porn on his own machine. – Jason Chen

Screenshot Tour: How to crack a Windows password with Ophcrack Live CD [Lifehacker]

Lets eat less

If you grow weary of those cumbersome USB flash drives you've been lugging around (most weigh about 10g), here's one that sheds nearly all of its weight. The Transcend JetFlash T2K weighs just 2 grams, and is available in your choice of capacities from 1GB ($15.90) to 4GB ($48.30).

Judging from the size of microSD cards the size of a baby's fingernail, we knew this was coming. The T2K isn't so small you would lose it in your pocket, but it's not big, either—it's just 1.6 inches tall and a mere 3mm thick. Can they get smaller than this? Probably. – Charlie White

Product Page [Transcend, USA]

Nba Sidekick

If you're a fan of NBA sensation Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat, you might be interested in D-Wade's limited-edition Sidekick 3 that he designed himself. He's been an avid user of the Sidekick since 2004, and designed this Sidekick 3 to look like the interior of a luxo-sport automobile, further personalizing it with his own number 3 showing up on the 3G smartphone in glittering gold.

It has the innards of the stock Sidekick 3, but D-Wade has chosen a swank white, tan and gold exterior with a special basketball-textured back for easy gripping. Just don't slam-dunk it, D-Wade. No pricing information was available, but this looks like it would command a sizable premium over an ordinary Sidekick 3.

It's got back, too. Take a jump shot for a gander at its basketball-like dorsal side:

Free Wi-Fi for Vista users

Looking for a reason to make the leap to Windows Vista? If you spend your days sipping lattes while surfing the Net, this deal may push you toward early adoption. T-Mobile is offering three free months of Wi-Fi access for Vista users at any of its HotSpot locations. (Hot spot operator The Cloud is running a similar promotion in the U.K.) If you are paying month to month for Wi-Fi at your local Starbucks or Borders, it amounts to a savings of $120 over the three months (the offer ends April 30). That's half the sticker price of Windows Vista Home Premium.

Disclaimer: Spending more time at Starbucks may result in spending more money given Starbucks prices.

Update: Engadget did a little searching and found a way to glom onto T-Mobile's free trial without having to pony up for Vista first. Unfortunately, Google has yet to spit out the answer for knocking back a Venti mocha latte without first paying $8.

Apple Making Future iPods Hot Unpluggable

One of the small things that's bugged me about my iPod is that every time I sync it I have to use iTunes to unmount it. Well, it appears Apple is doing something about that as it's filed a patent for a hot unpluggable media storage device. The patent talks about rendering a peripheral (I'm guessing an iPod unless it's something else) from a host computer without having to prep it. Small upgrade, but this means future iPods may be plug and play and not require software

The Linux Foundation forms, issues call to arms

The open source community fired its latest shot over the bow of the SUSE-loving SS Microsoft today, announcing that the two leading bodies of Linux proponents -- the Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group -- have been folded into a new, seemingly corporate-sponsored organization that promises to "promote, protect, and standardize Linux." Christened The Linux Foundation, the new consortium will not develop or distribute any products, but instead is tasked with three primary objectives: to enable the independence of select developers by funding their work, while at the same time providing legal support and advice for members of the community; to act as a neutral forum for collaborative projects or for members to air their grievances; and to help Linux gain market share with respect to Windows. All of the commercial interests which previously belonged to the OSLD and FSG will also play a leading role in the newly-formed body, leading some critics to argue that it was actually heavy hitters like IBM, HP, Fujitsu, and Hitachi pushing for this merger in the hopes of growing the $14.5 billion infrastructure that has reportedly developed around Linux. Still, none other than Linus Torvalds himself has thrown his weight behind the foundation -- which now pays his salary, mind you -- suggesting that the original goals of the OSDL and FSG had largely been met at this point, and that standardization is a laudible pursuit. Both groups' memberships still need to approve the proposed merger, but if all goes according to plan, you can expect to see the LinFo begin its work sometime in early February.

Read- Press release [Via TG Daily]
Read- NY Times coverage [Via ZDNet]

Apple planning to charge Tiger users for Boot Camp?

It was perhaps one of the most significant events the PC industry has seen in the last decade: Apple opening up its hardware to Windows operating systems through its proprietary Boot Camp software. Not only did it allow Mac owners running Intel-powered machines to dual boot XP at will, it did so completely gratis (well, save for the cost of a Windows license). Unfortunately, the honeymoon may soon be over for Tiger users accustomed to the free boot loader: according to a report on MacScoop, Steve and friends plan to begin charging about $30 for the software once OS X Leopard is released and Boot Camp leaves beta for the greener pastures of commercial. For those Macheads planning to upgrade to Leopard, this wouldn't be an issue, of course -- the new OS will offer Boot Camp as one of its standard features. Still, if you're planning on keeping the old Tiger and your draft-N router around for awhile longer, it sounds like there's a good chance you'll need to squirrel away about $32 for the future: $30 for Boot Camp, and two bucks for the privilege of unlocking your wireless card's dormant 802.11n functionality.

[Via Slashdot]

Parallels to turn it around, help Mac OS onto generic PC boxen

With the popularity of software like Apple's Boot Camp and SWsoft's Parallels, it's no secret that people want to run Windows and Mac OS on the same box, but who says that it has to be an Apple box? Well, Apple does, and the company has staunchly defended itself from the porting of OS X into the mad world of PC generics (not with total success, of course). But with mounting pressure from users and increasing software support from VMware and SWsoft, Steve Jobs might have to let go of his tight grasp on his shiny blue OS -- or at least turn the other way as OS X makes its way onto those vile, inferior, and cheaper x86 machines without his blessing. On that front, there's good news on the horizon: it turns out an upcoming version of Parallels just so happens to "make it easier to run Mac OS on a non-Apple computer," by some unknown but welcome means. VMware's own upcoming virtualization software for the Mac has been hamstrung by the trouble VMware has gone through trying to get Apple's blessing, and SWsoft's Parallels has been "crippled" in particular ways to make it more difficult to get Mac OS onto a non-Apple machine, but it seems like it's only going to get harder for Apple to have it both ways, and Intel's inclusion of virtualization in its own chips just compounds the "problem." Michael Dell has also reconfirmed his desire to pre-load Mac OS onto his own boring boxes "if customers wanted it and Apple would license it on reasonable terms," but that tantalizing offer doesn't seem to have swayed Apple yet.

Srorm Worm

Many home PC users may have been infected after a large-scale sustained Trojan horse attack that took place over the weekend, security vendors believe.

The Trojan, named "Storm Worm" by antivirus vendor F-Secure, first started to spread on Friday as extreme storms engulfed Europe. The e-mail claimed to include breaking news about the weather, in an attempt to get people to download an executable file.

Over the weekend there were six subsequent waves of the attack, with each e-mail attempting to lure users into downloading an executable by promising a topical news story. There were e-mails that purported to carry news of an as-yet-unconfirmed missile test by the Chinese against one of its weather satellites, and e-mails reporting that Fidel Castro had died.

Each new wave of e-mails carried different versions of the Trojan horse, according to F-Secure. Each version also contained the capability to be updated, in an attempt to stay ahead of antivirus vendors.

"When they first came out, these files were pretty much undetectable by most antivirus programs," said Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research at F-Secure. "The bad guys are putting a lot of effort into it--they were putting out updates hour after hour."

As most businesses tend to strip executable files out of e-mails they receive, Hypponen said he expected that companies would not be overly affected by the attacks.

However, F-Secure said that hundreds of thousands of home computers could have been affected across the globe.

Once a user downloads the executable file, the code opens a backdoor in the machine which that it to be remotely controlled, while installing a rootkit that hides the malicious program. The compromised machine becomes a zombie in a network called a botnet. Most botnets are currently controlled through a central server, which--if found--can be taken down to destroy the botnet. However, this particular Trojan horse seeds a botnet that acts in a similar way to a peer-to-peer network, with no centralized control.

Each compromised machine connects to a list of a subset of the entire botnet--around 30 to 35 other compromised machines, which act as hosts. While each of the infected hosts share lists of other infected hosts, no one machine has a full list of the entire botnet--each has only a subset, making it difficult to gauge the true extent of the zombie network.

This is not the first botnet to use these techniques. However, Hypponen called this type of botnet "a worrying development."

Antivirus vendor Sophos called Storm Worm the "first big attack of 2007," with code being spammed out from hundreds of countries. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said the company expected more attacks over the coming days, and that the botnet would most likely be hired out for spamming, adware propagation, or be sold to extortionists to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks.

The recent trend has been toward highly targeted attacks on individual institutions. Mail services vendor MessageLabs said that this current malicious campaign was "very aggressive," and said that the gang responsible was probably a new entrant to the scene, hoping to make its mark.

None of the anti-malware companies interviewed said they knew who was responsible for the attacks, or where they had been launched from.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Cisco fesses up to iPhone WIP300 GPL failings, is "taking steps"

Apple isn't the only one having trouble messing with intellectual property as it relates to its iPhone product. Cisco was apparently reprimanded in October by a certain Armijn Hemel over unreleased code which, under the GPL-license that the phone submits to due to its Linux underpinnings, is required to be made available publicly. After the chat in October, Cisco fixed a few of its other products that Mr. Hemel pointed out were in violation, but still hasn't come clean with certain bits of WIP300 iPhone code. "For someone talking about Apple using Cisco's property," said Hemel, "actually they're infringing on copyright themselves. So it's just a double standard." In a response on Saturday, Cisco's prolific blogger John Earnhard states: "Based on our investigation, Cisco is taking steps to resolve a single issue raised regarding this product's compliance with the GNU General Public License, or GPL." No word on when this will all be patched up, or whether Cisco's fixes will be sufficient, but for the moment it sounds like the GPL kids are going to get their way. Will the curse of the iPhone live on? Tune in next week for Pirates of the iPhone: Apple and Cisco At World's End.

[Via The Inquirer]

Read - Cisco's iPhone violates GPL, expert says
Read - Cisco responds

Apple reportedly (still) readying LED-backlit MacBook Pro

They may not have made an appearance at Macworld, but Apple's rumored LED-backlit MacBook Pros look to be slightly less of a rumor today, with AppleInsider reporting that "faithful industry sources" have confirmed the switch to the brighter, less power-hungry technology. Supposedly, Apple's 15-inch MacBook Pro will be the first out of the gate, getting the LED transplant sometime in second quarter of this year, with the other models in the line presumably to follow soon thereafter, although exactly soon remains to be seen. Not surprisingly, Apple appears to be timing the release of the new-and-improved MacBook Pro to coincide with the spring launch of Leopard, letting them show off the OS's snazzy new features in the best possible light.