News for Wednesday, 19 May 2004

The Virgin online music store is now open
VNU and Libération (both articles in French) revealed the details of the system.
So, basically, it's WMA only ("PC only"), and only 3 burns are allowed. The burnt CDs can of course be re-ripped, sans DRM, but not without some quality loss (WMA --> AIFF --> MP3 or AAC)
But, to top it off, Virgin voluntarily blocks access to Mac OS machines !Once the User Agent changed via the debug menu of Safari, the website is perfectly accessible.
That means they knowingly block Macs.
http://www.virginmega.fr/

Avie Tevanian, Apple Chief Software Technology Officer, said that they would slow down "a little bit" the Mac OS X development, because the current pace is simply not sustainable.
Now that the system is mature, it is an understandable move. The setback(s) in Microsoft's Longhorn release date are certainly not alien to this decision. The developpers will now be able to shift focus to other areas and other software titles.
In the meantime, 10.3.4 betas are being released at a crazy pace. The latest nightly build is 7H58.

A Russian company, specialized in computer security, seems to think that someone stole the source code of IOS from the router manufacturer giant Cisco Systems.
For proofs, a hacker supposedly published on the web 2.5MB of the 800MB archive.
Having access to the source code would allow malicious hackers to find security holes and exploit them. Cisco being present virtually everywhere, an attack could knock down half of the internet down. Knowing how some companies rely heavily on the Internet, this could get pretty ugly.
[note from kurisu]
Cisco routers are mostly used in the enterprise, but the infrastructure of the Internet run on more dedicated hardware.
Moreover, Cisco recently announced that they would move from IOS after version 13, writing a new os from scratch. But nonetheless, it is a true fact that a lot of nodes out there are running on Cisco hardware.

Source : Hardware.fr (in french)

Following Intel's footsteps, AMD might be on the verge of totally giving up on naming their processors according to their speed rating.
After all this time Apple said the Megahertz is just a myth, they might finally do the same for our Macs.
Even more true, if the rumor sites are on the right track, the PPC 975 is supposed to be faster, at the same speeds as the current PPC 970.
Apple should push the power of their offering rather than on the frequencies of their chips.
Is there someone here with a brilliant idea ?