News for Wednesday, 3 November 2004

Lexmark just lost in appeal against the small company Smartek. This company is selling a chip that makes it possible to use refilled toner cartridges in Lexmark printers. To develop such a system, Smartek had to perform reverse engineering studies in order to have a system which while being different will perform as well as the original cartridge in Lexmark printers. Lexmark sued Smartek arguing that its chip violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), probably expecting that the case will slam the brakes on the toner cartridge remanufacturing industry and force consumers to buy Lexmark's branded cartridges. However, there are exceptions, one of them being "enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs".
If the judgment is confirmed, it might have a humongous impact in a near future. Let's take some example:
- currently most of the inkjet printers are sold at their manufacturing cost, no profit are made by Manufacturers, as they expect getting money by selling inkjet cartridges. Now, if they are not anymore the only providers of cartridge for their own models, they might react by increasing the price of their printers.
- many users are complaining regarding the lack of compatibility between the different online MusicStores. With the DMCA exceptions mentioned above, on can imagine that WMA or Fairplay protection might have to be modified in order to become compatible with all digital music players.
The DMCA which was heavily criticized when it was voted 4 years ago, and which has been used so far exclusively by big IT, computers and Softwares companies to protect themselves against other companies (a smart way to kill competition), might at the end give fuels for those small companies in order to fire back and try to get their claims granted.

Thx to Fabrice for pics and comments.

I'm glad to announce that, for the last 10 days, the mac room instaled in UPMC functions. It is just close to a room with PC under windows/linux and is specially reserved to some students of 2d year of master. We already had classes on Eclipse and spin using those. For spin, students were almost equally divided between the two architectures (the soft is installed both on mac and linux). There seems to be still some configuration issue with windows;-)
Students do like this heterogeneity of environment and they seem to have fun using those... just get a look to the compared audiences before my lessons this morning (sure, I did take those pics at the same time, I swear;-). Yet, this door leads to the mac room.

The students accounts are located on a remote NFS server and it's the same main register, on PC/Linux as for MacOS X. The same goes for the login which is managed via a LDAP server common to the two architectures. On the other hand, the distribution/software installation system is different (as PCs won't have the chance of being served by a Xserve;-).
Things almost got possible thanks to Apple's offer of eMacs for universities with configurations deprived of CD readers, which makes the CPU + screen unit more competitive... if they go on with this more people will get to know it is possible to escape Bill G'w world... yet, it's not mere propagande yet an educational choice that made us wish we'd gave the 3 major OSes of computer world in the same room.

Aspyr has placed a link on its website to take pre-orders for DOOM3 Mac version. The game will cost US$49.99, and id Software is finalizing the development.
Soon, quite some Macs will face reality and the poor performance of their graphic cards due to huge CPU/GPU power required by this game in you want to play with the highest settings.

The most famous multimedia reader on Mac, VLC has just reached version 0.8.0. Many improvements are to be found. Yet the sotware won't decode DTS anymore, as DTS inc threatened them of legal action for patent violations.
http://www.videolan.org/

Safari (1.2.3 v (125.9) under Panther 10.3.5) has a breach that can used by people who'd like to make Phishing.
This kind of trick consists in making you believe you go to a site, while you're in fact diected to another address.
Typically, you'll believe youy go to your bank account site for instance, while the interface has only been copied so your login or password might be stolen.
Here's a plain, harmless example. If you roll your mouse pointer over the following link, you'll see Apple France page appear:

http://www.apple.com/fr

If you copy that link, you'll still have the address. Yet if you click on it, you'll get to Refurb Store page. You may try, there's no risk in it.
Yet this possibility might lead to fraudulous use.
This leak doesn't appear in the ageing and almost forgotten under OS X Explorer.
Until Apple solves this issue, just check in the top bar the address where links on unknown sites may lead you.

TDK is going to release in a near future a new coating process which will allow production of almost scratches-proof CD and DVD media. Indeed, only a knife can damage this new system.
TDK is planning to apply this new coating technology to many devices and applications, such as protecting mobile telephone displays.

The reference site Barefeats compared the new G5 1.8 GHz Powermac with a 600 MHz bus, to the older 900 Mhz model, and to a a dual 1.8 GHz.
Against all exepectations, the FSB frequency loss doesn't have much impact on overall performances.
In fact, what's most important is to replacer the overaged Geforce with a Radeon 9600 XT.
http://www.barefeats.com/g518.html

Jared decided to get a really original suit for Halloween. He got dressed as an iPod !

On his site, you'll see how he managed to simulate even the functioning screen from a portable PC.
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pmarks/slashdot/jwinick/

It took some times, but finally the GeForce 6800 GT is now available as a BTO from the European Apple Store.
For more info regarding this graphic card:
http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2004-10-19#3073