Everybody knows
Digg.com and
Google. Yesterday, following the release of the encryption key supposed to protect HD-DVD contents, lawyers acting for the MPAA and Advanced Access Content System (AACS) have sent dozens of cease and desist letters, even threatening administrators to take their websites down with a DMCA notice.
While trying to obey to request, Digg founders were heavily criticized by community members pushing Digg Staff to change their mind and leave message referring to the encryption key online. So Digg is getting ready to fight with the AACS. Lawyers went even further by trying to force Google to stop publishing links/messages containing and/or related to the encryption key; something almost totally impossible to do taking into account that web users have already found ways to communicate the key in an almost non identifiable format...
One can already order T-shirt with the encryption key printed on... as it was the case when the CSS key was cracked.
For sure by attacking a popular community website, the AACS is getting ready to fight a symbol of the internet community. Where does the right for information start and end? If suing the person who hacked and/or released the key can be explained by the law, how to avoid the public to get the information available on the net?
Today the Apple
Refurb Storeis filled up with all MacBook and MacBook Pro models, as well as Mac mini Core Duo.
So, is Apple clearing up stocks before introducing Santa Rosa-based MacBook models and Core 2 Duo-based Mac mini? If so, it could come very quickly, even as early as next Tuesday.
Direct link to the
Refurb Store near you.
After being attacked by Greenpeace (mostly due to its exposure to the news network), and accused for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products and for not properly recycling its old products, Steve Jobs decided to publicly unveiled Apple’s current practices concerning its environment policies, while acknowledging that Apple did not communicate enough in this field.
After a short introduction,
It is generally not Apple’s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished... So today we’re changing our policy., Steve jobs described the current programs developed by Apple to reduce or eliminate identified toxic chemicals from devices and manufacturing process while more aggressively recycle old products. While never citing directly Greenpeace, Steve Jobs went on and demonstrated how it is easy to biased the environment protection organization scorecard, illustrating why one should always looks further and not only concentrate on % or numbers. For a couple of points, Steve Jobs brings information and question which are surprisingly not covered by Greenpeace, and he took the European Union RoHS effective since July 2006 as a much better and reliable reference for scoring environmental friendly devices and manufacturing process:
- CRT are known to contain a huge amount of lead, and Apple completely eliminated the use of CRTs in mid-2006, while other manufacturers still offer such products (this point is ignored in Greenpeace scoring system).
- Apple products met both the spirit and letter of the RoHS restrictions on cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants years before RoHS went into effect. This is true, and for product not RoHS-compliant, Apple simply removed them from the European AppleStore in June 2006 (such as the iSigh). Concerning brominated flame retardants, Greenpeace is mostly concentrating on the usage of TBBPA while the EU and the WHO consider this chemical as moderately toxic among its class (see
here). PVC have been banned aggressively in EU since years mostly due to the chloridric acid released when eliminating PVC by burning and for their stability and long lifetime making PVC a dangerous polluting agent for the food chain.
- Apple is planning to introduce first displays using arsenic-free glass and LED backlight technology in 2007. If this is a good point, Apple also stated it will do its best to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when
technically and economically feasible. So let's see how it will evolve, as Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008.
- By 2010, Apple expects to recycle 30% of its branded products.
Importantly, Steve Jobs confirmed that all the e-waste collected in North America is processed in the U.S., and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal; indeed there is no interest to our point of view to collect large amount of e-waste for shipping them to Indonesia or India for being stored in inappropriate conditions leading to the pollution of water and air in the area. Indeed Greenpeace score system does not include such considerations.
So based on this information, which could be biased the same way as Greenpeace numbers are, we could expect to have a sub-notebook or a 13.3" MacBook Pro to be released before the end of the year.
Let's hope that Apple will keep communicating about its environment policies, and that the greener Apple does not have a bitter taste in the future as consumers and environment protection organizations will look closer at Apple concernign its practice in this field.
Following announcements from other manufacturers, Lexar unveiled its flash memory storage unit based on the Express Card format. Three models will be available: 4GB (US$129.99), 8 GB (US$199.99) and 16 GB (price unknown).
The main interest of such flash memory Express Card over standard USB key is its ability to remain plugged in the notebook without protruding, so one can use them as a definitely temporary external-internal storage disk.
Mozy recently announced its online and remote backup service to the Mac community as the first non-Apple service to be compatible with OS X. As reported by one of our reader, the service seems to work nicely, and
http://mozy.com/ offers 2GB 100% free backup space, while charging only US$4.95/month for unlimited storage.
If such an online secure and remote access is the only reason for paying .Mac account every year then you might have found a cheaper alternative to Apple's service.
To compete with the ATI Radeon X2900, NVidia unveiled its over-boosted GeForce 8800, so called "Ultra". The core/shader clock frequency jumps from GeForce 8800 GTX 575/1350 to 612/1500 MHz. The memory frequency climbs from 900 to 1080 MHz.
As expected, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is 10% faster than the GTX model, mostly corresponding to the frequency increase, but it cost 25% more! It remains to be confirmed, but ATI with its Radeon X2900 XT could take back the leadership for the fastest graphic card on the consumer market. If so, it will illustrate the tough competition between ATI and NVidia for the GPU leadership.
So far, it remains unclear if Apple plans to enhance the choice of graphic cards that could be installed in Mac Pro, if the Radeon 2900 XT will replace the current X1900 XT; or if Mac users will have the choice to install the last models from NVidia. Apple keeps playing this nasty game of using GPUs from the previous generation, mostly for cost reason, making Mac users frustrated over time... without speaking of the lack of support for crossover or SLI on the Mac Pro while the hardware is ready to support both...
