The Technophilez

Mozilla is working on patching its Firefox browser after a hacker posted details of a flaw that could let criminals run unauthorized software on a victim's machine.

The flaw lies in Firefox's URL handler component, which was the source of another bug Mozilla disclosed Tuesday.

This second flaw was disclosed Tuesday by Billy Rios and Nathan McFeters, security consultants with Verisign and Ernst & Young respectively.

Like the first flaw, this one could be exploited by attackers to launch programs on the victim's PC without authorization, said Tyler Reguly, a security research engineer at nCircle Network Security. "They're both related to the URL handling process," he said "It's just different errors within that handling process."

Even though the code posted by Rios and McFeters can only be used to launch software that is already installed on a victim's PC, it could be very dangerous if used by criminals, Reguly said. "It's still letting you run any program that exists on the user's computer," he said. "You can make it do some fairly bad things. For example, having it use command-line FTP to download a malicious file off a server somewhere and then execute that file."

A victim would have to be tricked into clicking on a malicious link for the attack to work, Reguly said.

Mozilla's security chief, Window Snyder, said that her team is working to verify and fix this latest flaw.

Firefox's URL handler has been a headache for Mozilla ever since security researcher Thor Larholm showed that the way IE (Internet Explorer) and Firefox interact with each other could be exploited to launch software on a user's machine without authorization. To make the attack work, IE would load malformed data from a Web site and would then send it to Firefox, which would launch the unauthorized software.

Microsoft and Mozilla disagreed about who was at fault, however. Snyder initially said that the attack wouldn't work on Firefox alone and that Microsoft should change the way IE passes malformed data to other programs. Microsoft said that the problem lay with Firefox.

While disclosing details on the first URL handler bug on Tuesday, Snyder admitted that she was wrong. "We thought this was just a problem with IE. It turns out, it is a problem with Firefox as well," she said. "We should have caught this scenario."

Mozilla is planning to fix this issue in the upcoming 2.0.0.6 release of its browser. Snyder did not say when the Billy Rios bug would be patched.

Hungarian state competition authority GVH raided the offices of Microsoft Hungary unannounced, according to a statement posted on the authority’s website. The raid was carried out on July 19 as part of a probe into Microsoft Hungary’s relationships with software distributors. Investigators are suspicious that Microsoft offered special conditions and incentives, known as “loyalty discounts," to prevent distributors from selling competing products.

“Microsoft can confirm that its offices in Hungary were visited by the Hungarian Competition Authority on [sic] Thursday 19 July. We are cooperating fully with the Hungarian Competition Authority,” said Microsoft Hungary spokeman Guy Esnouf in a statement e-mailed to the Budapest Business Journal.

Local media reports indicate that the visit was prompted by a complaint from the Open SKM Agency, a rival to Microsoft Hungary and an affiliate of Sun Microsystems. According to the complaint, Hungarian vendors were refusing to stock Sun’s competing StarOffice software suite, a product that Open SKM Agency distributes.

“During the raid, the GVH gathered evidence supporting these suspicions,” said GVH, but noted that the investigation does not mean that Microsoft had broken any laws.

Attempting to insure that vendors only stock Microsoft products by means of loyalty discounts is a violation of European Union trade rules, says GVH.

GVH has up to 180 days to investigate the allegations before it has to seek an extension.

IBM wants employees who work in Second Life and other virtual online worlds to be on their best behavior.

The company, which opened a sales center in Second Life in May, will publish official guidelines governing employee behavior to avoid potentially embarrassing incidents, according to reports by the Associated Press.

Second Life itself banned gambling earlier this month after facing an FBI investigation. But IBM is believed to be the first big corporation to issue its own rules governing employee behavior as Second Life increasingly becomes a platform for doing business, the AP says.

The IBM rules will tell employees not to discriminate or harass, or share intellectual property with people who aren't supposed to see it. "Avatars," the images that represent Second Life users online, should also have an appropriate appearance for doing business, the guidelines suggest.

"Building a reputation of trust within a virtual world represents a commitment to be truthful and accountable with fellow digital citizens," IBM states in the guidelines quoted by AP. "Dramatically altering, splitting or abandoning your digital persona may be a violation of that trust. . . . In the case of a digital persona used for IBM business purposes, it may violate your obligations to IBM."

IBM has not issued a press release about the guidelines and did not respond to an inquiry from Network World. It's unclear whether IBM employees who violate the guidelines could be disciplined.

Intel, which also does business in Second Life, is writing a "tip sheet" for employees who use virtual worlds.

In an effort to leverage its growing WiMax mobile Internet initiative, Sprint (NYSE: S)  has called on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)  to collaborate on a new mobile portal. The two companies will work together to bring Sprint WiMax mobile Internet customers search, interactive communications and social networking tools that will include the Google Apps communications suite.

Customers will be able to access Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk services, in addition to high-speed Internet browsing, local and location-centric services, music, video, TV and other as-yet unnamed on-demand services.

"Google and Sprint will optimize the Internet experience for the digital lifestyle," said Barry West, president of Sprint's 4G Mobile Broadband business unit.

"This collaboration brings what will be the best mobile Internet network together with the leading Internet search company. It allows us to capitalize on the powerful mobility and Internet trends, and create wireless services and applications that take advantage of each company's history of product development innovation," he added.

The battle between high-definition DVD formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD, has been heated for more than a year now. One camp publishes numbers saying players are selling well, then the other publishes a study saying more people prefer the way they do special features on a disc.

It's a confusing mess for the consumer, a frustrating process for anyone who thinks to themselves: Just get the whole thing over with already so the price can come down and I can get me a player.

Well, that could very well be happening but it might not be obvious to everyone yet. The Blu-ray team is the shark prowling the high-def waters, eating up everything just beneath the surface.

This week, retail giant Target announced it will only carry the Sony-backed Blu-ray format through the lucrative holiday shopping season, dealing a huge blow to Toshiba right between the HD-DVD players. Target is the second largest retailer in the United States.

Target released a statement saying they would carry Blu-ray stand-alone players exclusively "at least through the holiday season" and will add to the inventory of titles they carry for the player (they haven't totally killed HD-DVD - more on that in a minute). The deal will start in October and promote Sony's BDP-S300 player that sells for about $500.

Target is the second major retailer to go with the Blu-ray format, after Blockbuster announced its U.S. plans to do the same in June. Blockbuster said Blu-ray rentals are "significantly outpacing HD-DVD rentals."

A report published by Forbes says Target chose Blu-ray to help create resolution in the format war that has kept "confused consumers from rushing to buy new DVD players until they can determine which format will dominate the market."

HD-DVD stand-alone players will still be sold on Target's website, but in store the only HD-DVD player you will find will be the add-on for the Xbox 360. Anyone who wants choice needs both players in front of them, so HD-DVD will undeniably be hurt by Target's move, regardless if the players are still sold online.

The Neo 1973, the first phone to use the open-source, Linux-based OpenMoko mobile operating system, has techies abuzz in anticipation of its October consumer release.

Though the phone's large, touch-screen display might evoke comparisons with the iPhone, OpenMoko's approach to software is the exact opposite of Apple's. Apple doesn't allow third-party software to run on the iPhone (Web 2.0 sites notwithstanding), ostensibly to maintain the company's hallmark smooth and controlled user experience.

In contrast, OpenMoko's success may largely depend on whether the open-source community gets involved in writing new programs or inducing some of the multitude of existing Linux programs to work under OpenMoko.

The Neo 1973 is available now for $300 as an early, not-fully-functional developer release for hackers eager to see what they can make it do. When it ships in the fall for an expected $450, it will come unlocked rather than through a particular carrier, so you can choose your own cell phone company (with a GSM network) and plan.

The phone sports a 2.8-inch touch-screen display that works with finger taps or a stylus (though it does not match the iPhone's multitouch capabilities). It uses the GSM cell network and the unfortunately slow GPRS data network. It has built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, and supports microSD memory cards. (A full list of the specs appears at the end of this story. To compare the OpenMoko specs with those of the iPhone and five competing handsets, see our handy chart.)

Sony Computer Entertainment America executives finally have something to celebrate. Newly released sales Email Marketing Software - Free Demo data show the company's beleaguered PlayStation 3 Latest News about PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming platform saw a significant jump in sales for the month of June.

Sony Latest News about Sony was not the only winner last month, according to tracking firm NPD Group. NPD reported an overall video game market increase of 31 percent over the same period last year in the U.S. As it has consistently done in recent months, Nintendo Latest News about Nintendo led the pack in unit sales with its Wii Latest News about Wii console and DS portable player.

The news wasn't as cheerful for Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft. It reported a nearly US$2 billion loss for its Entertainment and Devices Division, under which the Xbox line falls.

MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on its website, more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago.

The figure was released by the attorney general of North Carolina, one of several US states whose officials have been pressing the popular social networking site, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, to provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using it and where they live.

MySpace initially withheld the information citing federal privacy laws, but the company began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove the profiles of around 7,000 sex offenders out of a total of about 180m profiles on the site.

"I'm absolutely astonished and appalled because the number has grown so exponentially over so short of time with no explanation," said General Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, who has also pressed the company for sex offender data.

MySpace declined to comment on the figure but its chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in a statement: "We're pleased that we've successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead."

North Carolina is considering bringing in a law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the websites to verify the parents' identity and age.

A Virginia man pleaded guilty this week to kidnapping and soliciting a 14-year-old girl he met on the site.

Advocates for internet companies and privacy campaigners have testified against the proposed restrictions, saying they would be deemed unconstitutional for prohibiting free speech and impeding interstate commerce.

Microsoft is releasing its Windows Home Server software to manufacturers Monday paving the way for home server devices based on Microsoft's software to be available this fall. Iomega today also announces it becomes the latest to offer hardware that will run Windows Home Server software. Other hardware partners previously announced to offer Windows Home Server devices are Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, LaCie, and Medion.

Iomega this fall says it will sell a user expandable home server for consumers with the ability to add up to four hard drives based on Windows Home Server software. No official word on pricing or exact dates for availability.

Windows Home Server is Microsoft's solution to bringing order to cluttered digital lives. Microsoft is targeting households that want to share storage among multiple PCs. Various models of home server products will provide automatic backup of connected PCs, sharing of digital content between network-attached devices (PCs, Zune media player, or Xbox game console), remote access to data, and storage expansion.

Microsoft is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies.

The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft's digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them.

The third version of FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. PC users can turn the protected music files they bought online — either a la carte or as part of a subscription service like Napster — and turn them into DRM-free tunes that can be copied and shared at will, or turned into MP3 files that can play on any type of digital music player.

"We knew at the start that no digital rights management technology is going to be impervious to circumvention," said Jonathan Usher, a director in Microsoft's consumer media technology group, in a phone interview.

Usher said Microsoft employs a full-time team to combat such breaches, and that the Windows Media DRM system was designed to be quickly modified to shut down this type of attack.

He did not say how many songs have been stripped of copy protection, or how long it will take for Microsoft to combat the hack again. But the music industry is aware of the nature of Microsoft's technology, he said, and added that he does not expect record labels to lose patience with the process.

The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group, declined to comment.

While Usher said Microsoft will remain committed to copy protection, attitudes around the industry are starting to shift.

Apple Inc. has modified its own online store, iTunes, to block similar efforts to break its FairPlay copy protection scheme. But Apple's chief, Steve Jobs, started calling for an end to digital music-locking earlier this year.

"There are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music," Jobs wrote in an online essay in February. "They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game."

Apple's iTunes store started selling DRM-free music from EMI Group PLC's catalog in May. The same month, Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. said its much-anticipated digital music store will sell tracks in the unprotected MP3 format.

Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst at research group Gartner Inc., said he expects music DRM to fade out in the next couple of years as record companies begin to realize selling unprotected tracks online won't hurt sales. After all, Bernoff said, the same tracks are already circulating unprotected, copied from CDs and on file-sharing networks.

Google introduced a new service for small businesses that allows visitors to search within their Web sites on a customized search page.

The product, Custom Business Search Edition, adds to Google's growing portfolio of paid services for businesses. It builds on Google's Custom Search Engine, a free, ad-supported product launched last October for searching within a predefined group of Web sites.

A key difference with the paid edition is that businesses can customize the search page with their own logo and color scheme. They can also modify results by manipulating an XML (Extensible Markup Language) feed of the raw search results, to guide visitors toward products the company wants to sell, for example.

The service is priced at $100 per year for Web sites with up to 500 pages, and $500 for up to 50,000 pages, Google said on its Web site.

Custom Business Search Edition uses the same index Google uses to deliver its other search results, and Google's own servers are used for searches. To set up the service, customers follow a set-up wizard and copy a small amount of code to their Web site. They get access to a reporting graph with daily and monthly views of how many times people used the search engine and what search terms they used.

The service provides an option for businesses who want to bring Google's powerful search technology into their organization but without paying for more expensive products. The company already sells the Google Search Appliance, starting at $30,000 for 500,000 documents, which indexes material in file servers, content management systems, databases and other sources. It also offers the Mini Search Appliance starting at $1,995 for 50,000 documents.

Along with English, Google's Custom Search Business Edition supports Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Intel on Monday introduced a faster quad-core desktop processor that's less expensive than its previous top-end chip, an indication that a new round of price cuts are on the way as the chip giant looks to keep the price pressure on rival Advanced Micro Devices(AMD).

Intel introduced the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 at $999, which is $200 less than the QX6800, the company's previously fastest desktop processor used primarily in workstations and high-end machines used for PC gaming. In addition, Intel introduced an Extreme brand of processor for notebooks, the X7800 mobile dual core with both cores running at 2.6GHz.

The QX6850, which has a clock speed of 3.0 GHz and a 1333 MHz system bus speed, marks the start of Intel's price cuts in the quad-core desktop line up. The cuts are expected this month, possibly on July 22. Intel also introduced on Monday the quad-core Q6700, which at 2.66 GHz is faster than the Q6600, but has the same price of $530.

Intel unveiled the new products a week after Advanced Micro Devices announced significant price cuts for its highest end desktop processors, the Athlon 64 FX-74 and FX-72. Pricing for both chips, which are dual-core processors, fell to $599 a pair from previous price points of $999 and $799, respectively. AMD declined comment on Intel's most recent price cuts.

AMD plans to ship its first quad-core desktop processors this year, possibly as early as August.

There's no doubt that Intel will be announcing new pricing for its Q6600, QX6700 and QX6800 quad-core chips, which are listed at $530, $999 and $1,199, respectively. "Those are still the prices today, but there will be a price move coming. I just can't say when or how much," Intel spokesman Dan Snyder said. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that with the new prices today, something has to give."

Nevertheless, Intel's latest move isn't expected to have any impact on mainstream desktops, which run primarily on dual-core microprocessors. Even at $999, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850 would add too much additional cost to the price-sensitive mainstream market. "That's still well above the value sweet spot for processors being introduced in desktops today," Gordon Haff, analyst for Illuminata, said.

In addition, with the exception of games, video editing, design, and other niche desktop software, most mainstream applications are not written to take advantage of the available speed of a quad-core processor. "On the desktop, specifically, quad core is really not all that relevant today," Haff said.

Intel, however, is preparing for the future. "The tide is turning," Snyder said. "It's [quad core] not a mainstream product today, but it's going to get there soon."

In the meantime, Intel's dual-core Extreme X7800 processor for notebooks, with 4 Mbytes of L2 cache, is available to manufacturers at a cost of $851. For the desktop, Intel also introduced on Monday the Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz E6850 for $266, the 2.66 GHz E6750 for $183, and the 2.33 GHz E6550 for $163.

Intel expects computer makers to start shipping products with the new processors within two weeks.

San Francisco (IDGNS) - A security researcher has found a security bug that could be attacked in Internet Explorer. Mozilla said it plans to patch the problem in its next Firefox software update.

No, that's not a typo, just the strange fall-out from an unusual bug that had security researchers debating the question this week, "Who's to blame? Microsoft or Mozilla?"

Security researcher Thor Larholm kicked off the controversy on Tuesday, claiming that he had discovered a flaw that would let an attacker run commands on a victim's PC.

In his blog posting, Larholm said the bug was similar to a flaw he'd discovered last month in Apple's Safari 3.0 beta software, and he called it an an "input validation flaw in Internet Explorer." The problem is with a URL protocol handler component of Internet Explorer, he said. This software allows Internet Explorer users to launch applications such as Excel or Firefox by clicking on specially written links on Web pages.

When Internet Explorer clicks on a link that launches the Firefox browser, however, the software does not properly check its syntax, and that, Larholm said, lets an attacker create a malicious link, that could be used in an attack. Security vendor Secunia ApS rates the flaw as "highly critical."

So while the flaw affects Internet Explorer users, it appears to be a risk only to those who already have Firefox installed. And to make matters more complicated, if a Firefox user were to click on one of the specially written links, he would not be affected.

Still, Microsoft Security Program Manager Mark Griesi said that the bug was not his company's problem. "We don't feel that there's an issue in IE and therefore there's nothing to be fixed," he said Tuesday.

With Microsoft saying it won't fix the vulnerability, Mozilla said it would change the way its Firefox URL protocol handler worked in its next Firefox update. That will fix Larholm's bug, but Mozilla security strategist Window Snyder wouldn't say whether or not she considered the vulnerability to be an IE or Firefox problem. She did, however, point out that without Microsoft making changes to IE, other Windows programs may be at risk.

Noted browser bug-hunter Aviv Raff wrote in his blog that he thought both Microsoft and Mozilla were to blame.

But another security expert said that the responsibility to fix the problem lies with the open-source browser developers. "This is an oversight in how Mozilla decided to construct their protocol registration, and how they do input validation between this handler and their application," said Eric Schultze, chief security architect with Shavlik Technologies, via e-mail. "I think Mozilla needs to write and release a patch for this issue and Microsoft can take the week off."

Microsoft announced the addition of Walt Disney Co. films to the Xbox 360's download service, Xbox Live, on Tuesday night at the opening news conference for the E3 Media and Business Summit.

Disney joins the ranks of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate among studios contributing high-definition titles to the fast-growing platform. Among the 35 titles that will be made available beginning Tuesday are "Bridge to Terabithia," "The Queen" and "Deja Vu."

"This is a big endorsement for us," Robbie Bach, president of the entertainment and devices division at Microsoft, said in a interview preceding the news conference. "With this partner, we have 28 TV and movie studios on Xbox Live."

Xbox still has some catching up to do in the Disney department compared with Apple's iTunes, which has a broader array of Disney films on tap as well as bigger titles, including "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." That might have something to do with tight ties between Apple and Disney's Pixar.

Bach reported robust numbers for Xbox Live, which recently surpassed 7 million members. He projected reaching 10 million by this time next year.

Contrary to expectations that Microsoft would lower the price of Xbox in response to a similar move made this week by Sony Corp. for its PlayStation 3 console, Bach did not announce such a move but didn't rule it out as an option.

"July is the worst month to do something like that," he said. "It's the slowest time in every market in the world. We'll decide what we'll do in the future when we get there."

Bach sought to bolster Xbox's image in the wake of a disclosure this week that Microsoft would spend more than $1 billion to repair technical problems experienced by some owners of the console as well as extend warranties.

He noted that 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold, 5.6 million in the U.S. In addition, Bach said that Xbox owners buy more games per console than owners of Nintendo or Sony devices. "When you look at the dollars spent on the consoles, we're dramatically ahead of our individual competitors," he said. "That's important for the marketplace because more publishers will want to develop more games."

Bach also touted Xbox's competitive advantage for the 2007 holiday season, noting that Microsoft will have the only console that can service the probable three biggest sellers out at that time: "Halo 3," "Madden NFL 08" and "Grand Theft Auto

IV."

"We think we have the best lineup of games in history," Bach said.

While Xbox has established itself as a console of choice for hardcore gamers, Bach signaled that Microsoft will take several steps to make it more accessible to a broader audience, including a set of new casual games for Xbox Live Arcade and a deal with DVD game brand Scene It? that will bring a customized new controller to the console.

Nokia said on Wednesday it has made Skype telephone services available on the Nokia N800 Internet tablet.

With Skype, Internet tablet users could make calls through a wireless internet connection, Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia added Skype would be available for download for existing users.

The two companies have earlier said they planned to work on adding Skype to additional devices.

AMD last week announced a strategic monetary investment in former CPU manufacturer Transmeta, despite quickly mounting debts. Transmeta will receive $7.5 million cash from AMD in exchange for preferred stock.

"AMD has long been a leader in the development and delivery of energy-efficient, high-performance computing technologies, standards and initiatives," stated Transmeta president and CEO Les Crudele. "Transmeta has been proud to endorse and contribute to those industry leading activities, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with AMD on technology initiatives in the future."

Transmeta posted a net loss of near $24 million for fiscal 2006; AMD posted a net loss of $611 million for the first quarter of 2007.

Last year, AMD closed the doors of its Geode and Alchemy divisions. Both divisions produced low-power processors that directly competed with Transmeta's Crusoe and Efficeon family. AMD then spun off the remnants of its Alchemy division to Raza Microelectronics, leaving AMD with an x86-only product lineup.

AMD hopes to take advantage of energy-efficient Transmeta technology to benefit AMD products and customers. AMD President and COO Dirk Meyer claims, "Transmeta was a key ally in helping to bring our highly-successful AMD64 technology to market and has supported the widespread industry adoption of both AMD64 and AMD’s HyperTransport technology."

Last February, Transmeta cut its workforce by 39% to focus its interests on just intellectual property. For the majority of 2007, Transmeta's primary revenue prospect revolves around an open patent infringement lawsuit aimed at Intel over ten patents allegedly found in low-power Intel processors.  Intel immediately counter-sued over this claim.

Unlike the acquisition of ATI, this is only an investment in Transmeta by AMD. The companies have not announced any plans of collaboration.

Sony  cut the price of the PlayStation 3 by $100, or 17 percent, in the United States on Monday, a move that should boost the video game console's lackluster sales.

The PlayStation 3, which includes a 60-gigabyte hard drive and a Blu-ray high-definition DVD player, will now cost $500, or $20 more than the most expensive version of Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The PS3 still costs twice that of Nintendo's Wii console, whose $250 price and motion-sensing controller have made it a best-seller despite its lack of cutting-edge graphics and hard disk.

"Our initial expectation is that sales should double at a minimum," Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in an interview.

"We've gotten our production issues behind us on the PlayStation 3, reaching a position to pass on the savings to consumers, and our attitude is the sooner the better."

The price drop was widely anticipated by industry analysts despite Sony President Ryoji Chubachi telling Reuters last week that the company had no immediate plans for one.

Sony is counting on the price cut to help it significantly grow sales of the PS3 ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season that accounts for most of the annual sales of highly profitable gaming software.

Sony is also introducing a new version of the PS3 featuring an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a copy of "Motorstorm," an off-road racing game that has already sold a million copies.

The new model will sell for $600 and is aimed at gamers who expect to download a lot of games and other content from Sony's burgeoning online network.

Sony also hopes the PS3 will win some converts following Microsoft's admission last week that the failure rate of its Xbox 360 console had been unacceptably high, forcing it to book $1 billion in repair costs.

"We're especially proud of the fact that the PlayStation 3 has the lowest failure rate of any PlayStation product. It's absolutely the gold standard," Tretton said.

"The quality of the product and long-term viability is what ultimately wins."

Hackers intent on unlocking Apple's iPhone so that it can be used outside the US claim to have made a breakthrough.

The bad news – for Apple fans not patient enough to wait until iPhone's official release in their countries – is that, when unlocked, the device only works as an internet browser and iPod, not a phone.

'DVD Jon', one of many hackers to have been scouring iPhone's system for vulnerabilities since its release last Friday, has published a software package which "activates" the hack, which would in theory enable a Europe-based owner to browse the internet and upload songs.

Officially, the iPhone only works for people signed up to packages on Apple's US network partner, AT&T.

According to many reports, the hack requires a significant amount of computer knowledge. Wired.com suggested that prospective hackers would need "a Windows machine with the MS.NET framework and a bit of hex editing."

One US-based eBay seller said that at least six iPhones have been bought by UK customers in the past week.

DVD Jon, who is best known for breaking the digital rights management (DRM) protection on tracks bought from iTunes, said that there was a second, easier, way to unlock the iPhone, but it relied on borrowing the SIM card from a legitimately "activated" iPhone, and the effect of this could be to disable the latter.

A post on DVD Jon's blog, which is called 'So sue me', read: "the only possible issue is that it might disable the original phone? But I have nothing to base this on, this is more or less a warning. I did not have access to the original phone after the process was done."

In a separate development, hackers claimed to have discovered six-letter passwords to the iPhone, one being the device's "root password", but it was not immediately clear what their use was.

"Some have suggested that the password file was left over from early development work, or was intentionally included to throw hackers off the scent," a report on builderau.com, an Australian web development site, said.

iPhones were still being advertised on eBay for as much as $1,000 today, suggesting that there is an appetite for the device among non US-based buyers.

A blog called unlockuriphone.com offers to unlock iPhones for "a small fee" as soon as it has cracked the code, and asks owners to send their iPhone's International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, a number which identifies each handset individually.

Paul Vlissidis, technical director with NCC, a security firm, said: "With a release as high profile as the iPhone, there's enormous kudos for the successful hacker, not to mention a potential income stream in handing over the code."

Microsoft  said on Thursday it would launch the advanced version of its Xbox 360 game console, Xbox 360 Elite, on October 11 in Japan, a country where sales of its game gear trail far behind rival machines from Nintendo Co. Ltd. and Sony Corp.

The Elite's 120-gigabyte hard drive, six times bigger than the regular Xbox 360's hard drive and twice as big as that of Sony's PlayStation 3 console, can store thousands of songs as well as a library of high-definition TV shows, movies and arcade games. It will sell for 47,800 yen ($390), compared with 29,800 yen for the most basic version of the Xbox 360.

Although popular in the United States, the Xbox 360 has seen slow sales in Japan. Microsoft sold 122,565 of the consoles in the first half of this year in Japan, the home turf of Sony and Nintendo, according to data from game magazine publisher Enterbrain.

Nintendo sold 1.78 million units of its Wii and Sony sold 503,554 of its PS3 consoles during the same period.

The basic model of the PS3 sells for 49,980 yen in Japan, while the Wii sells for half that.

The Xbox 360 Elite is already sold in North America for $480.

($1=122.71 Yen)

Toshiba has made its high-definition DVD player into a Web device that Hollywood studios can use to offer interactive content to movie buffs.

The consumer electronics company last week released firmware that could be downloaded to its players to support Web-based content and interactive applications embedded in movies that support the HD DVD format. Very few studio-produced DVDs have those capabilities, but there are some, such as "Blood Diamond" from Warner Home Video.

While rare today, studios are anxious to add content and bonus features that consumers could download from the Web while watching a movie on a DVD. Movie distributors could use the feature, for example, to update trailers for future movies, offer premium content for an additional charge, or give consumers a chance to participate in polls or promotions.

Toshiba offers an Ethernet port in all its HD DVD players, as well as some storage. To participate in the Web-enabled features, a person would first have to download Toshiba's firmware.

Chris Roden, analyst for Parks Associates, told InformationWeek Monday that a consumer would have difficulty finding a Web-enabled DVD today, "but it's something that's very important to studios down the road." The biggest hold up is consumer reluctance to buy a high-definition player, because of the ongoing battle between Toshiba-backed HD DVD and Sony-supported Blu-ray. Each company, along with their supporters, wants to make their favored format the market leader.

The battle has taken its toll on Toshiba. The company last month slashed its sales target for the year for its high-definition DVD player by 44% to 1 million, primarily due to weak sales in the United States.

Once the format war plays out, high-definition players being developed by Toshiba and competitors could move quickly to becoming a kind of entertainment hub for the home. "Right now, it's about getting them in the home," Roden said of HD players. "In time, they could move toward a set-top box form factor."

Before that can happen, however, the industry will have to end the standards battle that's reminiscent of the VHS-Betamax wars in the early days of VCRs. VHS eventually won, while Sony-backed Betamax disappeared.

Sony, which is heavily invested in Blu-ray, is trying to avoid a second defeat by including a Blu-ray disc player in PlayStation 3, the latest version of its popular videogame console. While too soon to declare a winner, Blu-ray currently has an advantage in the market.

iPhone users across the U.S. were complaining Monday that AT&T's wireless data network was down.

The network was down primarily in the West and Midwest, but by 7 p.m. on the East Coast, service was restored, according to Warner May, an AT&T spokesman. He said he didn't know when the problems started.

AT&T had isolated the problem and was still working on it, he said.

Voice and text messaging services remained fully functional but EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) and 3G services were down, he said. While BlackBerry users had full service, users of other phones in addition to the iPhone were also affected, he said.

"The iPhone was not the cause," he said.

Several different online forums are full of iPhone users complaining of having trouble using the EDGE network. Posters claiming to be from Dallas, Cincinnati, Tuscon, Oahu, Hawaii, Seattle, and Portland were among the West coast users who say they couldn't connect to the network. Users in Pittsburgh and Indiana also said they couldn't use the EDGE network.

A thread on Macrumors also describes users across the country having trouble.

Google acquired GrandCentral Communications, a start-up that lets users manage their existing phones and voice mailboxes over the Web as if they were a single account, the company said on Monday.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Grand Central of Fremont, California is one of dozens of innovative companies that are taking advantage of Web-based software to allow consumers and businesses to make voice calls over the Internet while also working with regular phones.

GrandCentral was founded in late 2005 by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, who worked together while running Web-calling pioneer Dialpad Communications. Google's biggest rival, Yahoo Inc., acquired Dialpad in June 2005.

Barcelona promises to be as much as 70% faster than its predecessors when running some database applications, yet will consume the same amount of power, according to AMD. With some floating-point operations, which often are used to crunch complex scientific data, the chip is expected to run 40% faster.

Initially, Barcelona will be released in two versions, standard and low-powered. Neither will exceed clock speeds of 2.0GHz. This is slower than some of Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 chips, codenamed 'Clovertown,' which were released last year. Xeon X5355, for example, is currently shipping and runs at 2.66GHz.

AMD said another higher-frequency version of Barcelona would ship in the fourth quarter sometime.

"AMD has prioritized production of our low-power and standard-power products because our customers and ecosystem demand it, and we firmly believe that the introduction of our native quad-core AMD Opteron processor will deliver on the promise of the highest levels of performance-per-watt the industry has ever seen," said AMD server and workstation VP Randy Allen, in a statement.

Barcelona is being touted by AMD as the first "native" quad-core chip because all four cores are on a single silicon die, compared to Intel's quad-core devices, which essentially are two dual-core chips packaged side by side.

AMD contends that having a processor built from the ground up to have four cores will enable higher performance.

Intel has said its two-by-dual-core design enabled it to keep costs low while it works on a single-chip quad-core using the next-generation 45-nanometer manufacturing process, which promises to help keep power dissipation low. Intel's forthcoming 45-nm quad-core processor, codenamed 'Harpertown,' is expected to launch this year.

Barcelona, at least initially, will be manufactured in the larger 65-nm node. And this doesn't seem be a factor, at this point in time, given Barcelona's thermal profile so far also seems low.

But it is worth noting AMD has only recently moved to the 65-nm node. The general rule is that the smaller the manufacturing node, the lower the manufacturing cost and the higher the performance.

AMD did not release Barclelona pricing.

A hacker successfully attacked a Web page within Microsoft Corp.'s U.K. domain on Wednesday, resulting in the display of a photograph of a child waving the flag of Saudi Arabia.

It was "unfortunate" that the site was vulnerable, said Roger Halbheer, chief security advisor for Microsoft in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, on Friday.

The problem has since been fixed. However, the hack highlights how large software companies with technical expertise can still prove vulnerable to hackers.

The hacker, who posted his name as "rEmOtEr," exploited a programming mistake in the site by using a technique known as SQL (Structured Query Language) injection to get unauthorized access to a database, Halbheer said. The site took SQL queries of a particular form, embedded in URLs (uniform resource locators), and passed them to a database. By embedding a query with an unexpected form in the requested URL, the hacker prompted the server to return error messages, Halbheer said.

From those error messages, a hacker can get an idea of how the database is structured and refine a SQL query that the database will process as an instruction to insert, rather than retrieve, data. Eventually, the hacker found the right combination and inserted a link to an external Web site into the database.

That meant when the normal Web page was called into a browser, the database would download data from an external link. In this case, it was two photos and a graphic, a screen shot of which is available on Zone-H.org, which tracks hacked Web sites.

There are two ways to avoid this style of attack. First, the database should not be allowed to return error messages, Halbheer said. Secondly, the Web application should have validated the URL the hacker entered and rejected ones that should not be processed, he said.

If a programmer makes a mistake, "the bad guy can leverage it," Halbheer said.

SQL injection attacks are on the rise, overall, since valuable data is held within databases, said Paul Davie, founder and chief operating officer of Secerno Ltd., a security vendor that develops technology to protect databases from SQL attacks.

"I don't think Microsoft are unique in this respect and shouldn't be held up as particularly slipshod," Davie said. "This could have happened to practically anybody."

Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, has declined to sign a long-term deal with Apple Inc.'s iTunes music store, leaving open the possibility for exclusive deals with other services, an industry source said on Sunday.

Universal will continue to sell music and videos of artists including 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and Black Eyed Peas via iTunes on a month-to-month basis, rather than be locked in to a two-year agreement Apple had proposed, the source said.

The music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi SA could now agree to offer significant portions of its repertoire exclusively to new partners, potentially weakening Apple's dominant hold on digital music retail.

Apple currently has more than 70 percent market share of all digital music sold in the United States. It also sells the most popular digital media player, the iPod.

The two sides had extended a previous two-year agreement by 12 months last summer, and that deal expired last month, the source said.

In effect, Apple will now have similar terms to those that Universal already has with the majority of its retail partners.

Some music executives have privately expressed frustration that Apple's dominant position may have hampered growth of the fledgling digital music market by keeping users locked within the Apple system.

Those concerns were further highlighted with the launch of Apple's iPhone last weekend, which they believe may give Apple further control in the mobile phone-based digital music market.

Apple, which only sells digital music via iTunes, has now overtaken Amazon.com to become the third largest retailer of music in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy Co..

Universal, which produces one in three albums sold in the United States, has been leading the push by music companies to demand that new technology and media partners who want to license music share in the proceeds of the new products as well. Last year Universal signed a deal with Microsoft Corp. to take a small share of sales of its digital media player, the Zune.

An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available.