"This week will see many ‘new’ digicams released at CES but few will be more than cosmetic tweaks and updates on current models. However Kodak have just announced something new (for them) – a Wi-Fi enabled digital camera that enables online photo sharing and viewing without the need for a computer. It also has 256MB of internal memory and stores up to 1500 images." Of course, to actually get on a wireless network, a special card is required for the camera, and the firmware has yet to support WEP, so one has to wait until a Q3 2005 update to join most authenticated networks....

AN JOSE — Stealing the merchandise was the easy part. The ring of young men and women had become pros at snatching cashmere sweaters, perfumes and other expensive items from the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret and Pottery Barn. The problem was how to turn the goods into cash. Hocking the wares on the black market was out. They didn’t have the contacts. And any attempt to return the goods for refunds would probably be rebuffed without some proof of purchase. Soon they hit upon a solution: eBay. The Silicon Valley-based auction house has become a fabulously...

Apple sues own fansites In its latest lawsuit seeking to clamp down on leaks, Apple Computer has added credibility to several hot rumors, including plans to offer a cheaper Macintosh and its own line of office software. Apple on Tuesday sued the publisher of Mac enthusiast site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, alleging that recent postings on the site contain Apple trade secrets, according to court documents seen by CNET News.com. The suit, filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, Calif., aims to identify who is leaking the information and to get an injunction preventing...

A startup has created a unique Linux-based home music distribution system based on “secure peer-to-peer wireless mesh” networking technology. Sonos says its Digital Music System can route the same or different songs, sourced from any connected computer, to as many as 30 audio output devices simultaneously. To be honest it looks very cool! Source: LinuxDevices [! more here !]

“SecurityFocus has released a security warning with three problems that affect Mozilla on all platforms. The first issue allows the source of a download to be spoofed, generating a fake URL. This security issue is really easy to replicate: Create a long URL and the downloading box will only display its ending (Mozilla and Firefox). The second issue was created by the way that Mozilla’s browsers handle news:// links to newsgroups, hackers can easily create false links and create a buffer overflow (Mozilla 1.7.5 and below, Firefox versions before 1.0). The third exploit affects machines...

Your free lunch will soon be over. What can you do about it? What are you doing about it? The major processor manufacturers and architectures, from Intel and AMD to Sparc and PowerPC, have run out of room with most of their traditional approaches to boosting CPU performance. Instead of driving clock speeds and straight-line instruction throughput ever higher, they are instead turning en masse to hyperthreading and multicore architectures. Both of these features are already available on chips today; in particular, multicore is available on current PowerPC and Sparc IV processors, and is coming...

Hitachi is adding three new 7,200 RPM drives to its family of Deskstar products, targeting the range of 3.5-inch consumer and commercial applications: mainstream PCs and workstations, digital video recorders (DVRs), nearline storage and other enterprise ATA applications. The Hitachi drives being released include the industry’s first half terabyte (500 GB) Serial ATA (SATA) drive for audio/video and other capacity-intensive applications – the Deskstar 7K500. In the mid-range category, Hitachi offers the Deskstar T7K250, a two-disk, 250 GB product, while the Deskstar...

“The new Archos PMA400 is a Linux based portable- entertainment/PDA/DVR/Internet device. It comes with wireless and ethernet LAN connections, plays Mophun and Qtopia and supports Microsoft DRM protected files (WMV, WMA). The company will release a SDK on its dedicated website sometime before the end of January 2005. The device will retail for around US$800.” shashdot