A judge has ruled in Apple's favor in its copyright-infringement case against Psystar, which has been selling Mac clones running Mac OS X.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup on Friday granted Apple's request for a summary judgment, while denying Psystar's counterclaim.


"In sum, Psystar has violated Apple's exclusive reproduction right, distribution right, and right to create derivative works," Alsup wrote in the ruling (PDF), which was posted by legal site Groklaw.net.

Apple filed its suit in July 2008, a few months after Psystar began selling Mac clones. The case revolved around Psystar's contention that it could run Apple's Mac OS X operating system on non-Apple machines. Apple denied this, stating that its Mac OS X end user license agreement allows people to install the OS on Apple computers only.

Both Apple and Psystar had a requested a summary judgment, which is a determination made without trial based on the merits of a case.

Neither Apple nor Psystar could immediately be reached for comment.

One of Psystar's contentions was fair use. The judge rejected this, stating the company "does not even attempt to address the four factors used to determine fair use." Another of Psystar's claims was "first sale" doctrine, which allows someone who buys copyrighted material to sell it. But Alsup said this doctrine applies only to legal copies, not to the "unauthorized copies" that Psystar produced.

The judge also ruled in favor of Apple's claim that Psystar violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "Psystar has violated the DMCA by circumventing Apple's protection barrier and trafficking devices designed for circumvention," Alsup said.

In addition, the judge rejected Psystar's claims that Apple had misused its copyright and that Apple's licensing agreement was unduly restrictive.

Alsup's ruling did not include a permanent injunction against Miami-based Psystar because, he said, Apple has not requested one yet.

There are other claims Apple has made that could still go to trial, including breach of contract, trademark infringement, and trademark dilution. A hearing to determine remedies is set for December 14. The trial has been scheduled to begin in January

http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Psystar-214.pdf
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10397876-37.html

Last post made by: Basher52 on Yesterday, 08:48 PM

Users of Apple's Snow Leopard operating system have experienced some glitches. So Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2 on Monday to eliminate several operating-system issues, problems with MobileMe, and issues affecting the quality and security of the OS.

The update, available on Apple's support site, addresses three times the glitches that version 10.6.1 covered.

Included in this update are fixes for a bug that unexpectedly logs out users, a problem that causes Mail to disable while setting up Exchange server and warn that an account has exceeded bandwidth limits, and a problem preventing authentication of an administrative user.

Other issues wiped away with the update is the distortion of web sites on Safari, the address book not responding during editing, a problem adding images to the address book, and not being able to open files downloaded from the Internet.

Hackintosh Users Beware

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has a history of keeping tight control of its products, and this update is no different. Apple has displayed that control on several occasions, including when it twice stopped Palm from allowing Palm Pre users to sync with iTunes.

Apple has issued a warning about what the update will do to netbooks with Intel Atom processors that are running Snow Leopard. These are known in the Apple community as Hackintosh computers.

"You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you've modified the operating system through other means," Apple warns on its support Web site.

Some users are opting for a less-expensive netbook in the economic downturn, but they want the power of Intel's Atom and the features of Snow Leopard. That has led to running Snow Leopard on Atom-based netbooks. Apple's update will wipe out the ability to create a Hackintosh -- at least for now. Observers think the removal of support for Intel's Atom is only temporary because the Hackintosh community will find another way to circumvent Apple's block.

Back Up First

Apple warns users to back up all files using Apple's Time Machine before installing the update. Time Machine lets users back up an entire system in Mac OS X version 10.5 or later. It copies everything on a Mac, including digital photos, music, TV shows, and documents.

The update with nearly 60 fixes and improvements can be run directly from Apple's web site. Users shouldn't interrupt the installation once the update has started, and Apple said the update size varies from computer to computer.

Because some updates are installed before others, Apple suggests users run Software Update more than once to be sure all updates have been made.

http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Apple-Fixes-Snow-Leopard-Problems/story.xhtml?story_id=032001UPVR6O

Last post made by: Spacebunny on Nov 15 2009, 01:09 AM

Microsoft introduced Exchange Server 2010 at its Tech-Ed Europe 2009 conference and said customers are reporting significant cost savings. Microsoft's Stephen Elop predicted productivity gains of more than 20 percent from Exchange Server with on-premises and cloud-based implementations. Microsoft also unleashed Forefront Protection 2010.

Microsoft formally introduced Exchange Server 2010 Monday at the company's Tech-Ed Europe 2009 conference in Germany. According to Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop, customers already using the new e-mail platform are reporting significant cost savings, thanks in part to new support for low-cost attached-storage options.

"For example, the U.K. office of NEC Philips expects to increase their e-mail storage capacity by a factor of eight, and at the same time they expect to cut costs by a full 75 percent by using Exchange 2010," Elop said. "Exchange 2010 helps you save money through integrated e-mail archiving as well."

A Universal Inbox

Among other things, Exchange 2010's integrated e-mail archive makes it easier to store and query e-mail across the organization. "Customers are expected to see productivity gains of more than 20 percent with a universal inbox that delivers e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and text messaging consistently across virtually any device," Elop said.

What's more, the new platform is designed to simplify the way organizations provide always-on communications and disaster recovery, with the goal of helping IT administrators spend less time managing their e-mail systems. And when deployed in combination with Microsoft Outlook 2010, Exchange 2010 promises to give workers more control over their communications through the addition of new features such as MailTips and Voice Mail Preview.

MailTips warn users before making a mistake like sending email to large distribution groups -- either within the company or outside. Voice Mail Preview enables workers to see text previews of their voice mail directly in Outlook.

More than 45,000 Microsoft partners are already trained on Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Elop said. A new Forester Research study commissioned by Microsoft indicates that a customer can see a payback period of less than six months when upgrading to either product, he added.

On Monday, Microsoft also unleashed Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server, which integrates multiple anti-malware engines and anti-spyware scanning, together with support for Exchange 2010, Windows PowerShell, and Hyper-V. Forefront provides for 38 times faster detection of malware than single-engine solutions and also offers 99 percent guaranteed spam protection , with only one in 250,000 spam false positives, the software giant said

In the Cloud or On-Premises

Rivals such as IBM and Google, which have been attempting to coax large enterprises to move their e-mail systems into the cloud , have their work cut out for them now that Microsoft has introduced its first platform designed to run equally well in both on-premises and cloud-based environments.

"The real threat with enterprise web-based e-mail is Microsoft," noted Ted Schadler, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. Therefore, the software giant's rivals will need to "compete aggressively," Schadler noted in an e-mail.

Exchange 2010 will make it easier for a large enterprise to split a domain and run a single managed environment across on-premises and cloud-based implementations. The bottom line is that any Fortune-class company will be able to "keep its high-volume mailboxes on-premises while taking advantage of the higher degree of automation , direct-attached storage, and new functionality," Schadler explained.

What's more, large businesses will be able to move "occasional users that can get by with a small mailbox and web e-mail client -- which they are probably using at home anyway -- to a cloud provider," Schadler observed. Though larger enterprises always have the option of moving all their mailboxes into the cloud, Exchange 2010 means they won't have "to take that leap in order to get the benefits of cloud economics," Schadler said.

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=03200236POE8&page=2

Last post made by: Spacebunny on Nov 15 2009, 01:08 AM

Intel has settled a lawsuit with chip manufacturer and archrival Advanced Micro Devices. Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion to settle complaints stemming from as early as 2000.

AMD filed complaints in 2000, 2003 and 2006, claiming Intel acted in an anticompetitive manner. Specifically, AMD said Intel illegally gave rebates to computer makers such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo and NEC on condition that they purchase all or most of their x86 processors from Intel.

Intel was also accused of paying Europe's largest computer retailer, Media Saturn Holdings, to stock only computers with Intel chips. Because the alleged moves took a toll on AMD's market share, AMD took its complaints to the European Commission, which fined Intel $1.45 billion.

In Denial

Intel denied all the allegations. In September, however, the EC released documents detailing communications and interviews from executives at HP, Dell and others to prove the allegations.

Intel said the EC had its facts and economics wrong and appealed the $1.45 billion fine, which is 4.15 percent of its 2008 turnover and less than half the allowed fine, which was 10 percent of a company's annual revenues.

"While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development," the companies said in a joint statement.

Separately, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said his company is "anxious to show our side of the story," referring to e-mail communications between Intel executives and the vendors. Otellini said that, of 200 million pages of documents produced, only four or five e-mail snippets were used in the complaints against Intel, and many of the comments were taken out of context.

Settlement Terms

AMD and Intel also adopted a new five-year cross-licensing agreement. Both companies will give up any claims of breaching the previous license agreement. Intel also agreed to abide by a set of business practices. AMD agreed to drop all lawsuits, including a case in U.S. District Court and two pending cases in Japan. AMD said it will also withdraw its worldwide regulatory complaints.

Otellini said Intel and AMD have been negotiating the terms of the settlement for a long time and agreed it would be the best deal for all parties.

Asked why Intel would pay AMD $1.25 billion if it had done nothing wrong, Otellini said, "Antitrust cases are incredibly complex and it is a jury trial, which has its own vagaries, and damages are troubling," he replied. "While it pains me to write a check at any time in this case, I think it made a practical settlement and good compromise between the two companies and in many ways it was a small multiple of the potential damages."

In spite of the huge pay-out for Intel, at least one analyst called the settlement a win-win for both parties.

"From the AMD perspective it resolves two issues -- one, being paid $1.25 billion in cash, and two, it allows them to focus on the marketplace," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at market-research firm Interpret. "As for Intel, AMD has some good products and at a time when Intel is under scrutiny from the European Union and the attorney general in New York, it makes sense if you are Intel to figure out a way to settle this problem and make your loudest complainant go away."

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=032002GF0HSW&page=2

Last post made by: Basher52 on Nov 15 2009, 01:17 AM

AMD has laid out its road map for processors through 2011, with an emphasis on a complete computing experience featuring stunning graphics and video. AMD also is on track to deliver a new line of Fusion processors to lower power consumption. For next year, AMD will release multi-core processors for notebook graphics.

Advanced Micro Devices gave analysts a briefing on its computing platform road map through 2011 Wednesday, with company executives saying they intend to differentiate the company's chips from rival offerings by enabling a complete computing experience featuring stunning graphics and video. The executives also said AMD remains on schedule to deliver a new family of Fusion processors in 2011 that promise to dramatically lower power consumption in server and mobile-device applications.

"We've got the opportunity at AMD to change the game, to redefine the way that people think about computer technology and, in particular, to redefine the way that people interact with computers going forward," said AMD CEO Dirk Meyer.

A Huge Industry Uptick

Starting next year, OEMs will be able to use quad-core processors featuring a 2M cache and DDR3 memory support . Code-named Danube, the chips are expected to help laptop makers deliver seven or more hours of notebook battery life. Moreover, AMD's third-generation Nile platform promises to deliver the same level of battery performance when deployed in ultra-thin notebook designs.

AMD also plans to launch a six-core processor targeting gaming enthusiasts. Called Leo, the new chip will include support for the company's latest ATI Eyefinity technology as well as DirectX, which AMD spokesperson John Taylor predicts will "bring incredible graphics capabilities and stunning HD video to AMD's new notebook platforms."

Two DDR3-based processing platforms will also become available for use in server applications for data centers, where IT managers have been asking for more performance, but without incurring any corresponding increase in power consumption, according to AMD Senior Vice President Rick Bergman.

"We are in the midst of one of the biggest performance increases on our server platforms in the history of AMD," Bergman told analysts. "In 2009, 2010 and 2011 we will be seeing a huge uptick on industry benchmarks, whether integer performance or floating-point performance."

AMD's Bulldozer

Code-named Maranello, AMD's forthcoming DDR3-based server platform will offer support for AMD's upcoming eight- or 12-core Magny-Cours processors. What's more, AMD's forthcoming San Marino platform will expressly target the rapidly growing web and cloud -computing market segment.

According to Taylor, San Marino will be "suited for large, dense deployments that require power efficiency and flexibility that is ideal for small/medium businesses, as well as web, cloud and infrastructure applications."

The most significant items on AMD's 2011 road map are the company's first Accelerated Processing Unit, code-named Llano, as well as new "Fusion" chips for notebook, desktop and server applications.

"Our first Fusion products for notebooks will offer performance north of eight hours of battery life," Bergman said. The big uptick in battery life, he observed, means that users will be closer than ever before to achieving the ideal "all-day computing experience."

On the server side, AMD's Bulldozer architecture employs a new approach to multithreaded computer performance that company executives say is capable of achieving higher efficiencies and throughput.

"Bulldozer is designed to give AMD an exceptional CPU option for linking with GPUs in highly scalable , single-chip Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) configurations," Taylor said.

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=032002GF0IE8&page=2

Last post made by: Spacebunny on Nov 15 2009, 01:01 AM

Making a bigger splash than expected, the crash of an empty rocket stage in a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole last month kicked up a surprising amount of water ice and vapor, confirming the presence of a potentially valuable resource for future space travelers.

"I'm here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water," said Anthony Colaprete, the project scientist and principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. "And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount."

Holding up water jugs to make the point, he said "if you remember, a month ago we were talking about teaspoons going into glasses over football fields. Well, now I can say today that in the 20- to 30-meter (65- to 100-foot-wide) crater LCROSS made, we found maybe about a dozen of these two-gallon buckets worth of water."

And more than water. Data from the LCROSS instruments show signs of other compounds that may shed light on the moon's evolution.

"It's a whole lot more beyond the water," Colaprete said. "That's the exciting part in my mind, it's not only about the water now. There's actually a lot more here that we're going to be talking about in the months ahead, looking at the LCROSS data."


Spectroscopic data from NASA's LCROSS lunar impactor shows the presence of water in two specific bands (yellow regions).
(Credit: NASA)

Said Greg Delory, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley: "This is not your father's moon. Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one that could tell us unique things about the Earth-moon system and the early solar system."

Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the discovery holds promise for future exploration. Using solar energy, future astronauts could, in theory, break down recovered ice and in effect live off the land.

"Water can be used for the kind of things we think about every day, drinking water if we have extended crews on the surface," he said. "You can break it down and have breathable air for crews to breathe. But also, if you have significant quantities of this stuff, water really is the constituents of one of the most potent rocket fuels: oxygen and hydrogen."

Whether the water ice detected by LCROSS might be accessible to future astronauts remains to be seen. But scientists were elated with the initial findings.

The $79 million LCROSS mission was launched June 18 as a companion payload to NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Working in a 31-mile-high orbit, LRO is designed to create a high-resolution map of the moon's surface to help identify sites for future manned missions.

It also is measuring the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face and mapping out the surface topology, mineralogy, and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites followed by three years of purely scientific observations.

While LRO was launched directly to the moon by an Atlas 5 rocket, LCROSS and the booster's empty Centaur upper stage were sent into a looping four-month orbit back around the Earth.

The spacecraft aimed itself and the attached Centaur stage back at the moon, targeting a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. Data from previous spacecraft indicated the presence of hydrogen in the polar regions, possibly associated with water ice just below the surface.

LCROSS mission managers initially selected a target crater known as Cabeus A, but after additional analysis of topographic data, the target was switched to nearby Cabeus, a crater measuring some 62 miles across and about two-and-a-half miles deep.

LCROSS successfully separated from the Centaur stage the night before impact, rotated 180 degrees to aim its instruments forward and then followed its doomed companion to the surface, trailing it by about four minutes.

The Centaur is believed to have hit the moon within about 650 feet of the planned target, blasting out a crater 65 feet to 100 feet across. Colaprete showed photographs from LCROSS Friday that clearly showed the plume of debris kicked up by the crash. Another photo showed the crater itself. LCROSS flew through the ejecta cloud, collecting data all the while, before crashing a short distance away.

The Centaur impact was not particularly impressive to the untrained eye--a pinpoint flash of light in the inky darkness of the crater's shadowed terrain--and many observers, expecting a more dramatic show as indicated in NASA animations, were disappointed.

But Colaprete said Friday the impact more than lived up to scientific expectations. Spectroscopic data from two instruments aboard LCROSS clearly showed the presence of water ice, along with a variety of other materials, in the ejecta plume.


Shown is the ejecta plume at about 20 seconds after impact.
(Credit: NASA)

"We can constrain right now how much water we think is in the field of view of our instrument," he said. "Based on these measurements, there is more than 100 kilograms in the field of view of our instrument. What does that mean, a hundred kilograms? That's the dozen or so two-gallon buckets I described.

"But what we need to do next is take all the information, the amount of ejecta, the size of the crater, how this all changed over time and actually reconstruct the entire event, understand how it all fits back into the ground along with all the other things we've seen in the ejecta plume to really understand this whole thing."

Delory said more analysis will be needed to figure out where the water ice originated.

"One possible source of the water is from comets," he said. "If that's true, and the lunar polar regions really are repositories for this material, they are a literal treasure trove of information in terms of the composition of comets, which are themselves indicative of early solar system conditions. That would be of extreme interest to many planetary scientists."

Another possibility, he said, is that the water ice is the result of chemical reactions that start with the solar wind, "which is basically an ionized gas streaming from the sun composed mainly of hydrogen."

"It impacts the lunar surface, undergoes chemistry, eventually these molecules hop around the moon and end up concentrated around the poles," he said. "Studying those deposits would tell us something about solar history, also about the history of chemical reactions occurring on the surface of the moon. Two completely different theories, we don't know which one is right yet."

Other sources are also possible, he said, including deposits from molecular clouds the solar system may have passed through earlier in its evolution as well as subtle chemical processes on the moon itself.
William Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia." You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published.

Last post made by: Basher52 on Nov 15 2009, 01:15 AM