A Maryland judge has tossed out a lawsuit against an alleged spammer, saying a state law restricting unsolicited e-mail is unconstitutional because it unfairly restricts interstate commerce.

Durke Thompson, a trial judge in Montgomery County, ruled that the Maryland law unduly discriminates against out-of-state commerce, a restriction that’s generally prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

Thompson dismissed a lawsuit that a Maryland business had brought against a New York firm, First Choice Internet, saying in a ruling on Thursday that the company and its president “did not intentionally direct their e-mails” to Maryland residents.

“There’s no way for a person sending e-mail to know where the e-mail is going,” said Andrew Dansicker, a Baltimore lawyer representing First Choice Internet. “Until there is, it’s not fair to be passing statutes that penalize people for sending an e-mail.”

First Choice Internet was sued by a George Washington University law student, Eric Menhart, who formed a Maryland company to file lawsuits against what he believes to be offensive marketing practices. But the judge ruled that Menhart spent most of his time in Washington, D.C., not Maryland, and it would be unfair to require a sender of e-mail to guess where the correspondence would be read.

Dansicker predicts that the “reasoning of the court could apply to other states, especially if it’s upheld by the appeals court.”

Source: News.com

A federal judge on Wednesday handed online search engine Google Inc. a victory in a trademark infringement case on Wednesday, ruling that when users searched for insurer GEICO, Google could display rivals as well

Source: Reuters

Domestic air travelers could be surfing the Web by 2006 with government-approved technology that allows people access to high-speed Internet connections while they fly.

The FCC also voted to solicit public comment about ending the ban on in-flight use of cell phones. Among the issues to consider are whether passengers want to be surrounded by cell phone conversations.

“The ability to communicate is a vital one, but good cell phone etiquette is also essential,” Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said. “Our job is to see if this is possible and then let consumers work out the etiquette.”

The FCC approved a wireless Internet offering from Boeing Co. that uses satellites to get air travelers online. Boeing’s “Connexion” service is offered by some international carriers, including some flights to and from the United States.

Domestic carriers have shied away from it in large part because of the cost of outfitting planes with the technology, estimated to be about $500,000 per jet.

Source: AP

As part of an ongoing race in the cable industry, Time Warner Cable is raising the speed of its broadband Internet offerings to 5 and 8 million bits per second without increasing prices.

The higher speeds are available in New York City starting Tuesday and will roll out to the rest of the country in January.

Road Runner, the company’s broadband service, has been running on speeds of 3 mbps and its premium service on 6 mbps — generally faster than the competing DSL, or digital subscriber line, technology but a tad slower than some cable operators’ offerings.

Cablevision Systems Corp., Cox Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and RCN Corp. all raised speeds earlier this year — without price rises — to between 4 mbps and 7 mbps.

Time Warner hadn’t increased its speeds since September 2003.

In order to woo new users and prevent current ones from defecting to DSL, cable operators have been busy trying to outdo competitors.

Revenue from broadband and other new services such as video-on-demand and high-definition TV are becoming more important as revenue growth from cable TV slows.

Broadband Internet business in particular has been highly coveted since it yields better profit margins.

Despite the competition, cable operators generally have been resistant to slash prices, preferring instead to raise speeds or offer additional services — free music or video mail, for instance.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable company in the country, has 10.9 million customers in all. Its broadband customers number 3.7 million.

Source: AP

Adobe Systems Inc. has warned of two serious security flaws affecting Windows, Mac OS X and Unix versions of its Acrobat software. The bugs could allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a user’s system via a PDF file distributed via e-mail, according to security researchers.

The first flaw affects Version 6.0.2 of Acrobat Reader, according to an advisory posted to the Bugtraq mailing list by security research firm iDefense, which discovered both bugs. Reader incorrectly parses the .etd files used in eBook transactions so that an .etd file containing special code in the “title” or “baseurl” fields can cause an invalid memory access.

This could allow the execution of malicious code with the privileges of the user, iDefense said. An attacker could exploit this bug by sending an e-mail message including either an attached PDF file or a link to the file.

Earlier versions of Acrobat Reader 6 may also be vulnerable, and Adobe Acrobat may also be affected, iDefense said. Adobe has released Version 6.0.3 of both Acrobat and Reader for the Windows and Mac OS X platforms, which fixes the problem.

Source: eWeek

NVIDIA Corporation introduced the NVIDIA GeForce 6200 graphics processing unit (GPU) with TurboCache technology.

NVIDIA TurboCache is a new, patented hardware and software technology, which allows a GPU to render directly to system memory, instead of using local memory on the graphics card. NVIDIA TurboCache technology lowers on-board memory requirements, enabling system builders to deliver PCs with more feature-rich GPUs and offer their customers better graphics performance and advanced capabilities previously unattainable at value prices.

NVIDIA has re-architected the 3D graphics pipeline for the GeForce 6200 GPU with TurboCache to allow direct rendering from the GPU to system memory by leveraging the bi-directional PCI Express bandwidth. The TurboCache Manager dynamically allocates memory for maximum system performance while intelligent software algorithms maximize application performance.