Hoping to take a bite out of Apple Computer’s iPod bounty, Creative Technologies began seeding orders for its next-generation music and video player.

Available first in the United States and Europe and then elsewhere, the 30GB Zen Vision sports a 3.7-inch color screen and can store up to 120 hours of video or carry as many as 15,000 songs, the company said.

A little larger in size and heavier than even Apple’s 60GB iPod photo, the device comes in black or white and sells for $399.99. It initially will be available online only.

“The Zen Vision supports video from TiVoToGo and popular Internet video formats including DivX,” the company said in a statement.

The device also allows for photo transfer directly from a compact flash card or up to 17 other variations of media through an optional compact flash adapter that Creative sells.

In addition to playing music files, the Zen Vision supports downloads from Internet music stores such as Napster, MSN Music and Music Now. The device can also tap into music subscription services such as Yahoo Music Unlimited and Napster to Go. The company said the player also has a built-in FM radio with 32 preset options, and FM recording.

The Zen Vision comes with a USB cable to connect to a PC. A docking station is available as well.

Source: News.com

Although two updates to Apple Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X Tiger have fixed many compatibility problems, enterprise networking problems persist. A new update, version 10.4.3, is expected this summer, and will address some of the remaining problems, according to sources.
Sources say that the update will fix continuing problems with integration with Microsoft Corp. Activity Directory, SMB file sharing and lower-level networking issues. Problems in these areas are being reported in discussion forums at Apple’s Web site and around the Internet.

VPN (virtual private network) connectivity, including connecting to Cisco Systems Inc.’s concentrators, is one of the more persistent problem areas. Most VPN clients that worked under previous versions of Mac OS X were incompatible with Tiger 10.4.0. Apple’s 10.4.1 update fixed a kernel bug, enabling some VPN client developers to release Tiger-compatible versions.

Source: eWeek

Novell is renaming SUSE Professional and releasing it as 100% open source. Novell spokesman and director of public relations Bruce Lowry says his company is “pushing” to make SUSE Linux available to anyone who wants it. According to sources close to the company, SUSE Professional is to be rebranded as OpenSUSE.

Lowry says Novell is will make SUSE freely available, starting with the 10.0 beta, at the Linux World Conference next week.

Source: newsforge

Cisco customers on Wednesday received e-mails from the networking company advising them of a security breach of its Web site.

And the company admitted that Cisco.com Web has been compromised and that customers need to change their passwords.

Cisco said: “It has been brought to our attention that there is an issue in a Cisco.com search tool that could expose passwords for registered users.

“As a result, to protect our registered Cisco.com users, we’re taking the proactive step of resetting Cisco.com passwords. Needless to say, we’re investigating the incident, which does not appear to be due to a weakness in our security products and technologies or with our network infrastructure.”

The company also stressed on its Web site that the incident appears unrelated to flaws in Cisco products.

Source: News.com

The Mozilla Foundation has announced the creation of the Mozilla Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary that will continue the development, distribution and marketing of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation will be a taxable entity (that is, a for-profit rather than a non-profit) but the Foundation is eager to emphasise that it will pursue the same public benefit goals as the Foundation itself and will not be driven purely by revenue goals.

The change will not affect the day-to-day development of Mozilla, with the current system of module owners, drivers, reviewers and super-reviewers staying in place. End-users are unlikely to notice any difference either, though the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation will eventually have separate websites. At the moment, only Firefox and Thunderbird will be developed under the auspices of the Mozilla Corporation; other projects, such as Camino and SeaMonkey, will continue to be overseen by the Mozilla Foundation.

By moving product development out to a new subsidiary, the Mozilla Foundation hopes to be able to concentrate on project and policy issues.

The creation of the Mozilla Corporation should eliminate some of the thorny legal and tax issues that have been caused by the revenue-generating potential of Firefox and Thunderbird. The Mozilla Corporation will now handle all relationships with commercial companies and its status should allow more flexibility in this area. It is hoped that the income from the Mozilla Corporation will help the Mozilla project (including both the Foundation and the Corporation) to be more self-supporting, though donations will still be welcome.

While the Mozilla Corporation will be a for-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is keen to stress that it is not selling out. The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation will continue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property and will license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also continue to govern the source code repository and control who is allowed to check in.

Source: mozillazine

Hundreds of thousands of Internet servers are at risk of an attack that would redirect unknowing Web surfers from legitimate sites to malicious ones.

In a scan of 2.5 million so-called Domain Name System machines, which act as the White Pages of the Internet, security researcher Dan Kaminsky found that about 230,000 are potentially vulnerable to a threat known as DNS cache poisoning.

Source: News.com