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It's common procedure for news organizations to pre-write obituaries for politicians, sports figures and titans of business, but the premature release of Jobs' obituary is stunning because Jobs has been struggling with pancreatic cancer.

Bloomberg quickly issued a retraction, which neglected to note the seriousness of the blunder or even that the story was about Jobs. The retraction said in its entirety: "An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted."

Is He 'Cured'?

The Gawker blog, which originally reported the mistake, noted that, "Jobs' battle with pancreatic cancer, and speculation over his health, jarred Wall Street earlier this year and continues to be the subject of speculation."

Jobs' only public discussion of the subject came in a 2004 commencement address at Stanford, where he said, "No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."

He told the graduates that he had been diagnosed with a tumor on his pancreas and that his doctors gave him six months to live. Later that day, a biopsy revealed he had a rare form of cancer treatable with surgery. "I had the surgery and I'm fine now," Jobs told his audience, adding, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

'Private Matter'

But a New York Times column in July revealed that Jobs had been diagnosed with the cancer nine months before he had the surgery, and that he had been hoping to cure himself with...

Shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, computer break-ins at more than 90 U.S. military and governmental agencies caused severe security compromises and data destruction. In 2002, U.S. investigators reportedly tracked the software used for the attacks to an e-mail account belong to McKinnon's girlfriend. Since that time, the United States has sought McKinnon's extradition.

On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights -- where appeals had escalated the case -- finally gave the OK to send McKinnon to the United States. But in what some see as a last-ditch effort to keep McKinnon on British soil, reports are circulating that the 42-year-old has just been diagnosed with Aspberger's syndrome. Aspberger's is often described as a form of high-functioning autism. In itself, this diagnosis wouldn't prevent his trial in the United States, but British law may see things differently.

The Crime

McKinnon has already admitted publicly that he broke into U.S. government computer systems, but he maintains he did no damage. Justice Department officials charge, however, that he compromised and deleted records at a key naval-operations center in New Jersey and repeatedly crashed systems belonging to NASA and the Pentagon. McKinnon claims he was snooping for evidence of a UFO cover-up by the U.S. government.

Allegedly, McKinnon posted the following message on a military computer system during his months-long spree: "U.S. foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days ... It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year ... I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels."

McKinnon and his lawyers rejected several plea offers by the...

A British customer reportedly turned on his iPhone last week to find photos of a plant worker posing and making the peace sign. The user posted the photos and this note on the Web: "Not sure if this is or is not the 'norm,' but I just received my brand new iPhone here in the UK and once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen (the screen you can personalize with a photo) already had a photo set against it !!!! It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun -- has anyone else found this?"

A spokesperson for Foxconn said it was a "beautiful mistake," according to published reports. Some, however, believe it was a publicity stunt to show a happy worker in a clean factory environment after a 2006 investigation by a British newspaper said the plant forced employees to work 15-hour days and live in overcrowded dormitories while earning just more than US$49 a month.

Factory Audit

After the British paper's report, Apple sent its own team of auditors to China to conduct random employee interviews, view living conditions, and dispel any allegations of mistreatment, child labor, or substandard living conditions.

In August 2006, Apple released a report of its findings, admitting it found some mistreatment of workers that violated its zero-tolerance labor policy and its supplier code of conduct. That code specifically states that "suppliers may not use any form of forced, bonded, indentured or prison labor," and "all work must be voluntary."

Apple's audit also found that employees were working long hours.

"We found no instances of forced...

The WiMAX service is expected to kick off in Baltimore in September, with Chicago and Washington, D.C., to follow before the end of the year.

GPS in the XOHM system continually updates the user's position and feeds it to back-end applications. This feature is added by California-based Open Wave. Using uLocate as the foundation for the service, Sprint has tested and implemented a number of applications before rollout.

The partnership between Sprint and uLocate includes building the entire XOHM localized experience, with APIs provided to third-party developers for their applications. Some big names will be part of the launch.

Yelp will provide local business news all the way through local restaurant reviews. Eventful service will not only list events for XOHM users but will also map the locations. NAVTEQ will stream up-to-the-minute local traffic information, while Google will serve up localized searching and map features.

John Polivka, spokesperson at Sprint, explained the difference between the XOHM user experience and using the Internet. "With Internet access you could go to each vendor now as a separate interaction; but with XOHM, the services are aggregated into a service package that correlates them due to the intelligence in the network; for example, plotting friend locations on a map, identifying a restaurant or entertainment venue from local search, and sharing plans to convene with the benefit of weather, traffic or ticket-purchase convenience."

XOHM users will have standard Internet as well. Polivka noted that there is no charge for third-party developers to become part of the program, but there would be...

Microsoft's next-generation browser for 32-bit and 64-bit computing platforms is currently available in English, Japanese, Chinese and German, with additional languages coming soon, said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's IE8 development team.

"While Beta 1 was for developers, we think that anyone who browses or works on the Web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2," Hachamovitch said.

Real-World Browsing

Suggested Sites is one good example of the IE8 development team's commitment to streamlining Web navigation. Click on the Suggested Sites button on the toolbar to see the top recommendations, based on choices made by online users visiting the same page.

In addition, the browser's new address bar is no longer just for URLs. Simply type a keyword into IE8's new "smart" address bar and the browser immediately searches across a user's history, favorites and RSS feeds to identify all the resources accessed during past online sessions. Users also can hit the return key after inputting a word to tell the browser to display the results of a Windows Live search.

Moreover, IE8's Web Slices capability gives users the ability to subscribe, view and interact with portions of their favorite Web sites with a single click on the Favorites bar.

"We looked very hard at how people really browse the Web," Hachamovitch said, "and tried a lot of different designs in front of many kinds of people, not just technologists."

Accelerated Access

Much like the Mozilla Labs new Ubiquity plug-in for Firefox 3, IE8's Accelerators option makes it easy for users to launch a variety of online services without leaving the page currently being displayed. Simply highlight any text on a page and right-click on...

"Intel and Nvidia have finally come to their senses," said analyst Jon Peddie of JPR, a leading GPU, multimedia and gaming analysis group in Tiburon, CA. The two companies have been in a standoff.

Until now, Nvidia has held all the cards in the SLI game, dealing out licenses for its chipset to motherboard manufacturers such as Gigatrend and aBit. Since many board makers rely heavily on gaming enthusiasts -- a market where Nvidia's GForce GPUs are a top player -- they bought Nvidia's chipsets by the bucket load, despite reports that competing chipsets had no technical limits with Nvidia's multi-GPU cards.

However, heat issues, motherboard elbow room, and the cost of the nForce 200 gave some board makers pause, according to reports. Some industry insiders even speculated that Nvidia would get out of the chipset market entirely.

Not so, said Peddie and sources at Nvidia. "They will have some chipset announcements in October," he said. Nonetheless, this announcement by Nvidia pretty much underscores that the nForce 200 had very little proprietary technology other than helping to create a licensing market for Nvidia's SLI.

Cashing in Chipsets

Others believe the chipset market is ripe for a shake-up. In an interview with Custom PC earlier this month, chipset maker VIA Technologies admitted the business is being swallowed up by Intel and AMD.

Richard Brown, VIA's vice president of marketing, said the Taiwan-based company, once the leader in CPU support chips, is moving into the X86 market instead.

Virtually any well-designed chipset, including Intel's X58, can...

The flaw isn't a new issue. Apple first addressed what is known as the passcode flaw last January. The fix prevented unauthorized users from circumventing the password-protected locking feature in an early version of the software. But the problem has reemerged in new versions of the iPhone software.

The flaw apparently allows attackers to bypass the passcode locking feature by touching "Emergency Call" on the password-entry screen and then double-tapping the Home button. An attacker would then have access to the iPhone users' frequently called contacts list, which includes both addresses and phone numbers.

An attacker could also use the breach to access the iPhone's e-mail application and gain access to e-mail addresses or Web sites, as well as the user's Safari browser. The flaw is reportedly present in iPhone software versions 2.0 and 2.0.2. The issue also affects the iPod touch.

Are There Other Security Flaws?

It appears that the security update Apple issued for iPhone 1.1.3 in January didn't make it into later versions of the handset's software. That January update offered three security patches for several vulnerabilities.

Besides the passcode, other issues included a memory-corruption issue in Safari's handling of URLs and a WebKit that allowed a page to navigate the subframes of any other page. There is no evidence that the latest versions of the iPhone's software continue to have these two issues. Apple could not immediately be reached for comment, but offered this explanation of the passcode flaw in January:

"The Passcode Lock feature is designed to prevent applications from being launched unless the correct passcode is entered. An implementation issue in the handling of emergency calls allows users...

IO Group, an adult entertainment company, had sued Veoh, alleging the site was displaying its content in violation of copyright laws. Veoh had uploaded IO Group's content without permission.

However, Judge Howard Lloyd of the U.S. District Court in San Jose disagreed with IO Group's argument. The judge ruled that Veoh is protected by the safe-harbor provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That provision protects against copyright infringement if action is taken after notification of a copyright violation.

"Veoh has a strong DMCA policy, takes active steps to limit incidents of infringement on its Web site and works diligently to keep unauthorized works off its site," Judge Lloyd wrote in his decision.

Google Applauds Ruling

Google-owned YouTube was quick to praise the decision. YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine applauded the court for confirming that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights. Zahavah then reiterated Google's oft-repeated statement:

"YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online.

"We work every day to give content owners choices about whether to take down, leave up, or even earn revenue from their videos, and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better."

What About Viacom's Suit?

Viacom could not immediately be reached for comment.

Viacom filed a suit against Google in 2006 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Viacom called YouTube a "significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent, Google."

Google might...

The two notebook and two desktop PCs are the first Dell models designed especially for emerging markets, said Steve Felice, the U.S. computer maker's president for the Asia-Pacific. They are meant for small-business users and are to be sold in 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Strong sales in Asia helped Dell turn in better-than-expected results in the last quarter despite a slowing U.S. economy. It is due to report its latest quarterly results after the U.S. markets close Thursday, and analysts are watching whether it can maintain its growth pace.

"Our success is going to be largely dependent on our ability to expand globally," Felice said in an interview.

Dell and rivals Hewlett-Packard Co., Taiwan-based Acer Inc. and China's Lenovo Group are expanding aggressively in emerging economies as sales growth in the United States and other developed markets slows.

Dell's first-quarter sales in China, India, Russia and Brazil -- markets known collectively as BRIC -- grew by 58 percent, about 10 times the U.S. rate, Felice said. He said Dell expects 20-30 percent annual growth in those markets in coming years.

Prices for the new Vostro notebooks will start at 3,299 yuan ($475) and for the desktop PCs at 2,999 yuan ($440).

Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, broke with its usual development and marketing strategy for its latest products, Felice said.

"We used to design products for global requirements and distribute the same product globally," he said. "In this situation, we started with talking to emerging country customers, designing a product for emerging countries, and our initial launch of the product is only in emerging countries. That's a big departure in our strategy."

The new...

Google began developing the search-suggestion product in 2004. The feature started as a "20-percent project" (a Google philosophy that allows employees to spend one day a week working on something not in the regular job description). But now, the tool has expanded and is included on Google Labs, the Google Toolbar, the Firefox search box, Google Maps and Web Search for select countries, the iPhone and BlackBerry, YouTube, and now Google.com.

Google Suggest is officially available by default on the Google.com home page. Over the next week, the company plans to roll out the tool so that more and more searchers will start seeing a list of query suggestions when they start typing into the search box.

Suggesting the Benefits

"Have you ever been stumped in finding the right words to search for? Back when I was planning my wedding, I had a list of wedding songs in mind, but the problem was that I couldn't remember any of the artist names or song titles," Jennifer Liu, a Google product manager, wrote on the company's blog.

Liu tells the story of how she started typing into the Google search box parts of the lyrics that she did remember, and saw suggestions with the artist name and song titles that she wanted. "We find that by providing suggestions up-front, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently," she wrote.

Liu outlined three key benefits of Google Suggest: help formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and save keystrokes.

Google Suggest helps users formulate more precise queries that yield more accurate results. So, instead of just typing "hotels in Florida," the technology will ask you a "Did you mean?" question that encourages you to select a...

Here's the problem for companies such as Google: power usage by data centers accounts for around 2 percent of all the power supplied to the U.S. grid and 2-3 percent globally.

As companies struggle to balance their quest for greater computing capacity while controlling power use, they are turning to technology for answers. Virident, a California-based startup set up by a couple of IIT grads who also went to the same graduate school at University of Illinois, is looking to address this issue using by enhancing the memory capacity of servers using specially designed flash memory chips (commonly used in cell phones, for example) to increase the computing capability of servers.

Virident (derived from Viridus in Latin meaning green and dent meaning to make; literally to make green), was started by Kumar Ganapathy and Vijay Karamcheti, who blended their experience across the semiconductor industry and academia to set up this company.

Ganapathy was a Fellow with Rockwell Semiconductor before he set up his own start-up, VX Tel, which built voice over IP chipsets, and then worked with Artiman Ventures. Karamcheti worked with Google and spent the last 15 years working on parallelization techniques at New York University.

The duo has teamed up with an assortment of business acquaintances to set up Virident and embed these flash memory chips in data centers. As a first step, the company roped in Raj Parekh, a...

LaCie

LaCie, long known for its stylish storage devices, has just announced its biggest, littlest such device yet -- the Little Big Disk (LBG) Quadra.

With storage capacity up to 1 terabyte (TB) and transfer speeds of up to 110 megabytes per second (MB/sec) via eSATA or 80MB/sec over FireWire 800, the LBG is a terrific answer to the question, "How fast, and how much, storage do I need for professional content creation?"

There are already 500GB and 400GB (7,200 RPM) versions, so this new portable Little Big Disk really ups the ante with two 2.5" hard disks that work together in a built-in RAID 0 configuration. The unit also has one eSATA 3Gbits, two FireWire 800 (FireWire 400-compatible with included adapter), and one TJSB 2.0 interface, so it can work with cross-platform compatibility in almost any production environment.

In spite of the two disks inside, the unit is powered entirely by the FireWire interface. It has a proven heat sink design, developed by Neil Poulton, and it operates quietly, without a fan. It weighs in at a little more than 1.4 pounds, so it can be a very portable storage solution.

Fully plug-and-play with Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard (including Time Machine) and Windows Vista, the Little Big Disk Quadra comes preloaded with the LaCie Setup Assistant, a utility that optimizes the drive according to your needs (Mac, Windows, or...

The big guys are looking to make sense of the market for solid state drives -- drives made of non-moving flash memory chips -- that are quickly replacing hard drives in high-end data storage networks, notebook computers and other industry-specific devices that can't break down.

Solid state drives made of flash memory are more durable, save power and are faster at some tasks than traditional disk drives.

Makers of electronics for data storage networks, including Costa Mesa's Emulex Corp., Aliso Viejo's QLogic Corp. and Milpitas' LSI Corp. are also looking into solid state drives.

"A week doesn't go by that we aren't contacted by someone in the storage industry," Hajeck said. "They are in the early stages of exploration and understanding who the players are in this market, how it will affect them, what's real, what's hype and when they'll need to get in."

Hajeck insists that his young company isn't for sale.

Networking gear makers Brocade Communications Systems Inc. of San Jose and NetApp Inc. of Sunnyvale are also said to be interested, according to Hajeck.

All the buzz "increases the size of the pie," for a time when he might make a move, he said.

Potential suitors might not only be after SiliconSystems' flash drives, according to Krishna Chander, a storage analyst at El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp. They may have set their sights on its controllers-interface chips that allow the drive to communicate with the brains of a device, he said.

"The hard drive companies understand the interface between a microprocessor in a PC and...