New Zealand Geek - news page 64

Sky TV today unveiled its high-definition service - and its plans to spend $22 million on HD broadcasts over the next two years.

New MySky HDi set boxes, the same as the Foxtel STBs used in Australia, will be available to customers at a one-off cost of $599 or for a monthly rental of $15.
June 11, 2008

Google has told a senior Republican lawmaker concerned about privacy that the internet search and advertising company supports a federal privacy law.

Privacy advocates object to the amount of information that Google, Yahoo and other online companies collect about users. Google, in particular, has been under pressure to post a link on its home page to its privacy policy.
June 11, 2008

Internet providers Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to child pornography and eliminate the material from their servers, New York's attorney general said yesterday.

The companies also will pay $1.1 million to help fund efforts to remove the online child porn created and disseminated by users through their services, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. The changes will affect customers across the United States.
June 11, 2008

Yahoo may have to defend its response to Microsoft's takeover attempt in a trial that could sway the outcome of the internet pioneer's August showdown with investor activist Carl Icahn.

The legal drama will unfold next month if a Delaware judge grants a request made by attorneys for Yahoo shareholders.
June 11, 2008

Register for Your ViewsConnectISP giants lock down child porn sitesMP appointed to head internetNZ boardRelated nzherald links:Texting and driving, the New Zealand pastimeMost young people text and drive - surveyNew calls for phone ban after fatal crashEditorial: Cellphone use in cars must endCalls mount for ban on using mobile phones while drivingTelcos want ban on cellphone use in carsNew calls for phone ban after fatal crashA proposed ban on drivers using hand-held cellphones has been announced by the Government in a bid to reduce road accidents.

The proposed amendment to the Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004 is scheduled to be released for public consultation in August.
June 11, 2008

The new iPhone and the way it will be sold look set to shut down a small industry that arose to make the first version of the iconic phone available around the world.

Judging by New Zealand company Parallel Imported still advertising first-generation iPhones with a hefty $1199 price tag, it was a lucrative industry, too.
June 11, 2008

Michael Bay feels vindicated. Paramount Pictures is releasing his box office hit Transformers on Blu-ray Disc, nearly a year after the studio's decision to issue the film in the rival HD DVD format triggered a tirade from the director.

"I've been waiting for Transformers to be released on Blu-ray for a long time, and it was worth the wait," Bay said. He called the September release of the two-disc set "the complete high-definition package for fans".
June 11, 2008

Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest computer maker, launched a new generation of PCs on that respond to users tapping or stroking the screen, potentially bringing user-friendly computing to the masses.

The TouchSmart All-in-One is designed around music, photos and video but has a full set of PC functions, and is the most persuasive product yet in HP's turnaround of a PC business that was once defined by run-of-the-mill products and low margins.
June 11, 2008

Four developing countries have appealed against the adoption of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format as an international standard, the International Organisation for Standardisation said.

ISO said in a statement the national standards bodies of Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela had appealed against the positive outcome of a vote it held in March after a controversial fast-track ratification process.
June 10, 2008

Amazon.com's website suffered sporadic outages yesterday, just days after unspecified system issues knocked the online retailer offline for more than two hours.

Keynote Systems, a California-based company that monitors website performance, said the latest troubles started shortly after 1 p.m. EDT and lasted at least an hour.
June 10, 2008

Retiring MP Paul Swain has been appointed to head internetNZ's board.

Mr Swain, who stands down from Parliament at the next election, will chair a five-strong board of directors, established as part of a structural review of internetNZ.
June 10, 2008

A computer designed to run virtual tests of US nuclear weapons will be the world's fastest, making a quadrillion calculations per second, the US Department of Energy said.

The IBM Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is the first to achieve a what is known as a petaflop of sustained performance, the department and IBM said.
June 10, 2008

The actor will star in and produce Atari, a project about the godfather of the video game industry, Nolan Bushnell.

The engineering student, puzzle-lover and game enthusiast went from fixing broken pinball machines to launching Atari Corp., a video game manufacturer, in the early '70s. Its first product was a little game called Pong that transfixed kids in suburban rec rooms across the country and led to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of video game sales.
June 10, 2008

Apple boss Steve Jobs has revealed the second generation of the company's much-lauded iPhone.

The announcement was made during Jobs' keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
June 10, 2008

ConnectYahoo harassment could backfire on IcahnInside the music industry's piracy battleVodafone will cut traditional home-phone costs by 40 per cent under a new local calling plan.

The saving was for the majority of New Zealanders on a standard Telecom anytime plan.
June 10, 2008