Category: Sign of the Apocalypse

The same people who brought you Yahoo! China (legally) now bring you Apple Macintosh (illegally): Alibaba, the Hong Kong-based e-commerce company, is apparently selling PowerPC Mac G6 “clones,” worldwide, with free global shipping, for US$499. Not sold yet? They’ll even throw in Photoshop CS2 and MS Office 2004. For you, habibi, Alibaba makes a deal you can’t refuse!

Why do I feel like my credit card’s going to have a hard time releasing itself from my wallet?

[Via Engadget]

Epson continues to win friends and influence consumers with their ongoing legal maneuvers, this time, “convincing” e-tailers in Europe to stop selling third-party ink cartridges, you know, the carts that don’t cost nearly as much as the printer itself and frequently last longer than the Epson brand. This comes on the heels of the Japanese company filing a complaint with the International Trade Commission against U.S.. sellers of ink, citing I.P. violations, and their recent less-than-resonable class action settlement deal. So, stock up on fair trade, America, while you still can.

Another one from the “How Do You Sleep at Night?” File: Skype has joined the growing list of companies that are more than happy to engage in censorship for China as long as it plumps up their bottom line. According to a piece in the Financial Times, Skype has admitted that Tom Online, its partner company in China, has been censoring text messages with words like “Falun Gong” (the banned religious group) and “Dalai Lama” in them. Says Niklas Zennström, Skypes’s CEO:

“I may like or not like the laws and regulations to operate businesses in the UK or Germany or the US, but if I do business there I choose to comply with those laws and regulations. I can try to lobby to change them, but I need to comply with them. China in that way is not different.”

Well DO let us know just as soon as you and Yahoo and Google and Microsoft start lobbying to change China’s laws and regulations and how you intend to do that while you’re pigging out in their tremendous trough.

According to patent sleuth Barry Fox, in his current Invention column in New Scientist, Philips has filed a patent for a technology that would make it impossible to fast-forward through commercials on digital video recorders. Basically, the scheme would embed flags in the broadcast signal which would disable user-control of the recorded/buffered content during commercial blocks. The scheme also includes a provision for a paid opt-out feature where viewers could pay a fee to regain control of their signal. Gee thanks, Philips. Philips? What do they make, again? I can’t think of the last time I bought a Philips anything. Maybe this is why. I don’t like the way these people think.

You can peruse the patent aquí.

Todd over at Geek News Central claims that he bought a new Dell computer recently and was asked by the SalesDroid if he wanted to pay an additional $20 to have them remove all of the junk software the manufacturer loads on. I love the twisted logic of this: Buy this product and then pay me more to take some of the product back. Luckily, you don’t have to pay a Blue Shirt at Best Buy to remove all of those unwanted wares. The Dell De-Crapifier is a utility created by a frustrated user to automate this inevitable purging. Unfortunately, it only works with Dells and you have to have the automation and scripting tool AutoIT installed.

Hey, guess what? Funny story. You know those new Macs with the Intel inside? Well, turns out there’s a Trusted Computing chip inside, too. Bonus, dood! You remember Trusted Computing, the controversial computer security/digital rights technology? Seems Intel/Apple may have forgotten to tell some folks, like you and me, about the inclusion, in case we balked at a box with such , so far, untrustworthy, tech inside.

Did you happen to see that dim bulb on American Inventor whose bright idea was “skins” for your car, outfits you could put on it to fit your mood or activity? Those otherwise equally-neuronally-challenged judges couldn’t get him out of the building fast enough.

Well, who would want such a viral idea to go to waste? Vincon of Spain sells similar temporary skins for your home appliances. Don’t worry, we don’t get it either. Do you really want your washing machine to look like its made out of giant mutant coffee beans? And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had too much crummy luck with appliances to want to totemically associate lemons with any of them.

[Via Techie Diva]

I nearly did a spit take of Java juice all over my keyboard this morning when I read that Apple has released a public beta of Boot Camp, their upcoming application (which’ll be built into Leopard) for dual booting OS X and Windows XP. Check it out.

If you want to know how much I loath all of the iGuys, iKitties, and other cutsey-puke iPod “buddies,” I’d rather carry my Pod in one of these iGoatse cases than any similar accessory.

So, what is a goatse? You DO NOT want to know. No seriously. You really DON’T. Let’s just hope this was an April Fool’s prank.

[Via Cult of Mac]

(Gee) Thanks, Jay!

EWeek is reporting a new trojan horse ransomware attack. Called Cryzip, the malicious software likely arrives via an email attachment, though exact details are not yet known. Once in your (Windows) machine, Cryzip scoops up all of the Word, Excel, PDF, and JPG docs on your system, encrypts a copy in Zip format, deletes the originals, and provides details on how to pay the US$300 ransom to get your stuff back. So far, reports of the attack have not been widespread. If you need another reason to always back data onto a second, removable medium, this’d be one (and we’re not going to bother to remind you about not opening up even remotely suspicious attachments).

Thanks, Alberto!