Week in review: Hackers put heat on security

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Wider access to high-speed broadband means broad access to video. And in the world of video, CNN is snatching a page out of YouTube's book. CNN Exchange will be a page on the company's Web site that will feature user-submitted video, audio and articles. Video-sharing sites have become online warehouses for war footage from Lebanon, Iraq and Chechnya.

Where can busy people watch all those heart-wrenching videos? On their phones, of course. Verizon Wireless this week introduced LG Electronic' Chocolate handset to U.S. shores, offering video and music features it hopes digital-media junkies will find tasty.

The phone has extensive music and video capabilities tied to its V Cast media store, with a caveat: V Cast service is compatible only with PCs running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10.

Verizon Communications, meanwhile, plans to spend $20 billion over the next several years to build a fiber-optic network that reaches directly to the side of its customers' homes. Over that period, it expects to make access to the network, called Fios, Verizon's best hope of competing with cable companies, which are now offering voice services as part of a "triple play" bundle that also includes television service and Internet access.

Of course, there are many areas of the world where cable bundles aren't as important as, say, electricity. So two former Sun employees are using solar power to get Wi-Fi technology running where sources of electricity are unreliable. Their nonprofit organization, Green Wi-Fi, is trying to bring Internet access to schools in developing countries via cheap, solar-powered Wi-Fi networks, enabling them to gather information from around the world.

Connecting with the world, however, doesn't always bring what one might expect. In the United States, the Bush administration has asked a federal appeals court to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally opening its communication networks to surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit to proceed would endanger national security and possibly expose classified information, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal brief filed on Monday.

The GPL debate
A proposed patent provision in a revamped General Public License, which governs thousands of open-source projects, isn't sitting well at Hewlett-Packard, raising concerns that two competing versions of the license could survive.

GPL version 3 represents the Free Software Foundation's first explicit attempt to grapple with the thorny issue of software patents. But HP prefers version 2, arguing that the new one imposes disproportionate patent consequences for a company that distributes even a single copy of GPLv3 software carrying technology the company has patented.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission, in a unanimous decision announced Wednesday, found that Rambus monopolized the markets for four computer memory technologies, which eventually made their way into industry standards for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Microsoft managed to avoid FTC issues this week, dealing with internal issues instead. The software giant announced executive changes within its Platform and Services Division on Tuesday, and said it is restructuring the group to sharpen its technology vision and bolster its response to customers. The changes come amid worries about delays in getting Vista out the door by early 2007.

Under the latest plan, big businesses should have Vista by November, and the consumer delivery of Vista is set for January. But that's dependent on the operating system sticking to a tight schedule, with a near-final version needing to be ready this quarter. Some prominent bloggers are calling on the company to reschedule the release and to send out a Beta 3 version instead.

Meanwhile, the comany Microsoft deems as its biggest competitor, plans to spend $740 million in cash to acquire MRO Software, a company that builds applications for managing industrial equipment. IBM said it will incorporate the asset management tools into its Tivoli line of systems management software. MRO will operate as a business unit within Tivoli.

Big Blue, which has begun podcasting, also dramatically expanded a partnership to use Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processors in its servers, announcing on Tuesday a full-fledged server line geared for mainstream business use. The move gives AMD a more powerful ally during a time when Intel is trying hard to reverse market share losses.

AMD is still making strides in the server market at Intel's expense, as the larger company waits to see if a new processor can reverse its slide. AMD on Monday said it increased its share of the x86 server processor market to 25.9 percent. Intel now holds 72.9 percent of the overall market for x86 processors, while AMD has 21.6 percent.

Also of note
A settlement between Google and the Associated Press draws attention...InCard installs a password-generating chip into a credit card...Intel issued patches for flaws in its Centrino device drivers...Microsoft has 12 security bulletins in store for next Tuesday...Friendster has a new patent it could possibly use to sue MySpace...An ice-powered air conditioner could cut summer electrical bills...Sprint Nextel, Lenovo, Nortel Networks and Napster report earnings.