Apple snubbed over free OS X offer to developing countries

Steve Jobs offered to provide free copies of OS X to a project that aims to supply $100 laptops to developing countries, but was turned down. The One Laptop Per Child charity instead opted for Red Hat Linux running on AMD processors, saying that they wanted the users to be able to tinker with the OS. 'We declined because it's not open source,' explained Dr Seymour Papert, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ...more

WebKit opens a Web Inspector palette

The WebKit Open Source Project has added a new Web Inspector palette to developer builds of WebKit, the system framework used by Apple's Safari as well as other browsers and applications. The inspector lets you browse the live DOM hierarchy in a compact window. It highlights the node on the page as it is selected in the hierarchy and lets users search for nodes by node name, id and CSS class name. ...more

Humans phased out by robots

New computer systems could see the end of two respectable professions. New Scientist reports about the mysterious-sounding Poseidon system, which will be used to save people from drowning. Using a series of cameras dotted around the swimming pool, the system detects whether a swimmer is getting into difficulty and alerts a human lifeguard. ...more

Anti-phishing technologies have no effect on spam

A security company has warned that technology touted to combat phishing attack and emails with spoofed addresses will have little effect on the war against spam. Technologies such as Sender ID and Sender Policy Framework are indeed an effective way of weeding out email that appears to be from one address but is in fact sent from elsewhere, says CipherTrust, but they have no mechanism to identify what messages are and are not spam. Indeed the company's latest finding reveal that spammers have taken to authentication technologies with gusto - registering their details to meet Sender Policy Framework requirements - and to such an extent that 34 per cent more spam email is getting past these authentication checks than legitimate email. ...more

IBM launches desktop range from $499

IBM has added new models to its NetVista range - the A21 and A21i - with models for as little as $499. While the A21 line up is aimed at the business market, with such niceties as one-button backup and the ability to easily swap user settings, files and folders between PCs, the A21i series has many of the same features of its business counterpart but is oriented at the consumer and small business user. This includes Access IBM, a keyboard button that takes you straight to the support site, which can run diagnostic tests and upgrade and repair the machine. ...more