ORG opens debate on UK privacy rules

The Open Rights Group has opened a wiki page for people who wish to contribute to the debate around changes to the UK Data Protection Act (DPA). This week the Department of Constitutional Affairs published a consultation paper on proposals to increase custodial penalties for breaches of the DPA in order provide an 'appropriate and effective level of deterrent for those who seek to profit from the illegal trade in personal information'. The ORG wiki invites answers and subsequent edits (since it is a wiki) to the five questions posed in the consultation paper: Do you agree that custodial penalties should be available to the court when sentencing those who wilfully abuse personal data?; Do you agree that custodial penalties will be an effective deterrent?; Do you agree that the custodial penalties are of the right length?; What do you suggest should be the maximum custodial penalty?; Do you agree that a guideline issued by the Sentencing Guidelines Council is necessary for this offence in England and Wales? Responses will be submitted to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Baroness Ashton. ...more

Intel debuts 64-bit Pentiums

Intel has slipped out what is probably the biggest change in its mainstream product line in years. The new Pentium 4 600 series features a larger cache as well as adding in some power management facilities borrowed from its Centrino line of mobile processors. Most importantly, it is the first Pentium to support 64-bit processing. ...more

Apple lists universal apps

Apple has published a list of OS X applications that have been updated with universal binaries. Put simply, Universal apps contain two sets of code, one compatible with PowerPC Macs and the other with the new Intel-based machines. Apple is currently listing 705 and asking developers to submit any that may have been inadvertently excluded. ...more

DRM sucks up to a quarter of battery life

Digital rights management systems can significantly shorten the battery life of portable music players such as iPods, according to recent tests. The tests found that playing tracks protected by DRM on an iPod reduced battery life by eight per cent. The impact on other players was more marked: an 18 per cent decline on an The Archos Gmini 402 for example and 16 per cent on an iRiver U10 (although that does have a maximum 32-hour battery life when playing MP3s). ...more

PlayStation 2 to get DVD boost?

Sony has bought up the entire worldwide stock of the LSI chipset and will be probably be using them in the new UK and US machines. These chips are currently used in budget DVD players and it is thought that Sony is thinking of upgrading their US and UK PS2 machines. The Japanese PS2's were released with software decoding rather than a dedicated hardware playback solution. ...more