Following yesterday's very real news of Sony's legal woes regarding its controller design, another stick could potentially be tossed in the PlayStation 3's spokes in the form of copy-protection issues for the Blu-ray format, if a report from Japan turns out to be true. According to Japanese business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the console's launch could be pushed back into November in Japan. That means that, if Sony follows its previous strategy of staggering the launch by geographical region, the console wouldn't hit U.S. shores until sometime in 2007.

Sony is holding a press conference regarding the PS3 during the early morning hours tonight, and we'll pass along any and all launch-related info here tomorrow.

Source: GameSpot

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"Search is boring," says Esther Dyson at the PC Forum search panel. Dyson, author of Release 1.0 and moderator of PC Forum, says this to a panel of search experts from Yahoo, Google, the real estate search start-up Zillow, and search engine marking firm Efficient Frontier. Not surprisingly, nobody on the panel agrees.

The next stages in search, the panel says, are the following:

First, personalizing search. Google's PageRank is "circa 1998," and it reinforces the tyranny of Webmasters. The next step is user-refined search, which explains the rise of social bookmarking sites (Del.icio.us, Digg, and Wink).

Then, better user interfaces. Google's static Web pages are old-school. Compare to Microsoft's and Yahoo's desktop search applications--much more productive to use. Also, sites like Zillow offer specialized interfaces for subsets of knowledge. (Also mentioned: Riya, the photo search technology, and Google's own Google Earth.)

Unforeseen consequences: What is search being used for? An interesting tidbit from Dyson: she was looking at hiring somebody and wanted to know more about him. So she Zillowed his house to find out whether he owned and for how long and to get an estimate on his wealth.

The final frontier: Very little of human knowledge is indexed; Yahoo's Jeff Weiner estimates it at 0.0058 percent. The panel calls this the "dark matter" of information. So there's a lot of work left to do for Google, Yahoo, and others. There's another company at PC Forum working on this problem directly: Tacit software, with its new consumer-grade knowledge-mining product, Illumio.

In other words, search isn't boring at all.

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MS06-011: Important

Entitled "Permissive Windows Services DACLs Could Allow Elevation of Privilege," this security bulletin addresses a vulnerability that could allow escalation of services on affected systems. Affected versions of Windows include Windows XP SP1 and Windows Server 2003. No other versions of Windows are affected.

MS06-011: Critical

Entitled "Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution," this security bulletin addresses several vulnerabilities within Microsoft Excel and other Office applications that include Excel functionality. Affected versions include Microsoft Office 2000 (specifically Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Multilingual packs), Microsoft Office 2002 (specifically Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Multilingual packs), Microsoft Office 2003 (specifically Excel and Excel Viewer), Microsoft Works Suite 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, Microsoft Office X for Mac (specifically Excel for Mac), and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac (specifically Excel for Mac). Note: Microsoft Works users should use Microsoft Office Update to download the appropriate patches. In affected versions of Office, if the current user has administrative user rights, an attacker could use this vulnerability to take complete control of the client workstation and install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

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A federal judge says Google must turn over at least some search records that have been under federal subpoena. The government wants the search results as a way to shore up its defense of a federal antipornography law. Google wants the government to find its online porn elsewhere and not start down a slippery slope toward asking for individuals' search records. Plus, it doesn't like getting bossed around.

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Cingular is back to selling the Motorola Razr after halting sales last week, due to a glitch in the phone that caused unexpected hang-ups. Motorola has apparently shipped fixed versions to both Cingular and T-Mobile, and T-Mobile is expected to resume sales later this week. Verizon's CDMA Razrs were unaffected.

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Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and creator of the Creative Commons group, spoke this morning at the VON conference about the concept of Net neutrality and its importance to continual technological innovation. At first, I was baffled about why someone who is known for his passion for updating copyright law to reflect the realities of the digital age was speaking to a roomful of VoIP professionals. But it quickly became clear that what he was speaking about not only affects individuals who are creating and consuming content on the Internet, but also the people who are creating the technology.

By drawing parallels between the Internet and previous innovations such as radio and newspapers, Lessig illustrated how quickly technologies can go from being "unlocked," that is, inexpensive and commonly available for people to innovate, to "locked" or "relocked," where the technology and the means to create are owned by very few. He sees the potential for this to happen to the Internet as a real and possible threat, as the few large companies who currently own the physical infrastructure lobby for more control over the Internet and move to create a pushed-content format, much like today's corporate-owned newspapers and radio.

Lessig argues for what he calls a read-write Internet (as opposed to a read-only), where the innovation--whether applications or content--happens on the fringe of the network and the network itself serves as the "stupid" structure on which everything else hangs. In this read-write scenario, people not only consume, but also create, and more importantly, innovate. As Lessig himself addressed the content side of this situation (by focusing on updating copyright law), he challenged the developers in the room, the employees of the Vonages and Googles, and the as-yet undeveloped start-ups, to carry the fight on the technology side. Their ability to do business and innovate depends on Net neutrality. "What are you going to do?" he asked.

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At PC Forum 2006, one of the coolest new services I saw was Spot Runner, a company that aggregates unsold television ad spots and resells them to small, local businesses. Apparently it costs much, much less than you might think to buy a prime-time ad on a cable channel, such as the Outdoor Life Network, or even CNN: as little as $18 a spot. (Except in Manhattan, Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf says.)

Since the cost of television advertising also includes the production of the content itself, and since that can be prohibitively expensive, Spot Runner also has generic video ad templates that customers can use.

There's a full write-up on News.com.

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Stewart Baker, assistant director for policy for the Department of Homeland Security, speaking at the PC Forum conference on lessons learned from Katrina: The best way to handle disasters is personal responsibility. People driving away from hurricanes is what saves lives. We're bad at letting them know they need to bug out. Yet nearly everybody has a cell phone. So why aren't we adding SMS emergency alerts to the cellular system? Even when voice cell towers fail, Baker says, text messages may still get through. Hey, Stewart, you work at DHS. Make it happen.

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Lay down the gauntlet, Apple, and the geeks shall rise to the challenge. Or at least get whizzy with the Photoshop. But it does look like a user known as narf2006 may have successfully installed Windows XP on an Intel Mac. At least, he hasn't been viciously flamed out of existence for his posts claiming success, and that's some sort of victory.

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While no word has been officially released from either Dell or Alienware, we heard from a reliable source this morning that the purchase has indeed gone down. Speculation began on March 5 after a blog post by Voodoo PC CEO Rahul Sood. The new source, a contact at a high-end vendor who requested anonymity, claims that two of his company's suppliers confirmed that the deal has been done, and he also claims that his company has received an influx of resumes from Alienware employees.

An Alienware PR representative did not deny the claim but instead forwarded us a prewritten statement from the company that said: "At this time, Alienware will not comment on any speculative stories or rumors concerning Dell and Alienware's association. While we do believe that news stories like this are ultimately a strong positive reinforcement of the Alienware brand and the company's success, we will not comment on speculation or potential future events. As always, Alienware is committed to offering consumers and businesses with the best high-performance, innovative PC products on the market and we remain manically focused on that goal."

Dell did not return calls asking for comment.

Dell has taken a lot of flak in high-end system reviews over the past year or so due to its exclusive use of Intel processors. Alienware, however, currently sells AMD-based systems through its Aurora line of desktops. Owning a subsidiary that sells AMD-based systems could be an easier path for Dell toward reclaiming the performance crown, rather than incorporating Athlons or Semprons into its current Intel-exclusive assembly line. We'll presumably know more when the deal is officially announced, or whenever we learn the specifics of upcoming products.

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