Daily New Brief: Crossing the Border? Leave the Laptop!

Posted 04/30/2008 at 2:54pm | by Paul Lilly

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Crossing the Border? Leave the Laptop...

In a unanimous three-judge decision, a federal appeals court on Monday gave federal border agents free reign to snoop into your laptop, cell phone, and digital camera. The controversial decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were "an extension of our own memory" making them too personal for government searches. It remains unclear whether a traveler must help the government sift through digital data by providing login information. Read the ruling here.

Warez David M. Fish Going?

To jail. David M. Fish earlier this week was sentenced to 30 months in prision on criminal copyright infringement and circumvention charges. Prosecutors accused Fish of operating 'warez' sites offering thousands of copyright protected movies, music, and software titles for download. In what could be one of many more convictions to come, the California case is part of Operation Copycat, an investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office targeting online warez groups.

iPhone Price Cut Coming

Those holding out for a 3G capable iPhone may not have to wait much longer, but, that's not all late adopters can look forward to. According to a Forbes report citing "a person familiar with the strategy," when the 3G iPhone ships this summer, AT&T will slash the price by as much as $200, bringing the cost of entry down to just $199 with a two-year contract agreement. More of what's in store for the new iPhone here.

Phenom(enal) Headache

Responding to reports suggesting trouble when pairing high-end Phenom chips with select motherboards, AMD this week confirmed that some board suppliers are mismatching parts. The problem stems from trying to mate higher frequency 125W Phenom processors (9750 and 9850) with certain lower end 780G based motherboards. "We've never made claims that 780G motherboards are enthusiast-class motherboards," said Jake Whitman, an AMD spokesman.

Ubisoft Giveth DX10.1 and Taketh DX10.1 Away

Gamers were stoked to learn that the first DX10.1 title had not only emerged, but resulted in a sizeable performance difference, but Ubisoft says 'not so fast.' It's true that Assassin's Creed, an NVIDIA 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' title, showed up to a 20 percent improvement on DX10.1 capable systems, but Ubisoft has now said it plans to remove DX10.1 support to address concerns over alleged graphical glitches. Because only certain AMD/ATI videocards currently support DX10.1, conspiracy theories over Ubisoft's decision have been raised. Don your tinfoil hat and read more here.

3DMark Vantage

Here's one for the benchmarking enthusiasts: Futuremark has released 3DMark Vantage, a partial successor to 3DMark06 which introduces DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 support. That means XP users need not apply, nor anyone without a compatible videocard. Based on a completely new rendering engine, 3DMark Vantage includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, and several new feature tests.