Real CEO acknowledges RealDVD will copy rentals

Update 9 p.m.: To include more on Glaser's comments about efforts to prevent RealDVD from being used to pirate movies.

SAN FRANCISCO--Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, acknowledged in federal court on Tuesday that his company's software, RealDVD, could be used to make unauthorized copies of DVD rentals.

But Glaser said that the company does all that it can to "steer people away from that," including limiting playback of copies to five separate machines. Moreover, he said the problem could be eliminated if the major movie studios helped create a way to identify a movie as a rental.

Glaser's testimony promises to be the dramatic highpoint in the dispute between Real and the Motion Pictures Association of America over RealDVD. The two parties presented their cases before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel.
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Macs to get Blu-ray?

Sometimes, information can be gleaned from the most unexpected sources. In the yet-to-be-released iTunes 8.2, Blu-ray was mentioned on the "About iTunes" splash screen.

For those not well-versed in the world of Apple computers, Mac machines currently do not support Blu-ray discs. Though you can install a third-party optical drive in the Mac Pro, you'll still need to boot into Windows to read Blu-ray media. However, if iTunes is going to allow ripping from these discs, we might finally see Macs and MacBooks with fully integrated Blu-ray support and drives.
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Microsoft tightens Windows 7 security for USB drives

In the wake of the Conficker worm spreading via removable storage devices among other methods, Microsoft said on Tuesday it is making a change to the way Windows 7 handles USB drives.

As a result of the change, most USB drives will not be able to automatically launch a program using a Windows feature known as AutoRun, Microsoft said in a post on its Security Research & Defense Blog.

So, if an infected USB drive is inserted on a machine then the AutoRun task will not be displayed, Microsoft said.

Fixed removable media, such as CDs and DVDs will still be able to use AutoRun. Also, some specialized "smart" USB flash drives such as those containing U3 software will still be able to appear as DVD drives, effectively allowing them to also use AutoRun, Microsoft cautioned.

The change will show up in the release candidate version of Windows 7 that is being released to developers this week and publicly on May 5.
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Moto Labs screens interactive display concept

A new touchscreen tabletop computer display brings together the unlikely combination of technologies popularized by Apple and Microsoft.

It's called the Scalable Multitouch display, and its touch technology is similar to the iPhone, but it would scale up from handheld device size to dimensions more like those of Microsoft's Surface. The prototype measures just 19 inches right now, but it aspires to cover an entire 50-inch tabletop one day.

The Scalable Multitouch has been in development at Moto Labs in San Francisco for the past two years, and on Tuesday the company released an updated video (below) as a peek of what it's working on.
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Averatec bids adieu to the old-fashioned desktop computer?

Some giants of the PC industry are just beginning to sell tiny and cheap Netbooks and all-in-one desktops, which have the monitor and processor in the same box.

But little-known Averatec, based in Orange County, California, but part of Korean parent company Tri Gem, has been at it for several years. So you'll have to pardon Averatec CEO Tae-Hyun "Tiger" Cho if he believes he has a few insights to share regarding this small but growing market.

Averatec's first all-in-one desktop was introduced in 2004. But the company's main business before jumping into Netbooks last year was making 12-inch ultraportable notebooks--when most were churning out 14- and 15-inch portables--and it was making them cheaply when the competition was charging hundreds more.
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