Teenager claims iPod Touch jailbreak

A 13-year-old hacker claims to have developed code that would let you put third-party applications on an iPod Touch without having to take a computer science class, says News.com.

AriX sent a press release Sunday promoting iJailbreak, an automated programme that allows third-party applications to run on the iPod Touch.

It doesn`t work for the iPhone, and it`s only available for iPod Touch owners who are using Intel-based Macs.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the hard drive arm of the Japanese conglomerate, has made what it says is the world`s smallest read head for hard drives, says News.com.

And, if it comes out in 2011 as expected, the head will allow Hitachi to continue to increase the density of drives, says John Best, Hitachi`s CTO. Current top-of-the-line desktop drives hold a terabyte.

With the new, elegantly named current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive heads (CPP-GMR heads), drive makers will be able to come out with four-terabyte drives in 2011 and/or one-terabyte notebook drives.

With all three next-generation consoles in play, many are looking to this holiday season as a good indicator of the future of the console race. Looking to get a leg up on the competition, Microsoft and Sony have undergone much-publicised price jiggering and repackaging in recent months, to help lure frugal shoppers to their console, reports Gamespot.

However, that won`t be the case for Nintendo`s Wii. Nintendo senior marketing VP George Harrison said the Wii`s price isn`t budging, at least for now.

"We`ll stay at $249 for the foreseeable future. We are still selling everything we can make," he said. Of course, Harrison`s "foreseeable future" may be skewed, given that the long-time exec announced last month that he would be parting ways with Nintendo this December.

All the discussions about the discordant ways of open source software and patent law have become a lot less abstract, says News.com.

Companies called IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation sued Red Hat and Novell, claiming the top Linux sellers` software products infringe US patent 5 072 412, "user interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects", and two identically named patents.

The suit, in the US District Court in Eastern Texas, seeks damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting any further infringement.