MS, Samsung unveil Origami at last

After weeks of speculation, Microsoft and Samsung have unveiled the Origami device at the Cebit electronics show in Germany. MacWorld reports that the device is a handheld computer that falls somewhere between a tablet PC and a PDA, and runs a special edition of Windows XP.

The device measures about 15cm by 20cm, and is known officially as an ultra-mobile device. Samsung`s product, called the Q1, runs on a 900MHz Intel Celeron microprocessor and has 500MB of RAM.

It boasts wireless local area network, 802.11 A/G and Bluetooth connections, and uses touch-screen controls. It also runs an instant-on multimedia player.

A new "hack my Mac" challenge proved Apple`s Mac OS X might not be such a pushover, when the challenger`s Mac Mini survived a sustained barrage of attacks for the 38-hour duration of the contest, reports Techworld.com.

Dave Schroeder, an Apple systems engineer at the University of Wisconsin, launched the contest after an earlier contest that he felt was unfair.

In the latest contest, PC Pro reports that despite traffic that peaked at over 30Mbps, mostly comprising Web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks and scanning tools, and including two denial-of-service attacks, the Mac Mini was not breached and remained up throughout the test. The system received half a million requests, with 400 login attempts via ssh.

The European Commission has called for rapid action to harmonise rules and regulations for mobile television, saying Europe cannot wait until 2012 when sufficient radio spectrum will become available, reports Reuters.

EU Information Society commissioner Viviane Reding said at Cebit that decisions must be taken "in the coming 12 months".

"I am more and more convinced that we cannot wait until 2012 to deploy new services such as mobile TV on a large scale. We cannot afford to sleep on this. Actions are already well under way outside Europe. That is why we should act now to allocate at least some common European spectrum bandwidths for mobile TV," she said.

LG.Philips has taken the wraps off a 100-inch thin film transistor liquid crystal display panel, which the company claims is the largest in the world, says The Korea Times.

The model is about 1.5 times bigger than the previous biggest, the 82-inch product by Samsung Electronics.