AMD Expands Line of ATI FirePro Workstation GPUs

ATI's professional line gets filled out.

Professional graphics workers now have an entire new line of ATI FirePro graphics cards to choose from now. In addition to the FirePro V8800, which launched earlier this month at an 'affordable' $1,499, AMD has now expanded the family to include the ATI FirePro V7800, ATI FirePro V5800, ATI FirePro V4800, and ATI FirePro V3800 to fill different needs and budgets.

Like the rest of the current ATI GPU family, these FirePro cards support DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.0 and OpenCL along with ATI Eyefinity technology.

AMD also announced the ATI FirePro 2460 Multi-View, a low profile, quad display graphics solution designed for financial institutions. This graphic part sips power with an average board power consumption of 13W.

Network Admin Charged for Hacking City Network

A jury found a San Francisco network administrator guilty of denying the city computer services.

A San Francisco network administrator who refused to provide his boss the passwords to the city's FiberWAN was finally charged on Tuesday after a six month trial. The court charged 45-year-old Terry Childs with one felony count of denying computer services, and could face a maximum of five years in prison.

Childs refused to provide Richard Robinson--the chief operations officer for San Francisco's Department of Technology and Information Services--the required information, thus leaving the city without administrative control over the FiberWAN for a period of 12 days. The city was unable to retrieve emails, access the payroll, police records, search for information on jailed inmates, or perform other city network tasks.

During the trial, Childs' lawyers said "that he was a buttoned-down, security-obsessed administrator who believed he was simply doing his job." According to Computerworld, the jury didn't buy the argument, with one jurist saying after the trial that "being able to administer the FiberWAN services themselves is a service."

Wired reports that--when arrested back in July 2008--Childs' $5 million bail was set five times higher then most murder defendants' because the city was afraid he'd jump back onto the network, lock up the system, and erase the city's records. Assistant District Attorney Conrad del Rosario said that the city spent around $900,000 to "clean up the mess" caused by Child's alleged denial of service (which is against the law in California), however he didn't elaborate on the actual damages.

Apple Asked for Probe into Stolen iPhone 4G

Prosecutors have halted the examination of Jason Chen's computers pending discussions with Gizmodo's lawyers.

Over the last two weeks, the tech world has been closely following the story of Gizmodo and the iPhone 4G. Earlier this week, editor Jason Chen's house was raided by police and several computers, cameras, hard drives and an iPhone were taken from the premises.

Right now, everyone is trying to decide whether or not a blogger counts as a journalist and if so, should the same laws that protect journalists protect bloggers. These laws protect a journalist's workplace (in Chen's case, his home) from searches, but if the journalist engaged in illegal activity, these laws do not apply.

However, a lot of people are asking if Apple somehow had a hand in the fact that there's any investigation to begin with. An article in the San Jose Business Journal suggests that Apple was the one who requested the probe into the "lost" iPhone 4G.

The San Jose Business Journal yesterday cited officials who said the criminal investigation into the purported theft of the Apple prototype came at the request of Apple. The Business Journal goes on to say that officials have identified and interviewed the person who took the phone from the bar where Apple engineer Gray Powell lost it. Officials did not say whether or not the person who took it from the bar was the same person who sold it on to Gizmodo.

Right now, the situation is this: Jason Chen has hired a top criminal defense lawyer and prosecutors are said to be defending the raid on Chen's house. CNet reports that Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, said prosecutors had considered whether reporter shield laws applied to the search and seizure but decided to proceed after carefully reviewing the rules.

"My prosecutor who is handling it considered this issue right off the bat when it was being brought into him and had some good reasons why he and the judge felt the warrant was properly issued," Wagstaffe said.

Gawker maintains that the search warrant is invalid because Chen should be protected by journalist shield laws and prosecutors have voluntarily agreed not to search Chen's computers while discussing the matter with Gizmodo's lawyer.