Ogg Vorbis sounds good

The oddly named Ogg Vorbis open source audio compression reached full status at the end of last week. The format, a competitor to the dominant MP3 audio format, allows developers to create audio hardware and software to encode or decode music files without royalties or distribution restrictions. While popular audio players such as Winamp already support the Ogg Vorbis format, it still has a long way to go to replace the MP3 format, despite the fact that it is widely considered to offer superior sound quality to that of MP3s. [More at TheRegister]

With wireless networks booming, wireless hackers are having a field day, often driving around town looking for open networks. Now IBM has released a self-diagnostic tool that monitors an 802.11 wireless network, looking for security problems and tracking down rogue users. Called Distributed Wireless Security Auditor, the lightweight process reports to a back-end server on a minute-by-minute basis. Running on Linux DWSA, it can accurately pinpoint the location of any rogue access points and enable network personnel to quickly find and fix or remove them, according to IBM. This is good news for companies that have in the past been victims of "drive-by" hacking activities.

The battle for mobility heated up this morning with the release of the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ processor. The processor, with QuantiSpeed architecture, is based on 0.13-micron technology and is immediately available in HP and Acer Europe mobile ranges. Because the range is built for mobile performance, the processor includes dynamic power management utilities and maker AMD promises that the end result is a cooler and quieter notebook, ideal for the serious road-warrior.

Sources: TheRegister, Reuters

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