cloning

Psystar, the controversial Florida company trying to sell so-called clones of Apple computers, says it doesn't have the money to fend off Apple's legal dogs. But with the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection petition filed last week, it looks like Psystar could have minimized the damages it may have to pay Apple.

The bankruptcy petition filed last week shows that Psystar, the maker of the Open Computer, a Mac clone, is more than $250,000 in debt, due to poor sales. Most of the debt is owed to shipping companies, PC parts makers, and more importantly, its … Read more

This post was updated at 10:45 a.m. PDT with information from court filings.

Psystar, maker of the the Open Computer, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The papers were filed in a Florida federal court Thursday. Psystar is more than $250,000 in debt, according to the bankruptcy petition, owed mostly to shipping companies, the IRS, and the law firm Carr & Farrell.

In the filing, Psystar pins its financial mess on the poor economy.

"Debtor sales have been greatly affected by the decrease in consumer spending. The financial crisis has also caused creditors to tighten up their … Read more

RussianMac is the latest company to release a Mac clone and test Apple's resolve to stop companies from selling its operating system.

On its Web site, RussianMac says that a full version of Mac OS X Leopard comes pre-installed on its computers. The company also confirms that the operating system is able to receive automatic system updates from Apple once installed.

This is where Apple seems to have the clone makers over a barrel. Apple's Mac OS X End User License Agreement (EULA) clearly forbids anyone from installing the software on hardware not sold by Apple. This effectively … Read more

A federal judge is letting Mac clone maker Psystar amend its legal defense against Apple.

Psystar was delivered a blow in November, when Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court in Northern California dismissed Psystar's antitrust claims against the Cupertino, Calif.-based Mac maker. The antitrust suit was a response to a copyright and trademark infringement suit Apple filed in July against Psystar, whose OpenComputers are designed to run the Mac OS X operating system.

In its amended complaint, Psystar accuses Apple of copyright misuse, as well as unfair competition violations based on its alleged copyright misuse. … Read more

The FBI is looking for suspects caught on video cameras who allegedly used cloned payroll debit cards to withdraw money from ATMs in a multi-city crime spree late last year, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The FBI in Chicago released surveillance photos of two suspects at ATMs allegedly participating in a worldwide scam using cards created by hackers who breached the computer of RBS WorldPay, a firm in Atlanta that processes financial transactions. Money from 100 accounts was withdrawn during a 10-hour period on November 8, the report said.

Fox 5 News reported earlier this week that as much as $… Read more

Let's be clear: we don't know how to cook a Mammoth. But Natali would like to know, because apparently she eats her pets. That is not true at all. But what is true is Google turned the whole Internet into malware this weekend. And that we can tell you why. And will. So listen in.

Google flags whole Internet as malware http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/ http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/01/google-broke-the-internet-malware-detector-went-haywire.ars http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10153942-92.html

Gmail spam filters broken http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-mornings-spam-filter-issue.html… Read more

Today's show is full of zombies, Hollywood agents, hungry, overeating robots, and cloned dogs. What's not to love? We also find out a hidden truth about Natali that none of us suspected. It involves her ideal pet. In and among all that good stuff we'll even find time to talk about Net neutrality and ISP filtering. Word. (Thanks to Sam from Melbourne for today's podcast artwork!)

Putin-Dell slap down at Davos http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/28/news/companies/dell.davos.fortune/index.htm

Google fans Net … Read more

A company called EFi-X USA (no, that's not a throwaway droid from Empire Strikes Back) apparently plans to take on Mac clone maker Psystar by bypassing the consumer market and jumping straight to the power user demographic.

The machines it's prepping sound pretty nice, with a 3.8GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 1TB storage on 7200 rpm drives, a 150GB 10k rpm system drive, 4GB of included RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GTS GPU.

What's more, according to AppleInsider, the company is planning to let consumers customize their machines, meaning that if the current crop of … Read more

Monday, I wrote about the process of upgrading the hard disk on my Apple MacBook Pro, and the as-yet unsolved problem of migrating the 20GB Boot Camp partition on the old hard disk--along with its Windows Vista installation--to a 32GB partition on the new drive. (See "Another new hard disk...and an unsolved problem.")

Well, it's all working now. As I've always said about the Mac, most things are either easy or impossible...and this one turned out to be easy.

My thanks to my friend EDN senior technical editor Brian Dipert who provided half of … Read more