Triplesourced

It seems that it’s not only Microsoft that has seized on the cash making potential of the MP3 player (the Redmond giant launched its Zune player this week). A man has been sentenced to 32 months behind bars for cracking into ATM machines using an MP3 player, according to The Times . Maxwell Parsons, 41, and other gang members, used MP3 players to record data transmitted by free-standing ATM machines.

Strange as it sounds, the Sundance kid himself has cast some of his glow on the 3GSM Association. Redford’s Sundance Institute announced on Wednesday that it’s joining forces with GSMA to create the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project. Six independent film makers have been commissioned to create short films that will work on the very, very small screens (guess that rules out the stunning Western vistas from Butch Cassidy then). Seems Redford is a big fan of what he describes as the “fourth screen” after television, cinema, and computers. You can find out more here: http://www2.sundance.org/.

..And this time around it's not Matthew Broderick. The 1983 original saw Broderick, equipped with an IMSAI microcomputer, accidentally almost initiate World War III by finding a back-door into a military system. The dubiously titled latest outing, War Games 2: The dead Code (surely dead duck?) will star Matt Lanter of Commander in Chief fame (well semi-fame anyway). This time instead of computer trying to trigger thermonuclear war between the US and the Soviets, a rogue AI decides the entire human race is a terrorist threat. According to Empire.com, filming is due to start on the 20 Nov…we can hardly wait…actually we can probably wait quite a long time…eons in fact.

The PC maker has pledged to clean up its environmental act again – this time via a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. We’re not sure what the WWF actually brings to the sustainable IT party – surely they are all about preserving Polar Bear’s like the ones in Sunday night’s excellent BBC Planet Earth programme? But anyway some marketing bod in HP has obviously decided some of their green credentials will reflect favourable on the PC maker. HP has committed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions from its worldwide manufacturing facilities by 15 percent, from 2006 levels, by 2010. Given the fact that HP is probably planning modest expansion in that time – of say 15 percent – then by 2010 we’re probably looking at erm – well no carbon cuts at all – well done HP! Cutting carbon is a nice nebulous idea that makes for good marketing but is actually very hard to prove in reality – so no one can say you haven’t done it. Measuring the toxicity of hardware is a more exact science – which HP found to its cost recently. A Greenpeace report from September
– showed that HP's Pavilion dv4000 Series machine contained high levels of a number of chemicals in its components including Brominated Fire Retardants (PBDEs), which HP claims to have removed from its products years ago.

I am off to interview Jim Peters CTO of airline technology company SITA tomorrow. Will be interesting to pose some questions that frustrate me as a passenger - like why do airlines still insist on paper tickets and is letting people use mobile phones on a plane really a good idea? We should have something up from the interview later this week and maybe a news story sooner than that if they say anything juicy. The whole laptop Sony battery issue could be another interesting topic - why if they were dangerous to ban for a while were they not dangerous to ban forever? We will keep you posted.