Global News Update: Tuesday, November 25, 2008

In today's podcast: FTC asks Supreme Court to review Rambus case; Giga-byte to sell M528 MID in Taiwan; and Intel, Micron produce 34nm NAND flash.

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a case in which the agency accused memory-maker Rambus of anticompetitive behavior in deceiving a standards-setting body. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in April threw out the FTC's case against Rambus, in which the agency accused the company of convincing industry groups to declare a standard for the memory used in PCs, servers, printers and cameras without admitting that it owned the patents to those technologies. The FTC Monday asked the Supreme Court to overturn that appellate decision.

Intel joined Taiwanese mobile phone service provider Chunghwa Telecom to launch Giga-byte Technology's M528 mobile Internet device on Monday in Taipei. The device, which runs a Linux OS, sports a 4.8-inch touchscreen, QWERTY keypad and 4G byte solid state drive (SSD), is just one of a few launched so far with an 800Mhz Intel Atom Z500 microprocessor inside. Chunghwa will begin offering the M528 to consumers in December for NT$12,900, or US$386, with a 2-year service package, the companies said. The first time users will be able to get their hands on an M528 will be Dec. 6 at an electronics show in Taipei. The device will be sold in Chunghwa stores throughout Taiwan starting from Dec. 22.

A company owned jointly by Intel and memory maker Micron Technology started mass producing NAND flash memory chips using tiny 34-nanometer technology. NAND flash memory is used to store songs, movies and more in iPods, iPhones and a range of other consumer electronics goods. The Intel-Micron joint venture, IM Flash Technologies, expects 50 percent of the chips at its factory in Lehi, Utah to be made using 34nm technology by the end of this year. The nanometer measurement describes the size of the smallest transistors and other parts that can be manufactured on a single chip.

Sirius XM Radio has quietly fixed a bug in its satellite radio system that provided a way for former subscribers to gain free access to the Sirius service since 2002, according to security vendor TippingPoint Technologies. The situation shines a light on what could become a new problem for the radio network, following the July merger of Sirius and XM: satellite piracy. Industry watchers say that with a combined audience of more than 18.5 million Sirius XM subscribers, pirates may now have the incentive they need to create illegal devices that can receive Sirius XM signals.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.