Alpha-Data will release a USB 2.0 external 2.5-inch HDD case that can operate on dry cell batteries, the “Copy BANK Case”, in mid January 2005. Using the included battery box and 4 AA batteries, the case can be used independently as a portable HDD. The case supports hard disk drives up to 80GB in size.

The USB PC lock from Thanko is a dongle that plugs into an available USB port on your PC. When the accompanying transmitter moves more than 2 meters away, the computer is locked to prevent access by unauthorized users.

Sharp will manufacture and start shipment of a new mobile phone developed for the Vodafone Group having a common design worldwide. The Vodafone 902SH features a 2.4-inch high-contrast wide-viewing-angle Mobile Advanced Super View LCD and a 2.02-effective-megapixel CCD camera with auto focus and 2X optical zoom.

In its continuing trek across the Martian landscape, NASA’s Opportunity rover has come across its own heat shield, jettisoned during its descent to the surface of our red neighbor.

Dueling satellite radio companies ended the year with dueling boasts of significant subscriber increases. Boosted by increasing visibility and holiday sales of satellite radio devices, XM Satellite Radio said it surpassed its year-end goal of 3.1 million subscribers, set in February, after starting the year with 1.3 million subscribers, while Sirius Satellite Radio said it bested its own goal of 1 million subscribers.

After several years of bulking up to meet consumer demand for high-performance models with large screens, many notebooks will shed weight to dip below 7.5 pounds. New hardware, including an updated version of Intel’s Centrino chip bundle, will help usher in the era of slimmer portables, which aren’t expected to cost much more than heavier counterparts with equal components.

Sharp Japan has announced details of their first entry into the digital media adapter space with the introduction of the Sharp CE-MR01 Network Media Player, which will be available February 2005 for suggested retail price of 40,000 yen (about $385 USD). The CE-MR01 handles a variety of audio, video, and photo formats, but does not appear to be Windows Media Connect compatible.

The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately. The LAPD has been using two computers donated by their developer, Santa Monica-based Neven Vision, which wanted field-testing for its technology. The computers are still considered experimental.

The latest version of the Santy worm poses an elevated risk to many Web sites built using the PHP scripting language. Early versions of the Santy worm exploited a specific bug in a bulletin-board software package called phpBB, and their attacks could be prevented by applying a patch to the software. However, the security flaw exploited by newer versions of the worm such as Santy.C or Santy.E is more general, and can occur anywhere a site designer has left the door open for the inclusion of arbitrary files into PHP scripts.

Leading nuclear scientists with top security clearances will gather next summer at a screening room east of San Francisco and witness the results of the greatest effort ever in supercomputing. Using a computer doing 360 trillion calculations a second, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab will simulate the explosion of an aging nuclear bomb in three dimensions.