New & Noteworthy: Power Mac G4 a winner; Wireless Internet in hotels; Sub7 ported to Mac; more

Power Mac G4: best on performance and price Based on a comparison test, as reported on this web page, "the new PowerMac G4 Tower ends up squeaking by as the overall price-performance winner" when compared to similar systems from Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Sony and HP.

Wireless Internet in hotels The latest trend in hotel accommodations is to provide wireless Internet access. Imagine, being able to use your AirPort-equipped laptop from anywhere in the hotel. Cool!

Sub7 ported to Mac An article notes that the "infamous Sub7 Trojan horse" has been ported to the Mac. "This means that Mac OS users are now susceptible to the tool which allows a user to remotely take complete control of another machine." See this securemac.com page for more info.

AT&T's Natural Voices software AT&T's new commercial text-to-speech engine, Natural Voices, is being demoed from this web page. As stated in a New York Times article: "AT&T says that the software is so good at reproducing the sounds, inflections and intonations of a human voice that it can recreate voices and even bring the voices of long-dead celebrities back to life. The software, which turns printed text into synthesized speech, makes it possible for a company to use recordings of a person's voice to utter things that the person never actually said." As you might imagine, this raises such "sticky issues as who, for example, owns the rights to a celebrity's voice?"