32427457
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined. It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.
The new company, referred to for the moment as Newco, will contain B&N’s digital business, as well as its College division. While Microsoft will take 17.6 percent, B&N will own 82.4 percent of the venture. And there is a legal twist to the deal, too: the two companies say they have definitely sorted out their patent litigation now: “Moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products,” the two write in the release below.
32423115
submission
suraj.sun writes:
More than a decade ago, Microsoft execs, led by Chairman Bill Gates, were touting a future where .Net coffee pots, bulletin boards, and refrigerator magnets would be part of homes where smart devices would communicate and interoperate. Microsoft hasn't given up on that dream. In 2010, Microsoft researchers published a white paper about their work on a HomeOS and a HomeStore — early concepts around a Microsoft Research-developed home-automation system. Those concepts have morphed into prototypes since then, based on a white paper, "An Operating System for the Home," (PDF) published this month on the Microsoft Research site.
The core of HomeOS is described in the white paper as "a kernel that is agnostic to the devices to which it provides access, allowing easy incorporation of new devices and applications. The HomeOS itself "runs on a dedicated computer in the home (e.g., the gateway) and does not require any modifications to commodity devices," the paper added. Microsoft has been testing HomeOS in 12 real homes over the past four to eight months, according to the latest updates. As is true with all Microsoft Research projects, there's no guarantee when and if HomeOS will be commercialized, or even be "adopted" by a Microsoft product group.
32416147
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has always vehemently denied bringing cheap foreign labour into Canada. Employers had to pay foreign temporary workers “the prevailing wage,” he pointed out. That indeed is what the rules said – until Wednesday, when Human Resources Minister Diane Finley quietly changed them. Employers will now be allowed to pay foreign temp workers 15 per cent less than the average wage.
Business leaders, eager to recruit low-cost workers abroad, were delighted. Immigrant support groups, already fighting to protect temporary foreign workers from exploitation, were heartsick. And labour leaders warned that the wage cut would bring down the pay scale for all workers and make it harder for Canadians to compete for jobs in their own country. When Canada introduced its temporary foreign worker program in 2002, the governing Liberals vowed never to adopt the European model route in which “guest workers” are paid less than nationals and treated as second-class residents.
32415569
submission
suraj.sun writes:
The Russian antivirus company Dr. Web report that the latest version of Flashback, the backdoor malware targeting Macs through a Java exploit, is using Twitter as a backup command and control network. Dr. Web was the first to report on the rapidly growing Flashback botnet—the largest recorded malware attack ever focused on Macs.
In an analysis of current variants of the malware, Dr. Web’s team found that the Trojan initially configured with a list of servers through which it can receive additional commands and configuration updates. If the malware doesn’t get a correct response from one of the control servers in its own internal generated list, it will search Twitter for posts containing a string of text generated from the current date, and look for a control server address embedded in the posts. “For example, some Trojan versions generate a string of the ‘rgdgkpshxeoa’ format for the date 04.13.2012,” the Dr. Web team wrote in their blog post. “If the Trojan manages to find aTwitter message containing bumpbegin and endbump tags enclosing a control server address, it will be used as a domain name.”
32396295
submission
suraj.sun writes:
The Ahe is reporting on, Microsoft and Apple being asked to defend their pricing policies at a federal parliamentary inquiry into why Australians pay far more for music and game downloads than overseas customers. Labor MPs hope publicity generated by challenging the companies will result in lower prices and put an end to local consumers being ''fleeced''. The Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy, has signed off on the inquiry, which will begin later this year, will also consider the pricing of software and other IT-related material.
The excuses overseas technology companies use to justify the higher prices, such as the small size of the Australian market, the cost of setting up support centres here and the imposition of local taxes and duties, were not acceptable to local customers, spokeswoman Ingrid Just said. The debate over pricing surfaced again last week when global software giant Adobe revealed Australians would pay up to $1400 more than US residents for the latest version of its Creative Suite software.
32364683
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Apple, the world’s most profitable technology company, doesn’t design iPhones here. It doesn’t run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn’t manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby. Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Braeburn Capital, an Apple subsidiary in Reno, Nev., manages and invests the company’s cash. Nevada has a corporate tax rate of zero, as opposed to the 8.84 percent levied in California, where Apple has its headquarters.
Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero. Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.
Without such tactics, Apple’s federal tax bill in the United States most likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year, according to a recent study by a former Treasury Department economist, Martin A. Sullivan. As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent. By comparison, Wal-Mart last year paid worldwide cash taxes of $5.9 billion on its booked profits of $24.4 billion, a tax rate of 24 percent, which is about average for non-tech companies.
32364389
submission
suraj.sun writes:
The Social Networking Online Protection Act, introduced by Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), would prohibit current or potential employers from demanding a username or password to a social networking account. "We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private," Engel said in a statement. "No one would feel comfortable going to a public place and giving out their username and passwords to total strangers. They should not be required to do so at work, at school, or while trying to obtain work or an education. This is a matter of personal privacy and makes sense in our digital world.”
The bill would apply the same prohibitions to colleges, universities, and K-12 schools. Facebook has already threatened legal action against organizations who require employees to reveal their Facebook passwords as policy. While Maryland was the first state to pass legislation, several states have taken up legislation to block the practice as well, following reports of the spread of the practice by the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times.
32353493
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Microsoft has been counted as a supporter of CISPA since the beginning. Now the company tells CNET any new law must allow "us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers" and protect "consumer privacy." Microsoft is no longer as enthusiastic about a controversial cybersecurity bill that would allow Internet and telecommunications companies to divulge confidential customer information to the National Security Agency. The U.S. House of Representatives approved CISPA by a 248 to 168 margin on Thursday, in spite of a presidential veto threat and warnings from some House members that the measure represented "Big Brother writ large."
Microsoft added that it wants to "ensure the final legislation helps to tackle the real threat of cybercrime while protecting consumer privacy." That's a noticeable change — albeit not a complete reversal — from Microsoft's position when CISPA was introduced in November 2011. To be sure, Microsoft's initial reaction to CISPA came before many of the privacy concerns had been raised. An anti-CISPA coalition letter (PDF) wasn't sent out until April 16, and a petition that garnered nearly 800,000 signatures wasn't set up until April 5.
What makes CISPA so controversial is a section saying that, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," companies may share information with Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, or other agencies. By including the word "notwithstanding," CISPA's drafters intended to make their legislation trump all existing federal and state laws, including ones dealing with wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy, and more.
32290217
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Political power has a similar effect on the brain to cocaine — and it's not surprising that, as the Leveson Inquiry shows, our political leaders are hooked on it, says Dr Ian Robertson. Democracy, the separation of judicial powers and the free press all evolved for essentially one purpose – to reduce the chance of leaders becoming power addicts. Power changes the brain triggering increased testosterone in both men and women. Testosterone and one of its by-products called 3-androstanediol, are addictive, largely because they increase dopamine in a part of the brain’s reward system called the nucleus accumbens. Cocaine has its effects through this system also, and by hijacking our brain’s reward system, it can give short-term extreme pleasure but leads to long-term addiction, with all that that entails. But too much power — and hence too much dopamine — can disrupt normal cognition and emotion, leading to gross errors of judgment and imperviousness to risk, not to mention huge egocentricity and lack of empathy for others.
32287889
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Microsoft quietly fixed a flaw in Hotmail's password reset system that allowed anyone to reset the password of any Hotmail account last Friday. The company was notified of the flaw, by researchers at Vulnerability Lab, on April 20th and responded with a fix within hours—but not until after widespread attacks, with the bug apparently spreading "like wild fire" in the hacking community.
Hotmail's password reset system uses a token system to ensure that only the account holder can reset their password — a link with the token is sent to an account linked to the Hotmail account — and clicking the link lets the account owner reset their password. However, the validation of these tokens isn't handled properly by Hotmail, allowing attackers to reset passwords of any account.
Initially hackers were offering to crack accounts for $20 a throw. However, the technique became publicly known and started to spread rapidly with Web and YouTube tutorials showing the technique popping up across the Arabic-speaking Internet.
32286911
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.
The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf—scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.
Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for "cybersecurity" or "national security" purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.
Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a "cybersecurity crime". Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all.
32285383
submission
suraj.sun writes:
On Monday Dolby Laboratories announced Dolby Atmos, a new audio platform, the company claims, that will change the experience of sound in entertainment with its more natural and realistic sound-field, which could transports people into the story with a lifelike, sensory experience. For the first time, Dolby Atmos introduces a hybrid approach to mixing and directs sound as dynamic objects that envelop the listener, in combination with channels for playback, with its ability to transmit up to 128 simultaneous and lossless audio inputs (channels or objects), and the ability to render from 5.1 all the way up to 64 discrete, precisely positionined, and individually amplified speaker feeds. “Dolby Atmos brings a completely new dimension to the motion picture soundtrack. To be able to move sounds anywhere in the theatre, and to also create environments that surround and excite an audience, is extremely powerful,” said Mike Hedges, the Academy Award–winning re-recording mixer at Park Road Post Production. Initially, Dolby will be focused on installing Dolby Atmos in a select number of premium global locations in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan, with plans for a larger rollout of Dolby Atmos in 2013.
32277671
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Signaling the gravity of the government's antitrust investigation against Google, the Federal Trade Commission has hired a prominent Washington litigator — Beth Wilkinson, who successfully argued for the government in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh case — to serve as its outside counsel in the case, the first time in at least five years the federal regulatory agency has taken such a step.
"This means, to me, that the FTC is quite serious about bringing a case against Google," said Samuel Miller, a San Francisco antitrust lawyer who was recruited by the Justice Department in 1993 to prosecute its first antitrust case against Microsoft. "The antitrust authorities don't bring in outside counsel unless they are very serious about bringing a case."
The F.T.C. has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Google’s search business for over a year. Mr. Leibowitz cautioned that this did not necessarily mean the F.T.C. would sue Google.
32244091
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Just as the House Rules Committee convened to weigh amendments to the measure, spearheaded by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), the administration released a formal policy statement that raised the stakes: It said President Barack Obama’s advisers would recommend that the president veto the bill unless there are significant changes to boost privacy protections, add new protections on users' personal information and alter its liability protection language. "This is just, I think, them kicking up some dust," said Rogers, who is backing a number of amendments that would try to address many of the issues raised by the administration.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it agreed with the Obama administration. “The White House is right: CISPA threatens fundamental notions of privacy and without a substantial rewrite should be voted down,” Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in an e-mail. “The Obama administration has endorsed the Patriot Act and other wiretapping laws. It speaks volumes that even they oppose this bill as a bridge too far.” Asked about Obama’s veto threat, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters today that the president wants to put “the government in charge of the Internet.”
32202185
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Nokia and HTC won a key ruling by the European Patent Office that a patent used by German firm IPCom in legal battles against the two mobile phonemakers was invalid in its current form. Nokia said it meant it could continue selling products in Germany. IPCom acquired Bosch's mobile telephony patent portfolio, which was created between the mid-1980s and 2000 and includes about 160 patent families worldwide. Those patents, including 100A, include some key technologies for the wireless industry.
Several top phone makers have signed a licensing deal with IPCom, but HTC and Nokia have challenged IPCom's patents in courts across Europe.
