32592379
submission
suraj.sun writes:
A class-action lawsuit against Apple accuses the tech giant of double billing customers for downloads made from the company’s iTunes Store. The lawsuit filed by New York resident Robert Herskowitz alleges that Apple charged him twice for purchasing a single pop song, “Whataya Want from Me?”
According to the lawsuit, he immediately contacted Apple and informed them about the double-billing snafu. The next day, Herskowitz received Apple’s ‘personal response.’ The company refused to make things right by fixing the double billing error, citing its Terms of Service (‘TOS’):
Your request for a refund for “Whataya Want from Me” was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches App1e’s refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.
32591869
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Rand Paul has a reform plan for the Transportation Security Administration: Scrap the whole thing. A personal message from Paul (R-Ky.) came atop emails this week from the Campaign for Liberty Vice President Matt Hawes, asking for readers to sign a petition in support of Paul’s “End the TSA” bill. A Paul spokeswoman said that legislation is being finalized next week.
“Every inch of our person has become fair game for government thugs posing as ‘security’ as we travel around the country. Senator Rand Paul has a plan to do away with the TSA for good, but he needs our help,” reads the petition, which also asks signers to “chip in a contribution to help C4L mobilize liberty activists across America to turn the heat up on Congress and end the TSA's abuse of our rights.”
“The American people shouldn’t be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane. As you may have heard, I have some personal experience with this, and I’ve vowed to lead the charge to fight back,” Paul wrote at the top of a C4L fundraising pitch, according to blogs that received the email. “Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pressure Congress to act now and restore our liberty. It’s time to END the TSA and get the government’s hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers.”
32590689
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Russia threatens to use "destructive force pre-emptively" on US missile defence system based in Central Europe:
BBC:
Russia says it is prepared to use "destructive force pre-emptively" if the US goes ahead with controversial plans for a missile defence system based in Central Europe. The warning came after the Russian defence minister said talks on missile defence were nearing a dead end. Moscow fears that missile interceptors would be a threat to Russia's security. But the US and Nato say they are intended to protect against attacks from Iran or North Korea. "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," chief of the Russian defence staff Gen Nikolai Makarov said.
President Barack Obama, who succeeded Mr Bush in the White House in 2008, scrapped plans for a network of bases spread across Poland and the Czech Republic with the capacity to intercept long-range missiles. But in 2010, the US signed an agreement with Poland to use an old airstrip at Redzikowo, near the Baltic coast, as a missile defence base.
32565027
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Microsoft’s Biggest Cloud Deployment: 7.5 Mil Students & Faculty at 10,000 Institutes Across India:
In an ambitious plan Microsoft is rolling out a set of cloud apps to 7.5 million students and faculty members at 10,000 institutes across the India for India’s body for technical schools, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). These students anticipate becoming users of Microsoft’s Live@edu, a set of apps that includes e-mail and calendars with a 10GB inbox, 25GB of file storage, document sharing, instant messaging and video chat. Microsoft says Live@edu already has about 22 million users. What’s missing from the storyline? How such a large installation will take place. What are the realities and challenges behind “the largest cloud deployment ever”?
“The two largest issues are concurrent requests and cooling. In order to handle concurrent requests Microsoft will most likely need to use a two-tier server architecture that requires two servers for each request: one to process the request and one to serve the data,” says the network consultant Nick McElhinney of MacTech Solutions. Shriram Natarajan of software developer Persistent Systems, pointed out geography and access concerns and the issue of availability. “With the user population so widespread and presumably using a variety of access networks, it’s going to be a challenge to ensure uniformity of access,” Natarajan said.
While Dave Laurello, CEO of Stratus Technologies said, “If ever there was the perfect cloud deployment this could be it, with its massive consumer base using a constant, static application set that’s not mission-critical.” With an application this large, there will be the challenge of supporting high availability. “High availability deployments are tricky to coordinate because you need to handle things like load balancer configuration and update certain groups of servers at a time. Because deploying a multi-component system to support 7.5 million users can’t rely on any manual steps it must be automated,” says XebiaLabs’ Phillips.
32563325
submission
suraj.sun writes:
The filesharing website The Pirate Bay has been blocked to millions of UK internet users following a high court ruling earlier this week. Customers of the country's second-biggest internet service provider, Virgin Media, were on Wednesday denied access to site. Other internet providers, including BT and Sky, are expected to follow suit within weeks. Virgin Media has 21.5% of the market share, behind BT with 27.5%. The provider said in a statement: "Virgin Media has received an order from the courts requiring it to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to help protect against copyright infringement.
32541621
submission
suraj.sun writes:
In a blog post, Steven Sinofsky, and Chris Jones details the cloud services integration that will be featured in Windows 8 and Windows Phone and will serve as an update to Microsoft's Windows Live platform, which has not met Microsoft's expectations of "a truly connected experience." At the forefront of the company's cloud services will be a Microsoft account, which creates an identity to be used across Microsoft services, from the Xbox to SkyDrive and beyond. Microsoft accounts were previously known as Windows Live IDs. In Windows 8, a user's account settings will roam across PCs via the user's Microsoft account.
Windows 8 and Windows Phone will make use of the following Microsoft cloud services: Microsoft accounts, SkyDrive, Mail/Hotmail, Calendar, People, Messaging and Photos. According to Sinofsky, Windows Live services are currently used by more than 500 million users a month. Additionally, Hotmail has 350 million, Messenger has 300 million and SkyDrive has 130 million, active users.
32533785
submission
suraj.sun writes:
The Guardian is reporting on the thorny issue that emerges whenever a game involving in-app purchases shuts down. People who own the game have been reporting a pop-up message titled "Dear Rockers", which continues thus: "On May 31, Rock Band will no longer be playable on your device. Thanks for rocking out with us!" Yes, and thanks for spending money via in-app purchases on songs to play at 69p a time, too.
EA is also shutting down iOS social game Restaurant City: Gourmet Edition on 29 June and Outside EA, social games firm ngmoco – nowadays owned by Japanese social games company DeNA – is also closing one of its first ever freemium games on iOS, Eliminate. All this is a reminder that virtual items and currency are just that – virtual.
32532967
submission
suraj.sun writes:
According to TheVerge, Microsoft is planning to launch a $99 Xbox console package with a monthly subscription as early as next week. The company will offer the 4GB console with a Kinect sensor at its range of Microsoft Stores in the US, subsidized with a monthly cost of $15. We're told that the two-year subscription will provide access to the Xbox Live Gold service and possibly some additional streaming content from cable providers or sports package providers. Customers who sign-up for the deal will also be covered under a two-year warranty. With E3 2012 on the horizon, and Microsoft working on a "Woodstock" music service — it's clear that the company wants to ensure as many people as possible have an Xbox in their living rooms.
32532701
submission
dubme writes:
Ever wanted to play tic-tac-toe was a friend in another city? Now you can, thanks to a camera & projection system from Microsoft. It's called IllumiShare & looks like a desk top lamp.
The in-built cameras allow users to capture images of their desks or any other surface and project it onto friend's or colleague's via Skype.
The clever bit is the system can tell the difference between projected images and recorded ones, so it doesn't record the projections — which would otherwise cause a sort of video echo.
The system makes it possible to collaborate on physical objects — whether that be a tic-tac-toe grid or a whiteboard or whatever. It might also be used for tutors to remotely help schoolkids with their math homework.
32528401
submission
suraj.sun writes:
An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast's discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service, that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March, Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast's own video service would be exempted from the cable giant's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap. "These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth," he said. "If they start capping things, it gets difficult."
Sony isn't the first Comcast rival to complain about the bandwidth cap. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality. Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers.
32526517
submission
suraj.sun writes:
In a massive lawsuit campaign against HTC, RIM, and Viewsonic, Nokia has filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against HTC, and a host of lawsuits across the U.S. and Germany against RIM and Viewsonic, in addition to HTC. Nokia argues that the firms are violating a total of 45 patents. "Nokia proprietary innovations protected by these patents are being used by the companies to enable hardware capabilities such as dual function antennas, power management and multimode radios, as well as to enhance software features including application stores, multitasking, navigation, conversational message display, dynamic menus, data encryption and retrieval of email attachments on a mobile device," Nokia wrote in a statement today.
Although Nokia hasn't been the most litigious company in the mobile space, it has enforced its intellectual property in the past. Last year, in fact, the company inked a deal with Apple that saw Apple license a host of mobile patents from Nokia. The licensing deal came nearly two years after Nokia sued Apple for infringement.
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.
