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Submission + - Facebook Fighting Its Property Tax Bill (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "Facebook recently opened a data center in rural Crook County, Oregon, and after being told to assess the center's value in terms of the "real and personal, tangible or intangible," the company was hit with a $390,000 property tax bill. Though local authorities are now backing off, Facebook is still fighting for a clarification of what exactly will be taxed. At heart is a question that should trouble anyone who runs a data center: is the value of the data on your servers, or of your brand itself, something that can or should be taxed?"
Piracy

Submission + - SOPA and PIPA: What Went Wrong (for the MPAA) (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "While most Internet denizens are celebrating the apparent defeat of the twin SOPA and PIPA bills in Congress, proponents of the legislation have been left licking their wounds and trying to figure out how a bill that seemed destined for passage suddenly lost its support. Grant Gross, a veteran reporter who's covered the intersection of tech and legislation for years, thinks that, among other mistakes, the MPAA, with former Senator Chris Dodd at its head, simply underestimated the Web."
Cellphones

Submission + - We Want Thin Gadgets -- And Thick Cases. Why? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "If there's one word that gadget-makers can't get into their marketing material enough, it's "thin." Based on their advertising, you'd think consumers would want their gadgetry to be as skinny as possible. But then there's also the fact that cases that make gadgets easier to hold — and, yes, thicker — are a huge money-making industry. What's the dynamic?"
Security

Submission + - College Discovers 12-Year-Old Virus Infection (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "The City College of San Francisco discovered a virus just after Thanksgiving that leads back through at least seven variants to an original infection in 1999. In the dozen years since, the virus may have pilfered the personal banking and financial data of 100,000 students and staff. 'We looked in the system and discovered these things were all over the place,' John Rizzo, president of the college's Board of Trustees, told the AP. Apparently to blame is a school culture that requires students to access porn sites to complete homework assignments while also not requiring anyone to change passwords."
Apple

Submission + - When a 'gentleman's agreement' is collusion (itworld.com)

Submitted by bdking
bdking writes: Recently released evidence compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice shows that a half-dozen Silicon Valley firms, including Apple, had illegal "no-poaching" agreements designed to avoid bidding wars for top talent, despite a 2010 settlement in which the companies admitted no wrongdoing and incurred no penalties.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook's Timeline Apps Are Beacon 2.0 (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "Remember Beacon, the Facebook advertising initiative that went down in a hail of privacy protests in late 2009? Well, as privacy blogger Dan Tynan points out, the array of Facebook Timeline apps announced today look an awful lot like Beacon 2.0. There have been some genuine privacy improvements over the original — and there's probably also been a definite shift in attitudes about sharing in the last 2+ years."
Cloud

Submission + - Linux Thrives On The Cloud And In The Data Center (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "We've all more or less given up on this year being the "year of the Linux desktop," but that shouldn't obscure the fact that Linux is thriving in ways few could have predicted in the early '00s. Two big arenas where Linux is king: the cloud servers bearing more and more of the industry's computing load, and doing the heavy lifting for so-called "big data" analytical installations."
Hardware

Submission + - Could Non-Volatile MRAM Replace DRAM? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "When you talk about how much RAM your computer has, you're talking about DRAM — dynamic memory that needs to be charged to maintain the data it stores. For years, researchers have been working on MRAM, which stores data magnetically and doesn't require constant charging. It's too expensive now for anything but very specialized uses, but in the not-so-distant future that could change."

Submission + - LightSquared Says GPS Tests Were Rigged (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Would-be cellular carrier LightSquared claims that the company's LTE network was set up to fail in GPS intereference tests. 'Makers of GPS (Global Positioning System) equipment put old and incomplete GPS receivers in the test so the results would show interference, under the cover of non-disclosure agreements that prevented the public and third parties from analyzing the process,' LightSquared executives said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning."
Blackberry

Submission + - Samsung's not going to buy RIM (not now, anyway) (itworld.com)

Submitted by bdking
bdking writes: Research in Motion reportedly is in talks with a number of companies regarding a sale, with Samsung as the top contender to buy the troubled BlackBerry maker, according to the Boy Genius Report. But BGR's sources say RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are jeopardizing a potential sale by grossly overvaluing the Canadian company.
Android

Submission + - Google Introduces, Then Yanks QR-Code Security (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "If typing your Google account password into a public computer makes you nervous, then Google had the answer to you: a login process that involved a QR code processed by your more secure Android phone. Note that I said 'had': the unannounced feature was pulled almost as soon as it went up. Hopefully it'll be back soon?"
Linux

Submission + - Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger (itworld.com)

Submitted by LinuxScribe
LinuxScribe writes: As predicted last September, Samsung has announced plans to merge Tizen with its own Bada platform to create a new mobile OS that will fit well on low- and high-end smartphones. Last year, Bada had more global phone deployments than Windows Phone 7. The merger means each Linux-based platform will have access to more native- and HTML5-based apps.

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