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Music

Submission + - Apple's iTunes store having serious problems. (apple.com)

Submitted by rpax9000
rpax9000 writes: Apple's iTunes store is still accepting customers' money, but in many cases it will not allow customers to download what they have purchased. In some cases, customers are now going on their third day of being unable to download items they have already been charged for. Thus far, there is no public admission from Apple that there is a problem, although some support e-mails have admitted there is an issue with the store that should be resolved "in the next 24 hours" (as of 48 hours ago). Apple has gone so far as to lock a support forum thread with complaints from Windows users, which is ironic considering that they initially direct their users to the support forums to try to find help. A thread in the Mac iTunes Store forum, is still active for now.
Patents

Submission + - No more imports of "infringing" Qualcomm c (opinionjournal.com)

Submitted by rpax9000
rpax9000 writes: Is there going to be a shortage of cell phones due to a ruling by the US International Trade Commission? The ITC issued a ruling banning import of cell phones using chips that Broadcomm claims infringe upon their patents. The WSJ opinion article points out this is noteworthy due to the fact that the law under which the ITC is banning imports might be misapplied in this case — a patent dispute between two US companies. Perhaps the most interesting angle here is that it might be possible to apply international trade regulations in patent disputes due to the fact that so many items patented by US companies are produced outside the US and then imported back into the market.
Software

Submission + - CNBC Software Flaw Worth $1 Million?

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes: In the past few months, Jim Kraber became more than a little obsessed with CNBC's "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge." At the peak, the 42-year-old was spending 12 hours a day on the contest, using three computers in his Greenwich Village apartment to trade 1,600 different portfolios, all in an effort to win the $1 million grand prize. He even dropped his studies for the chartered financial analyst (CFA) exam, given once a year, so he could have more time for the financial news channel's game. He made it into the group of 20 finalists, but in mid-May, as the last round of trading opened, he noticed an unusual pattern in the picks of other contestants. One trader had a stream of near-perfect picks, consistently placing huge bets on shares that soared in after-hours trading. Kraber suspected the trader and perhaps others were getting help from someone who was changing their picks after the stocks' increases — and he quickly notified CNBC. "I went back and looked at his trades and thought, 'This is pretty much statistically impossible,'" says Kraber, who holds master's degrees in business and statistics from New York University. Kraber says CNBC rebuffed him at the time, but now it looks like he may have been right. Several contest participants have told BusinessWeek that there was a flaw in the design of the CNBC game that allowed certain players an unfair advantage. As many as four of the top contestants in the million-dollar contest may have exploited the flaw, according to the participants interviewed by BusinessWeek.
Google

Submission + - Privacy group accuses Google of smear campaign

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "One day after slapping Google with the lowest possible privacy ranking among 23 major Internet companies, non-profit Privacy International is accusing the company of launching a smear campaign to undermine the report, according to InfoWorld.

"London-based Privacy International (PI) has publicly accused the search behemoth of attempting to undermine the non-profit's report, saying Google suggested to the media that PI has a "conflict of interest regarding Microsoft." That conflict: a member of the PI advisory board works at Microsoft. PI maintains that it's still an objective group, that it has gone after MS and other companies in the past, and that Google is just chewing on sour grapes. (Also notable: Microsoft doesn't score all that well in the privacy ranking either.)"
Google

Submission + - Google Search Slowed Down by Vista

Submitted by Vengance Daemon
Vengance Daemon writes: The United States Justice Department has rejected an antitrust claim made by Google. A New York Times Article states that "...Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google's desktop search program." It then adds that a Justice Department "memo dismissing Google's claims, sent to state attorneys general around the nation, alarmed many of them...Some state officials said they believed that Google's complaint had merit...[and] the memo appears to have backfired. Prosecutors from several states said they intended to pursue the Google accusations with or without the federal government. In response, federal prosecutors are now discussing with the states whether the Justice Department will join them in pursuing the Google complaint." What an odd place to work the Justice Department must be these days.
Security

Submission + - OpenOffice Virus Found in Use (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Remember the 'SB/Badbunny-A' virus that wasn't in the wild yet? Well, according to Symantec, it is and it's not caring what platform you're running. The respective behaviors of the designated worm in the wild: "On Windows systems, it drops a file called drop.bad which is moved to the system.ini in the user's mIRC folder, while executing the Javascript virus badbunny.js that replicates to other files in the folder. On Apple Mac systems, the worm drops one of two Ruby script viruses in files called badbunny.rb and badbunnya.rb. On Linux systems, the worm drops both badbunny.py as an XChat script and badbunny.pl as a Perl virus.""
Republicans

Submission + - Congressman Orrin Hatch caught pirating software

Submitted by
Rocketship Underpant
Rocketship Underpant writes: "Orrin Hatch, the Congressman viewed by many as a shill for corporate copyright interests, recently stated that people who download copyrighted materials should have their computers destroyed as punishment. However, as Wired.com reports, Hatch's own website uses copyrighted software without permission — a Javascript menu system developed by a British company. Is Mr. Hatch accepting volunteers to go through his home and office destroying all his computers, or were his comments to Congress just a bunch of hypocritical hot air?"
Movies

The Pirate Bay To Create YouTube Competitor 232

Posted by kdawson from the torrential dept.
Jared writes "The Pirate Bay has confirmed that is working on a streaming video site with user-generated content. A spokesman said the site will be modeled after YouTube but there will be 'no censorship': The Pirate Bay 'will not be the moral police' and determine what content stays or goes as is oftentimes the case with YouTube. He added that 'the community will have to do that.'" The site will be at thevideobay.org, but nothing is up there for the public yet.

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