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Books

Submission + - The Kindle Skews Amazon's 2011 Best-Seller List (beyond-black-friday.com) 1

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Amazon's released their list of 2011's best-selling books, revealing that 40% of the best-selling ebooks didn't even make it onto their list of the best-selling print books. The #1 and #2 best-selling ebooks of the year weren't even available in print editions, while four of the top 10 best-selling print books didn't make it into the top 100 best-selling ebooks. "It couldn't be more clear that Kindle owners are choosing their material from an entirely different universe of books," notes one Kindle site, which points out that five of the best-selling ebooks came from two million-selling ebook authors — Amanda Hocking and John Locke — who are still awaiting the release of their books in print. And five of Amazon's best-selling ebooks were Kindle-only "Singles," including a Stephen King short story which actually outsold another King novel that he'd released in both ebook and print formats. And Neal Stephenson's "Reamde" was Amazon's #99 best-selling print book of 2011, though it didn't even make it onto their list of the 100 best-selling ebooks of the year. "People who own Kindles are just reading different books than the people who buy printed books," reports the Kindle site, which adds "2011 may be remembered as the year that hundreds of new voices finally found their audiences.""
Android

Submission + - App Developers Betting On iOS Over Android (flurry.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: A study by Flurry Analytics shows that, despite Android making up 46.3% of U.S. smartphone subscriptions versus 28.1% for iOS, developer support for Android has declined by more than one-third in the last year. When asked, developers respond that they make up to four times as much money on iOS. Other concerns include Android fragmentation, the lack of store curation, and lower penetration of Google Checkout among Android users compared to iOS users, who are always payment enabled through their iTunes accounts.
Android

Submission + - FBI Admits Carrier IQ Used For Law Enforcement (muckrock.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: A FOIA request has revealed that the FBI is using Carrier IQ data for investigative purposes. In response to a request for documents related to accessing Carrier IQ information, the FBI replied that it did have files but could not release them due to possible interference with an ongoing investigation. This would seem to contradict earlier claims by researchers that Carrier IQ isn't logging data.
Television

Submission + - Study links sexual content on TV to teen pregnancy (cnn.com)

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "Sexual content on television is strongly associated with teen pregnancy, a new study shows. Researchers at the nonprofit organization RAND found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to television shows with sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who saw fewer programs of this kind over a period of three years."
Google

Submission + - Google deploys IPv6 for internal network (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: In a project that has taken longer than company engineers anticipated, Google is rolling out IPv6 across its entire internal employee network. Google network engineer Irena Nikolova discussed the company-wide implementation at the Usenix Large Installation System Administration conference, being held this week in Boston. From the experience, Google has learned that an IPv6 migration involves more than just updating the software and hardware. For early adopters, it requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. "We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported," the paper accompanying the presentation concluded.
Nintendo

Submission + - Miyamoto stepping down from current position, work (wired.com)

Submitted by
terrisus
terrisus writes: "Wired, in an interview with Shigeru Miyamoyo, has revealed that Miyamoto plans to step down from his current position with Nintendo, with Miyamoto saying "I'm not saying that I'm going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position."

"What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself" Miyamoto said. "Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small."

"Miyamoto said that he's hoping to start work on a project in 2012, and hopefully show the game off publicly within the year.""
United States

Submission + - RIAA Gets in Bed with Righthaven 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Steve Green reports that the RIAA and the Association of American Publishers have asked the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for permission to participate as "friends of the court" in one of Righthaven's copyright lawsuit appeals where a lower court ruled against Righthaven finding that the unauthorized posting of 100% of a Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports betting website was fair use — a ruling that could could haunt the RIAA and booksellers in their own copyright fights. In a request to file an "amici curiae" brief, attorneys for the RIAA and the AAP say permission of the court is needed because attorneys for the defendant in the appeal, Wayne Hoehn, have refused to agree to their participation. Saying the case involves "important questions related to the US Copyright Act and the U.S. Constitution," attorneys Steven Metalitz and J. Matthew Williams argue it was wrong to grant Hoehn a fair use victory over Righthaven because in the same ruling, Pro found Righthaven lacked standing to sue and that should have ended the case. "It is clear that the amicii are struggling against a present which seems hostile to their profits," writes Leric Goodman. "Amicii would prefer that they could prevent "infringement" of "their" works by threatening suit any time any part of a copyrighted work appeared on the net.""
Hardware

Submission + - Silicon-Free Molybdenite Microchips Developed (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Swiss team may have found an alternative to silicon microchips which could result in smaller, more flexible and less energy hungry processors. The Swiss team’s chip does not use silicon, butmolybdenite (MoS2) a dark-coloured, naturally occurring mineral that is able to be used in much thinner layers. Currently used as a strengthening agent in plastic, molybdenite isabundantin the natural word.

Submission + - US Senate Declares War On Citizens (newsvoice.se) 4

Submitted by
iONiUM
iONiUM writes: "In a stunning move, the US senate passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America. From the article, "This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a ”battleground” upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity."
Wired magazine is also reporting this story, with similar disgust: "Here’s the best thing that can be said about the new detention powers the Senate has tucked into next year’s defense bill: They don’t force the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial. They just let the military do that."
Good luck Americans. You're gonna need it."
Android

Submission + - Apple & Android Devices Overload ActiveSync in (cnn.com)

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "Just a few months after the New York City Dept. of Education shelled out over $1 million on iPads for teachers, the agency has stopped accepting new users on its Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync server as it is "operating near its resource limits" due to an influx of iOS and Android devices. A memo from the deputy CTO warned, "Our Exchange system is currently operating near its resource limits and in order to prevent Exchange from exceeding these limits, we need to take action to prevent any more of these devices from being configured to receive email. As of Thursday, November 10th no additional users will be allowed to receive email via NYCDOE's Exchange ActiveSync." Existing setups will continue to operate, and students will not be affected."

Submission + - Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclose (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Technology

Submission + - TV Ownership Declines 2

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: Every year, the estimated number of U.S. households owning TV sets goes up. Until now. This year, for the first time since 1970, tv ownership has gone down; by about 1%. TV ownership among the key adult 18-49 demo also declined even steeper, down 2.7 percent and percentage of homes without a TV is at the highest level since 1975. The reasons behind this appear to be online media content and the recession.
 
Businesses

Submission + - Patent Expires on Best Selling Drug of All Time

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The US patent has just expired on Lipitor, the best-selling drug of all time, as the first generic versions go on sale, marking the end of a brand that has dominated the drug industry, lowered the cholesterol of tens of millions of patients, and generated $10.7 billion last year in annual sales. But drug manufacturer Pfizer, dependent on Lipitor for almost one-fifth of the company’s revenue, does not intend to go down without a fight. Pfizer is employing unprecedented tactics to hold onto as many Lipitor prescriptions as it can with an aggressive marketing plan and forging deals with insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and patients to meet or beat the price of its generic replacements because even at the lower price, Pfizer has a huge profit margin because of the relatively low cost of materials for Lipitor. Some deals require pharmacies to reject prescriptions for low-cost generics and substitute a discounted name-brand Lipitor while other deals block generic makers from mail-order services that account for an estimated 40 percent of all Lipitor prescriptions. “Pfizer’s tactic of dressing up as a generics company is pulling the rug under the incentive system created to foster the development of generic drugs,” says attorney David A. Balto."

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