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Businesses

Submission + - China's Alibaba Interested In Buying Yahoo (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "Alibaba is a company that most Americans probably haven't heard of, but it's a hugely important Internet player in China, owning the Yahoo! China site as well as a host of other marketplace Websites. It's 40 percent owned by Yahoo, but now, in what seems a bit like a snake eating its own tail, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has declared his interest in buying the embattled Internet portal outright."
Open Source

Submission + - Sony Ericsson Helps Out FreeXperia Developers (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Smartphone maker Sony Ericsson has decided to work closely with developers creating custom Android ROM for devices in order to learn from them. The company said in a blog post that it has decided to support an open source developer group called ‘FreeXperia’, which creates custom Android ROMs based on the CyanogenMod for several Sony Ericsson phones like the Xperia ARC and Play. Sony Ericsson maintained that it does not approve some of the work carried out by independent developers but was keen to work with developers who were developing custom ROMs.
IT

Submission + - IT Inferno: The Nine Circles Of IT hell (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes us on a tour of the nine circles of IT hell, a place 'not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his Divine Comedy.' 'But here, in the data centers, conference rooms, and cubicles, the IT version of this inferno is no allegory. It is a very real test of every IT pro's sanity and soul,' Tynan writes. From IT limbo, to tech lust, to stakeholder gluttony, to tech-pro treachery, the IT inferno is not buried deep within the earth, it's just down the hall. 'Thankfully, as in Dante's poetic universe, there are ways to escape the nine circles of IT hell. But IT pro beware: You may have to face your own devils to do it. Shall we descend?'"

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 5, Insightful) 398

by readthemall (#36553276) Attached to: Who Killed the Netbook?
Exactly, every time I go to a shop at least 1/3 of the portable computers sold are netbooks. With prices about half of the cheapest 14"+ laptops they are very good choice in a poor European country, and perhaps in many other parts of the world. And unlike spartphones, netbooks are real computers that can be actively used for many hours both for creating and consuming content.
Piracy

Submission + - US ISPs, Big Content Reaching Antipiracy Agreement (cnet.com)

Submitted by Chaonici
Chaonici writes: The word on cnet is that an antipiracy agreement between a number of ISPs (including Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast) and the RIAA & MPAA is nearing completion. Under the agreement, ISPs will step up their responses to copyright infringement complaints against subscribers. If a subscriber accumulates enough complaints, the ISP can throttle their bandwidth, limit their Web access to only the top 200 websites, and/or require participation in a "copyright awareness" program that explains the rights of content creators. ISPs and rights holders will share the costs of the system. Ars Technica confirms the story with notes from an industry source, who mentions that the Obama administration is "generally supportive" of the agreement.

Submission + - Data-Mining Ban Struck Down by US Supreme Court (medpagetoday.com) 1

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: The Supreme Court struck down Sorrell vs IMS Health, a law banning data mining which has been in place since 2007. The court ruled that the data on medications prescribed by doctors is protected by the First Amendment and can be used for marketing by the pharmaceutical companies. This follows similar declarations in Maine and New Hamshire.
Cloud

Submission + - How do I scrub pirated music from my collection? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I tried out Google Music, and I liked it. Google made me swear that I won't uploading any "illegal" tracks, and apparently people fear Apple's iCloud turning into a honeypot for the RIAA. My music collection comprises about 90% "legal" tracks now--legal meaning tracks that I paid for--but I still have some old MP3s kicking around from the original Napster. Moreover, I have a lot of MP3s that I downloaded because I was too lazy to rip the CD version that I own.

I wanted to find a tool to scan my music to identify files that may be flagged as having been pirated by these cloud services; I thought such a tool would be free and easy to find. After all, my intent is to search my own computer for pirated music and to delete it--something that the RIAA wants the government to force you to do. But endless re-phrasing on Google leads to nothing but instructions for how to obtain pirated music.

Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?
Businesses

Submission + - ICANN Domain Expansion Could Increase Phishing (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: The ICANN board gave final approval to what some are calling “the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades” allowing the expansion of new TLDs. Some argue this ICANN initiative could force a land grab of domains by businesses to protect their company reputation. However, they aren’t the only ones who are likely to try to snag these new top level domains. There’s a very legitimate concern that cybercriminals could also seek these new domains to create legitimate looking websites using well-known brand names. These can then be used for phishing attacks or delivery of Trojan malware to unsuspecting visitors.

Submission + - FSF 25 years October 3, 1985 (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 25 years of the Free Software Foundation. On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgement or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution.
Advertising

Submission + - Senate Votes to Turn Down Volume on TV Commercials (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Ever since television caught on in the 1950s, the FCC has been getting complaints about blaring commercials but concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials. Now AP reports that the Senate has unanimously passed a bill to require television stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as the programs they interrupt using industry guidelines on how to process, measure and transmit audio in a uniform way. Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a co-sponsor, says it's time to stop the use of loud commercials to startle viewers into paying attention. "TV viewers should be able to watch their favorite programs without fear of losing their hearing when the show goes to a commercial." The House has already passed similar legislation so before the new measure becomes law, minor differences between the two versions have to be worked out when Congress returns to Washington after the November 2 election."

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