Microsoft's effort to document protocols for DOJ hits a snag
The challenge continues for Microsoft to produce documentation about Windows' communications protocols that others outside the company can understand. Two weeks ago, the Justice Dept.'s team started making its own suggestions.
According to the US Dept. of Justice's regular Joint Status Report on the ongoing effort by Microsoft to meet the commitments of its settlement with the government, the Technical Committee (TC) overseeing the project for documenting communications protocols has not been entirely pleased with the quality of Microsoft's work thus far. It's not that Microsoft hasn't produced papers -- it has, and perhaps now that the count has reached the five-digit mark, parties may have stopped counting. It's that the work has been hard to understand, and now the TC is trying to help Microsoft by suggesting a new set of documentation templates based on what it considers to be approved industry standards.
DOJ unwilling to prosecute in private IP theft cases
Is the Justice Dept. unconcerned with everyday cases intellectual property theft, like the one profiled in the upcoming movie, Flash of Genius? No, it's just that there's not enough resources to go around, says a key DOJ official.
Bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this month before both houses of Congress would enable the President to appoint an "intellectual property czar," responsible for the enforcement of the nation's IP protection laws and answerable to the Executive Branch. But that would entail the creation of a major new wing of the Dept. of Justice whose responsibility would be to prosecute even the smallest cases, including instances that have typically been tried in civil court up to now.
ISPs to Congress: Let us regulate our own privacy practices
Broadband service providers are perfectly capable of setting up appropriate safeguards for users who may be targeted by behavioral ad platforms, said ISPs' executives this morning. It's the content providers we should be worried about.
It was an eerie setting on Capitol Hill this morning, as representatives from three of the nation's largest broadband ISPs -- Verizon, Time Warner, and AT&T (Comcast was conspicuously absent) -- plus the founder of Public Knowledge, noticed the hearing taking place in front of them very nearly suggested the absence of a quorum. Not that the subject of ad targeting methodologies for broadband users wasn't important. But with the Senate Commerce Committee's own chairman absent from this morning's hearing, and with only three senators present at any one time -- the bare minimum -- you definitely got the feeling something bigger was going on next door.
Congress may see the glass half-empty on DTV transition
Suppose only a small percentage of the American population finds themselves without television service come next February, and either don't know why or aren't sure what to do. Are federal, state, and local governments ready for them?
After a pair of congressional hearings in recent days where witnesses gave generally favorable reports on the status of the nation's transition to digital television -- still slated for next February 17 -- leaders there are still putting out the word that a crisis of misinformation may not be avoided in time.
Yahoo denies any new developments with Time Warner over AOL
With Microsoft out of the picture in any future deal with Yahoo, there has been speculation over someone else potentially filling the void. But a news story yesterday made it seem like that void was being filled, and Yahoo is disputing it.
Late yesterday, following a meeting of Yahoo's board of directors, the Financial Times published a story citing someone its reporter called "one person familiar with the company's thinking" as revealing that some type of hurdle had been cleared precluding a future deal between Yahoo and Time Warner over the latter's AOL unit.
Royalties breakthrough: RIAA and media agree on streaming rates
While legislation before Congress languishes in the midst of two wars and now a severe financial crisis, the major parties in the online music royalties debate have actually come to an agreement on compromise rates.
In a surprise announcement that could actually signal the beginning of the end of the long-running streaming media royalties debacle, representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America state they have reached an agreement with DiMA, the leading trade group representing digital media broadcasters. That agreement could cap the music royalties that streaming broadcasters pay to 10.5 percent of revenue.
Sony's latest lightweights will have SSDs, play and burn Blu-ray
The smallest Sony devices to show Blu-ray movies on big and small screens aren't PlayStations. They're super-small, lightweight Vaio computers, and like a certain banned iPhone app, they have "I Am Rich" written all over them.
There have been, and continue to be, two classes of customers for small computer devices. One class is interested in making functionality portable enough to achieve true data mobility, and it's that class to which the latest rounds of MID and netbook form factor computers are being pitched. The other is interested in seeing how much hardware can be shrunken down to a minimum form factor -- oftentimes without regard to cost -- and it's that second class to whom Sony is playing today, with its latest miniaturized Vaio notebooks, slated to roll off the assembly lines this fall.
HP to absorb Voodoo PC's catalog, re-org appears likely
Is one of North America's most prolific builders of ostentatious, custom PCs going the way of the Atari ST and the Exidy Sorcerer? The man in charge says no, but the way it's being said has not been filling folks with confidence.
A blog post from the usually forthright Rahul Sood, the CTO of the Voodoo business unit that was incorporated into Hewlett-Packard last year, is being interpreted by the hardware enthusiast community as a thinly-veiled, euphemistic notice of deep setbacks at the former VooDoo PC, and what had up until recently been called the Voodoo Business Unit.
Verizon Wireless offers alternative month-to-month contract
In a further gamble that its quality of service is enough to sustain its customer base, VZW this morning announced it will let customers pay for service month-to-month if they're also willing to pay full price for their phones.
Pre-paid contracts typically let customers acquire the phones they want for little or no up-front payment, and usually the best phones are paired with the longest contracts. Now, Verizon Wireless will let customers of its Nationwide Voice and Data plans either bring their own CDMA equipment -- which was an option expected since its historic announcement last November -- or purchase phones from VZW at full price.
Nokia denies UK ship date report on 'Comes With Music'
A spokesperson for Nokia flatly denied a report from Reuters which claimed to have cited UK retailer Carphone Warehouse as having announced the first Nokia 5310 "Comes With Music" phone would premiere in about three weeks.
"The sales start for Nokia Comes With Music has not yet been finalized, and the date that was posted on the Carphone Warehouse Web site was in error," Nokia spokesperson Victoria Dickson told BetaNews early this afternoon. "We're delighted with the level of interest in the launch of Comes With Music, and will confirm further details in due course."
Windows HPC Server 2008 ships: Is this a 'cloud' alternative?
"Cloud computing" is so attractive: it enables enterprises to outsource their IT by offloading their logic onto third parties' bigger hosts and save costs. But if businesses could own their logic and still cut costs, would they do it instead?
There's already a cottage industry whose foundation is the presumption that corporate data centers will be so inclined to outsource their data processing to so-called "cloud computing" services, such as the one developed by Amazon, that expenditures for high performance servers could go down in coming years. CIOs are already estimating they can save their enterprises as much as $300,000 per year annually, on average, in hiring expenses for IT personnel, if they're able to shift their resources to low-cost hosting services who'll maintain their infrastructure and their applications for them.
Class action lawsuit charges President, NSA with illegal surveillance
There's been no dispute that the National Security Agency cooperated with AT&T in a surveillance operation from its West Coast office. But its legal basis has been a Presidential order, and a new lawsuit questions whether that is enough.
In a lawsuit that would most likely convene after President Bush has left office next year, a number of AT&T phone and Internet customers have sued the President personally, along with the National Security Agency and members of the President's intelligence community since 2001. Citing evidence brought to light last year by former AT&T network technician Mark Klein, the suit alleges that AT&T was ordered by the President to cooperate with the NSA in illegal warrantless surveillance operations, in what has often been described as "the secret room on Folsom Street" in San Francisco.
Who needs hackers? Palin e-mail hack reveals obvious vulnerability
The tell-all autobiography of the person who broke into Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo address may not have much to say. Assuming his story checks out -- and it's looking likely that it will -- the method he used was all too easy.
Of the four technical possibilities that BetaNews speculated yesterday could be linked to the means by which someone hijacked the Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin this week, the actual method may have ended up being far simpler than we surmised.
'Wave 3' of Windows Live Writer reveals some loose ends
It's the latest test of the one component in Microsoft's online applications arsenal whose code could be leveraged for a more general purpose than blog publishing. Our tests show it lacks a few things Microsoft users would expect.
One of the revised components in Microsoft's latest "Wave 3" test for its Windows Live services is something we've mentioned before here in BetaNews: Windows Live Writer. Its name sounds deceptively like a general purpose word processor -- like the Write utility that comes with Windows -- and you might think that with a little tweaking, it could be.
USITC to investigate whether Wii violates month-old patent
Can a two-and-a-half-year-old game console infringe upon a company's IP portfolio that includes patents that are younger than the device itself -- including one that's only days old? A new case now tests a curious loophole.
The US International Trade Commission says it will formally investigate whether Nintendo's Wii game console violates Section 337 of the Tariff Act -- specifically, whether Nintendo is importing devices that infringe upon the intellectual property held by Hillcrest Labs. This after the licensing firm filed suit against Nintendo in US District Court in Maryland for infringing four patents, literally one day after the US Patent Office granted Hillcrest one of those patents.
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