Performers' coalition sends fish to broadcasters in royalties spat
In an indication that it is indeed possible to construct fences with a herring, a very public spat erupted this morning between representatives of musicians and broadcasters, with a can of fish as the proverbial bone of contention.
In an effort to maintain public attention in the debate over performance royalties paid annually by Internet radio services and not paid by terrestrial radio broadcasters, this morning, the musicFIRST coalition -- representing musicians and performers seeking royalties parity among multiple media -- sent National Association of Broadcasters President David Rehr a can of herring.
Amended FISA bill passed House, telco immunity left in
It appears likely that individuals believing their rights were violated by ISPs during anti-terrorism investigations, will not have much recourse against them after a sweeping House vote Friday that galvanized Republicans and split Democrats.
By a vote Friday afternoon of 293-129, with 13 not voting (including one-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul), new compromise legislation passed the US House of Representatives that would restrict the government's ability to conduct warrantless wiretaps on "non-United States persons" in the future. However, the means for those involved in such operations since 9/11/2001 to obtain legal immunity remains in the bill, thereby increasing its chances of being signed by President Bush should the Senate also pass the bill.
A fire drill couldn't clean out Yahoo's executive suites sooner
When Robert Bostock, Jerry Yang, and Susan Decker assert next August that they're a better team to lead their company than the one Carl Icahn is building instead, one question shareholders may ask by that time is, "What company?"
It is a staggering array of individuals -- many of them employees since the company's founding, some of them top acquisitions over the past few years -- who are now exiting Yahoo almost in lockstep, in advance of a tumultuous shareholder meeting scheduled for August 1. As of this afternoon, Yahoo declined to confirm with BetaNews even the exit of individuals whose names were already plastered all over The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as the entire matter of employee exits is now apparently off limits to its public relations.
Microsoft re-issues one security fix for a Bluetooth hole
For an undisclosed reason, there continued to be a vulnerability in Windows XP's built-in protocol stack for Bluetooth, even after a patch released a week ago Tuesday was supposed to have addressed the problem.
Last week's round of Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft included what had been described as a critical fix, over and above what the company had just released in Windows XP Service Pack 3, that addressed a potential problem with how the operating system's internal Bluetooth protocol stack responds to requests for certain services.
Compromise FISA bill in US House could lead to telco immunity
A new draft of foreign intelligence legislation to be debated tomorrow could give the President what he's been seeking: acknowledgment of his authority to declare US telcos immune from prosecution for aiding anti-terrorism investigations.
Multiple news sources in Washington are reporting that a deal has been worked out between House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D - Md.) and the White House, on compromise language for legislation regarding a hardening of federal law regarding warrantless surveillance. Though drafts of this compromise language have yet to be made public, it's widely believed that a mechanism may be put in place for US telecommunications companies to eventually be granted immunity for having cooperated with the White House in anti-terrorism investigations since 9/11/2001, which may have been contrary to US law at the time.
OpenSUSE 11.0 final release now underway
Download OpenSUSE 11.0 GM from FileForum now.
One of the closest-knit of the many Linux communities is trumpeting the public release of its latest distribution, whose functional and graphical features may give it some powerful value propositions compared to Windows Vista.
First reports of a Firefox 3 vulnerability
A group of researchers collaborating on behalf of security firm TippingPoint has claimed it has written a report concerning a "critical vulnerability" in the just-released Firefox 3.0, and has presented that report to the Mozilla organization.
The nature of the vulnerability has not been publicly released, and TippingPoint states its policy is to notify the vendor first.
Pints of Guinness all 'round! 8.3 million Firefox 3 downloads
Download Firefox 3.0 Final Release for Windows from FileForum now.
The early estimates from the Mozilla organization show its servers (when they were up and running) cranked out enough bytes to cover 11.07 million downloads of Firefox 3.0, and were registering as many as 283 downloads per second.
The winner by knockout: Los Alamos claims the Top 500 throne
The petaflop barrier was not only broken last week, it was pulverized into infinitesimally small, neutrino-sized particles. While Intel continues to blow even more horns, suddenly it's the Cell processor that has engineers talking.
When in November 2003, the Oklahoma Sooners football team blew out Texas A&M by a score of 77 - 0, a sportscaster was heard to have said, "It wasn't that close." When the news arrived this morning from Mannheim -- after a few days delay, apparently to celebrate -- of the absolute trouncing of the once unstoppable IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer by, quite literally, a hybrid collection of AMD Opterons and parts you'd find in a PlayStation 3 -- not a vanquishing, not a clobbering, but a mathematical and systematic decimation of the former champion by 231% -- it was the type of blowout that the late, great Jim McKay would have loved to have described, up close and personal.
Mozilla: 1.6 million downloads and counting
Early Tuesday evening, the Mozilla organization gave BetaNews an update on its quest to have posted the single most downloaded (tracked) software item in a single day, having exceeded Firefox 2's single-day mark in just five hours' time.
As BetaNews confirmed this afternoon, the worldwide usage share of all Web browsers declaring themselves as Firefox 3.0 in HTTP requests, catapulted by 265% between 11:00 am and 6:00 pm EDT today, according to independent data compiled live by analysis firm Net Applications, from 0.96% to 2.54%. That means nearly one Web browser in 40 worldwide is using Firefox 3, as of Tuesday evening.
Europe to become the center of Microsoft's search research efforts
It failed to acquire Yahoo's search business -- or at least that's what Yahoo has said. So now Microsoft has to rely on its own resources to come up with a plan for moving forward in search; and to do that, it's setting up a second laboratory.
This morning, Microsoft publicly announced it will be opening what it's calling a "Search Technology Center" somewhere in Europe at some point next year. It did not say exactly when or exactly where, though with the company's slate of acquisitions in the search space already hailing from all over the continent, there are several intriguing candidates.
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 final release under way
Download Firefox 3.0 Final Release for Windows from FileForum now.
Downloads commenced after 1:00 pm EDT will count toward Mozilla's try for the record.
Round two: Radio royalties ruckus resumes in the US House
In an extremely familiar-looking gathering of legislators, performers, and radio broadcasters last Wednesday, Congress once again debated how musicians and performing artists could be compensated by radio without breaking the industry.
Very few rounds of House subcommittee hearings are ever so entertaining that members actually consider the notion -- some not so much in jest at all -- of making it an annual event. Last year, the Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property took up a "debate" on the subject of whether the exemption on performers' royalties for terrestrial radio should be lifted, featuring a bench full of proponents of the lift, four more proponents on the panel, and one lone opponent left to represent the radio industry.
UMPC for Vista given one more push with 'Origami Experience'
New software for Vista-using UMPC owners could make their portables into something more like what they expected to begin with. However, there may be some hardware out there that won't be so welcoming.
For reasons that may have less to do with Windows than with the limitations of the hardware, the first incarnation of the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) specification went down with a "thud heard 'round the world." In a serious attempt to revive interest in a computing niche that still begs to be interesting, and so far just isn't, Microsoft is steadily reassembling its software portfolio for UMPC, with a new campaign that this time answers more questions, rather than asking, "What is it?" and leaving the answer hanging over a cliff.
Yahoo execs provide more details on Google deal
The headend of Yahoo's search results, come this October, will probably continue to look the way Yahoo always intended it would. It's the tail that will change, in a deal where Google has apparently been offered the tail first.
"We gain a right to use Google to backfill some of our advertising, and we have full control over that." That's the characterization Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang gave to the service Google will provide to his company, in a conference call with investment analysts early Thursday evening.
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