Schwarzenegger Vows to Fight Repeal of Violent Video Game Law
A controversial California state law banning the sale of so-called "violent video games" to citizens under the age of 18, was struck down Monday in US District Court as unconstitutional. Judge Ronald Whyte made this ruling two years after putting a stay on its enactment pending review. Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who signed the bill into law -- is vowing to appeal the ruling.
The governor's appeal, with all its embedded ironies of a former action movie star speaking out forcefully against wanton depictions of violence, will no doubt launch a new wave of speeches and photo opportunities, followed by excerpts of the alleged violent acts depicted on television and Internet news, giving those games public exposure - including to children - that advertising couldn't possibly purchase.
Judge: Qualcomm Guilty of 'Litigation Misconduct and Concealment'
In a blistering rebuke of Qualcomm during its pursuit of patent infringement claims against rival Broadcom - whose counterclaims led to an import ban on some Qualcomm chips, signed into law by President Bush yesterday - US District Judge Rudi Brewster yesterday issued a finding which contained this quote: "The Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that Qualcomm counsel participated in an organized program of litigation misconduct and concealment throughout discovery, trial, and post-trial [prior to] April 27, 2007."
As a result of this finding, Qualcomm is now prohibited from being able to enforce two of its patents for video compression techniques, the existence of which the company failed to disclose before a key meeting of the Joint Video Task Force (JVT).
AMD Boosts Dual-Core Opteron Past 3.0 GHz: Will It Be Enough?
Yesterday's launch by AMD of dual-core Opteron processors at the 3.0 GHz and 3.2 GHz clock speeds substantiates what company officials had been saying at an analyst day meeting the week before: Maybe clock speed no longer matters in the consumer desktop space, but it's still a factor in the IT department.
Last year at this time, AMD processors were taking a pounding from newly introduced Intel Core 2 Duos. Since then, there have been two successive upgrade generations to Intel's new Core Microarchitecture, and it's already well on its way to replacing it with a design that eliminates its dependence upon an external memory controller...like AMD's had for a few years already.
$1.5 Billion MP3 Fine Against Microsoft Struck Down
In the clearest sign yet that the landscape for patent infringement cases was altered significantly by the US Supreme Court, Judge Rudi Brewster of District Court in San Diego late yesterday tossed out a $1.5 billion jury verdict against Microsoft, partially overturning that verdict on one infringement count and remanding the second to a lower court for retrial.
As a result, the tide could be turning in favor of Fraunhofer Labs, the European licensee of the MP3 format. In the US, AT&T was considered the rightful patent holder for the format, based on the theory that it was the first to file in this country.
Can DRM-Free MP3 Tracks Bail Out EMI Music?
The first real test of the viability of DRM-free music sales came this past quarter, as investors monitored whether EMI Music's recent arrangements with Apple and Amazon to sell unlocked tracks on their services at a premium, would lift the publisher out of its financial doldrums. The news this quarter is mixed: While the reaction to the move appears strongly positive from consumers, the publisher's conventional businesses are sinking at too fast a rate.
In its preliminary quarterly report issued this morning, EMI Music said that revenues from digital music sales increased 26% over the previous quarter, while revenue from its physical music sales declined by 19.8%. If that were the final score, it would sound like a win for digital. It's not, since physical sales constitutes a greater share of the overall business: After adjusting for inflation, EMI Music's total revenues declined by 5.1%.
Labor Day Deadline Set for Webcasters' Royalties Negotiations
Last week, the US Senate's chief sponsors of the Internet Radio Equality Act vowed to push for its expedited approval, if broadcasters and the SoundExchange performance rights organization haven't reached a compromise agreement by the time the Senate returns from its summer recess on Labor Day (September 3).
As Sens. Ron Wyden (D - Ore.) and Sam Brownback (R - Kan.) jointly stated, they're fully aware now of what appears to be a plan by the PRO to leverage a planned $500 USD minimum annual royalty fee per channel to apply to each stream or playlist a Webcasting service generates. Literally, each Pandora channel generated for a user could carry a $500 USD fee.
California Revokes Four Voting Machine Certifications
Following last week's report by University of California, Davis engineers on the integrity -- or lack thereof -- of electronic voting machines used in statewide elections, the California Secretary of State late last week revoked the approval of systems from Diebold, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia, and Elections Systems and Software, Inc. Manufacturers now each have 30 days to come up with a plan for how they intend to harden their systems' internal configuration security, and 45 days for a network security hardening plan, before their systems can be submitted for re-approval for use in next February's presidential primary.
Among the findings Sec. of State Debra Bowen cited in her proclamations this morning was this: "The Diebold Red Team members [from UC Davis], with access only to the Windows operating system on the Diebold GEMS election management server supplied to Diebold and without requiring access to Diebold source code, were able to access the Diebold voting system server software and to corrupt the election management system database, which could result in manipulated voter totals or the inability to read election results, rendering an election impossible to complete electronically."
Did Yahoo Knowingly Turn Over a Customer to the Chinese Police?
Last week, members of the human rights organization Dui Hua Foundation presented evidence to Congress that Yahoo expeditiously complied with a Chinese state request for information on a citizen the government later sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for inciting rebellion. On Friday, Rep. Tom Lantos (D - Calif.) responded to Dui Hua's evidence by opening a formal investigation.
Yahoo's apparent compliance with China's request for e-mails from Wang Xiaoning's account may not have been illegal under US law. However, in the Washington Post last weekend, Rep. Lantos suggested that a Yahoo official's testimony before Congress in February 2006 may have been false. At that time, Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan suggested that, while Yahoo complied with the Chinese government's request, it had no knowledge of China's intentions - and perhaps no interest as well.
AMD's War with Intel Becomes a Street Brawl
The war between Intel and AMD this week became almost entirely rhetorical, following the European Commission's action last week, charging Intel with abuse of its dominant power status on that continent. While US antitrust law holds companies to a higher standard of conduct once they have attained monopoly power through non-illegal means, EU law sets the bar somewhat lower, where the test is dominant power.
But just what is dominant power, legally speaking? A Wall Street Journal editorial last Tuesday raised the question. It's easy to call Intel's 80% market share there "dominant;" but the article asked, why should a company expect to compete its little heart out using any means necessary, until it reaches 80% or some such point, after which time it can no longer be allowed to compete the same way?
Red Hat PM Says Global Desktop Linux Delayed to September
A highly anticipated consumer release of Red Hat Linux announced last May has been delayed a few weeks until sometime in September, according to a statement made in an e-mail by product manager Gerry Riveros to Reuters.
The "delay" may actually come as good news to many Linux users who had not yet actually known for certain which month the product would be released. In May, Red Hat announced the product's "availability," before pointing toward later in the year; since then, users have been relying mainly on rumor and speculation.
Engineer Demonstrates iPhone Hack After Acknowledging Apple's Patch
Though security consultant Charlie Miller went through with a scheduled demonstration late yesterday afternoon of how he and his colleagues discovered how to hack the Apple iPhone to obtain personally identifiable information from it, he and his company's Web site both acknowledged that Apple had patched the vulnerability.
The demonstration took place at the BlackHat convention in Las Vegas, where apparently Miller used an unpatched iPhone. Though the specific hole Miller discovered was apparently sealed over, the techniques he demonstrated for uncovering those techniques, and the information he learned along the way, indicate that this may not be the only hole to emerge from what could be characterized as a design flaw.
'Open Access' Wireless Auction Could Be All for Naught
Tuesday's 4-1 vote by the US Federal Communications Commission begins a process whereby a portion of the UHF television spectrum - specifically, between 775 and 793 MHz, in the midst of what we now call Channels 64 through 67 - would be auctioned off only to companies willing to keep a promise: To allow customers of wireless services they deploy on that spectrum to use the devices of their choice, rather than the ones the carriers choose for them; they could use any applications they wish on those devices; and they would make their services available to public safety in emergencies.
Google had hoped for a few more concessions on the FCC's part, one being a net neutrality promise not to resell frequencies to select customers at discount rates, the other being a promise to allow smaller companies to purchase access to frequencies at wholesale rates.
Did Apple Patch the iPhone Just in Time for BlackHat?
Yesterday, the US Dept. of Homeland Security acknowledged Apple's release of a set of security updates for its new iPhone. As the device's widespread popularity will bring it under much closer scrutiny than for any other smart phone, and also make it the target of attempted attacks, this release marks the first test of Apple's ability to respond to security threats under pressure.
Judging from descriptions on Apple's Web site, the first series of patches addresses a vulnerability that was the subject of a discovery by security researcher Charlie Miller and colleague Jake Honoroff. Apple credited the pair with the discovery of what its security page describes as a heap buffer overflow problem.
Google, Microsoft File FTC Complaint Against NFL, MLB, NBCU
Claiming that copyright warnings are "misleading consumers," the Computer & Communications Industry Association - a trade organization whose more prominent members include Microsoft and Google - filed a formal complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission yesterday. Targeted by the complaint were the two premiere sports leagues, two movie producers, and two book publishers.
The group's claim is that everyday users may be intimidated by the tone of these groups' copyright warnings, to such an extent that their rights to use the material they produce, as protected by US law, is infringed. But the CCIA's language rises even higher than that, accusing the subjects of the complaint with "a nationwide pattern of unfair and deceptive trade practices by misrepresenting consumer rights under copyright law."
Massachusetts: MS Open XML Now in Equal Standing with ODF
Late today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts announced that it has formally ratified the 4.0 version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Policy. As a result, Microsoft's Office Open XML format -- recently ratified by the ECMA standards body -- is now considered in equal stature with OASIS' OpenDocument Format, for use by state employees.
The ratification officially codifies Massachusetts' approval last month of the new default format of Microsoft Office 2007, and opens a new chapter in the strange controversy over something as seemingly uninteresting on the surface as storage formats. A public institution's choice of storage formats dictates the applications its workers use to utilize those formats. Massachusetts has not rejected ODF, nor is it considering ODF in some sort of alternate or subservient stance with respect to OOXML.
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