Intel Ordered to Produce Documents in AMD Case
In a ruling this morning, US District Court Judge Joseph A. Farnan, Jr., has accepted the findings of the Special Master appointed to oversee the discovery of documents in AMD's antitrust case against Intel, and is ordering Intel to produce documents that may show that company entered into exclusivity agreements with retailers in Germany, the effect of which was to limit AMD's ability to upgrade its fabrication facilities in Texas, thereby hurting US customers.
Last month, Judge Farnan ruled that much of AMD's original case is impossible to prove under current US antitrust law, which restricts actionable conduct to business transactions made here, with the exception of some export arrangements. But on December 15, Special Master Vincent Poppiti found that, as long as AMD intends to proceed with its plans to argue why the remainder of its case is viable, it has the right to ask that the court compel Intel to produce relevant documents that may help it bolster its case, even if the judge throws out the rest of the case later.
Apple Options Investigation May Implicate Steve Jobs
A report in this morning's Financial Times, following up on a story in a California legal journal posted to Law.com on Tuesday, states that 7.5 million stock options at an exercise price of $18.30 per share were granted to Apple CEO Steve Jobs without authorization from the company's Board of Directors. The report states that documents were later falsified to make it appear as though the Board did approve of the grant - a practice whose penalty could involve huge fines and jail time.
Tomorrow is the deadline for Apple to produce a delayed 10-K filing for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, whose balance sheets could be adjusted to account for previously unstated expenses involving the granting of options during 2001. Up to this point, Apple's representatives have maintained that Jobs never exercised those options that were granted him, instead trading them in for legitimate securities.
Google Expanding Newspaper Advertising Program
The Associated Press reported this morning that Google is expanding a pilot program representing the company's second attempt to crack the realm of traditional print advertising.
Two months after launching a trial run with 100 selected advertisers and 66 newspapers, the online ad firm will soon be rolling out the next stage of its print publishing campaign in earnest, enabling online advertisers to purchase surplus print ad inventory.
Gerald R. Ford (1913 - 2006)
BetaNews notes this afternoon with sadness and reminiscence the passing of the United States’ 38th President. Gerald R. Ford was never elected to the office – in fact, he had been appointed House Minority Leader in 1965, as well as to every office thereafter.
Having calmed, if not completely soothed, the country’s mood after Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Ford became the personification of the quintessential pinch-hitter: reliable, safe, sturdier in his policies than at times on his own feet.
Samsung Reducing Mobile Memory Density
In a move that could lead to the integration of such features as inline linear editing on camcorders conceivably as soon as 2008, Samsung announced today it will begin mass production of a single-chip one-gigabit (1 Gbit) low-power double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM package, for use in mobile handsets and small digital camcorders, as soon as the second quarter of next year.
With production beginning soon, it’s very likely that Samsung will have some type of demonstration planned for the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, preliminary festivities for which begin just a week from Friday.
Is Vista Really Bug-Plagued as the NY Times Claims?
Last week's discovery of a non-critical bug affecting the old 32-bit Windows API, which BetaNews reported on at the time, was picked up by The New York Times this morning, although its severity was substantially elevated in the process. Under the headline "Flaws Are Detected in Microsoft's Vista," the message box problem was touted as triggering "an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system."
Yet tests of the flaw conducted by BetaNews suggest that, while the bug can crash Windows XP, its roots in the Win32 API dating back to Windows 3.1, coupled with the fact that the source code for the proof-of-concept appears to be straight ANSI C, directly contradict the Times' implication that the bug somehow afflicts Internet Explorer 7.0.
Windows Bug Via Message Boxes Gives Security Team Holiday Headaches
A proof-of-concept code fragment that turned up on a Russian security software engineers' forum wasacknowledged today by Microsoft’s response team. It showed that the MessageBox API function that enables Windows applications to give simple alerts to users, if subjected to repeated calls, can leave an open handle to free memory.
So far, the problem isn’t being rated as critical. Though the usual suspects are flagging this vulnerability as another “zero-day,” no exploits regarding this proof-of-concept have yet been acknowledged by Microsoft or other sources, BetaNews found evidence of the source of the problem lurking as far back as early 1999.
DirecTV Swap with News Corp. Puts Malone in Charge of DBS
A stock swap exchange between Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and John Malone's Liberty Media, predicted two weeks ago by The New York Times, is on its way to fruition today, as both companies announced their intent to make a stock swap. The deal will give Malone the most sizable stake - 38.4% - in DirecTV, the US' largest satellite service provider, which has lately been giving broadband Internet service a second try.
News Corp. will receive 16.3% of its own stock back, solidifying the Murdoch family's hold on the company and removing what Murdoch has considered an obstacle to progress. To even things out, Malone will receive about $550 million USD in cash, meaning Murdoch is essentially paying Malone over half a billion to take away a property he paid $6.6 billion USD just three years ago. That is, if Malone will also promise to go away and leave him alone.
US Music Publishers Sue AllofMP3 for $1.65 Trillion
In a move curious only due to its relatively late timing, the major record production labels in the US have filed suit in federal court against Russian online music distributor AllofMP3.com, seeking $150,000 USD for each single violation of copyright infringement for tracks the site posted without authorization.
The lawsuit, brought by Sony BMG, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group - the "big four" - along with Arista Records and Capitol Records, estimates at least 11 million individual intellectual property violations. Thus the publishers are collectively seeking damages equaling the gross national product of many countries.
Fifth Samsung Exec Pleads Guilty in DRAM Price Fixing Probe
Reuters and the Associated Press are both reporting that a fifth senior executive of world #1 DRAM manufacturer Samsung has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the US Justice Dept.'s investigation into memory industry collusion and price fixing.
Former Samsung vice president of sales Young Hwan Park will plead guilty and cooperate with the federal investigation, after which he will reportedly pay a $250,000 fine and spend ten months in prison. Samsung Electronics last month pled guilty for its own part, and was fined $300 million. Park is one of 18 executives from four organizations - Samsung, Hynix Semiconductor, Elpida, and Infineon (which has since spun off its memory unit as Qimonda) - to have been directly charged in the price-fixing probe since it began in 2002.
Florida Democrat Loss Could Trigger Hearings on Voting Machines
The candidate declared the loser in last month's race for Florida's 13th US congressional district is now seeking the help of the incoming Congress she might have joined, in investigating whether an apparent 18,382 undercount by voting machines in Sarasota County might have prevented her from losing by just 369 votes.
If Christine Jennings gains the support of incoming Democratic committee heads - which, with the help of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, she's likely to do - the result could be a series of congressional hearings into the integrity of electronic voting machines nationwide.
Multi-network Video Sharing Site Deal Probably Dead
Broadcasting & Cable this morning cited a source close to negotiations between NBC Universal, MySpace parent Fox Interactive, and former siblings CBS Corp. and Viacom to produce a rival video sharing service to Google's YouTube, as having broken down after MTV parent Viacom walked away from the table.
At first, the concept of producing a television-centric mega-site where users would apparently happily upload clips of the network owners' own content on their behalf, for free, without fear of copyright reprisal, may have seemed tempting to negotiators even from a cost-savings standpoint.
FCC to Cities: Open Cable to Competition
In a 3-2 vote that was delayed until this afternoon for procedural reasons, the US Federal Communications Commission voted to compel states and municipalities to give telephone companies 90 days following the date of their initial petition, to make their case for offering competitive cable TV and broadband service, in regions currently restricted to one CATV provider.
The new rule comes as legislation engineered by Republican House and Senate commerce committee heads last year, in an attempt to open up municipalities to possible national franchising, ground to what may be a permanent halt in the wake of the changing balance of power in Congress.
Discovery of Symantec Antivirus Exploit Gains Traction in Winter Rerun
Last week's announcement from security research firm eEye, claiming the discovery of an active exploit affecting Symantec's Antivirus suite, led to sweeping national headlines, some proclaiming the existence of a mutating "worm-bot" in the wild. But denials of the threat's severity from Symantec, asserting it's effectively the same problem that was discovered last May by eEye and patched by Symantec the following month, were surprisingly confirmed late yesterday.
Rather than the usual security advisory posted to its Web site, eEye last week shot off a press release, characterizing the worm as "a new class of malware," and christening it "Big Yellow" for dramatic effect. "IT urgently needs to understand that the new vector for attack will not come from Microsoft," eEye CTO Mark Maiffret was quoted as stating, "but from the myriad applications that are scattered throughout its network."
Sharp Attempts Rescue of HDTV with New Blue Lasers
In an effort to end the industry-wide shortage of blue laser diodes that occurred as a result of staggering underproduction by Sony and Nichia, the world's first two suppliers, Sharp Electronics today said it's ready to step up the mass production of diodes it's been making on a trial basis since just last month.
The move could relieve a beleaguered consumer electronics industry that saw Sony, the champion of the Blu-ray Disc format, allocate nearly all its capacity to its PlayStation 3, and yet still have only enough diodes on hand for perhaps a quarter-million units at the time the console launched last month.
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