In an unusual public comment made during a gathering of high-ranking business executives this morning in Barcelona, Sony Advisory Board Chairman -- and, as some still see it, chairman -- Noboyuki Idei is quoted by Reuters as having commented that he expects the next CEO of his company to be someone from the "young generation," about 40-45 years of age, and specifically Japanese.

"I think it is very important for Japan to open up the country and communicate with other countries," Idei reportedly said, in response to a question about whether he believed Sir Howard Stringer was the right choice to serve as CEO. Idei did respond in the affirmative before giving this explanation, and he did not say how soon such a change would be made.

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Albeit several days after an official deadline had already passed, negotiators for law enforcement officials in the US and Europe have agreed to resume a controversial program in which the personal data of European airline passengers traveling into the US may now be shared with US officials.

A statement released late this afternoon from the Office of the Presidency of the European Council reads in part, "The EU welcomes the new Agreement which will help to prevent and combat terrorism and serious transnational crime, whilst ensuring an equivalent level of protection of passengers' personal data in line with European standards on fundamental rights and privacy."

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Reuters reported this afternoon that the heads of two of the Netherlands' leading corporations worldwide, Nokia and Philips, co-authored a joint letter urging the European Commission to strongly consider renegotiating -- if not striking altogether -- levies collected from consumers from the sale of MP3 players and disc recording media.

These levies were designed to enable consumers to pay their fare share of copyright fees, but electronics companies and consumers groups alike are complaining that since copyright fees are also collected from legal song downloads, consumers are effectively double-taxed.

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Government Computer News is reporting that a 15-page Inspector General's report on time wasted by workers at the U.S. Department of the Interior has raised such a stir that the Dept.'s own servers have seen major slowdowns due to excessive downloads of the report.

The IG's report, entitled "Excessive Indulgences: Personal Use of the Internet at the Department of the Interior," estimates that an average of 104,221 work hours per year are wasted by DOI employees alone, simply by those perusing Internet gaming sites. The report cited thousands of collected logs from users' computers showing workers spending between eight and fourteen hours at a time on gaming sites.

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Generally with a search engine, you get the best results when your queries contain just enough related terms or criteria for the engine to determine a common context. Each new term in a query strengthens the context of the information you're trying to locate - for example, with the Google query strawberry fields -Beatles location.

Historically, finding a good example of source code on the Web has been a matter of crafting the right query that will hit on the common language text that's adjacent to the code you're trying to find. Today, Google's new Code Search facility begins exploring a new premise: Is there a way to apply the same search tool as for a common language query, in order to locate a passage of source code from Google's vast library of open-source pages?

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Apparently taking heed of analysts' advice that the best chance a digital music download service has of survival comes from being associated with a specific player, Best Buy announced this morning it's changing course. In what appears to be an early termination of its existing deal with Napster, the retailer is launching its new Digital Music Store, as the online storefront for Sansa's re-branded Rhapsody MP3 player.

Starting today, Best Buy is partnered with player manufacturer Sansa and its teammate, RealNetworks, to place its brand front-and-center on the Sansa Rhapsody player.

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If you want to see in real life how a single, Europe-wide software patent authority might work, keep your eyes on the new Central Licensing Agreement for music copyright, formalized in the EU on Wednesday.

Thirteen agencies that competitively offer royalties packages to licensees such as broadcasters, along with the five leading music copyright holders worldwide -- BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner -- have agreed to manage a Pan-European copyright system that EU member companies will recognize and uphold.

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A Portugese-language blog post from a member of the Windows Local Test and Support team in Brazil Wednesday, along with a download page on Microsoft's Web site confirmed that Windows Vista RC2 is arriving shortly, and will be available for public download.

According to the Web page for Customer Preview Program (CPP) participants, which has since been removed, RC2 will be build 5744.

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In a report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission regarding allegations that the company may have failed to report certain backdated options granted to its senior executives as expenses over the last several years, Apple today said its CEO, Steve Jobs, knew something about his company's options backdating practices, but never benefited from backdating personally.

"Stock option grants made on 15 dates between 1997 and 2002 appear to have grant dates that precede the approval of those grants," Apple acknowledged in a statement. Jobs was re-appointed "interim CEO" of Apple in September 1997.

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In the latest step in its continuing effort to focus the Web services model around its own servers, Google this morning introduced a way to enable individuals to embed some Google Gadgets -- those handy utilities that many run in the background using the Google Desktop program -- within Web pages, without the need to install software.

The concept is called Google Universal Gadgets, and although it sounds uncharacteristically sweeping, the idea is to let Web sites perform simple functions provided by Google's servers at no cost.

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The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are both reporting this morning that officials of the European Commission stated this morning they may be ready to pursue antitrust charges against Intel, based on information they've acquired regarding possible company misconduct in relation to the German retail electronics market.

Last month, the EC assumed control of a German government investigation into allegations that Intel used its influence -- and perhaps some financial incentive -- to compel an electronics retailer there, Media Markt, to sell Intel-based products exclusively through its chain of 400 stores throughout Europe. AMD officials had made such allegations public as early as June 2005, when that company first filed an antitrust suit in the US against Intel.

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After a long series of delays characterized by turmoil in Asian markets and a continuing "bottoming out" in the LCD TV industry, Canon has finally given the green light to a project that, it says, will enable it to mass-produce a new breed of flat-screen, electron-driven television displays by early 2008.

With a development history dating back to 1986, Canon's Surface-Conduction Electron Emitter Display (SED) -- developed in a joint project with Toshiba -- may have actually been the industry's earliest prototype for flat-screen TVs. Like the old RCA cathode ray tube, an SED display produces light when electrons strike a phosphor-coated interior surface. What's different is how the electrons get there.

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One of the speakers at a Toorcon security conference session last weekend has admitted that claims he and an accomplice made regarding an "unfixable" flaw in Firefox, and a video of the two purportedly exploiting this flaw, were a not-so-elaborate hoax.

"The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous," admitted Mischa Spiegelmock, in a statement made through Mozilla.org this afternoon.

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In a detailed analysis paper and video that are continuing to make waves, a trio of Princeton University Dept. of Computer Science researchers demonstrated last month how Diebold AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines -- the very devices recommended to end the 2000 "nightmare of the hanging chads" -- could be easily compromised by injecting malicious software through a memory card at boot time.

With mid-term elections in the U.S. just a few weeks away, and the balance of power in both houses of Congress made more tenuous with the emergence of even more political scandals, the likelihood is growing that the outcome of close elections this November may be challenged if the technology relied upon to secure those elections comes under question.

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