Verizon subsidized netbooks to come from HP
In March, Verizon representatives unofficially said that it could begin selling netbooks with nationwide broadband service as early as the second quarter 2009. Now, the company has said it will begin selling them on May 17.
For a moment, it looked like Verizon would follow AT&T's plan, and offer the Acer Aspire One netbook. At one point, Acer's brand name even showed up on the Verizon Wireless product page, though it was a dead link, and could potentially have correlated to another Acer product, such as its rebranded E-Ten smartphones.
Apple's Safari 4 Beta for Windows speeds up after security update
Earlier this week, Apple posted security updates for both its production and experimental versions of its Safari browser, for both Mac and Windows platforms. But Betanews tests indicate that the company may have sneaked in a few performance improvements as well, as the experimental browser posted its best index score yet: above 15 times better performance than Internet Explorer 7 in the same system.
After some security updates to Windows Vista, Betanews performed a fresh round of browser performance tests on the latest production and experimental builds. That made our test virtual platform (see page 2 for some notes about our methodology) a little faster overall, and while many browsers appeared to benefit including Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, the very latest Mozilla experimental browsers in the post-3.5 Beta 4 tracks clearly did not. For the first time, we're including the latest production build of Apple Safari 3 in our tests (version 3.2.3, also patched this week) as well as Opera 9.64. Safari 4, however, posted better times than even our test system's general acceleration would allow on its own.
RealNetworks calls Hollywood studios an 'illegal cartel'
RealNetworks is now pointing an accusatory finger at Hollywood, and yesterday filed a countersuit in the U.S. District court of Northern California calling the DVD Copy Control Association and its related Hollywood studios an "illegal cartel."
The suit originated late last year when Real's DVD archiving software RealDVD was taken to court, and then temporarily banned for violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The hearings continued, but it turned out that RealDVD wasn't the main reason for the litigation after all. The true threat, as RealNetworks would reveal, was a product known as "Facet" -- a set-top box that allows CSS-protected DVDs to be copied, stored, and recalled at any time, like a much cheaper Kalidescape (the product upon which Real based its initial defense.)
FCC: It should only take a day to change your phone number
The Federal Communications Commission will soon give voice communication service providers (wireline, wireless, and VoIP) only a single day to transfer a subscriber's number when they change carriers, instead of the previous four-day requirement.
"Delays in number porting cost consumers money and impede their ability to choose providers based solely on price, quality and service," the commission's statement yesterday said.
The latest BSA report: More educated consumers will thwart piracy
Twitalyzer, one of those wonderful sites that makes Twitter feel just a little bit more like a high-school popularity contest, has a sense of humor about what they do: "Having worked with numbers for over a decade we are well aware of the fact that most people don't understand them, even when put in context." After which they proceed to at least try to provide a bit of context for their usage statistics, because what else can you do?
Numeracy is on my mind this week here in Seattle, where the geek contingent failed to block the adoption of a set of high-school math textbooks that spotlights "inquiry-based" or constructivist learning, as opposed to the type of learning where you learn how to do math. The idea of the new curriculum is that if you let students "discover" mathematical concepts on their own, they'll all turn into little Newtons or Leibnizes. And their self-esteem will be exquisite!
New royalties for radio clears first congressional hurdle
If Congress were to pull the trigger, eliminating language from US Code dating back to the 1920s stating that terrestrial radio stations don't have to pay royalties to play music whose performers they promote, the resulting shock wave could impact the Internet music industry, and digital music publishers in general. With some radio broadcasters reducing or even eliminating their air time -- one such threatened repercussion -- Internet radio alternatives like Last.fm and Pandora could pick up more listeners. But with possible new performers' royalty rates that could result, with terrestrial radio serving as a gauge for what all broadcasters should pay, those Internet stations could end up paying more for absorbing those new listeners.
That outcome is by no means certain, but one of the few likelihoods in the whole radio royalties debate came to fruition today, as the latest version of the Performance Rights Act passed the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 21 - 9. That committee is chaired by John Conyers, Jr. (D - Mich.), who is the bill's principal sponsor, and whose realignment of judiciary subcommittees following last November's elections certified that his committee would be the one marking up the bill, and not a subcommittee chaired by Rep. Rick Boucher (D - Va.).
Dell changes its Windows vs. Linux netbook strategy, plans new subsidized model
Rolled out last night at a press event in New York City, the Mini 10v "companion netbook" offers some but not all of the same features as the slightly pricier Inspiron Mini 10 "media netbook," according to DK Ray, product marketing manager.
The new Inspiron Mini 10v is the first netbook from Dell to be available for Windows and Linux simultaneously, and it won't be the last. Up to now, Dell has released the Windows XP flavors before the Ubuntu Linux editions. Going forward, though, Dell will ship all future netbooks on the same OS, Ray divulged, in a meeting with Betanews at the event.
Adobe delivers a patch for JavaScript-related PDF vulnerability
Adobe this week delivered a patch for a highly critical PDF vulnerability that's been hanging open since late April -- 14 days of potential mayhem, but a lot faster than their previous month-long delay on a critical-level hole earlier this year.
Though Adobe has denied knowledge of exploits in the wild for the problem, which stems from a JavaScript memory corruption error, at least one security firm says they're out there if you look. Speaking to SCMagazineUS.com, a representative of Arizona-based Lumension says the firm has spotted infected PDF files on China-based Web servers.
Intel CEO: The exclusivity and loyalty of OEMs are up for bids
This morning's ruling by the European Commission essentially finding Intel guilty of illegally tying rebates to exclusivity agreements, and other practices, is said to be a 500+ page document that as of now remains under seal. But the EC's characterization of its ruling today paints a picture of a dominant market manipulator that made exclusivity deals with at least five major global PC producers and Germany's largest PC retailer, making them offers they couldn't refuse that kept AMD from competing on an equal playing field.
"Not all rebates are a competition problem -- often they will lead to lower prices for consumers in the long term as well as the short," stated EC Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes in a press conference this morning in Brussels. "But the Intel rebates in this case were a problem because of the conditions that Intel attached to its rebates. Moreover, the Commission has examined closely whether an efficient competitor could have matched these rebates. These conditions, to buy less of AMD's products or to not buy them at all, prevented AMD from competing with Intel on the merits of its products. This removed the possibility of genuine choice for consumers and undermined innovation."
Opting to go one-up in virtualization, Oracle ingests Virtual Iron
The company already has a decent hypervisor in Oracle VM, and more options on the way as the Sun buy comes to pass, but Oracle is apparently looking to upgrade its toolset. The company announced on Wednesday that it's acquiring Virtual Iron (nee Katana Technology), which offers a hypervisor with an interesting and speedy set of system tools. It's expected that those tools will be combined with the current Oracle offering.
Virtual Iron has in recent years been overtaken by big-iron (Citrix, VMWare, Microsoft) interest in the category, but the company brought some interesting policy-based and modular thinking to the table. Past and current customers include Priceline.com, Sandia National Labs, Siemens, Toyota, Hitachi and the office of the Maine Attorney General.
Clearwire aligns with Cisco for WiMAX
Today, mobile WiMAX operator Clearwire announced that its core infrastructure provider for the Clear 4G mobile WiMAX network moving forward will be Cisco.
Scott Richardson, Chief Strategy Officer of Clearwire said, "By teaming with Cisco, one of the world's most forward-looking IP network infrastructure providers, we're building a robust and cost-efficient next-generation network that's designed specifically for delivering rich broadband services."
Novatel portable hotspot to launch with Sprint, Verizon
Novatel's MiFi 2200 was unveiled last December, promising a portable 3G hotspot in a package no larger than a deck of cards. The unique device is unlike previous carrier-subsidized 3G modems in that it not only includes a wireless router for sharing connections, but that it also requires no host machine for use.
The 3.5" x 2.3" x .3" device weighs only 2.05 ounces, supports up to five simultaneous Wi-Fi connections, WEP and WPA2-PSK security, and includes SPI Firewall protection. The device is battery-powered and can run for about four hours on a charge. Novatel publicly showed the device off for the first time less than six months ago at CES 2009.
Retailers face new hurdles in their exodus to the Internet
This Friday, May 15, the United States Census Bureau will release its revised quarterly e-commerce market estimate, in which the government looks at overall retail performance and compares it with the online retail environment. Since the turn of the millennium, e-commerce has been expected to eventually supplant on-site shopping, and has represented an increasing portion of all retail sales. That is, it did until 2008.
Because of the recession, the Census Bureau last year predicted that growth would all but cease in e-commerce. The National Retail Federation found that these predictions were mostly true, and marked a 2% decline in Internet spending in 2008, the first such decline since becoming recognized as a significant retail channel.
Hanging up now: Verizon backs out of landline business in 14 states
In a deal valued at $8.6 billion, Verizon Communications has agreed to sell its wireline assets in Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Washington, West Virginia and parts of California to Connecticut-based Frontier Communications.
Verizon will spin off its assets into an independent business called New Communications Holdings Inc. (creatively called "SpinCo") which will then merge with Frontier's existing model in approximately one year's time. Frontier will earn 4.8 million lines and incur $3.3 billion in debt.
EU fines Intel $1.4B, says it paid OEMs, retailer to exclude AMD products
For years, the evidence against Intel with regard to its business conduct in Europe has been treated as allegation, especially by anyone in the press with any serious intent of showing fairness. As of today, at least in Europe, it's no longer an allegation: Intel cheated, says the European Commission this morning, in a decision that can best be described as the worst-case scenario for Intel coming to fruition.
This morning, the EC found that for a 62-month period beginning in October 2002, Intel paid German retailer MediaMarkt, which operates stores primarily in Germany and Russia (not an EU member), to sell Intel-based computers exclusively in its retail outlets. This based on evidence turned up during a February 2008 raid of Intel's German offices.
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