Rep. Lantos to Yahoo: 'Morally, You Are Pygmies'
In a scene staged for maximum dramatic effect, complete with the mother and family of jailed dissident Shi Tao seated directly behind them, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and chief counsel Michael Callahan were grilled yesterday for over three hours by Rep. Tom Lantos (D - Calif.) and his House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"While technologically and financially you are giants," Chairman Lantos reprimanded them, with his face cast down and his eyes peering out like the famous promotional poster for A Clockwork Orange, "morally, you are pygmies."
Prince Targets Fans for Copyright Violations
Pop musician Prince continued his online content bulldozing with a series of legal notices sent to sites devoted to the artist, demanding that all images of, lyrics by, and "anything linked to the likeness of " the artist be removed.
Fan sites housequake.com,
CinemaNow and Sonic Try DVD Copying Despite CSS Headaches
Digital entertainment download service CinemaNow has announced a partnership with Sonic Solutions' QFlix, to develop a system which enables burning of protected DVDs that promise to be identical to those available off the shelf, with one very big catch.
CinemaNow holds protection of DVD copyrights high in its list of priorities. It had previously offered a download-and-burn service, though copied discs intentionally included a kind of defect that was supposed to protect against further copies. That defect defeated those copies to the extent that they did not even play on many DVD players.
OLPC Laptop Begins Mass Production
Some five years after the concept of a so-called "$100 laptop" was proposed, the first devices began rolling off a production line in China this week.
The first official order for the device came from Uruguay, which wanted 100,000 laptops. It's likely that many of the first PCs produced will be shipped to the central South American country.
LG Using Broadcom Chips in Dual HD Disc Players
LG said Wednesday that it had selected Broadcom's integrated dual HD disc format system-on-a-chip had been selected to power the company's next dual-format player.
Broadcom says that its solution continues to be the only one in the industry that can fully support the interactive features of either format -- HD DVD's HDi and Blu-ray's BD-Java -- and other mandatory requirements.
Nokia Tests on New Mobile Broadband Standard Crack 100 Mbps
Nokia announced today that the LSTI (LTE/SAE Trial Initiative) had achieved a 100 megabits-per-second data transfer speed in recent tests.
LTE/SAE is an evolved version of today's mobile phone radio access technology designed for faster data transfer with a simplified architecture, using new transmission schemes and advanced antenna technology. Initial deployment configurations are specified to have downlink rates above 100 Mbps and uplink rates above 50 Mbps.
Microsoft Steps Up Anti-Piracy Effort in China
Microsoft is trying to fight piracy in China by ensuring that more new computers in the region come with genuine copies of Windows pre-installed at the factory.
The Redmond company said Wednesday that it had come to an agreement with the nation's second largest computer manufacturer, Founder, which includes a deal to resell Microsoft hardware as well.
Opera Mini 4 Available for Phones
After nearly 5 months of beta testing, Opera Software has released version 4 of its Opera Mini Web browser for mobile phones. The update includes iPhone-like capabilities that enable users to see a full overview of a page and zoom in to specific parts.
When zooming, Opera Mini snaps to content so scrolling is smooth. A virtual mouse cursor aids users in moving down a page and selecting links, although the software resizes text and images to reduce the amount of scrolling required. These features were originally developed for Opera's browser on the Nintendo Wii.
Fired: Microsoft CIO Violated Company Policies
Without much explanation late yesterday, Microsoft notified the press that it had terminated the employment of its Chief Information Officer, Stuart Scott, for violation of its corporate policies. This after having appeared on stage just seven weeks ago to hold up Microsoft's IT department as a role model for, as he described it, stamping out "shadow IT" agents within corporations, so that they can do more with less.
Scott may have done exactly that for Microsoft during his short tenure there. In 2005, he was brought onto the CIO role from General Electric, only to find that Microsoft already had somebody called "Chief Information Officer" reporting to a different department. That person was Ron Markezich, whose role was described at the time as "chief beta tester." Since that time, Markezich has shifted to Vice President of Managed Solutions, with his awkward co-CIO role having effectively been stamped out.
How HD DVD Got its Groove Back
ANALYSIS: Sources close to retailers indicate that Toshiba sold over 90,000 $99 HD DVD players over the weekend, and that figure only represents a portion of the retailers that participated in the frenzy.
According to Video Business, the 90,000 count includes Toshiba HD-A2 players sold at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Circuit City along with a few other brick and mortar outlets. But it apparently doesn't include online retailers who also participated in the price drop, such as Amazon.com.
MPEG-2 Patent Holder, Licensing Agent in High-Def Codec Dispute
The company which saw the biggest IP infringement verdict in history granted to it and then taken away, faces a new problem this week over another part of its MPEG IP portfolio. The principal licensing agent for MPEG codec technology, MPEG LA, has sued Alcatel-Lucent in Delaware court.
Its claim is that Alcatel didn't have the right to absorb Lucent's IP portfolio -- which included patents on MPEG-2 technology -- into a new and separate trust, after Lucent had already made a commitment to provide that technology through MPEG LA.
AT&T's U-verse: $2 Million Smaller, $500 Million Costlier
What began as the nation's biggest planned deployment of IP-based services, having originally anticipated a customer base of 19 million homes, AT&T's U-verse high-speed TV/communications/Internet service appears to be scaling down its predicted uptake while scaling up its cost estimates.
In a recent regulatory filing, AT&T downgraded the availability of U-verse to 17 million homes by the end of next year, 2 million fewer than its spring forecast.
Pirate Bay Developing BitTorrent-like Protocol
The Pirate Bay is pushing forward with the development of a new software standard that makes it easier for downloaders to pirate media files, as BitTorrent works to become more legit.
The site has long used BitTorrent to trade files between its users. However, the creators of that technology have taken great strides to market legal uses of its product and have begun to crack down on illicit file sharing where it can.
Microsoft Launches Assault on Google's Search Appliances
In a clear move to undercut one of Google's most noteworthy revenue sources outside of advertising, Microsoft today launched its "search server" strategy by releasing both a free and a commercial version of software that performs many of the same functions as a dedicated search appliance.
In classic Microsoft fashion, the company has released a free edition of the product as its way of crashing the gate.
Two Out of Three Didn't Pay for Radiohead
A survey by research firm comScore indicates that nearly two out of every three downloaders of Radiohead's release In Rainbows did not pay for it, while the rest only forked over an average of $6 per download. The band released its album in October without digital rights management, and let fans decide how much they were willing to pay for the release, if at all. In total, some 1.2 million people visited the website set up for the album download between October 1 and 29, comScore said.
The study also showed a disparity in how much was paid for the album inside the US and overseas. Here in the US, about 40 percent chose to pay for the album, and the average selling price was $8.05. However, overseas 36 percent paid, and only were giving an average of $4.64 per download. Radiohead plans to release the album in CD format next year. The band had no comment on the study.
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