Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) As the House Judiciary Committee met to consider changes to the Stop Online Piracy Act, several members of the committee warned that rushing the bill through the legislative process would lead to costly mistakes. [......]
Starting next month, Microsoft will begin automatically upgrading some Windows users to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PCs, the Redmond software juggernaut announced in a blog post today. [......]
Sergey Brin The cofounders of some of the Internet's most successful startups have put out a letter condemning the Stop Online Piracy Act. It warns that SOPA will undermine online security, burden future web startups, and "censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran." The strongly-worded letter is signed by Google's Sergey Brin, Yahoo's Jerry Yang, eBay's Pierre Omidyar, Netscape's Marc Andreessen, three cofounders of Twitter, and a number of other Internet luminaries. [......]
Nobody likes malware. Correction: nobody with a soul likes malware, which effectively excludes malware writers and script kiddies who find it monetarily beneficial (the former) or just plain amusing (the latter) to spread infected files. Microsoft certainly isn't amused by malware and has built a tool to help restore systems ravaged by rootkits and other cruft. [......]
TechRadar has launched Tech Deals - offering discounted tech goods on a first-come, first-served basis. [......]
Motorola Mobility on Thursday won an important injunction against Apple in Germany, which could potentially bar Apple's European sales arm from selling iPhones and 3G-equipped iPads. At issue is a Motorola patent for cellular data transmission, part of wireless data transmission standards that are encumbered by an agreement to license the patent on "fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory" terms. The ruling suggests that, at least in Germany, raising a FRAND defense against standards-essential patent infringement claims could be a difficult proposition, and may force Apple to accept Motorola's licensing terms—FRAND or not—for "past infringement." The FRAND defense has worked for Apple elsewhere, including in lawsuits brought by Samsung in The Netherlands and France . [......]
At the risk of sounding a little old-fashioned, ePawn CEO Christophe Duteil thinks that there’s something missing with the way people play games these days. Modern gaming lacks "conviviality" - the sensation of revelling with good company. His vision of gaming aims to bring people into the same physical space once again, an experience that has become less relevant thanks to fat data pipes and networked consoles. [......]
Following a similar announcement by the European Commission on Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed on Wednesday that it is also conducting an investigation into allegations that e-book publishers conspired with Apple to keep e-book prices from bottoming out. [......]
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has changed the official name of its next-generation mobile operating system after a judge blocked it from using its original name, "BBX." A US Federal Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico issued an order on Tuesday barring RIM from using "BBX" during its DevCon Asia developer conference in Singapore on December 7 and 8. At the conference keynote on Wednesday, RIM announced that its new name will be "BlackBerry 10." Basis International, a mobile software company that markets tools for building cross-platform mobile apps under the name "BBX," filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against RIM in October. The company holds two registered trademarks for the BBX name, and naturally became perturbed when RIM announced that its next-generation OS would be called "BBX"—an amalgam of BlackBerry and QNX, the real-time OS it acquired last year to power its PlayBook tablet [......]
In 2008, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy said that 20 percent of teens had distributed nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves. Cue the moral panic about sexting! Certainly, examples of sexting—both ridiculous and unnerving—weren't hard to find. [......]
Verizon Wireless has struck a $3.6 billion deal to buy wireless spectrum covering 259 million Americans from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. The deal comes just as rival AT&T's $39 billion attempt to buy T-Mobile USA flounders in the wake of opposition from the Federal Communications Commission[......]
Researchers at North Carolina State University have uncovered a variety of vulnerabilities in the standard configurations of popular Android smartphones from Motorola, HTC, and Samsung, finding that they don't properly protect privileged permissions from untrusted applications. In a paper just published by researchers Michael Grace, Yajin Zhou, Zhi Wang, and Xuxian Jiang, the four outlined how the vulnerabilities could be used by an untrusted application to send SMS messages, record conversations, or even wipe all user data from the handset without needing the user's permission. [......]
Samsung has successfully appealed a preliminary injunction that barred the company from releasing its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia. A three-judge appellate panel unanimously reversed the injunction ruling , citing issues with the way Justice Annabelle Bennett interpreted Australian law. [......]
If there's any doubt how social networks have presented hackers with a wealth of social engineering tools, a Brazilian security researcher recently demonstrated how he could "friend" even allegedly more wary Facebook users in less than 24 hours. At the Silver Bullet security conference in São Paulo, UOLDiveo chief security officer Nelson Novaes Neto showed how he leveraged LinkedIn, Amazon, and Facebook to convince a target—a Web security expert he called "SecGirl" using social engineering. [......]
A quartet of hackers based in the Philippines have allegedly bilked AT&T and possibly other telecommunications companies out of millions, which they channeled to their own bank accounts and to accounts associated with a terrorist organization. [......]
