The FCC will allow AT&T to yank its application to buy T-Mobile from consideration. Read More: Wall Street Journal Read the comments on this post [......]
In light of the erosion of privacy online , we need to be careful to protect our privacy at home, according to Michael Birnhack , law professor at Tel Aviv University, speaking at Intelligence Squared's If conference . In direct contrast to Martin Blinder's argument in favor of personal analytics , Birnhack said: "Yes we can measure stuff, but do we want to measure all that stuff? I would argue that at least some of us would like to maintain a place where nothing is measured and nothing should be measured." We have always used technology to maintain privacy within our properties, such as locks, curtains, shades, CCTV, and security systems, and a person's home has always provided a degree of privacy where you can do what you like. [......]
Some of the Silicon Valley's most important companies, including Intel, Google, and Yahoo, were cofounded by immigrants. Yet America's creaky immigration system makes it difficult for talented young people born outside of the United States to come to the Bay Area. [......]
Prosecutors have charged two New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission employees with selling names, addresses, birthdates and Social Security numbers of "unsuspecting residents" for as little as $200 per identity. The same investigation conducted by the Mercer County Prosecutor's Economic Crime Unit in Trenton led to charges against two non-government workers who allegedly used their jobs in a tax office and realty company to sell identities as part of a similar scheme. The prosecutor's office announced the identity theft charges last week. [......]
A data-logging software company is seeking to squash an Android developer’s critical research into its software that is secretly installed on millions of phones, but Trevor Eckhart is refusing to publicly apologize for his research and remove the company’s training manuals from his website. Though the software is installed on millions of Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia phones, Carrier IQ was virtually unknown until the 25-year-old Eckhart analyzed its workings, recently revealing that the software secretly chronicles a user’s phone experience, from its apps, battery life and texts[......]
With the holidays approaching, tech news has been heating up. This week, we reviewed the Kindle Fire from Amazon and covered the important Stop Online Piracy Act hearings in Congress. [......]
Next year is going to be a busy one for Qualcomm. The mobile chip maker announced a whole bunch of new Snapdragon chipsets, including several upgraded parts designed for entry-level smartphones transitioning from 2G to 3G. Along with higher end chips for feature-rich smartphones and tablets, Qualcomm is also making a push into Windows 8 PCs. [......]
Maria Pallante One of the most depressing bits of today's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Congressional hearing was watching US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante double down on her support for blacklisting Internet sites, encouraging private companies to cut off credit card processing to certain sites in the absence of any court order, and sending the US government after sites that "facilitate" copyright infringement (YouTube? DropBox? Scribd[......]
A major new survey of American attitudes to online copyright infringement has found that 70 percent of all 18 to 29-year-olds have pirated music, TV shows, or movies. [......]
The US Department of Justice has charged seven people in Russia and Estonia with 27 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, and computer intrusion, accusing them of spreading malware to over 4 million computers worldwide to drive traffic to clients' Internet advertising. The alleged hackers used malware to alter the network settings of infected computers and created a network of "rogue" Domain Name Service users to reroute computer users' clicks to advertisers' sites. They also replaced ads on webpages with those of paying customers, a Department of Justice spokesperson told Ars Technica. [......]
LG has signed a deal with Intellectual Ventures, a company that owns many an innovation right, so that it may continue to create new products without fear that it will be sued over the technology within them. [......]
A Kansas man was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison "for selling $1 million worth of counterfeit Cisco computer equipment," the US Attorney's office for the District of Kansas said . Timothy Weatherly, 29, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit goods and making false statements to smuggle goods into the United States, related to the operation of a business called Deals Direct in 2005 and 2006. [......]
The end of an era: Internet Explorer drops below 50% of Web usage : Two things happened during October: Internet Explorer lost its majority share of the browser market, and here at Ars, Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time ever. [......]
If the Samsung Focus Flash had you even remotely excited, then the Focus S is sure to leave you thrilled. With almost all the same specs as baby brother, the Focus S brings a slightly larger screen and more powerful camera to an already snappy little phone[......]
Are you concerned that Windows 8 with its radically redesigned UI and Metro style Start menu will be too much to swallow on the desktop? [......]
