The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says that a proposed alternative to the draconian Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) won't work, and that it has found the patent case to prove it: Kodak's patent claims against Apple and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM). Two days before the new year, the US International Trade Commission announced that the Commission will place the "target date" for review of the case at September 21, 2012. Aha! declares Mitch Glazier, Senior Executive Vice President for the RIAA, in a blog post . [......]
Thanks to a flaw in WiFi Protected Setup, most home and small business routers could be giving away free WiFi. On December 27, the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a warning about a vulnerability in wireless routers that use WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) to allow new devices to be connected to them. Within a day of the discovery, researchers at a Maryland-based computer security firm developed a tool that exploits that vulnerability, and has made a version available as open source[......]
One sign of a good judge is being able to set aside his or her personal feelings to uphold the law when it conflicts. [......]
The Düsseldorf International Airport is about to flip the switch on one of the largest solar arrays in Germany. The 8,400 panel, 2 megawatt solar array spans the space of six soccer fields, and it was finished in time to start feeding power to the grid before the clock strikes 2012. To prove the solar array’s everyday worth, the airport has installed a real time statistics ticker in the airport lobby so passengers can see how much energy it is creating and how much carbon dioxide is being diverted from the atmosphere[......]
Apple was recently awarded a patent related to multitouch input processing, which the Internet immediately characterized as a "key multitouch patent" that Apple could use to target Android handset makers. While the patent does describe a useful—and perhaps even important—part of Apple's multitouch technology, it certainly isn't a "thermonuclear" option that Apple could use to wipe out its smartphone competition. Read the comments on this post [......]
Google began promoting its new flight search tool above those of third-party airline booking sites earlier this month. This has caused rivals to claim that Google is "violating the spirit" of a commitment it made to the Department of Justice when it acquired travel software company ITA Software, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal . Google's purchase of ITA, which was completed in April, was cleared by the DOJ after Google promised to make travel data available to competitors and build tools to drive more traffic to airline and online travel agency sites[......]
Views on copyright law have never broken down cleanly along ideological or partisan lines, but many of the key supporters for the Stop Online Piracy Act have come from the political right. [......]
India is getting a second government-sponsored tablet. The first model (the so-called Aakash) sold out in just a few days after it was launched online last week, but maker DataWind has already followed up with another 7-inch model, the Ubislate 7 . [......]
It seems Sharp saw good sales when the company launched the so-called AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH on the Japanese market, the world’s first clamshell Android phone. Today, Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE IS14SH [JP] went on sale in Japan, and again they squeezed a ton of smartphone functions into a feature phone body. [......]
In September of 2007 the general public first heard about "white space" broadband devices via a series of scary television advertisements rolled out by TV broadcaster groups. "Digital television means you can watch your favorite shows with a crystal-clear picture," a narrator promised while generic grandma watched TV. "But if some high-tech companies like Microsoft get their way, your picture could freeze and become unwatchable," the ad warned viewers. [......]
On Monday, the City of New York formally announced that it had chosen the winning bids for a new science and technology incubator it wants to see built on Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. The winner was a joint effort by Cornell University and Israel's Technion Institute[......]
Traffic shaping along Bell Canada and Bell Aliant's ISP lines came in with a bang three years ago, infuriating consumers and advocates. "Unacceptable," critics called it—a "symptom of Bell's arrogance" and "blatant censorship." But Canada's telecommunications regulators gave the practice a provisional go-ahead , so the companies throttled away , the focus being on P2P use between 4:30pm and 2am[......]
US Government tries to restrict publication of details on avian flu virus that spreads among mammals
Although avian flu viruses have infected humans in the past (often with lethal effect), so far, these infections have come directly from birds. Over this past summer, however, researchers presented disturbing results at a scientific meeting. By growing the avian H5N1 virus in mammals for several generations, they had evolved a strain that can spread among mammals (ferrets, in this case) simply through the air. [......]
Smart HDTVs will be a big trend at CES 2012. Nearly every major brand will release major updates to existing lines along with completely new products[......]
A new song, "Firewall," protests to the SOPA Copyright bill. Read More: YouTube , Cnet Read the comments on this post [......]
