My Way News - Apple Faces Suit Over IPod-ITunes Link: "As if its options woes weren't trouble enough, Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL) said Friday it is facing several federal lawsuits, including one alleging the company created an illegal monopoly by tying iTunes music and video sales to its market-leading iPod portable players.
The case, filed July 21, is over Apple's use of a copy-protection system that generally prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival players. Likewise, songs purchased elsewhere aren't easily playable on iPods.
The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages and other relief. The court denied Apple's motion to dismiss the complaint on Dec. 20.
Another lawsuit, filed Nov. 7, alleges that the logic board of Apple's iBook G4 fails at an abnormally high rate. The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said its response to the complaint is not yet due.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also disclosed that PhatRat Technology LLC filed a lawsuit Oct. 24 alleging patent infringement. The Nike-iPod product in question, developed jointly with Nike Inc. (NKE), allow runners to keep track of how far and how fast they've gone. The company's response to the complaint is not yet due."
Friday, December 29, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
My Way News - Vista Flaw Discovered, Risk Believed Low
My Way News - Vista Flaw Discovered, Risk Believed Low: "Windows Vista, the new computer operating system that Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is touting as its most secure ever, contains a programming flaw that might let hackers gain full control of vulnerable computers.
Microsoft and independent security researchers, however, tried to play down the risk from the flaw, which was posted on a Russian site recently and is apparently the first affecting the new Vista system released to larger businesses in late November.
The software company said it was investigating the threat but found so far that a hacker must already have access to the vulnerable computer in order to execute an attack.
That could occur if someone is actually sitting in front of the PC or otherwise gets the computer's owner to install rogue software, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security research company F-Secure Corp.
'The bottom line is you couldn't use a vulnerability like this to write a worm or hack a Vista system remotely,' Hypponen said Tuesday. 'It only has historical significance in that it's the first reported vulnerability that also affects Vista. It's a nonevent in other ways.'
Attackers with low-level access privileges on a vulnerable machine could theoretically use the flaw to bump up their status, ultimately gaining systemwide control, Hypponen said.
The flaw affects older Windows systems, too, and Hypponen said vulnerabilities like these are quite common and can be fixed with a software patch, which Microsoft releases on the second Tuesday of each month except for the most serious threats. The flaw remains a proof of concept, with no one known to have actually launched an attack with it, Hypponen said."
Microsoft and independent security researchers, however, tried to play down the risk from the flaw, which was posted on a Russian site recently and is apparently the first affecting the new Vista system released to larger businesses in late November.
The software company said it was investigating the threat but found so far that a hacker must already have access to the vulnerable computer in order to execute an attack.
That could occur if someone is actually sitting in front of the PC or otherwise gets the computer's owner to install rogue software, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security research company F-Secure Corp.
'The bottom line is you couldn't use a vulnerability like this to write a worm or hack a Vista system remotely,' Hypponen said Tuesday. 'It only has historical significance in that it's the first reported vulnerability that also affects Vista. It's a nonevent in other ways.'
Attackers with low-level access privileges on a vulnerable machine could theoretically use the flaw to bump up their status, ultimately gaining systemwide control, Hypponen said.
The flaw affects older Windows systems, too, and Hypponen said vulnerabilities like these are quite common and can be fixed with a software patch, which Microsoft releases on the second Tuesday of each month except for the most serious threats. The flaw remains a proof of concept, with no one known to have actually launched an attack with it, Hypponen said."
Amazon.com Has 'Best Ever' Holidays
Amazon.com Has 'Best Ever' Holidays: "The 2006 holiday season was Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) (AMZN)'s 'best ever,' peaking with more than 4 million orders placed on Dec. 11, the Web retailer said Tuesday.
In its 12th holiday season, Amazon.com said it shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines around the globe. At its peak, the retailer sent out more than 3.4 million units in a single day.
The company said it sold 1,000 Xbox 360 game consoles in 29 seconds, as part of a promotion that slashed two-thirds off the regular retail price. Demand for the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) machines was so high that Amazon.com's site bogged down briefly on Thanksgiving Day, generating bitter complaints from shoppers and forcing the retailer to change procedures for subsequent promotions.
Amazon.com also said customers ordered enough orange-flavored Airborne old-fighting supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747 planes.
Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL)'s iPods, Canon Inc. (CAJ) (CAJ)'s Powershot Digital Elph cameras and Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) (GRMN)'s navigational devices using Global Positioning System technology were among the best-selling consumer electronics items. Amazon.com also sold the most expensive digital music player to date, for $19,999.
Among the top-selling DVD titles was 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest', starring Johnny Depp. Best-selling books included Barack Obama's 'The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream' and 'You: On a Diet' by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen.
Shares of Amazon.com dipped 65 cents to $39.59 in midday trading Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market"
In its 12th holiday season, Amazon.com said it shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines around the globe. At its peak, the retailer sent out more than 3.4 million units in a single day.
The company said it sold 1,000 Xbox 360 game consoles in 29 seconds, as part of a promotion that slashed two-thirds off the regular retail price. Demand for the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) machines was so high that Amazon.com's site bogged down briefly on Thanksgiving Day, generating bitter complaints from shoppers and forcing the retailer to change procedures for subsequent promotions.
Amazon.com also said customers ordered enough orange-flavored Airborne old-fighting supplements to supply every passenger on 192 Boeing 747 planes.
Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL)'s iPods, Canon Inc. (CAJ) (CAJ)'s Powershot Digital Elph cameras and Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) (GRMN)'s navigational devices using Global Positioning System technology were among the best-selling consumer electronics items. Amazon.com also sold the most expensive digital music player to date, for $19,999.
Among the top-selling DVD titles was 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest', starring Johnny Depp. Best-selling books included Barack Obama's 'The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream' and 'You: On a Diet' by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen.
Shares of Amazon.com dipped 65 cents to $39.59 in midday trading Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market"
Thursday, December 21, 2006
My Way Finance
My Way Finance: "Stock-compensation expenses cut into profits for the second consecutive quarter for Red Hat Inc., but the company again exceeded analysts' expectations.
Red Hat, a leading provider of the open source Linux operating system and services, reported Thursday that its third-quarter profit sank 37 percent because of stock options expenses and tax provisions. The company's second-quarter profit dropped 34 percent on stock-compensation expenses.
But company shares surged nearly 14 percent in after-hours trading Thursday.
'Our brand and our reputation is world-recognized,' Red Hat Chairman Matthew Szulik said after markets closed. 'The continued innovation in the next quarter will allow us to compete successfully.'
For the three months that ended Nov. 30, earnings dropped to $14.6 million, or 7 cents per share, down from $24.6 million, or 12 cents a share in the same period last year.
Excluding stock options expenses and income tax provisions, profit totaled $29.6 million, or 14 cents per share.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast a profit of 12 cents per share, excluding options expenses."
Red Hat, a leading provider of the open source Linux operating system and services, reported Thursday that its third-quarter profit sank 37 percent because of stock options expenses and tax provisions. The company's second-quarter profit dropped 34 percent on stock-compensation expenses.
But company shares surged nearly 14 percent in after-hours trading Thursday.
'Our brand and our reputation is world-recognized,' Red Hat Chairman Matthew Szulik said after markets closed. 'The continued innovation in the next quarter will allow us to compete successfully.'
For the three months that ended Nov. 30, earnings dropped to $14.6 million, or 7 cents per share, down from $24.6 million, or 12 cents a share in the same period last year.
Excluding stock options expenses and income tax provisions, profit totaled $29.6 million, or 14 cents per share.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast a profit of 12 cents per share, excluding options expenses."
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
My Way News - IBM to Open Islands in Virtual World
My Way News - IBM to Open Islands in Virtual World: "IBM Corp. is launching an ambitious marketing campaign in the hip virtual world 'Second Life.'
Big Blue has developed 12 'virtual islands,' and most will be open to anyone with a Second Life account starting next week. Other areas will remain private haunts for about 800 IBM employees - including the CEO - who have cyber alter-egos.
Second Life is a subscription-based 3-D fantasy world devoted to capitalism - a 21st century version of Monopoly that generates real money for successful players. More than 1.95 million people worldwide have Second Life characters, called avatars.
At any given time, 10,000 or more avatars may be logged onto Second Life, socializing by instant messages or engaging in virtual pastimes such as flying, dancing, gambling or watching adult videos.
Second Life is notoriously buggy; avatars may spontaneously shed clothing, hair or limbs, and sometimes graphics take several seconds to render. In September, the San Francisco-based company that runs Second Life, Linden Labs, warned that a security breach may have exposed subscribers' data, including credit card numbers and passwords."
Big Blue has developed 12 'virtual islands,' and most will be open to anyone with a Second Life account starting next week. Other areas will remain private haunts for about 800 IBM employees - including the CEO - who have cyber alter-egos.
Second Life is a subscription-based 3-D fantasy world devoted to capitalism - a 21st century version of Monopoly that generates real money for successful players. More than 1.95 million people worldwide have Second Life characters, called avatars.
At any given time, 10,000 or more avatars may be logged onto Second Life, socializing by instant messages or engaging in virtual pastimes such as flying, dancing, gambling or watching adult videos.
Second Life is notoriously buggy; avatars may spontaneously shed clothing, hair or limbs, and sometimes graphics take several seconds to render. In September, the San Francisco-based company that runs Second Life, Linden Labs, warned that a security breach may have exposed subscribers' data, including credit card numbers and passwords."
Sunday, December 10, 2006
NASA Hasn't Put Price on Lunar Outpost
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — It'll be cheaper to build a permanent moon base and keep it running, than it will be to get to the moon. Just don't ask how much, NASA's boss says.
The U.S. space agency's newly unveiled grand plan for a continually staffed lunar outpost starting around 2024 doesn't come with a similarly grand price tag. It doesn't come with a price tag at all.
"You ask what things will cost, I don't know yet," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a detail-oriented engineer. "We just rolled out a very preliminary architecture."
Griffin's lack of specifics is partly because NASA is budgeting its large cosmic construction projects differently, more "pay as you go" than "get there at all costs."
It's a departure that outsiders call either a brilliant way to avoid cost overruns and sticker shock — or a blank check that will end up squeezing taxpayers.
"Typically a habitat is less than the cost of large rocketry," Griffin said in an interview with The Associated Press as he awaited a space shuttle launch that was foiled on Thursday.
Last year, NASA said it would cost about $104 billion leading up to the first moon landing, now scheduled to happen by 2020. But that doesn't include the cost of multiple and continuous moon flights and the price of building and running the newly unveiled lunar outpost.
The Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of Congress, puts the cost of NASA's lunar program through 2025 at $230 billion.
There is still no estimate from anyone for the second phase of President Bush's 3-year-old "vision of space exploration" — an expedition to Mars.
Griffin contends NASA should be able to pay for the lunar phase of this space vision simply by using its existing yearly budget of about $16.8 billion. If something has to give, he said, it will be the target dates.
American University public policy professor Howard McCurdy said that method — which he said is smarter and far different from the Apollo days when unlimited moon spending "was eating everybody's budget" — gives NASA "a real incentive to invest that money wisely."
And it gives the space agency a mission without an end date when the budget axes start coming out, he said.
"You don't know when to draw the line in the sand and say 'the program is over,'" McCurdy said. "It is a program like Buzz Lightyear that does whatever it can and reaches infinity," he added in a joking reference to the "Toy Story" movie character.
This way there are not the massive budget overruns that have forever dogged the international space station, which was once projected to cost $17 billion but is actually in the $50 billion range, McCurdy said. It also avoids the sticker shock of a $500 billion moon-and-Mars program proposed by President Bush's father that collapsed when the cost was revealed.
But Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group, calls the moon plans a waste.
"You've got to have some price tag on what you're going to do, otherwise you're going to continue to waste money," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the group. "This is like building a house and not knowing how much it is. You don't have plans."
Griffin says many of the details of the lunar station are purposely being left to future rocket scientists. He envisions the outpost, not as a city, but more like America's research station in Antarctica.
"It is the choice of the next generation to decide to avail themselves of that option," Griffin said. If they don't want to stay and research on the moon "then we'll move on more rapidly to Mars."
What Griffin doesn't want is a repeat of the mistaken choice to mothball Apollo, made by the White House in the early 1970s.
"We're rebuilding systems that we had 40 years ago and that we built at that time and then discarded," he said. "That was not a NASA mistake. It was a policy mistake at the highest level of the U.S. government.... My generation now has the task before it of fixing that mistake."
The U.S. space agency's newly unveiled grand plan for a continually staffed lunar outpost starting around 2024 doesn't come with a similarly grand price tag. It doesn't come with a price tag at all.
"You ask what things will cost, I don't know yet," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a detail-oriented engineer. "We just rolled out a very preliminary architecture."
Griffin's lack of specifics is partly because NASA is budgeting its large cosmic construction projects differently, more "pay as you go" than "get there at all costs."
It's a departure that outsiders call either a brilliant way to avoid cost overruns and sticker shock — or a blank check that will end up squeezing taxpayers.
"Typically a habitat is less than the cost of large rocketry," Griffin said in an interview with The Associated Press as he awaited a space shuttle launch that was foiled on Thursday.
Last year, NASA said it would cost about $104 billion leading up to the first moon landing, now scheduled to happen by 2020. But that doesn't include the cost of multiple and continuous moon flights and the price of building and running the newly unveiled lunar outpost.
The Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of Congress, puts the cost of NASA's lunar program through 2025 at $230 billion.
There is still no estimate from anyone for the second phase of President Bush's 3-year-old "vision of space exploration" — an expedition to Mars.
Griffin contends NASA should be able to pay for the lunar phase of this space vision simply by using its existing yearly budget of about $16.8 billion. If something has to give, he said, it will be the target dates.
American University public policy professor Howard McCurdy said that method — which he said is smarter and far different from the Apollo days when unlimited moon spending "was eating everybody's budget" — gives NASA "a real incentive to invest that money wisely."
And it gives the space agency a mission without an end date when the budget axes start coming out, he said.
"You don't know when to draw the line in the sand and say 'the program is over,'" McCurdy said. "It is a program like Buzz Lightyear that does whatever it can and reaches infinity," he added in a joking reference to the "Toy Story" movie character.
This way there are not the massive budget overruns that have forever dogged the international space station, which was once projected to cost $17 billion but is actually in the $50 billion range, McCurdy said. It also avoids the sticker shock of a $500 billion moon-and-Mars program proposed by President Bush's father that collapsed when the cost was revealed.
But Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group, calls the moon plans a waste.
"You've got to have some price tag on what you're going to do, otherwise you're going to continue to waste money," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the group. "This is like building a house and not knowing how much it is. You don't have plans."
Griffin says many of the details of the lunar station are purposely being left to future rocket scientists. He envisions the outpost, not as a city, but more like America's research station in Antarctica.
"It is the choice of the next generation to decide to avail themselves of that option," Griffin said. If they don't want to stay and research on the moon "then we'll move on more rapidly to Mars."
What Griffin doesn't want is a repeat of the mistaken choice to mothball Apollo, made by the White House in the early 1970s.
"We're rebuilding systems that we had 40 years ago and that we built at that time and then discarded," he said. "That was not a NASA mistake. It was a policy mistake at the highest level of the U.S. government.... My generation now has the task before it of fixing that mistake."
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Slumping Yahoo Shakes Up Executive Suite
"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc. announced its biggest executive shake-up in more than five years, including placing Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker in charge of ad sales in a move that may signal her anointment as successor to the company's top job.
Shares of Yahoo, which have struggled this year as the stock of competitor Google has flourished, fell 54 cents, or 2 percent, to $26.88 in midday trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Under the overhaul announced late Tuesday, Yahoo vowed to rein in a sometimes-rambling product expansion that has bogged down its earnings growth and threatened its position as the Internet's most popular site as more buzz built up around upstarts like MySpace and YouTube.
The streamlining will bunch Yahoo's disparate operations into three core groups focused on its Web site's audience, advertising network and technology."
Shares of Yahoo, which have struggled this year as the stock of competitor Google has flourished, fell 54 cents, or 2 percent, to $26.88 in midday trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Under the overhaul announced late Tuesday, Yahoo vowed to rein in a sometimes-rambling product expansion that has bogged down its earnings growth and threatened its position as the Internet's most popular site as more buzz built up around upstarts like MySpace and YouTube.
The streamlining will bunch Yahoo's disparate operations into three core groups focused on its Web site's audience, advertising network and technology."
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