Shareholders approve AMD's foundry spinoff gamble
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View the full AMD chart at WikinvestIt is perhaps the most colossal gamble in the history of the semiconductor industry, and now, the chips are down. AMD shareholders yesterday voiced their approval for a deal that effectively spins off the crown jewel of their company -- its processor foundry operation -- to a new corporation run by the government of Abu Dhabi in the UAE.
Judge knocks the thunder out of 'Vista-capable' class-action suit
Though the likelihood of Microsoft's prevailing actually looks worse than it did last week, if it ends up losing, it might not be much after the judge says plaintiffs failed to prove its actions harmed a plurality.
When Microsoft decided to present consumer editions of Windows Vista with multiple versions, some of which lacked the very features the company advertised as defining the product, was it with the willful intent to defraud the public? An internal e-mail from then-president Jim Allchin to his colleagues suggests he was indeed afraid that the multiple versions could lead to consumer confusion and frustration...but that memo, made public during the discovery phase of the "Vista-capable" class-action case in Washington state district court, also appears to indicate a lack of willfulness on the part of at least one of the company's senior executives to deceive the public.
Yahoo up, Ask and Fox down in latest search rankings
ComScore's January 2009 numbers are out, and the most popular search site in America is...oh, that one you can easily guess. The less obvious numbers involve who's gaining ground, and which mega-funded search entity seems to be slipping.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Google leads the pack in market share, accounting for 63% of all search traffic from home, work and university locations in January. Interestingly, that's down one-half of one percent -- precisely the amount by which second-ranked Yahoo is up for the month, at 21%.
Sprint customer drain continues in Q4, 1.3 million leave
This morning, Sprint Nextel reported its fourth quarter earnings, or more accurately, losses. The wireless operator posted a $1.2 billion loss for the quarter, a 14.4% drop in revenue, and a loss of 1.3 million customers.
"In tough economic times, we're generating substantial cash and reducing costs to ensure we remain financially sound," said Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse in a statement this morning. "We already have the cash on hand to be able to meet our debt service requirements at least through the end of 2010."
Hulu apologizes as it bids an early goodbye to Boxee
Freeware media center Boxee is still very young, but offers a comprehensive solution for both managing a user's existent collection of movies, music, and photos, and discovering free online content. Unfortunately, it will be continuing ahead without support from Hulu.
In a blog post entitled Doing hard things, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar today announced that Hulu's content will no longer be available on boxee after this week. Done at the behest of content providers (aka Hollywood Studios), Kilar said that Hulu really had no choice but to suspend support for boxee.
HP revenues lift slightly, but profit sharply falls by 13%
Services sparked a slight first-quarter revenue gain for Hewlett-Packard, but profits fell by 13% over the prior year, prompting the company's shares to fall 6% in after-hours trading.
In a conference call this evening, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd told financial analysts that HP "executed well in a challenging market" by turning in a one percent revenue gain during the first quarter of this year.
IFPI site hacked amid Pirate Bay trial
The Swedish language Web site belonging to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry -- which is leading the legal charge against file sharing site The Pirate Bay -- was hacked this afternoon and has been pulled offline.
At around 7:50 pm Central European Time, the Web site for the IFPI -- the international recording industry's representative body -- was replaced with a bulletin, or rather a declaration of war, which read (translated):
A veritable absence of panic after some TV stations throw the switch
The US Federal Communications Commission reports that, after 421 of the nation's analog television stations ceased transmission on February 17 as originally planned, its call centers received a grand total of 28,000 calls from viewers, with a great many of those apparently concerning the proper use of converter boxes already received.
This afternoon, the National Association of Broadcasters reported that stations opting to make the switch yesterday also received phone calls, but nothing beyond what they were already equipped to handle. For instance, in Madison, Wisconsin -- whose major affiliate stations were first denied the option of switching on 2/17, and then granted nearly at the last minute -- three of the city's stations reported a combined viewer call count of 400. Some of those calls were from folks who hadn't installed their converter boxes properly.
CBS to move 'March Madness' to Silverlight
If Microsoft's Silverlight is indeed fizzling, someone didn't get the message out to the NCAA. For its annual endeavor in covering all the NCAA basketball playoff games online, CBS has opted to triple the NCAA's bandwidth over last year by switching from a Flash-based player -- which already received rave reviews -- to a Silverlight player produced in conjunction with Microsoft.
Like last year, the NCAA March Madness player will deliver every game in the NCAA Championship series to individuals who sign up for free. Online telecasts will be ad-supported, in the wake of poor reception to a subscription-based model in 2007 and earlier years, produced at the time in conjunction with YouTube. The 2008 move to an ad-supported player, the network says, led to 4.8 million total unique visitors downloading the player throughout the Championship series -- a 164% annual jump -- watching a total of 81% more hours of video.
At last, a miniature USB cable for handsets is at hand
Two years ago, the Micro USB spec was standardized, and shortly thereafter, the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) announced approved it as the universal standard phone cable.
This week, the OMTP -- sponsored by Ericsson and Nokia, and 35 hardware and software manufacturers across the telecommunications industry -- announced the publication (PDF available here) of the "Common Charging and Local Data Connectivity" (CLD) document -- a sort of industry agreement upon what these Micro USB cables need to provide.
Court dismisses claim Google Street View invades folks' privacy
A privacy invasion case against Google that was given extra attention after the company asserted in court that getting your picture taken is just part of life in the 21st century, was dismissed yesterday by a judge who apparently agrees.
Last April, the Borings of Allegheny, Pennsylvania argued that their private space was interfered with by the roving camera of Google's Street View. In filing their lawsuit against the search giant, they may have brought more attention to themselves than Google's cameras might have merited. But the fact that few others among the millions who have had their front porches snapshot by Google's panoramic camera, convinced a district court judge in Pennsylvania yesterday to toss the Borings' case.
Microsoft tells its security story (in pictures)
It's been a long strange trip toward better security for Microsoft, but they've made enough progress to have both improvements to their technique and some highly interesting war stories. The company's got a new site explaining the past decade's advances, and you have a reason to read comics at work today.
The process of "baking security in" -- getting developers to think about security less as "those people who yell at us" and more as an integral part of any software-construction effort -- lends its name to Baking Security In, which details Microsoft's progress on the Security Development Lifecycle, a process involving 14 stages and checkpoints over the six stages of the software-dev cycle (requirements, design, implementation, verification, release, support/service).
Courtroom webcast fight may delay RIAA trial
In an attempt to block the Courtroom View Network (CVN) from broadcasting the RIAA v. Tenenbaum trial, the counsel representing the record labels escalated the affair to the US Court of Appeals.
The legal counsel for the defendant in the copyright infringement suit -- a Harvard Law School class led by Charles Nesson of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society -- moved to have the case broadcast online in January. Developments in this aspect of the case today may lead to the hearing's ultimate delay.
Something to woot about
In an age of breakdown, a small but cheerful -- not to mention colorful -- bit of news reaches us from Texas, where woot.com's t-shirt site recently sold its 1,000,000th printed piece of geek culture. Since site launch, shirt.woot.com has sold a garment every 48.24 seconds since July 22, 2007.
The millionth shirt, according to the company, was sold for $10 on January 30th at 8:25am CST to a man in Houston. Fittingly, the shirt was a Derby winner -- a short designed by an artist competing to have a shirt chosen (by the users) for printing. "Sun Wukong (The Monkey King)" was the first-place shirt in that week's Derby, the theme of which was "Myths and Legends." Many of Woot's shirts are designed for them for free; tomorrow (Thursday), the site will branch into celebrity-designed T's with an offering from geek icon Wil Wheaton.
Verizon names partners in LTE development
Partners in Verizon's most recently announced LTE deployment will include hardware vendors Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, packet core vendor Starent Networks, and IMS partner Nokia Siemens.
Verizon Executive Vice President and CTO Dick Lynch has been vocally supporting the 4G standard LTE (Long Term Evolution) for two years, and only two months ago said LTE services could begin by December of this year. In Barcelona today, Lynch discussed Verizon's LTE deployment plans, which more realistically anticipate construction to begin in 2010.
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