US House to Debate Resolution Against Radio Performance Royalties
In a gamble that is certain to receive stiff opposition from both sides of the aisle, Reps. Gene Green (D - Texas) and Mike Conaway (R - Texas) offered to the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday a draft resolution opposing the imposition of royalties on terrestrial radio broadcasters for the use of sound recordings.
"For more than 80 years, Congress has rejected repeated calls by the recording industry to impose a performance fee on local radio stations for simply playing music on the radio and upsetting the mutually beneficial relationship between local radio and the recording industry," reads one clause of the draft for House Concurrent Resolution 244, which thus far has garnered 50 co-sponsors.
Seagate Settles Suit Over 'Gigabyte' Definition
Seagate will settle a lawsuit over its definition of a gigabyte by giving customers the choice of either a cash refund or free backup and recovery software.
The hard drive maker was sued in 2005 by Michael Lazar and Sarah Cho, who accused the company of misleading consumers as to how much storage space Seagate hard drives contained.
Toshiba A3 HD DVD Player Now $199
In yet another price drop for HD DVD, Best Buy and Circuit City are now offering Toshiba's latest third-generation A3 player for $199, $100 off the original price. Although the older A2 player can be picked up for $98 while supplies last at a number of retail outlets, the A3 has only been out for one month, making the sale quite a surprise.
Further enhancing the $199 deal, the A3 includes 7 free HD DVDs - two of which can be selected instantly and another 5 sent via mail-in offer. Sears previously announced plans to sell the A3 for $169 on just the day after Thanksgiving, but Best Buy and Circuit City's sale doesn't appear to be limited, and units are in stock online and at stores. Blu-ray plans to offer discounts for the holidays as well, but Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow said prices of Blu-ray players will not likely fall below $400.
Sprint Mulls Future of WiMAX Business
Without an official CEO to succeed Gary Forsee, Sprint is weighing options regarding the rollout of its planned national WiMAX network.
The company has reportedly been in talks since July with a wireless start-up called Clearwire about working together to build a nationwide WiMAX network. No official agreements have yet been made, and given Sprint's current state of administrative flux, they will likely continue unresolved; at least until a new CEO is in place.
Groups Ask FCC to Investigate Comcast for BitTorrent Blocking
Comcast may soon find itself in hot water with the FCC after several public interest groups and legal professors from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford filed a network neutrality complaint against the company.
Listed as complainants are: Free Press, Public Knowledge, Media Access Project, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Barbara van Schewick of Stanford Law School and the Stanford Center for Internet & Society.
Manhunt 2: The Second Coming of Hot Coffee?
UPDATE - Friday, 4pm EST - ESRB President Patricia Vance has issued a statement saying Take-Two is not responsible for the latest hack.
"Once numerous changes to the game's code have been made and other unauthorized software programs have been downloaded to the hardware device which circumvent security controls that prevent unauthorized games from being played on that hardware, a player can view unobscured versions of certain violent acts in the game," Vance said. "Contrary to some reports, however, we do not believe these modifications fully restore the product to the version that originally received an AO rating, nor is this a matter of unlocking content."
Yahoo's Callahan Apologizes Over Omissions to Congress About China
"Months after I testified before two House subcommittees on Yahoo's approach to business in China," reads a statement released this morning by Yahoo Senior Vice President and General Counsel Michael Callahan, "I realized Yahoo had additional information about a 2004 order issued by the Chinese government seeking information about a Yahoo China user."
That user was Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist about whom his government sought private information from Yahoo, his Internet service provider. The Chinese government used that information as evidence against Tao, eventually sentencing him to 10 years' imprisonment for divulging state secrets.
MySpace Joins Google to Take On Facebook and Microsoft
BetaNews has learned that amidst MySpace's move to join Google's OpenSocial community, Microsoft is now in talks with Facebook to integrate Windows Live ID into the quickly growing social network.
Reliable sources tell BetaNews that the two companies have begun talks on integrating login systems following an advertising agreement that gives Microsoft a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook in exchange for $240 million.
Sprint Continues to Bleed Customers, Profit Plummets
Sprint Nextel's third quarter profit plummeted 77 percent as the wireless provider continued to lose customers amid concerns over the carrier's future.
Much of the losses come from the company's Nextel division, which has seen its share of troubles after the merger. Some believe that Sprint has turned its back on the division -- which uses Motorola's iDEN technology -- choosing to focus solely on its CDMA wireless business.
SharePoint Services Role Removed from Final Windows Server 2008
As Microsoft sources first quietly noted on its product teams' blogs on Monday, and as the company is making clear today, one of the roles that had been planned to ship as part of Windows Server 2008, and that was being tested with the current Release Candidate 0, now will not be shipped with the final product. Instead, admins will be able to download the SharePoint Services 3.0 directly from Microsoft for no additional charge.
"As we're getting closer to release, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is returning to how it was previously available to Windows Server 2008 customers," wrote senior product manager Julius Sinkevicius on Monday. "Specifically, we are going back to making it available as a separate download that is available to customers at no additional charge."
China's Olympics Ticket Sales Crash
First-come, first-served ticket sales for the 2008 Beijing Olympics began and ended in one hour on Tuesday when the overwhelming demand crashed the server's database.
Ticket sales for the Games were halted after demand proved to be far too much for the database to handle. The ticketing database could supposedly process 150,000 transactions an hour, but in just the first hour, the Games' site had 8 million hits, its hotline had 3.8 million calls, and 200,000 orders were taken from customers.
Canadian Firm Sues 22, Claims it Owns Wi-Fi Tech
A Canadian technology licensing company called Wi-Lan Inc. launched an assault today on no fewer than 22 companies, including both equipment vendors and consumer electronics retailers. The claim isn't new - patent infringement - but the strategy is certainly unique.
Each of the company's three infringement suits deal with individual patents, two of which were actually invented by the co-founders of the company, dealing with Wi-Fi/OFDM and multicode applications.
Mac Porn Surfers Subject to QT Flaw
Attackers are going after Macintosh computer users who are visiting pornographic web sites, claiming to offer a plug-in that installs a video codec necessary to play the movie files within QuickTime.
On certain profiles, the links to the Trojan download appear as stills to a supposed porn clip. When a Mac user clicks on the link, they are taken to a page with the message "Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file. Please click here to download new version of codec." From there, the install would proceed like a normal program install.
Mandriva Accuses Microsoft of Dirty Tactics
Mandriva Linux cried foul Wednesday, saying in an open letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that his company spoiled a deal between Mandriva and the government of Nigeria over Intel's Classmate PC.
Mandriva had agreed to supply the central African nation with an initial order of 17,000 Classmate PCs -- of which it is a partner in with both Microsoft and Intel -- and had apparently signed an agreement with the country that would have meant additional orders in the future.
New Qimonda GDDR5 Memory Promises 3x Performance of GDDR3
In advance of its likely acceptance by JEDEC as an international standard for memory implementations, Qimonda said today it is now sampling the first Graphics Double Data Rate 5 memory in 512 Mb modules.
It is graphics memory that analysts attribute to the stellar rise of Qimonda, the Infineon division yet to be spun off, into the global #3 supplier position on iSuppli's list, behind Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor. Having been on the crest of the GDDR3 wave put Qimonda there, and now the company and its parent are taking a gamble on hopping directly over one generation of memory and riding the GDDR5 wave at its outset.
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