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New submitter ve6ay writes "The talk of the tech world over the past day is that RIM, struggling mightily in these last months, was in talks to be bought either partially or wholly by Samsung. Sources at the Boy Genius Report indicate that while RIM may be trying to sell, it is asking way too much for itself."

LinuxScribe writes "As predicted last September, Samsung has announced plans to merge Tizen with its own Bada platform to create a new mobile OS that will fit well on low- and high-end smartphones. Last year, Bada had more global phone deployments than Windows Phone 7. The merger means each Linux-based platform will have access to more native- and HTML5-based apps."

itwbennett writes "The Consumer Electronics Association stopped letting actual consumers attend the gadget extravaganza years ago, but even so, plenty of attendees can't exactly be described 'industry affiliates'. IDG News Service turned up a motorcycle stuntman, a restorer of 8-track tapes, and a lot of folks who were there just for fun."

itwbennett writes "The Consumer Electronics Association stopped letting actual consumers attend the gadget extravaganza years ago, but even so, plenty of attendees can't exactly be described 'industry affiliates'. IDG News Service turned up a motorcycle stuntman, a restorer of 8-track tapes, and a lot of folks who were there just for fun."

itwbennett writes "The announcement earlier this week that AT&T joined OpenStack was greeted with much fanfare (of the 'woo hoo for open source' variety). But dig into why AT&T decided to sign up for OpenStack and things get a lot more interesting. 'AT&T is about to take on Amazon's EC2 and S2 cloud services, and OpenStack's technology is going to be the engine that drives it,' writes blogger Brian Profit. 'Leaving aside the potential problems for user privacy here — and oh, there are many to be addressed to be sure — a plan such as this would represent a stunning coup for AT&T, since they would be able to provide the one thing Apple and Google have not been able to have in their respective plans to own the entire stack: the network on which all communications must flow.'"

itwbennett writes "The announcement earlier this week that AT&T joined OpenStack was greeted with much fanfare (of the 'woo hoo for open source' variety). But dig into why AT&T decided to sign up for OpenStack and things get a lot more interesting. 'AT&T is about to take on Amazon's EC2 and S2 cloud services, and OpenStack's technology is going to be the engine that drives it,' writes blogger Brian Profit. 'Leaving aside the potential problems for user privacy here — and oh, there are many to be addressed to be sure — a plan such as this would represent a stunning coup for AT&T, since they would be able to provide the one thing Apple and Google have not been able to have in their respective plans to own the entire stack: the network on which all communications must flow.'"

itwbennett writes "The announcement earlier this week that AT&T joined OpenStack was greeted with much fanfare (of the 'woo hoo for open source' variety). But dig into why AT&T decided to sign up for OpenStack and things get a lot more interesting. 'AT&T is about to take on Amazon's EC2 and S2 cloud services, and OpenStack's technology is going to be the engine that drives it,' writes blogger Brian Profit. 'Leaving aside the potential problems for user privacy here — and oh, there are many to be addressed to be sure — a plan such as this would represent a stunning coup for AT&T, since they would be able to provide the one thing Apple and Google have not been able to have in their respective plans to own the entire stack: the network on which all communications must flow.'"

bdking writes "Reddit's planned 12-hour 'blackout' on January 18 sounds like an ineffectual, if not self-defeating, strategy for opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act. But the social news site actually will use that time not to 'go dark,' but to educate visitors about the ramifications of the House legislation that many fear will lead to widespread shutdowns of Internet sites."

jfruhlinger writes "Much of Intel's story of the past few years has involved its so far fruitless attempts to break into the smartphone and tablet market. But as it keeps trying, it may find competition on its home turf: Qualcomm, which makes many of the ARM-based chips in those smartphones and tablets, wants to make PCs, too. The advent of Windows 8 for ARM and Android will make this possible."

LinuxScribe writes "Oracle has announced a new Big Data Appliance, which will feature Cloudera's Hadoop, shiny hardware, and a price tag that could be more affordable than commodity servers. But Oracle's new Cloudera partner should heed the lessons of Red Hat and what it means to partner with Oracle."

smitty777 writes "Rick Falkvinge, better known as the leader for Sweden's Pirate Party, recommends doing away with copyright laws since no one is following them anyway. FTA: '...he uses examples from the buttonmakers guild in 1600s France to justify eliminating the five major parts of copyright law today. The first two are cover duplication and public performance, and piracy today has ruined those. The next two cover rights of the creator to get credit and prevent other performances, satires, remixes, etc they don't like. Falkvinge says giving credit is important, but not worthy of a law. Finally, "neighboring rights" are used by the music industry to block duplication, which Falkvinge rejects.'"

jfruhlinger writes "A recent study claimed that the top 1 percent of mobile data users eat up half of the available bandwidth. But assuming it's true, who's at fault? Stats show data usage has increased radically with each new model of the iPhone, and similar phenomena are in place for Android phones — all of which are gleefully sold to the public by the same people who complain about 'data hogs.' Isn't this the equivalent of a car dealer heavily promoting Cadillacs, then complaining about poor fuel efficiency, then charging a ton for extra gasoline?"

LinuxScribe writes "A shareholder fight (French [Google translation]) has put one of the oldest commercial Linux vendors at risk of shuttering on January 16. If Mandriva can't raise 4 million euro in capital by then, it will have no choice but to cease operations."

itwbennett writes "Tyler Nichols learned an obvious but important lesson with his freemium Letter from Santa site: 'most people who want something for free will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your service.' He also discovered that non-paying customers are more demanding than paying customers, which only stands to reason: If someone likes your service enough to pay for it, they probably have an affinity for your brand and will be kinder."

itwbennett writes "Tyler Nichols learned an obvious but important lesson with his freemium Letter from Santa site: 'most people who want something for free will never, ever think of paying you, no matter how valuable they find your service.' He also discovered that non-paying customers are more demanding than paying customers, which only stands to reason: If someone likes your service enough to pay for it, they probably have an affinity for your brand and will be kinder."

jfruhlinger writes "Deep down, most people know that the germiest thing they touch all day is the thing they're touching all day: their keyboard. But what, if anything, can be done about it? A couple of former Microsoft hardware guys have launched a keyboard that sterilizes itself via ultraviolet light. While the FDA has signed off on it, tests show that the UV only kills about two-thirds of the germs living in it, and that it still needs to be cleaned by hand."

LinuxScribe writes "The Linux Foundation has quietly restored all of the websites it took down following the September 2011 breach that affected Linux.com and all other Foundation websites--an attack that was linked to the August 2011 breach of kernel.org. But one website won't be coming back: the Linux Developer Network, launched in 2008. Content from the site will now be hosted across all of the Linux Foundation's web properties."

itwbennett writes "The newly acquired patents include email management, server backup, tuning and recovery, e-commerce, advertising, mobile web page display, instant messaging, online calendaring, and database tuning. Google hasn't said why they wanted the patents, but it's a good bet they had fighting lawsuits in mind."

itwbennett writes "The newly acquired patents include email management, server backup, tuning and recovery, e-commerce, advertising, mobile web page display, instant messaging, online calendaring, and database tuning. Google hasn't said why they wanted the patents, but it's a good bet they had fighting lawsuits in mind."

itwbennett writes "Nokia's research into solar-powered cell phones ended with a (barely audible) thud. Under the best of conditions researchers were able 'to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time,' Nokia wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle."

itwbennett writes "Nokia's research into solar-powered cell phones ended with a (barely audible) thud. Under the best of conditions researchers were able 'to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time,' Nokia wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle."

jfruhlinger writes "Privacy may have become a hot-button issue in the Internet age, but the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has been fighting against corporate privacy violations for 20 years now. Today, they've launched an online complaint center that will hopefully help keep your private data private. Fill out the online form and the PRC will follow up with the privacy compliance officer at the company in question, or investigate whether a complaint to a government agency is in order."

itwbennett writes "It's no surprise that China's internet-using population is growing fast. And so it's also no surprise that the country is planning to build new data centers by the dozen. What is surprising, at least to those of us who expect to read stories about widespread pollution in China, is that China is working with both The Green Grid and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop standards for energy performance."

itwbennett writes "It's no surprise that China's internet-using population is growing fast. And so it's also no surprise that the country is planning to build new data centers by the dozen. What is surprising, at least to those of us who expect to read stories about widespread pollution in China, is that China is working with both The Green Grid and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop standards for energy performance."

itwbennett writes "It's no surprise that China's internet-using population is growing fast. And so it's also no surprise that the country is planning to build new data centers by the dozen. What is surprising, at least to those of us who expect to read stories about widespread pollution in China, is that China is working with both The Green Grid and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop standards for energy performance."

itwbennett writes "Yes, IPv4 addresses are running out, but a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won't be coming in 2012. Instead, businesses are likely to spend the coming year preparing to upgrade to IPv6, experts say. Of course there's a chance that panic will ensue when Europe's RIPE hands out its last IPv4 addresses this summer, but 'most [businesses] understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately,' said IDC analyst Nav Chander. Plus, it won't be until 2013 that North America will run out of IPv4 addresses and there's no sense getting worked up before then."

itwbennett writes "Yes, IPv4 addresses are running out, but a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won't be coming in 2012. Instead, businesses are likely to spend the coming year preparing to upgrade to IPv6, experts say. Of course there's a chance that panic will ensue when Europe's RIPE hands out its last IPv4 addresses this summer, but 'most [businesses] understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately,' said IDC analyst Nav Chander. Plus, it won't be until 2013 that North America will run out of IPv4 addresses and there's no sense getting worked up before then."

itwbennett writes "In a presentation at the Usenix LISA conference in Boston, researchers from the Naval Academy showed that signal analysis of factors such as timing, packet reordering, congestion and flow control can reveal the work of a spam-spewing botnet. The work 'advanced both the science of spam fighting and ... worked through all the engineering challenges of getting these techniques built into the most popular open-source spam filter,' said MIT computer science research affiliate Steve Bauer, who was not involved with the work. 'So this is both a clever bit of research and genuinely practical contribution to the persistent problem of fighting spam.'"

itwbennett writes "In a presentation at the Usenix LISA conference in Boston, researchers from the Naval Academy showed that signal analysis of factors such as timing, packet reordering, congestion and flow control can reveal the work of a spam-spewing botnet. The work 'advanced both the science of spam fighting and ... worked through all the engineering challenges of getting these techniques built into the most popular open-source spam filter,' said MIT computer science research affiliate Steve Bauer, who was not involved with the work. 'So this is both a clever bit of research and genuinely practical contribution to the persistent problem of fighting spam.'"

bdking writes "If you purchased something online from a mobile device in December, there's a 92% chance you used an iPad or iPhone. And if so, you probably spent more money than someone making an online purchase with an Android or a desktop computer."

itwbennett writes "Following last month's acquisition of Whisper Systems, Twitter is open sourcing 'some' of the company's Android security products. First up: TextSecure, a text messaging client that encrypts messages. Souce code is on GitHub now. 'Offering the technology to the community so soon after the acquisition could indicate that Twitter made the acquisition primarily for the developer talent,' writes IDG News Service's Nancy Gohring."

itwbennett writes "Following last month's acquisition of Whisper Systems, Twitter is open sourcing 'some' of the company's Android security products. First up: TextSecure, a text messaging client that encrypts messages. Souce code is on GitHub now. 'Offering the technology to the community so soon after the acquisition could indicate that Twitter made the acquisition primarily for the developer talent,' writes IDG News Service's Nancy Gohring."

jfruhlinger writes "Tired of your code only executing in digital space? Why not hack your smiling snowman? OK, this crash course only shows you how to make pretty LED lights blink in a sequence of your choosing, but it serves to introduce you to Arduino, an open-source platform that uses C-like code. Really, any project that involves a soldering iron is good fun."

bdking writes "Imagine finding out from the Internet that you're dead. That's what happened Monday to rock star Jon Bon Jovi, who took to the stage at a New Jersey benefit concert to prove he's still alive. Like that flimsy evidence can debunk what millions already had read online."

jfruhlinger writes "The Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble Nook tablets are similar enough and close enough together in price that they ought to be fighting market share and one-upping each other in terms of features they offer users. But the latest OS upgrades to both gadgets claims to be an 'upgrade' while actually taking functionality away: both remove the ability to root the device." A more balanced way of looking at it is that the updates fix known local privilege escalation vulnerabilities. This might be more of an issue for people wanting to hack on the Nook Tablet: its bootloader is confirmed locked, but reports lean toward the Kindle Fire having an unlocked bootloader letting anyone flash their own software without needing to gain root first.

itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."

itwbennett writes "Use of the GPL, LGPL, and AGPL set of licenses is declining at an accelerating rate, according to new analysis by the 451 Group's Matthew Aslett. In fact, the 451 Group projects that GPL usage will hit 50% by September 2012. Instead, developers are licensing projects under permissive licenses such as the MIT, Apache (ASL), BSD, and Ms-PL. The shift started in 2007 and has been gathering momentum ever since. Blogger Brian Proffitt posits that 'the creation of the GPLv3 and the sometimes contentious discussion that led up to it' may be partly responsible for the move away from the GPL."

jfruhlinger writes "A victory, or a just a breather? The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has postponed further debate on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) until after Congress' holiday break. At the urging of some SOPA opponents, Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and committee chairman, said Friday he will consider a hearing or a classified briefing on the bill's impact on cybersecurity." Update: 12/17 04:28 GMT by T : "Or not," as an anonymous reader comments below. "Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday. This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further."

itwbennett writes "Saying that Twitter and blogs are today's equivalent of a bulletin board that one is free to disregard (as compared to e-mails or phone calls directed to a victim), Maryland Judge Roger Titus on Thursday dismissed a criminal case against a person who was charged with stalking a religious leader on Twitter."

itwbennett writes "Saying that Twitter and blogs are today's equivalent of a bulletin board that one is free to disregard (as compared to e-mails or phone calls directed to a victim), Maryland Judge Roger Titus on Thursday dismissed a criminal case against a person who was charged with stalking a religious leader on Twitter."

jfruhlinger writes "In a political environment that's become very strongly defined by partisan lines, the SOPA debate has offered an unexpected ray of hope: the two main Congressional opponents of the bill are Ron Wyden, an Oregon Senator deemed a 'hardcore liberal' and Darrell Issa, a California Representative who is one of the Obama Administration's fiercest critics. (There are both Ds and Rs in favor of the bill, too.)" (Read more below.) In the technical rather than political world, opposition seems easier to find: Trailrunner7 writes "A group of engineers, networking specialists, security experts and other specialists deeply involved with the Internet's development and growth have sent a letter to lawmakers criticizing the highly controversial SOPA and PIPA bills and imploring them not to pass the legislation, which they say would stifle innovation and 'threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S. government.' The letter is signed by a long list of Internet pioneers and other respected figures, including Steve Bellovin, Paul Vixie, Vint Cerf, Jon Callas, Tony Li, Robert W. Taylor, Esther Dyson and Fred Baker, among many others. Both SOPA and PIPA have been criticized heavily by technologists, privacy advocates and security experts who say that not only would the proposed bills make it difficult for companies to create innovative new technologies, but they also would likely not even accomplish the goals their authors' had in mind, namely preventing copyright infringement and content piracy."

And (hat tip to Rob Malda), here's the letter itself (PDF).

jfruhlinger writes "Nokia's Windows Phones haven't hit the U.S., but at least one company executive thinks they'll be a slam dunk, since young people have soured on the iPhone and find Android baffling. Of course, much of the Internet commentariat found his remarks even more baffling. Is he right, is he delusional, or is he just trying to build buzz for his company's products the best he can?"

itwbennett writes "The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a debate and vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act for later this week. Representative Lamar Smith, the committee chairman and main sponsor of the bill, will offer an amendment that is meant to address some concerns with the bill. Smith's proposed amendment would clarify that the bill applies only to foreign websites, not U.S. sites, accused of aiding copyright infringement."

itwbennett writes "The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a debate and vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act for later this week. Representative Lamar Smith, the committee chairman and main sponsor of the bill, will offer an amendment that is meant to address some concerns with the bill. Smith's proposed amendment would clarify that the bill applies only to foreign websites, not U.S. sites, accused of aiding copyright infringement."

jfruhlinger writes "When HP announced it would release webOS as open source, it added a competitor to a narrow niche: there's already Tizen, the descendant of MeeGo, which is, like webOS, an open source Linux-based operating system for smartphones. Can they co-exist, or will one come out on top? One built-in advantage for webOS is that already has hardware, in the form of all those $99 TouchPad's being snapped up on eBay."

LinuxScribe writes "According Linux Mint founder Clement Lefebvre, the popular Linux Mint distribution has changed the Amazon.com affiliate code for the Banshee music player so that Mint, not Canonical or the GNOME Foundation, will receive the revenue from MP3 sales through Banshee. Though a trivial amount of money ($3.41 in November 2011), Linux Mint's actions still raise the question: how should revenue be shared between upstream and downstream FLOSS projects?"

itwbennett writes "Google is four years into a project to roll out IPv6 to its entire internal employee network. At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference in Boston last week, Google network engineer Irena Nikolova shared some lessons others can learn from Google's experience. For example: It requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. 'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported,' the paper accompanying the presentation concluded."

itwbennett writes "Google is four years into a project to roll out IPv6 to its entire internal employee network. At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference in Boston last week, Google network engineer Irena Nikolova shared some lessons others can learn from Google's experience. For example: It requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. 'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported,' the paper accompanying the presentation concluded."

itwbennett writes "At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference being held this week in Boston, two Dartmouth computer scientists presented variants of the grep and diff Unix command line utilities that can handle more complex types of data. The new programs, called Context-Free Grep and Hierarchical Diff, will provide the ability to parse blocks of data rather than single lines. The research has been funded in part by Google and the U.S. Energy Department."

itwbennett writes "At the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference being held this week in Boston, two Dartmouth computer scientists presented variants of the grep and diff Unix command line utilities that can handle more complex types of data. The new programs, called Context-Free Grep and Hierarchical Diff, will provide the ability to parse blocks of data rather than single lines. The research has been funded in part by Google and the U.S. Energy Department."