Delayed Novell Report Contains MS Patent Agreement Documents

The 10-K filing for the fiscal year to Oct. 31, 2006, was delayed as a result of a company stock option investigation, which was recently concluded, allowing the company to release its annual report.

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The entire 10-K filing can be found here.

The text of the 144 page 10-K filing does not get into the specifics of the Microsoft deal but it does include, subject to some redactions, the full three Microsoft agreement documents: the second amended and restated technical collaboration agreement; the first amended and restated business collaboration agreement; and the patent cooperation agreement.

Novell first said publicly that it planned to release the agreement documents with Microsoft on May 23 during a panel discussion at the annual Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, where the question of whether the deal with Microsoft was good for open source was being debated.

Asked by eWeek if it was not unusual for a company to make such contracts public, Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said that when the agreements were material – as these are for Novell rather than for Microsoft - it was standard practice to include them in a company's periodic financial reports.

"We would have done so earlier but for the stock options review and the fact that we weren't filing our periodic reports. Microsoft is certainly aware of this. There are confidential elements in the agreement, and SEC rules allow for redaction of those elements. This is a standard practice in situations like this," he said.

Among other things, companies may redact from their agreements trade secrets and confidential commercial or financial information, including confidential information that refers to specific products or joint work.

"So there are redactions in our filings. But we believe the text of the agreements, even redacted, will provide important additional detail on the scope of work going on between the two companies," he said.

For its part, Microsoft seemed unconcerned about the release of the agreement documents, with Horacio Gutierrez, its vice president of intellectual property and licensing, saying the deal was "an historic bridging between the worlds of open source and proprietary software that was created to address issues of interoperability and intellectual property for our customers."

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian says he has no regrets about the Microsoft deal. Click here to read more.

The agreements greatly enhanced interoperability between Linux and Windows and gave customers greater flexibility in their IT environments, he said, noting that the patent cooperation agreement gave customers peace of mind and intellectual property assurance regarding patent issues.

"Customers have asked for this type of solution to address their interoperability and IP needs in a mixed source environment and we are happy to have been able to come to this agreement for the mutual benefit of our customers. We will continue our bridge-building efforts in this area," he said.

Asked about the timing of the 10-K release, ahead of the Memorial Day long weekend, Lowry said this was not intentional but rather "the luck of the draw. When we completed the stock options review Wednesday, we were obligated to file our outstanding financial reports as quickly as possible following that. We also have earnings May 30, which I'm sure also had finance pushing hard to get these out the door as soon as we could."

In the 10-K filing, Novell says that "the overarching purpose of this partnership [with Microsoft] is to increase the utility, desirability and penetration of Linux by enabling its interoperation with Windows to a mixed environment that is easier to maintain. We believe that this partnership will help us deliver value to customers by giving them greater flexibility and effectiveness in their IT environments."

The Microsoft partnership essentially consists of three related agreements: the technical collaboration agreement, primarily in the areas of virtualization, web services management, directory interoperability, and document format compatibility; a business collaboration agreement around joint sales and marketing activities; and a patent cooperation agreement.

"We believe that this partnership addresses pressing, industry-wide issues, that it puts customers' needs first, and that our company will benefit from it financially and strategically," Novell said in the report.

With regard to the competitive front, Novell says that the market for identity-driven computing solutions and Linux and platform services solutions is highly competitive and subject to rapid technological change. "We expect competition to continue to increase both from existing competitors and new market entrants," it said in the 10-K filing.

However, the company also acknowledges the threat, and dominance, posed by Microsoft. "One pervasive factor facing us and all companies doing business in our industry is the presence — and dominance — of Microsoft … We will continue to be competitors of Microsoft, but it is our goal that through this set of agreements, Microsoft will serve as an important indirect source of channel sales for Novell's Linux sales," the company said.

On the copyright, licensing, patent and trademark front, Novell said that its business included a mix of proprietary offerings and offerings based on open source technologies.

Dell plans to partner with Microsoft and Novell on interoperability. To read more, click here.

"With respect to proprietary offerings, we perform the majority of our development efforts internally, but we also acquire and license technologies from third parties. No one license is critical to our business. Our open source offerings are primarily comprised of open source components developed by independent third parties over whom we exercise no control," the company said in its filing.

But Novell also recognized the potential harmful effects to its business if it lost access to third-party open source technology.

"The collective licenses to those open source technologies are critical to our business. If we are unable to maintain licenses to these third party open source materials, our distribution of relevant offerings may be delayed until we are able to develop, license, or acquire replacement technologies. Such a delay could have a material adverse impact on our business."

Microsoft says free and open source software violates 235 of its patents. Click here to read more.

The company also said that current trends indicate the frequent litigation in the software industry regarding patent, copyright and other intellectual property rights might increase.
Source :http://www.physorg.com

Facebook Lets Advertisers Reach Members Via Free Apps

Social networking site Facebook has launched a new platform to give advertisers a deeper level of free access to its 24 million users by providing them the ability to write applications that can be shared from person to person. Among initial partners using the new service are Microsoft, Amazon and Obama for America.

Speaking to a hall of developers and business partners at the Facebook f8 Event in San Francisco, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the "Social Graph" of the site's users who influence their friends and contacts. Calling the Facebook Platform an operating system to gain access to the Facebook members, he invited developers to create applications to run across the site. The hope is the advertiser applications will generate more traffic, adding ad inventory for Facebook’s paid advertising through the pages generated by the apps, which will cost nothing to the companies adding them to the site.

As part of its launch, Facebook laid claim to 65 partner companies who had already developed over 85 applications to run on the platform. They run the gamut from major businesses like Microsoft, Amazon and Red Bull, to online game companies like social gaming site Bunchball and entertainment fantasy gaming site FantasyMoguls.com. Even more sublime like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Obama for America have joined in.

"We're providing integration and distribution; you guys are providing great applications, and together we can help share more information and both benefit," he said.

Zuckerberg demonstrated the new platform's ability for users to share applications, and showed how businesses can serve ads and transactions via those applications, and promised they could keep all the revenues. Facebook, which started as a social networking system for college students, now has over 60 percent of its users over the age of 25, according to Zuckerberg.

"You can build a real advertising business off of Facebook, especially with all the distribution you get on the Social Graph. You get to keep all of the revenue, and you don't even have to send people off the site to process the transactions," said Zuckerberg. "You can run ads or you can run transactions, and we encourage both. This is good for us too, because if you are building good applications, that's helping our users."

For example, Microsoft's Popfly Web-based mashup tool is being integrated onto the Facebook platform to allow users to create applications that can be embedded into their profiles. This is not the first partnership between Facebook and Microsoft, which is the exclusive seller and manager of all display ads on Facebook through its adCenter platform. Microsoft also provides sponsored text link ads for the social networking site.

Amazon, on the other hand, is launching a book reviews application to allow users to share information on their favorite reads.

"This application is…duh…to let the communities on Facebook share their book recommendations. We know now how powerful it is to let others share opinions," Russ Grandinetti, VP of Amazon, joked with the audience. "One of the things that our companies share is a passion for the communities that we serve. Some of the earliest Web community things we built because we were just trying to do the right thing for our readers."
Source :http://www.clickz.com

Man in NASA love triangle quits

The space shuttle pilot at the center of a bizarre love triangle that included a former astronaut who now faces attempted kidnapping charges is leaving the space agency, NASA said in Houston.

Cmdr. William A. Oefelein will leave NASA on June 1, nearly four months after authorities believe his cooled relationship with Lisa Marie Nowak led her to drive 900 miles from Houston to Florida and confront her romantic rival.

Oefelein was being assigned to the Naval Network Warfare Command in Norfolk, Va.
Source :http://www.latimes.com

Bid to Save Whales Drags Into 3rd Week

Everyone seems to have a suggestion to get two wayward whales lingering in the Sacramento River to swim 70 miles back to the Pacific Ocean.

One person suggested towing life-sized replicas of orcas behind the whales to scare the recalcitrant mother humpback and her calf. Another proposed placing a giant magnet downriver, since humpbacks are thought to navigate by an internal compass that can sense magnetic north.

On Saturday, veterinarians on a boat shot custom-made syringes with 8-inch needles at the whales in what wildlife officials said was the first time antibiotics have ever been administered to whales in the wild. The treatment is meant to ward off infection in deep wounds that have worsened from long exposure to fresh water.

While rescuers have not tried the hundreds of suggestions they have received via e-mail _ most of which are unfeasible _ they acknowledge that they are running out of ideas.

"This is very much a work in progress," said Trevor Spradlin, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working at the rescue scene.

More than two weeks after the whales were first spotted in fresh water, the giant mammals continued to circle in the river. Their once smooth, shiny skin has become dull and rough, and tissue around the gashes likely inflicted by a run-in with a boat was starting to die off, biologists said.

Scientists hastily drew up plans to spray the whales with fire hoses Friday after nearly a week of pipe-banging and whale recordings failed. Scientists used recordings to nudge a male humpback dubbed Humphrey out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 1985.

The pair got stranded after marking an apparent wrong turn earlier this month and heading upstream until they reached the Port of Sacramento and could go no farther. They turned around on their own Sunday, and swam some 20 miles downriver to the Rio Vista Bridge.

The central problem facing scientists trying to engineer new whale-herding techniques is that, while gentle coaxing has proved ineffective, they fear anything too forceful might make the situation worse. Nets pose a threat of entanglement, biologists said.

Any method that induces panic could separate the whales or send them fleeing, increasing the danger they could become stranded in the mud among the delta's labyrinthine network of sloughs, they said.

During the week, rescuers grew concerned that some of the tactics they tried may have been too stressful for the duo. Some onlookers complained that scientists should stop interfering with the whales and allow them to follow their natural instincts.

The problem with that theory, according to veteran whale watchers, is that the humpbacks' natural sense of direction has been thrown off severely by their 90-mile journey upriver.

"They'd probably like to just go north, but there's no way they can do that," said Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research, who helped track Humphrey after he returned to the Pacific.

Balcomb gave poor marks to the current rescue effort, arguing that aggressive steps should have been taken to turn the whales around as soon as they were spotted. And, he said, the effort should have different leaders at the helm.

The most qualified whale herders in the world, Balcomb said, are Japanese whale hunters whose traditional pipe-banging technique known as "oikomi" has been passed down for more than 700 years.

Instead, at least a dozen federal, state and local agencies have been involved in the whale operation since the pair appeared.

As the mother and calf tarried near the Rio Vista Bridge, their health deteriorated.

"The loss of any single animal would be bad. The loss of a breeding animal and her calf would be a substantial biological punch," said Brian Gorman, a NOAA spokesman. "To ignore the plight of such iconic animals as humpback whales in such a public place would be unthinkable."
Source :http://www.washingtonpost.com

Royalty Proposal Divides Webcasters, Musicians, And Labels

A musicians' union said Wednesday that it backs below-market royalty rates to "subsidize small webcasters," but a group representing webcasters rejected the plan.

The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), which claims more than 90,000 members, said it supports SoundExchange's plan to allow some small webcasters to pay below-market rates for songs played from 2006 through 2010. It said the deal would allow the businesses time to develop and expand their audiences.

"Most recording musicians, including royalty artists and session musicians, are entrepreneurs themselves," AFM President Thomas F. Lee said in a prepared statement. "Fifty percent of the royalties paid by webcasters go to performers, and performers surely need that income stream to make it in their own careers. But they also know from experience that it can be tough to build a business, and they are willing to make some sacrifices to give small webcasters the opportunity to grow and make the world of Internet music as diverse and artist-friendly as possible."

A group representing webcasters rejected the plan.

SoundExchange represents the four major record labels, more than 20,000 artists and 2,500 independent labels. It announced the proposal soon after Representatives Howard L. Berman, (D-Calif.) and Howard Coble (R-N.C.), members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, urged the group to work toward a settlement between recording artists and webcasters. The representatives and several others are considering legislation that would overturn rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB).

The CRB decided to increase royalty rates for Webcast music, setting a retroactive rate of $0.0008 per song for 2006. The rate in 2005 was $0.0007 per song. The amount is set to rise to $0.0019 per song by 2010. That -- plus a $500-per-station fee and the elimination of schedules that based fees on a percentage of revenue -- could amount to a 300% increase for large operations and up to 1,200% for smaller operations, according to digital media representatives.

SoundExchange said the rates are "fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace," but it is willing settle on 10% of all gross revenue up to $250,000 for royalty fees and 12% for gross revenue above that amount.

"There's a sense in the music community and in Congress that small webcasters need more time to develop their businesses," SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson said in a prepared statement. "Artists and labels are offering a below-market rate to subsidize small webcasters because Congress has made it clear that this is a policy it desires to advance, at least for the next few years. We look at it as artists and labels doing their part to help small operators get a stronger foothold."

The AFM called on the small webcasters and SoundExchange to seal a deal quickly and urged small webcasters to more fully and accurately report the songs they play.

"Small webcasters all confirm that they want performers to be paid, but many of them fail to file the reports that enable royalty dollars to flow smoothly to the entitled performers," Lee said. "In return for below-market rates, small webcasters should file the required reports so performers can be paid. Bottom line, musicians' creative work has value and it is important that they be fairly compensated for its use."

SaveNetRadio, which boasts a membership of "hundreds of thousands" of webcasters, listeners, and musicians, said all webcasters are small compared to terrestrial and satellite radio companies, and the proposals would "throw" the largest webcasters under the bus."

"Labeling webcasters small or large is a distinction without a difference," SaveNetRadio spokesman Jack Ward said in a prepared statement. "Two of the most prominent webcasters, Pandora.com and Live365 are models of industry success but would be bankrupted by the CRB and by the SoundExchange proposals. Pandora employs 100 people in an enterprise zone in Oakland, California, but its popularity would put it out of business. Similarly, Live365, an aggregate webcaster that provides a platform for more than 10,000 individual webcasters, has a staff of fewer than 40. Though clearly small as a business, Live365's enormous importance and scope among webcasters would force them to shut down."

Ward said that the revenue caps that SoundExchange proposed would "create an insurmountable barrier to growth for small webcasters," which would guarantee "the perverse and unintended consequence of forcing thousands of webcasters to stay small if they want to stay alive, thereby weakening the industry -- the very opposite of Congress' intention."

SaveNetRadio and the Digital Media Association support legislation that would set rates at 7.5%, which is what satellite radio pays.
Source :http://www.informationweek.com

Dell unveils three consumer systems featuring Ubuntu 7.0

Dell has made it official, unveiling three consumer systems with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux distribution factory installed. The systems include the XPS 410n and Dimension E520n desktops and the Inspiron E1505n notebook.

The company says the systems target the Linux enthusiast community and are a direct result of customer feedback received since February via a website specially setup for this project.

About 30,000 community members advocated that Dell offer systems with Linux pre-installed, and more than 100,000 participated in a follow-up survey to help determine customer preferences, including which Linux distribution to offer initially.

With no software licensing costs associated with Ubuntu, the base price for each system is competitively priced and fully configured. Hardware support is available through normal Dell support channels, along with the Basic software support on a variety of dedicated Web sites and Linux forums. Customers can also choose service upgrades from Canonical, including: 30-day Get Started, One-year Basic and One-Year Standard.

Dell is offering hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been tested and certified by Canonical. For hardware options not offered with this release, Dell is working with the vendors of those devices to improve the maturity and stability of their associated Linux drivers, and expects to have a broader range of hardware support with Linux over time.

In response to customer feedback, Dell created a Dell Linux Forum, providing an easily accessible resource and collaborative environment that enables customers to interact with other Linux enthusiasts, ask questions, share experiences and learn.

The Inspiron E1505n comes with a 15.4 inch WXGA display, an Intel Pentium Dual Core T2080, 512MB memory, 80GB hard drive. The Dimension E520n comes with a 17 inch flat panel, Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, 1GB memory, 250GB hard drive and 256MB nVidia GeForce 7300LE. The XPS 410n has a 19 inch flat panel display, Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, 1GB memory
250GB hard drive and 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE.

Prices start at U$599 for Inspiron E1505n, US$599 for the Dimension E520n and US$849 for the XPS 410n.
Source :http://www.geekzone.co.nz

Will the new firmware update save the PS3?

If the fact the PS3 couldn’t upscale existing DVD videos to 1080p HD annoyed you, especially when you’d purchased Sony’s top of the line digital device for the 21st century, salvation is at hand thanks to the latest Version 1.80 firmware update from Sony Computer Entertainment.

You will need a widescreen TV with an HDMI socket to watch DVD movies in all their upscaled glory, but you won’t get any upscaling if you connect the PS3 to the TV with component cables.

On the other hand, the library of Playstation and PS2 games that will play on a PS3 will now play in HD – whether you’re using component cables or HDMI, so that is at least some consolation for component cable users – you won’t need to buy a new HDMI-equipped TV just yet.

Peter Dille, the senior Veep of marketing at SCEA said that: “As adoption of HDTVs continues to surge, we know that consumers are hungry for content, and this latest firmware update leverages the PS3s technology to deliver an HD-quality experience using the entertainment media already in your collection”.

In a statement, Dille continued that: “In addition, we continue to enhance the PS3s capabilities as an entertainment hub, giving consumers the option to bring their content with them on-the-go, or to stream photos, videos, and music stored on their PC to the PS3 in their living room. That’s often where the largest TV monitor and sound system is located, giving consumers the best possible entertainment experience”.

The new firmware also brings some other nifty features along for the ride. If you own a PSP, you’ll find that after the next PSP firmware update 3.50 due next week, the PSP and the PS3 can play together much better than before thanks to the new Remote Play feature.

Although the PS3 has been able to stream photos, videos, and music to a nearby PS3 for some months now, the next PSP update will let you access that same content whenever you are connected to a Wi-Fi connection - even if it’s on the other side of the world. That’s pretty cool.

Streaming content from your PC, digital video recorder or other device with storage is made possible by the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance).

That fully transforms the PS3 into the same kind of ‘media center’ that the Xbox 360 has been able to do in conjunction with XP or with Vista’s Media Center for some time now, with Sony saying the “new functionality reinforces the value of PS3 system as a home entertainment hub”.
Clearly, it’s yet another important piece of Sony’s media enabled and digitally connected home entertainment lifestyle ‘vision’ that companies have been dreaming of for years and doing much to answer Microsoft’s ‘Windows Media Center/Xbox 360’ challenge.

So, what else can the new PS3 firmware do, and will all of this boost PS3 sales? Read onto page 2 to find out!
Source :http://www.itwire.com.au

Scare Tactic Used on Wayward Whales

Scientists hope recordings of orcas attacking a mother whale and her calf will persuade a pair of ailing humpbacks meandering in a freshwater river to head back toward the ocean.

The tactic is just the latest that increasingly concerned marine biologists have come up with to coax the two lost, injured whales back to the ocean. They have spent more than a week in freshwater, which they are not physically equipped to inhabit.

"I wouldn't say there's a lot of optimism right now," said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The humpbacks apparently took a wrong turn during their annual migration to feeding grounds in the northern Pacific. They traveled 90 miles inland to the Port of Sacramento before turning around. They were making progress Monday until they reached a Sacramento River bridge about 70 miles from the Pacific and began swimming in circles.

For a third day Wednesday, the whales _ a mother and calf _ did not respond to a gauntlet of boats that tried to herd them past the Rio Vista Bridge.

Boat crews resumed playing underwater recordings of humpbacks feeding _ a method tried last week _ after attempting to startle them by banging on metal pipes.
Source :http://www.foxnews.com

MySpace to give up sex offenders’ details

Following threat of legal action from eight different state attorneys in the US, MySpace has agreed to hand over details on registered sex offenders that had a profile on its site.
Originally, the News Corporation-owned social networking site was reluctant to reveal any data, citing privacy laws, but was aware that following legal requests they were obliged to release the information.

Although MySpace has already identified and deleted the accounts of some 7,000 people which it suspected to be sex offenders, the company has held the personal data from these profiles.

Last December MySpace joined forces with Sentinel Tech Holding and together they developed Sentinel Safe, a program that sorted through the 180 million MySpace member pages to find possible sex offenders.

MySpace CSO Hemanshu Nigam said: "We have zero tolerance for sexual predators on MySpace and took the initiative to create this first-of-its-kind tool ourselves because nothing previously existed.

"We look forward to working collaboratively with the attorneys general on all future efforts to make the internet a safer place for teens."

Throughout the US it is possible for registered sex offenders, who are no longer on parole, to sign up for a MySpace account or indeed an account on any other dating or social networking site. Currently there are 20,000 such offenders in the US.

New Jersey is planning to introduce a law that would ban sex offenders from using the internet completely, but MySpace is asking state administrators to pass laws requiring these offenders to register their email address.

However, it is easy to sign up for and hold several email addresses at once and there is nothing to stop sex offenders from hiding behind this method of anonymity.

Source : http://www.siliconrepublic.com

Wayward whales halfway back to ocean

The journey of a wayward whale and her calf back to the Pacific Ocean hit a snag Monday when the pair reversed course and began heading back up the Sacramento River.

The humpbacks, nicknamed Delta and Dawn, had traveled more than 20 miles south from the Port of Sacramento since taking a wrong turn and swimming toward the state capital more than a week ago. But they turned around again Monday afternoon, even as scientists and the Coast Guard tried to position more than a dozen boats in front of them.

"They're at this point lost. We don't think they have any clue," Rod McInnis of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Their route includes sloughs leading to muddy deltas that could trap the whales, who appear to have been wounded by a boat's propeller. Crews were trying to maneuver boats to the mouths of side channels to keep the whales from going off course.

The two also will have to make their way through the pylons of four bridges on their 90-mile trek. Once they reach San Francisco Bay, the whales will have to swim under the Golden Gate Bridge to return to the ocean, Wilson said.

The whales started moving toward the Pacific around 3:30 p.m. Sunday from the Port of Sacramento, where crowds gathered over the weekend to catch a glimpse. They swam as far as the Rio Vista Bridge in the rural Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region before turning around.

Scientists theorized that vibrations from traffic were upsetting the mother and calf, but the whales could not be coaxed forward even when the drawbridge was raised to halt the flow of vehicles.

"We were thrilled to get them down the channel yesterday, but I'm afraid that was the easy part," Carrie Wilson, a marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, said Monday.

Federal officials have authorized researchers to fire darts carrying a satellite tracking device beneath the mother's fin to ensure authorities can still locate the whales if they wander from the main channel into the delta's maze of river branches.

If the two continue to head upstream, authorities could resort to "hazing" by banging on metal pipes dangling underwater with hammers, said Steve Edinger, assistant chief of the Department of Fish and Game.

The goal is to "make as much noise to be as obnoxious to the whales as possible" to get them to move back toward the ocean, Ed Sweeney, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary said from his boat Monday.

No one is certain why the whales decided to go back downstream in the first place, but Jim Oswald of the Marine Mammal Center said the change may have been spurred by tug boats. The tugs' engines fired up about 100 yards away from the pair, and the sound may have had an influence.

"The tugs were out in the basin, and the whales decided to follow them," Oswald said.

There was no indication that the whales were in poor health, Wilson said. "They have been very consistent and moving along at a good pace," she said.

The appearance of the humpbacks was not the first time a West Coast whale has veered so far off course during the annual spring migration northward. A humpback named Humphrey swam in the delta for nearly a month in 1985 before scientists used recordings of whale songs to lure him back to the Pacific.
Source :http://www.chron.com

MySpace exposes sex predators

The move ends a standoff between MySpace and top prosecutors from eight US states that had demanded the identities of convicted sex criminals who have posted their profiles on the News Corporation-owned website.

State attorneys general subpoenaed MySpace after the website refused to hand over the data on the grounds that disclosure of the private information was barred by US law.


"Our subpoena compels this information right away -- within hours not weeks, without delay -- because it is vital to protecting children," said Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal.


"MySpace has decided to do the right thing, but additional steps are necessary, such as age verification, to protect children from predators on social networking sites."


MySpace told AFP that since innovative "Sentinel SAFE" software began running" 24 hours a day" on the website May 2, 2007 it has ferreted out about 7,000 profiles posted by convicted sex criminals.


MySpace deleted the profiles but saved information about them for law enforcement officials, said MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam.


"We've always intended to provide law enforcement with the information," said Nigam, a former US prosecutor who handled sex crimes.


"The last week has been about the mechanism to provide the information in a way so that someone charged by law enforcement doesn't get off because of a technicality."


US law bans illegally obtained evidence from being used in court.


Nigam said that since MySpace received the letter from US attorneys general last week he has been collaborating with them to make certain they use proper legal channels to get the data.


"At the end of the day, it is all about implementing a process that lets the information be used in court," Nigam told AFP. "We work with law enforcement every day. We have a very well-oiled law enforcement compliant program."


North Carolina state attorney general Roy Cooper laments that the data from MySpace does not include sexual predators without convictions, using fake names, or not registered with police.


"We are pleased to see MySpace step up to the plate and provide us with the very important information," Cooper said. "But, we still must do more to protect our children from predators."


MySpace is lobbying for a federal law requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses to make it easier to screen them from membership websites used by young people.


US law already requires people convicted of sex crimes to register their addresses with local police after they are released from custody.


Sex offenders may have violated their parole or probation by contacting or soliciting children on MySpace, Blumenthal said.


There are an approximately 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. Nearly 180 million profiles are posted on MySpace.


"What you are really seeing is a mirror of a physical community appearing online," Nigam said of MySpace.


"It is a reflection of society, which is why we have to implement all the safety features and education we can."


MySpace and Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. created Sentinel Safe, touted as the nation's "first proprietary software dedicated to identifying and removing sexual predators from online communities."


The justice chiefs of Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and New Hampshire had contacted MySpace after getting word that it had found thousands of convicted sex offenders with profile web pages.
Source :http://nationmultimedia.com

Google’s ‘universal search’ – the logical next step

A subtle homepage redesign that gives more prominence to Google’s greatly expanded range of products and services, along with an improved set of results from the US Google.com search engine called ‘Universal Search’ ensures Google’s lead as the most accurate and relevant search engine is undiminished.

This is despite some commentators believing Google’s better search results aren’t in Google’s or users best interests, but clearly, information resides in more than just HTML web pages, but also in scanned books, blogs, video clips, news stories and more.

Being able to access this on one page of results gives you more – and better – information on the topic at hand. It helps you find information more easily, because it has brought you what should be relevant information that you didn’t even ask for, such as images or videos or blog entries or news stories, all of which could hold the answer to what you want to know.

Google say their vision for universal search is to “ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time, and deliver a single, integrated set of search results that offers users precisely what they are looking for”, beginning today, with more categories of search results to be added in the future in the new single set of results that Google is offering its users.

Google’s Veep of search products and user experience, Marissa Meyer, said that: “Our focus has always been making our users' search experience as simple and straightforward as possible. The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query. While we still have a long way to go, today's announcements are a big step in that direction.”

As Meyer implies, it’s basically still a version 1.0 product. Google promise it will get much better, but have offered some examples of how it works right now. Have a look at the search results for Steve Jobs, Darth Vader and Nosferatu. In the Nosferatu results, you’ll see a link to the movie. Click the little + sign, and the video window will open up right there in the Google results pages. Steve Jobs and Darth Vader brings up images from the Google Images search engine along with other useful information.

The results aren't totally consistent yet – you can type in names of other famous people and not get the Google Images results, for example. But it’s version 1.0, and Google promise they’re working on making it better and better. They even foreshadow that new types of ads might appear on the right hand side of the page, such as video ads. But that’s still to come in the future.

Even though it’s a great idea, Google aren’t the first to offer these kinds of results. Yahoo said they have been offering something similar in Europe for two years, and anyone who’s tried out Yahoo Mobile search on their mobile cell phone will have noticed that different categories of results are offered up in the results, as the aim was to bring the most relevant information from different categories right to your cell phone screen, making cell phone based search more useful.

But what is new is Google’s way of grouping all of this information together. A blog entry at Google’s official blog explains how difficult getting the right and relevant results together from Google’s different search engines. Google also say that they are “in the process of deploying a new technical infrastructure that will enable the search engine to handle the computationally intensive tasks required to produce universal search results”.

In addition, Google is upgrading their ranking mechanism once more to cope with the added information, which “automatically and objectively compares different types of information”, with Google’s “search results ranked automatically by algorithms to deliver the best results to users anywhere in the world”.

Udi Manber, Veep of engineering at Google, said that: “Google has continued to concentrate on improving the quality of search. The level and speed of search innovation at Google has increased. Most of this innovation addresses basic ranking algorithms and is often not obvious to users. Users just see more accurate results, more often, in more languages, which is our primary goal.”

It’s great to see Google is finally able to accurately aggregate search results from different parts of the Google empire into a single page, while still making the original interfaces for different Google search products still separately available, and no doubt this is something that all competitors will try emulating in their own search results over the coming days, weeks and months.

Finally, Google have unleashed a new version of Google Experimental, available from Google Labs. Google said the site “provides users an opportunity to try out some of the latest search experiments and innovations and provide Google with feedback”.

Google says that one of the first experiments to be featured on the site “enables users to view their search results on a map or timeline. For instance, when someone searches for "Albert Einstein" on Google Experimental, they can choose to view the search results on a map that shows locations mentioned within web pages about Albert Einstein or on a timeline that illustrates the history of Albert Einstein's life”.
Source : http://www.itwire.com.au

Halo 3 Beta Is Trial by Fire and Snow

The Halo 3 beta has, at long last, gone live. And it plays better than most game designers' finished projects.

The launch was not without its snags. The vast majority of the beta invites (about 900,000 of them) went to purchasers of the Xbox 360 game Crackdown, but those players found that the download link in the game's menu screen didn't work. Bungie Studios furiously worked to fix the problem, but Crackdown players weren't able to pull down the 900 MB download until about 7 p.m. Wednesday.

In apology, Bungie extended the beta test by four days. The mayhem is now scheduled to end June 10.

As expected, Halo 3 is wildly popular. Microsoft said that 294,821 players have played 355,011 matches in the first 24 hours since the beta went live.

Halo newbies (like me) shouldn't expect a slow-paced introduction to the world of Spartans and Elites. This is trial by fire -- the game is multiplayer only, and as soon as you start you'll be taking potshots from all sides. But Halo 3, like its predecessors, is meant to be a pick-up-and-play party game, so you'll get the hang of things soon enough. (And Bungie has put up a helpful guide.)

The first thing you'll notice is that the graphics are nowhere near the holy-crap level of Microsoft's last shooter epic, Gears of War. In fact, Halo 3 looks pretty much like a slightly more polished, high-def version of Halo 2. But that's OK: When you're dealing with a maximum of 16 players on screen at once, all zooming around in giant vehicles and blasting rapid-fire, you can't also be pushing knock-your-socks-off graphics.

A few new features change up the gameplay. The biggest is the inclusion of items that can be picked up and used. There's a bubble shield that you can throw up around yourself to stop bullets temporarily. And an anti-grav jumping device lets you get extra height -- perfect, we found out, for infiltrating an enemy's base in Capture the Flag.

If you get sick of CTF (and there's got to be some people who are by now), there's the new VIP mode. In this team-based affair, one player on each team is the VIP, and the only way to score is by killing him. My team really appreciates it when the VIP charges our base alone.

But ultimately, it's the interface changes that will have the biggest impact on the Halo experience. It's easy to join up and stay together with the friends on your Xbox Live master list. The game will automatically match you up with the group of people closest to your skill level that it can find, although it often takes a few more minutes than should really be necessary in the beta.

If you play a round with some good people, you can choose to "party up" afterward, and you'll stick with that group for the next play session.

Each time you begin a game, the beta version auto-selects the map and game type, but players can veto the first suggestion the game makes. If a majority of players veto, the game will automatically pick another map.

Many players have been exercising their veto power whenever the Snowbound level comes up. The map features a lone building set in a snowdrift surrounded by mountains and turrets. There's nowhere to run, which means that matches are less strategic and more of a bloodbath. And nobody seems to like it. Snowbound "sucks balls" and is also "gay," according to two of the cultured, erudite gentlemen with whom I last enjoyed a round of Team Slayer.

This might be an excellent time to mention that muting a player's audio is as easy as selecting them on the menu and clicking the right joystick.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to film your matches -- after a match, you can save a record of the whole experience, then upload it for all to see. Whether you want to save an impressive victory for posterity, analyze a loss or be the new Red vs. Blue, this is sure to be a fan favorite.
Source : http://www.wired.com

StarCraft 2 cinematic trailer

In case you didn't hear, Blizzard today announced StarCraft 2 at the Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea.

StarCraft 2 will feature the return of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg races, overhauled and re-imagined with Blizzard's signature approach to game balance. Each race will be further distinguished from the others, with several new units and new gameplay mechanics, as well as new abilities for some of the classic StarCraft units that will be making a reappearance in the game.

StarCraft 2 will also feature a custom 3D-graphics engine with realistic physics and the ability to render several large, highly detailed units and massive armies on-screen simultaneously.

This trailer offers over four minutes of cinematic footage.
Source : http://download.boomtown.net

Hundreds flock to shipping channel to watch whales

Hundreds of people with coolers, kids and dogs in tow lined the shores of a West Sacramento shipping channel today, eager to catch a glimpse of the two hapless whales that have swum 70 miles into the heart of California and gained international renown.

It was too great a show for people to miss, and too great an opportunity for opportunists to make a buck. There was a guy selling sodas for a buck a piece, and Francisco Mondragon, 32, of Sacramento forked over $10 for a "Whale Watch 2007" hat. The lure of a 45-foot humpback whale and her calf proved irresistible, he said.

"I just wanted to see something unique," he said. "This is history in the making. Whales have a special charisma about them. They draw your attention."

He planned to stick around until noon, when he figured he'd go home for a bite to eat. In deference to the whales, it won't be tuna, he said.

"Let's just hope they make it back home," said Mondragon, who was 11 years old when the excitement over Humphrey, the last humpback to enter the delta, reached a fever pitch. "Thanks for visiting Sacramento," he told the whales. "I hope they enjoy their stay."

The two whales swam north through the Delta on Sunday and have spent the past week calmly circling the turning basin at the Port of Sacramento, occasionally breaching the surface with a spectacular exhalation through their blowholes. Experts believe the two cetaceans, which have set the inland travel record for their species, became disoriented during their annual migration north.

Readers of SFGate.com have named the whales Rio and Vista because they were first spotted in the delta near the town of Rio Vista. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who played a key role in organizing the rescue effort, has suggested naming the mother "Delta" and the calf "Dawn."

The whales have become a huge tourist draw. People have come by the dozens over the past week; today being the first day of the weekend, there were up to 800 to 1,500 who showed up along a dirt road on a levy to watch the spectacle on a sunny day.

The whale watchers came with spotting scopes, cameras and dogs. Police were on hand to help maintain order and direct motorists to parking spots as a gentle breeze sent dust flying in the air.

Onlookers stared at the glassy, smooth surface of the channel as a Coast Guard boat patrolled the waters. A cargo ship that's taken on a load of cement could be seen across from the channel; officials hope to bring the ship out Monday morning without hurting the whales.

Not everyone was impressed with the spectacle. Jeff Spradlin and his wife, Jenny came from Elk Grove with their sons, Noah, 8, and Cole, 6, "just to see the whales submerge." But Cole didn't see what all the fuss was about. He gave it 90 minutes, but by 10 a.m., he was eager to return home to stage a race between a tortoise and a rabbit they'd captured in the backyard.

"It's so boring," he said of the whale-watching. "Not cool."

Wildlife rescuers are giving the leviathans the weekend to rest up after the past week's attempts to coax them from the channel failed. They've placed speakers underwater to broadcast recordings of whales, hoping the animals would follow the sound back to sea. The rescue effort will resume Monday with further broadcasts; if that fails, the experts might try herding the whales downstream with a flotilla of boats.

Although the animals appear to be in good shape, marine experts are concerned about their welfare. The whales are in a freshwater environment that cannot provide nearly enough food to sustain them. Humpbacks typically consume huge quantities of small, oil-rich fish such as anchovies, herring and sardines.

Both animals sustained relatively minor injuries during their sojourn, possibly by the propeller of a ship or the keel of a sailboat.
Source :http://www.sfgate.com

Whales aren't responding to call of the wild

From a boat in the brackish waters of a backwater delta channel, Bernie Krause and his scientific colleagues lower an underwater speaker that emits a staccato symphony of grunts, squeals and squeaks.

They're whale noises, some of which the 68-year-old bio-acoustics expert captured 16 years ago off the Alaskan coast as he hovered above a pod of humpback whales in a tiny kayak. Now he is using this whale language to reach out to an injured mother humpback and her calf, circling in the depths below.

Krause is a whale whisperer. And he's spearheading an effort to rescue two wrong-way cetaceans that last week strayed from their seasonal migration on a misguided 100-mile journey up the San Joaquin River Delta.

Now the whales, both wounded from an apparent run-in with a boat propeller, have reached a dead-end in a murky inland channel not far from the California State Capitol dome. Racing against time, a host of governmental agencies for days has tried to coax the leviathans back to sea.

Krause has spent nearly four decades recording natural sounds worldwide -- pristine underwater soundscapes, jaguars in the Brazilian jungle, corn growing in Iowa. He earned an international reputation in 1985 when he turned his attentions to a whale known as Humphrey, who had ventured many miles into the Sacramento Delta. Using tapes of whales' feeding and social noises, the Detroit native helped coax the wayward humpback back out into the open ocean.

Friday, Krause and a team of scientists tried, for the second straight day, to reprise that success. But the two whales simply weren't taking the bait.

"The animals are just not responding," Krause said. "It might be from the noise of the boats or aircraft flying overhead, or from the effects of their injuries. We just don't know."

Humphrey spent 26 days wandering inland waters, but experts worry that the mother and her calf don't have that much time. Although the adult humpback's wounds don't appear to be life-threatening, officials aren't so sure about the calf, which they believe was nursing when the propeller struck the pair.

The whales' injuries have added pressure and drama to the rescue effort, as dozens of reporters wait for updates near the Port of Sacramento and hundreds of onlookers watch from a nearby levee.

Friday, the news still wasn't good. Scientists varied the sounds they played. They fiddled with the speaker volume. They changed boats. Nothing worked.

"They call me a whale whisperer," said a frustrated Krause. "Yeah, right. Nature always has the last laugh."

(Begin optional trim)

A former musician who plays both violin and guitar, Krause became a pioneer of electronic sound in the 1960s and helped introduce the Moog synthesizer to pop music and film.

In 1970 he and a partner produced "In a Wild Sanctuary," an album that incorporated recorded natural sounds into the music.

The record changed his life, launching him on a quest with his microphone and recorder to amass what he says is the world's largest collection of natural sounds -- 3,500 hours, featuring countless habitats and 15,000 creatures, many of which are now extinct.

Krause has studied whales and their environment, and he said he understood why so many people were captivated by the journey of the humpback and her calf.

"People associate with these wild critters. There's something atavistic in our genes, making us long for a simpler time," he said. "Whales just have a presence, being so gentle and coming back from the brink of extinction."

Twenty-two years ago, when asked to take part in Humphrey's rescue, Krause had not yet made any of his own whale recordings. He used recordings collected by a pair of University of Hawaii graduate students who studied humpbacks. Krause took the scratchy recordings into his sound studio and spent hours working on the sound quality.

He recalled the moment when Humphrey reacted to the sounds. He and Dianna Reiss, a colleague from Marine World in San Francisco, were aboard a 42-foot boat south of Sacramento. The whale had been wandering for weeks and authorities were losing hope in the rescue.

So the two went to work with their whale sounds.

"I have never seen a animal move so fast. That whale was hydroplaning," Krause said. "He was a quarter-mile away and got to our boat in 15 seconds. He nearly swamped us."

A flotilla of boats behind Humphrey slowly moved the whale toward the ocean. Each time he veered off course, officials played more whale sounds, along with pipe-banging noises from behind to herd him along. Tens of thousands of onlookers gathered along the delta shores to root the whale on.

"Every time the whale surfaced, an incredible roar arose from the crowd," Krause said. "Every so often, he swam toward shore and did a tail slap. It was an emotional experience."

This time, Krause has played a prerecorded loop of sounds he described as a "whale dinner call."

"It's a long clear tone, lower than a b-flat in pitch, and then it slowly ascends," he said. "It's very powerful, very forceful."

(End optional trim)

Whale roundups are an inexact science. Studies show that humpback whales respond to recorded stimuli only about 10 percent of the time. But Krause has focused on the task, spending most of his time on the water, away from the news conferences and reporters' questions.

"They're saying we failed on Thursday," he said early Friday, sighing. "I don't think we failed. These animals don't respond to protocol, the way we understand the world. They'll respond when they're ready, not when we're ready."

Rescuers say they will take a break over the weekend and resume their efforts Tuesday. But Krause won't be there.

He will leave his recordings with the rescue crew and head back to his Wild Sanctuary headquarters in Sonoma County, where he has other projects in the works.

He'll keep pulling for the mother humpback and her calf, in the hopes they make it back to sea, he said. But he won't give them names or adopt the names chosen in contests run by several Northern California newspapers and radio stations.

"These whales are not cartoon characters, you can't animate them like at Pixar," he said. "Try and humanize them and you're going to have human expectations they cannot deliver. They're going to do what they're going to do. They're wild."
Source : http://www.latimes.com

iPods able to crash pacemakers

There's no denying the technological impact of Apple's iconic iPod and its subsequent dominance in the digital music marketplace, and, considering its prolific rise and ongoing consumer dominance, the occasional bug, fault, and glitch are perhaps tolerable in an otherwise superb piece of kit. However, one of this week's news stories would suggest that loving your iPod and duly keeping it close to your heart might be bad for your health, especially if you're fitted with a pacemaker.

More pointedly, according to a study carried out by Jay Thaker, a 17-year-old high school student, which was presented to a selection of heart specialists yesterday, close proximity to an iPod can trigger monitoring malfunctions in cardiac pacemakers due to electromagnetic interference.

Thaker, lead author on the heart-related study and a student at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan, revealed that iPod units positioned a mere 2 inches from the chests of patients fitted with a pacemaker caused electrical interference in 50 percent of them. Even when located around 18 inches from a patient's chest electrical interference was registered as disrupting the pacemaker's telemetry equipment, leading the implanted device to misinterpret the pace of the heart. In one test the pacemaker ceased to function completely.

The study was conducted at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University across 100 patients with an average age of 77, all equipped with implanted pacemaker devices. Thaker’s somewhat worrying results (which only focused on the iPod, and not the effects of other digital portable music players), were presented on Thursday at the annual meeting off the Heart Rhythm Society in Denver, Colorado.

While the test results are worth noting, the study's senior author, Dr. Krit Jongnarangsin (who is also an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's Division of Cardiovascular Medicine) conceded that the patient and age demographic generally associated with iPod use doesn't coincide with the related demographic of those fitted with pacemakers, and therefore actual figures connected to possible misdiagnosis are hard to amass.

"Most pacemaker patients are not iPod users," said Jongnarangsin in a Reuters report. "This needs to be studied more."

Young Mr. Thaker, whose mother and father happen to be a rheumatologist and electrophysiologist respectively, is now aiming to conduct a similar test that will assess the effects of iPod use in location to implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs).
Source :http://tech.monstersandcritics.com

NASA shuttle tank an eyesore but ready to fly

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle and its newly repaired hail-damaged fuel tank are ready to return to the launch pad for a June 8 launch, NASA managers said on Friday, even though the tank is a bit of an eyesore.

Instead of being a uniform orange color, Atlantis's tank now has a patchwork of white spots where technicians sprayed, scraped and filled fresh foam into more than 4,200 areas that were damaged during a freak hail storm in February.

"I want to prepare all of you for what this tank is going to look like when we roll it out," fuel tank manager John Chapman told reporters on a teleconference call. "It's going to look pretty speckly."

The shuttle had been due to take off on a mission to the International Space Station in March when the storm blew through and showered the shuttle and its tank with hail as they perched on their seaside launch pad in Florida.

The repair work cost NASA about three months time in its race to finish building the space station by the time the shuttle fleet is due to retire in 2010.

NASA has been particularly sensitive to issues involving the fuel tanks since the deadly 2003 Columbia accident. The shuttle was lost and seven crewmembers killed as it was returning to Earth when superheated atmospheric gases ate into a hole in the wing that had been caused by foam falling off the tank at launch.

The tank's deep orange color is caused by ultraviolet light from the sun striking the foam insulation over time. The fresh foam on Atlantis' tank is light-colored, some of it bright white and some off-white depending on what repair technique was used in a particular area.

"There's not at all a problem with this," Chapman said

"We have total confidence in the integrity of the repairs but I'm telling you right now that your mind will have a hard time convincing your eyes."

Atlantis and a newly expanded crew of seven will be carrying a new set of solar power-producing wings for the space station. The extra crewmember, Clay Anderson, will be replacing station flight engineer Sunita Williams, who will return home aboard Atlantis.

The space station, a $100 billion project of 16 international partners, is about half finished. The shuttles are the only vehicles capable of hauling and assembling the outpost.


Source :http://www.reuters.com

Ashes of 'Scotty,' Others Await Recovery

UP Aerospace Inc. president Jerry Larson said recovery crews can get no closer than 1,300 feet to the payload because it landed in rocky, steep terrain in the San Andres Mountains.

"It's on top of the mountain," Larson said. "The only way to get in there is by helicopter. But once we spot it, getting it out is the easy part."

Connecticut-based UP Aerospace launched the 20-foot rocket April 28. It was the first successful attempt to reach space from New Mexico's fledgling Spaceport America, which is under development north of Las Cruces.

The rocket, carrying remains of about 200 people, made a 4-minute suborbital flight and parachuted back to Earth.

Attempts to recover the payload last week failed because of bad weather, including tornadoes that struck other areas of the Army's restricted White Sands Missile Range.

Larson said the payload landed within its designated recovery zone but that future flights will try to target areas with less challenging terrain.
Source :http://www.foxnews.com

Encyclopedia of Life to cover Earth's 1.8 mln species online

The world's scientists plan to put descriptions, pictures, videos and sounds of all of the Earth's 1.8 million known species on one Web site, open to everyone, U.S. media reported on Wednesday.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will standardize the presentation of "information about the plants and animals and microorganisms that share this planet with us," said James Edwards, the project's executive director.

Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading scientific institutions and universities. The project will take about 10 years to complete.

It appears they will begin by scraping the web for information, then checking the material they gather for accuracy and copyright issues. Then that material will become the basis of the encyclopedia entry.

If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 83,200 km long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
Source :http://news.xinhuanet.com

Wave of New Notebooks Follows Intel Centrino, NVidia 8M

So much has already been said or leaked about Intel's Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro mobile computing platforms - formerly code-named "Santa Rosa" - that this morning's announcement from the company in San Francisco produced few surprises. But the announcement served as a starting gun for notebook computer manufacturers who are anxious to put an end to the seasonally duller spring purchasing season, and move forward the back-to-school buying season.

The Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro platforms designate a typical range of buildouts for notebook system builders who want to use Core 2 Duo mobile processors, and earn the prestigious Intel logo and reap the benefits of cross-marketing. With at least one notebook manufacturer having jumped the gun (quite literally, a marketing manager may have mistaken "May 9" for "May 4" on a schedule), exactly what the new Centrinos will entail is not new.

Chief among the new platforms' features is the inclusion of Intel's so-called "Next-Gen Wireless-N" system-on-a-chip, whose existence came to light last January immediately after members of the IEEE came to some substantive agreement on 802.11n. Still, Intel's implementation of 11n remains impressive, with three-antenna MIMO support, and transmission on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band to reduce the likelihood of signal collision with 11g equipment - the problem which had delayed 11n's rollout to this point.

Intel's Next-Gen will also support 802.11i, a transmission-layer security standard devised as far back as 2004, but which hasn't been widely implemented since due in part to the IEEE logjam. Now, supporting 11n wireless routers can implement end-to-end encryption, greatly reducing the likelihood of signal snooping.

We'll also see for the first time Intel's implementation of "Turbo Memory," the culmination of the project once code-named "Robson" that utilizes NAND flash as a kind of performance-enhancing buffer. Intel first announced Turbo Memory at a conference in Hannover last March, and is expected to give some of the first practical demonstrations of the technology at WinHEC in Los Angeles next week. BetaNews will be there to see it.

Helping to maintain Intel's now-well-reputed "cadence," nVidia timed its DirectX 10-supporting notebook GPU announcement to fall in lockstep. Its new GeForce 8M series will focus on two principal features: enabling the full DirectX 10 Windows Vista experience, and expediting the playback of high-definition video. Several of today's announced notebooks support both Centrino Duo/Pro and 8M, which may lead some to the conclusion that nVidia and Intel can address the mobility market quite well as partners, thank you, without having to effectuate their own merger first.

Here's a rundown of the new platform-based notebooks announced today:

1. Toshiba will be phasing out its mainstream Satellite A105 and P105 models in favor of A205 and P205, which will follow the Centrino Duo spec, will include a built-in webcam and nVidia GeForce Go 7-series GPUs, and will support an optional DVD "SuperMulti" (+R/-R double-layer) burner. The A has the 15.4" diagonal screen, the P the 17". On the business side, the Tecra M9 will appeal to travelers with sturdy construction and "spill-resistant keyboard," and in following the Centrino Pro spec, will include support for Intel's Active Management Technology - its hardware-level remote management system for enforcing policies and proactively monitoring the operating system. The M9 will have options for upgraded graphics, including nVidia's professional Quadro NVS 130M. On the performance side, Toshiba's Qosmio G45 proudly waves the "green eye" logo of nVidia's GeForce 8600M, making it Toshiba's official DirectX 10 notebook. Expect pricing and availability news to come in the third quarter.

2. Sony has followed suit by turning up the volume on its Vaio series. The Vaio FZ follows Centrino Duo, and then adds a plethora of the company's exalted multimedia features. For instance, LocationFree software will enable the system to wirelessly connect with a media center base station, typically in the house, for transmission of DV-R and other recorded content, as well as the ability to "phase-shift" (pause and rewind) live TV. The $1,400 model supports DVD, while the $2,000 edition - as you might expect - both records and plays Blu-ray Discs in what Sony is touting as "full 1080 HD resolution." It will be interesting to see how Sony pulls this off on a 15.4" screen. Availability is expected in just a few weeks.

3. Fujitsu announced four systems for various markets that all follow the full Centrino Pro specification - which means Intel AMT should be available even for the Lifebook A6030, which has Vista Home Premium and is targeted toward the everyday user. The E8410 targets the business user who wants a durable case (for instance, steel hinges rather than plastic). Meanwhile, the E8310 appears to utilize the same case, except without the "widescreen" form factor (15" rather than 15.4"), and without the "powerful nVidia graphics processor" (Fujitsu did not say which one). Most interestingly, perhaps, the T4220 may be the first Centrino Pro tablet system, weighing in at 4.3 pounds and featuring a bi-directional display hinge. Availability was not discussed.

4. Asus announced five (5) systems, though as has been the case with this manufacturer in the past, resellers' variations may actually lead to greater than five systems when they finally hit the street. Most impressive among these are the A8SC, with a 1440 x 900 17" screen and a GeForce 8400G with 896 MB of RAM all to its lonesome; the F3SC, with a 1200 x 800 15.4" display and nVidia 8600M GPU; and the F3SV which adds Asus' fingerprint reader to that mix. Although pricing and availability have not been specified, Taiwanese retailers online are already taking orders and appear to be making near-term shipping promises.

5. Acer is the manufacturer that jumped the gun, letting slip last Friday that its Aspire 5920 would pair its attractive Gemstone chassis with an nVidia 8600M-GT GPU - a chip that at that time was not yet announced. The Aspire is the only unit thus far announced that appears to exploit Centrino Duo's Turbo Memory option. Its stylish chassis will support options such as Dolby surround-sound speakers and an HD DVD drive, though at this stage it doesn't look like an HD DVD writer. Pricing and availability were not announced.

Though Dell also took advantage of the day's high tide to trumpet three new Latitude models, strangely, they're not Centrino Pro or Duo models. In fact, the D531 is said to "expand consumer choice" by offering an AMD Turion 64 - which is guaranteed to fall outside the Intel specs. Dell says it plans to announce a Centrino Pro model D630c "in the fall."

In the meantime, its new Latitudes' networking abilities seem centered around Dell's own implementation of HSDPA and EV-DO options, which perhaps for the first time places Dell behind the forefront of a major Intel platform announcement.
Source :http://www.betanews.com

Yahoo Asks Users to Switch Photo Sites

Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos, a photo storage site, and asking users to move instead to its photo-sharing site Flickr, which emphasizes community features, a Yahoo executive said on Thursday.

In June, tens of millions of registered users of Yahoo Photos will be notified of their options, including moves to Flickr or various competing photo-storage sites, according to Stewart Butterfield, a co-founder of Flickr and a director of product management at Yahoo.

Mr. Butterfield and Caterina Fake, his wife, sold Flickr to Yahoo in 2005. Yahoo continued to operate both its older photo service and Flickr over the last two years, reflecting the different customer base of the two sites.

Yahoo Photos is a more conventional photo-finishing site, full of family snapshots, while Flickr has attracted a passionate fan base of amateur and professional photographers who use the site to share digital photos online, and for whom printing is largely an afterthought.

According to data from comScore supplied by Yahoo a year ago, Yahoo Photos counted 30 million registered users, who had uploaded two billion photos as of June 2006.
Source :http://www.nytimes.com

Digg's Mob Rules

Chester Millisock was angry and he had friends. Digg, a community news-sharing site, had banned the 24-year-old programmer for posting a not-so-secret code enabling tech-savvy users to illegally copy high-definition DVDs. Rather than accept banishment, Millisock re-registered and voted for the offending post to appear on Digg where it would be seen by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Digg users. Tens of thousands of other Digg members did the same, arguing that the right to post the code was covered under freedom of speech. Soon, the code covered Digg's homepage. "If the majority decides something is true, then it's the truth," says Millisock. His rationale: "Majority rule."

At 9 p.m. Pacific time, May 1, Digg joined that majority. Site founder and chief architect Kevin Rose wrote in a blog post that Digg's staff would allow the stories to post and deal with whatever legal ramifications would follow. "If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying," wrote Rose. In a show of solidarity with the users, he included the offending numbers in his message.
Take-down troubles

Digg CEO Jay Adelson says that about-face was against the advice of Digg's lawyers, who fear it could embroil the company in a costly, and potentially losing, legal battle with HD DVD's backers. He also insists that Digg's senior managers never wanted to follow the lawyers' advice in the first place. "Not only are we aligned with our users in this, but we cannot suppress such a voice," says Adelson. "The people have the power in this new medium."

"Power to the people" is a popular rallying cry of young Web companies whose businesses are dependent on the communities their sites empower to create and share content. But it's also their prime problem. Try as they might to guide the wisdom of the crowds supplying their content—and viewing their advertising—they cannot ultimately control them. "This is the flip side of these companies whose strategy is building up a community of users and encouraging those users to see the company as leaders of the community rather than their bosses," says Edward Felten, professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. "You can imagine a similar kind of thing happening in MySpace or YouTube or any of these places."

Already Google's (GOOG) YouTube has found itself in trouble for its users actions. The site's terms of service clearly state that users cannot upload content that they don't own the copyright to. Yet users continue to do this, and take-down notices continue to be filed. The company was sued by Viacom (VIA) as a result (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/14/07, "Viacom's Suit Won't Snuff Out YouTube").
Risky business

Even if Digg disagreed with the users, Adelson says the company doesn't have a staff large enough to silence the majority. The site attracts 15 million unique users a month, by Digg's estimate. The company has around 18 employees. In fact, it relies on the majority to police itself by voting for the promotion or deletion of posted content and comments. Digg can, and will continue to, remove posts that violate Digg's terms of service, such as hate speech or pornography. But if the users really want something—such as the keys to copying cutting-edge DVDs—the users have the power to get it. That is, providing Digg doesn't simply shut itself down.

Digg's alliance with the users could prove devastating. About a month before Digg's change of heart, the company received a take-down notice alerting it to the posted code from the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administration, the copyright protection group backed by such heavyweight tech and media companies as IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), Microsoft (MSFT), and Disney (DIS). The code could be injected into a DVD player that would then decrypt the HD-DVD discs and allow them to be copied or used to write programs to strip the copy protections from the discs. As such, it was a "circumvention device" and illegal in the view of the AACS and the courts. The AACS declined to comment for this story through a spokesperson. A lawyer listed on the take-down notices for the AACS did not return phone calls.

The legal precedent barring the code was set in a 2000 case, Universal City Studios vs. Reimierds, and upheld on appeal. In that case, 2600 magazine, nicknamed The Hacker Quarterly, published a story in which it included a code that enabled the technically adept to crack DVD copyright protections. The motion picture studios sued for damages as well as an order preventing the publication of the code. They won. "I think that at this point if [Digg] just ignores take-down notices they will probably lose their business over it," says Cory Doctorow, a professor, author, and co-editor of Boing Boing, a blog devoted to culture, art, and digital rights.

Doctorow had a blog for his University of Southern California class, "Pwned: Everyone on campus is a copyright criminal," on which a student posted the code. He received a take-down notice months later and replaced the code with the take-down notice, which conveniently had the code in it. Doctorow believes Digg should also take this tack—preserving the information without "falling on their sword."
Dependent on the Community

Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the firm which tried and lost the 2000 Universal City case, believes that even linking to the numbers at all may be considered a violation. "There is a possibility that you can be sued even if you have no idea it was there," says von Lohmann.

Of course, Digg may have no other choice but to fight for whatever its users want. Digg depends on their participation. If it angers enough of its core users, they may go somewhere else. That not only means no real audience to serve advertising to, it means no real content, period. No articles submitted. No Diggs. Nothing. It can hope to attract a community of like-minded users by advertising its terms of service, but it risks losing any community if it doesn't let the crowd influence—if not outright dictate—what those terms should be.

Despite having his initial account reinstated, Digg user Millisock is looking for another community site that gives its audience more power. "What users are after is a Web site where they can submit stories and just the users can decide what is important," says Millisock. "That is still the ideal."
Source :http://www.businessweek.com/

Jobs Polishes Apple's Eco Image

Responding to critics like Greenpeace, which gave his company a particularly low rating in environmental friendliness, Apple chief Steve Jobs outlined the company's plans for making itself more eco-friendly. Strategies including reducing the use of toxic chemicals like arsenic, and expanding product recycling programs. Greenpeace lauded the move, but indicated there was more work to be done.



Having found his company in April at the bottom of a Greenpeace list ranking the world's most eco-friendly electronics companies, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted a letter on the company Web site Wednesday detailing present and future plans to make a greener Apple. Included among the iPod maker's green initiatives is a push to reduce the use of toxic substances in its products and also to improve its practices for recycling old products.

"It is generally not Apple's policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished," Jobs wrote. "Unfortunately, this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Apple's desires and plans to become greener."

"Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and they're right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today we're changing our policy," he continued.

Green Apple

In his rebuttal to criticism from environmental groups such as Greenpeace, Jobs noted several steps that Apple had already undertaken to reduce the impact of its products on the environment. Whereas other companies, including Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) Latest News about Dell, Gateway (NYSE: GTW), HP (NYSE: HPQ) Latest News about Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo continue to ship cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors that contain as much as three pounds (1.36 kilograms) of lead, Apple completely eliminated the displays from its product line in 2006, according to Jobs.

Apple's remaining line of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) contains arsenic and mercury. In order to eliminate the use of mercury in its displays, the company plans to transition from fluorescent lamps to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the displays. The first Macs sporting LED backlight technology will debut later this year. However, Jobs cautioned, making a full transition to LED backlighting could take time.

"Our ability to completely eliminate florescent lamps in all of our displays depends on how fast the LCD industry can transition to LED backlighting for larger displays," he wrote.
Out With Arsenic

In addition, Apple plans include a complete elimination of the use of arsenic it all of its displays by the end of 2008. As for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), Jobs said Apple began phasing out PVC in 1995 and began restricting BFRs back in 2001.

"Today, we've successfully eliminated the largest applications of PVC and BFRs in our products, and we're closer to eliminating these chemicals altogether," Jobs wrote. "For example, more than three million iPods have already shipped with BFR-free laminate on their logic boards. Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of PVC and BFRs in its products by the end of 2008."

In terms of Apple's recycling programs, Jobs pointed out that the company began recycling in 1994. During the past 13 years that program has expanded to include more than 82 percent of the countries in which Macs and iPods are sold. By the end of 2007 that percentage, according to Jobs, will increase to 93 percent.

As part of its recycling efforts, Jobs said in the future Apple will extend its free iPod recycling program, currently only available in the U.S., to the rest of the globe.
Still Not There

Greenpeace lauded the Apple's new commitment to environmental transparency and the phasing out of the worst chemicals in its product range as "genuine steps forward." However, the environmental organization noted that the plans Jobs outlined would only raise Apple's score from its previous 2.7 to 5 out of 10.

"We look forward to Apple going further to green their existing products, to get non-toxic products on the market and to announce a worldwide take-back and responsible reuse/recycling policies," the group said. "We will continue to work with Apple users to ask Apple to do just that."

The greening of products is all well and good, Danial Fleischer, an analyst at IDC, told MacNewsWorld, and it is a topic that many IT vendors are focusing on. "This is something that doesn't come as a surprise. It is something that a lot of IT vendors are focusing on, how to portray a green image to the marketplace."

A green strategy Barracuda Spam Firewall Free Eval Unit - Click Here does not stop at producing green products, Fleischer pointed out. In his research, producing and using green products plays a role, but it is not the only answer. Manufacturers also need to take a hard look at and begin greening their manufacturing processes as well.

"There's one thing in developing green products, but it's another thing to presenting yourself as a green organization," he explained. "The approach to take is to set your own internal goals and your own internal targets and benchmark yourself on anything from energy reduction to reducing your carbon footprint within manufacturing and logistics as well."
Source :http://www.macnewsworld.com

IBM's New Nano Chip Process Takes Cue From Nature

IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM has developed a method of assembling microchips using nanotechnology, the company stated Thursday, a potentially revolutionary process for insulating tiny wires by allowing them to assemble themselves around air gaps. This advance could make next-generation chips dramatically faster and more energy efficient, IBM said.

IBM borrowed the concept directly from nature, using the same approach that occurs in the creation of snowflakes, seashells and tooth enamel to create natural insulation around the nano-scale wires that make up a computer chip Latest News about computer chips.

Chips made with the process could be up to 15 percent more energy efficient than the most advanced chips built with traditional technology, IBM said. Electrical signals could also flow up to 35 percent faster, potentially leading to additional advances in computing power and speed.

From the Lab to the Fab

With the technique, IBM said, Moore's Law -- the theory named after the founder of Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel which holds that the number of transistors on a like-size chip doubles every 24 months -- can be dramatically sped up, with two such improvement cycles happening at once.

"This is the first time anyone has proven the ability to synthesize mass quantities of these self-assembled polymers and integrate them into an existing manufacturing process with great yield results," said Dan Edelstein, IBM fellow and chief scientist of the self-assembly air-gap project.

"By moving self assembly from the lab to the fab, we are able to make chips that are smaller, faster and consume less power than existing materials and design architectures allow," he added.
Eliminating Etching

As computer processing chips have advanced, traditional chip assembly techniques have limited the ability of manufacturers to continue to shrink them while still growing their speed and power. Most current microchips use tiny glass insulators to absorb and help dissipate heat from the surrounding wires.

Other researchers have attempted to create a vacuum effect around chip wires to eliminate the need for insulators to be installed, IBM said. Doing so would free up additional space on the chip for transistors.

Big Blue's breakthrough came as the result of work done by researchers at the company's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, N.Y., the company noted. The manufacturing technique was tested and perfected at the nanotechnology department at the University at Albany, near IBM's headquarters in Armonk, N.Y.

IBM's tests show the new technique can be integrated into existing chip fabrication facilities without major changes to the way things are done and that its approach could yield "millions of chips with consistent, high performance results," the company stated.

The air-gap process eliminates a process by which transistors are installed on insulating material, which is then etched out with lasers. Instead, IBM's now-patented approach involves a liquid mixture of compounds that are poured over a wafer on which wires have already been installed. The chip is then baked, with the result being "trillions of uniform, nano-scale holes" across the surface of a chip wafer.

By removing material from the wafer, the air holes then create a vacuum called an "air-gap" that acts as an insulator while causing relatively little friction.
Looking Ahead

IBM is hoping to start using the technique as soon as 2009 on its own chips, the company said. However, it may be some time after that before the technique becomes widespread -- through licensing of the IBM technology or development of similar approaches.

Still, the advance is one of several IBM researchers have rolled out in recent weeks as the longtime patent leader seeks to reinvigorate its image as a developer of cutting-edge technology.

Last month, Big Blue announced it had devised an entirely new way of enabling chips to be stacked within devices, potentially reducing the need for additional wiring that slows devices down and drains battery power. In January, both IBM and Intel announced advances in assembly techniques aimed at reducing electricity leakage in microchips.

IBM has said it would selectively license the new technology, likely starting with existing partners such as Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) Latest News about AMD and Toshiba Latest News about Toshiba.
Some Implications

The advances could have far-reaching implications, noted Enderle Group Principal Analyst Rob Enderle, because just about all device makers are seeking ways to make smaller devices that last longer on a single battery charge while all PC makers are interested in making more energy-efficient machines.

"There is also potential to drive down costs in manufacturing and design, and that has a lot of appeal," he said.

The ability to make more energy-efficient chips would also be welcomed by many in the technology business, which is increasingly coming under criticism from environmental groups for producing inefficient machines that require more power than necessary to operate and cool.

This week, for instance, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple found itself defending its environmental record after being called out by Greenpeace for contributing to global warming and helping to create a growing stream of so-called "i-waste." Apple pledged to take steps to get greener, a promise met with applause from the environmental group.
Source :http://www.technewsworld.com

RIM, Nokia Unveil High-End, Low-End Phones

Research In Motion is taking its second stab at the high-end consumer market with the new BlackBerry Curve, even while Nokia unveils some of the least expensive handsets in its line-up.

The introduction of the devices from both vendors reflects a trend in the mobile-phone industry to target the very high and very low ends of the market as growth slows in saturated regions.

The Curve is the smallest and lightest BlackBerry yet. It follows the introduction last year of the Pearl, a well-received BlackBerry that was aimed at the consumer smartphone market as well as business users. But unlike the Pearl, the Curve features the full QWERTY keyboard that appears on most other BlackBerry devices.

The Curve has a number of features aimed at mainstream users. It comes with a 2-megapixel camera that has a 5X digital zoom and built-in flash and enables three picture quality and resolution settings.

Users can also listen to music and watch videos on the phone and add more storage using a microSD expansion card slot.

The Curve comes with Roxio Media Manager for BlackBerry, software developed by Sonic Solutions that helps users organize their media files on their computers and then convert photos, music and videos for playback on the Curve.

The Curve will become available from AT&T in the United States and other operators around the world in the first half of the year. RIM did not reveal a price for the Curve. T-Mobile is currently selling the Pearl for $199 after rebates.

The Curve is likely to appeal to a very different customer than phones also introduced on Thursday by Nokia. The cheapest of the seven new phones from Nokia, the 1200, will cost $48 and is designed to support entrepreneurs in rural areas primarily in developing markets who may want to run a business by sharing the phone with neighbors.

As regions like Europe and North America grow increasingly saturated with mobile-phone users, vendors are looking to emerging markets as well as the high end of mature markets in hopes of continuing to grow their businesses. That means they're producing very low-end devices that they can sell for cheap in developing regions--devices like the new Nokia phones--as well as high-end phones like the Curve that might have good margins and are targeted to mature markets.
Source :http://www.pcworld.com

Apple promises to get greener

Apple Inc., responding to criticism from environmental groups, promised to change its image, getting greener than most of its competitors, U.S. media reported Thursday.

Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted a letter on the company website Wednesday detailing present and future plans to make a greener Apple.

Included among the iPod maker's green initiatives is a push to remove toxic chemicals -- such as lead, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, arsenic and mercury -- in its products.

Jobs emphasized that Apple completely eliminated the use of CRTs, which contain lead, in mid-2006. Moreover, Apple plans to completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008.

Apple also plans to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when technically and economically feasible.

He also touted Apple's recycling efforts, with comparison to HP and Dell.

Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5 percent of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier. Apple expects this percentage to grow to 13 percent in 2007, and to 20 percent in 2008.

"By 2010, we forecast recycling 19 million pounds of e-waste per year -- nearly 30 percent of the product weight we sold seven years earlier, significantly more than either Dell or HP," Jobs said.

All the e-waste Apple collects in North America is processed in the United States, and nothing is shipped overseas for disposal, Jobs noted.
Source :http://news.xinhuanet.com

Google personalisation with iGoogle

In a tech climate where flexibility and personalisation are both ranked highly in terms of consumer demand, Google Inc. has this week begun pushing its own boundaries with iGoogle, which will allow users to widen their personal preferences and creative input, a move that sees the California-based giant shrugging off its largely default search engine image.

Aspects connected to the personalisation expansion of iGoogle will see users able to distribute photographs, (blog-style?) text, favourites lists, and other personal and creative elements, as well as being provided with a unique and personalised Net view built around their physical location and amassed search archive – should they allow Google access to the details of their search history.

"We want to personalise the traditional notion of search," commented Sep Kamvar, lead engineer for iGoogle, to reporters gathered at Google’s HQ. "I am an eclectic person. But everyone is. We can't go about designing products for the average person."

So, we may soon need to bid a fond farewell to Google's classically simple and internationally recognized homepage as more fresh and personally interactive design elements are injected into Google's structure - not to mention Web page designs implemented to aid users in bringing their own personal content to the eyes of the masses.

Regardless of how it chooses to tiptoe around the obvious, Google's personalisation expansion smacks heavily of a tactical sidestep into the growing social network arena where the likes of News Corp's MySpace, placed alongside Flickr and Photobucket generally hold sway. For example, Google’s integration of its “Gadget Maker” feature means that users will be swiftly able to upload imagery merely by completing a simple Web form (without needing to have prior knowledge of coding), while other templates will see users expanding their input to sending virtual greeting cards and crafting creative and informative profiles crammed with personal info and favourites.

"I look at personalised search and I think it is one of the biggest advances we have had in the last couple of years," commented Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP in charge of search and user experience, during a related news briefing. Mayer also offered that the new expansion would serve well on the back of the tens of millions of Web users already taking advantage of Google’s established personal homepage feature.

iGoogle’s product manager, Jessica Ewing, has this week revealed that the iGoogle personalised Web search will be available in 40 countries spread across 26 languages, which is a boost of 18 user nations and a further 11 languages.
Source :http://tech.monstersandcritics.com

Google outlines defence in YouTube lawsuit

Google has outlined its defence in the copyright lawsuit by Viacom against Google's video sharing site YouTube.

In papers filed Tuesday with the US District Court in New York, the web-search giant said that the popular video clip site was protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act that provides a 'careful balance' between the rights of copyright owners and hosting providers.

In its 1-billion-dollar lawsuit, entertainment conglomerate Viacom claims that that Google 'appropriates the value of creative content on a massive scale for YouTube's benefit without payment or license' and that YouTube and Google 'actively engage in, promote and induce' copyright infringement.

But Google claimed that YouTube goes 'above and beyond what the law requires' by limiting the videos to 10 minutes in length and taking down videos after being alerted that they are in violation of copyright.

'By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression,' Google said.

Google requested that Viacom's case be dismissed with prejudice, and that the defendants should receive costs and 'further relief.' If the matter does go to trial, Google is demanding it be heard by a jury.
Source :http://tech.monstersandcritics.com