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Twins drop Facebook lawsuit detailed in hit movie (AP) : Technet |
- Twins drop Facebook lawsuit detailed in hit movie (AP)
- Apple removes anti-Israel app from App Store (AP)
- Sony Ericsson eyes Android market with new phones (AP)
- Just Show Me: How to update your apps on your Android phone (Yahoo! News)
- Classic phonebooth goes high tech with Skype and an iPad 2 (Yahoo! News)
- Who's Winning: Walmart or Amazon? [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)
- Biggest 2 Australian telcos join broadband rollout (AP)
- Australia's $38 billion broadband plan clears last major hurdle (Reuters)
- Legislation Would Require Disclosure of 4G Specs (NewsFactor)
- The state of Android apps: These aren’t all task managers and widgets anymore (Appolicious)
- Winklevoss twins won't take Facebook to Supreme Court (AFP)
- Dutch pass law to ensure open Internet access (Reuters)
- Report: PopCap Games to be acquired for north of $1 billion (Appolicious)
- Best Buy Launches Its Own Music Cloud Service (NewsFactor)
- Hulu weighs sale options after approach: source (Reuters)
- iPhone App Video Review: iMuscle (Appolicious)
- Overachiever Oracle faces high growth hurdles (Reuters)
- FBI targets two "scareware" rings in U.S., Europe (Reuters)
| Twins drop Facebook lawsuit detailed in hit movie (AP) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:50 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – The Harvard University classmates of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are ending the legal battle made famous by the Hollywood movie "The Social Network." In a one-paragraph court filing Wednesday, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss said they would accept a settlement that was worth $65 million when agreed upon in 2008. The twins had sought to undo the settlement of $20 million cash and $45 million in stock. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the twins, saying they had been represented by a squadron of Silicon Valley lawyers and their father, a noted business professor. The twins said Wednesday they would forgo a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their stock is now worth more than $100 million. |
| Apple removes anti-Israel app from App Store (AP) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:22 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – Apple Inc. says it has removed an application called "ThirdIntifada" from its App Store following complaints that it glorified violence against Israel. Israel's information minister, Yuli Edelstein, requested the company remove the app in an email he sent to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jewish human rights group The Simon Wiesenthal Center also complained to Apple. "Intifada" is the Arabic term for two violent uprisings against Israel over the past two decades. The free application encouraged followers to share opinions and organize protests against Israel. It linked to a website that helped organize violent clashes with Israeli troops recently along Israel's frontiers with Lebanon and Syria. Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Wednesday the app was removed "because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people." |
| Sony Ericsson eyes Android market with new phones (AP) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:27 AM PDT SINGAPORE – Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson unveiled two new Android models Wednesday in a bid to grab more of the burgeoning smartphone market. The company, a joint venture between L.M. Ericsson and Sony Corp., plans to launch the Xperia ray and Xperia active models during the third quarter, Chief Marketing Officer Steve Walker announced in Singapore. The new models should help the company expand its 11 percent market share of the Android segment, Walker said. "Android smartphones is a rapidly growing part of the market, and we see our share within that market growing," Walker told The Associated Press. London-based Sony Ericsson, which saw its phone unit sales drop 23 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, is moving away from cheaper phone models and seeking to take on Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry and Nokia Corp.'s N9 in the higher-priced smartphone market. By 2015, about 60 percent of mobile phones sold in the Asia-Pacific region will likely be smartphones, up from 20 percent in 2010, Walker said. "We made quite a fundamental shift in strategy and decided to focus a large part of our efforts into smartphones, to focus on the mid- and high-end part of the business," Walker said. "In many markets, we see a dramatic shift from feature phones to smartphones." The company said in April that smartphones accounted for more than 60 percent of its sales during the first quarter. Sony Ericsson's latest models that run on Goggle Inc.'s Android platform, the Xperia ray and active, will likely be priced below the high-end Xperia arc, Walker said. Xperia active is water resistant and works if fingers are wet or sweaty, while the Xperia ray seeks to combine a sleek design with a device that is 9.4 millimeters thick (about 1/3 inch-thick). Sony Ericsson also plans to introduce a less expensive model that highlights texting service and is aimed at teenagers, Walker said. |
| Just Show Me: How to update your apps on your Android phone (Yahoo! News) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 05:15 PM PDT Welcome to Just Show Me on Tecca TV, where we give you tips and tricks for getting the most out of the gadgets in your life. In today's episode we'll show you how to keep your apps update on your Android phone. Keeping apps updated is vital to keeping your phone running smoothly. Often times app updates will fix important issues with the tools you use every day, and if you want the best performance, best features, and best security — update your apps! If you're looking for new apps to use on your Android phone, check out our Android App of the Week column. As usual, if you have any requests for something you'd like Just Show Me to cover, we want to know about them! Please be sure to let us know what you want to know in the comments. More from Tecca: |
| Classic phonebooth goes high tech with Skype and an iPad 2 (Yahoo! News) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:24 PM PDT
The Language Resource Center at the Washington & Jefferson College is "a place for students to come, explore international media, communicate with the world, and speak foreign languages with each other." Students are encouraged to "use their foreign language skills in a real world setting."
Sometimes, however, students found themselves wishing for a bit more privacy for their Skype conversations. To solve that problem, Professor Michael Shaughnessy found a 40-year-old replica of a classic red British phone booth and retrofitted it to hold an iPad 2, which students can use to do voice and video chat via Skype with friends and colleagues all over the world. The iPad 2 is mounted on an adjustable arm to accommodate students of different heights. No word yet on whether the Physics department is working similarly to acquire a Police Box to create their own TARDIS. Post by Katherine Gray [Image credit: Michael Shaughnessy] More from Tecca: |
| Who's Winning: Walmart or Amazon? [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable) Posted: 20 Jun 2011 06:33 PM PDT If one online retailer could ever challenge big-box retailer Walmart, it would be Amazon.com. Amazon already surpasses Walmart in areas such as customer service ranking, acquisitions, online presence and -- believe it or not -- prices. [More from Mashable: The History of Email [INFOGRAPHIC]] The biggest area where Walmart is still ahead by leaps and bounds is overall revenue. The retail giant bags more than $408 billion annually, while Amazon takes $34 billion. But Amazon is projected to close that gap by 2024, which is still admittedly a long way off. And Walmart is still much bigger than Amazon in terms of sheer size and reach. With more than 2 million employees and a customer base of 200 million people each week -- that's one out of ever seven consumers in the market -- Walmart is by far the heavyweight in this match-up. [More from Mashable: Could Game Mechanics Turn Work Into Play? [INFOGRAPHIC]] Here's an infographic from OnlineMBA.com showing the competitors head-to-head. Where would you rather do your shopping? Do you prefer one outlet over the other, or do you shop at both depending on your needs and circumstances? Click image to see larger version. [source: OnlineMBA] This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Biggest 2 Australian telcos join broadband rollout (AP) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 08:49 PM PDT CANBERRA, Australia – Australia's two largest telecommunications companies signed lucrative deals with the government to join the rollout of a fiber optic national broadband network that will be among the world's fastest. Telstra Corp. and Optus Pty. Ltd. — which combined represent 60 percent of Australia's retail broadband market, signed separate deals with the government Thursday to close down their own infrastructures and transfer customers to the national broadband network, known as the NBN. The deal with Telstra, the larger company, was required under the NBN business plan to achieve the rollout at 36 billion Australian dollars ($38 billion). Without it, NBN Co., the government-owned company that is building the super-fast network, would have had to duplicate Telstra's unrivaled infrastructure. But the deal with Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., is an added bonus that will boost customers and drive down costs, Treasurer Wayne Swan said. "Two major telcos have now signed on with the NBN and that will mean a very strong take up of the NBN," Swan told reporters. "This will, of course, completely change the market structure in Australia." Both deals need the approval of Australia's competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Telstra also needs the approval of shareholders at an Oct. 18 annual meeting. Telstra, a former government-owned monopoly that still owns the nation's aging copper wire communications infrastructure, which it leases to competitors, has agreed to progressively disconnect that infrastructure. Telstra and the government expect the agreement to deliver AU$11 billion to Telstra over decades in replacement revenue through disconnection payments, and new revenues through payments for access to its infrastructure. Telstra services will migrate to the NBN over its expected 10-year construction. Telstra will also provide NBN Co. with access to other infrastructure for a period of 35 to 40 years. Optus will progressively migrate its hybrid fiber coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the NBN starting in 2014, for which it will earn AU$800 million. The government has already begun rolling out the network, which will deliver broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second to 90 percent of Australian homes, schools and businesses through fiber-optic cables connected directly to buildings. The new speeds are 100 times faster than most Australians currently get — enough to watch multiple high-quality downloads of movies or television shows at once from the same connection. A handful of countries — South Korea, Japan, France and Germany among then — currently have comparable speeds. The plan to make Australians one of the most wired people in the world with uniform Internet access is made more challenging by the vast and scarcely populated Outback, which separates the major coastal cities. The conservative opposition argues the plan is too expensive. The opposition Liberal Party went to elections in August last year promising to deliver a smaller, slower — but much less expensive — AU$6 billion network with a range of technologies, including optical fiber, wireless and DSL. |
| Australia's $38 billion broadband plan clears last major hurdle (Reuters) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 03:53 PM PDT SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia's plan to build a $38 billion national broadband network cleared a major hurdle on Thursday with a deal to pay top telecoms firm Telstra A$11 billion ($11.6 billion) for using its infrastructure. The project, which will use the former phone monopoly's fixed-line network and cable ducts, as the basis of a high speed network covering a country the size of western Europe to boost productivity and economic potential. Under a deal between Telstra and the state-owned National Broadband Network (NBN), the project will use Telstra's existing fiber network and also its national system of ducts to roll out fiber to homes and businesses across the country. (Reporting by Adrian Bathgate; Editing by Balazs Koranyi) |
| Legislation Would Require Disclosure of 4G Specs (NewsFactor) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 02:05 PM PDT U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation that would require the nation's wireless carriers to supply key information about the high-speed wireless offerings they call 4G. The goal is to help consumers intelligently evaluate the real-world performance of high-speed wireless systems. As Eshoo noted Wednesday, consumers equipped with smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices often experience vastly different 4G speeds depending on the wireless provider and location. And she thinks consumers deserve to know exactly what they're getting when they sign up for a so-called 4G data plan. "My legislation is simple," Eshoo said. "It will establish guidelines for understanding what 4G speed really is, and ensure that consumers have all the information they need to make an informed decision." Murky Waters Unlike most technical specifications, the definition of what constitutes 4G wireless service in the U.S. is not clear. Verizon Wireless and AT&T are building networks founded on an advanced technology called Long Term Evolution, while the networks operated by Clearwire and Sprint Nextel are based on another spec known as WiMAX. And T-Mobile offers yet another set of services based on a technology called high-speed uplink packet access plus (HSUPA+). All four of these wireless technologies are faster in comparison to 3G, at least in theory. However, none of the 4G claims made by the nation's top five carriers are accurate with respect to the official definition of 4G, noted Gartner Vice President Phillip Redman. "The ITU is the international governing agency that defines the standard," which is also known as IMT-Advanced, Redman observed. Although this is still a work in progress, "most of the specs were ratified in October," he added. What's more, none of the top five U.S. service providers actually define what they mean by 4G. Additionally, the real-world network performance of any carrier can vary widely, depending on whether the user is in a rural area or small town or in a congested metropolitan area such as Manhattan in New York City or the business district of San Francisco. Cutting Through the Clutter The proposed legislation would function in a manner similar to the government-imposed stickers that automobile manufacturers place on cars to indicate average vehicle fuel consumption under various road conditions. If Congress passes the Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act, it would require wireless carriers to issue 4G performance guidelines based on specifications that would make it easier for consumers to understand at a glance. For example, 4G network operators would be required to prominently display key information such as guaranteed minimum data speed, network reliability, and coverage areas at all points of sale. The legislation also calls for the Federal Communications Commission to evaluate the speeds and pricing offered by the nation's top 10 providers of 4G services. Consumers would be able to use the FCC data for side-by-side comparisons of the services available in their areas. Consumer advocacy groups hailed the new bill as a revolutionary step toward giving consumers the power to make intelligent decisions before signing a long-term wireless service agreement. "It will help people cut through the clutter so we can compare prices and options, and we can better understand what really constitutes 4G data service," said Parul Desai, policy counsel for the nonprofit Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. |
| The state of Android apps: These aren’t all task managers and widgets anymore (Appolicious) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 02:30 PM PDT |
| Winklevoss twins won't take Facebook to Supreme Court (AFP) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 05:38 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have opted not to go to the US Supreme Court with their bid to get out of a deal they made in a lawsuit charging that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook. Lawyers filed legal paperwork on Wednesday saying that the twin brothers will not ask the top court in the nation to overturn a decision the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals made siding with Facebook. A spokesman for the attorneys declined comment on the decision to abandon the suit and said the Winklevoss brothers had no statement. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in May rejected a bid by the identical twin brothers to have a full panel of 11 judges second guess a ruling made a month earlier by a three-justice panel. The three-judge panel said that litigation in the case "must come to an end" and threw out the bid by the Winkevosses to review the settlement. The twins had argued that Facebook held back information about the estimated value of the California-based social networking firm while reaching a $65 million dollar settlement with the brothers. The twins inked a settlement two years ago that got them $20 million in cash and $45 million worth of stock valued at $36 per share. The value of that yet-to-be-issued stock has skyrocketed along with Facebook's estimated market value. The brothers challenged the settlement, which was supposed to be confidential, on the grounds that Zuckerberg suckered them during settlement talks by not revealing Facebook internally valued the stock at $9. The lower figure would have resulted in the Winklevoss twins getting many more shares. |
| Dutch pass law to ensure open Internet access (Reuters) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Dutch parliament on Wednesday passed a law banning telecommunications providers from charging their subscribers extra fees for Internet services such as Skype and instant messaging. The law is intended to preserve open access to the Internet at a time when some mobile operators in Europe are blocking or charging extra for specific voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services including Skype and instant messaging such as WhatsApp, used on Apple's iPhone. "Blocking these types of services or placing an extra charge on them curbs innovation. That is not good for the economy. We are now going to regulate that with the Parliament. That way we'll guarantee an open Internet," Economy Minister Maxime Verhagen said. The Netherlands would be one of the first countries in the world to legislate open access to the Internet if the law is also enacted by the Dutch Senate or upper house. The legislation also imposes stricter regulations on the use by websites of so-called cookies, which collect data about a consumer's Internet use and personal preferences. The data can be used for more focused online advertising. Dutch telecoms company KPN, which is struggling to reverse a decline in its domestic business, is likely to be affected, analysts said. KPN has lost market share in its mobile business, largely because smartphone users are increasingly turning to free forms of communication such as Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging, at the expense of traditional mobile services. In May, KPN flagged that it plans to raise data prices for consumers as it tries to offset revenue losses -- for example, following the example of France Telecom, which charges customers for using Skype. KPN declined to say previously how the law will affect the pricing of its new data and voice packages, due to be released this summer, adding it has not yet quantified the impact. "It means that no mobile operator in the Netherlands can block access to mobile VoIP services, or indeed charge for its use. For KPN and others, it means they must now kiss goodbye to any revenue that they currently generate from charging for access to mobile VoIP services," RBS analyst Giles Thorne told Reuters. He added that they would also have to drop "any plans they had to insulate their legacy voice and text businesses by launching mobile VoIP tariffs. The latter is something that KPN had explicitly said they wanted to do." Thorne said that given EU policy harmonization, it was likely that similar laws would follow in other countries, either led by the parliaments in the member states (as in the Dutch case) or driven by the EU in the center. "Whichever way you cut it though, the powers that be are falling clearly down on the side of having an open and neutral Internet. Pro-consumer, pro-competition, pro-harmonization. The EU way!" KPN's 47 percent share of its home market is under threat as it competes with Vodafone Group and Deutsche Telekom AG and increasingly with cable firms wooing customers with bundled packages of super-fast broadband, television and telephone services. (Reporting by Aaron Gray-Block and Roberta B. Cowan; Writing by Sara Webb; Editing by Steve Orlofsky) |
| Report: PopCap Games to be acquired for north of $1 billion (Appolicious) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 05:57 PM PDT |
| Best Buy Launches Its Own Music Cloud Service (NewsFactor) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 02:33 PM PDT Seems like everyone has their heads in the clouds these days. With a growing emphasis on synchronizing media purchases and applications on multiple mobile devices and computers, retailer Best Buy is launching Music Cloud. The service is available for devices powered by Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry operating systems and requires downloading software that enables music streaming. The desktop app copies libraries and playlists from iTunes (required) on a home computer and puts them in an account to be accessed on multiple mobile devices. It's powered by Catch Media's Play Anywhere service. Listen on the Bus "With Best Buy Music Cloud, your digital music lives in one place but you access it from wherever you are," according to the Best Buy web site. "Enjoy all your music when you're at a friend's house, in the car, on the bus, walking to work ... virtually anywhere." "You can store your favorite songs and playlists for when you're offline," it adds. "You can select just a single song, a playlist, or even an artist, allowing you to continue listening when you don't have coverage." The premium version is available for $3.99 and, for now only, a demo version is available with 30-second playbacks of your songs. Early reviews are mixed. "I quickly became familiar with the controls and was impressed with the customizability of the library," wrote Everything Mobile blogger Brian Joseph. But PC magazine's Mark Hachman found the software "inflexible, and painful, and with some odd design decisions, to boot." Best Buy's Music Cloud comes on the heels of Apple rolling out iCloud to synchronize media purchases across computers and its mobile devices. iCloud was the major announcement by CEO Steve Jobs at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this month. Google and Amazon.com have also launched cloud music services. Why is this Cloud Different? "This is going to need a differentiation to do well in the market," said analyst Michael Gartenberg of Gartner Research. "A lot of music services have come and gone over the years. Others, like Rhapsody, still struggle to grow their user base. They need to explain the value proposition to consumers on why this model works." But Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said success will depend on how well Best Buy markets the idea. "Apple certainly has the high ground in traditional MP3 music sales, but cloud computing could level the playing field considerably," King said. "I'd say they have a shot." Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy, which has about 1,150 stores, has managed to weather the recession, unlike competitors like Circuit City, which closed its stores in 2009 but still sells online. It's increasingly looking beyond traditional retail to stay competitive. Earlier this month, at the E3 conference, Best Buy announced a Reward Zone Gamers Club that offers points toward purchases. |
| Hulu weighs sale options after approach: source (Reuters) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 12:44 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters) – Online video site Hulu has been approached by a potential buyer and is weighing whether to sell itself, according to a person familiar with the matter. Hulu is best known for offering free online access to popular TV shows from its strategic owners but last July launched a paid subscription service as a way to expand its offerings to include TV shows from other programing partners like Viacom. The approach presents another decision point for the jointly owned company, which has shown an unclear strategy and last year spent six months planning an initial public offering before dropping the plan. The development has encouraged the Hulu board to engage with the banking community to help handle the approach from the "serious" buyer and other potential offers, the person said. Hulu is jointly owned by News Corp, Walt Disney Co, NBC Universal and private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. The acquisition approach has not been made by any of the current equity holders, the person said. The buyer is expected to be either a strategic buyer or private equity. No decision has been made about whether the board is prepared to sell the company or not. Though Hulu has been immensely popular with users, its owners have come under increasing pressure from their cable and satellite distribution partners reluctant to pay premium dollars to carry content that is being offered for free on the Web. Added to that has been the unwillingness of many program makers to put their shows up on a free site with an advertising model that is yet to prove itself with premium video. Hulu's stiffest competition online is from Netflix, which now has more than 20 million paying subscribers in the United States. Last year, Hulu had been planning to raise $200 million to $300 million in a public offering that would have valued the company at about $2 billion. But the company backed out of the plan in favor of a focus on new subscription models. A Hulu representative was not immediately available. (Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Gary Hill) |
| iPhone App Video Review: iMuscle (Appolicious) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 05:42 PM PDT |
| Overachiever Oracle faces high growth hurdles (Reuters) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:51 PM PDT SEATTLE (Reuters) – Oracle Corp has a habit of beating Wall Street expectations, but some investors fear billionaire Larry Ellison's software and server juggernaut will find it hard to keep up its own pace when it reports earnings and sets new forecasts on Thursday. The world's No. 1 database software maker is facing wobbly economies across the world, especially in Europe, and might already have reaped the greatest gains from the purchase of Sun Microsystems 18 months ago. "It ain't easy to keep putting up those kinds of numbers," said Richard Williams at Cross Research, which has no holdings in Oracle. "The real question's going to be: Do they maintain the kind of growth rates they have been seeing? Or do we a see a slower growth rate implicit in first quarter guidance?" Oracle, based in Silicon Valley's Redwood Shores, has almost doubled sales and profit in the past five years, helped by a string of acquisitions. It has beaten Wall Street's average sales and earnings estimates for the last six quarters -- often by a good margin -- and topped annual estimates for the last five years. Aside from that stellar performance, technology investors pay attention to Oracle's quarterly earnings as its fiscal quarters are out of sync with most others and it is the first to give a glimpse of business conditions in the most recent months, in this case April and May. For Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter, ended May 31, analysts are expecting a 12 percent jump in sales, to about $10.75 billion, and an 18 percent leap in profit, to 71 cents per share. Several have hinted they expect those estimates to be beaten. But most are focused on the company's forecast of the current quarter's new software sales -- delivered in a conference call after the earnings report by Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz -- which are key to long-term growth. "I wouldn't be surprised if they forecast a little bit of disappointment going forward, talking down the analysts' estimates for revenue," said Kim Caughey Forrest, senior analyst at money manager Fort Pitt Capital Group, which holds Oracle shares. Investors may already have priced in some disappointment. Oracle's shares are down 10 percent since the end of April, compared with a 7 percent fall in the tech-heavy Nasdaq. It still trades at about 13.5 times expected earnings for the next 12 months, compared with an average of about 10.7 for its peers. WEAKNESS, DEALS AHEAD? Oracle, which vies with Germany's SAP AG and IBM Corp in selling specialized software to companies, and with Hewlett-Packard Co in server hardware, has been largely immune to persistently weak consumer sentiment since the U.S. recession ended two years ago. But a recent loss of momentum in the U.S. economic recovery and renewed fiscal woes in Greece put a question mark over continuing demand. Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter is usually its strongest, as it signs deals before its financial year end, but the current quarter is generally its weakest. Investors will have to judge how much of that weakness is more than cyclical. "In the last four quarters, Oracle has managed to be independent of the rest of the group," said Williams. "What we are looking for in the quarter is to what degree the first quarter will be seasonally weak." Software maker Adobe Systems Inc warned that lower-than-expected sales in Europe dragged on earnings this week, sending its stock down 6.5 percent on Wednesday. In the face of faltering economies, Oracle, which has spent more than $42 billion on acquisitions over the past six-and-a-half years might be ready to go back into the market to help keep up its growth rate. Eighteen months after Oracle's $5.6 billion deal to buy hardware maker Sun, which strongly boosted sales and provided a new set of clients to sell software to, the year-over-year comparisons are getting harder to match. "They haven't done a large acquisition in a while, that's why I'm assuming we're going to see a little leveling off in year-over-year gains going forward," said Forrest at Fort Pitt. Some potential targets mentioned by industry watchers include software companies Symantec Corp, BMC Software Inc and CA Techologies, formerly Computer Associates Inc. "We're getting closer to the point where they are going to have to do another deal," said Williams at Cross Research. (Reporting by Bill Rigby; editing by Andre Grenon) |
| FBI targets two "scareware" rings in U.S., Europe (Reuters) Posted: 22 Jun 2011 04:04 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police in the United States and seven other countries seized computers and servers used to run a "scareware" scheme that has netted more than $72 million from victims tricked into buying fake anti-virus software. Twenty-two computers and servers were seized in the United States and 25 others in France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday. The suspects involved in the scheme, who were not identified, planted "scareware" on the computers of 960,000 victims. The scareware would pretend to find malicious software on a computer. The goal is to persuade the victim to voluntarily hand over credit card information, paying to resolve a nonexistent problem. Latvian authorities seized at least five bank accounts believed to have been used by the leaders of the scam, and the Justice Department said nothing about arrests. U.S. authorities also said on Wednesday they disrupted a second scam, charging two Latvians with running a similar scareware scheme that led to $2 million in losses through an advertisement placed on a Minnesota newspaper's website. Peteris Sahurovs, 22, and Marina Maslobojeva, 23, were arrested on Tuesday in Latvia and face two counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy and one count of computer fraud in the United States, the Justice Department said. "Scareware is just another tactic that cyber criminals are using to take money from citizens and businesses around the world," said Assistant Director Gordon Snow of the FBI's cyber division. 'BOTNETS' Law enforcement officials would not confirm whether the seizures were directly connected to a raid early on Tuesday morning at a web-hosting company in northern Virginia where they took servers, a move that disrupted more than 120 websites. U.S. authorities have been more aggressive this year in trying to stem cybercrime and have been scrambling to investigate several hacking attempts on U.S. institutions and corporations. In March, law enforcement raided servers used by a "botnet," essentially computers controlled by criminals without the knowledge of the computers' owners. Authorities severed the IP addresses, effectively disabling the botnet. That operation, nicknamed Rustock, had been one of the biggest producers of spam e-mail, with some tech security experts estimating it produced half the spam that fills people's junk mail bins. In April, government programmers shut down a botnet which controlled more than 2 million PCs around the world to spread a computer virus named Coreflood, which grabbed banking credentials and other sensitive financial data. Losses were estimated at about $100 million. A botnet is essentially one or more servers that spread malicious software and use the software to send spam or to steal personal information or data that can be used to empty a victim's bank account. (Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Diane Bartz; Editing by Peter Cooney and Todd Eastham) |
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