Tech blog

The Software & Information Industry Association has filed eight lawsuits in federal court against eBay software sellers. The SIIA said it's the second-largest number of lawsuits it has filed at once in an attempt to curb intellectual property theft. The group filed nine lawsuits in February.

The SIAA filed the latest lawsuits on behalf of Adobe Systems in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against defendants in seven states. The affair is work of the group's Auction Litigation Program, which monitors Internet cant sites and identifies individuals or groups selling pirated software.

The Auction Litigation Program has led to successful prosecutions, including Symantec, et al. v. Chan, et al. In that case, defendants sold OEM, unbundled, and counterfeit copies of software without resale authorization.

The SIIA warns that those who buy illegal copies of software don't get technical support and risk getting viruses. The group publishes software buying guides and offers a certification program beneficial to software sellers, so consumers can identify legal software resellers.

In the latest suits, the association accuses Todd Bennett of Phoenix, Marvin Brown of San Antonio, Andrew Channin of Lawrenceville, N.J., Alex Jackson of Westlake Village, Calif., Denis Norton of Plymouth, Conn., Kamal Salibi of Doral, Fla., Simon Yeo of Los Angeles, and Stephen Cavener and the Henry A. Lineberger Group LLC of Philadelphia. The defendants are accused of intentionally selling illegal copies of Adobe Photoshop CS3 and other software.

Scott Bain, an SIIA lawyer, said the group plans to continue suing illegal sellers "without warning, regardless of where or how the vender acquired the illegal copies."

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's losing bid for coveted wireless airwaves may prove a victory for the Web search leader as it low stands to get access to mobile networks without spending tens of billions of dollars to build one, analysts said on Thursday.

Wall Street analysts said the Silicon Valley Internet search and advertising giant has succeeded in forcing open network requirements upon winning bidder Verizon Communications via Google's apparent strategy of "proposal to lose."

Verizon will control the open network but will be required to allow devices and applications from other companies to use it.

"Google was never in this game to actually build out a telecom network. Their key goal was to open up closed networks," Cowen & Co analyst Jim Friedland said of the control that carriers hold over handsets and services on their networks.

Google's participation in the U.S. government's auction of wireless licenses is credited with helping to drive up the price Verizon paid to win a nationwide wireless license, giving it control of a major piece of the airwaves being vacated by TV broadcasters as they move to digital signals early next year.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, AT&T Inc and Frontier Wireless, a partner of U.S. satellite TV company DISH Network Corp, took the lion's share of new airwaves.

The auctions raised a record $19.12 billion for government coffers.

"By creating a system that is completely open, Google may prevent carriers from using their monopoly position to drive users in a particular way to their services," Friedland said.

Google and rivals Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp have stepped up moves over the past year to help ensure that consumers will one day be able to use the Internet services on mobile phones in the way they now use computers.

Google believes making the Internet easier to use for billions of mobile phone users will translate into increased demand for its Web search and advertising services.

"Consumers at so early an hour should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices," Google attorneys Richard Whitt and Joseph Faber said in a brief statement following the FCC auctions.

Earlier this year, investors had begun dismissing the idea that Google was seriously aiming to get the compliance of licenses to build a nationwide U.S. wireless network as a way to expand its Web services business from computers to phones.

"Glad they didn't win it. Glad Google isn't going to have being a wireless network operator," Global Crown Capital Martin Pyykkonen said. "Look at the margins of wireless operators!"

Google's extremely profitable business involves selling online advertisements alongside its Web search services. Building out and operating mobile networks could have slashed operating margins now in the high 30 percent wandering to network operator levels in the mid-teens or low-20s, Pyykkonen said.

What remains up for debate is the degree to which Google can make Verizon live up to auction rules that protect independent Internet services such as Google from being kept off phones and other devices through network owner Verizon.

"Whether or not Google can exist charged for access to the devices or if customers be possible to be surcharged on account of using Google applications remains unclear for now," Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said in a research reckoning.

(Editing by Gary Hill)

Red Hat has open-sourced its identity-management and security system to promote its assertion that open-source software provides the most secure infrastructure.

The Linux vendor said Wednesday it has released the entire source code for the Red Hat Certificate connected view, its security framework for managing user identities and transactions on a network. Red Hat acquired the system from AOL three years ago, but only parts of the system, which uses the Apache Web server and the Red Hat Directory Server, were unreserved source.

According to a blog post by Red Hat's security team, the move "further demonstrates Red Hat's belief that the open cause development model creates more secure software." In addition to offering the Red Hat Certificate combination of parts to form a whole to users of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux product, the company also uses it internally.

The team said now that the system is open source, it will be easier for developers to integrate the technology with other security- and network management-related projects from Red Hat.

One of those is the freeIPA project, which provides central management of identity, policy and auditing for Unix and Linux using open-source and open-standards technologies. According to Red Hat, by integrating technology from the attestation system, the freeIPA project eventually will offer central management and provisioning for machine and service digital certificates.

Red Hat is best known for its Linux assignment, but has been working steadily for several years to broaden its open-source portfolio beyond the OS. New CEO Jim Whitehurst said recently that the company, more than ever, needs to demonstrate more support for the open-source community outside of Linux and visibly promote the continued adoption of open-source software amidst businesses. Whitehurst took over CEO duties from longtime Red Hat leader Matthew Szulik in January.

EVANSVILLE, Indiana (Reuters) - The controversial pastor who roiled Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign this week shook hands with former President Bill Clinton at the White House nearly 10 years ago, according to a photo published on The New York Times' Web site.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial comments spurred Obama, who would have being the first black U.S. president, to give each emotional speech about race in America on Tuesday, attended a prayer breakfast at the White House in 1998, the photo shows.

New York Sen. and former first spouse Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign accused the Obama team of circulating the picture for political purposes.

"Less than 48 hours after calling for a high-minded conversation on race, the Obama campaign is peddling photos of an occasion then President Clinton shook hands with Rev. Wright," a Clinton campaign spokesman said.

"To be clear, President Clinton took tens of thousands of photos during his eight years as president."

The Obama campaign shot back, accusing the Clinton team of pushing the Wright fiction to knock Obama's lead in the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

"After their be superior surrogates pushed this storyline, and Senator Clinton's campaign outlined this as a central strategy in her plan to overturn the will of Democratic voters, I can see why they wouldn't want a photo out there that shows the kind of hypocrisy we've all come to expect from their campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail.

He confirmed that the campaign had circulated the picture.

Clinton and her advisers have deflected questions approximately Obama's relationship with Wright all week. Clinton said on Thursday that Obama's speech on race had been important.

"I commend him for making the speech. I thought it was a very important speech," she told reporters.

Obama sought to quell a political firestorm with his address after news outlets called attention to sermons by Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the Illinois senator attended for two decades.

Wright, who retired recently, has railed that the September 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy, called the government the source of the AIDS virus and expressed anger over what he called racist America.

Apple on Thursday said it is distributing the latest version of the Safari Web browser to Windows users through Apple Software Update, a move that reflects a more aggressive attempt to seize violently market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Apple uses the update mechanism for Windows for distributing the latest versions of its iTunes music store and for the QuickTime video player, which is a foundation technology for iTunes. With the release of Safari 3.1 this week, Apple also started offering Windows users the option of installing the browser upgrade. Software Update is also used to update Apple software in Mac computers.

"We are using Software Update to make it easy and convenient for both Mac and Windows users to get the latest Safari update from Apple," copartnership spokesman Bill Evans said in an emailed statement.

As of February, IE had 74.9% of the browser market in terms of usage, followed by Mozilla Firefox, 17.3%; and Safari, 5.7%, according to Web site analysis group Net Applications.

By shipping Safari via Software Update, Apple is taking a more aggressive approach to distributing its browser within Microsoft's home turf. In releasing Safari 3.1, Apple claimed its browser loads Web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 periods faster than Firefox 2. Such claims are not unusual among vendors comparing products to rivals'.

amidst the key improvements in the latest version of Safari, which is available at no charge, is support for additional Web standards. On that front, the upgrade supports new video and audio tags in HTML 5, and animations created through the use of cascading style sheets. The browser also supports CSS Web fonts.

Microsoft this month said it would configure the default settings in the upcoming IE 8 to make content using methods that give a top priority to Web standards interoperability. In choosing to favor standards, Microsoft recognized a "harden benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability around commonly accepted standards as they evolve," Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, before-mentioned in a statement.

NEW YORK (AP) — The next update of Sony’s PlayStation 3 console, slated late this month, will include features that let users download games, video and ring tones.

Sony said Thursday the system update will add Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, or BD-Live capability, to the PS3. It will also let users copy photos and music playlists onto their handheld PlayStation Portable, use the PSP as a inconsiderable govern for playing music on the PS3, and stream linked video files from the Web.

This give by will make the PS3 the first Blu-ray player with access to Internet content and downloads. Matsushita Electric Industrial, what one. owns the Panasonic brand, also plans to ship a BD-Live player this recoil.

With the updates, Sony wants to build the gaming console’s status as every entertainment hub.

The downloadable content will range from bonus movie scenes and trailers to “interactive movie-based games.”

“With Blu-ray established as the high-definition optical disc standard, more consumers are ready to jump in and take advantage of everything the format offers,” said Scott A. Steinberg, vice president of product marketing, in a statement.

The free update also adds a “resume play” feature that enables users to restart Blu-ray discs and DVDs at the point where they stopped even grant that they take the disk out of the drive. According to Sony’s PlayStation blog, the update is slated for the “next few days.”

Sony is planning to release a stand-alone Blu-ray player this summer that will feature an Ethernet port to download bonus materials. It won’t be BD-Live capable — meaning users won’t be able to access Web content — until a subsequent software update.

In this respect, Blu-ray players are playing catch up to the recently defunct HD DVD systems, which always had Internet capabilities.

The BDP-S350 player will cost about $400; a second player, shipping later this year, will cost about $500 and be able to download Web content.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  

San Francisco - Verizon Wireless was one of the big winners in the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) 700MHz appearance auction with the carrier winning a large chunk of nationwide spectrum.

Verizon was the high bidder in the 22MHz C block of spectrum, the FCC announced Thursday.

More on this story to come.

New Jersey prosecutors have subpoenaed records of JuicyCampus.com, a Web site that publishes anonymous, often malicious gossip about college students.

Attorney General Anne Milgram said Tuesday that she believes New Jersey is the first state to investigate the site. JuicyCampus may be in violation of the state’s Consumer Fraud Act by suggesting that it doesn’t allow offensive material, but providing no enforcement and no way for users to report or dispute the material, she said.

Milgram said her office began its investigation last month when a student came forward who had been terrorized by posts on the Web site, which included her name and address. Prosecutors have subpoenaed denunciation on how JuicyCampus is run, citing concerns about “unconscionable commercial practices.”

“There’s an unbelievable amount of offensive material posted and absolutely no enforcement,” said Milgram, noting insults about students’ appearance, race and sexual history as “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Through its public relations firm, JuicyCampus said it would not have any immediate comment on the state’s action.

The attorney general has also subpoenaed the Web site’s advertising agency, Adbrite, to determine how JuicyCampus represented its operation and what advertising keywords the site requested.

Milgram said Adbrite has inasmuch as offered full cooperation with the investigation and canceled its contract with the site.

The site launched last fall on seven college campuses and recently expanded to 50 more, including Princeton University. Free to use and supported by advertising, JuicyCampus promises posters total anonymity. Many of the postings indicate they’ve been viewed thousands of general condition of affairs.

Language on the site ranges from catty to hateful and offensive. One thread, on the side of example, on the “most overrated Princeton student” quickly dissolves into name-calling, homophobia and anti-Semitism.

There’s an unbelievable amount of offensive material posted and absolutely not any enforcement.

Anne Milgram,
N.J. Attorney General Students at frequent schools have responded with outrage and disgust at seeing peers smeared. The student government at Pepperdine University in California voted overwhelmingly to request a ban on the site, although the university has a skill against censoring Web sites.

JuicyCampus founder Matt Ivester has expressed little concern in the past relating to backlash from colleges.

“Like anything that is even remotely controversial, there are unceasingly folks who demand censorship,” he told The Associated Press last month. “However, we give credit to that JuicyCampus can have a really positive impact on college campuses, as a place for both entertainment and free expression.”

The site seems designed to shield its users from the threat of libel claims.

“It is not possible for anyone to use this website to find out who you are or where you are located,” assures a JuicyCampus privacy page. “We answer the purpose not track in any degree information that can be used by means of us to identify you.”

Mainstream social networking sites, on the other hand, maintain detailed logs of users’ numeric Internet protocol suit and their posting history.

The capital’s famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till around April 5.

In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about on March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged there anywhere from mid-April to mid-May.

And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen was already heavy in the air. Less than sum of two units decades ago, that pollen couldn’t be measured until late April.

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.

“The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

Blame global warming.

The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s official report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists. further than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime across the country, in nearly every state.

What’s happening is so noticeable that scientists can footstep it from space. Satellites measuring when land turns green found that spring “green-up” is arriving eight hours earlier every year on average since 1982 north of the Mason-Dixon line. In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.

Biological timing is called phenology. Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. EDT Thursday, is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor these changes.

The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is “to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?”

There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters, the longer growing season and maybe even better tasting wines from some early grape harvests. But biologists also foresee big problems.

The changes could push some species to extinction. That’s because certain plants and animals are dependent on each other for food and shelter. If the plants bloom or bear fruit before animals return or surface from hibernation, the critters could starve. Also, plants that bud too early be able to still be whacked by a late freeze.

It’s all a part of life. Timing is everything.

Jake Weltzin
director, National Phenology Network The young of tree swallows - which in upstate New York are laying eggs nine days earlier than in the 1960s - often starve in those last gasp cold snaps because insects forbear flying in the cold, ornithologists said. University of Maryland biology professor David Inouye noticed an unusually early February robin in his neighborhood this year and renowned, “Sometimes the early bird is the one that’s killed by the winter storm.”

The checkerspot butterfly disappeared from Stanford’s Jasper Ridge preserve because shifts in rainfall patterns changed the timing of plants on which it develops. When the plant dries out too early, the caterpillars die, said Notre Dame biology professor Jessica Hellmann.

“It’s an early warning sign in that it’s some supplementary onslaught that a lot of our threatened species can’t handle,” Hellmann said.

It’s not easy on some people either. A controlled federal domain study shows that warmer temperatures and increased carbon dioxide cause earlier, longer and stronger allergy seasons.

“in the place of wind-pollinated plants, it’s probably the strongest signal we have yet of climate change,” said University of Massachusetts professor of aerobiology Christine Rogers. “It’s a huge health impact. Seventeen percent of the American population is allergic to pollen.”

While some plants and animals use the amount of sunlight to figure out when it is spring, others base it on heat building in their tissues, much like a roasting turkey with a pop-up thermometer. Around the world, those internal thermometers are going to “pop” earlier than they once did.

This past winter’s weather could send a mixed message. Globally, it was the coolest December through February since 2001 and a year of heavy snowfall. Despite that, it was noiseless warmer than average for the 20th century.

Phenology data go back to the 14th century for harvest of wine grapes in France. There is a change in the timing of fall, but the change is biggest in spring. In the 1980s there was a sudden, big leap forward in spring blooming, scientists noticed. And spring keeps coming earlier at an accelerating rate.

Unlike sea ice in the Arctic, the way climate change is tinkering with the natural timing of day-to-day life is solidify and local. People can experience it with all five senses:

Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota’s state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly without fault dinosaur, skin and all.

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It’s among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.

“This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large parts of a dinosaur actually looked like, in the flesh,” said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Manchester University in England, a member of the international team researching Dakota.

“This is not the usual disjointed sentence or remnant of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter.”

Animal tissue typically decomposes quickly in relation to death. Researchers say Dakota must have been buried rapidly and in just the right environment for the skin to have existence preserved.

“The process of decay was overtaken by that of fossilization, preserving many of the soft-tissue structures,” Manning said.

Tyler Lyson, a 25-year-old doctoral paleontology student at Yale University, discovered the dinosaur on his uncle’s ranch in the Badlands in 1999. Weeks after he started to unearth the petrifaction in 2004, he knew he had found a part special.

“Usually all we have is bones,” Lyson said in a telephone interview. “In this special case, we’re not just after the bones; we’re after the whole corpse.”

Researchers have used the world’s largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing Co. in California and used to examine space shuttle parts, to get a better look at what is encased in the rumpled mass of sandstone.

“This is the fourth dinosaur mummy that’s ever been found in the world of any significance,” said Stephen Begin, a Michigan consultant forward the project. “It may turn out to be one of the best mummies, because of the quality of the skin that we’re finding and the extent of the skin that’s on the specimen.”

This is not the usual disjointed sentence or fragment of a word that the fossil records offer up as evidence of past life. This is a full chapter.

Phillip Manning,
paleontologist Dakota was moved to the museum early last month and is currently surrounded by precariously perched desk lamps and a machine to suck up dust. State paleontologist John Hoganson, of the North Dakota Geological Survey, said it will take a year, maybe additional, to uncover it.

Amy Sakariassen, part of the team working on the throw, was toiling away with a brush whose bristles had been ground from a thin to a dense state to nubs.

“It really is wonderful to work on it,” she said, as Begin used a sharp instrument to pick away tiny bits of rock and expose a scale. “Nobody’s seen that particular scale in 67 million years. It’s quite thrilling.”

Manning said his involvement has meant 18-hour days, seven-day weeks and “more work than I could have ever imagined. But I would not change a single second of the past few years.”

Hoganson said the main part of the fossil is in couple parts, weighing a total of nearly 5 tons.

“The skeleton itself is kind of curled up,” he reported. “The actual length would be about 30 feet, from about the tip of its tail to the tip of its nose.”

The fossil has spawned both a children’s book and an adult book, as well as National Geographic television programs. The National Geographic Society is funding much of the exploration.

“We are looking forward to seeing what emerges from the huge dinosaur body block now housed in North Dakota,” said John Francis, a society vice president.

Many prehistoric fossils have been found in the western North Dakota Badlands where terrain has been heavily eroded over time by weather. Hoganson declared other treasures likely are waiting to be unearthed.

“It’s one of the few places in the world where you can actually see the boundary line where the dinosaurs became extinct, the time boundary,” he said. “In the Badlands, this layer is exposed in certain places.”

Lyson, who found the fossil, eventually hopes to send it on a worldwide tour and then bring it back to his hometown of Marmarth, where he is creating a museum. For now, workers at the North Dakota Heritage Center on the state Capitol grounds are getting part of it ready for display this summer.