Anonymous spokesman's YouTube meltdown led to arrest

Sep 21, 2012 09:24 am | CSO by Taylor Armerding If anybody was surprised at the arrest in Dallas last week of Barrett Brown, self-described sometimespokesman for the hacktivist group Anonymous, it should not have been Brown himself. He practically invited it. A three-part, 43-plus minute rant posted on YouTube on Sept. 11 and 12 included a threat to "shoot ... and kill" any armed government officials who...

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Researchers hack iPhone, steal data

Sep 21, 2012 09:24 am | CSO by Antone Gonsalves Researchers have broken into an iPhone 4S running the latest version of Apple iOS, making it possible to exploit the same vulnerability in the iPhone 5 that is set for release on Friday. The white-hat hackers Joost Pol and Daan Keuper showed how they were able to steal contacts, browsing history, photos and videos to win $30,000 in the mobile Pwn2Own contest Wednesday...

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Google faces hefty fine from European Union antitrust authority

Sep 21, 2012 08:45 am | IDG News Service Microsoft also needs to honor commitments it has made in an unrelated antitrust settlement, says the EU competition watchdog by Jennifer Baker Europe's competition watchdog is considering formal proceedings against Google over antitrust complaints about the way it promotes its own services in search results, potentially exposing the company to a fine of 10 percent of its global...

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London iPhone 5 buyers disagree on need for LTE, but look forward to bigger screen

Sep 21, 2012 07:56 am | IDG News Service No-one seems concerned about the lack of support for NFC by Mikael Ricknäs The iPhone 5's bigger screen was the big draw among people waiting in line for the new model, while opinions are split over whether to sign up for an LTE subscription or not. As in many cities across the world, lines had formed outside the Apple Stores on Regent Street in London and opposite the Opéra...

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BlackBerry service failure hits Europe one year after major outage

Sep 21, 2012 07:21 am | Computerworld RIM apologizes, says it's working on a fix  by Matt Hamblen Research in Motion's BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa are experiencing service problems today, and RIM said in a statement that it is working to resolve the problem. RIM apologized, but didn't have information on when the problems might be resolved. The problem has left thousands of BlackBerry...

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Google pulls the plug on its free music service for China

Sep 21, 2012 06:50 am | IDG News Service Google said in a blog post the service's popularity failed to meet expectations by Michael Kan Google is shutting a Chinese music search service that offered free licensed music downloads because it wasn't popular enough, the company said Friday. The announcement came in a blog posting from senior engineering director Boon-Lock Yeo, who said the company was shutting...

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China's Alibaba is spinning off its Aliyun OS into a seperate business unit

Sep 21, 2012 02:58 am | IDG News Service China's Alibaba bolsters its own mobile OS with $200M investment  by Michael Kan Days after feuding with Google over its mobile operating system, Alibaba Group said on Thursday it would spin off its Aliyun OS into a separate business unit, and invest US$200 million to back the new venture. The announcement came from Alibaba Group's CEO Jack Ma in an internal email that...

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AU Optronics fined $500 million for LCD price-fixing

Sep 21, 2012 02:21 am | IDG News Service The sentence on AU Optronics and two employees was lower than the government had asked by John Ribeiro AU Optronics was fined US$500 million by a San Francisco court on Thursday, and two of its former executives were sentenced to serve three-year prison terms and pay fines in connection with a LCD price-fixing conspiracy, the Department of Justice said. The sentence by a Judge...

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Sony focuses on PlayStation Vita at the Tokyo Game Show

Sep 21, 2012 12:31 am | IDG News Service Japan's main game show has faded a bit from recent years, but Sony still fields a massive booth at the event by Jay Alabaster Sony's focus is on its PlayStation Vita handheld at this year's Tokyo Game Show. Japan's premier game event has lost a bit of its luster and is noticeably smaller than years past, as many companies focus on the larger E3 that takes place in the summer...

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