13
February
2008
|
05:49 AM
America/Los_Angeles

Newswatch 2.13.08: Net neutrality rises again

Markey offers net neutrality bill

[Reuters] "Our goal is to ensure that the next generation of Internet innovators will have the same opportunity, the same unfettered access to Internet content, services and applications that fostered the developers of Yahoo, Netscape and Google," Markey said in a statement.

A busy Patch Tuesday

[InternetNews] "Most organizations these days have a fairly good security practice about not opening unknown files from unknown users. But visiting Web sites that can be exploited is still a biggest area of concern. Here you have a remote code execution with no user interaction. Keeping your users from visiting sites like this is especially difficult."

Racing to define the future of cellphones

[AP] The LiMo Foundation — which includes such software companies as McAfee Corp. and Purple Labs and telecommunications giants such as Samsung — showed off 18 handsets Wednesday at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona. Some of the devices are ready for market. Just two days earlier, also in Barcelona, chip makers Texas Instruments Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. began demonstrating prototypes of handsets based on Android — for which no one offered a launch date.

Woman says lost laptop worth $54m

[WSJ] A woman is suing Best Buy for $54 million because the retailer’s tech-repair staff lost her laptop. The rationale: There’s no telling what the store’s technicians might do with the data on the computer. Sure, $54 million dollars seems a bit insane – we’ll have more on why she chose the amount in a moment. But blaming the tech guys is anything but crazy. In fact, it appears to be all the rage for people who find themselves in cyber trouble.

AAPL will offer 3G iPhone this year

[CIO] In a research note Monday, analyst Richard Gardner of Citigroup cited the falling production numbers as an indicator that Apple is gearing up for a new model, The Washington Post reported. In Europe, iPhone sales have been underwhelming. "We believe that lack of 3G has been a significant headwind for iPhone in Europe, where 3G is already pervasive," Gardner said.

Facebook yields to users (again)

[CompWorld] After a flood of highly publicized user complaints, Facebook Inc. this week moved to make it easier for users to permanently delete their accounts and all the content associated with them by posting instructions on its user help page.