Kool Study

850,000 Android devices activated each day now

Google Chrome browser has 200 million-plus users, and Gmail has over 350 million users, with more than 5,000 new businesses and educational establishments signing up each day. (GigaOm)

Meanwhile, in other Google (GOOG) news, the Mountain View, California-based company has reportedly pushed back the release of its first Android tablet to make some design tweaks and potentially lower the $249 price. (The Verge)

Yahoo (YHOO) Chief Product Officer Blake Irving has resigned. Irving joined the company in mid-2010, as one of former CEO Carol Bartz’s hires. (All Things D) Instagram is nearly done raising a $50 million round of funding which would value the popular photo-sharing start-up at $500 million. (All Things D) According to a new study, Pinterest is now the third most popular social network behind Facebook and Twitter. (Venturebeat)

First-quarter profits for handset-maker HTC plummeted 70%. “We simply dropped the ball on products in the fourth quarter,” said Chief Financial Officer Winston Yung. (Bloomberg)
Microsoft (MSFT) is so keen on having developers create apps that they’re willing to financially cover the Windows Phone versions. (The New York Times)

source: cnn.com

Apple closes a trojan loophole after 550,000 Macs are infected

Having written several times — and taken a lot of heat from PC users — about the relative security of Apple’s (AAPL) operating systems (See Why are there no Mac viruses), I feel obliged to report that Mac OS X is under what appears to be the most serious malware attack to date.

According to a report posted Wednesday by Dr. Web, a Russian anti-virus vendor that may have a stick in this fire, the security of more than 550,000 Macs around the world have been compromised by the Flashback trojan.

Dr. Web, which sells an antidote for the versions of Flashback that run on Microsoft (MSFT) Windows machines, describes the Mac variant like this: JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit… The exploit saves an executable file onto the hard drive of the infected Mac machine. The file is used to download malicious payload from a remote server and to launch it…It may get and run any executable specified in a directive received from a server.

Oracle (ORCL), which assumed responsibility for the the Java programming language when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010, released a fix for the vulnerability in February. According to Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng, “Apple didn’t send out a fix until earlier this week, after news began to spread about the latest Flashback variant.”

The fix is part of the OS X software update called Java for OS X 2012-001. You’ll find it in Software Update in System Preferences. If you think one of your Macs is infected, F-Secure has instructions on how to use the Terminal application in your Utilities folder to find out.

source: cnn.com

The real importance of the revived Viacom-YouTube case

Yesterday’s federal appeals court ruling, reinstating Viacom’s 2007 copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube, may be of greater importance to the nation’s technology and media lawyers than to the parties in the suit.

Viacom (VIA) and YouTube themselves have been peacefully coexisting fairly well since 2008, when YouTube initiated its Content ID filtering program, which Viacom finds satisfactory. (Earlier this week Viacom’s Paramount unit and YouTube announced a deal to rent Paramount movies from the site.) Their dispute is backward looking and finite.

Nevertheless, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is of tremendous ongoing interest to the tech and content industries because it fiddles with bedrock definitions that determine the outcome of a crucial recurring question in our Web 2.0 world: When are Internet companies liable for their users’ online copyright infringing activities?

The court’s puzzling, gnarly, 39-page answer to that question, written by Judge Jose Cabranes, will certainly make lawyers earn their fees. What it gives with the right hand, it seems to take away with the left. It will give each side both ammunition and headaches in current and future litigation over such controversial businesses as cyberlockers, like Hotfile.com and RapidShare, which are hotbeds of infringing file-sharing.

Despite the ambiguity, though, the ruling clearly nudges the lines of demarcation modestly in the direction content-owners had hoped. It allows Viacom’s suit against YouTube to go forward “at least with respect to a handful of specific clips” for which Viacom was able to show (mainly through internal YouTube emails) highly specific knowledge of infringement on YouTube’s part. The ruling also reinstates a related class-action copyright suit against YouTube, whose representative plaintiffs include the Football Association Premier League (an English soccer organization), the French Tennis Federation, and a number of music publishers. Those plaintiffs seek damages for ongoing alleged copyright infringement on the site.

In brief statements, both Viacom and YouTube maintained that the wording of the court’s ruling amounted to a victory for it. According to Viacom, “The Court delivered a definitive, common sense message — intentionally ignoring theft is not protected by the law.” YouTube countered: “All that is left of the Viacom lawsuit . . . is a dispute over a tiny percentage of videos long ago removed. . . . Nothing in this decision impacts the way YouTube is operating.”

The ruling’s greatest contribution might be its conclusion that site-owners’ “willful blindness” to users’ infringing activity can be deemed to be “knowledge” on their part, potentially disqualifying them from the protections of the safe harbor. (Explicit recognition of the “willful blindness” principle had been proposed in the recent Stop Online Piracy Act bill, or SOPA — which was dropped after spectacular Internet protests in January — and had been one of the hot-button issues that had alarmed tech lawyers and digital rights advocates.)

Viacom’s case arises from the early history of YouTube, and illustrates well the temptations startup web businesses may have to turn a blind eye to users’ copyright infringement, at least while building scale and audience.

source: cnn.com

Manchester Royal Infirmary surgeons first to use 3D

They used the equipment during an operation on John Green, 62, from Openshaw, to remove his prostate.The team wore special glasses in order to view the procedure in 3D.Doctors said the combination of robotic and 3D technologies allows for greater surgical mobility with keyhole techniques. During the operation, a high definition screen carried a 3D image of a hand-held robotic arm developed to carry out intricate surgical techniques. The arm was used for the first time at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport last month.

Manchester Royal Infirmary said it hoped the advancement would provide better results at a fraction of the cost of current robotic and imaging techniques. A spokeswoman for the hospital said 3D projection allowed the surgeon to have greater accuracy, “therefore reducing the risks of muscle and nerve damage.” She added it would help reduce surgeon fatigue, meaning they would be able to carry out “more operations with even better outcomes.”

The technology is to be used on a small number of patients before being offered more widely.’Already excited’ Dan Burke, who led the surgery, said he hoped the technology would become available to many more patients.

“We are already excited at the potential this technology has, not just for us but for our many colleagues in the trust performing keyhole surgery.

“Ultimately we are aiming for a better patient outcome at a cost that will benefit the NHS.” Last month, a patient at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport became the first in the UK to have his prostate removed using the same robotic hand-held device used in Mr Green’s operation. The technology offers a more precise and quicker surgical procedure, as it provides more flexibility than the human wrist.

source: www.bbc.co.uk