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Oracle Buys Sun For $7.4 Billion

2009-04-20T18:34:56Z

After a recent quarterly loss of $209 million, Sun Microsystems may not look like the ideal purchase, but it was Oracle and not IBM that announced today it will be buying the home Java and Solaris for a sum total of $7.4 billion, which nets out at $5.6 billion after cash and debt.

Said Oracle president Safra Catz:

We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.

Speculation as to the motivation behind the buyout has run toward ideas about Oracle "integrating hardware and software with Oracle's Exadata database machine," and the transaction was approved unanimously at Sun.

Safra Catz, who owns a super cool name in addition to one, now two, of the world's top tech firms, made it clear that he does not consider the purchase of Sun as much of a gamble:

"We intend to ensure that it is profitable... We believe we will be able to run Sun at substantially higher margins."

Oracle to buy Sun in $7.4 billion deal [CNet]

From GayGamer: Pirate Bay Founders Arrrr Guilty

2009-04-17T18:47:45Z

The four defendants in Sweden's uber-high-profile PirateBay case have been found guilty, and are facing millions in fines and a year of jail time. I'll let my darling colleague Pixel Poet explain it all:

A ruling from a Swedish court was given today on the case that was brought against the founders of Pirate Bay by many of the big giants in the recording industry. Turns out the founders were found guilty and charged with one year of jail time as well as $4.7 million in damages to pay. The verdict partially came as a surprise to the defendants, the founders of Pirate Bay, since they argued the fact that their servers never held any of the copyrighted material and therefore were not breaking any copyright laws. Peter Sunde, one of the founders, had this to say about the verdict:
"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. . . It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime."

So it seems like the verdict is currently a big win for the record companies who fear the effects that music file torrents has on their bottom line. The verdict also indicates that a program that can be used for malicious purposes, such as the torrenting of copyrighted material, can have legal repercussions on the makers of that software and/or system if they are knowledgeable about its illegal use; however, the founders of Pirate Bay are not going to be walking the plank just yet, one of their lawyers told the press that the verdict is:

". . . outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal. . . This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

The internet exploded upon hearing this news. Sites like TorrentFreak seem to have been brought to their knees by the verdict, one way or another.

Court jails Pirate Bay founders [BBC]
[Thanks to Philip for the pic, Neij is a cutie!]

Update: Amazon.fail Official Response

2009-04-14T04:58:32Z

I just received an official response from Amazon regarding the Amazon petition I signed earlier today, which corroborates our stalwart Sgt. Sausagepants' update suggesting the whole affair is/was human error rather than human malice:

Hello,
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:

If not, click here:

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

Okay. 'Ham-fisted' indeed and it's good to see Amazon acknowledge that. But all those horrible anti-gay books are still popping up on a simple "homosexuality" search for me, which makes me wonder how long it will be before that ham's fist gets removed from Amazon's guts, so to speak. Or have these shenanigans now legitimately skewed the rankings, or something woeful like that?

Conficker's Anticlimactic Purpose Revealed!

2009-04-10T23:00:29Z

It seems that Conficker's ultimate purpose has finally been revealed!

Drum roll please!

.
.
.

It's a spam bot!

Yes, that's right. Despite huge amounts of hysteria painting Conficker as some world destroying super spy doomsday botnet, it seems Conficker's makers are a little more practical and therefore... money driven.

According to a report by Karpersky Labs, the purpose of the mysterious download by Conficker machines on April 1 has been revealed as a directive to send out spam offering users a fake anti virus programme for $49.95.

Yep, it's peddling snake oil spam.

How anticlimactic, but money makes the world go round, neh?

Conficker Doomsday Worm Sells Out For $49.95 [Wired]

Intel Takes Some Tips From Microsoft's Marketing Department

2009-04-10T20:00:42Z

Seemingly taking some tips from Microsoft's labyrinthine naming and labelling schemes, Intel has unveiled the new badges that will mark its current crop of processors, all of which are in the image above.

Comprising some strange mish mosh of colours that seem to have no meaning (Hey look, black is for high end, except when it's the Atom!) and numbers that while understandable to geeks like us just serve to confuse mom and pop (Core-two-quad-what's-it? Which is it, two or four, son?), these new badges are nothing short of a marketing train wreck.

Here's a very valuable rule, marketers: KISS. Look it up.

Canadian Filmmaker Has Fun With Prosthetic Eye

2009-04-10T19:42:46Z

This is just one more reason I wish I were Sandy Duncan: Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence, who lost his right eye at the age of 11 while playing with a shotgun at his grandfather's farm in Ireland, is planning a second serious upgrade to his cybernetic components.

Spence and the rest of the Eyeborg Project have installed a red LED into his prosthetic eye, and want to follow up the success of that drop-dead awesome trick by installing a video camera into the eye to "explore privacy and surveillance issues." And to look wicked cool, I'm guessing.

Check out ~~Locutus of Borg~~ Spence's autobiographical video below. Gross eyeball footage is par for the course, so you've been warned. Look out for the hot techie who's building Spence's video-eye.

eyeborg: canadian filmmaker installs a red LED into his prosthetic eye [Technabob]

Time Warner Slightly Alters Its Stingy Bandwidth Plan

2009-04-10T19:20:18Z

That roadrunner may no longer be fast or fun: if you want unlimited internet access from Time Warner, you'll have to shell out $150 a month. That's about twice what I currently pay for my Time Warner cable modem, which as of yesterday was still downloading totally clothed pictures of totally appropriate men at speeds nearing 1 MB/s.

But in certain test locations (like Texas), Time Warner has a strict and unfriendly bandwidth-capped, tiered-pricing system. This week it altered those restrictions, but you'll still be paying through the nose for what used to be unmetered. In Texas, limits were raised from 5GB to 40GB per month to 10GB to 60GB per month, ranging in price from $25 to $65 per month. An additional option of 100GB per month was added for $75. Additional data will cost you $1 per GB up to $75, at which point you're shelling out $150 per month for unlimited access.

Compared to Comcast's $43 monthly rate for 250GB, Time Warner's plan looks abysmally stingy. Of course, if you're not a high-bandwidth user, it matters not a lot. But with Time Warner charging more than twice as much for less than half the bandwidth, Comcast looks positively generous. (Cue Jesse James!)

And my endless stream of totally appropriate video material isn't safe here in NYC either, since Time Warner is testing out data caps here too, earning the ire of at least one politician.

Time Warner: Unlimited Internet for $150 Per Month [DailyTech]

Awesome Cylon Wristwatches Easier To Read If You're An Actual Cylon

2009-04-09T20:42:11Z

These Kisai Denshoku watches are gorgeous brushed-metal bodied instruments, available for $236 at Tokyo Flash, were inspired by the neon daylight of Tokyo's Shinjuku district but could have just as easily come from a Cylon Basestar - and you might need a Cylon's ability to read data in flashing red lights to tell the time, but it'd still be worth it.

They work like this: the number of lit bars tells the hour. Pressing a button initiates a three-phase time-telling animation: the bars flash the hour, then flash the number of ten-minute intervals that have elapsed since the hour began, and then flash the number of single-digit minutes that have elapsed since the last ten minute increment.

Yeah.

In other words, a flash of "4, 5, 6" would mean the time is 4:56.

That's something I could get used to, but only if my irises flash Cylon-red in response.

kisai denshoku led watch: how a cylon tells the time [Technabob]

Throw Pillows For The PC Stalwart

2009-04-09T20:00:18Z

Don't say I don't write for you Windows users out there: If you're looking to add a little PC to your living room, look no further than these CTRL-ALT-DEL pillows from Etsy.

The set will cost you $60, on Diffraction Edge's Etsy shop.

There's no better way to declare your allegiance in the PC/Mac wars to all who come into your living room than throw pillows designating your most oft-used key combination (ZING! What? You really thought I was going to write this whole article without jabbing at Windows? Hah!)

Gadget get!

Microsoft Loses $388 Million Patent Suit

2009-04-09T19:35:50Z

One of the longer-running patent cases against Microsoft was resolved yesterday, and not in the computing giant's favor.

Microsoft faced allegations from Uniloc that Uniloc's patented technology has been used as part of Microsoft's software activation service, and a federal jury in Rhode Island found that, indeed, Windows XP, Office XP and Windows Server 2003 all infringed upon the Uniloc patent in question.

Microsoft will appeal the decision that granted Uniloc $388 million in fines:

"We are very disappointed in the jury verdict," Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said in an e-mail. "We believe that we do not infringe, that the patent is invalid and that this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported. We will ask the court to overturn the verdict."

Microsoft slapped with $388 million patent verdict [CNet]

Video: WiiSpray - Virtual Tagging Made Awesome

2009-04-08T23:00:19Z

For all of you that love tagging but hate the prospect of being arrested for vandalism, a partnership between Montana Cans and Bauhaus University Media Department students has led to WiiSpray, a pretty awesome virtual spray painting program for the Wii:

Realistic physics, ability to use stencils, colour palette control. Pretty neat stuff.

» WiiSpray Teaser of Final Presentation [WiiSpray]

From GayGamer: More PSP2/4000 Rumors Surface

2009-04-08T21:00:36Z

Our GayGamer colleague Game-Boy got the scoop on the PSP v iPhone rumor that's going around, which sees the next PSP as a slide/flip-screened, double-analog-sticked bad boy that Pocket Gamer finds worthy of the moniker "iPhone beater":

It's no secret that Sony has been working on some sort of revision of the PSP, but there's been nothing but conflicting information coming from a variety of developer leaks. Today's latest batch via PocketGamer's anonymous developer source says that the next hardware update is set to include a touchscreen, a d-pad and set of face buttons that slide out, and... you better sit down for this one... a second analogue nub/stick. Praise Jebus!
The source also claims that Sony is ready to ditch the controversial UMD this holiday season in favor of digital distribution through the PlayStation Network Store. While I've never been a big fan of the UMD, I can't say that I'm that ecstatic to hear this. Sony's online stores have been awkward experiences for me at best and the 5th circle of User Interface Hell at worst (that's right next the original Xbox, for those wondering). Add on the fact that there's still no Mac software option for the PlayStation Network and I get the feeling that I'll be missing the UMD drive as much as I miss the GBA slot on the DSi.

Everyone, including the source of this latest rumor, is predicting that Sony will reveal the next step in the PSPs evolution at this year's E3 in June. Only time will tell if these stories are true or not, but with so much gossip around the PSP I get the feeling that there's at least a small amount of truth some of these rumors.

[PSP 2 coming pre-Chrismas will be an iPhone beater] PocketGamer

Microsoft Makes It Tough To Upgrade To Win 7 RC From Beta

2009-04-08T19:29:36Z

Unfortunately for those of us who've enjoyed beta testing Windows 7, Microsoft is making life difficult for beta testers to upgrade their copy of Windows 7 to the new release candidate version - and that includes a lot of folks at Microsoft itself.

Microsoft needs feedback from users upgrading from Windows Vista to Win 7, because that's what will happen when Win 7 is indeed released into the wild - it doesn't need data on thousands of beta testers upgrading, it needs data on thousands of Vista users upgrading. So it's fair for Microsoft to recommend that the new build be installed from Vista rather than a current Win 7 beta build, but where's that leave loyal beta testers, including those working on the project at Microsoft?

The Windows 7 blog addresses that question for the millions of people it says are using Win 7 beta as their full-time OS:

Again, we know many people (including tens of thousands at Microsoft) are relying on the pre-release builds of Windows 7 for mission critical and daily work, making this step less than convenient. We're working hard to provide the highest quality release we can and so we'd like to make sure for this final phase of testing we're supporting the most real world scenarios possible, which incremental build to build upgrades are not. At the same time everyone on the beta has been so great we wanted to make sure we at least offered an opportunity to make your own expert and informed choice about how to handle the upgrade.

Read the full post here to find out what hoops you'll need to jump through to upgrade your trusty Win 7 beta to the RC build.

Engineering Windows 7 [Windows 7 Blog]

Rumorama: Next iPhone To Have Compass, Video Camera, Auto Focus?

2009-04-08T18:00:39Z

People have been digging around the iPhone OS 3.0 beta and have discovered some rather interesting tidbits buried deep within the configuration files.

The video capabilities have pretty much been confirmed, as changing a configuration file to make the iPhone OS 3.0 think there's a video camera changes the camera interface into the picture you see, with a switch to change between video and still camera modes.

References to a "magnetometer" (compass), "auto-focus camera," and "Voice Control" have also been found in the configuration files.

All of these point to likely hardware additions to the next generation iPhone, rumoured to be released during WWDC 2009 in June.

It seems Apple is trying to match and beat the feature set of T-Mobile's Android G1 set. I love competition.

(Photo by MacRumors)

iPhone Video Recording Interface, Digital Compass, Voice Control and Auto-Focus Camera [MacRumors]

Bono Blames Apple For BlackBerry Switch

2009-04-06T22:20:54Z

Oh joy, just what the world needed: Bono has another opinion he'd like to share with us. The light-sensitive Irish rocker told Toronto DJ Alan Cross that U2 had approached Apple with the idea to design a U2-specific product but was (gasp) rejected, which led U2 to seek partnership with RIM instead:

"I'm very excited about this," Bono told Mr. Cross about the RIM deal. "Research In Motion is going to give us what Apple wouldn't -- access to their labs and their people so we can do something really spectacular."

I'm trying to work out which is more offensive, that Apple would dare to say no, eventually, to the world's most self-important rockers, or that those self-important rockers would publicly announce that RIM was their second choice? That's a backhanded compliment if ever I've heard one.

What exactly U2 and RIM are cooking up remains to be seen, but Apple must have some nerve to say no to the group that sold bunches of U2 Edition iPods between 2004 and 2006 and continues to sell U2-related (product) Red iPod nanos and shuffles to benefit Bono's AIDS charity. Ok, I guess the guy ain't all bad.

But is anybody really surprised that an Apple with Steve Jobs back at the helm would be anything less than icily aloof and unwilling to collaborate? C'mon now.

RIM rocks a new tune [GlobeAndMail]