Business, Financial & Legal - Page 156

EVGA are set to update their warranty policy with a new global-based policy, which will be announced in a week or so. EVGA's "New and Improved Global Warranty" will soon be publicly announced through their website, but between now and then we can look at the basic overview of the biggest changes to their system:

On top of this, EVGA will offer a Standard Cross-Shipping RMA service, free of charge. EVGA will cross-ship a replacement product to the customer, as long as the customer provides a valid credit card as collateral, and the customer will pay for the return shipping of their malfunctioning part. At the moment, the Advanced RMA Program covers shipping both ways.

We can feel it now: a massive undercurrent shift of the way we use technology. 10 years ago, if you wanted to use the Internet, you required a desktop, and failing that, a notebook. Notebooks were just too thick, and large, and their battery lives were crap. Desktops were the only route, really.

Now, you can use the Internet on your TV, fridge, smartphone, tablet, iPod, and countless other Internet-connected devices. The IDC has put out a long-term estimate, where they've put mobile and desktop platforms in a single smart device category, where they've estimated that Windows will slip from 35.9-percent market share in 2011, to just 25.1-percent in 2016.

Android would move from 29.4-percent to 31.1-percent in the same 2011-2016 time frame. iOS is the smaller puppy here, with just 14.6-percent from 2011, and with an estimated 2016 market share of just 17.3-percent. The total number of smart devices? This goes from a 1.1 billion predicted for this year, to 1.8 billion in 2016.

MegaUpload would like to gain access to its seized servers in order to collect evidence to prove the innocence of the accused MegaUpload employees. However, officials will not release the $1 million dollars required to do so, hence the claim that the feds are impeding the defense of MegaUpload. "It's hard to reconcile the chain of events in this matter with any other conclusion," Rothken said. "MegaUpload is frustrated and wants to preserve the data for litigation and to defend itself and ultimately -- with the approval of the court -- to provide consumers access to their data."

According to MegaUpload's lawyers, there is no criminal copyright infringement statute in the United States, so if the US get the extradition they are requesting, MegaUpload will be successful in its defense. MegaUpload's lawyers are trying to prepare for the extradition defense, but are unable to because they don't have access to the e-mails, documents, and files on the servers which they claim will refute the charges.

MegaUpload's lawyer negotiated a deal with Carpathia, MegaUpload's host, to buy the servers for a little over $1 million but the government again refused to release the money. "As we've stated previously," the spokesman wrote, "we continue to give careful and thoughtful consideration to any reasonable and detailed proposal by MegaUpload's counsel that addresses the practical and technical issues of this matter for the court. Ultimately, it is the court that will decide what is appropriate and whether any funds will be released to carry it out."

In the words of Nelson from The Simpsons - "HA HA". What a great start to this news, as much as I love Apple (I'm rocking along with the new iPad and I've been loving it so far, there are issues, but it's overall a nice product) the 4G iPad is a huge misleading mess in Australia. When I went down to grab mine, you could see 4G signs and talk of it around the store, and it's just simply pathetic.

Apple are now finding themselves in a pickle in Australia, where Australian consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has accused Apple of misleadingly calling its new iPad as 4G-capable. The ACCC have said they will be applying to the Federal Court of Melbourne for an order against the company and is moving for the court to impose fines and injunctions against sales.

The ACCC is saying that labelling the new iPad as 4G-capable is misleading to customers in Australia. Yes, 4G LTE networks are available here in Australia, but they run on an entirely different band to what the iPad is compatible with. 4G services in Australia provided by Telstra run on the 1800MHz frequency band, which makes them completely unusable on the new iPad. The new iPad only works on the 700MHz or 2100MHz frequency bands for its 4G LTE connectivity.

Samsung's 5.3-inch GALAXY Note smartphone has been doing surprisingly well for the South Korean-based company, having shipped over 5 million units in just five months. This is quite the achievement considering its one of the larger screened smartphones on the market today.

5 million units shipped, and the 5.3-incher doesn't even include Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this is quite the achievement for Samsung. We should expect Samsung to released their Premium Suite of apps, as well as Android 4.0 in the near future.

Until then, the GALAXY Note is still an amazing looking phone. I personally wouldn't mind checking it out, but I'm waiting for some Ice Cream Sandwich lovin' before I get into that gorgeous 5.3-inch display. I really should stop dilly dallying and just get one, shouldn't I?

People are spending up big on Apple's Newsstand app, where a study of Apple's App Store for iPad during just the month of February from market research firm Distimo shows that the top 100 publications raked in more than $70,000 a day. This is just absolutely huge, considering that the revenue is from the United States alone, and is led by News Corp.'s The Daily, followed by The New York Times, and The New Yorker magazine.

Apple don't disclose what individual app makers and content providers earn on ints store, but Apple provide 70-percent of each sale to the content creators, holding back 30-percent for themselves. Publishers can also let existing subscribers view digital editions of content, to which they've already subscribed to. But, they're not allowed to link to outside Web sites where subscriptions can be struck outside of Apple's App Store, that's a naughty no-no.

Some noteworthy metrics from the study:

Transformers, robots in disguise. Well, in the case of Hasbro, it's "tablets in disguise." Remember how Hasbro sued Asus over its Transformer Prime tablet because of the name "Transformer?" Well, the judgement came in today in that case. The court decided that Asus can continue selling its Transformer Prime series because it does not infringe on Hasbro's trademark.

The court found that Hasbro's trademark did not cover the Transformer Prime. One reason is because the tablet is not similar in use to any of the products manufactured by Hasbro and the likelihood of them getting confused is slim. Additionally, because the tablet does indeed transform (by way of its detachable keyboard), it was a suitable name for the device to have. Hasbro is, of course, free to appeal, but for now, the tablet is safe.

I'm sure everyone reading this has used Google at some point and seen that nifty feature which auto-completes your search query for you based on previous queries other people have placed. It's pretty cool, and sometimes outright outrageously funny with some of the suggestions it provides. But how would you like it to auto-complete your name with suggestions that suggest you committed crimes?

Well, that's just the situation that one Japanese man has found himself in. He says that when he searches his name, it does just that: return suggestions and results that suggest he has committed crimes that he claims he hasn't. He claims he lost his job because of it, and wasn't hired for new ones. After all, almost all jobs do a Google search on a prospective employee.

He requested that Google take it down, but they refused. He then turned to the courts to seek an injunction. On March 19th, the Tokyo court approved the injunction requiring Google to suspend its auto-complete results. Google has refused to comply with the order, and refuses to be regulated by Japanese law.

Well, well, isn't this quite the golden nugget of news today, folks! Megaupload co-founder, Kim Dotcom, has admitted that high-profile U.S. government officials held accounts with Megaupload. Not only did people at the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and NASA hold Megaupload accounts, but some 15,600 members of the U.S. Military did, too.

The MPAA and RIAA may think that Megaupload is predominantly used for piracy, but there are plenty of government officials and installations using it for legitimate transferring of files, that are simply too big to throw over e-mail. Megaupload's team is working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with their MegaRetrieval campaign, where they hope to reunite site users with their data.

This has created the opportunity for Megaupload to discover that a large number of Megaupload accounts are actually held by US government officials, thanks to fresh information provided to TorrentFreak from Kim Dotcom himself. This includes accounts from domains like dhs.gov, doe.gov, fbi.gov, hhs.gov, nasa.gov, senate.gov, treas.gov and uscourts.gov. The number of accounts held with these domains total 1058. From these, 344 users upgraded to Premium access. Between these accounts, they uploaded 15,242 files, a total of 1,851,791MB.

Today has been a day filled with Microsoft news. First the Xbox Lite rumor, and then the "Smoked by Windows Phone" contest. Well, now we're going to tell you how a couple of Bing promoters got fired. The two's employment ended with a bang. At Sundance, they built a three-story party palace filled with celebs and an open bar.

The two had become known for high power marketing campaigns for the search engine Bing. They painted Bing as something colorful and fun, whereas Google could be seen as plain and simple. The experts at AdAge scrounged up some details of why they were fired:

Clearly, the flight is a small point in comparison to the $1 million fee, but it could just be the straw that broke the camel's back. However, everything above boils down to ethics violations, as far as I can tell. It will be curious how Microsoft's marketing strategy changes when it hires new people in to market Bing. Just remember, if you want to quit, why not get fired by throwing a massive party on the companies dime instead?

A new challenger has appeared. Apple is no longer the only one doing frivolous lawsuits; now, they are at the receiving end of one! Yes, it's true, one of Apple's stores, with its slick and modern design, "caused" an 83 year old woman to break her nose by walking into the glass--guess they use Windex!

As a result of the collision, Grandmother Evelyn Paswall is suing the company for a cool $1 million. Her lawyer explains:

This will most likely settle out of court, as most lawsuits of this nature due. It remains to be seen if Apple's warning labels will be adjusted to be more visible. Besides, this isn't the first time this has happened: two other customers suffered minor injuries after colliding with the glass. Apple introduced the warning labels after these events.

New iPhone (will that be the new name?) development is of course under way, but a massive part of this is the actual production of the smartphone itself. Foxconn are key partners to Apple, but right now, Foxconn's northern plant in Taiyuan, which is in China's northern Shanxi province, may become both a key hub of the new iPhone, as well as a flashpoint for working condition issues.

The China Times reports that the factory was facing a "huge" shortage of workers, to the tune of 20,000 of them, as it got ready for the new iPhone. It is being reported that they would be in charge of producing as many as 85-percent of total orders, or close to 57 million new iPhones. So, we'd be talking about just under a year of stock for one single model.

The problems with the workers apparently stem from Foxconn allegedly promising to raise pay packets for everyone, but then only delivered their promises to mid- and upper-tier workers, which of course, pissed off some employees, rightfully so, too. The raises supposedly reduce the requirement to work overtime in order to get a decent pay, but the managers have been pushing an all-or-nothing attitude toward overtime. Either you work insane amounts of overtime, or you get offered no overtime at all.

Research in Motion were born in Canada, and have enjoyed Canadian's being loyal to RIM, but this has just begun to stop. In 2011, RIM shipped 2.08 million BlackBerry smartphones, versus the 2.85 million iPhones that Apple sold. Rewind another twelve months into 2010, and we have RIM selling over 500,000 more units than Apple did in Canada.

If we go back a bit further to 2008, RIM sold 500-percent more BlackBerry phones than Apple did iPhones. But, we all know that the iPhone has grown in popularity immensely, and Canadian's just don't want to continue being blindly loyal. Bloomberg notes that Canada-based sales make up roughly 7-percent of RIM's total revenue.

RIM has enjoyed local support in Canada, which would hurt them considerably seeing Apple overtake them on their home ground. Alfred DuPut from research firm Interbrand says that this is due to RIM not investing enough in promoting their devices once the iPhone shipped. If you ask me, it's because Apple have a totally contained system, with hipsters wanting them, grandmas wanting them, great marketing, they just 'work', and are simple enough that a 5-year-old could use it.

Earlier today, we reported the FaceBook issued a statement regarding employers and the like who asked for FaceBook log in credentials. Well now, a senator in the USA is reportedly drafting a bill to make this illegal. The DOJ has already said they believe breaking FaceBook's ToS, which ban giving your password to someone, is a federal offence, but have sated they will not be prosecuting it.

The senator described the requests as an "unreasonable invasion of privacy for people seeking work," adding that the bill would be ready "in the very near future." The practice is akin to them asking to open your postal mail to see if there is anything interesting in there. With everyone up in arms about the practice, it's no wonder someone thought it to be a good idea to write a law regarding it.

France's President, Mr. Sarkozy, said in a statement, "From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hate and violence will be punished. France will not tolerate ideological indoctrination on its soil." If politicians aren't blaming games for violent behavior, they turn to the internet. It's common political rhetoric, but does this announcement even make any sense?

What caused this? Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old, killed seven French people - three soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi. He claimed Al Qaeda inspired him to do so. Luckily, there is a good distance to travel from this statement issued in the heat of the moment to it being implemented in a law. Sticking to this particular case, is there any evidence that Merah visited any of these "extremist websites?"

Besides, as most people know, these videos can be found pretty much anywhere, including sites like YouTube. Also, how would this law be implemented? This is starting to sound like an assault on France's internet freedom. Besides, how do you tell apart a PhD student from a radical? The simple answer: you can't. Let's just hope today's announcement is just more political rhetoric in an election year.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (say that ten times fast), who is kind of equal to the US Secretary of the Treasury announced that the government would make tex credits available to UK-based video game developers in the next budget. Andrew Eades, CEO of UK developer Relentless Software, said in a statement released by The Independent Game Developers Association (TIGA):

We were nearly here before, back in 2010, when the current UK government cancelled plans for gaming industry tax breaks when they came into power in 2010. Critics have said that the cancellations of these tax breaks were pretty catastrophic for the UK gaming industry, where they caused studio closures, impeded the nation's ability to compete internationally, and have caused a brain drain of talent seeking better jobs in countries like Canada.

TIGA have said that the new tax initiatives could help protect 4,661 British jobs, as well as £188 million ($298 million) in investment expenditures, contributing an estimated £283 million ($448 million) to the UK GDP. TIGA CEO, Dr Richard Wilson says:

OK. I admit it: since I purchased the new iPad, I've been obsessed about 'Draw Something', the Pictionary-like drawing game which is just insanely addictive. Most of the people around me, family and friends, have been playing it too, which makes it great. Today I wake up to the news that the maker of Draw Something, OMGPOP, has been acquired by social gaming powerhouse Zynga.

What price did Zynga draw on Draw Something's cheque? A very cool $210 million. TechCrunch has heard they were offered $180 million upfront, plus a $30 million earnout. OMGPOP chief executive, Dan Porter, now becomes a general manager and vice president of Zynga New York, with OMGPOP's employees joining Zynga. OMGPOP had not hit great success with titles up until Draw Something, when they bought the game to iOS and Android just over a month ago, they saw the title explode: racking up 35 million downloads, and 1 billion drawings.

It has also been reported that OMGPOP could have been worth more... a lot more. Simon Khalaf, the chief executive of mobile analytics company Flurry, said to TechCrunch's Kim-Mai Cutler, as well a Business Insider's Henry Blodget that OMGPOP effectively left $800 million on the tablet by selling to Zynga. The reason behind this is that Draw Something could've branched out into different areas, the same way that Rovio took the Angry Birds franchise and made it flourish.

Several job hunters were taken aback recently when applying for a job because of something the interviewer did. The interviewer pulled out a computer, and pulled up the applicant's FaceBook profile. When the interviewer found the profile was private, she did the unthinkable: she asked the applicant for his/her login information to the site. The scary part is that this seems as if its becoming the normal practice; employers checking FaceBook and the Internet to try to find the best applicant.

But what do they do when it's private? Apparently, they just ask the applicant. But, is this legal? Can they do this? Obviously, one can refuse, but they run the risk of not getting the job. Or, in the case of Justin Basset, he chose to withdraw his entire application, citing that he did not want to work for a company that requested such private information.

"It's akin to requiring someone's house keys," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former Federal prosecutor who labeled it "an egregious privacy violation." However, some people don't have a choice, such as Robert Collins of Baltimore who complied with the request citing he felt he needed the job to provide for his family and had no choice.

It seems as though Apple is on track to pass Intel as the world's largest mobile device chip provider, if all things continue as they are, before the end of 2012. This is according to technology research firm, In-Stat. The continued success is thanks to Apple's amazingly popular mobile devices, as well as the selective use of manufacturing partners such as ARM and Samsung.

The study done by In-Stat included what are commonly thought of as "mobile" devices, this includes notebooks, smartphones, tablets, handheld gaming systems, e-readers and the iPod Touch. It completely excludes desktop computers and servers. By the end of 2011, Apple were already in second place, where they sat behind Intel, shy of 5 million processor shipments. Apple had a total of 176 million mobile processors shipped, compared to Intel's 181 million. This provided Apple with a 13.5-percent share of the mobile device market versus Intel's 13.9-percent.

Considering Apple seem to be unstoppable, one would think that Intel would eventually turn into a serious rival of Intel's, but that might not be the case. Intel has long held out the possibility that Apple would eventually switch over to its own mobile processors in the future, and has been spending big amounts of time and money on new smartphone, tablet and Ultrabook-capable chips in order to stake claim in some future market share. Intel hopes to compete head-to-head against ARM's processors with a low-power Atom chip called Medfield, which will roll out over the rest of 2012.

Bit of a strange one here, but I guess it can make sense, too. According to a leaked e-mail from Alain Crozier, the chief financial officer of Microsoft's Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, & Operations Group (SMSG), Microsoft may install a policy that prevents employees from using corporate funds to purchase Macs and iPads.

The e-mail was passed onto a ZDNet writer, in its entirety below:

From: Alain Crozier