Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 223

WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, has revealed his plans to run for a Senate seat in the 2013 Australian federal election. The WikiLeaks founder says that his goal for a political party has quickly gained speed and that there is tonnes of support in his home country, Australia.

Assange will be looking for a Senate seat which will be under his own, new political party named the 'WikiLeaks Party'. Assange requires 500 Australian citizens at a minimum to sign up for the new WikiLeaks Party name for it to be officially recognized. Assange feels that his WikiLeaks Party would be great for an open government and is a requirement these days when they see is an illegal government operating, and spying on citizens.

Assange feels that its his goal to keep personal privacy, personal and says its at stake all around the world right now. I can tell you this much, Assange, I'll be voting for you next year as an Australian.

The XDA Developers forums are built with some geniuses at work, where this time a user with the name of 'alephzain' who is claiming that they've discovered a hole in multiple Samsung devices that gives access to all physical memory.

This hole can be used to access devices to remotely wipe them, brick the device, or worse, access user data without the user noticing. Alephzain tested the vulnerability out on a Samsung Galaxy S III to root his device, but noticed that the flaw is also on the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note II, the Meizu MX and other devices sporting an Exynos 4210 and 4412 processor, using Samsung kernel sources.

Samsung haven't come out and confirmed the vulnerability, but it is already being exploited. The post on the forum notes the following devices are at risk: Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-I9100, Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300, Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE GT-I9305, Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100, Verizon Galaxy Note 2 SCH-I605 (with locked bootloaders), Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 GT-N8000, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 GT-N8010.

Every season, Google performs a bit of cleaning to keep its product line sleek and efficient. Each season comes with various products being killed off and it's become a tradition that I look forward to. Which of Google's products didn't make the cut for this winter's cleaning? Read on to find out.

As posted by Google on their blog:

Last January, we renewed our resolution to focus on creating beautiful, useful products that improve millions of people's lives every day. To make the most impact, we need to make some difficult decisions. So as 2012 comes to an end, here are some additional products, features and services we're closing:

Apple's PR better kick into gear here soon. A Chinese woman who was attempting to buy more than the two-per-customer limit of iPhone 5s was tased outside of the store after she didn't leave the store because she didn't understand the request by the store manager, who asked her to leave.

She had apparently already bought 2 iPhone 5s last Friday and attempted to buy more. This resulted in her being told she had reached the two-per-customer limit on iPhone 5s, so she went online and ordered two. She returned to the store, where she had previously made a video of customers she believed had been sold more than two iPhones.

They, of course, wouldn't sell her the extra devices, and the store manager asked her to leave. She says she didn't understand the request, and since she didn't leave, the manager asked a police officer to escort her out. "The officer approached her, told her she wasn't welcome in the store, and she refused to leave," Nashua police captain Bruce Hansen told WCVB TV.

Close your eyes, now imagine you're sitting in a restaurant and the waiter brings you the biggest salt shaker you've ever seen. Imagine that the grains of salt are as big as your fist. That's how big this rumor is, and that's how big the salt is going to be for you to believe this.

Bright Side of News* are reporting from their latest trip to the UAE that Intel could acquire NVIDIA - yes, you read that right. This has been a rumor for quite sometime, especially over the years when AMD were acquiring ATI.

NVIDIA are a much smaller company than Intel, and Intel will struggle in the graphics department in the coming future. Sure, they'll do well, but AMD's APUs have some great graphics attached, and NVIDIA's mobile solutions in their Tegra range are also great. NVIDIA are already involved in a technology licensing deal with Intel, and the acquisition talks are just an extension of this.

Samsung isn't missing a chance to take a shot at its fierce rival, Apple. A marketing campaign has popped up in Australia, where the police have issued a warning that Apple Maps may put your life in danger, at least if you're trying to reach the city of Mildura.

Apple Maps instead leads you to the middle of a national park, which just happens to be in a really hot part of the country with limited water. With it being summer Down-Under, this is a bit of a problem. As you can see in the picture above, Samsung has placed a 4x4 SUV in Sydney, Australia, with a tent and sign next to it.

"Oops, should have got a Samsung Galaxy S III. Get navigation you can trust," the sign reads. Is this a good marketing campaign? What are your thoughts on it?

Tim Cook has said that Apple is investing $100 million to build one of its Mac lines exclusively in the US. But just which Mac line will it be? Cook didn't specify, but there are certainly some clues that lead us to a likely candidate. Apple will most likely build (drum roll please!) the Mac Pro line of Macs in the US.

First off, $100 million for a factory will yield a factory with about 200 people and be capable of building around 1 million units a year. Apple sells less than 1 million Mac minis and less than 1 million Mac Pros every year. Tim Cook et al has indicated that a new Mac Pro line is coming in 2013.

The Mac Pro is much heavier, and thus more expensive to ship, than the Mac mini. Also, the profit margin on the Mac Pro is much higher as they retail from $2,500 to $3,800. This higher profit can easily absorb the increase in costs to produce. They are also the easiest Mac to produce and customize.

Apple's patents are key to their legal successes against Samsung and other companies. But what happens when one of those patents is ruled invalid? Well, not only does Apple lose the right to sue over that patent, any patents based upon that patent could also be ruled invalid.

The patent that Steve Jobs is best known for, 7,479,949, has been preliminarily ruled invalid. The patent covers a touchscreen device and input derived from apply heuristics. The patent, if you speak legal and engineering, probably does a better job explaining than I can:

A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

This is a story that could completely wreck Yelp's business, if the company isn't careful. A women in Virginia is facing a lawsuit from a contractor over allegations that her negative Yelp review caused him to lose work. Sound a bit ridiculous? We thought so too, until we found out a bit more.

In the review, Jane Perez listed out a bunch of accusations, which included damage the contractor reportedly did to her home, an invoice for work that was reportedly not done, and missing jewelry. She finished out the post by saying, "Bottom line do not put yourself through this nightmare of a contractor."

The contractor, Christopher Dietz, has now filed a $750,000 Internet defamation lawsuit against her, claiming that the Yelp post, along with some Angi's List postings, were false and caused him to lose business. He's also seeking a preliminary injunction to keep her from writing even more reviews.

I've said that Apple should bring their production to the US, and it looks like they read my posts here at TweakTown - probably not, but this is great to see. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the news during an interview with Rock Center, that they will be indeed bringing some Mac production to the United States:

At the moment it's not known which Mac products will be manufactured in the US, but there have been rumbles of it being the iMac as some of the current iMacs have "Assembled in USA" inscribed in the back of them.

During the interview with Brian Williams, Cook said "we've been working for years on doing more and more in the United States". Cook noted during the interview that Apple are spending around $100 million in the US production adventure: