Top Items:
Larry Dignan / Between the Lines:
Can an airline exec run Red Hat? You'd be surprised — When former Delta Airlines chief operating officer James Whitehurst takes over as CEO of Red Hat on New Year's Day he'll face the worst kind of doubters-the quiet ones. But Whitehurst could very well take Red Hat to the next level.
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Rogers Cadenhead / Workbench:
Long Bet Winner: Weblogs vs. The New York Times — In 2002, blogging evangelist Dave Winer made a long bet with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.”
Security Watch:
Russian Feds Bust ‘Pinch’ Malware Creation Kit Authors — According to reports out of Russia, two men who allegedly built and distributed the notorious Pinch malware creation kit has been busted and could soon face prosecution. The two men, identified as Ermishkin and Farkhutdinov …
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Kaspersky Lab Weblog:
Pinch authors pinched — Today Nikolay Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Services, announced the results of the measures taken to combat cyber crime in 2007. — Among other information, it was announced that it had been established who was the author of the notorious Pinch Trojan …
Jon Fortt / Big Tech:
The odds on an Apple flash laptop — At next month's Macworld show, will the trendsetter say goodbye to hard drives? … What do you get when you cross an iPod with a Mac? — A super-slim laptop that uses chip-based flash memory in place of a spinning hard drive, of course.
TED / uncov:
Pownce Is Still Alive — Yeah, I know. It surprised me too, but they are still kicking. Stagnation is the name of the game in Web 2.0, and Pownce is no exception. — In case you forgot, Pownce is a Twitter clone whose added value is the resale of Amazon S3 space.
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Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Is Pownce Going To The DeadPool? — Uncov has a very funny post …
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franticindustries
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Breaking: Kayak Raises $196 Million, Buys Rival SideStep — Discount travel site Kayak has acquired rival SideStep for $200 million. This story was set to be announced tomorrow but word is leaking all over the place after Sidestep CEO Rob Solomon told his company employees the news at an all hands meeting.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Amazon Patents Blurbs; Google Patents Snippets — from the patents-patents-all-the-time dept — theodp writes “On Tuesday, Amazon.com was granted a patent for Personalized Selection and Display of User-Supplied Content to Enhance Browsing of Electronic Catalogs, which the three inventors …
Justin Berka / Infinite Loop:
More details emerge about amended Apple backdating suit — The media was all a-twitter earlier this week when the New York City Employees' Retirement System announced that it would be continuing its options backdating lawsuit against Apple with amended complaints.
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Reuters
Jeff Smykil / Infinite Loop:
Smashing Pumpkins exclusive coming to iTunes — “Eh, making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel." — One of the nice things about the iTunes Store is some of the exclusive content we get from various artists. Some of it is good, some of it is bad …
Kenji Hall / Business Week:
Does Japan Need the iPhone? — The world's most sophisticated users of wireless technology may be unimpressed by Apple's high-tech gadget — The Japanese fell for the iPod. So why should they not embrace the iPhone, too? It's tempting to think that Japan's love affair with Apple's …
Tony Smith / The Register:
Plunging player prices to reveal Blu-ray vs HD DVD winner? — A clear leader in the battle to be the top next-generation optical disc format could emerge next year as player prices plummet and take of the cost of entry out of the equation, market watcher Understanding & Solutions (U&S) has claimed.
Discussion:
Gearlog
heise Security:
Antivirus protection worse than a year ago — The effectiveness of antivirus software has fallen off, and more and more pests can now slip past these barriers. This is the sobering conclusion the german computer magazine c't comes to in issue 1/08 with a test on 17 antivirus solutions.
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F-Secure Antivirus …
David Meyer / CNET News.com:
Kaspersky inadvertently quarantines Windows Explorer — Windows Explorer, one of the most crucial components of Microsoft's operating system, was quarantined earlier this week after being falsely identified as malicious code by an antivirus company. — Users of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus products noticed …
BBC:
Apple shuts down rumours website — Apple has settled a legal row with tip site Think Secret that will see the website shut down. — The legal battle between Apple and the site blew up in January 2005 when Think Secret revealed details of the Mac Mini before its official unveiling.
