Well, well, well it looks like the folks at AT&T are going to have a go at settling the Anti-Trust suit brought by the DOJ. Originally some statements from the Telecommunications giant had indicated they would fight this in court. Now it according to a report from Reuters they are looking for a compromise that will allow the deal to go through without the need to bother any judges. This would seem to indicate that the deal is a bit shady in the first place, despite AT&T’s claims to the contrary.

But what kind of compromise would AT&T need to make to get this merger deal through? We know that T-Mobile does not care one way or the other. In fact they have a rather healthy failed merger clause that gives them a nice chunk of money in the event it is blocked. So the internet and the press begin to speculate and analyst put in their two cents. Right now there are rumors that AT&T will agree to sell off 25% of T-Mobile to its competitors. It will also probably agree to maintain the pricing and plan structure that T-Mobile has (for a predetermined period of time). These all sound good on the surface, but they hardly address the core argument in the suit. You see the DOJ put it very bluntly; if AT&T and T-Mobile merge it will reduce the competitive market by 25% and put the GSM Market firmly in AT&T’s hands.

This is something that is absolutely not in the interest of consumers, but then again most business dealings are not. AT&T is in a rough position, with the loss of the iPhone to Verizon and the possibility that Sprint will get the iPhone5 later this year AT&T no longer has a truly big seller and the fact that they banked on the iPhone instead of working on 4G put them behind their competitors. Now they have to act or they will fall even farther behind. Instead of investing in rebuilding their aging network they want to buy up one that is working towards modernization and pickup quite a few customers in the mix.

For now it is all in the hands of the Federal Regulators and perhaps even judges as this merger moves towards its fate; whatever that is

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A man in Bernal Heights might have had his home searched by Apple Employees who were masquerading as police. According to SFWeekly Sergio Calderón is the person whose home was searched. Calderón’s story, if true, is extremely concerning and raises questions about what Apple will do to get its way.

Calderón says that in July six people (four men and two women) wearing badges showed up at his door saying they were from the San Francisco Police Department. The “Police” claimed they had traced the phone to Calderón’s home via GPS and also asked him if he had been to Cava 22 (the site where the phone was believed to have been lost).

Apparently the “police” also threatened to call INS on Calderón’s family (even though Calderón is an American Citizen and his visiting family members are all here legally). One of the investigators even offered a $300 reward for the return of the phone (which Calderón says he knows nothing about). The thing that makes things even more odd about this story is that one of the “police” who called himself Tony gave Calderón a plain card with a phone number on it. Calderón gave this number to SFWeekly who called it and found that it was a phone number to Apple. This number was answered by a man named Anthony Colon who is currently employed by Apple and a Senior Investigator.

As the plot thickens the SFPD first said they had no knowledge of any search at that location, but now are saying they did assist Apple in searching a house in July.

SFWeekly has more information including the linked-in and facebook pages for “Tony”. This one will be interesting to follow up on, if Apple really did misrepresent themselves it is very concerning as it shows they are willing to stop at nothing to get what they want (regardless of what laws they break). Plus when you add this to the falsified evidence Apple presented in the EU we have to wonder about how concerned they are with the consumer…

Source SFWeekly

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Although the news of this broke a couple of days ago we thought we would wait and take a deeper look at what the recent DOJ (Department of Justice) Anti-Trust suit means to the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. First and foremost the DOJ does not have the authority to prevent business mergers nor does the Federal Trade Commission. These two governmental bodies can enforce certain laws if someone files a complaint, but they cannot take direct action in most cases.

However, when the companies merging are very large (like AT&T) or there is direct evidence that the merger will harm consumers or the market, then they can step in and file an Anti-Trust lawsuit to force the companies in question to change things. This is what has happened with the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
The DOJ looked at the claims that AT&T has made and found that some of them just did not make any sense.

AT&T is claiming that the only way they can improve their network is by acquiring T-Mobile. The biggest problem with that is once they do they will have cornered the market on GSM Cellular service in the US. This is something that is certainly not good for consumers (although AT&T claims it is). It is also important to note that AT&T and T-Mobile compete in over 90 out of 100 markets making the deal a big relief for AT&T as far as competition goes.

The sad part is that even though there is a law suit filed it does not mean the deal is dead. AT&T now has the chance to reorganize the deal and present it to Federal Regulators or they can go to court and prove to a judge that the deal really is in the best interest of the consumer. Considering the level of understanding that many of our higher judicial officials have on what is good for the consumer this could be an easy win for AT&T.  We will keep you up to date on this as we find out more.

Read the full suit here

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In what has to be rather big blow to Netflix Starz has ceased contract negotiations with Netflix. This means that once the contract expires in February 2012 there will be no more Starz movies streaming on Netflix. Although this is certainly not a death toll for Netflix it is not good at all. Starz has rights to both Disney and Sony content which makes their contribution somewhat large to the Netflix catalog.

As you can imagine the issue is the amount of money that is changing hands over the deal. Although the exact amount is not known to anyone other than Starz and Netflix there are some estimates that put the amount at around $300 Million to renew for the next four years.  This is an amount that Netflix just cannot afford to pay.
As we mentioned above this does not mean the death of Netflix, it only means that they will have to come to some sort of compromise. As both Netflix and Starz need each other we are sure this will happen but the exact details of this (or any) compromise is guess work. We would suspect a reduced number in return for more restrictive content rules. This would be similar to when Starz pull their Sony content because Netflix had reached the total number of views for those titles.

The Netflix of next year might not be the same as what we were seeing even last month. If the content dries up they will not be able to justify the price increases and they will lose customers. Conversely if they pay the higher amount to keep the content and raise their prices more they will lose customers that do not want to pay that high of a price for a streaming service. To put it bluntly Netflix is between a rock and a hard place…

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There is a ton of contradictory information on the net today about just exactly what AMD and Globalfoundries are going to do with the next process. As we already know AMD’s next gen CPU Bulldozer will be a 32nm 8-core monster that has the potential to turn things around for AMD (at least on paper) that is if they can correct some of the past issues with memory performance.  What happens from there we are not so certain about, nor is anyone else for that matter. This is despite the fact that multiple journalists ended up at a press event hosted by Globalfoundries.

So far the rumors run something like this; AMD and Globalfoundries are moving away from SOI (Silicon on Insulator). SOI has been the basis for AMD CPUs for some time and to see them move away from this is a little shocking. Oh, wait; that rumor was contradicted by Globalfoundries who now say they will be sticking with SOI moving forward. Next we hear that AMD won’t move to the next node (28nm) until 2013. This is actually somewhat believable as AMD tends to try and get the most money out of any process move. After all they have been on 45nm for a number of years! To think they won’t move to the next process node until 2013 is not unreasonable (although I really think 22nm is much more likely).

To add to this are the usual suspects commenting back and forth about what they think of each article or the writer in general. It makes trying to find out real information a tad tedious.  To be honest about the only thing we know for certain is that AMD will launch Bulldozer sometime between the middle of September and the end of the Year. It will have 8 physical cores (in four CPU clusters) improved core to core communication and a few other tricks up its sleeve. We do not know much about the memory controller, but it appears from looking at the design to be a slightly modified revision of the one in the Phenom II. If this is the case and the optimizations are not spot on we could see this hinder what is certainly a bold CPU design from AMD. I guess we will all find out what is going on around the middle of September. We hope to be on the very short list of sites to review this new CPU for you, but again time will tell on that.

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So it appears that Google thinks people should use their Chrome Browser even if they work at a company that restricts things of this nature (often with very good reason).  Although you will not hear much about this it has been a well-documented fact that Chrome caches web pages (even in private mode) and also runs certain applications after Chrome is closed. These APIs read and write data to the System Volume Information folder and also do a few other things that are suspicious at best. This (amongst over things) has caused more than a few companies to ban the browser from use inside the corporate network.

However, Google still thinks that it has the right to let people by-pass these restrictions and install software that is not authorized. They have done this with a plug-in called Chrome-Frame. Chrome Frame is an API that allows a web page to be rendered using Chrome’s engine inside the currently running browser.  I guess this is for people that do not want to use multiple browsers, and is fine as long as it is something they want to install and (in the case of someone at their place of employment) it is authorized to be installed. This was not good enough for Google though, they have written a version of the plug-in that allows this to be installed with elevated privileges by-passing restrictions that are in place to prevent this from happening.

Now, I know there are some that will not understand why this is bad. They will say that people should be able to view the internet and that companies that are still on IE6 or 7 (which are no longer supported by GMAIL and other Google sites) are hindering their employees. However, most companies have fairly strict policies on browsing. This is mostly to prevent malware but also to help increase productivity. I know at more than one company I have worked for we provided internet systems in the break room and lunch room, but prevented all browsing on the users workstations. We also were never hit with a virus on any user desktop, but had them on the employee internet systems.  So it is not unusual to place these restrictions on browsing. It is entirely wrong (not to mention arrogant) of Google to create something that by-passes these restrictions. It also opens up a vector for attack as someone will find a way to usurp the plug-in and execute code through that elevated API, it is nothing short of Malware all on its own.

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We have heard many comments about Steam, Vale’s distribution service these range from very bad to it is the greatest thing since the invention of the internet. Our personal feelings fall in the middle. It is a great service and has some very competitive pricing, but we would like to be able to turn a few things off from the social side and as a parent I would like to be able to monitor it a little better.

Still no matter what you think about Steam one thing cannot be denied. Steam has found a way to make money even in Russia, where the majority of games and software are pirated. How have they done this? Well they have decided not to try and stop piracy (which is impossible) but to compete head to head with it.  To quote Gabe Newell "The best way to fight piracy is to create a service that people need," We would add at least a service that people want. Gabe recently spoke to Kotaku about this subject and their concerns over companies Like EA and Sony developing their own Steam-Like services.  Gabe said he is not concerned about either.

The problem as Gabe sees it is that companies like EA (who has their own problems with their recent EULA mistake), Sony, and others are making their games “Worth Less” (not to be confused with worthless) by adding in more DRM restrictions to protect and monetize their games. This is often presented as a way to thwart piracy (which is, of course, impossible) but is more and more commonly meant to nickel and dime the consumer and try to make more money per game title. Instead of worrying about this type of approach Gabe thinks that companies need to provide a service to the consumers, this way they will feel the value of the game and the service behind it; "Customers want to know everything is going to be there for them no matter what: Their saved games and configurations will be there. They don't want any uncertainty." Which is what you get when you get many of today’s games uncertainty , you never know if you are going to get what you pay for or if the game will run due to restrictive DRM that is forced on you to try and “prevent piracy” (which is impossible).

Gabe also mentioned that Steam will not be standing still, as the market moves from the PC to the Console to the Integrated TV, Steam will have to evolve. To put is in his own words “"Where we are today is trivial to where we will be down the line. We need to be focusing on where we are headed."
He also goes on to say that he knows that if they make a big enough mistake Steam can fail and become nothing more than the “answer to a trivia question."

Source Kotaku

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There were some interesting announcements for AMD at the Globalfoundries event today; although it was not AMD that made these, but Greg Bartlett, Senior VP of Technology and Integration Engineering at GF.  Gregg was showing off a few slides of upcoming technology that GF will be involved in and let some things out. We are certain these were previously approved by AMD that would like as much press as possible about their new APUs (which appear to be very good).

The things that were let to slip were the fact that AMD’s next generation Trinity will be 32nm instead of 22nm or even 28nm. The new Trinity will be based on a derivative of the Bulldozer core architecture and, according to AMD, will be roughly 50% faster than the current Llano APUs. The new APUs will feature AMD’s next generation 28nm HD7000 series graphics (which was another confirmation although not a formal announcement). The trinity parts are slated to be pushed towards the mobile market (where AMD seriously needs a better offering) and should begin shipping in early 2012.

It will be interesting to see AMD and Intel compete for this new market space. We have already watched some entertaining Facebook posts from both sides about this very issue.

Source Fudzilla

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In stunning news VMware announced the reinvention of the wheel at the VMware World Conference in Las Vegas. They showed of their new “wheel” which will run slower and have a greater potential for security risks than the older wheel, but they feel that this is the way things are going to be in the future.

Of course the thing that VMware was showing off was not the wheel it was VMware’s Project AppBlast, an updated Horizon Application Manager (which now allows Windows Applications) and a new technology called ThinApp Factory. The theme was the “Post-PC Era” with CTO Steve Herrod saying such catch phrases as “the world has changed” and other nonsense considering the fact that Citrix has been out for more than 10 years and has never managed to push the PC to extinction.

The three technologies that VMware showcased today are not really new, Citrix has XenApp and even Microsoft has products that will allow you to serve up single applications to users. True the Microsoft product will not let you push out to anything other than Windows based systems but Xen can push to the iOS and even to Android in many cases. Xen also has a web interface that allows you to pick and choose the applications you want to run which are run in secured memory spaces on the client system.
We have tinkered with XenApp and XenDesktop on more than a few occasions and it is more than functional with plenty of support behind it.

So, while the new Applications from VMware are interesting they are far from revolutionary and with their expensive licensing scheme you can pretty much bet they will be pricing out of the reach of most companies.

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In the recent patent wars between Apple and, well just about everyone else you hear a lot about Prior Art.  This is when someone can point to something that was created or in use before the item in question was patented. For example, if I tried to patent a circular disk intended to hold data, video or music I would not get it because of the CD-ROM, the DVD-RROM etc. So what about Apple’s recent legal action against Samsung? They claimed that the Tab 10.1 was a copy of the iPad and violated their patent.  However, there is plenty or prior art to invalidate the concept design patent for the iPad.

One of the funniest that Samsung has brought to bear in the case is a screen shot taken from the Stanley Kubrick Movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” where two of the astronauts are sitting watching a video feed on a tablet device.  Now Apple fans will say that Apple is allowed to patent this because Mr Kubrick did not! So since they (Apple) spent their hard earned money to take this concept and make it real they deserve the patent.  Well there are two problems with that argument. First of all there were real tablets in existence before the iPad was even put to paper. But the second and one that I find the most ironic is that every movie is by its nature copyrighted. So images, concepts and ideas are considered the property of the copyright holder. This means that Apple violated Copyright when they designed the iPad.
Something to think about while we all wait for more interesting news.

Source CNET

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