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FOX News Doctors NY Times Photos

I suppose FOX News’ lack of integrity will come as a surprise to no one else, but it still occasionally surprises me — not the lack of it, as much as the poor job of demonstrating it. It’s not even good ’shopping. Apparently they have no more respect for themselves or their viewers […]

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Gates Says G’Bye to Microsoft

Billy G. heads out the door, and pundits wonder: will there be any real changes or will the 800-lb. gorilla continue to lose weight?
As the company prepares for Gates’ departure this Friday, a host of analysts and tech experts waxed practical and philosophical about the future of Microsoft and the legacy of the man behind […]

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Symbian to become open source

Nokia Throws Open Mobile Software
The Finnish company announced a plan to buy the 52.1% of shares it doesn’t already own in London-based Symbian, the leading maker of operating system software for advanced mobile phones. In an industry-shifting move, Nokia will merge the company with parts of its own organization and then create an open-source foundation […]

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Tech Companies Join to Stop Email Addiction

Email and other communications technologies are supposed to make us more productive. But has the pendulum swung so far that these tools are now a productivity drain?
Many large tech companies are worried that it has. That’s why IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft and more than a dozen other companies and academic institutions have come together to […]

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Two Die in European Truck Drivers’ Fuel Price Protest

Two Die in European Truck Drivers’ Fuel Price Protest
BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 11, 2008 (ENS) - Two truck drivers were killed in fuel price protest actions in Spain and Portugal on Tuesday as governments across Europe struggle to contain strikes by thousands of truckers, fishermen and railway workers over soaring fuel prices.
I couldn’t find reference to […]

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Information Polarization

It is an indication of the state of journalism in this country, and perhaps others (I wouldn’t know, unfortunately), that just about everyone ends up preaching to the choir.
This is by no means the fault of individual journalists; it’s a function of how the system works. Except for the op-ed pages of a couple […]

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Windows 7 demo: all multitouch and no meat

The demonstrated software was more or less the same demos we saw with Surface—photo scaling, finger painting, splashing about in water—along with a Virtual Earth/Google Earth-style mapping program. And that’s the extent of it. That’s all that was demonstrated. The demoed software appeared to have a new taskbar, but no details on this were forthcoming; […]

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The Geopolitics of $130 Oil

The real winners are countries that can export and generate cash in excess of what they need domestically. So countries such as Venezuela, Indonesia and Nigeria might benefit from higher prices, but they absorb all the wealth that is transferred to them. Countries such as Saudi Arabia do not need to use so much of […]

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Apple buys PowerPC designer P.A. Semi

P.A. Semi was founded in 2003 by veterans of a number of successful chip design projects, including DEC’s Alpha and StrongARM processor families. Correctly guessing that power use would become an increasingly significant factor due to rising energy prices and an increasingly mobile world, the company designed an impressively efficient chip, the PA6T-1682M. The dual-core […]

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Boys’ Club 2.0

As David Kushner gushed in Rolling Stone: “The long epoch of top-down culture… is fading faster than anyone predicted. The more vibrant world is bottom-up, powered by the people. Make a video, put it online; download a song, remix it, put it back up… With cheap computers, free software, broadband access and enough Mountain Dew, […]

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How Google decided what to give to

How Google decided what to give to. By Larry Brilliant - Slate Magazine
Gandhi was once asked, “How can I know that the decisions I am making are the best I can make?” He answered: “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, […]

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Sony Ericsson Releases First Windows Mobile Phone

Here’s one for the early adopters to drool over…
“The X1’s specs include, basically, everything. Quad-band EDGE plus quad-band HSDPA 7.2 with HSUPA? Check. Wi-Fi and GPS? Check. A 3.2-megapixel camera with DVD quality video playback and capture? Check. FM radio, Bluetooth stereo, and GPS? You bet. It’s all powered by a 520-MHz ARM11 processor running […]

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Yahoo Deal Is Big, But Is It the Next Big Thing?

Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing? - New York Times
…what will touch off the next battle? Maybe it will be a low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, that Intel plans to announce Monday. It is designed for a new wave of hand-held wireless devices that Silicon Valley hopes will touch […]

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Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion

The $31-a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo’s closing price yesterday. Before today, Yahoo had dropped 18 percent this year in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, and this week posted a 23 percent profit decline for the fourth quarter.  Bloomberg.com: U.S.

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Why Kindle is a hit

Redeye VC: Why Kindle is a hit…
When Amazon announced their Kindle last year, I bought one. I wasn’t too optimistic, as I had read a lot of bad reviews.However, to my surprise, I’ve really enjoyed my Kindle experience.

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Where have all the iPhones gone?

On Jan. 22, Apple reported that it sold 3.7 million units of its smartphones worldwide through the end of 2007. But AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone reseller and by far the largest buyer of the devices, reported that its subscribers activated fewer than 2 million units last year. The big question on the minds of […]

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FCC Spectrum Auction Begins Today

Silicon Alley Insider offers the following guide:
Who’s In, Who’s Out?There are 214 approved bidders. The ones you care about include wireless companies like AT&T (T), Verizon Wireless (VZ, VOD),  Leap (LEAP), and Metro PCS (PCS); cable firms Advance/Newhouse, Cox, and Cablevision (CV); satellite provider EchoStar (DISH), chip maker Qualcomm (QCOM), and Google (GOOG). On the […]

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Tech’s all-time top 25 flops

Neil McAllister, at InfoWorld, gives us his take on the biggest flops in CyberHistory:

For all the amazing advances that the computing industry has brought us over the years, some of its most pivotal moments are memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not every idea can be a winner, and not even Microsoft can avoid every […]

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Google to provide free open storage for scientific datasets

Alex Madrigal at Wired Science reports that
Sources at Google have disclosed that the humble domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all.  Wired Science from Wired.com

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LifeLock Raises $25 Million

Silicon Alley Insider reports the following about credit protection outfit LifeLock.
We hear that Goldman Sachs is investing $25 million in LifeLock, a three-year-old company that promises to protect consumers from credit fraud.
Credit Protector LifeLock Raises $25 Million; $220 Million Valuation - Silicon Alley Insider
Disclosure: the writer uses LifeLock services.