Apple, Google, and Yahoo are being investigated got anti-trust violations. The US Department of Justice is looking into the companies hiring and retention practices. Of particular interest is the use of employee contracts to prevent employees from leaving “the mother ship” and seeking greener pastures.

Non-Compete and Non-Disclosure agreements are nothing new when it comes to upper level or technical employees. I have had to sign them at every company I have worked for. Primarily they are used to prevent a disgruntled employee with sensitive information from to another company and spilling the beans. However when these are used to prevent good employees from obtaining better work (or pay) is when the system breaks down.

The DoJ thinks that Apple, Google and Yahoo might be engaging in this type of preventative behavior not to protect company secrets but to prevent the competition from gaining a talented employee. They feel that this behavior stifles competition and harms consumers.

Read more here.

The review is said to be “industry-wide” and in preliminary stages, according to the report, which cited two unnamed sources. Companies that agree not to hire away talent could be stifling competition, the report noted.

Representatives for Apple, Google, and Yahoo, as well as the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tech companies, known for their exhaustive recruiting efforts, have waged fierce battles to maintain top talent. In one closely watched case, Google was sued by Microsoft in 2005 over Google’s decision to hire Kai-Fu Lee away from Microsoft to run Google’s research operation in China. The two parties eventually settled out of court.

via. TweakTown.com

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against Apple Inc. today to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial, public Internet “wiki” site known as BluWiki.

EFF and the San Francisco law firm of Keker & Van Nest represent OdioWorks LLC, which runs the BluWiki website. Like many “wiki” platforms, such as Wikipedia, it is open to the public for collaborative authoring and editing on any topic. The site is entirely noncommercial, operated by OdioWorks as a public service.

Late last year, after BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple’s own iTunes, Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content. In a letter to OdioWorks, the attorneys alleged that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA’s) prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site.

OdioWorks filed the lawsuit today in order to vindicate its right to restore those discussions. Filed in federal court in San Francisco, the suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple.

“I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,” said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. “Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.”

The discussions on the BluWiki site focused on how hobbyists might enable iPods and iPhones to work with desktop media management software other than Apple’s own iTunes software. The discussions were apparently spurred by Apple’s efforts prevent the iPod Touch and iPhone from working with competing media management software such as WinAmp and Songbird.

“Apple’s legal threats against BluWiki are about censorship, not about protecting their legitimate copyright interests,” said Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It’s legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it’s legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it’s legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.”

Read More

A while ago we already reported that on some AMD Phenom II 720BE processors the 4th core could be enabled. It seems that the very popular Dual Core AMD Athlon X2 7750BE has four cores as well as it is Phenom based, though with two of them disabled.

Yet all can be enabled

This new’ phenomenon’ works exactly the same as back then with the Phenom II 720BE processors. In some older BIOSes you can enable Advanced Clock Calibration on your AMD 790 motherboard and after a reboot … you might end up lucky with four active CPU cores.

Yeah it’s really that simple, your processors will come back as AMD Phenom FX-7750 Quad-Core. Mind you that the two active cores ‘might’ be damaged and that it only works with some AMD 790 motherboards from ASROCK and BIOSTAR.

It’s a bit of a luck of the draw really, can’t hurt to try though. If it doesn’t work, clear CMOS and yu are back to normal.

The biggest challenge however will be finding a 7750 BE to purchase. Currently I can’t find it anywhere in the price lists.

via. Guru3D

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as “bizarre.

“It’s serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It’s really serious. And that’s a bit weird,” Sunde said.

“It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

“We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”

It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today’s court judgement.

Read more at the dot.life blog

Q&A: Pirate Bay verdict

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

“These guys weren’t making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

“The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn’t even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

“There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,” he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

“That’s outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours.”

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party – which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age – told the BBC that the verdict was “a gross injustice”.

“This wasn’t a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

“There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can’t encourage people to break copyright law, I’m not following it and I don’t agree with it.

“Today’s events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we’re going to take this to the European Parliament.”

The Pirate Bay is the world’s most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay’s web servers; instead the site hosts “torrent” links to TV, film and music files held on its users’ computers.

via. BBC News

As a result of Time Warner Cable’s plan to charge its customers by the gigabyte in Rochester, New York, congressman Eric Massa “called TWC’s proposal to switch its 8.4 million cable broadband customers to metered internet billing an “outrageous plan to tax the American people.”

Critics say usage caps will cost users more and hurt innovation on the net – especially in new video services, as subscribers begin to calorie-count their internet usage. TWC’s new tiered pricing structure for its Roadrunner internet service starts at $15 for a plan that allows 1 GB a month with an overage charge of $2 per GB. (A GB of data equals about three hours of online video from Hulu.com and about half of a rented standard definition movie.) The company says bandwidth hogs need to pay their fair share and maintain that if the company doesn’t get enough money to build new infrastructure, “internet brownouts” will be inevitable.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Massa dismissed those arguments, describing TWC as a greedy, unregulated monopoly providing a utility service. His yet-to-be-introduced bill would seek to increase competition among broadband providers and regulate monopolies, he said, though he declined to give specifics.”

Particularly interesting is the fact that “Time Warner Cable’s 2008 annual report shows its high-speed data costs actually declined by 12 percent to $146 million. Meanwhile its subscriber count increased by more than 10 percent to 8.4 million, and high-speed data revenues climbed to more than $4 billion.

“Congress must investigate these anti-competitive practices before they become a nationwide problem.” Timothy Karr, a campaign director at the consumer advocate group FreePress, said last week.

A Massa spokesman said the text of the bill would be ready late in the week.”

via. Guru3D

Apple has publicly posted in their HotNews feed that they are opposing a proposal (Proposition 8 ) that seeks to eliminate the right to same-sex marriage in the state of California. Apple has also donated $100,000 to the “No to 8″ campaign:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees? same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person?s fundamental rights ? including the right to marry ? should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.
Proposition 8 is on the California ballot for the November 4th vote. We typically avoid political news stories on MacRumors. Besides (generally) being off-topic, the debates surrounding an individual’s belief in politics can often degenerate into very heated discussions. Due to this, we are keeping this story’s discussion thread in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. While anyone can read the discussion thread, only forum members with more than 100 forum posts will be able to post new replies. Please keep the discussion civil.

via. MacRumors

Ever wonder where your tax dollars go? Well here is an example of your tax dollars at work

Gov. Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, even to places where they were not invited.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006.

Also she has charged the state for hotel rooms in luxury hotels for her daughters.

CNN for more info

In time of world crisis apparently Kenya has the money to expand their airport for the Air Force One to land.

Obamas father was born in Nyanza Province. In Kisumu, Obama, is a hero to them; They even named a local beer after him! (losers).

In the Nyanza Province Mps said that they already know Obama is going to win this year Presidential elections, so they already have started the expansion of the airport with some minor delays that is making them go a little behind schedule, but they expect the project to be completed by 2010.

But seriousy Kenya spends money on expanding their aiport, but doesnt feed the poor? or help the needed?