Latest news

French lawsuit dropped.

It was brought by a French anti-racism group against Apple Inc. over an application available for the iPhone called "Jew or not Jew." The application let users check the names of celebrities and public figures against a database to discover whether they were Jewish or not.

The application's developer, Johann Levy, decided to remove the application and the lawsuit was dropped. Lawyer Stephane Lilti says the decision "is motivated by the removal of the application in all countries of the world," adding that the lawsuit turned out to have beneficial effects.

After Apple was criticized in December over the application, it removed it from the store in France, but it was still available to download from other countries.

Bugs affect volume levels.

Search giant Google, and consumer electronics firm Samsung, have confirmed that the Galaxy Nexus handset suffers from issues related to the volume. Complaints from owners of the device in the UK surfaced on some web forums in recent weeks.

"Regarding the Galaxy Nexus, we are aware of the volume issue and have developed a fix," Samsung said in a statement. "We will update devices as soon as possible."

Reports from owners say that the volume spontaneously drops to nothing. Some suggest that it gets worse if stuck using a 2G service, but it even apparently can happen when the handset's alarm goes off.

"I was already awake and had not touched the phone yet, the alarm sounded for a second and then went silent. Thought that was weird so checked the phone and the volume was down," one Galaxy Nexus owner posted about the issue.

Samsung said a repair will be offered to customers affected by the bug, but did not indicate when.

European Court of Justice (ECJ) strikes down widescale piracy filters.

The ECJ was ruling in a case that stretches back to 2004, when a Belgian music licensing company, SABAM, brought a case against ISP, Scarlet, in the country. SABAM discovered that customers on Scarlet's network were downloading music illegally using P2P software.

When the case was put before the Brussels Court of First Instance, the court ordered Scarlet to stop its customers from sending or receiving music content from SABAM's catalogue. Knowing the financial and technical implications of such an order, Scarlet brought the case to the Brussels Court of Appeal, claiming the injunction infringed law within the European Union.

Specifically, Scarlet argued that the obligation to monitor the communications of its customers on its network was in clear breach of the E-Commerce Directive in the EU, and having examined the issue, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) sided with Scarlet.

It ruled against the order for several reasons. It found that it would affect Scarlet's ability to run its business as it imposed a requirement to install a complicated, expensive filtering system at its own expense, and that the filtering practice itself could infringe the rights of customers and their right to protect their own data.

New and Used games to be lumped together.

Kotaku is citing employees of Canada's EB Games (GameStop) in reporting that the chain is to blur the distinction between NEW and USED game titles in its stores. If the report is correct, then all games must be in the same sections with the same white price tags.

Essentially, it will strip away much of the features that would give away the fact that a game was previously owned. Kotaku's main source also told them that employees are encouraged to put New copies of games below Pre-Owned copies.

Kotaku contacted EB Games for comment but has not heard anything back at the time of writing.

Since posting the news, Kotaku has gotten e-mails from people who claim to be EB Games employees, with most saying the report is true, and in some cases that the policy has been in effect in a particular store for more than a week.

One e-mail pointed out concern among staff about games that require codes for online play, as some customers might accidentially pick up a Used copy of a title, and go home to find they can't play it online.

Still, even in that e-mail the employee does admit that the stickers do still have USED and NEW on them, but didn't seem convinced it was enough to completely avoid problems for customers.

Legal nag solved, source code in wild.

The source code for the 2004 shooter Doom 3 has been released publicly by id Software. It was ready to be released a couple of weeks back but a small legal nag had held it up.

A shadow stencilling technique discovered independently by John Carmack back in 1997 had been separately patented in 2002 by Creative Labs, and so the lawyers were reluctant to clear the release of the source code.

Carmack solved the problem by rewriting the code in question. President of id Software, Todd Hollenshead, announced the release of the code on via Twitter on Tuesday, which is available from GitHub.

Doom 3 sold more than 3.5 million copies.

Universal Music Group seeking over $17 billion in damages.

The music industry giant claims that Grooveshark employees uploaded more than 100,000 pirated songs to the website. It alleges that even the chief executive, Samuel Tarantino, uploaded 1,791 pirated songs at least, while Nikola Arabadjiev, head of quality assurance efforts, allegedly uploaded over 40,000 songs.

Universal is seeking $150,000 in damages for each of the 113,777 tracks, or about $17.1 billion.

Grooveshark responded to the lawsuit by saying it is based on blatantly false data and on a "gross mischaracterization of information." Marshall Custer, general counsel for Grooveshark, said in a statement that Universal's claims rest almost entirely on an anonymous blog comment.

The comment itself was posted to an entry on the Digital Music News blog. The blog post was about the band King Crimson, and its attempt to have music removed from Grooveshark, which was not a success.

The commenter claimed to work for Grooveshark, saying that employees are set a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and are paid a bonus if they can exceed it. The commenter admits that the practice is neither legal or ethical and that the culture at Grooveshark from the top down is to view the industry, and artists, as the enemy.

German drug-maker will sue to get Facebook page control.

After World War I, Merck & Co was setup as an independent company in the United States, sharing the Merck trademark with Merck KGaA in different geographical areas. The change was part of Germany's reparations under the Treaty of Versailles.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, Merck KGaA is accusing Merck & Co of hijacking its Facebook page, and is threatening to sue to regain control. It has asked a New York judge to force Facebook Inc to turn over information on how the company lost the ability to administer the facebook.com/merck page.

Merck KGaA goes further to say that Faceook has not been cooperative, and even has been evasive while asked for help. "Because Facebook is an important marketing device, the page is of great value to Merck, and its misappropriation is causing harm to Merck," Merck KGaA said.

"It is not clear how that happened or who is at fault nor ... is Facebook providing clear information about what happened."

Aiming for 99% of the market.

BioShock Infinite is due to be release next year. It is set in a floating city called Columbia in the year 1912, and is occupied by two political factions; the right wing Founders and the left wing Vox Populi.

The inspiration for the two factions comes from historical political groups such as the Baader-Meinhof left-wing militants in Germany, and the Know Nothings anti-immigration faction in the United States.

"It's been fascinating to watch the conflict in the game, which is based on historical conflicts, sort of become reincarnated in our times," said Ken Levine, creative director at Irrational Games.

When Levine watched the Occupy Wall Street protests spread, he decided to go and join the crowed and see such a political protest up close. "It's one thing to read about these movements by reading history books but another thing to see one of these things happening in real time and go there and breathe it in," Levine said.

He did not say exactly what about the OWS protest will spill over into the finished title, but he certainly hopes the protests would never imitate his art, as the fictional BioShock Infinite protests turn very radical and violent.

Insults allegedly aimed at Thai King.

In Thailand, you will face harsh penalties if you insult or make threats toward King Bhumibol Adulyadej, regardless of how you do so. For defendant Ampon Tangnoppakul, a 61-year old retired truck driver, the law has become all too real.

He has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for allegedly sending text messages that the court deemed insulting to the King. Specifically, he was given five years per message, according to lawyer Poonsuk Poonsukcharoen.

"He insists that he does not know how to send text messages," Ms. Poonsuk said. "He insists that he loves His Majesty the King."

The contents of the messages were not revealed in the court, but the judge said they defamed, insulted and threatened the King and his wife.

The Thai government has set up a "war room" which has a goal of censoring websites that carry materials deemed insulting to the royal family.

Carrier IQ apologizes for baseless threats, but defends its practices.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) came to the defence of security researcher Trevor Eckhart after he received legal threats from Carrier IQ, a mobile software company.

Eckhart had published an analysis of the company's software, and also posted training materials provided by the company for his audience to download. Eckhart pointed out that Carrier IQ's software logs a great deal of information about users' activities without their knowledge.

The software in question is pre-installed on some Android handsets (reportedly mostly on the Sprint network) and Eckhart reported it was capable of recording a great deal of user activities. In response, Carrier IQ sent a cease and desist demand (PDF) to Eckhart, claiming he made false allegations against the company, and infringed its copyright.

The EFF contacted Carrier IQ through a letter, citing protection of Eckhart's research and commentary under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As for posting the training materials, EFF argued it was "classic fair use" of a copyrighted work for research purposes.

Shocked cinema manager considers warning cinema-goers about possible effects of watching 3D movies.

Julian Mathisen, from Honningsvag in Norway, came down with some bizarre symptoms after returning home from a movie theatre. The six year old appeared cross-eyed to his stunned father, and also complained of double-vision, headaches and nausea.

"After he came home from the movie I saw that there was something strange about his eyes," his father said. "One eye squinted, and he complained that he saw double."

Julian saw doctors and opticians following the ordeal, and they agree that the boy must have had a latent visual defect all along that was triggered by the 3D images on screen.

"You can get different kinds of ailments from this. Julian's case is extreme. However, diplopia, migraine, nausea and discomfort may occur," said Hans Torvald Haugo, Chief Advisor for the Norwegian Opticians Association.

Julian now must wear a patch on his eye, and the hope is that the condition will improve, though the Norwegian media reports suggest that he has not gotten better 14 days after the cinema visit. If he continues to experience the symptoms, he may face surgery to correct it.

According to multiple sources, HP still wants webOS for one thing only, its printers.

The company acquired the mobile operating system when it purchased Palm in 2010 and recently shut down its webOS hardware division.

HP is actively looking for a buyer of webOS, which cost them $1.2 billion to purchase and $1.66 billion to run into the ground.

Because of their want to have the operating system on their printers, it has apparently become a sticking point with potential buyers that they must be able to license the OS back "on the cheap" for use in the printers.

Intel, Amazon and Qualcomm are said to be early stage potential buyers of Palm, webOS and all its patents, which are worth hundreds of millions on their own.

Last week Google's challenge for Apple's dominance in the online music world, called Google Music officially came out of beta and opened to the public.

If done well, Google Music could end up being one of their biggest and best achievements. If done poorly it could be just as big a mistake. In this article I will try to help you decide for yourself which one it is, and whether it's worth trying out if you haven't already.

What Is Google Music?

Google Music is an attempt to take on Apple in the lucrative online music business while also improving Android's music ecosystem. The Google Music Android app is more or less equivalent to the iPod app on an iPhone. It even goes so far as to copy much of the Apple app's visual style, albeit with a distinctively Android feel. The Music Store in the Android Market is obviously similar to Apple's iTunes store.

9to5 has posted a leaked list of Apple's Black Friday deals.

The sales are similar to past years and aren't too spectacular.

For example, the iPad 2 base model will sell down $41 at $458 while the higher capacity 64GB model will sell down $61 at $631.

Macbook Air, Pro and iMacs will sell down $101 which isn't even as cheap as Best Buy is offering the devices.

Additionally, there are accessories on sale like the Smart Cover and Magic Trackpads.

Check the photos:

According to analyst firm Jefferies & Co., Apple will use Sharp to create its rumored HDTV.

The TV could be introduced as early as the Q2 2012, says the firm, and will be a huge win for the manufacturer.

Says analyst Peter Misek (via BW):

It's a huge deal for Sharp because they spent significant amounts of capital to try and expand capacity and upgrade their facilities. It gives Apple a partner that they can control manufacturing and secure supply at a lower price.

Misek calls the upcoming a device "iTV."

Apple has reportedly purchased up to $1 billion in manufacturing equipment and taken over a full Sharp facility for iOS devices.