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According to multiple sources, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma is "very interested" in buying Yahoo.

Says the chairman:

We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo, and Yahoo is important to us? All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.

Alibaba is China-based and is one of the largest online marketplaces for business-to-business trade around the world. Additionally, the group has a payment platform, a shopping search engine, and cloud computing services.

Yahoo has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, and it is one of the company's biggest money producers.

To gain that stake, Yahoo gave its Yahoo China business completely to Alibaba and invested $1 billion.

Earlier this year, Voltage Pictures filed a lawsuit against 24,583 defendants for allegedly downloading and sharing pirated copies of the Oscar-winning picture "The Hurt Locker."

Today, the studio has let 22,000 of those defendants off the hook, voluntarily dismissing them "without prejudice."

Voltage will still seek damages from the remaining 2500 defendants, although many of those being sued still have not been identified positively. The studio continues to work with ISPs to link the IPs correctly.

The studio had 120 days to serve them with papers, but many of the anonymous defendants filed motions with their ISPs, slowing the process to a crawl.

Via VentureBeat, the recent filing says:

In circumstances where a Doe [unidentified] defendant has not filed the motion and only sent it to the ISP, most ISPs withhold the identifying information so that the Doe defendant can then file the motion with the court. Further, plaintiff's counsel has been informed by the ISPs that numerous Doe defendants have recently re-filed their motions or have filed motions for reconsideration of the Court's prior rulings.

Apple is expected to launch iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 on Tuesday.

The company has accidentally let slip the iPhone 4S, referencing the product in its latest iTunes beta.

AppleInsider looked into the info.plist file of the MobileDevices bundle in iTunes 10.5 beta 9 and found multiple references to the iPhone 4S, which has yet to be formally launched.

The device is expected to look just like the current iPhone 4 but be dual-mode, meaning it will work on GSM and CDMA networks. It will also likely have a boost in the processor department.

Each of the upcoming devices will run iOS 5, and could have voice recognition technology.

Hitachi and LG's joint venture has pleaded guilty to price fixing scheme and will pay a $21.1 million fine.

The price fixing and bid-rigging came with the sale of optical disk drives, said the U.S. Justice Department.

Dubbed Hitachi-LG Data Storage, the joint company was accused of 15 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud.

In 2009, Hitachi-LG, Sony, Toshiba and others all received subpoenas from the DOJ in a probe on their sales of disk drives. Said Sharis Pozen, acting head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, at the time: "The bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies involving optical disk drives undermined competition and innovation in the high tech industry."

In the plea agreement, the company has agreed to assist the ongoing investigation and work on internal compliance.

According to a recent disclosure, Motorola Mobility spent $530,000 lobbying in the Q2.

The company lobbied the federal government on spectrum allocation and patent reform, reads the report.

Additionally, the hardware company lobbied congress on cable set-top boxes, which is half of the company's hardware offerings. The other half is smartphones.

In the first quarter, the company spent $470,000 on lobbying.

Last month, Google purchased Motorola Mobility for $12 billion, in order to gain their patent portfolio and protect Android.

The photography pioneer nears bankruptcy.

Eastman Kodak, which released the world's first consumer camera in 1888, stands as close to bankruptcy as possible, and now has a market value of just $230 million.

In 1997, the company had a market value of $31 billion, before the revolution of digital photography began. The company has not had a profit since early 2007 and its stock market shares now trade for under $1.

The most valuable part of the company is now its digital imaging patents, which have a value of $2 billion.

While Kodak says it has no intention of filing for bankruptcy, the stock has fallen to a price not seen since the 1970s as investors assume the worse.

Potential buyers of the $2 billion patent portfolio have been scared away as they could be sued by Kodak creditors if the company goes bankrupt. Most experts believe Kodak should just go bankrupt and then sell the patents to pay off creditors.

(Pic via Reuters)

According to an IHS iSuppli estimate, the upcoming Amazon Kindle Fire tablet will cost $209.63 to make, meaning Amazon is losing money on every unit sold.

The giant e-tailer is selling the tablet for $199 starting November 21st.

Components that go into the Fire cost $191.65, says IHS, while miscellaneous manufacturing expenses bring the total to the stated estimate. It is unclear if the miscellaneous expenses include shipping and R&D.

If so, Amazon is losing just $10 per device sold, which can easily be made up if user's use the integrated Amazon app store or buy music, movies.

Dubbed the "Gillette model," Amazon loses money upfront, but gets the product into as many hands as possible. It is called the Gillette model because Procter & Gamble sells their Gillette razors at a loss upfront, then makes a killing on selling the blades later at huge markup.

Says the research firm (via Reuters):

When further costs outside of materials and manufacturing are added in -- and the $199 price of the tablet is factored along with the expected sales of digital content per device -- Amazon is likely to generate a marginal profit of $10 on each Kindle Fire sold.

According to a report in the British papers, Mark Bradford, a father of three, was playing a round of Call of Duty multiplayer online against a teen last week.

The teen sniped Bradford, killing his character repeatedly in the game, and then teased him via headset about it.

Bradford, who is 46, then allegedly drove to the teen's house and choked the child, resulting in a scratch and reddening of the neck, says Cnet.

The adult is now out on bail, but will be back in court later this month.

Samsung has added another small form factor tablet to their line.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has Android 3.2, runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4G, 16GB or 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot.

Samsung now has a 7-inch tablet, a 7.7-inch model, an 8.9-inch option and a 10.1-inch tablet.

The company says the tablet will launch in Indonesia and Austria at the end of October, and everywhere else, afterwards.

There was no word on price, but with the Kindle Fire coming in November at $199 the consumer is not likely to pay over $300.

Best Buy has dropped the price of the HTC Flyer to $299 from its launch price of $499, effective tomorrow.

While the tablet was popular for the 7-inch demographic, it was clearly overpriced considering the market leader iPad 2, at 9.7-inches, sells for the same price.

The Flyer runs on Android 2.3.3 (upgradeable to Honeycomb eventually), has a 1.5 GHz single-core processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, a 5MP camera and a 1.3MP front-side camera.

Additionally, the tablet has a Sense 3.0 UI and a special stylus for easier typing.

The price cut is likely due to the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which will retail for $199 and is expected to quickly become the leader in the 7-inch space.

AT&T has asked a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits by Sprint and Cellular South opposing their buyout of T-Mobile USA.

AT&T's deal to buy T-Mobile, once thought almost a sure thing, has been sidelined thanks to an antitrust suit from the Justice Department. Sprint, the smallest of four national US carriers, and regional carrier Cellular South have filed similar suits of their own.

AT&T argues it's actually competition, not a lack of it, the two companies are afraid of. Sprint claims that the loss of T-Mobile as an independent entity would eventually lead to their own demise, resulting in just two national carriers.

Cellular South is arguing the buyout would result in less competition for roaming deals which regional carriers rely on to extend their coverage.

In fact, like so many arguments AT&T has made so far, their claims of competition seem to be dishonest, if not completely false. They argue Sprint fears their ability to become a more formiddable competitor.

Yesterday Verizon Communications filed a challenge to the FCC's authority to mandate net neutrality through their Open Internet rules.

The rules, drafted last December, were officially entered into the Federal Register last week. They will go into effect on November 20 unless a successful legal challenge is mounted between now and then.

Verizon's filing was actually an appeal of a decision from April when they first challenged the rules. The case was dismissed at the time because new rules can't be challenged until after a schedule to put them in place has been set.

A Verizon statement on the lawsuit said:

Today's filing is the result of a careful review of the FCC's order. We are deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself. We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers.

Recent history suggests Verizon will lose in court thanks to a 2005 Supreme Court ruling which gave the FCC nearly unlimited power to determine what level of regulation broadband Internet providers are subject to.

RIM has no intention of giving up on the tablet market according to an email from a company spokeswoman.

The PlayBook initially sold well after its release in April. More recently lagging sales have led to RIM rethinking plans for a 4G model and drastically reduced prices.

In an email to Reuters, RIM's Marisa Conway called rumors the PlayBook will be discontinued, "pure fiction." She went on to say, "RIM remains highly committed to the tablet market and the future of QNX in its platform."

The rumors she was referring to started with an analyst's note yesterday claiming RIM had discontinued production on the tablet and cancelled development on additional models.

Of course it's hard to imagine what RIM would stand to gain from getting out of the tablet market. Unlike HP, who gave up on their tablet operation last month, tablets are essentially part of RIM's core business.

If they can't get a foothold in the tablet market, it seems unlikely their smartphone business will keep them afloat for long.

Amazon may be looking to move from Android to WebOS for future tablets based on a report from VentureBeat.

Although Amazon's upcoming Kindle Fire runs Android, it has been customized to be more of a dedicated client for their various services than an all-purpose tablet. It even has a custom web browser which uses an Amazon service to speed page load times.

According to VentureBeat, "a well placed source" told them Amazon is negotiating buy Palm from HP.

HP bought Palm in 2010, hoping to use their WebOS mobile operating system as the basis for smartphones and tablets. After a half hearted attempt to continue developing Palm's phone business, they launched the TouchPad tablet this July.

After less than two months, facing poor sales and complaints from retailers, HP decided to get out of the mobile device business entirely.

Palm's assets seem like a much better fit for Amazon than HP. Unlike HP, Amazon isn't concerned with turning a profit from hardware sales.

Intel may appear to have moved on from MeeGo, but ASUS isn't ready to ditch the mobile OS just yet.

Intel announced their plan to move on from MeeGo and support the upcoming Tizen mobile OS. Like MeeGo, Tizen is based on Linux.

In reality, the timing of their announcement probably had more to do with taking a shot at Nokia, their former MeeGo partner, who released a phone running the OS just two days earlier. Tizen also happens to have the support of Nokia rival Samsung.

ASUS Technical Marketing Manager Gary Key told PCMag.com reports of MeeGo's demise are greatly exaggerated, or at least premature. ASUS released a MeeGo based netbook, the Eee PC X101, earlier this month.

Key also says he expects Intel to release MeeGo 1.3 on schedule next month.

That's not to say ASUS plans to stick with MeeGo indefinitely. He said:

I actually think it is a good thing as there are some real positives with MeeGo, especially for its intended audience, but with full support from the two Linux foundations and additional technical support from the Hardware Council, it should be a very viable player in the sub-$200 market next year.