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Nero, Uhura, Spock, and Kirk... in technicolor!
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Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's (SIRI.O) purchase of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc (XMSR.O) was approved with conditions by U.S. communications regulators on Friday, clearing the way for a deal that will leave just one U.S. satellite radio service. The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of a proposal that would allow the deal to proceed as long as the companies meet a series of consumer protection conditions, including a three-year cap on prices, set-aside of channels for minority and non-commercial programming and payment of a $19.7 million penalty for past FCC rule violations.
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This just in: Days ago it was being reported that Google was in negotiations to acquire Digg. Now TechCrunch is reporting the Google/Digg acquisition is off.Negotiations were in full swing as of last Tuesday passing the term sheet [document outlining the material terms and conditions of a business agreement.] stage and the two companies were in final negotiations in the $200 million range. But sometime this last week Google decided to walk from the deal.Sources are indicating there was something about the management or basic technology about how Digg works that was to blame. Kevin and Co. seem to be doing fine, though, with their current venture funding of $11 million.
Digg was notified on late Thursday or Friday. Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away - but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage.
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This just in: Kevin Rose, ex TechTV host and founder of Digg, is about to be very, very wealthy. Kevin's social news website, Digg, is about to be bought by the Google.
According to TechCrunch, who heard from "multiple sources," the deal is going down like this:
"The two companies have reportedly signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source."
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It's the end of an era. Both Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert are leaving the nationally syndicated movie review show, “At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper,” next season.In a statement yesterday, Ebert wrote: “After 33 years on the air, 23 of them with Disney, the studio has decided to take the program named ‘Siskel & Ebert’ and then ‘Ebert & Roeper’ in a new direction. I will no longer be associated with it.”
AP is reporting that after eight seasons Roeper will also leave the show. Roeper said in a statement that he and Disney-ABC failed to reach a contract agreement. Roeper also said he planned to continue as a host of a movie review show elsewhere, but did not disclose details. His last appearance will be for the weekend of Aug. 16.
Ebert said in his statement that the trademark for the program, which he began with Gene Siskel in 1975 as “Sneak Previews” on PBS, “still belongs to me and Marlene Iglitzen, Gene’s widow, and the thumbs will return.”
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The heads of five agencies building the International Space Station staged talks here Thursday on tackling a looming transport problem for the ISS and gave positive signals for extending the orbital outpost's life beyond 2015.The ISS will need extra transport for crew and freight to substitute for the US space shuttle, scheduled to be retired in 2010 when the ISS is completed.
A US replacement for the shuttle, a rocket-and-capsule system called Aries-Orion, is due to be operational around 2015.
The head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, told reporters that the United States and Russia will hold talks on beefing up flights by the Soviet-era workhorse, Soyuz, to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS between 2011 and 2014.
"By the end of this year or by the beginning of next year at the latest, the whole rationale for our cooperation will be laid out," Perminov told a press conference at European Space Agency (ESA) headquarters.
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A team of astronomers announced they have discovered the smallest and potentially most Earth-like extrasolar planet yet. Five times as massive as Earth, it orbits a relatively cool star at a distance that would provide earthly temperatures as well, signaling the possibility of liquid water. "The separation between the planet and its star is just right for having liquid water at its surface," says astronomer and team spokesperson Stephane Udry of the Observatory of Geneva in Versoix, Switzerland. "That's why we are a bit excited."But researchers do not yet know if the planet contains water, if it is truly rocky like Earth, which might make it hospitable to life as we know it, or whether it is blanketed by a thick atmosphere. "What we have," Udry says, "is the minimum mass of the planet and its separation" from its star.
The researchers say they detected the presence of two new extrasolar planets (exoplanets) around a red dwarf star, Gliese 581, 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra, based on slight motions of the star. Their discovery brings the total number of planets orbiting Gliese 581 to three; two years ago they made the initial finding of a planet there.
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Stoked by fan fever over the manic performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, "The Dark Knight" set a one-day box office record with $66.4 million on opening day, Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman said Saturday.The movie's Friday haul surpassed the previous record of $59.8 million set last year by "Spider-Man 3." "The Dark Knight" might break the opening-weekend record of $151.1 million, also held by "Spider-Man 3."
"The Dark Knight" began with a record $18.5 million from midnight screenings, topping the previous high of $16.9 million for "Star Wars: Episode III — The Revenge of the Sith."
The opening day grosses for "The Dark Knight" far exceeded the full weekend haul of its predecessor, "Batman Begins," which took in $48.7 million in its first three days in 2005.
Reviews were excellent for director Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins," but they were stellar for his "Dark Knight."
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Money problems will likely force NASA to abandon its ambitious internal goal of having a new moon spaceship ready by 2013.The agency should still be able to meet its public commitment to test launch astronauts in the first Orion capsule by March 2015, the official said, unless national budget stalemates continue.
But the agency's own hurry-up plan to get the job done even earlier — with a first crew launch by 2013 — will "very likely" be changed during meetings this week in Houston, said Doug Cooke, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration.
"We're probably going to have to move our target date," Cooke said in a phone interview. An actual astronaut moon landing is still set for 2020. Orion initially will just orbit Earth before attempting a more complicated moon launch that also will involve unmanned rockets.
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Get ready to have your mind blown by the feature trailer for Zack Snyder's Watchmen! Who would have thought decades ago that we would be seeing such quality comic adaptations come to the screen? Wow.
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The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a disgruntled network administrator has locked up a multimillion dollar city computer system that handles sensitive data and is refusing to give police the password.The employee, 43-year-old Terry Childs, was arrested Sunday. He gave some passwords to police, which did not work, and refused to reveal the real code, the paper reported.
The new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) handles city payroll files, jail bookings, law enforcement documents and official e-mail for San Francisco. The network is functioning but administrators have little or no access. Childs, who remains in custody, is accused of improperly tampering with computer systems and causing a denial of service, said Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, on Monday afternoon.
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It's official; the Star Trek Experience will be closing Sept.1. This is not a good commentary on the state of Trek right now. In an official statement, Paramount Parks released the following:Las Vegas - Star Trek: The Experience, Las Vegas’ premier interactive attraction willread more | digg story
conclude its historic 11 year run at the Las Vegas Hilton on September 1, 2008.
Since 1998, millions of guests have gone boldly into the 24th century to battle Klingons, Borg, and other hostile aliens. The original complex featured the Klingon Encounter, an interactive adventure and ride. In 2004 Borg Invasion 4-D was introduced and the Secrets Unveiled Backstage Tour was unveiled in 2005, making Star Trek: the Experience the stomping grounds for fans around the galaxy.
Asked if there is any final transmission he’d like to convey from the Enterprise bridge, Chad Boutte, Operations Manager and Director of Marketing said “Hailing frequencies open. We’d like to thank all the fans and friends of Star Trek, whose constant and amazing support we’ve enjoyed throughout our tenure at the Las Vegas Hilton.
As we boldly go into the futures that await, know that we take your love of Star Trek: The Experience with us. We share the memories of time spent in the most unique place in the Galaxy, and we carry those memories into our futures with us. Live long, and prosper.
Hailing frequencies closed.”
It will be the end of an era. The final flight in NASA's space shuttle program will take off on May 31, 2010, four months before the fleet is retired after 30 years of service.NASA has 10 missions remaining for the shuttle fleet, which President Bush ordered to retire by Sept. 30, 2010. The schedule announced Monday and reported in the Houston Chronicle includes five flights this year, five in 2009 and three in 2010.
Some members of Congress want to add at least one more mission, to carry the $1.6 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station. The mission was one of about a dozen canceled after space shuttle Columbia broke apart upon re-entry in 2003. Once the shuttles retire, work will focus on the Ares rocket and Orion capsule that will be used to return astronauts to the moon.
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The smallest planet in the Solar System has become even smaller, studies by the Messenger spacecraft have shown.Data from a flyby of Mercury in January 2008 show the planet has contracted by more than one mile (1.5km) in diameter over its history.
Scientists believe the shrinkage is due to the planet's core slowly cooling. Studies published in the journal Science show the same process also powers the planet's magnetic field, a topic long debated by scientists.
"Cooling of the planet's core not only fuelled the magnetic dynamo, it also led to contraction of the entire planet," said Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, US. "And the data from the flyby indicate that the total contraction is at least one-third greater than we previously thought."
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You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him get internet. Or something. This reminds me of the survey a year ago that revealed one-third of Americans households don't have internet and have no plans to get it.A new study suggests that attitude rather than availability may be the key reason why more Americans don't have high-speed Internet access. The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.read more | digg story
Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they're stuck with the older, slower connection technology because they can't get broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.
Thirty-five percent say they're still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or do not know.
Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday at his home of congestive heart failure. He was 83.Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular frizzy-haired clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos.
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Ok, what?! According to Wired's Threat Level, Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom. You read correctly. Every instance of someone pressing the play button on a YouTube clip on any website, ever. Date, time, IP address.Background: Viacom is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube. Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.
Now Viacom could have sued YouTube at any time within it's first two years of existence, but in a display of typical corporate greed, waited until a company with deep pockets purchased the startup to do so. This proves Viacom is really more interested in a settlement, monetary award, or forcing some kind of partnership deal than actually keeping it's video content off YouTube (which, according to Viacom and other studios OWN ARGUMENTS during the writers strike, does nothing but promote the content.)
If any user can be personally identified by their user history or IP address, this may constitute a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, which has already been pointed out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The VPPA is a law with dated language that was meant "to preserve personal privacy with respect to the rental, purchase, or delivery of video tapes or similar audio visual materials and the use of library materials or services." In 1987, the video rental history of a judge got published in a local alternative newspaper. Congress quickly passed the VPPA the following year, which remains one of the strongest privacy laws on the books.
So whats next? What will Viacom do with this data? Will they now sue individual YouTube posters by their IP addresses ala the recording industry?
Will other content owners follow suit?
Update: Viacom is responding to privacy concerns, stating they "have no ability (and absolutely no desire) to use this data to sue end-users," and stating all the data is covered by a confidentiality agreement. Evidently no one at Viacom will even be able to look at the user data, only the lawyers and court personnel will.
Still, it's disconcerting that with the bang of a judge's gavel, what you thought once was private data and activity on one site now has to be offered up to another company and courtroom for inspection. And there's no guarantee that the next time a website has to turn over user logs the data will be protected by a confidentiality agreement or that the company getting that data won't take action against users.
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