facebook filed charges against yahoo

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A legal battle between Yahoo! and Facebook heated up Friday with the floundering Internet pioneer accusing the rising social network star of buying patents just to retaliate in court.

The accusation came in a 37-page response filed by Yahoo! to a countersuit Facebook filed charging that the Sunnyvale, California-based company is violating the social network's patents -- and not the other way around.

"In retaliation for Yahoo!'s good faith allegations of patent infringement, Facebook alleges infringement of 10 patents as counterclaims," Yahoo! attorney Kevin Smith said in a reply filed in federal court.

"Facebook lacks a good faith basis for most, if not all, of its counterclaims, particularly those patents that it purchased from others."

Along with asking a judge to rule immediately in its favor on all claims in the cases, Yahoo! wants Facebook to be made to pay its legal costs.

"We remain perplexed by Yahoo's erratic actions," a Facebook spokesman told AFP.

"We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously."

In March, Yahoo! filed suit against Facebook in US District Court in San Francisco, accusing the social networking giant of infringing on 10 patents.

The Yahoo! suit accused Facebook of infringing on patents in areas including advertising, privacy and messaging and contended that Facebook's growth "has been based in large part on Facebook's use of Yahoo!'s patented technology."

Yahoo! asked the court to order Facebook to halt its alleged patent-infringing activities and to assess unspecified damages.

Facebook, which is shifting operations to a former Sun Microsystems campus in the northern California city of Menlo Park, denied violating any valid Yahoo! patents.

Facebook went on to accuse Yahoo! of infringing on its patented technology in a broad array of products including online venues for news, games, cars, travel and photo-sharing service Flickr.

The social networking service asked the court to dismiss Yahoo!'s complaint entirely and make the Internet veteran pay damages as well as the social network's legal costs.

In its legal response, Yahoo! argued that Facebook essentially cheated by buying patents to use as legal ammunition in their fight.

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"Facebook purchased and asserted patents tainted by inequitable conduct," Smith said in the filing.

"Furthermore, Facebook asserted its newly-acquired patents against aspects of Yahoo!'s products for which there is little to no publicly-available information," he continued.

"Facebook's infringement assertions appear to be based on nothing more than conjecture, assumptions, and unsupported inferences about how Yahoo!'s products may possibly operate."

Yahoo! also added a few more patents to the list of intellectual property it claims Facebook is abusing.

The legal brawl is taking place as Facebook prepares to go public on Wall Street with a valuation of up to $100 billion.

Facebook recently amended paperwork filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to warn potential investors that Yahoo!'s patent lawsuit could deliver a significant blow to its business.

"This litigation is still in its early stages and the final outcome, including our liability, if any, with respect to these claims, is uncertain," Facebook said in the updated SEC filing.

"If an unfavorable outcome were to occur in this litigation, the impact could be material to our business, financial condition or results of operations."

Patent suits are a frequent occurrence among smartphone and tablet computer makers, and the world's best known brands are ensnared in a complex web of legal claims, but such suits are relatively rare among social media companies. 

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CISPA bill,:Internet company to handle all your datas to the Fed

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The U.S. House of Representatives today approved a controversial Internet surveillance bill, rejecting increasingly vocal arguments from critics that it would do more to endanger Americans' privacy than aid cybersecurity.

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By a vote of 248 to 168, a bipartisan majority approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, which would permit Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency and other portions of the U.S. government.CISPA would "waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity," said Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, during today's marathon floor debate. "Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on."

Americans' confidential information that could legally provided to the feds would "include health records, it can include firearm registration information, it can include credit card information," warned Polis, a former Web entrepreneur who was a leader in opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act as well.

CISPA wouldn't formally grant the NSA or Homeland Security any additional surveillance authority. (A proposed amendment that would have veered in that direction was withdrawn.)

But it would usher in a new era of information sharing between companies and government agencies -- with limited oversight and privacy safeguards. The House Rules committee yesterday rejected a series of modestly pro-privacy amendments, which led a coalition of civil-liberties groups to complain that "amendments that are imperative won't even be considered" in a letter today.That prompted some politicians, including House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), to reluctantly oppose the bill. Schiff said that because his proposed amendments were rejected, he had to vote against CISPA "due to my concerns about civil liberties and the privacy of Americans."

What made CISPA so controversial is a section saying that, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," companies may share information with Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, or other agencies. By including the word "notwithstanding," CISPA's drafters intended to make their legislation trump all existing federal and state laws, including ones dealing with wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy, and more.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had predicted earlier in the week he had the votes. And it turned out he did, despite a last-minute surge of opposition that included Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul warning that "CISPA is Big Brother writ large," a White House veto threat, and 18 Democratic House members saying it "does not include necessary safeguards."

CISPA is "needed to stop the Chinese government from stealing our stuff," Rogers said. They're "stealing the value and prosperity of America."

Rogers' position paper on CISPA said the bill is necessary to deal with threats from China and Russia, and that it "protects privacy by prohibiting the government from requiring private sector entities to provide information." During today's floor debate, Rogers repeatedly referred to the need for the Feds to share attack signatures with the private sector -- but never addressed the privacy criticisms directly, except to say they were invalid.

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One of the biggest differences between CISPA and its SOPA predecessor is that the Web blocking bill was defeated by a broad alliance of Internet companies and millions of peeved users. Not CISPA: the House Intelligence committee proudly lists letters of support from Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, Verizon, AT&T, Intel, and trade association CTIA, which counts representatives of T-Mobile, Sybase, Nokia, and Qualcomm as board members.CISPA's authorization for information sharing extends far beyond Web companies and social networks. It would also apply to Internet service providers, including ones that already have an intimate relationship with Washington officialdom. Large companies including AT&T and Verizon handed billions of customer records to the NSA; only Qwest refused to participate. Verizon turned over customer datato the FBI without court orders. An AT&T whistleblower accused the company of illegally opening its network to the NSA, a practice that the U.S. Congress retroactively made legal in 2008.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where related cybersecurity legislation has been stalled for years, and the threat of a presidential veto makes speedy approval unlikely.

"Once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there's no going back," Michelle Richardson, ACLU legislative counsel, said after the House vote. "We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity."

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Do Cell Phone Causes Cancer

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A new U.K. science review says not to worry about brain tumors while chatting on mobile phones because "evidence overall has not demonstrated any adverse effects on human health."

Are people endangering with their lives, risking cancer, brain tumors, and infertility by talking on their cell phones? A new review by the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency (HPA) says no.

Scientists conducting the review looked at hundreds of studies and assessed all major research into "low-level radio frequency," which they said comes not only from mobile phones but also TV and radio broadcasting, Wi-Fi, and other technologies, and concluded that everyone in the U.K. is exposed to "universal and continuous" radio frequency, according to the BBC.

Despite this constant exposure, the scientists said that they didn't find any definite links to cancer, brain function, or infertility. According to the BBC, this is the most expansive review ever on the safety of mobile phones.

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"There are still limitations to the published research that preclude a definitive judgment, but the evidence overall has not demonstrated any adverse effects on human health from exposure to radio frequency fields below internationally accepted guideline levels," chairman of the review Anthony Swerdlow said in a statement.

All the research is based on the past 15 years, since mobile phones did not become widespread before then. The scientists recommended that long-term effects continue to be monitored and researched.

"As this is a relatively new technology, the HPA will continue to advise a precautionary approach and keep the science under close review," director of the HPA's Center for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards John Cooper said in a statement. "The HPA recommends that excessive use of mobile phones by children should be discouraged."The debate over whether cell phones arehazardous to people's health has been raging for years. In 2004, a Swedish research institute found that 10 years or more of mobile phone use could cause tumors to grow in humans. In 2007, scientists found that just 10 minutes of cell phone use can cause changes in the brain. And, last May the World Health Organization classified mobile devices as a "carcinogenic hazard."

However, in more recent years, several studies have come out saying that cell phone dangers might be overblown. Besides this study by the HPA, a 2011 Danish study said cell phone use does not raise the risk of brain tumors and another 2011 European study claimed mobile phones do not increase cancer risks in kids.

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Samsung sued over Facebook app

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Eighteen US Olympians including swimming greats Mark Spitz and Janet Evans are suing Samsung Corporation, saying its US Olympic Genome Project Facebook app misuses their names and images.

Spitz and Evans are joined as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court by diver Greg Louganis, athletics great Jackie Joyner-Kersee, beach volleyball player Phil Dalhausser and 13 other swimmers.

The suit alleges that the app, unveiled by Samsung earlier this month, uses their names, images and background information "in an attempt to link plaintiffs to consumers".

The complaint claims that Samsung "has used plaintiffs' names and images to create the impression that plaintiffs endorse Defendants' products and business."

A section of the California Civil Code makes it unlawful to use someone's name or likeness for commercial purposes without that person's consent.

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The plaintiffs are seeking license fees, a percentage of interest in sales and punitive damages.

Samsung, an Olympic sponsor, launched the app with the blessing and help of the US Olympic Committee.

It's designed to allow people to find connections between themselves and US Olympians, and USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said it was not intended to commercialize the sports figures' names.

"We have honored the requests of the athletes who have filed suit to remove their names, as we offered to do months ago, and of course we will remove any athletes that do not wish to be listed," Sandusky said in a statement Thursday.

A Samsung spokesperson said the company was "disappointed" by the lawsuit. 

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Facebook new measures to protect its millions User

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Facebook is making sure its 900 million users are protected from malicious URLs in addition to spam, phishing and viruses. The company announced Wednesday that it’s partnering with Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec to offer its growing user-base more protection.

“Our URL blacklist system, which scans trillions of clicks per day, will now incorporate the malicious URL databases from these security companies to augment our existing level of protection,” the blog post notes. “So whenever you click a link on our site, you benefit not just from Facebook’s existing protections, but the ongoing vigilance of the world’s leading corporations involved in computer security.”

Taking security measures a step further, Facebook also announced the AV Marketplace. Users can download a six-month license for a full version of anti-virus software from one of Facebook’s new partners, free of charge. Facebook reminds users to “like” its Security Page to receive regular updates from these partners about how to keep data safe from online predators.

“We have had a long standing partnership with McAfee and many others in the security community, and the AV Marketplace will offer users more choice and increase the scope of our partnerships,” Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesperson, wrote in an email to Mashable. “We believe we have a unique opportunity to provide our users with the software and technology to help keep their data safe both on and off of Facebook.”

Facebook privacy and security has always been an issue the site has aimed to address, as millions of people put detailed personal information on the site. Earlier this month it was reported that Homeland Security searches the social network for keywords that might lead them to breaking crime news. Scammers also use Facebook for ploys such as fake sick baby scams.

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Facebook is set to become the biggest country in the world

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Facebook disclosed on Monday that it has 901 million users, making it likely that it will pass the 1 billion mark well before the end of the year.

The company, which dropped the stat in its amended S-1 filing, also notes that its network receives 3.2 billion comments per day and 300 million new photos daily. The site also claims 125 billion friendships. Of the 901 million figure, 526 million were described as daily active users in March. Some 488 million people also used Facebook mobile products that month, according to the filing.

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When Facebook filed its IPO paperwork with the SEC in February, the network tallied 845 million users. Back in January, Gregory Lyons, a senior analyst at iCrossing, estimated that Facebook would hit 1 billion users by August, a rate of growth that appears plausible based on the latest numbers.

Even before Monday’s latest numbers dropped, Facebook was by far the largest social network in the world. Twitter, which passed 500 million users in February, is number two on the list — although Twitter says thatonly 140 million of those accounts are active.

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A 26years Englishboy hacked facebook and stole facebook source code

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The English man responsible for stealing Facebook’s source code spilled his guts Thursday about what really happened.

Glenn Mangham, 26, of York, England, did it for the challenge, he said. He works as a white-hat security specialist, hacking sites at their owners’ behest to determine their vulnerabilities. Mangham said we would have been happy to give Facebook a free report.

In a blog post, Mangham explained why he hacked Facebook’s precious code and how he felt about it.

“I accept full responsibility for what I did, it was my idea and my idea alone to do it and in truth I did not fully think through all the potential ramifications at the time,” Mangham wrote on Blogspot. “For whatever it is worth I would like to apologise for allowing the situation to escalate into a full blown investigation and for any distress that my actions caused to certain individuals. While I accept that some cost was caused by what I did I would still dispute its quoted magnitude.”

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Mangham hacked Facebook in April and May of last year, which Facebook discovered during a security check. He hadn’t used a proxy server to hide his location, but he did delete “his electronic footprint to cover his tracks,”reported the BBC.

Mangham was jailed on Feb. 17 after pleading guilty to three counts of unauthorized access to computer material and unauthorized modification of computer data, reported The York Press. Mangham’s original sentence was for eight months in prison, but that was cut down significantly thanks to a successful appeal earlier this month.

Facebook claims that Mangham’s hack cost the company $200,000 and “prompted a ‘concerted, time-consuming and costly investigation”’ by the FBI and British law enforcement, reported Naked Security. Mangham calls that figure “suspicious.”

Mangham argues that he had no intention of damaging the network or selling its secrets and instead says that he wanted “to achieve a better understanding of how the system worked and to leverage that knowledge to find more vulnerabilities.”

“I actually have a neutral to mildly positive view of Facebook and have no motivation whatsoever to harm it. … There was plenty of strong evidence for the many past occasions where I had found and disclosed vulnerabilities and while my paid work for Yahoo! was given the most attention, what you may not know is that I have offered up many of my finds unconditionally, I have even turned down offers of rewards after providing information because it was the challenge and the gratification of conquering it that was important.  I would have been quite happy to have passed over the eventual report and to have simply got a “thank you” and a pat on the back, I was not out touting for business, although I would have given serious consideration to an offer if one was made.”

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sense of direction

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“ There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.”

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How To Speed Up Safari browser

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One of the first things most of us learned back when Safari 4 appeared was how to turn off the "Top Sites" feature (via the General tab of Safari’s Preferences) and return to our normal home page.

Safari does a lot of work to collect those cute little thumbnails of the web pages, store them in a hard-to-find folder and organize them in a way they can be quickly retrieved. In fact, if you click over to the History view in the Top Sites window, you’ll see that Safari has industriously captured a thumbnail image of seemingly every page you ever visited. Even if we totally ignore this feature, Safari keeps plugging away, collecting and storing those snapshots.

That hard work slows Safari down and sucks up a surprising amount of storage space on your hard disk (nearly half a gigabyte on one of our machines). And aside from staying in Private Browsing mode, there’s no easy way to turn the feature completely off. Though it’s a little more complicated than a button-click, we’re going to walk you through a few steps that will clean up all those images and prevent Safari from storing any more.

Step 1: Locate Your Library

First, you’ll need to dive into your personal Library folder. Through Snow Leopard, this was easily found in your Home folder (the folder with your user name) and in the Finder’s Go menu. Apparently, too many people took advantage of this (you can do a lot of serious damage by messing around in the Library), so Apple tried to hide it away in Lion. However, they left a convenient back door open. Just hold down the Option key and select the Finder’s Go menu and there it is!

Step 2: Clean House

When the Library window pops open, find the Caches folder and look for a folder named “com.apple.Safari” inside of that. Select the Webpage Previews folder. Open the Get Info window by either selecting the command in the File menu or right- or control-clicking on the file. This will give you an idea of how much space these thumbnails are taking up and will get you ready for the next step. Drag everything in the Webpage Previews folder to the Trash.

Step 3: Lock it Up

Go back to the folder’s Get Info window and click the “Locked” checkbox to add a checkmark. That will tell Safari that you have no further interest in collecting web page thumbnails. In spite of this blatant show of ingratitude, Safari doesn’t appear to mind. In fact, you’ll probably notice that the program hops from page to page with a bit more spunk. Should you ever wish to turn the feature on, just repeat these steps and unlock the folder.

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Online Video Game Grows on the

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Consumer demand and technological change will drive stunning growth in online video for years to come, so long as Internet access is widely available to all, a Senate committee heard Tuesday.

"Online video is just beginning," Barry Diller, at 70 still a titan of the US entertainment industry, testified before the Senate's commerce, science and transportation committee.

"In the end, there is no stopping technical innovation," said Diller, who foresaw the rise of "many new competitors" and more consumer choice that would both enrich American culture and advance the economy.

"It is the promise of a la carte programming that is, I think, the greatest opportunity there is," he said.

But he urged Congress to ensure that "the rules of the game favor entry and innovation" and not the financial interests of "incumbents" -- his code word for cable, telephone and satellite providers keen to guard profitable turf.

Diller -- a former Hollywood studio and television boss who now oversees Aereo, which relays local TV channels to Internet viewers for a monthly fee -- also lamented the relatively poor state of the US broadband network.

"We cannot compete in the world with the 16th or 18th best communications infrastructure," he said.

Committee chairman Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from rural West Virginia, convened the hearing -- the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, he said -- to reflect on how online video might lead to better content for less cost.

Susan Whiting, vice chair of television ratings organization Neilsen, said Americans on average watch five hours of video a day -- most of it still in real time on traditional television sets.

But with the number of Americans with Internet access doubling since 2000, and video now available on smartphones and tablets, Whiting said more and more viewing is taking place on both computers and mobile devices.

"Consumers watch their favorite content on the best screen available at that moment -- and they watch from more locations, and on more devices, than ever before," she explained.

Microsoft's vice president for media and entertainment, Blair Westlake, cited the software giant's Xbox evolution from a gaming console to a video entertainment hub as an example of how fast technology is changing.

"I think we are only in the early innings of the beneficial changes that consumers have yet to see and experience," said Westlake, who predicted "more change in the next 18 months ... than we did in the past five years."

But he stressed that universal access to high-speed broadband was "the single most important issue shaping the future of video."

Paul Misener, vice president for global public policy at Amazon.com, the online bookseller that now also offers streaming video, said consumers were in the driver's seat when it came to establishing new ways to watch video.

"They are on the move, and thus they want access to digital video not just anytime, but also anywhere," he said, brandishing one of Amazon's popular Kindle Fire tablets.

But "this assumes the Internet will remain a non-discriminatory, open platform," he said, urging "vigilance" against "immutable or unrealistically priced" ceilings on how much data subscribers can download. 

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Apple has make new profit as iPhone-iPad sales increases

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Apple said it had raked in a profit of $11.6 billion in the first three months of the year driven by record sales of iPhones and iPad tablet computers.

Revenue for the quarter ended March 31 hit $39.2 billion as iPad sales more than doubled from the same quarter the previous year and iPhone sales surged 88 percent, the company said on Tuesday.

"We're thrilled with sales of over 35 million iPhones and almost 12 million iPads in the March quarter," said Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

"The new iPad is off to a great start, and across the year you're going to see a lot more of the kind of innovation that only Apple can deliver."

Apple's net income for its second fiscal quarter was nearly double that seen in the same three-month period a year earlier, when sales tallied $24.7 billion.

The Cupertino, California-based company released the third-generation of its market-ruling iPad tablet computer in March, meaning its blockbuster sales out of the gate have only begun to pump up Apple's bottom line.

"Our record March quarter results drove $14 billion in cash flow from operations," said Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer.

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A man walks past an Apple Store in San Francisco, California. Apple's net income for its second fiscal quarter was nearly double that seen in the same three-month period a year earlier, when sales tallied $24.7 billion.

"Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter, we expect revenue of about $34 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $8.68."

While Apple gadgets were hot in markets around the world, demand was "mind-boggling" in China, where revenue for the quarter was a record-high $7.9 billion, Cook said in an earnings conference call.

Apple took in $12.4 billion in China in the six months that mark the first half of its current fiscal year, promising that the company will easily eclipse the $13.3 billion in sales in that country in the entire prior fiscal year.

"China has an enormous number of people moving into higher income groups, middle-class if you will, and this is creating a demand for goods," Cook said.

"There is tremendous opportunity for companies that understand China, and we are doing everything we can to understand it."

Cook said that Apple had the "mother of all Januaries" that included tending to a huge backlog of gadget orders and launching the iPhone 4 in China.

Apple is scrambling to keep up with demand for iPads around the world.

Apple sold three million of its new iPads over the course of its first weekend on the market, and hunger for the devices has not yet abated.

"The new iPad is on fire," Oppenheimer said. "We are selling them as fast as we can make them."

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Customers at the new Apple store in Lyon, France. Apple's stock price reversed a losing trend for the day after the release of the earnings figures, jumping more than seven percent to $600.30 a share on the Nasdaq exchange.

The tablet computers are being embraced by companies, schools, and governments as well as by gadget lovers, according to Apple.

Apple sold two iPads for every Macintosh computer sold in the education market while still reporting record Mac sales.

The US Air Force allows flight crew members to use iPads to help do their jobs, and engineering and construction project titan Bechtel lets workers use the tablet computers in the field, according to Apple.

About three quarters of the world's top corporations are either using or testing iPads, according to Cook.

Overall sales of devices running on Apple's iOS mobile operating system have topped 365 million and the "ecosystem" of applications and accessories continues to blossom, according to executives.

Apple's online App Store boasts more than 600,000 mini-programs tailored for the company's coveted gadgets, with more than a third of those "apps" devoted to the iPad.

The iTunes online shop for music, films, and other digital content brought in a record-high $1.9 billion in revenue during Apple's recently ended second fiscal quarter.

More than 125 million people are using the iCloud service Apple launched in October as a way for users of its devices to store music, pictures, video and other digital data online at the company's datacenters.

Apple's stock price reversed a losing trend for the day after the release of the earnings figures, jumping more than seven percent to $600.30 a share on the Nasdaq exchange. 

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