The government has approved the long-delayed merger of the nation's only satellite radio companies, combining Sirius and XM into a single entity with 18 million subscribers.

The decision last night came almost a year and a half after the companies first proposed joining. Based on yesterday's closing share prices, the deal is valued at $3.3 billion, not including debt.

Dozens of lawmakers, consumer groups and broadcasters had long opposed the merger, saying that the union would create a satellite radio monopoly. But three of the five members of the Federal Communications Commission agreed that the marketplace has changed since the two companies formed, with Internet radio, iPods and other technological advances competing for consumers.

The merger passed, but with several conditions.

The companies must cap prices for three years after joining and allow consumers to choose the channels they want and pay less for packages of channels. Radios that allow a la carte channel selections will eventually be available for car dashboards -- the largest area of growth. The companies said they would introduce radios that receive both XM and Sirius channels.

On Thursday, XM, of the District, agreed to pay $17.5 million in fines and Sirius, based in New York, agreed to pay $2.2 million to resolve complaints that some of their radio receivers sold to consumers and signal-boosting radio towers violated FCC technical rules. Both companies said they would bring their equipment into compliance.

The agreement appeared to bring an end to a contentious and drawn-out bid to join the companies. But a last-minute stalemate between two Republican commissioners delayed a final vote.

Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate withheld her tie-breaking vote to approve the merger until FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin cast his deciding vote to penalize the companies for violating rules, according to sources familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity. The hold-up was resolved when Tate formally voted in favor of the deal.

Democratic commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein voted against the merger. Robert M. McDowell, a Republican, voted in favor of it.

"Consumers will get to enjoy the best of the programming on both services," Martin said in an interview. "They'll also be able to pick and choose channels at a lower price."

The FCC's approval means that XM and Sirius have passed the final regulatory hurdle associated with the merger. The deal passed antitrust scrutiny by the Justice Department in March.

Not everyone was pleased with the decision. Critics have argued that the FCC's approval would be a dramatic reversal of rules set in 1997, when the companies were given satellite radio licenses with the condition that they never merge.

via washingtonpost 

(AP) A new school district policy in southern Mississippi prohibits teachers from texting or communicating with students through Internet social network sites such as MySpace.

The Lamar County school board approved the policy earlier this month after becoming concerned that casual contact between teachers and students would be unprofessional.

"The only intent is to limit the personal communication between teachers and students," Superintendent Ben Burnett told The Hattiesburg American newspaper. "We don't need to let it cross the line between professional and personal communication."

Burnett said the policy won't keep teachers or students from creating profiles on sites such as MySpace or Facebook, which allow users to share personal information and communicate over the Web.

"This just keeps them from communicating socially through those kinds of means," Burnett said.

No incident led to the policy, which was enacted at the suggestion of the school board attorney. The board has yet to set penalties for violating the policy.

via  cbsnews

This Monday readers of New Hampshire’s Valley News were surprised to see the paper's name spelled "Valley Newss" on the front page masthead.

The following day the newspaper, which covers the Upper Valley area straddling New Hampshire and Vermont, published an “Editor’s Note” acknowledging the error.

“Readers may have noticed that the Valley News misspelled its own name on yesterday’s front page,” it read.

“Given that we routinely call on other institutions to hold themselves accountable for the mistakes, let us say for the record: We sure feel silly.”

The misspelling, which is still visible in the archive section of the newspaper’s website , has already been touted as favourite for typo of the year by the Regret the Error blog, which monitors media mistakes.

via telegraph 

Just four days after escaping a federal minimum-security work camp, "Spam King" Eddie Davidson shot his wife and child and wounded a teen-age girl before turning the gun on himself.

Sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunfire in the small plains town of Bennett at about 11:15 a.m. today and found Davidson, 29-year-old Amy Lee Ann Hill and their 3-year-old daughter shot to death.

Davidson's most recent spam business, Power Promoters, was based in Bennett.

Arapahoe County Undersheriff Mark Campbell said the bodies were found laying near a Toyota Sequoia SUV in the driveway. Davidson's body was beside the driver's door, a pistol nearby, and his wife's body fell near the passenger side.

The 3-year-old

girl was found dead in the vehicle. A boy, about 7 months old, was found unharmed in a car seat in the SUV, Campbell said.

A teenage girl, shot in the neck, escaped by running to a neighbor's home, the Sheriff's Office said.

The teenager was taken to University of Colorado Hospital in Denver for treatment for her serious wound, and the infant to The Children's Hospital in Aurora to be examined.

Ken Deal, chief deputy U.S. marshal in Denver, said that hours after Davidson's escape Sunday, his wife, Amy Hill, told Lakewood police he had forced her to take him to the Denver area in the same SUV.

Hill told police Davidson had slapped or back-handed her during the two-hour drive from Florence.

U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said Thursday night that Davidson drove the SUV from Florence to Lakewood, where he got a change of clothes and cash before disappearing.

Neighbors in Bennett said Davidson and his family had moved from the house more than six months ago. The family was known in Bennett as "the Hills" and "stayed to themselves," a neighbor said.

Media and prosecutors have dubbed Davidson "The Spam King" for years for his prolific anonymous e-mails selling a raft of products.

Davidson had pleaded guilty to

tax evasion and falsifying information about the sender of e-mail pitches for low-cost, high risk stocks.

He was sentenced in April to 21 months in federal prison camp in Florence and reported to begin his sentence in late May.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff said Davidson had become a "consultant" to the FBI investigating other spammers.

Bob Cambron, who lives about a half-mile away, said he was working in the yard when he heard the sound gunshots carried on the wind.

"Immediately after the shots, there was intense screaming," Cambron said.

He drove to the house right away.

"I didn't have any idea what I was driving into," he said. "I just saw the vehicle in the driveway with bodies."

He said he was reluctant to get close "because I didn't want to be the next victim."

He said a neighbor who called 911 also helped the teenage gunshot victim.

"What a nightmare, and such a coward," Eid said. "Davidson imposed the 'death penalty' on family members for his own crime."

via denverpost 

ASSWORDS for nuclear missiles at a US silo became insecure after three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep at their posts.

'Fortunately' an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts found that, while a terrorist could have snuck into the base past the sleeping crew members, the launch codes would have done little good.

But that was because the passwords were out of date and the crew wouldn't have been able to launch a muffin in the advent of a nuclear attack by Iran or North Korea, who are probably the only ones likely to want to launch a nuclear strike on the US.

It is the latest in a long list of security stuff ups by the Air Force which recently mailed four Air Force fusing devices to Taiwan and armed a B-52 with six nuclear warheads.

via theinquirer 

Optimus Pultius - a 15-keys addition to any keyboard. To be used with the Maximus or with any other non-display keyboard.

Optimus Pultius uses the same principles as Maximus, has the same display keys and the same set of ports on the back (using one instead of two additional USB hub slots).

via community.livejournal 

In a significant step toward vanquishing the local video store and keeping couch potatoes planted firmly in front of their televisions and computers, Amazon.com will introduce a new online store of TV shows and movies on Thursday, called Amazon Video on Demand.

Customers of Amazon’s new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs on a cable video-on-demand service. That is different from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon’s video store, which require users to download files to their hard drives.

“For the first time, this is drop dead simple,” said Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital media. “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.”

Amazon, which is based in Seattle, is also pursuing the technology and media world’s holy grail — an Internet pipeline to the TV. It has struck a deal with Sony Electronics to place its Internet video store on the Sony Bravia line of high-definition TVs.

The video store will be accessible through the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, a $300 tower-shaped device that funnels Web video directly to Sony’s high-definition televisions. That is an awkward extra expense, for now. But future Bravias are expected to have this capability embedded in the television, making it even easier to gain access to the full catalog of past and present TV shows and movies, over the Internet, using a television remote control.

Mr. Carr said Amazon would pursue similar deals with other makers of TVs and Internet devices. “We can support both streaming and downloading,” he said. “Our goal is to continue to establish partnerships with all companies who have a connected device.”

Amazon Video on Demand will be accessible to a limited number of invited Amazon.com customers on Thursday before it opens more broadly to other users later this summer.

Films and TV shows from almost all the major studios and television networks are available for sale or rental to Amazon’s customers in the United States, at varying prices depending on the program and whether people buy or rent it. The lone holdouts are Walt Disney and ABC, which Disney owns. Both have close relations with Amazon’s digital rival, Apple.

Although Amazon does not release revenue numbers for its digital initiatives, its 10-month-old digital music store, Amazon MP3, is viewed favorably as a solid runner-up to iTunes from Apple. But it is far behind iTunes, which recently surpassed Wal-Mart Stores as the leading supplier of music in the United States.

Amazon Unbox, the company’s original download-only video store, was largely seen as a disappointment because it required customers to download special software to watch the programs they bought. The service also worked only on Windows PCs and TiVo set-top boxes.

To make the new service more enticing, the first two minutes of all movies and TV shows will begin playing for users on Amazon.com immediately when they visit a title’s product page on the digital video store.

It will also let users buy a TV show or movie without actually downloading the video file to the PC’s hard drive. Amazon will store each customer’s selection in what it calls “Your Video Library.” Customers can then watch that show or movie whenever they return to Amazon, even if it is from a different computer or device, a solution that neatly gets around studio concerns about piracy.

“I can be at my office, purchase a movie, and then it will be available on my television at home,” said Robert Jacobs, a senior manager at Sony Electronics. “Creating this on-demand available-everywhere access to premium content is going to be very attractive to consumers.”

Amazon will have some formidable rivals if it hopes to dominate the emerging world of digital video. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Netflix are all looking to capture the coveted real estate in the living room as well. Apple has had the most success with video on its iTunes video store and its Apple TV set-top box. It recently added content from several movie studios and introduced video rentals to the service.

Amazon Video on Demand is not expected to generate significant profits for Amazon, which must pay large royalties to Hollywood studios and develop the costly technical infrastructure required to make the service operate reliably.

But Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, may have another goal in mind. Establishing a foothold on televisions could be a way to let couch potatoes and television advertisers link up to the rest of Amazon’s online store with a click of the remote control.

“That is certainly a possibility for the future,” Mr. Carr said.

via nytimes 

Facebook was at the centre of a massive ID fraud scare yesterday after it accidentally published confidential information about its users.

In a huge breach of privacy, the social networking site disclosed the dates of birth of many of its 80 million active users - even if they had asked for the information to be kept secret.

Although the details have now been removed, there are concerns that internet fraudsters could use the information to commit identity theft.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing and most popular services on the internet.

It allows people to create home pages devoted to themselves, and then swap pictures, news, trivia and gossip with a circle of friends, family or acquaintances.

Owners of a Facebook page can limit who has access to personal details such as dates of births, phone numbers, addresses and photographs.

However, a test website of a new version of Facebook made available to the public this week included confidential details that should have been kept private.

The blunder was spotted by the computer security firm Sophos on Monday evening.

'I was shocked to see people's full date of birth revealed, even though I knew they had their privacy set up correctly to supposedly hide the information,' said Sophos' Graham Cluley who discovered the security slip.

'It's essential that users of social networks should have confidence that their privacy will be protected - and it's especially important with information like your date of birth, which can be a golden nugget for a committed identity thief.'

Mr Cluley informed Facebook as soon as he discovered the flaw, which now appears to have been fixed.

'It's good that Facebook fixed the problem - but can people feel confident that this kind of mistake won't happen again in future?' he said.

'My advice to Facebook users would be, even if your date of birth is set to be non-visible, change it to a made-up date in case this kind of blunder happens again.

'Facebook and other social networking websites need to be more careful about protecting their members' data, or risk losing users.'

Security experts have repeatedly warned that Facebook and other networking sites like MySpace and Bebo expose people to identity fraud.

Many of the user profile pages contain personal information such as pet names, children's names, favourite sports teams and work details that could be used to guess passwords.

Others carry dates of birth, phone numbers and addresses.

One Facebook user even publicised his mother's maiden name on his site - information that is often used by banks to confirm identity over the phone.

Last year, Sophos published results of a identity theft probe into Facebook which uncovered that 41 per cent of users would divulge personal information - such as email address, date of birth and phone number - to a complete stranger.

People who publish personal photographs and potentially embarrassing information on Facebook are also in danger of ruining their future career opportunities.

Around one in five companies admits to routinely trawling Facebook to learn more about job candidates.

A senior tutor at Cambridge University has also admitted to using Facebook to check up on potential students.

via dailymail.