The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Google for more information about its planned US$12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, potentially slowing the transaction, Google said in a blog post Wednesday.
Google received a so-called “second request” from the DOJ asking for more details with which to evaluate the deal. The acquisition is Google’s largest ever and would marry the top search company with one of the biggest sellers of Android-based devices.
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A brand-new security feature to be included in Windows 8, designed to block some types of malware, is drawing fire from advocates of non-Microsoft operating system. In particular, they accuse Microsoft of launching a stealth attack against people who choose to install open source operating systems on their Windows-branded PCs.
The feature in question, unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI), is designed to be a more flexible replacement for the BIOS that’s long featured in PCs. “In most PCs today, the pre-operating system environment is vulnerable to attacks by redirecting the boot loader handoff to possible malicious loaders. These loaders would remain undetected to operating system security measures and antimalware software,” said Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows group at Microsoft, in a blog post. “Windows 8 addresses this vulnerability with UEFI secure boot, and using policy present in firmware along with certificates to ensure that only properly signed and authenticated components are allowed to execute.”
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Mozilla has released a new version of its popular Firefox browser for Windows, Mac and Linux that optimizes memory management to accelerate web surfing.
Indeed, the browser is now significantly faster at opening new tabs, clicking on menu items and website links.
The latest iteration of Firefox has also been revamped to better handle “heavy” Internet use, meaning, lag and drag is reduced when multiple tabs are opened for extended periods of time.
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Intel on Monday started shipping new low-power Atom chips built on the platform code-named Cedar Trail, with numerous improvements to boost graphics and application performance over their predecessor.
The two new Atom chips are targeted at entry-level desktops and all-in-one PCs for Internet surfing and basic multimedia and productivity applications, an Intel spokeswoman said. The new dual-core Atom chips run at clock speeds of up to 2.13GHz and are able play Blu-ray movies.
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Security firms today warned Mac users of a new Trojan horse that masquerades as a PDF document.
The malware, which was spotted by U.K.-based Sophos and Finnish antivirus vendor F-Secure, uses a technique long practiced by Windows attackers.
“This malware may be attempting to copy the technique implemented by Windows malware, which opens a PDF file containing a ‘.pdf.exe’ extension and an accompanying PDF icon,” said F-Secure today.
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Google+ is approaching 50 million users, if it’s not there already, said Paul Allen, who said Google saw a 30 percent membership bump Sept. 22. That’s just 2 days after its beta launch.
Google+ is rapidly approaching the 50 million user mark, just days after launching to everyone in open beta, according to unofficial number-crunching from Internet entrepreneur Paul Allen.
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The current market has proven that it can’t support an unlimited number of smartphone platforms. But there’s still some consolidation to go, believes Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam.
In January of this year, you could argue that the top mobile ecosystems were Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s BlackBerry, and HP/Palm’s webOS. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (merely months old) was but a blip. That was too many for the carriers and the market. At least one or two of the platforms/ecosystems had to go down.
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