A state appeals court on Friday rejected Apple Computer Inc.’s bid to identify the sources of leaked product information that appeared on Web sites, ruling that online reporters and bloggers are entitled to the same protections as traditional journalists.

“In no relevant respect do they appear to differ from a reporter or editor for a traditional business-oriented periodical who solicits or otherwise comes into possession of confidential internal information about a company,” Justice Conrad Rushing of the 6th District Court of Appeal wrote in a unanimous 69-page ruling.

“We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes ‘legitimate journalism,” he wrote. “The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitioners did here.”

Source: AP

AT&T’s attorneys this week filed a 25-page legal brief striped with thick black lines that were intended to obscure portions of three pages and render them unreadable.

But the obscured text nevertheless can be copied and pasted inside some PDF readers, including Preview under Apple’s OS X and the xpdf utility used with X11.

The deleted portions of the legal brief seek to offer benign reasons why AT&T would allegedly have a secret room at its downtown San Francisco switching center that would be designed to monitor Internet and telephone traffic. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class action lawsuit in January, alleges that room is used by an unlawful National Security Agency surveillance program.

Source: News.com

Select NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC news items will now be available for download via Apple Computer’s iTunes, NBC said this week. The downloads will be priced at $1.99 each. Available programs will include historical news footage, programs and documentaries, as well as current pieces created specifically for iTunes, NBC said in a statement.

Source: News.com

Mandriva, the publisher of the popular Mandriva Linux operating system, and the OpenVZ project today announced that the OpenVZ operating system virtualization software will be included as part of the Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0.

OpenVZ is operating system level server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server — enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

In the reexamination proceeding initiated late last year by the Public Patent Foundation (”PUBPAT”), the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the broadest claims of the patent Forgent Networks (Nasdaq: FORG) is asserting against the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) international standard for the electronic sharing of photo-quality images. In its Office Action released yesterday, the Patent Office found that the prior art submitted by PUBPAT completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672 (the ‘672 Patent).

Source: groklaw

Earthlink Inc., the Internet service provider, said on Friday it has won approval from the New Orleans City Council to build a wireless high-speed Internet network in the city.

Source: Reuters

HD DVD is to get region coding after all, if the DVD Forum, the industry organisation that maintains the DVD format, has its way. This week, the Forum decided to put in place a team to create a region-coding scheme for the next-generation optical disc technology.

Source: TheRegister

To look at what’s been going on at the fastest-growing tech companies - including Apple , Adobe , eBay , and many lesser-known firms - you’d almost think it’s the late ’90s all over again.

These employers grew their payrolls by an average of 16% in 2005, hiring more than 70,000 people. Google , meanwhile, has snapped up so much tech talent over the past couple of years that it’s pushed salaries higher all over Silicon Valley.

According to NimbleCat’s latest figures, the top 10 metropolitan areas for new tech jobs are: Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Dallas, and Atlanta. Note that only three are in the Golden State, the fewest since NimbleCat began counting seven years ago.

But even if you don’t live anywhere near those top 10 cities, plenty of employers want you - if you’ve got the right skills.

What skills are employers seeking now? The list is a fairly extensive one, according to Rodriguez: “Nationwide, Microsoft .Net is in big demand, as are Oracle and Java developers.

Source: CNN

Microsoft is retooling a PC rating feature in Windows Vista following criticism from hardware makers and others, an example that the next-generation operating system may not yet be ready for mass consumption.

The critique is that the current version of the Windows System Performance Rating feature could be “misleading”.

Source: News.com

Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 U.S. carrier, said on Friday more than 95 percent of its customers had phones capable of identifying their location when they call 911 for help.

Sprint Nextel told the FCC recently that more than 84 percent of its customers had wireless phones capable of identifying their location. Alltel said it has reached 86.1 percent and expected it could take until June 2007 to comply with the 95 percent requirement.

Source: Reuters