Patent trolls’ latest gambit: Sue businesses if they dare to use office scanners

We’ve seen a lot of ridiculous claims asserted by patent trolls over the past few years, but this one truly takes the cake: Ars Technica reports that an entity called “Project Paperless LLC” has been sending out letters to small and medium-sized businesses demanding licensing fees for using office scanners capable of sending PDFs via email. Steven Vicinanza, founder of Atlanta-based IT services provider BlueWave Computing, told Ars that both his company and several of its customers had received letters telling them that they needed to buy licenses for “distributed computer architecture” patents that cover basic networked scanning technology. At a cost of $1,000 per employee, Vicinanza said that the licenses would have cost his company a grand total of $130,000 just for the right to scan documents.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Vicinanza couldn’t believe that he was actually being threatened with a lawsuit for using office scanners, so he decided to contact the attorney for Project Paperless to get some clarification.
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
“[The attorney] said, if you hook up a scanner and e-mail a PDF document — we have a patent that covers that as a process,” Vicinanza told Ars. “So you’re claiming anyone on a network with a scanner owes you a license? He said, ‘Yes, that’s correct.’ And at that point, I just lost it.”
Vicinanza isn’t the only one “losing it” over patent suits, of course. Cisco (CSCO) late last year decided to go on the offense against patent trolls by flat-out accusing them of breaking the law. What’s more, we’ve heard rumblings that the United States Department of Justice’s antitrust division may be ready to do something to limit patent trolls’ ability to extract licensing fees, so there could be some relief for patent suit-stricken firms on the horizon.

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Typical American without a landline: A 27-year old Latino living in Columbus, Ohio

The statistical study compiled by NHIS about landline and mobile phone usage in American households is a pretty fascinating read. The number of U.S. adults with a mobile phone but no landline rose to 34% in the first half of 2012. That percentage is ticking up roughly two points every six months — a fairly rapid clip. The number of adults with a landline but no mobile phone plunged below 8% according to the study, which was picked up by GigaOm. These numbers may explain why some of the pollsters using landline-only calls in the last election ran off the rails so spectacularly. So many Americans can no longer be reached via a landline phone that polling methods simply must be adjusted.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Latinos are far more likely to have a mobile-only household (46%) than non-hispanic whites (30%) according to the study; this gap is surprisingly large. The number of 25- to 29-year-old adults living in a mobile-only household hit a remarkable 60% in the beginning of 2012. There is a sharp generational divide here: Fewer than 25% of 45- to 64-year-old Americans have dared to drop the landline.
[More from BGR: Nokia predicted to abandon mobile business, sell assets to Microsoft and Huawei in 2013]
Somewhat surprisingly, the Midwest is the region with the highest level of mobile-only households. Naturally, metropolitan households are more likely to depend solely on mobile phones than suburban or rural households. For the first time ever, women edged out men as the larger group of mobile-only adults.
Back in 2006, only 10% of adults lived in a mobile-only household. Americans are kicking their landline habit with remarkable alacrity considering that many homes with small children still feel that depending solely on a mobile phone is too risky.

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Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone

Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft (MSFT), took aim at Google (GOOG) and the company’s unwillingness to develop for Windows Phone 8 in a blog post on Wednesday. Heiner claims that, “Google continues to prevent Microsoft from offering consumers a fully featured YouTube app [among other] for the Windows Phone.” Microsoft has been apparently been trying to get a full-feature YouTube app for its Windows Phone operating system for more than two years, however it has been unsuccessful.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
Despite the fact that the Windows Phone Marketplace has doubled in the past year, Google has not yet produced any quality apps for the platform. The company previously said that it will not be launching a native Gmail or Google Drive app for Windows 8 or Windows Phone until people start using the operating systems.

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Despite repeated sellouts, Nexus 4 sales estimated to total just 375,000 units

Google’s (GOOG) has had trouble keeping latest Nexus-branded smartphone, the LG (066570)-built Nexus 4, in stock as hordes of Android fans would swarm Google’s website each time more units became available. According to new estimates however, the Nexus 4 stock-outs were due entirely to inventory issues rather than immense demand. The xda-developers community has done some calculations based on data gleaned from device serial numbers. They have been able to determine where and when their Nexus 4 handsets were built, and they were also able to estimate the total number of units sold to date: 375,000. While the figure is hardly precise, it appears as though sound logic was used to calculate the figure and it likely represents a good rough sales estimate.

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Microsoft’s huge R&D budget is useless if its best ideas are poorly executed or never released

PC World’s Matt Smith has a lengthy article highlighting all of Microsoft’s (MSFT) coolest research projects to show that, contrary to popular opinion, the company is a fountain of research and innovation. And Microsoft’s R&D team really is working on some cool stuff, including interactive displays that can be projected directly onto your arm and a “Magic Wall” that brings to mind the holodeck from Star Trek’s Enterprise spaceship. But as I was looking through all of these cool projects I thought to myself, “What are the chances that Microsoft will release them for public consumption in a timely manner, or that they will be well executed on the first go-round?” Given the company’s recent history the answer is sadly, “Pretty low.”
[More from BGR: Samsung confirms plan to begin inching away from Android]
Look, for example, at the case of tablets. Microsoft had been messing around with tablets for several years before the iPad was ever released but they never caught on in the consumer market because they were always heavy and had poor battery life. An even bigger issue was that Microsoft wanted to make tablets act basically as full PCs that just happened to have touch screen capabilities, when in reality many consumers wanted tablets to act as portable computing devices that they could use for more basic tasks such as surfing the web or playing games.
[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]
By the time Microsoft finally released a good tablet in late 2012, the market had already been well established by Apple’s (AAPL) iPad on the high-end and smaller Android-based tablets on the low-end. The fact that Microsoft decided to price its first tablet like an iPad more than two years after Apple established itself as the world’s top company for tablets only compounded its earlier mistakes.
To use a more forward-looking example, consider the Glass eyewear display that Google (GOOG) has been teasing for months. We know from patent filings that Microsoft has been working on something similar but the company itself hasn’t made a peep about it even as Google has given us some tantalizing demonstrations of the technology’s capabilities. What’s more, we know that Google plans on releasing Glass to developers in the first half of 2013 and we don’t even have any clue whether or not Microsoft’s eyewear project will ever make it out of the lab.
Why Microsoft never seems to get its best ideas ready for mass consumption in a timely manner is something of a mystery. Forbes‘ Roger Kay, for instance, speculates that Microsoft’s brutal employee performance review creates an atmosphere where “employees are afraid to do anything other than play palace politics in a descending spiral of shooting down each other’s projects.” Regardless, Microsoft’s enormous R&D budget hasn’t changed the fact that the company seems to get much less bang for its buck in terms of groundbreaking, innovative consumer technology than Apple and Google.

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Google chairman heading to North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — When he lands in North Korea, even Google's executive chairman will likely have to relinquish his smartphone, leaving him disconnected from the global information network he helped build.
Eric Schmidt is a staunch advocate of global Internet access and the power of Internet connectivity in lifting people out of poverty and political oppression. This month, he plans to travel to the country with the world's most restrictive Internet policies, where locals need government permission to interact with foreigners — in person, by phone or by email — and only a tiny portion of the elite class is connected to the Internet.
The visit may be a sign of Pyongyang's growing desire to engage with the outside world. North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, talks about using science and technology to jumpstart the country's moribund economy, even if it means turning to experts from enemy nations for help.
In recent years, "North Korea has made a lot of investment in science and technology, not just for military purpose but also for the industry and practical reasons," said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at South Korea's Kyungnam University.
But the U.S. government Thursday voiced its opposition to the trip, saying the timing was "unhelpful." Last month, North Korea launched a long-range rocket in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Google's intentions in North Korea are not clear. Two people familiar with the plans told The Associated Press that the trip was a "private, humanitarian mission." They asked not to be named, saying the delegation has not made the trip public. Schmidt will be traveling with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a seasoned envoy, and Kun "Tony" Namkung, a Korea expert with long ties to North Korea.
"Perhaps the most intriguing part of this trip is simply the idea of it," Victor Cha, an Asia expert who traveled to North Korea with Richardson in 2007, wrote in a blog post for the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
Kim Jong Un "clearly has a penchant for the modern accoutrements of life. If Google is the first small step in piercing the information bubble in Pyongyang, it could be a very interesting development."
But this trip will probably be less about opening up North Korea's Internet than about discussing information technology, Lim said. North Korea may be more interested in Google services such as email and mapping, as well as software development, than in giving its people Internet access, he said.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that she did not know what Google might be planning in North Korea, but like all U.S. companies it would be subject to restrictions under U.S. law.
Kim Jong Un, who took power a year ago, has stressed the need to build North Korea's economy.
In the early 1970s, communist North Korea had the stronger economy of the two Koreas. But North Korea's economy stagnated in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union as the regime resisted the shift toward capitalism in the world around it.
By 2011, North Korea's national income per capita languished at about $1,200 while South Korea's was $23,467, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul.
And as the Internet began connecting the world — a movement South Korea embraced — North Korea reinforced its moat of security. Travelers arriving in Pyongyang are ordered to leave their cellphones at the airport and all devices are checked for satellite communications. Foreigners and locals are required to seek permission before interacting — in person, by phone or by email.
However, leader Kim Jong Un declared Monday that North Korea is in the midst of a modern-day "industrial revolution." He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory. More than 1.5 million people in North Korea now use cellphones with 3G technology.
But giving citizens open access to the Internet has not been part of the North's strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic Intranet service, only a select few have clearance to freely surf the World Wide Web.
Schmidt speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology.
As Google's chief executive for a decade until 2011, Schmidt oversaw Google's ascent from a small California startup focused on helping computer users search the Internet to a global technology giant. Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea's neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.
After being accused of complying with China's strict Internet regulations, Google pulled its search business from the world's largest Internet market in 2010 by redirecting traffic from mainland China to Hong Kong.
In April, Schmidt and Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who heads Google's New York-based think tank, will publish a book about the Internet's role in shaping society called "The New Digital Age."
Son Jae-kwon, a visiting scholar at Stanford, compared Schmidt to Chung Ju-yung, the late founder of the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai who strode across the DMZ dividing the two Koreas with a pack of cattle in 1998.
But this time, it's computer technology, not cows.
"Internet is the cattle of the 21st century," Son said. "It is what North Korea needs most."
The Richardson-Schmidt trip comes at a delicate time politically. In December, North Korea defiantly shot a satellite into space on the back of a three-stage rocket, a launch Pyongyang has hailed as a major step in its quest for peaceful exploration of space.
Washington and others, however, decry it as a covert test of long-range ballistic missile technology designed to send a nuclear-tipped warhead as far as California. The U.N. Security Council quickly condemned the launch, and is deliberating whether to further punish Pyongyang for violating bans on developing its nuclear and missile programs.
The visit also follows North Korea's announcement that an American citizen has been jailed in Pyongyang on suspicion of committing "hostile" acts against the state. Richardson will try to address his detainment, the sources said.
State Department spokeswoman Nuland said Schmidt and Richardson would be traveling as private citizens and carrying no messages from Washington.
"We don't think the timing of the visit is helpful and they are well aware of our views," she told a news briefing.
Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations. North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War before signing a truce in 1953.
However, North Korea has indicated interest in repairing relations with Washington.
In 2011, a group of North Korean economists and diplomats visited Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
And North Korean-affiliated agencies already use at least one Google product to get state propaganda out to the world: YouTube.

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Apple reportedly not looking to buy Waze after all

Despite earlier rumors that claimed a deal was in the works, CNET and TechCrunch are both reporting that Apple (AAPL) has no plans to acquire Waze. It was previously reported that Apple was considering a buyout of the social navigation startup in an effort to improve its widely-panned Maps application. A second report suggested that negotiations between the two companies were further along than once thought and that Waze was seeking a hefty $750 million payout from Apple. According to MG Siegler of TechCrunch, however, “there is no deal happening, at least not now or anytime soon.”

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Google settles on patents, other antitrust claims

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is pledging to license hundreds of key patents to mobile computing rivals under more reasonable terms and to curb the use of snippets from other websites in Internet search results in a settlement that ends a high-profile antitrust probe.
In a major victory for Google, the Federal Trade Commission unanimously concluded that there isn't enough evidence to support complaints that Google unfairly favors its own services in search results.
Thursday's announcement caps a 19-month antitrust investigation by the FTC over Google Inc.'s business practices.
The outcome "is good for consumers, it is good for competition, it is good for innovation and it is the right thing to do," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said.
Google is still trying to settle a similar antitrust probe in Europe. A resolution to that case is expected to come within the next few weeks.
The U.S. government's wide-ranging investigation ended with Google agreeing to charge "fair and reasonable" prices to license hundreds of patents deemed to be essential for mobile devices. Google makes the Android operating system that runs many phones, and the agreement ensures the key technologies can be used in Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and smartphones running on a Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software. Those patents came as part of Google's $12.4 billion acquisition of device maker Motorola Mobility Holdings last May.
To placate regulators, Google also promised that upon request, it will exclude snippets copied from other websites in its summaries of key information, even though the company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Despite the fair-use defense, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or "scraping," of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation.
Under the FTC resolution, Google's rivals will now be able to request that their excerpts are left out of Google's search results without having to fear that links to their sites will be penalized in Google's search rankings.
In another concession, Google pledged to adjust the online advertising system that generates most of its revenue so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks.
The FTC's investigation focused on allegations that Google has been abusing its dominance in Internet search.
Microsoft Corp. and other Google rivals say the search company has been highlighting its own services on its influential results page while burying the links to competing sites. Google has fiercely defended its right to recommend the websites that it believes are the most relevant. While the FTC said it uncovered some obvious instance of bias in Google's results during the investigation, the agency's five commissioners unanimously concluded there wasn't enough evidence to take legal action.
"Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers," said Beth Wilkinson, a lawyer that the FTC hired to help steer the investigation. "However, the FTC's mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors."
The FTC's findings vindicated Google, which has depicted its methods as a more convenient way to capsulize key information so users can get the information they desire more quickly and concisely.
"The conclusion is clear: Google's services are good for users and good for competition," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a Thursday blog post.
Throughout the FTC investigation, Google executives also sought to debunk the notion that the company's recommendations are the final word on the Internet. They pointed out that consumers easily could go to Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo or other services to search for information. "Competition is just a click away," became as much of a Google mantra as the company's official motto: "Don't be evil."
The FTC's implicit endorsement of Google's approach to Internet search is a blow for Microsoft and other rivals who had lodged complaints with regulators in hopes of goading the government into taking legal action that would split up or at least hobble the Internet's most powerful company.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a technology trade group, applauded the FTC for its restraint.
"This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable to the realities of the Internet age," said Ed Black, the group's president.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. But FairSearch, a group whose membership includes Microsoft, call the FTC's settlement "disappointing and premature," given that European regulators might be able to force Google to make more extensive changes. "The FTC's settlement is by no means the last word in this case," FairSearch asserted.
Yelp also criticized the FTC's handling of the case, calling "it a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it."
Microsoft and its allies could still try to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to pick up the antitrust probe where the FTC left off. That's what happened in the 1990s the Justice Department took over wide-ranging investigation into Microsoft's dominant position in personal computer software after the FTC backed off.
The attorneys general in at least six states — California, Texas, New York, Ohio, Mississippi and Oklahoma — also have been examining whether Google's business practices throttled online competition. The status of those state inquiries is unclear.
Investors had already been anticipating Google would emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed.
Google's stock rose 64 cents to $723.89 in afternoon trading Thursday. Microsoft shed 35 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $27.27.

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FTC tightens rules protecting children's online privacy

 The government announced tighter rules on Wednesday to protect children's online privacy by restricting the collection of data, like the child's location, unless parents consent.
The actions by the Federal Trade Commission mark an update to rules that were based on the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, developed when most computers were big beige boxes sitting under office desks instead of smartphones in backpacks, and online social media was unheard of.
"The Commission takes seriously its mandate to protect children's online privacy in this ever-changing technological landscape," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.
Under the updated rule, IP addresses, which are unique to each computer, will be added to the list of personal information that cannot be collected from children without parental consent if the data will be used for behavioral advertising or tracking.
Location, photos, videos and audio files were also added to the definition.
Leibowitz said the commission struck "the right balance between protecting innovation that will provide rich and engaging content for children, and ensuring that parents are informed and involved in their children's online activities."
But Senator John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, which oversees the FTC, said he had wanted legislation that went further.
"There are groups that will complain about it (COPPA being too weak), and so will I, but we can't do anything more about it right now," he said. "Children's privacy as far as I am concerned is an absolutely top line issue."
Privacy advocates and advertising companies had been watching closely to see if the agency would go through with a pledge made in August to add IP addresses to the restrictions.
Advertisers had argued against the move since several people in a family - adults and children - could use the same computer. Privacy advocates said it was needed to protect children.
Also under the updated rule, plug-ins and other third parties connected to children's websites and apps cannot allow third parties to collect information on children without parental consent.
Big companies would be able to deal with the changes but the tighter regulators could be onerous for smaller firms, said John Feldman of the law firm Reed Smith LLP.
"I represent companies who are trying to sell products and services," he said. "The bigger companies feel like they can deal with it. There are significant costs that will be associated with this."
Privacy advocate Kathryn Montgomery, who teaches at American University, said the update was needed, given the growth of social networks and mobile computing. She urged the FTC to be tough about enforcing the rules.
"The new rules should help ensure that companies targeting children throughout the rapidly expanding digital media landscape will be required to engage in fair marketing and data collection practices," she said.
The proposal also specifies that family websites, which are websites aimed at children and adults, would be allowed to screen users to determine their ages and only provide protection to children under age 13.
Currently, all visitors to the websites must be treated as if they are under age 13.
The FTC's rule implementing COPPA became effective in 2000.
The updated rule takes effect on July 1. It was approved by a vote of three to one with one commissioner abstaining.

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Vatican takes first spot in Internet domain name draw

 The Vatican has come out in first place in a long-awaited draw to expand the Internet address system with new domain names that go beyond the usual .com, .org or .net endings.
ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system, announced this week the domain name .catholic written in Chinese characters will be the first bid it considers in a drive to expand and reorganize sites on the World Wide Web.
The same extension in Arabic letters ranked 25th in the random draw and the Vatican's application for a version in Cyrillic for Russian and other Slavic languages came in 96th.
Ranking high means the applicant could get approval early next year to operate the new domain and approve addresses using it. In the Vatican's case, Rome could then ensure only genuine Roman Catholic institutions get to use that domain name.
"This is a way to give a coherence and authentication to our presence in the digital arena," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
"Anyone looking online will recognize the site belongs to an institution that belongs to the Catholic Church," he said, adding the new, so-called top level domain names (|TLDs) could also help speed online searches.
.BIBLE AND .ISLAM
For online retailers such as Amazon, whose application for .store in Japanese came in second, early approval could mean a competitive advantage and prompt a quick introduction of the new name.
But the Vatican did not enter the draw for commercial reasons and would not rush to launch its TLDs, Tighe said. In addition, the main TLD it seeks - .catholic in Latin letters - ended up in 1,366th place and may take months before it is approved.
Website owners are now restricted to a few dozen TLDs such as .com and country code domains such as .co.uk or .fr. Many of the 1,930 applications for new TLDs came from companies, including Internet giants such as Amazon and Google.
Several other faith-based groups applied for other TLDs such as .bible or .islam. The extension .mormon was the next-highest religious application drawn, coming in at 118th place.
ICANN (www.icann.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has stressed that assigning a certain TLD does not imply any endorsement of the religious group seeking it, just recognition it is the best suited to use the name.
Tighe said the ICANN draw handled applications for TLDs in non-Latin alphabets first, which explained why the Vatican's Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic extensions came out far ahead of its main TLD in Latin letters.
INTERNET IMPRIMATUR
ICANN invited comments on applications earlier this year. The Vatican's application for exclusive use of .catholic drew criticism from members of several Protestant churches that also use the term, which comes from the Greek for "universal".
"This request is a move by a powerful group to squelch the voices and rights of other Christians," Dave Daubert, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Elgin, Illinois, wrote on the ICANN webpage for comments on the applications.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, apparently saw no hope of a consensus on religious TLDs and opposed them all.
Some religions seem to have kept out of the fray entirely. There were no applications for .buddhist, .hindu or .jewish.

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Vatican says pope beats Justin Bieber on re-tweets

 Pope Benedict, white-haired, 85, and a neophyte to social media site Twitter, has beaten out 18-year old heartthrob Justin Bieber to set a percentage record for re-tweeting by his followers, the Vatican said on Thursday.
The Vatican newspaper said that as of noon Italian time on Thursday the pope had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, eight days after his first tweet was sent.
While Canadian singer-songwriter Bieber has roughly 15 times as many followers - 31.7 million - the Vatican newspaper said Benedict had beaten Bieber on re-tweets.
It said about 50 percent of the pope's followers had re-tweeted his first tweet on December 12 while only 0.7 percent of Bieber's followers had re-tweeted one of the singer's most popular tweets on September 26, when he commented on the death by cancer of a six-year-old fan.
The Vatican said this was part of a wider trend in which people were looking for more spiritual content.
The pope already tweets in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic. The newspaper said he will start tweeting in Latin and Chinese soon.

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Saudi website editor could face death for apostasy-rights group

RIYADH (Reuters) - The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said.
Badawi had initially been charged with the less serious offence of insulting Islam through electronic channels, but at a December 17 hearing a judge referred him to a more senior court and recommended he be tried for apostasy, the monitoring group said.
Apostasy, the act of changing religious affiliation, carries an automatic death sentence in Saudi Arabia, along with crimes including blasphemy.
Badawi's website included articles that were critical of senior religious figures, the monitoring group said.
A spokesman for Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry was not available to comment.
The world's top oil exporter follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam and applies Islamic law, or sharia.
Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent.
King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's ruler, has pushed for reforms to the legal system, including improved training for judges and the introduction of precedent to standardize verdicts and make courts more transparent.

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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say

 Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said.
The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters.
Chinese police requested help from Sri Lanka, he said.
Officials at the Chinese embassy in Colombo were not available for comment.
China has been the top lender to Sri Lanka since the end of a 25-year war in May 2009 and thousands of Chinese are working in the country on Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.

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News Summary: Kodak sells patents for $525 million

STEPPING STONE: Eastman Kodak is selling its digital imaging patents for about $525 million, money the struggling photo pioneer says will help it emerge from bankruptcy protection in the first half of 2013.
GROUP OF 12: Apple Inc., Google Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Research In Motion Ltd., Microsoft Corp., China's Huawei Technologies and Facebook Inc. are among the 12 companies paying to license the 1,100 patents, according to court filings.
HISTORY: Founded in 1880, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January after a long struggle to stay relevant. First came competition from Japanese companies, then the shift from film to digital photography. Kodak failed to keep up.

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Best Buy exec leaves for COO post at Symantec

Best Buy's president of digital operations is leaving the struggling electronics chain to become chief operating officer at the computer security company Symantec.
Best Buy has been implementing a turnaround plan as it faces tough competition from discounters and online retailers. The Minneapolis company last week extended until after the holiday season the window for co-founder Richard Schulze to make a buyout offer.
Best Buy Co. announced Wednesday that Stephen Gillett's responsibilities will now be divvied up, with responsibilities going to Chief Financial Officer Sharon McCollam, Scott Durchslag, the president of online and global e-commerce and Shawn Score, senior vice president of U.S. retail.
Gillett also served as executive vice president. He will take on that role at Symantec Corp. in addition to his COO post.
Gillett, who starts at Symantec on Friday, will report to its Chairman and CEO Steve Bennett. He will work at the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.
Shares of Best Buy added 9 cents to $11.99 in premarket trading on Thursday.

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SC Gov Haley unveils $6.3 billion budget proposal

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Gov. Nikki Haley's budget plan she presented Thursday would spend more on computer security, law enforcement and health care. She also asked that not-yet-projected revenue go toward tax relief that saves the average filer less than $30.
Her $6.3 billion budget plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 seeks $47 million for computer security following a massive breach at the state's tax collection agency. More than 40 percent of the money would pay back a loan approved last week by the Budget and Control Board to cover costs incurred so far.
The Department of Revenue is receiving a $20.2 million loan this fiscal year from the state's insurance reserves.
Haley wants $12.4 million to complete computer upgrades at the agency, plus $3 million for security consultants.
The Republican governor also wants to hire 25 agents to supervise parolees, 10 natural resources officers, 18 state troopers and 15 employees at the State Law Enforcement Division, to include agents and lab technicians. She also wants to provide all troopers wireless access in their vehicles and upgrade prison officers' safety.
The only salary increases Haley proposes are to officers that work in the state's eight maximum security prisons for violent offenders. She recommends giving them a 3 percent boost.
She noted that when she visited Lee Correctional in Bishopville, where inmates took officers hostage in June and September, 60 positions were open. Authorities could not fill them "because people are too scared to work there," she said
Her budget would spend $10 million to build two watch towers at Lee Correctional and buy cameras and metal detectors and wands at prisons statewide.
"We are sending them in there every day and not giving them the tools to protect themselves," Haley said. "You are not giving money to prisoners. You're giving money to people who keep prisoners from harming you."
Haley said the budget's top cost driver is health care, with state employee benefits costing nearly $80 million more. Haley adamantly opposes expanding Medicaid eligibility under the federal health care — a decision left to legislators next session. Still, Haley's budget allocates an additional $67 million to Medicaid just to cover already-eligible residents expected to sign up after the law takes effect.
Governors generally release their executive budgets in January before session starts. But Haley said she wanted to get her proposal to legislators sooner this year in hopes they'll use more of her recommendations as they craft the budget. Haley recognized that legislators largely ignored former Gov. Mark Sanford's budget plans.
"We don't do this for kicks and giggles," she said.
Haley's $6.3 billion plan represents a 3 percent increase in spending from the state's general fund, which doesn't include federal money and other sources such as fines and fees that agencies collect.
Haley's budget is based on the Board of Economic Advisors' current predictions for tax collections in 2013-14. The board revises their estimate in the spring, which usually gives legislators more money to work with, though 2008-09 and 2009-10 were exceptions. On average over the last eight years, legislators have had $100 million more to allocate in their final approved spending plan than the governor.
Haley said when the "money tree falls" this spring, legislators should use $26 million of it to cut income taxes. Eliminating the 6 percent tax bracket, would save the average filer $29, according to her report.
She wants the rest spent on roads and bridges, calling that tax relief.
"This is an option not to increase the gas tax," she said.
The state transportation department anticipates needing nearly $50 billion over the next 20 years for infrastructure but only receiving $19 billion under the current system. The state motor fuel tax, which has been 16 cents per gallon since 1987, is the agency's main funding source but is declining due to improved vehicle fuel efficiency and higher costs for gasoline and diesel fuel.
Haley said she will not tolerate any move to increase that tax and considers her plan a start toward addressing the multi-billion-dollar need.

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Samsung is replacing faulty Galaxy S IIIs that are suddenly dying for no reason

Samsung (005930) is reportedly quietly replacing faulty Galaxy S III devices according to many users on XDA Developers. The issue appears to be related to the NAND becoming corrupted and killing off the Galaxy S III’s mainboard, which causes the phone to essentially “brick” itself. Users have reported the issues have affected some devices after 150-200 days after purchase. Users on XDA Developers and Reddit are also saying Samsung is replacing affected smartphones (rooted or not) with new ones that could potentially be just as faulty in another 200 days. The Galaxy S III made headlines last week when an XDA forum member discovered that a security hole in its Exynos-4 processor was vulnerable to app-based malware attacks. Samsung has since said it will patch the hole as soon as possible.

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Insight: Security fears dogged Canada debate on China energy bid

In September, two months after China's state-owned CNOOC Ltd made an unexpected $15.1 billion bid for Canadian energy company Nexen Inc, Canada's spy agency told ministers that takeovers by Chinese companies may threaten national security.
The rare warning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which was disclosed to Reuters by intelligence sources, did not stop the takeover. That was approved by Canadian authorities earlier this month.
But the intervention and an influential U.S. lawmaker's warning in October that Canadian companies should be careful about doing business with Chinese telecom equipment companies Huawei Technologies Co and ZTE Corp made the approval process for the deal more difficult than initially expected.
"CSIS did not like the Nexen bid and thought it was a bad idea for Chinese firms to be investing in the oil sands. It all played into their greater fears about firms like Huawei," said one person familiar with the agency's concerns. "They do not want to wake up one day and realize a crucial sector of the economy is under the control of foreign interests."
And after listening to the spy service, which usually keeps a low profile, Canada drew up surprisingly tough foreign investment rules that were unveiled when approving the Nexen deal, China's biggest-ever successful foreign takeover. In a clampdown on companies it deems influenced by foreign governments, Canada will block similar purchases in the future.
CSIS has been silent about what it said to Ottawa on the Nexen transaction, and it declined to comment for this story. It didn't specifically recommend the CNOOC deal be blocked, but rather warned more generally about such deals with Chinese entities, the person said.
In reality, the government was unlikely to want to block the CNOOC bid, given a high-profile push by Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier in the year to boost ties with China, and given that a lot of Nexen's assets are outside Canada, and it has underperformed other energy companies.
SPECIFIC WORRIES
By pushing back aggressively, CSIS ensured that it got foreign investment policy tightened significantly to deter similar such takeovers by companies under the sway of foreign governments.
"I think people at CSIS and elsewhere are going 'Good. That was a very good response by the government'," said Ray Boisvert, a former CSIS assistant director of intelligence, who retired this year after almost three decades at the agency.
"It did reflect some of those deep strategic concerns that practitioners have had about this kind of investment."
Specific worries include theft of Canadian intellectual property, espionage, computer hacking and foreign companies gaining too much influence over crucial sectors of the economy, said the person familiar with the agency's views.
The government could, in theory, nationalize assets if it thought foreign control was problematic. But the pro-business Conservatives would likely find it politically unpalatable to take such a step.
"To be blunt, Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead," Harper said as he announced the new investment rules.
In October, the U.S. House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee urged U.S. firms to stop doing business with Huawei and another Chinese telecom equipment company ZTE on the grounds that Beijing could use products made by the two companies to spy.
The House Intelligence Committee's chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, urged Canada to take a similar stance, and two days later, the Canadian government indicated it would not let Huawei help build a secure government communications network because of possible security risks.
"The Huawei business caused a lot of political complications for the CNOOC bid," another person familiar with the CNOOC deal said of the U.S. committee's report.
Both Huawei and ZTE have repeatedly denied the allegations in the report, and China's foreign ministry dismissed as "baseless" the idea that security concerns could impede commercial ties.
"We hope that the relevant party can objectively and justly treat Chinese companies' overseas investment and cooperation plans, and stop actions which harm Chinese companies' image and do more to benefit the promotion of bilateral trade and business cooperation," said ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
CLANDESTINE SUPPORT
In its annual report, released in September, CSIS noted risks that included espionage and illegal technology transfers, and said some foreign state-owned enterprises had "pursued opaque agendas or received clandestine intelligence support for their pursuits" in Canada.
The agency did not give details, but added: "When foreign companies with ties to foreign intelligence agencies or hostile governments seek to acquire control over strategic sectors of the Canadian economy, it can represent a threat to Canadian security interests."
CSIS, hit by controversy in 2010 after its head suggested China had too much influence over some Canadian provincial politicians, did not mention any country or firm in its report.
It is unclear how much, if any, influence the United States had on the Canadian authorities' foreign investment policy.
Fen Hampson, head of the global security program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario, said he had learned that a U.S. official visited Ottawa in the last few months to discuss mutual concerns about foreign state-owned enterprises.
U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson told Reuters he was not aware of such a meeting, but he noted that officials from the two countries met constantly. "I would be surprised if almost any issue you could think of has not come up in one or more of those conversations," he said. "The United States has not sought to influence Canada's decision with respect to that (CNOOC's bid)... We respect that decision."
The Canadian government did not respond to a request for a comment.
Chinese companies have bought up smaller Canadian energy firms before, but the July 23 bid for Nexen was their first attempt to buy one of the larger players.
Nexen has assets in Canada, the North Sea, Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico. Technology that Nexen and its partners use for deep sea drilling could interest CNOOC. [ID:nL4N09N3R5]
Asked about the CSIS concerns, a spokeswoman for Industry Minister Christian Paradis replied: "The government has the authority to take any measures it considers necessary to protect national security."
Yet two people close to the deal noted that the Canadian government did not exercise its option to do a separate review of the potential security risks of the CNOOC-Nexen bid, again signaling its concerns were tied to overall Chinese investment rather than to this particular deal.
Under the new rules, which Paradis is responsible for enforcing, foreign state-owned enterprises can no longer buy controlling stakes in assets in the oil sands, the biggest reserve of crude oil outside Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Such enterprises can buy minority stakes in the oil sands, or majority stakes in companies outside the oil sands. Companies deemed to have strong government links will be treated with particular caution wherever they propose to invest.
"When it comes to our security and intelligence services, they would rather pull up the drawbridge than let it down," said Hampson, co-author of a report on trade ties between Canada and emerging nations that he discussed with Harper in June.

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