Murdoch

Google calls Murdoch's piracy allegations 'nonsense'

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is talking nonsense, according to Google.

Murdoch, a Twitter user for only the past several weeks, used the service to fire a barrage of accusations Saturday night against President Obama and Google.

He accused the White House of being in the employ of "Silicon Valley paymasters." Murdoch claimed Google was profiting from advertisements sold against pirated materials. He also called the search company a "piracy leader." (Read more about Murdoch's Twitter tirade here).

In an e-mail sent to CNET on Sunday afternoon, Google responded to Murdoch's statements.

"This … Read more

Who is winning SOPA? Read Rupe Murdoch's Twitter feed

The White House raised concerns yesterday about controversial antipiracy bills being debated in Congress and one way to measure how furious some copyright owners are with President Obama is to read the Twitter posts of Rupert Murdoch.

"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," wrote an obviously angry Murdoch, chairman of News Corp., one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world.

The Senate is debating the Protect IP Act (PIPA) while the House is doing the same with a similar bill, the Stop Online … Read more

How Twitter made a hash of verifying Mrs. Murdoch

Hope in human relationships had taken a step forward when it seemed that Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, was communicating with him publicly on Twitter.

That hope was dashed when the verified @Wendi_Deng feed turned out to be fake. How, then, did Twitter make a hash of this verifiably simple situation?

AllThingsD, with Santorum-like determination, appears to have secured the reason for a state of affairs so hapless that Mrs. Murdoch has now frozen the Twitter feed she already had: @wendideng.

You might have already noticed the difference between these two Twitter handles. Yes, the impostor has an underscore. … Read more

@Wendi_Deng: I'm not really Murdoch's wife

Few can have been anything other than overjoyed when Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter last week.

Finally, the world hoped, we would be privileged to hear the uncensored thoughts of the man who would turn Machiavelli to jelly.

But our cup overflowed onto our coffee table when his wife, Wendi Deng, also opened a verified Twitter account and began to admonish her husband for ribald tweets such as: "Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!"

As soon as the great mogul of the media had tweeted that, Deng replied from her verified account: "@rupertmurdoch RUPERT!!! delete … Read more

Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter

As head of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch is one of the most powerful media personalities on the planet, and he has finally joined what some call the "new journalism": Twitter.

The 80-year-old media tycoon who "never learned to e-mail" joined the social media service on New Year's Eve and has since posted 17 tweets, with the most recent congratulating New York mayor (and competitor) Michael Bloomberg.

Great to see Mike Bloomberg getting some rewards for being New York's best mayor in memory!

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) January 2, 2012… Read more

The 404 968: Where we're totally idiot-proof (podcast)

We asked CNN technology writer Mark Milian to come into the studio today to wrap up the last show of the year, and he surprises us with Peter Ha from The Daily in tow!

Our two favorite guests join us for a discussion about the tech trends of 2011 ("hacking," privacy, mobile OS wars, Tumblr, and Reddit), and we'll also take a look at Mark's new book, Letters to Steve: Inside the E-Mail Inbox of Apple's Steve Jobs.

It's a collection of e-mails sent from the legend himself that shows his dedication to customer service and Apple fans. Some of them aren't so nice, though, as Mark tells us a few stories about his lesser-known messages.

I know you're probably super upset that this is the last episode of the year, but we'll be publishing exclusive Yuletide and Throwback episodes throughout the break, all the way up until we start our block of CES shows, live from the CNET stage at the Las Vegas Convention Center!

Thanks to everyone who helped us out this year--too many names to list, but we wouldn't be here without all our awesome guests, fans, moderators, producers, callers, and co-workers!… Read more

Steve Jobs bio: Scoring the surprises and score-settling

Some people simply won't read Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs because it has 656 pages, meaning it requires strong fingers--and nerves--in order to make it through the whole thing.

So with various media organizations obtaining copies by Wikileaky, Watergate-like subterfuge, I thought I'd create a little scorecard to tabulate all of the tiffs, digs, revelations, affronts and full-frontal stabbings that have dripped out so far.

Each of them I have given a score: The "What A Surprise" score. A score of 1 means that surely most sentient beings expected this. A 10 means that … Read more

News Corp. pays $4.8M to phone hacking victim's family

News Corp., whose now-shuttered News of the World newspaper hacked into phone accounts of a teenage murder victim, agreed to pay a $4.8 million settlement with the girl's family.

According to The Wall Street Journal, News International, News Corp.'s British newspaper unit, will pay the family of Milly Dowler $3.2 million. It will give another $1.6 million to "charities chosen by the Dowler family that represent causes close to Milly and those that provide support to other victims of crime."

In 2002, News of the World reporters hacked into the mobile phone of … Read more

The 404 864: Where there's Lion pie in my eye (podcast)

Wilson's especially giddy today because Apple just released two new MacBook Airs and a pair of new Mac Minis that all feature a data port for high-speed Thunderbolt peripherals. On today's episode, we're also talking about Rupert Murdoch's pie in the face, a social network for Anonymous hackers called AnonPlus, and the proper way to teach your parents how to use modern technology.

The 404 Digest for Episode 864

Apple updates MacBook Air, Mac Mini. Anonymous unleashes social network AnonPlus.

Episode 864 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1513: The FBI is coming after Anonymous. Run and tell that. (Podcast)

The FBI rolls out a massive raid across the United States in connection with the "Anonymous" hacking investigation. Google's Eric Schmidt will defend HTC at all costs and if you can't wait for the inevitable Mac OS X Lion release, it's already out on the internet. Because that won't get you in trouble at all.