u.s

U.S.Cellular and Alltel Wireless have joined up with Wal-Mart to take on the cell phone frontier of big-box retail distribution.

U.S. Cellular, a regional carrier out of Chicago, and Alltel, based in Little Rock, Ark., will begin selling select phones under the U Prepaid brand in 18 states some time in May.

U Prepaid, a pre-existing Alltel brand, will kick off at Wal-Mart with four phones: the Android-powered Samsung Repp, LG Attune/LG Exchange and LG Saber feature phones with QWERTY keyboard, and the simpler Samsung Chrono.

Customers will ride either U.S. Cellular or Alltel's … Read more

As if anyone needed another data point to grasp where the hot money is heading, a new report has found that about 21 percent of all patents in the first quarter of this year were for mobile technologies.

The study compiled by consultant Chetan Sharma examined approximately 7 million patents granted both by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office. What she found underscores the trend that has been long in the making. In the last decade, the number of mobile-related patents granted by the USPTO and its European counterpart have soared: The U.S. … Read more

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--Managers at Carpathia Hosting should have known their MegaUpload gravy train would roar off the tracks one day, according to a lawyer representing the U.S. government.

Since January, when the U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal copyright charges against MegaUpload, one of the world's most popular cyberlocker services, the private firm that hosted MegaUpload's servers has preserved user data on its own dime. During a hearing yesterday in U.S. District Court to decide what to do with MegaUpload's user data, Carpathia's lawyer told the judge that the federal government should pick … Read more

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--The struggle for control of MegaUpload's servers begins in earnest later today.

The courtroom of U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady is expected to be packed with lawyers representing the many parties with some kind of stake in what happens to the billions of files stored on MegaUpload's 1,100 servers. Expected to appear are attorneys representing consumers, MegaUpload, the six major Hollywood studios, the U.S. government and MegaUpload's hosting service.

The U.S. government in January accused MegaUpload, founder Kim DotCom, and six other company managers of criminal copyright violations, racketeering, and … Read more

A former Intel engineer has pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of data from the chip giant before leaving the company, according to a Bloomberg report.

The worker, Biswamohan Pani, 36, of Chelmsford, Mass., stole the sensitive chip-related information "to advance his career with a competitor," according to Bloomberg. He worked at an Intel chip-manufacturing plant in Hudson, Mass.

Pani gave notice to Intel on May 29, 2008, with his last day set for June 11 and began work at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on June 2, "while retaining access to Intel's … Read more

The Motion Picture Association of America believes there's still hope for the controversy-plagued Stop Online Piracy Act.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter that was published online today, MPAA chief Christopher Dodd said he was "confident" that President Obama was using his "good relationships in both communities" -- that is, Silicon Valley and Hollywood -- to advance SOPA.

When asked whether there are negotiations going on now, Dodd replied: "I'm confident that's the case, but I'm not going to go into more detail because obviously if I do, it becomes … Read more

Sprint and AT&T aren't the only ones with big LTE plans. U.S. Cellular is taking bold steps to build out 4G LTE wireless data access, too. In February, the carrier announced the Samsung Galaxy S Aviator, its first smartphone to link to the provider's swift new infrastructure, and just last week it revealed its first 4G tablet. Today U.S. Cellular has officially launched the $199 handset. … Read more

As the 2012 presidential election revs up, 33 states now permit some form of Internet ballot casting. However, a senior cybersecurity adviser at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned today that online voting programs make the country's election process vulnerable to cyberattacks.

"It is premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time," DHS cybersecurity adviser Bruce McConnell said at a meeting of the Election Verification Network, which is a group that works to ensure every vote is counted. He explained that all voting systems are susceptible to attacks and bringing in Internet … Read more

It's no secret the U.S. and China are waging a clandestine cyberwar. National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander says it's hitting home hard.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Gen. Alexander said that China is stealing a "great deal" of the U.S. military's intellectual property, adding that the NSA sees "thefts from defense industrial base companies." According to a story in Information Week, he declined to provide any information on those attacks. However, he did confirm speculation swirling around the security space that China was behind last year's attacks on RSA.… Read more