Corporate & legal

The Israel Defense Forces this week extended its airstrikes on Gaza to the Web, posting video footage of its air assault against Hamas militants on YouTube and using Twitter to spread its message.

According to various news reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) created its own YouTube channel carrying videos that include black-and-white aerial footage of attacks on Hamas weapon sites, and clips of Hamas terrorists loading rockets into trucks.

An IDF spokesperson said it is using the platform to "help us bring our message to the world," by offering "exclusive footage showing the IDF's operation … Read more

Eleven counterfeiters have been given jail sentences of between one and a half and six and a half years by a Chinese court after being found guilty of producing fake Microsoft software.

The "ringleaders of the world's largest software-counterfeiting syndicate," as Microsoft described them in a statement on Wednesday, were sentenced on New Year's Eve. According to Microsoft, theirs were the longest sentences given for this type of crime in China's history.

The syndicate was charged with making and distributing more than $2 billion worth of fake Microsoft software, which had ended up all over … Read more

President-elect Barack Obama appears to be gearing up for a space race 2.0, this time with China.

Obama's transition team is considering doing away with some of the barriers that separate the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, according to Bloomberg.

Citing people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team, Bloomberg says they believe collaboration between the country's civilian space agency and the military's space program would speed up the time in which the U.S. is able to send people back to the moon.

The main--and very costly--goal is to build a … Read more

TechFlash is reporting that EMC has purchased SourceLabs for an undisclosed fee. The unanswered question in TechFlash's report is why EMC would buy SourceLabs, a provider of support tools for Linux and other open-source software.

It's not that SourceLabs isn't a good company. I have followed SourceLabs since its inception, meeting with founder and CEO Byron Sebastian back at OSCON (in 2003) before the company was founded in 2004, and spent some time in the SourceLabs office in 2004 getting a demo of its technology. It was cool back in 2004, and has improved since then.

In … Read more

Mark January 15 in your calendar: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft peg that as the day the bad news will come.

The latest to report on the possibility of layoffs at the software giant is the blog Fudzilla, which puts the number of job cuts at 15,000, or nearly 17 percent of Microsoft's worldwide operations. The January 15 date is a week before Microsoft's second-quarter earnings report, scheduled for January 22.

Microsoft also has a briefing for financial analysts planned for January 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with the headliner listed as Robbie … Read more

China's state council said it's approved licenses for higher-speed 3G mobile networks, a move expected to help bring higher-end services to phone users in the country.

Under a telecommunications reorganization plan whose creation delayed issuance of the licenses, China Mobile is set to receive approval for a network using TD-SCDMA technology, a standard backed by Beijing, according to a Reuters report Wednesday. China Unicom would be awarded a WCDMA license and China Telecom a CDMA 2000 license, according to the report.

WCDMA and CDMA 2000 standards are mature and globally accepted but come with royalties the Chinese government … Read more

Computer maker Dell reorganized its global management structure to focus on four customer groups, and some executives are out of a job, the company said Wednesday.

The company's consumer business already is a global operation, but now three other groups will follow suit: those for big business customers, government customers, and small- and medium-size business customers.

"We have laid the foundation for the transition from a global business that's run regionally to businesses that are really globally organized," Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. "Customer requirements are increasingly being defined by how … Read more

Gawker Media announced Tuesday that it has sold its Consumerist blog to Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.

The blog, which is often an outlet for consumer complaints, will become a new division within the publisher. The current editorial staff is expected to remain, and there are no plans to change coverage, according to a report in The New York Times.

"We don't want to acquire the Consumerist and then squelch it in some way," Kevin McKean, vice president and editorial director of Consumers Union, told the newspaper.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to … Read more

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin has backed off his plan that would require free wireless broadband license holders to filter for smut.

On Monday, the chairman told the blog Ars Technica that he has revised his proposal for free wireless broadband so that it doesn't require license holders to filter for porn. Martin said in an interview with the Web site that he has already started circulating the new version of the plan.

The FCC has been considering auctioning off 25 megahertz of wireless spectrum in the 2155MHz to 2180MHz band for several months. As part of the … Read more