Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

House urges Obama to fight UN web regulation By Brendan Sasso  - 08/02/12 07:04 PM ET     The House unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday urging the Obama administration to fight efforts to give a United Nations agency more control over the Internet. Proposals to give the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more control over the governance of the Internet could come up at a conference in Dubai in December. The move is reportedly backed by China, Russia, Brazil, India and other U.N. members. The Obama administration has already announced its strong opposition to such proposals. "Today’s unanimous vote sends a clear and unmistakable message: the American people want to keep the Internet free from government control and prevent Russia, China and other nations from succeeding in giving the U.N. unprecedented power over Web content and infrastructure," said Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), who sponsored the resolution. "We cannot l...

Latest Market Glitch Shows 'Trading Out of Control' Published: Wednesday, 1 Aug 2012 | 3:52 PM ET By: Jeff Cox CNBC.com Senior Writer Wednesday morning's stock snafu had a familiar ring to it — mysterious volume in trades that simply could not have been made by a human comes surging out of nowhere, causing brief but acute market mayhem. By now, many players on trading floors have gotten used to the disruptions that can come from the highly automated new world of high-frequency trading. But that doesn't mean they like it. "This algorithmic trading is kind of out of control," Phil Silverman, managing partner at Kingsview Capital, said as officials at the New York Stock Exchange tried to make sense of what happened. "It seriously hurts investor confidence." By mid-afternoon, no one still quite knew exactly why about 150 stocks experienced a blinding surge in market volume, causing momentary disruptions in the prices of nine Dow...

Apple seeks 'emergency' sanctions against Samsung Apple today said it will file for penalties against Samsung in the federal court case between the two companies. by Josh Lowensohn   August 1, 2012 1:21 PM PDT  Apple is not happy with Samsung's explanation for why it published excluded evidence outside of court yesterday. In a letter to U.S. district court judge Lucy Koh this afternoon, Apple's counsel William Lee said the company found Samsung's letter to the court -- which was filed by John B. Quinn of Samsung's law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan earlier today -- to be unsatisfactory. "Mr. Quinn's declaration does not address two of the Court's questions: who drafted the statement and who released it," Lee wrote. "Samsung's multiple references to the jury in its statement make plain its intent that the jurors in our case learn of arguments the Court has excluded through the press." As a result L...

Black Hat: Iris scanners 'can be tricked' by hackers 26 July 2012 Last updated at 12:41 Iris scanners are widely recognised as one of the most secure biometric security measures Security researchers have discovered a way to replicate a person's eye to bypass iris-scanning security systems. A team at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid was able to recreate the image of an iris from digital codes of real irises stored in security databases. The findings were shared at the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. It raises doubts over what is considered to be one of the most secure methods of biometric security. Researcher Javier Galbally and his team, which included researchers from West Virginia University, were able to print out synthetic images of irises. In one experiment, the researchers tested their fake irises against a leading commercial-recognition system. In 80% of attempts, they said, the scanner believed it was a real ey...

New Russia internet law deemed censorship by critics AFP – 19 hours ago A new law seeking to protect minors from internet sites with harmful content comes into force in Russia on Monday amid criticism that it is a veiled move to increase censorship in the country. Under the law, which was approved by both houses of parliament in July, websites containing illegal "dangerous content" will be blacklisted on a federal register and forced to close. Officially, the aim is to protect young people from sites that feature child pornography, promote drugs or offer tips for committing suicide but observers say the legislation is another step towards greater control over the population by President Vladimir Putin since his return to power in May. In less than three months, parliament has adopted a series of laws labelled oppressive by the opposition. They include the strict monitoring of political NGOs benefiting from foreign funding and heavy fines for anyone who o...

Innovation is Hard: The Real Story of Microsoft's Fall From Grace By   Matthew Yglesias Posted   Thursday, July 26, 2012, at 4:22 PM ET I can't believe it took me this long to read Kurt Eichenwald's long   article on Steve Ballmer and the fall of Microsoft . It's a great piece full of telling detail. But I do think it's worth offering a more analytic take. There's a reason people in Ballmer's position tend to fail. The basic issue facing Microsoft over the past ten years has been this—innovating is really hard. The company reached a point where Office and Windows were so popular that wasn't much you could do to increase their popularity by improving the product. They continued to work on improving the product, and kept these divisions very healthy and profitable, but there simply wasn't an explosive growth opportunity left to be had because the previous successes had been so enormous. So you create a situation where the compan...

Newsweek Owner Says Magazine Will Eventually Shift Online By Sarah Frier and Edmund Lee - Jul 25, 2012 10:00 AM PT Newsweek will eventually transition to an online publication, owner IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) said today, marking the beginning of the end for the magazine’s 79-year run as a print weekly. IAC Chairman Barry Diller made the announcement during a quarterly earnings conference call, saying the New York-based company aims to curb investments in the money-losing business. Still, he stopped short of saying it would be a “total” shift to the Internet. “The transition to online from hard print will take place,” Diller said. “We’re examining all of our options.” A plan to move Newsweek to an online-only publication will be announced as early as September, Diller said. Newsweek became part of his media holdings in 2011 when it merged with IAC’s Daily Beast Co., an online news startup that Diller started with former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown. The merger was ...