TomTom ONE 130. Buy Now $149.95July 20, 2007 11:00 AM PDT
Week in review: Keyloggers and crime fighters
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Meanwhile, a House of Representatives panel approved a bill that backers say will help fix the problem of Social Security number misuse and identity theft. By a vote of 41-0, the House Ways and Means Committee voted for a 56-page bill that the panel's chairman, New York Democrat Michael McNulty, said would "stop giving access to our Social Security number to every Tom, Dick or Harry who seeks it."
The bill, called the Social Security Number Privacy and Identity Theft Protection Act, includes a requirement that government agencies not include SSNs on checks, identity cards issued to government employees, or medical tags issued to patients in government hospitals, as well a prohibition on the sale or purchase of SSNs by private companies.
In other Capitol Hill moves, House and Senate committees have approved sweeping changes to U.S. patent law that high-tech firms argue are critical to correcting perceived flaws in the U.S. system. The House of Representatives panel's Patent Reform Act of 2007, for example, proposes some of the most substantial changes to the patent system in years, including replacing a system that awards patents to the "first to invent" with one based on the "first to file," which all other foreign patent systems use. The approved version also includes a number of provisions long sought by technology companies--and contested by others.
Earning and learning
It's earnings season--time for tech companies to put their cards on the table.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini's 2006 cost cuts, painful as they were for Intel employees, paid off as the company's second-quarter profits rebounded compared with last year. The chipmaker posted a 47 percent increase in net income during its second quarter, up to $1.3 billion or 22 cents per share. The Wall Street crowd had been expecting 19 cents per share. Intel said it had 90,300 employees during the second quarter, way down from the 102,500 employees it had at this time last year.
One sore spot for Intel was its gross margin, whose tumble contributed to a sharp decline in the price of Intel shares during after-hours trading. The company's gross margin percentage (basically revenue minus the cost of making chips) fell to 46.9, lower than expected and very low compared with Intel's historical margins.
Yahoo on Tuesday posted second-quarter net profit that was down from a year ago as growth in its historically strong display advertising business slowed, and moves to better compete with Google on search advertising have yet to pan out. Yahoo executives said revenue for the rest of the year would be lower than previously anticipated because of continued lower-than-expected display ad growth and larger-than-expected declines in search affiliate revenue. Yahoo stock dropped more than 3 percent in after-hours trade.
Many Yahoo observers feel that as Google pulls further and further ahead in the ad market war, Yahoo executives keep promising big things. But so far, it appears, they're just promises, and vague ones at that.
"I'm a little frustrated by the direction of Yahoo," said Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets. "Investor patience is wearing thin."
In a sharp contrast to Yahoo's earnings, Google's second-quarter revenue rose 58 percent from a year ago on continued strong search advertising sales, while profits rose 28 percent, slightly lower than analyst expectations. The search king's earnings, missing expectations by 3 cents per share, disappointed many on Wall Street and sent the stock down more than 7 percent in after-hours trading.
So what happened? Looks like the Googlers got a little ahead of themselves with spending. Specifically, it appears the culprits were payroll and data center construction. The company hired 1,548 employees during the quarter, bringing the total number of employees to 13,786.
Also of note
Broadcom and Verizon Wireless said they have agreed to a deal by which Verizon Wireless will pay Broadcom $6 for every handset, smart phone or data card that it imports that contains Qualcomm's 3G chips...A Motorola board member has denied reports that the company is actively looking to replace CEO Ed Zander after the company reported another quarter of losses...The writer of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs appeared to break character in decrying "invasions of privacy" that have the anonymous author rattled.
See more CNET content tagged:
keylogger,
suspect,
PGP Corp.,
crime,
Week in review
- no warrant needed
- there's enough technology openly available combined with congress blessed power for any cop to tap your lines or place bugs in your home without having to convince a judge.
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