AT&T drops its attempt to buy the United States’ other major GSM carrier. [All Things D]

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AT&T drops T-Mobile bid

Eastman Kodak, once one of America’s most illustrious companies, is nearly out for the count. Trading for a dollar a share , its fortunes now rest on patent lawsuits. Here’s Sinead Carew, for Reuters : Eastman Kodak Co shares lost more than half their value on Friday as the company hired a law firm well-known for bankruptcy cases, triggering speculation that the photography pioneer could file for bankruptcy. Kodak, which delivered the first consumer camera in 1888, denied it had a bankruptcy plan, saying it was committed to meeting its obligations and is still looking for ways to “monetize” its patent portfolio. People often suggest that there’s an irony in Kodak having invented digital photography. But its real problem was a sales model based on selling cheap cameras and expensive media. So it wasn’t killed by the digital camera, really. It was killed by the cheap flash memory that came with it. Kodak denies bankruptcy plan but shares plummet [Reuters]

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Did digital photography kill Kodak?

Guangdong, the Chinese province in the Pearl River Delta where practically everything you’ve bought in the past ten years was made, is about to see a minimum wage increase effective Jan 1, with some workers seeing increases as high as 20 percent. Guangdong has experienced high inflation. The wage increases, combined with weak western currencies, suggests that prices for virtually every consumer good in the west will rise significantly in the new year. The experts quoted in this Global Post article say that while other cheap labor markets exist in places like Bangladesh, they lack the scale and infrastructure of south China and are unlikely to provide a substitute. For decades, Guangdong province and Chinas Pearl River Delta have been at the heart of Chinas economic rise. And while larger manufacturers and state-owned companies have contributed greatly to the boom, smaller and medium-sized private firms have also helped propel China to become the worlds second-largest economy. As wages, raw material costs and other costs rise, those smaller businesses say theyre being cut out of the mix. Lau said at the current rate, he expects 30 percent of factories in Guangdong to reduce production or close down this year, in the wake of a minimum wage increase last year. Another 18-20 percent pay rise would decimate the industry. But Crothall is less than sympathetic, noting that although Chinas inflation rate has slowed somewhat, Chinas workers still need more to get by. Bye-bye cheap, Chinese labor ( via Digg )

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Minimum wage hike coming to Guangdong, the world’s factory

Guangdong, the Chinese province in the Pearl River Delta where practically everything you’ve bought in the past ten years was made, is about to see a minimum wage increase effective Jan 1, with some workers seeing increases as high as 20 percent. Guangdong has experienced high inflation. The wage increases, combined with weak western currencies, suggests that prices for virtually every consumer good in the west will rise significantly in the new year. The experts quoted in this Global Post article say that while other cheap labor markets exist in places like Bangladesh, they lack the scale and infrastructure of south China and are unlikely to provide a substitute. For decades, Guangdong province and Chinas Pearl River Delta have been at the heart of Chinas economic rise. And while larger manufacturers and state-owned companies have contributed greatly to the boom, smaller and medium-sized private firms have also helped propel China to become the worlds second-largest economy. As wages, raw material costs and other costs rise, those smaller businesses say theyre being cut out of the mix. Lau said at the current rate, he expects 30 percent of factories in Guangdong to reduce production or close down this year, in the wake of a minimum wage increase last year. Another 18-20 percent pay rise would decimate the industry. But Crothall is less than sympathetic, noting that although Chinas inflation rate has slowed somewhat, Chinas workers still need more to get by. Bye-bye cheap, Chinese labor ( via Digg )

Originally posted here:
Minimum wage hike coming to Guangdong, the world’s factory

Guangdong, the Chinese province in the Pearl River Delta where practically everything you’ve bought in the past ten years was made, is about to see a minimum wage increase effective Jan 1, with some workers seeing increases as high as 20 percent. Guangdong has experienced high inflation. The wage increases, combined with weak western currencies, suggests that prices for virtually every consumer good in the west will rise significantly in the new year. The experts quoted in this Global Post article say that while other cheap labor markets exist in places like Bangladesh, they lack the scale and infrastructure of south China and are unlikely to provide a substitute. For decades, Guangdong province and Chinas Pearl River Delta have been at the heart of Chinas economic rise. And while larger manufacturers and state-owned companies have contributed greatly to the boom, smaller and medium-sized private firms have also helped propel China to become the worlds second-largest economy. As wages, raw material costs and other costs rise, those smaller businesses say theyre being cut out of the mix. Lau said at the current rate, he expects 30 percent of factories in Guangdong to reduce production or close down this year, in the wake of a minimum wage increase last year. Another 18-20 percent pay rise would decimate the industry. But Crothall is less than sympathetic, noting that although Chinas inflation rate has slowed somewhat, Chinas workers still need more to get by. Bye-bye cheap, Chinese labor ( via Digg )

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Minimum wage hike coming to Guangdong, the world’s factory

Google is going to start offering businesses the opportunity to have the interiors of their stores photographed and available on Google Street View . That way a user can…see the inside of a store? WHAT THE — A COMIC BOOK STORE WITH COMICS INSIDE?! *brain explodes shooting cobwebs like Spiderman* Business owners are told they must warn their customers and employees about the photoshoot before it begins. Google has promised it will blur out or refuse to publish any images that include bystanders. The photoshoots will produce 360-degree images using fish-eye and wide-angle lenses as well as stills. Business owners are also invited to upload their own pictures. *tries Street Viewing every strip club I can think of* Damn, nary an areola. Oooh ooooh — *Street Views Cinnabon* Mmmm, now that’s what I’m talking about. *lathering chest with icing and crushed pecans* Example Comic Book Store and Guitar Shop and Google Street View now takes you inside buildings [msnbc] Thanks to Lynn, who agrees they should expand the service to include restaurants’ kitchens. Yeah! …Are those hot wings on the floor?

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Google Street View: Now With Store Interiors

UEFI is a new hardware standard nominally aimed at stopping malicious software, but it could also make it illegal to replace Windows or MacOS with GNU/Linux on your computer . The Linux Foundation has written a technical memo for hardware vendors explaining how they can ship PCs that still protect users from malware, without putting them in legal jeopardy for running free operating systems: The recommendations can be summarized as follows: All platforms that enable UEFI secure boot should ship in setup mode where the owner has control over which platform key (PK) is installed. It should also be possible for the owner to return a system to setup mode in the future if needed. The initial bootstrap of an operating system should detect a platform in the setup mode, install its own key-exchange key (KEK), and install a platform key to enable secure boot. A firmware-based mechanism should be established to allow a platform owner to add new key-exchange keys to a system running in secure mode so that dual-boot systems can be set up. A firmware-based mechanism for easy booting of removable media. At some future time, an operating-system- and vendor-neutral certificate authority should be established to issue KEKs for third-party hardware and software vendors. Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms ( via /. )

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Linux Foundation memo: how to make a computer that doesn’t lock out GNU/Linux

But I wasn’t! Multi-Touch For the second time, Apple was denied a trademark for the term ‘ multi-touch ‘ by the US Patent and Trademark Office after the Appeal Board upheld the original rejection. God, move on bro — she doesn’t want you! For trademarks, “the greater the degree of descriptiveness the term has, the heavier the burden to prove it has attained secondary meaning.” The trademark attorney pointed out that the term “multitouch” has taken on generic meaning, being used by a wide variety of publications to describe the touchscreen technology on Android phones, tablets, and notebooks. Awwww, don’t cry Apple. You and I both know you were just being greedy anyways. You know what you need to do? Come up with an ever cooler term to describe your multi-touch and trademark that. Fingergangbang. Also, that wasn’t free Holler at my Paypal, son! Apple Denied Trademark for Multi-Touch [macrumors] Thanks to Mitchel and Dan, who both claim they’ve multi-touched hooters before but I suspect Dan’s only brushed up against one with an elbow by accident (it’s cool, I know him IRL).

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REJECTED: Apple’s ‘Multi-Touch’ Trademark

Bunnie Huang blogs his recent Open Hardware Summit talk on the future of open hardware. Bunnie says that open hardware stands to grow from a niche in the global hardware market to an important segment, thanks to phenomena like “heirloom laptops” (and boy, isn’t that a provocative coinage!?). Someday, you cannot rely on buying a faster computer next year. Your phone wont get any smaller or more powerful. And the flash drive you buy next year will cost the same yet store the same number of bits. The idea of an heirloom laptop may sound preposterous today, but someday we may perceive our computers as cherished and useful looms to hand down to our children as part of our legacy. This slowing trend is good for small businesses, and likewise open hardware practices. To see why this is the case, lets revisit the plot of Moores Law versus linear improvement, but this time overlay two new scenarios: technology doubling once every 24 and 36 months… In the post-Moores law future, FPGAs may find themselves performing respectably to their hard-wired CPU kin, for at least two reasons: the flexible yet regular structure of an FPGA may lend it a longer scaling curve, in part due to the FPGAs ability to reconfigure circuits around small-scale fluctuations in fabrication tolerances, and because the extra effort to optimize code for hardware acceleration will amortize more favorably as CPU performance scaling increasingly relies upon difficult techniques such as massive parallelism. After all, todays massively multicore CPU architectures are starting to look a lot like the coarse-grain FPGA architectures proposed in academic circles in the mid to late 90s. An equalization of FPGA to CPU performance should greatly facilitate the penetration of open hardware at a very deep level. There will be a rise in repair culture as technology becomes less disposable and more permanent. Replacing worn out computer parts five years from their purchase date wont seem so silly when the replacement part has virtually the same specifications and price as the old part. This rise in repair culture will create a demand for schematics and spare parts that in turn facilitates the growth of open ecosystems and small businesses. ( via Make )

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Bunnie Huang: the best days of open hardware are yet to come

Because everyone was all, “oh no you di-in’t!” when Netflix announced their price-hike , the company has decided to split into two parts in a feeble attempt at damage control. The streaming company will still be called Netflix , but the DVD-by-mail portion will now be known as Qwikster, and will soon incorporate a video game upgrade option but NOT a price downgrade option. No word if they plan on rolling out a “curtained back of the rental store” porn service, but I’m not touching those discs if they do. Well, not without my gauntlets on anyway. Check out full coverage of the story over at IWATCHSTUFF.

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Netflix Splitting Into Two Companies, Netflix For Streaming, Qwikster For DVDs & Games