The Los Angeles Times reveals that “
The Washington Post writes that “If you are one of the few to land a ticket to the swearing-in of President-elect Barack Obama, don't think about hawking it on eBay. The online auction site is banning such postings after U.S. senator [Dianne Feinstein] said she was crafting a bill to make the sales a federal crime. The 240,000 or so tickets, which will be available for free, have not been distributed by members of Congress or the yet-to-be created presidential inaugural committee. But that did not stop people from offering them on eBay and other Web sites, promising they would secure the tickets if they were paid up to $40,000 apiece. Representatives of the auction site met with the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and came to a mutual decision to stop the sales, said eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe. ‘We think it's in the best interest of all concerned,’ she said. […] In a statement, Feinstein said eBay ‘led the way and I hope other Internet companies will follow.’”
According to the New York Times, “China agreed on Thursday to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, settling a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada. The agreement, which was signed in Geneva, allows international news and information agencies, like Bloomberg, Dow Jones & Company and Thomson Reuters, to more freely compete and sell their services inside China, where government controls were tightened in 2006. The United States and European Union had filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization in March arguing that China unfairly required foreign news and financial information providers to be licensed by the Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese state-controlled entity that serves as the official outlet for the Communist Party and also a competitor of the foreign news companies. Canada later filed its own complaint against China.”
eWeek.com reports that “ICANN has placed the EstDomains registrar back on death row. According to ICANN, the embattled registrar will have its accreditation terminated effective Nov. 24. The decision comes roughly two weeks after ICANN first contacted EstDomains Oct. 28 and said it was taking the registrar offline due to the conviction of the registrar’s then-president Vladimir Tsastsin on fraud and money laundering charges. According to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN may terminate the RAA before its expiration when any of a registrar's officers or directors is convicted of a crime related to financial activities, provided the person is not removed in such circumstances. n response to ICANN, EstDomains sent a letter Oct. 29 stating that Tsastsin was no longer president and his conviction was being appealed. On the strength of that letter, ICANN granted the registrar a brief stay of execution until EstDomains' counterclaims could be investigated. On Nov. 7, ICANN responded to EstDomains that it was going ahead with the termination.”
According to ZDNet.com, “Sun said Friday that it will lay off 15 percent to 18 percent of its workforce–or 5,000 to 6,000 people–as it restructures amid weak demand, a series of poor quarters and a business model that rallies around open source software. Add it up and Sun is looking to save about $700 million to $800 million annually. Sun is a company mired in what seems like a never-ending transition. The bulk of its revenue comes from hardware sales–an increasingly tough market–yet it sees its future in open source software like MySQL and services it can package around those applications. The rub: Those growth markets have much smaller revenue bases.”