Stories related to: Internet

Nostalgia for Windows XP is misplaced, Rob Pegoraro argues in the Washington Post : Vista has its problems, but they’re not solved by XP, which is ill-equipped to face the “busy” and “brutish” modern Internet landscape. “XP is not something that needs to be ‘saved,’ as if it were some architectural triumph in need of historic preservation,” he writes. More »

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says businesses aren’t working hard enough to promote an upgrade to the current Internet protocol, which is set to run out of IP addresses by 2011. So it’s pushing for governments to spend more on IPv6 equipment, software and services, as well as fund R&D for the new protocol, reports PC World. More »

CBS has agreed to buy CNET for $1.8 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. The merger comes just as CNET was facing a full-scale shareholder revolt. Now, those investors are getting $11.50 a share, a price the stock hasn’t touched in two years and a 45% premium on yesterday’s close. Those shares immediately soared to $11.30 in premarket trading. More »

The battle between Craigslist and eBay heated up yesterday after Craigslist filed a countersuit charging the auction giant—which holds a 28.4% stake in Craigslist—with offenses ranging from unfair competition to trademark infringement, the New York Times reports. The action is in response to eBay’s lawsuit filed last month, and is being driven by eBay’s launch of its own classified listings, Kijiji.com. More »

Today's youth are dangerously dumb, Mark Bauerlein writes in his new book, The Dumbest Generation. Here's why : Check out Jay Leno's "Jaywalking," where "the ignorance is hard to believe." They boast "a new attitude," taking pride in their illiteracy. More »

The Oxford English Dictionary—the 3-volume one with the magnifying glass—has ditched its hard copy and gone digital for good, which makes one "bookish middle-class" writer nervous. "Other totemic college books could go out of style, maybe," Virginia Heffernan writes in the New York Times . But "the OED was forever. Wasn’t it?" More »

Spanish health officials are opening a virtual clinic in the popular online world Second Life, where they plan to advise teens who are too shy to consult flesh-and-blood doctors, the Guardian reports. It will appear as a consultation room for now, but officials hope to expand the service and eventually “deal with problems of dermatology and psychology through a webcam," one doctor said. More »

China apparently will continue to censor the Internet during August's Olympics, but says the international press will have the access it needs to function, Jacqui Cheng writes on Ars Technica. Officials said they would guarantee as much access “as possible,” but “controls on some unhealthy websites” would continue. In defense, they said, “every country limits access to some websites.” More »

With the Clinton campaign in death throes, Karen Tumulty runs down its five crucial  mistakes in Time : Mood. In a season when Democrats were desperate for change, Hillary “completely misread the mood” and went with incumbency. Rules. Clinton's inner circle wasn't up on them. Mark Penn thought California's primary was winner-take-all—an early flub that forced them into a big-state strategy. More »

Papa John's passed the $1-billion mark in online pizza orders yesterday, trumpeting growth in Internet sales averaging 50% per year since it debuted the service in 2001. Domino’s and Pizza Hut join the third-place pizza-delivery chain in reporting that the Internet is giving the business new life and increasing their slice of the casual dining pie, reports the AP. Pizza Hut says its online orders have grown sixfold in the last 3 years, and Domino's says its tracking system has given the company a "big bump." More »

The New York Times is in "perilous financial condition," and colleges would play the perfect savior, Lee Smith writes in the Chronicle for Higher Education . His plan: Have the seven richest institutions direct 3% of their endowments—which, combined, come to $114 billion— to buying the Gray Lady. "That's for a start." Later on, universities could snap up other papers that "make intellectual life possible." More »

The Olympic torch is bringing more than controversy on its round-the-world trek—it’s also responsible for the world’s highest Internet café, the People's Daily reports. China Mobile built the communications center at Mount Everest's 17,000-foot-high base camp to ensure communications for relay teams as the torch scales the mountain. More »

Spam turns 30 today, but don't break out the champagne just yet: The junk e-mail is as healthy as ever, frustrating tech experts desperate to blow out its candles. It all started on May 3, 1978, with a pitch for a new computer on a government-run precursor to the Internet. Even then, the reaction was fierce, the Washington Post says. More »

The outgoing Italian government posted all citizens’ earnings and tax information, briefly, on the Internet yesterday, sparking outrage over lost privacy, the BBC reports. The site was quickly clogged by Italians checking up on neighbors’ and celebrities’ financial status. The information went offline after about 24 hours in response to a complaint from the country’s privacy overseers. More »

Steve Ballmer's next move on Yahoo is expected momentarily, and one option is to nominate a proxy slate for the board of directors, the Wall Street Journal reports, but hold off on making a new hostile bid for the company. Microsoft could buy time for setting a new price for Yahoo, which rejected the company's $42-billion bid, but keep the option of a hostile campaign later. More »

In an ominous sign of the times for printed news, a struggling 90-year-old Wisconsin daily newspaper is shutting down its daily print operation, but will continue to exist online, the New York Times reports. Most of the 18,000 current subscribers of Madison's afternoon Capital Times are switching to the city's bigger daily. More »

It's been a while since AOL was associated with rising numbers, but a jump in traffic to its content sites shows the company's transition to an ad-supported business is on track, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company redesigned its news, sports, and health sites and created some new ones after its 2006 decision to make its service free. More »

Wikipedia will soon hit bookshelves, the AP reports: German giant Bertelsmann AG is publishing a condensed print edition of the user-generated encyclopedia. The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia will contain 50,000 of the most-searched-for German entries this year—and it could be the first in an annual series. “A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist,” said a publishing exec. More »

In 2000, technology watcher George Gilder argued in a book called Telecosm that infinite bandwidth and instant communication were on the way, thanks to booming construction of fiber-optic cable. Eight years later, post-bust (both dot-com and telecom), the “telecosm” is not far from what Gilder predicted, writes Mark Williams in Technology Review . More »

Microsoft is testing a new product that will allow users to link data across multiple electronic devices through the internet—so the picture you took on your phone can be in the digital picture frame in your home within minutes. It’s a big step for Microsoft, which until now has resisted the “cloud computing” movement, Reuters reports. More »