Netflix takes steps to thwart hostile takeover

By Cliff Edwards, Bloomberg News

SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix Inc., the world’s largest subscription video service, adopted a so-called poison pill to protect against a hostile takeover after billionaire investor Carl Icahn acquired an almost 10 percent stake in the company.

The stockholder rights plan, approved unanimously by Netflix’s board on Nov. 2, would be triggered if an “activist shareholder” acquired 10 percent of the stock, or an institutional investor bought 20 percent, Jonathan Friedland, a company spokesman, said in an interview.

The move is designed to make a hostile takeover too expensive and gives Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings a tool to thwart Icahn or other potential buyers. Icahn, 76, said on Oct. 31 he had acquired stock and options representing 5.54 million Netflix shares. He said the video service is an attractive takeover target for larger companies, including Amazon.com and Verizon Communications, that have entered the market Netflix pioneered.

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Superman Home: Planet Krypton ‘Found’ in Sky

By Ned Potter

Look! Up in the sky! It’s — oh, forget it.

Superman is, of course, a fictional character, the stuff of comics and movies. But that didn’t stop DC Comics, which owns the Superman franchise, from enlisting the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to “find” the location of his lost home planet, Krypton.

It’s in the constellation Corvus the raven, in the southern sky not far from Virgo and Hydra. The planet Krypton — not that it ever existed — would have orbited a red dwarf star called LHS 2520, Tyson concluded. The star is 27.1 light-years from Earth.

You’ll recall that according to the story, the baby Kal-El was sent in a spaceship to Earth by his parents, who knew that Krypton would soon be destroyed. As an adult in the city of Metropolis, he disguises himself as Clark Kent, a reporter fighting a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. But he also has feelings. In the newest comic, out this week, Tyson is seen helping the homesick Superman trace his roots.

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Apple’s mea culpa: U.K. site posts apology, new statement

After testing a British court’s patience with a not so apologetic public statement, the iPhone and iPad maker is finally eating humble pie.

by Zack Whittaker

Apple’s U.K. Web site now includes a prominent, hard to miss apology after a U.K. appeals court found a previously published statement to be “untrue.”
(Credit: Screenshot by Zack Whittaker/CNET)

Apple has reissued and updated its Samsung “apology” statement on its British Web site after a U.K. Court of Appeal found it to be “untrue” and “incorrect.”

It comes of weeks of back and forth from the U.K. courts after Samsung scored a rare legal win over Apple, after the iPhone and iPad maker lost an iPad design patent suit it brought to the British court against rival tablet maker Samsung.

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Early look at Windows 8 baffles consumers

By PETER SVENSSON | Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system is a week away, and consumers are in for a shock. Windows, used in one form or another for a generation, is getting a completely different look that will force users to learn new ways to get things done.

Microsoft is making a radical break with the past to stay relevant in a world where smartphones and tablets have eroded the three-decade dominance of the personal computer. Windows 8 is supposed to tie together Microsoft’s PC, tablet and phone software with one look. But judging by the reactions of some people who have tried the PC version, it’s a move that risks confusing and alienating customers.

Tony Roos, an American missionary in Paris, installed a free preview version of Windows 8 on his aging laptop to see if Microsoft’s new operating system would make the PC faster and more responsive. It didn’t, he said, and he quickly learned that working with the new software requires tossing out a lot of what he knows about Windows.

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Billboard Hot 100 Singles – Week of Oct 20, 2012

1. Maroon 5, “One More Night”
2. PSY, “Gangnam Style”
3. One Direction, “Live While We’re Young”
4. fun., “Some Nights”
5. Taylor Swift, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”


6. Taylor Swift, “Red”


7. Justin Bieber f/ Big Sean, “As Long As You Love Me”
8. Adele, “Skyfall”
9. P!nk, “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”
10. Alex Clare, “Too Close”


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Microsoft Makes New Push Into Music

By NICK WINGFIELD

SEATTLE — Music fans have often viewed Microsoft as something like a bad cover band, one that pumped out uninviting facsimiles of Apple’s iPod and iTunes with its Zune music players and service.

Now that the Zune brand is dead, Microsoft is once again in search of a hit in digital music. But this time, to improve its odds of success, it is marshaling some of its most powerful brands as never before: Windows and the Xbox.

On Monday, the company plans to announce a service called Xbox Music that will offer access to a global catalog of about 30 million songs. The service will let consumers listen free to any song on computers and tablets running the latest version of its Windows software, as well as on the Xbox console. Microsoft will not initially limit how much music can be streamed, though that could change over time.

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Windows 8 Tablets: The most successful tablets ever.

Summary: Are you going to buy a Windows 8 tablet or smart phone? It will be interesting to see who bites first on the coming wave, you or your employer.

By Ken Hess for Consumerization: BYOD

Soon, you and users around the world will be able to purchase your very own Windows 8 Tablet computers. Though I haven’t been lucky enough to review one yet, I feel as if they’ll take the market by storm for one single reason alone: Windows 8. Tablets have been around for years. Windows has been around for years. Windows tablets have been around for years. So, what’s so special about Windows tablets now? The answer is simply, Windows 8.

But, that’s only the answer to the first part of the question. The answer to the second part of the question is, support.

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Apple’s iPad Mini Brackets Microsoft’s Surface In The Tablet Media War

Ewan Spence

So now we know the date of Apple’s next launch, Tuesday October 23rd, and everything is pointing towards the announcement of the iPad Mini. Of course many in the Cupertino-watching industry were expecting an announcement last week. Why go for a date later in the month?

First of all, the Occam’s Razor approach is simply that earlier in October wasn’t right for Apple and they needed another week or two to be ready. That could simply be a logistics issue, an area of the software or production that needed a few more days testing to sign off, or perhaps this the plan all along – to gain extra publicity from the earlier date and feed this into the increasing hype around the iPad Mini.

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