Microsoft gives Yahoo three weeks to do a deal

Microsoft on Saturday issued an ultimatum to Yahoo, giving the Internet search pioneer three weeks to enter formal merger negotiations and conclude a deal.

The software giant threatened to launch a proxy fight to unseat Yahoo's board of directors, as well as take its case straight to Yahoo investors should no deal be reached in that period.

And as a further cattle prod in getting a deal consummated, Microsoft threatened to lower its existing bid, citing how Yahoo's value will be hurt if it needs to resort to such hostile means.

"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive, stated in his letter to Yahoo's board of directors. "The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal."

Microsoft initially offered an unsolicited buyout bid of $31 per share for Yahoo back on February 1.
Since its initial offer, executives from both companies met four weeks ago for the first time to discuss the merger and once again last week with no results of moving it into formal talks.

Yahoo's board is expected to discuss Ballmer's letter next week, as well as provide a briefing on how talks between the two companies went last week, one source said.

Ballmer's letter is no slam dunk in driving Yahoo to formal talks. Yahoo, which already rejected Microsoft's initial offer as too low and one that undervalues the company, is leery of entering formal talks without assurances Microsoft's bid will be higher.

"We could enter formal talks and they might increase the bid, or they might not," the source said, noting opening their financial books to the software giant may make little difference. "Our books are already open. We're going to report our earnings in a couple weeks."

Yahoo, meanwhile, is cognizant that Microsoft wants to get the deal done and past federal antitrust regulators, otherwise called the Department of Justice (DOJ), while President Bush is still in office, the source said.

One former high-level antitrust attorney with the DOJ, who is now in private practice, said it usually takes six to eight months to move a deal through the DOJ. There is approximately eight months left before Bush's term ends.

Meanwhile, another source noted back in early March that Microsoft has its opposition slate of directors for Yahoo all ready to go.

The opposition slate would move to unseat Yahoo's 10 directors at the next annual shareholders meeting. Should Microsoft take such action and prevail, it's likely the opposition slate would vote to remove Yahoo's "poison pill," which makes it prohibitively expensive to acquire the company. A poison pill floods the market with additional shares of a target company, should a hostile bidder acquire too many shares of a company's stock.

Ballmer, in his letter, indicated that Microsoft would ask Yahoo investors to tender their shares to the software giant, which would park them until it could get its opposition slate elected. While Microsoft would not be able to gain control of Yahoo by taking that measure, it will send a clear message to Yahoo if enough of the Internet company's investors side with Microsoft. Basically, it would show Yahoo how successful Microsoft would be in getting its opposition slate of directors elected, when those investors are asked to vote on Yahoo's new board.

Yahoo should brace itself for an onslaught of investor wrath come Monday.

One large institutional investor is planning to call Yahoo's independent directors and management on Monday.

"I'm not happy with how Yahoo has handled it. I think they've bungled it while Microsoft has played it pretty well," the investor said. "I like that (Microsoft) has put a clock on this. I previously told Yahoo's independent directors that if they didn't move forward with this, I might support a new board."

And while this investor had a brief thought of banning together a group of major Yahoo investors to make a public statement in support of Microsoft's bid, the institutional investor noted that there would be a number of filing hoops to go through with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He noted a more likely scenario will be for institutional investors to make individual statements.

The investor previously advised Yahoo to move forward and fast in doing a deal with Microsoft, given the changes in January with a new administration in the White House and in the European Union. He also advised Yahoo's management to ditch the idea of doing a roadshow with its three-year strategic plan, and instead spend the time getting a deal in place.

"We all think Microsoft should pay more for Yahoo and, if it is handled right, Microsoft will likely pay more," said the major investor, who thought $34 to $35 per share is a good range.

The investor added: "Microsoft has to do this deal. The paradigm is shifting away from their core business to the Internet. They've already spent billions of dollars but haven't gotten it right. This is such a logical deal for them to do."

Bet on 'Rainbow Six Vegas 2'

A sequel to a great video game shouldn't mess with the original formula too much, yet should still introduce enough new features and improvements to justify the purchase.

This is precisely what the talented Ubisoft Montreal developers did with "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2," an intense tactical shooter that once again drops you in the middle of Sin City with your elite squad of operatives to put an end to a terrorist siege.

This time you play as team leader Bishop, a veteran sharpshooter tasked with saving the city.

Among your teammates are Park, an electronics and recon expert, and Walter, who specializes in heavy weapons and demolitions .In this game, played from a first-person perspective, you'll sneak through familiar locations from the first game, as well as many new areas, including a huge theater with balconies, a seemingly abandoned loading dock and, as one would expect, a hotel casino.

You will have access to 11 new weapons and a half-dozen pieces of gear, such as smoke grenades, C4 plastic explosives and breaching charges used to blow open doors. New moves include the ability to sprint by holding down the left shoulder button, which helps pick up the pace of the game nicely.

The story is written and voiced well, including some surprising moments when you hear events taking place in your headset before you meet the characters in person.

Visually speaking, this high-definition world looks stunning, with near-photorealistic characters and environments and real-time day-to-night cycles. And talk about personalization, while we didn't try this ourselves, "Rainbow Six Vegas 2" lets you import a photo of your face using a console or PC Web cam to create an in-game model that looks just like you, used in both solo and head-to-head games.

Speaking of multiplayer matches, if the improved enemy artificial intelligence isn't enough for you during the lengthy single-player campaign - including tougher terrorists equipped with night vision, thermal vision and shields - this game can best be enjoyed in new online multiplayer modes, spread out over 13 new maps.

The game supports up to 16 simultaneous players on the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3 or PC. One of the more memorable new multiplayer modes is called Team Leader, where you need to protect your squad leader from elimination, which is no easy task.

Interestingly, whatever achievements you earn in multiplayer games, such as increasing your rank, are carried over to the single-player game. Similarly, experience points can be earned during the solo campaign, and spent to upgrade armor, clothing, equipment and more, even for multiplayer games.

You can also turn the single-player mode into a cooperative game at any time, seamlessly, by having an online friend jump into your story mode.

Action fans in search of an intense thriller that looks as good as it plays will win with "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2." It's a safe bet you'll find it a gripping tactical adventure for you and a bunch of friends.

Online Supermarket Sells Stolen Credit Cards

If you've ever wondered where stolen credit card numbers end up, Finjan might have part of the answer. The security company-cum-cybersleuthing outfit has uncovered a Web site supermarket for stolen card data.

The 'SellCVV2' Web site, as it is called, was found to be trading the card numbers and other data in a number of sophisticated ways. Criminals visiting the site would be able to earn discounts based on volume bought and choose from a range of tiers, starting at the least valuable Classic Visa or MasterCard -- those with the lowest credit limits -- through more valuable Gold, Platinum, and Corporate levels.

According to Finjan, prices ranged from US$38 for small volumes of premium card numbers, down to $10 for the equivalent low-limit cards in chunks of 100 at a time. Criminals worried about being stung themselves by non-working cards were being offered "guarantees" as well as trial data sets.

No breakdown was given on where or how the cards might have been stolen, but they are believed to be from around the globe and possibly culled using online Trojan-related techniques.

"The site, which appears to use Google's Blogspot service, is typical of a number of portals promoting the exchange of fraudulent card data. But what is apparent from the SellCVV2 site is the level of commercialization of the traders involved," said Finjan's CTO Yuval Ben-Itzhak.

The site gets its rather apt name from the three-digit CVV2 (Card Verification Value 2) number on the reverse of credit cards, essential for remote transactions, and implying that the numbers themselves are also being supplied.

All this after Finjan reported recently on a similar site found to be selling a large number of valid FTP server logins, many used by large companies around the world. As with SellCVV2, that site used a sophisticated trading model.

"If further proof were needed that there is a very serious problem facing the card acceptance and processing industry, this is it. The level of sophistication shown on the site, acts as a clear warning to anyone who thinks card fraud is a containable problem," said Ben-Itzhak.

Oldest recorded voices sing again

An "ethereal" 10 second clip of a woman singing a French folk song has been played for the first time in 150 years.
The recording of "Au Clair de la Lune", recorded in 1860, is thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice.

A phonograph of Thomas Edison singing a children's song in 1877 was previously thought to be the oldest record.

The new "phonautograph", created by etching soot-covered paper, has now been played by US scientists using a "virtual stylus" to read the lines.

"When I first heard the recording as you hear it ... it was magical, so ethereal," audio historian David Giovannoni, who found the recording, told AP.

"The fact is it's recorded in smoke. The voice is coming out from behind this screen of aural smoke."

Sheet music

The short song was captured on April 9, 1860 by a phonautograph, a device created by a Parisian inventor, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville.

The device etched representations of sound waves into paper covered in soot from a burning oil lamp.

Lines were scratched into the soot by a needle moved by a diaphragm that responded to sound. The recordings were never intended to be played.

It was retrieved from Paris by Mr Giovanni, working with First Sounds, a group of audio historians, recording engineers and sound archivists who aim to make mankind's earliest sound recordings available to all.

To retrieve the sounds scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California made very high-resolution digital scans of the paper and used a "virtual stylus" to read the scrawls.

However, because the phonautograph recordings were made using a hand-cranked device, the speed varied throughout, changing the pitch.

"If someone's singing at middle C and the crank speeds up and slows down, the waves change shape and are shifting, Earl Cornell, a scientist at LBNL, told AP.

"We had a tuning fork side by side with the recording, so you can correct the sound and speed variations."

Previously, the oldest known recorded voice was thought to be Thomas Edison's recording of Mary had a little lamb. The inventor of the light bulb recorded the stanza to test another of his inventions - the phonograph - in 1877.

"It doesn't take anything away from Thomas Edison, in my opinion," Mr Giovannoni told Reuters.

"But actually, the truth is he was the first person to have recorded [sound] and played it back."

The new recording will be presented on 28 March at a conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in California.

Corporate iPhone to challenge the BlackBerry

(Fortune) -- As anticipated, Apple announced a series of software developments Thursday to make the iPhone more useful to business customers while venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said it is starting a $100 million "iFund" to finance startups developing applications for the iPhone.

Speaking at the company's town hall session in Cupertino, Calif., CEO Steve Jobs took direct aim at smartphone rival Research in Motion (RIMM) with the introduction of a plan to have the iPhone sync with office desktops.

The plan, according to iPhone enterprise chief Phil Schiller, is to license software that allows the device to work on Microsoft's Exchange platform for so-called push email as well as calendar and contact syncing.

Schiller explained that the business-user targeted iPhone will have network and information security features similar to BlackBerry devices in conjunction with Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500). This would allow users and IT departments to perform similar functions that the BlackBerry does like swiping clean the devices if they are lost or stolen.

The move comes as iPhone sales start to droop ahead of a new faster 3G model due out mid-year. The business market, if Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) is successful, would represent a reasonable strong opportunity for added growth. RIM fans, however say the niche is pretty tightly locked up at the moment.

On the software development front, Apple says "starting today" the company is opening up some of its development tools to application writers outside the company. This development kit, which many had speculated would not be ready or made fully available to outsiders, will allow people to create widgets and other software applications to work with the iPhone.

The company demonstrated a Facebook interface and an online banking screen that works with Bank of America. The company also introduced Cocoa Touch, software for the iPhone's multitouch screen that opens the way for more interactive video games.

Apple showcased some of the new applications that will be possible on the iPhone, including a screen for Salesforce.com's business software allowing salespeople to measure performance against benchmarks and import new customer leads.

The company says it will open "The App Store," available in the next release of iPhone software. Presumably like iTunes, the feature will allow people to buy new applications for their phones.

It appears that Apple's business plan for developers will be a revenue sharing arrangement. Apple will keep 30 percent of sales from every app sold. Plus Apple will host and take care of credit card fees. The software developers get to keep 70% of the proceeds, said Jobs.

Jobs ended the event by bringing venture capitalist John Doerr to the stage. "We're all here today because we love Apple products. And I'm here because I love Apple entrepreneurs," he said.

Doerr called Jobs the "supreme commander" of the world's entrepreneurial rebels. "Today we are very proud to announce the iFund," he said. "We decided the iFund should be $100 million," Doerr said. "That should be enough to start a dozen Amazons, or even four Googles."

Satellite shows Saturn moon might have rings

PASADENA, California (AP) -- New observations by a spacecraft suggest Saturn's second-largest moon may be surrounded by rings.

If confirmed, it would the first time a ring system has been found around a moon.

The international Cassini spacecraft detected what appeared to be a large debris disk around the 950-mile-wide moon Rhea during a flyby in 2005. Scientists proposed that the halo likely contained particles ranging from the size of grains to boulders.

The finding was described in a study published in the March 7 issue of the journal Science.

Unlike the rings around Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, the apparent arcs around Rhea remain invisible and have not been directly seen. Scientists inferred their existence based on measurements by Cassini, which detected a drop in electrons on both sides of the moon, suggesting the presence of rings was absorbing the electrons.

It's unclear where the rings would have originated, but one explanation is they may be the result of an ancient asteroid or comet collision that spewed material around Rhea.

"Rings may even have survived since Rhea's formation," wrote lead author Geraint Jones, a space physicist from University College London.

Until now, only planets were known to have rings, said Jones, who began the research while at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

The Cassini mission, funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn in 2004. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.