NEW YORK: Apple Inc. on Thursday launched its attempt to make the iPad a replacement for a satchel full of textbooks by starting to sell electronic versions of a handful of standard high-school books.
The electronic textbooks, which include ``Biology'' and ``Environmental Science'' from Pearson and ``Algebra 1'' and ``Chemistry'' from McGraw-Hill, contain videos and other interactive elements.
But it's far from clear that even a company with Apple's clout will be able to reform the primary and high-school textbook market. The printed books are bought by schools, not students, and are reused year after year, which isn't possible with the electronic versions. New books are subject to lengthy state approval processes, making the speed and ease with which ebooks can be published less of an advantage.
Major textbook publishers have been making electronic versions of their products for years, but until recently, there hasn't been any hardware suitable to display them. PCs are too expensive and cumbersome to be good e-book machines for students. Dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle have small screens and can't display color. IPads and other tablet computers work well, but iPads cost at least $499. Apple didn't reveal any new program to defray the cost of getting the tablet computers into the hands of students.
All this means textbooks have lagged the general adoption of e-books, even when counting college-level works that students buy themselves. Forrester Research said e-books accounted for only 2.8 percent of the $8 billion U.S. textbook market in 2010.
Pearson PLC of Britain and The McGraw-Hill Cos. of New York are two of the three big companies in the U.S. textbook market. The third, Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, also plans to supply books to Apple's store, but none were immediately available.
The new textbooks are legible with a new version of the free iBooks application, which became available Thursday.
The textbooks will cost $15 or less, said Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing. He unveiled the books at an event at New York's Guggenheim Museum. Schools will be able to buy the books for its students and issue redemption codes to them, he said.
Albert Greco, a professor of marketing at Fordham University in New York and a former high-school principal, said schools would need to buy iPads for its students if it were to replace printed books.
It wouldn't work to let students who can afford to buy their own iPads use them in class with textbooks they buy themselves, alongside poorer students with printed books.
``The digital divide issue could be very embarrassing. Because if you don't have the iPad, you can't do the quiz, you don't get instant feedback ... that is an invitation for a lawsuit,'' Greco said. ``I would be shocked if any principal or superintendent would let that system go forward.''
Greco said hardback high-school textbooks cost an average of about $105, and a freshman might need five of them. However, they last for five years.That means that even if an iPad were to last for five years in the hands of students, the e-books plus the iPad would cost more than the hardback textbooks.

US cracks down on popular file sharing website
Jan 12, 2012
SOURCE : ET AGENCIES 

WASHINGTON: In one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the US, FBI has shut down a popular file sharing website - Megaupload.com -- and charged seven individuals and two corporations for massive worldwide online piracy of copyrighted works. 
The action, initiated by the FBI yesterday one the site that is popular with Hollywood celebrities and has been endorsed by music stars such as Kanye West, prompted hackers to disable the FBI and Justice Department's websites. 
Online piracy by the two companies - Megaupload Ltd and Vestor Ltd - generated more than $ 175 million in criminal proceeds and caused more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the US Justice Department and FBI announced today. 
This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the US and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime. 
The individuals -- three of whom are citizens of Germany and one each from Slovakia, Estonia, and Dutch -- and two corporations were indicted by a grand jury in US District court, and charged with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement. 
The individuals each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement. 
The indictment alleges that the "criminal enterprise" is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand. 
Dotcom founded Megaupload Limited and is the director and sole shareholder of Vestor Limited, which has been used to hold his ownership interests in the Mega-affiliated sites. 
According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies - often before their theatrical release - music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale. 
The conspirators' content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the internet, the FBI said in a statement. 
"The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy's criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $ 500 million. 
"The conspirators allegedly earned more than $ 175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships," it said. The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. 
It alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded.

McAfee software bug could turn customers' PCs into spam servers
Jan 24, 2012
SOURCE: ET Bureau

BOSTON: Anti-virus software maker McAfee warned that a flaw in one of its products could make customers' PCs vulnerable to attacks in which hackers used their computers to distribute spam.
The company, which is a unit of chipmaker Intel Corp, disclosed the flaw in a message to customers on its website Wednesday.
McAfee spokesman Ian Bain said t least one customer had fallen victim to such an attack, which leveraged a flaw in a service offering known as McAfee SaaS for Total Protection.
The web-based service protects customers from viruses hidden in emails and websites. Bain said the flaw was in a piece of software that McAfee customers install on their PCs to enable them to use the service.While the flaw could enable hackers to send spam from machines of McAfee SaaS for Total Protection customers, it does not grant them access to data on an affected PC, Bain said.
He said that the company's engineers were working to fix the bug and expected to have it fixed on Thursday.
In April 2010, a glitch included in a regular release of McAfee's anti-virus software mistakenly identified part of Microsoft Corp's popular Windows XP operating system as a virus, triggering personal computer outages at many of its customers, including more than 100 large corporations.