by James T. Areddy, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
China’s military is under attack. At least its Web site is…from hackers.
In a sign that China’s Ministry of National Defense faces the same kind of Internet security challenges that militaries around the world have reported, its new Web site was attacked more than 2.3 million times within a month of its August launch. The state-run People’s Daily newspaper reported that revelation Wednesday in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Chinese defense department’s site, Ji Guilin.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Dell’s fiscal third-quarter earnings fell 54 percent to $337 million, while revenue declined 15 percent to $12.9 billion.
The personal-computer maker saw revenue in its small and medium business unit slip 19 percent from the year-earlier period, while its consumer business was down 10 percent. In a statement, Michael Dell, its chief executive, said that the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 has been “very well received” by consumers and businesses, and that the company will see those results more in the fourth quarter.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The use of peer-to-peer networks for sharing files has come under fire during recent months, including the dismantling of Swedish BitTorrent site Pirate Bay, but it turns out even members of Congress need to be kept in check over their file-sharing practices.
by Pui-Wing Tam, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Norwest Venture Partners on Wednesday announced that it had closed a new venture-capital fund sized at $1.2 billion. That’s nearly double the size of the Silicon Valley venture firm’s last fund in 2006, which closed at $650 million.
The new fund is unusual in this day and age amid a tough fundraising environment brought on by the recession.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Cybercriminals are capitalizing on swine-flu fears by pitching sales of fake Tamiflu, security firm Sophos said.
Networks of fraudsters use spam and malware to direct Web traffic to phony pharmaceutical sites, wrote Graham Cluley, a technology consultant for Sophos.
by Conor Dougherty, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
While Tony Hawk has been a skateboarding legend since the 1980s, today there is a generation of kids who know him for his eponymous videogames.
Starting with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater in 1999, the Tony Hawk series has spawned more than 10 titles–among the more successful gaming franchises, and popular among skateboarders who play videogames as well as gamers who have never stepped on a board.
China’s factories have long churned out high tech products. A big question facing Silicon Valley–underscored in a survey released Monday by Intel and Newsweek–is how big a role the country will play in dreaming up those gadgets.
by Matthew Rivera, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama has been spending considerable time on East-West trade agreements while in Asia, but for one chip maker, the negotiations between China and Taiwan are even more important.
by Cassandra Vinograd, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
On the first day that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened registration for non-Latin script domains, Egypt says it has seized the opportunity to register the first all-Arabic domain name.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As the temperature drops, some cold-weather commuters are trying out an iPhone app that lets them climb in to an unlocked, pre-heated car.
Directed Electronics, the company that sells the Viper car-alarm system, has developed an accompanying app called SmartStart that lets customers use their phone to lock or unlock the car, or turn the alarm on and off.
On Monday, researchers will release a twice-yearly list of the 500 biggest computers in the world. The latest rankings should provide some new clues about high tech’s relentless speed race, and how it’s being funded.
China’s bloggers are a focus of organizers of the President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit, echoing similar efforts by the administration to use social-media tools to communicate with Americans.
by Lauren Goode, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Efforts to reform the U.S. health-care and bank lending systems are likely to lead to an increase in information-technology spending, said one potential beneficiary, Sudhakar Ram, chairman of IT firm Mastek.
Overhauling the country’s IT systems could cost as much as $250 billion to $300 billion over five to seven years, he said in an interview.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A new fashion-rental service has been getting buzz this week, but it follows other designer sites that have adopted the Netflix model to their ventures.
Rent the Runway, which started Monday, marks another entry into the growing market of online luxury rental services.
An online news start-up is going where Google and other giants haven’t: sharing revenue with the people who write the news.
Fwix, a one-year-old start-up backed by BlueRun Ventures, is one of a growing number of portals for “hyperlocal” news, a buzzword that refers to sites about schools, culture, gossip and other information on a neighborhood level.
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