Now, Microsoft has closed its acquisition of Skype, locking in an $8.5 billion payment that was led by investor group Silver Lake. Microsoft and Skype are focused on their goal of connecting all people and accelerating both companies’ efforts to transform real-time communications for consumers and enterprise customers. Skype will continue to offer its current products to millions of users globally. Employers are global including Estonia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States. Skype will also be integrated across an array of Microsoft products to broaden Skype’s reach and accelerate its growth as a fundamental way people communicate online.

Samsung attorney, Kate Sullivan, was asked to identify which of the two tablets (ipad 2 and Galaxy 10.1) was the Galaxy Tab 10.1 while the judge held them above her head. Sullivan responded “Not at this distance, your honor.” While she stood only 10 feet away! It is shocking to find out that the lawyers cannot identify their own product. The judge then asked if one of the other lawyers can identify which tab was the Samsung, while one was able to quickly respond with the correct answer. Judge Koh decided that Samsung’s Galaxy-branded tablets do collide on some of Apple’s tablets, but Apple must still prove that their patents are valid under the law before she could grant Apple an injunction. . Koh wrote that she is unable to grant the injunction based on the “utility” patent Apple claims Samsung is infringing upon, but she is still considering three other design patents. If the lawyers of Samsung are unable to identify the tablet, this may have a hurt on their case.

Iran announced that they were planning on shooting a monkey into space with one of their Kavoshgar-5 rockets. Western officials were worried that the Islamic Republic was really just testing its own ability to create long-range ballistic missiles. Thankfully Iran has failed to send a rhesus monkey into Earth’s orbit. Iran postponed its plans on October 3rd to send a monkey into space. Iran has already sent a rat, turtles and worms to space by its Kavoshgar-3 rocket in 2010. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country plans on putting a man into space by 2017.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report earlier this month that nearly one in 10 Americans admit to regularly using illegal drugs. There is a drug arrest every 19 seconds in the U.S. Every day there is 4,320 people that get arrested because of drugs. Because of more than 1.6 million drug arrests in 2010, police and judges have been campaigning to legalize and regulate drugs. Since the declaration of the ‘war on drugs’ 40 years ago there has been tens of millions of people making an effort to reduce drug use. The fact that there has been another 1.6 million citizens last year that have been arrested in effort to reduce drug use shows that this is not working. In this current economy arresting so many people in the failed ‘war on drugs’ is becoming too pricey. Some people agree that legalizing and taxing drugs would be the best option. This would create new revenue in addition to the money from arresting users as well as making society safer by bankrupting the cartels and groups who control the current illegal marketplace. FBI reports show that 81.9 percent of all drug arrests in 2010 were for possession only, and 45.8 percent of all drug arrests were or possession of marijuana. Today the Mexican drug cartels are currently operating in more than a thousand cities in the United States. Two years ago the Mexican drug cartels were only in 230 U.S. cities.

Appelbaum, 28, is a computer scientist employed by the University of Washington. Applebaum has yet to be charged with any crime and his records were demanded without his knowledge. He was dubbed ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace’ by Rolling Stone in 2010. In the making of WikiLeaks, the U.S government issued secret court orders requiring Google and Sonic.net Inc.to give information on the email accounts of WikiLeaks volunteer.

Court documents reviewed by the wall street journal have shown email address of everyone that Applebaum has corresponded with over the last two years. The Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, while The Attorney General’s office obtained the records without a search warrant. Google and Sonic fought to inform Appelbaum of the investigation, the court ruled against them.

The government is no longer legally compelled to provide copies of search warrants. Now, the warrants are sealed and the full investigation proceeds without the suspect knowing. Because the government’s process is so secretive it’s unknown how often the methods are employed, but Google began disclosing the number of requests it receives in December 2009.In the last six months of 2010 the Internet giant received more than 4,600 requests, search warrants, and subpoenas complying with them 94 percent of the time.

Today at 3:30PM ET time the New York Stock Exchange website was down for 2 minutes. It was reported by the Chicago Tribune that a group of hackers calling themselves “Anonymous” Launched a massive DDos attack on the NYSE website and made it unavailable to the public for 2 minutes.

DDos attacks do not involve actual hacking, packets are sent to the servers by 1000′s causing the server to overload and become slow and eventually unavailable.
The NYSE official respond was “We detected no service outage on our corporate website at that time,”. And claimed that the trading was no interrupted at any time.

Read More – http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-anonymous-takes-down-nysecom-for-1-minute-20111010,0,1627656.story

A month ago Yahoo’s board of directors managed to kick CEO Carol Barts. What seemed like another new page for Yahoo seem more like a planned strategy to put Yahoo for sale.
Rumors are surfacing that Yahoo is getting ready for a sale, it seems as Yahoo has been in contact with Goldman Sachs and Alien & Company for due diligence and financial reporting in preparation for a sale.
And it’s already been rumored by Reuters that Microsoft has an eye for Yahoo once again.

Back in 2008 Microsoft tried a hostile takeover with 45,000,000,000$ in their pocket it seemed like a done deal at the time. Now after 3 years Yahoo is valued at 18,000,000,000$. But for a company like Microsoft gaining control over Yahoo, it’s hard to put a number behind the value.

Reported by http://twitter.com/#!/MuscleNerd It seems as if @ConceitedApps sold us out and sold Jailbreakme.com to a unknown buyer.

Reports show JailbreakMe will infect your iPhone with Malware so be warned do not use jailbreakme.com. MuscleNerd has announced they will have all the web biased Jailbreaking files on jailbreaks.me as soon as possible.

Be kind and spread the word “JailbreakMe.com Malware” to protect other users from using jailbreakme.com

Update:

There is no need to worry the site has been sold to “http://twitter.com/#!/saurik” For those of you who don’t know, he is the creator of cydia.

As reported by a TwitPic all Apple retail stores are having an “all hands meeting” TONIGHT, which requires all employees to show up. But, there is a fun twist! All Apple’s retail store windows are being covered in black cloths to prevent people from seeing what is happening inside. Can it be the Verizon iPhone? We will find out 1/11!

UPDATE:: TUAW has to pointed out some interesting commentary:

Despite the unrelated coverup, we’re hearing that retail employees will have a meeting next weekend for the “red zone” — a code name given to the sales area of the floor. We’re also hearing of a possible new set up area, meaning you may see a part of stores set up to accommodate new iPhone purchasers get their phones activated. This would be great for Verizon customers suddenly flocking to Apple’s warm embrace, yes? At any rate, it’s more about the service than the product, both in the retail experience and on your network when you leave the store.

Hey folks! Been getting some email lately about what is the best way to get heard. It the UNEASYapp (Available for both Android and iOS at http://uneasy.me/app).

Just grab the app and hit contact to reach me directly. The most interesting comment gets a free iPod nano! We support picture uploads via both our apps and the most interesting comment (with an email address by Friday) gets a free iPod nano. Let the creative juices flow and nothing is too out there! The iPod nano is the perfect for the holidays!