bush

Bush administration endorses eternal Net tax ban

A soon-to-expire ban on Internet access taxes must be made permanent by Congress, two cabinet-level Bush administration officials urged Wednesday.

In a joint statement, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson said the "vast potential economic and social benefits of electronic commerce" depend on immortalizing an almost decade-old moratorium on Internet access taxes and discriminatory e-commerce taxes.

"Preventing the taxation of Internet access will help sustain an environment for innovation, ensure that consumers continue to have affordable access to the Internet, especially high-speed Internet, and strengthen the foundations of electronic … Read more

States group wants to extend Microsoft antitrust oversight

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:16 a.m. PDT.

WASHINGTON--A group of state prosecutors led by California on Tuesday told a federal judge that they plan to file a request that Microsoft antitrust oversight be extended until 2012.

Right now, most portions of the settlement reached with the Bush administration and state prosecutors in 2002 are set to expire November 12. Those provisions primarily deal with "middleware," or applications that sit on top of the operating system. One section relating to server protocol licensing has already been extended until 2009.

U.S. District Judge … Read more

DOJ still wants spy suit against Verizon tossed

Much has been made of an El Paso Times interview last week in which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell acknowledged the "private sector" has assisted in the president's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Some opponents of the phone-call-and-email-snooping regime promptly pounced on the remarks, suggesting they implicate telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon, which have been accused in numerous lawsuits of consumer privacy violations and illicit cooperation with the Bush administration.

"Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell told the paper, … Read more

Bush, 'state secrets,' and national security run amok

A federal court case involving Internet wiretapping has revealed the Bush administration at its worst.

I don't say this lightly. Senior attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice showed up before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week and argued that the president should be able to violate federal law--and that judges can't do anything about it.

Their argument rests on something called the "state secret" privilege, which traditionally has been used to pull the plug on lawsuits that could, for instance, disclose national-security secrets such as a crashed military plane's true mission. … Read more

Digital radio goes retro for happier days

We've got to hand it to Bush. (No, not that Bush, the one that makes consumer electronics.) There are tons of companies out there that are trying to recapture mid-century chic, but the U.K. company has done the job exceptionally well, which is a good thing because the radio is such an important icon for that generation.

Its latest creation may be the ultimate combination of old and new in the genre. The unfortunately named TR04DABBLK may look like something from Happy Days at first glance with its piano-black finish, according to GeekAlerts, but closer inspection will find … Read more

Hey, that's funny about Peter Moore leaving Microsoft...

By now, the news has hit the wires (and the blogs) that Peter Moore, corporate vice president of interactive entertainment at Microsoft, is leaving Redmond to be president of the sports division at game publisher Electronic Arts (EA). An EA representative confirmed to CNET News.com that there is no press conference planned, but a release (now posted on Kotaku, which first reported the news) has been sent out.

It's by no means the only recent major executive shuffle in the game console world, as PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi famously stepped down in April. But Moore's timing is … Read more

What the Internet Has Wrought: Presidential Fundraising '00, '04, '08

As the Republican & Democratic presidential candidates report their fundraising numbers after two quarters, there are lots of stories to tell. What's one of the really amazing stories? It's not that Clinton the Democratic "frontrunner" raised about $10 million less than Obama the "challenger" in the last three months or that McCain the Republican "frontrunner" is in third place in fundraising for his party. (Well, those are pretty neat.) The story technophiles should celebrate and fear is how the Internet has enabled such an extraordinary, incredible, surprising increase in dollars collected compared … Read more

Bush, Estonian president talk cyberattacks

When Estonian President Toomas Ilves dropped by the Oval Office for a visit with the president on Monday, a recent wave of cyberattacks with suspected Russian origins was high on the European leader's mind.

"It is a serious issue if your most important computer systems go down in a country like mine, where 97 percent of bank transactions are done on the Internet," Ilves said, according to a transcript provided by the White House. "When you are a highly Interneted [sic] country like we are, then these kinds of attacks can do very serious damage." … Read more

Retro radio recalls the roll in rock

As long as we're in a nostalgic mood for music, we might as well go all the way down memory lane to radios from the birth of rock 'n' roll in the '50s. (That's even before our time, believe it or not.) The classic design from that era has been revived in the form of an updated "Bush TR82," which combines its retro look with digital radio technology. Gadget Lab says its reviews have been mixed at best but, as retro gadgets go, it could have been a lot worse.

The smallest HD-ready TV ever?

So you've got a 50-inch plasma in the lounge, a 32-inch LCD in the bedroom and a waterproof TV in the bathroom. That only leaves the kitchen devoid of entertainment. No need to panic, though--Bush has released what could well be the smallest HD-ready television your money can buy.

The catchily named LCD15W08DVDHD has a 15.4-inch widescreen LCD, built-in DVD player and, of course, features an HDMI input for watching all your high-definition material.

This TV has a decent range of other inputs, too. There's a VGA-in for connecting a computer, or even an Xbox 360. There'… Read more