George Lucas' 'Red Tails' will finally hit theaters

George Lucas has been talking about Red Tails for a long, long time. If you look closely, you can find the film’s title mentioned in nearly every major article written about Lucas in over a decade. Especially during the slow-but-steady release of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the Red Tails project began to take on the aura of myth: It was the Film George Lucas Would Make Next, lurking just over the next dune. (To quoteSpaceballs: “You said that three dunes ago!”) The film — which tells the story of the heroic African-American pilots in the WWII-era Tuskegee program — finally went into production a couple years ago, with a cast that included Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Bryan Cranston.

Google Acquires I.B.M. Patents

Google made its most recent move in the ongoing great game of acquiring tech patents. The company purchased a bundle of more than a thousand patents from I.B.M., according to a report in the New York Times.

Reiterating a strategy long-espoused by the tech giant, an e-mail statement from Google said that the purchase was relevant to its "business needs," stressing, "Bad software patent litigation is a wasteful war that no one will win." In short, the idea is that preemptively buying patents will mean law suits are less likely down the line.

Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government

As the U.S. government attempts to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling, the Treasury's operating cash balance dropped to $74 billion this week, less than the $76 billion that the tech company Apple had in cash as of June 25, when it released its most-recent financial results.

Apple is taking in more money than it lays out, CNN said.

At present, the U.S. is spending around $200 billion more than it takes in in revenue every month, BBC News reports. Meanwhile, Apple is raking it in. In the three months ended June 25, net income was $7.31 billion, an increase of 125% from a year earlier.

Not only has the world's highest-valued technology company surpassed the fiscal strength of the world's most powerful nation, but Apple is now the second-largest company on the planet, after Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $363.25 billion, according to Financial Post. And earlier this week, shares of the company began trading above $400 a share on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time ever.

Yes, Apple is really on a roll.

Alcatel-Lucent Gets $70 Million in Microsoft Patent Case

Microsoft has been ordered to pay US$70 million to networking vendor Alcatel-Lucent in a years-old patent dispute that at one time could have cost Microsoft $1.5 billion.

A jury in San Diego issued its verdict Friday in a lawsuit that accused Microsoft of violating patents in several products including Outlook. The suit was brought by Lucent in 2003, before it merged with Alcatel.

In 2007, a jury in the same court ordered Microsoft to pay Lucent $1.5 billion for the infringement. The judge overturned that decision, saying Microsoft infringed only one of two patents at issue, and that the second patent was jointly owned by a European research institute, so the court didn't have jurisdiction to rule on it.

Facebook offers bounty to bug hunters

Facebook began offering rewards of $500 or more on Friday to security researchers who identify vulnerabilities in the social network.

"To show our appreciation for our security researchers, we offer a monetary bounty for certain qualifying security bugs," Facebook said in a blog post.

Security researchers who are the "first person to responsibly disclose" a bug that could "compromise the integrity or privacy of Facebook user data" would be eligible for a bounty of $500, Facebook said.

"Our security team will assess each bug to determine if qualifies," Facebook said.

The Palo Alto, California-based social networking titan said a typical bounty was $500 but it "may increase the reward for specific bugs."

Facebook last month hired George Hotz, a celebrated hacker known as "GeoHot," but has not disclosed what he is doing for the company.

Hotz was sued by Sony for hacking the Japanese company's PlayStation 3 game console and is credited with being the first person to go public with a way to hack into an iPhone.

Source: csmonitor

BofA sued for securities fraud by institutional investors

The tsunami of litigation washing over Bank of America Corp. intensified Thursday with some of the nation’s biggest institutional investors suing the bank in federal court in Los Angeles. The investors allege securities fraud by Countrywide Financial Corp., the troubled mortgage lender BofA purchased in 2008.

Plaintiffs, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and funds managed by BlackRock, (NYSE:BLK) T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ:TROW) and TIAA-CREF allege that Countrywide misled investors about its finances and lending practices.

“These prominent institutional investors made every effort to amicably resolve their claims for recovery of damages caused by the massive and pervasive fraud at 

Countrywide without filing formal litigation, but were unsuccessful,” the investors’ attorney, Blair Nicholas, a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg News. The investors hope to “maximize” their returns in a jury trial, he told the news service.

Promises Of An Entourage Movie Heat Up As The Final Season Begins

In the grand history of "movie adaptations of TV shows that will probably never happen but the people involved keep talking up anyway," Entourage isn't the worst offender. Yes, it's been rumored on and off since around 2007, and as recently aslast December executive producer Mark Wahlberg was talking it up as a possibility, but it hasn't come up nearly as often as, say, the Arrested Development or Party Down movies, maybe because there are fewer hopeful journalists who actually want it to happen. 

But with the final season of Entourage now airing on HBO, the movie rumors are flying faster than ever, and have moved up to the person who actually has the power to make it happen, namely creator and executive producer Doug Ellin. During the TCA press tour, that week where the creators of every show gather with every television critic in the country to be barraged with questions, both Wahlberg and Ellin sounded very confident about the possibility of a movie. "If I had to finance it myself, I would do it," Wahlberg said-- and that's no empty promise, considering he could probably actually do that.

Boeing shows off 787 Dreamliner at Oshkosh air show

Marking its public debut in the U.S., Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, the 21st century's first radically different commercial airliner, landed at the AirVenture air show on Friday.

The world's first jetliner made largely of superhardened plastics is still officially "experimental,'' sharing that title with many of the homebuilts and other aircraft on display at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual week-long show in Oshkosh, Wis. But that similarity will end soon.

The Dreamliner, an ultra-smart plane that Boeing says will achieve a 20 percent improvement in fuel burn compared to planes the same size, is scheduled for delivery to its first customer, Japan's All Nippon Airways, by the end of September, Boeing officials said.

That's three years late. The twin-engine plane that will carry up to 250 passengers has been beset by design and construction problems that caused numerous delays.

Kitten overlooked for adoption because she looks like Hitler

An abandoned kitten, named Kitler by animal rescue staff because of her uncanny resemblance to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, is being overlooked for adoption on account of her appearance.

The six-week-old kitten, small enough to fit into a cup, bears a striking resemblance to the German Fuhrer due to a bold black marking across her nose.

The little cat found by a member of the public was severely malnourished and clinging to life after being left abandoned by a roadside.

The kitten was taken to the Wood Green animal shelter in Godmanchest, Cambridgeshire, where she was nursed back to health and is now said to be full of life.

Staff at the centre say she is still in need of a new home and they feel she is being overlooked because of her appearance.

Baros brace sinks Liverpool

kenny; not a happy at all with his team's performance.

An understrength Liverpool side lost 3-0 to Galatasaray in Istanbul, their second successive pre-season defeat by that scoreline.

Having been defeated at Hull on Saturday, manager Kenny Dalglish sent out a virtual reserve side in the first half at the Turk Telekom Arena, with only Andy Carroll considered a genuine first-team starter.

Such was the make-up of the team there were five full-backs on the pitch at the start and the disjointedness cost them as former Reds striker Milan Baros hooked home an eighth-minute volley and added a far-post header just before half-time.