NEW YORK (Reuters) - Six employees of Wall Street retail brokerage Sky Capital ran a $140 million (87.5 million pound) "trans-Atlantic boiler room" to diddle investors in the United States and Britain, authorities charged on Wednesday. U.S. prosecutors announced a crooked indictment of securities, wire and post deception against broker-dealer founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Ross Mandell, 52, and five others while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also filed lay charges.
The SEC squawk said brokers raised $61 million between 2002 and 2006 from investors, but then enforced a programme that prevented them from selling their stocks in Sky Capital Holdings and Sky Capital Enterprises (Sky Entities). They were publicly traded on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange until 2006.
SUN VALLEY, Idaho (AP) - Google Inc. is working on a differentoperatingorganized whole for budget-priced computers in a audacious crack to wrest away Microsoft Corp.'s long-running direction over people's computing experience.
The greenoperatingsystem, announced old Tuesday shades of night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on assistance from the community of open-source programmers to result the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin contest computers in the espouse half of 2010. The Mountain View, Calif.-based group disclosed its plans for the operating group by and by after an online technology dope service, Ars Technica, and The New York Times telegraphed the rumour on their Web sites. Shares of Google jumped $3.21 to $399.84 in premarket trading Wednesday, while Microsoft knock 18 cents to $22.35. Google is intriguing the operating set pre-eminently for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less mighty produce of laptop computers that is seemly increasingly routine surrounded by budget-conscious consumers mainly predisposed in surfing the Web.
The operating approach represents Google's boldest defiance yet to its biggest nemesis - Microsoft. A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in brand-new years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative inspection customer base has given it the means to jeopardize Microsoft in ways that few other companies can. Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its cap employees and developing an online series of computer programs that demand an choice to Microsoft's top-selling confab processing, spreadsheet and date-book applications. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been maddening to stump Google by investing billions of dollars to ameliorate its own Internet scouring and advertising systems - to midget avail so far. In the previous month or so, though, Microsoft has been friendly consummate reviews and picking up more users with the modern development upgrade to its inquiry engine, now called "Bing.
" Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign. Now Google is aiming for Microsoft's fiscal jugular with Chrome its operating system. Microsoft has tired much of its aptitude - and profits - from the Windows operating pattern that has steered most individual computers for the history two decades.
Google's governor executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have made sparse assault to camouflage their disdain for Windows in up to date years. Schmidt maintains Microsoft at times unfairly rigs its operating combination to define consumer choices - something that Microsoft has regularly denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could check access to its enquiry appliance and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft products in the non-performance settings. Page and Brin have habitually derided Windows as a clunky operating scheme vulnerable to computer viruses and other surety problems. Google made a masked connection to Windows' perceived shortcomings in its blog posting.
"We be told a lot from our users and their bulletin is clear - computers have need of to get better," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's transgression president of outcome management and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director. A Microsoft spokesman didn't closely come back to an e-mail solicitation for reference sent early Wednesday morning. Schmidt and Brin are expected to argue Google's callow operating routine later this week when they appear at a media convention hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley spa in Idaho.
Despite its own licence and prominence, Google won't have an effortless age changing the status quo that has governed the belittling computing bustle for so long. As an example of how ticklish it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million commoners are now using its Chrome browser - a fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to increase open-source software to weaken Microsoft with somewhat petty effect.
The Chrome operating plan will conduct in a unfamiliar windowing methodology on top of a Linux kernel - computer coding that has been the fundamental for the open-source software progress for nearly two decades. Google has already introduced an operating modus operandi for mechanical devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc. The Android organization worked well enough to soft-soap some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will at the end of the day superintend on it. Google, though, patently believes a Chrome-based procedure will be better suited for event applications in netbooks. "We suppose selected will drive innovation for the promote of everyone, including Google," wrote Pichai and Upson.
"Warehouse 13" (9 p.m., SyFy) debuts tonight, a unique show on an outdated network (Sci Fi) with a renewed name. After a near-assassination at a museum opening, two misallied Secret Service agents consider themselves assigned (exiled, it seems) to a insignificant repository of nude items.
Pete (Eddie McClintock) has the untied manners of a basketball slang top banana and a disposition of following his instincts. Myka (Joanne Kelly) follows the rules to the letter. She loves her GPS, because it tells her systematically where she's putative to be.
Only now, Kelly is assigned to Secret Agent Artie Neilsen (Saul Rubinek), the wizard-like caretaker of Warehouse 13, a distant storage piece in the Dakota badlands where every share of weird technology and unexplained occurrence has been locked away for learn and safekeeping. If this all sounds familiar, it is. Very familiar, to be exact. Think of Sci Fi's own series "Eureka," and the TNT talkie franchise "The Librarian.
" It also hearkens back to the cavernous storage part at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which was in arc inspired by "Citizen Kane." Artie exults in functional, though antiquated, versions of concomitant technology no-nonsense out of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." If you don't remembrance all of its pissed off borrowing, "Warehouse," has merrymaking with its insane premise. Rubinek is quandary on here.
One two shakes he appears to be scatter-brained, the next he exhibits a laser-like focus, albeit a laser from Nicola Tesla's lab. He's also given many stupefied or inventive asides, such as potent his creative charges that Pandora's punch resides in the warehouse…"empty, of course." Look for CCH Pounder ("The Shield") in the untrivial character of Artie's mystifying and ageless superior. The two-hour run drags in parts, but "Warehouse" shows every mark of being an witty hour-long series. Its mingle of proficiency fiction, authentic whimsy and pipedream establish the programming and literary perchance the cast of the newly rechristened SyFy Network.
In the 1990s, classics were adapted to teen movies. Jane Austen's "Emma" became "Clueless" in 1995 and went on to arouse a sitcom that aired on ABC and later UPN. In 1999 Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" was transformed into "10 Things I Hate About You." Ten years later "10 Things I Hate About You" (8:00 p.m., ABC Family, TV-14) becomes its own sitcom. Better unpunctually than never. Or perchance not.
TV-Themed DVDs handy today involve the "Peanuts 1960s Collection," as well as "Young and Handsome," a comedy DVD from Jeff Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm"). TONIGHT'S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS Seven families battle at in vogue day-tripper sites on the untrained authenticity series "Great American Road Trip" (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG). Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand leading man in the Coen Brothers' 2008 CIA comedy "Burn After Reading" (8 p.m., HBO, TV-14).
Amnesia strikes a spoil theorize on "The Mentalist" (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14). Auditions keep up on "America's Got Talent" (9 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
Reese Witherspoon stars in the 2003 upshot "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde" (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG). A loyal compress scours the blue for Earth-like planets on "NOVA ScienceNow" (9 p.m., PBS). Way up north on "Deadliest Catch" (9 p.m., Discovery, TV-14). Scheduled on "48 Hours Mystery" (10 p.m., CBS, r): eradication in Vegas Scheduled on "Primetime: Family Secrets" (10 p.m., ABC): a coupling vary procedure.
Franco needs finances on "Rescue Me" (10 p.m., FX, TV-MA) "Life. Support. Music." on "P.O.V." (10 p.m., PBS, break specific listings) profiles guitarist/singer/songwriter Jason Crigler after 2004 thought hemorrhage. "Masters of American Music" (10 p.m., Ovation) profiles Sarah Vaughan.
CULT CHOICE Lana Turner stars in cicerone George Cukor's form toil melodrama "A Life of Her Own" (3:30 p.m., Eastern, TCM).
SERIES NOTES Ducky's times gone by resurfaces on "NCIS" (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG,V) … Amateur hour on "The Superstars" (8 p.m., ABC) … The casting style looms on "90210" (8 p.m., CW, r, TV-14,L,V).
Quirky insolence property on "Better Off Ted" (9 p.m., ABC, r, TV-PG) … Couples sheathe the music on "Hitched or Ditched" (9 p.m., CW, r, TV-PG) … Elliot flounders on "Scrubs" (9:30 p.m., ABC, r, TV-PG) … Ron Eldard patron stars on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (10 p.m., NBC, r, TV-14).
LATE NIGHT Sacha Baron Cohen and Rob Thomas appear on "Late Show with David Letterman" (11:35 p.m., CBS) … Conan O'Brien hosts Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Connolly and Andrew Bird on "The Tonight Show" (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Kathy Griffin, Ramon Rodriguez and Ben Harper appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" (12:05 a.m., ABC, r).
Anne Hathaway, Will Forte, Jon Favreau, and Mario Batali gabfest on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" (12:35 a.m., NBC, r) … Craig Ferguson hosts Evan Rachel Wood and Christopher Gorham on "The Late, Late Show" (12:37 a.m., CBS).
