Technology: Carl Icahn’s Battle for Yahoo | Newsweek From Forbes.com

The Spy In Your Hand
Benjamin Sutherland 6/6/2009 12:00:00 AM
Don't talk: your cell phone may be eavesdropping. Thanks to recent developments in "spy phone" software, a do-it-yourself spook can now wirelessly transfer a wiretapping program to any mobile phone. The programs are inexpensive, and the transfer requires no special skill. The would-be spy needs to get his hands on your phone to press keys authorizing the download, but it takes just a few minutes—about the time needed to download a ringtone.
They Might Be a Little Evil
Daniel Lyons 5/23/2009 12:00:00 AM
We all know how an auction works. The auctioneer sits up front and keeps calling for higher bids until there's one bidder left—and that person wins. Now imagine an auction where the auctioneer won't let you see the other bidders, but assures you they are there, on the other side of a curtain. The auctioneer won't tell you who the other bidders are; you're only told a range of prices that others have bid. And there's another twist: simply paying the most doesn't guarantee you'll win, because the auctioneer has created a system that lets some bidders win even when they pay less. You may not like this system, but you must participate because this auctioneer controls the bulk of the market.
TECHTONIC SHIFTS
Number Crunching Made Easy
Christopher Werth 5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
A dwindling water supply spells disaster for the residents of Brazil's arid Northeast, who live by subsistence agriculture. Droughts have become longer and more frequent, and every year more families set off for the urban slums. Predicting how rainfall patterns will shift in a few years and how it will affect aquifers and agricultural output has become an urgent task. Civil engineers need to know where to build reservoirs and how much water they should hold. But this kind of local climate modeling requires a lot of number crunching, and supercomputers are rare in these parts.
I’m A PC. Keep The Change.
Daniel Lyons 4/4/2009 12:00:00 AM
She is an unlikely assassin—a cute young woman with long red hair, geeky glasses and a funky scarf. But make no mistake: Lauren De Long, star of a new Microsoft ad, is a flat-out killer. For three years Microsoft has been bullied by Apple's snarky "I'm a Mac" ad campaign, in which Macs are represented by a smart young hipster, played by actor Justin Long, and Windows PCs are represented by the dorky, dopey John Hodgman. Microsoft has tried to fight back, but its ads have been so bad that they only made Microsoft seem even more lame.
BUSINESS
Bargain Hunting Billionaires
3/27/2009 12:00:00 AM
Back in October, revered billionaire investor Warren Buffett offered up some advice to anxious Americans: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."
Eighty Is the New Fifty
Daniel Gross
Have you noticed that CNBC is dominated by frisky septuagenarians? Last Wednesday, Carl Icahn, the 72-year-old corporate raider turned hedge-fund manager/ shareholder activist, was terrorizing the whippersnappers at Yahoo, accusing the executive team of foolishly torpedoing a merger with Microsoft. The day before, the network aired testimony of legendary trader George Soros, 77, who was lecturing Congress on the oil spike. Earlier in the month, Warren Buffett's annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting, known as Woodstock for Capitalists—with Buffett, 77, strumming a ukulele rather than Jimi Hendrix wailing the national anthem—received blanket coverage. Kirk Kerkorian, 91, who amassed big stakes in Chrysler and General Motors and agitated for change, is amassing a large stake in Ford.