On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

“Do we have your attention now?” The EC fines Microsoft €899 million for non-compliance. That’s ½ of what Exxon was fined for the famous Valdez 11 million gallon oil spill.

“Microsoft was the first company in fifty years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision", says European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. "I hope that today's Decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft's record of non-compliance…".

Actually the fine was lower than what Microsoft expected and had already preserved in its budget.

Now You’ve Really Made Nellie Mad

This year China (500 exhibitors) overtakes Taiwan (490) for the first time in CeBIT history as 3005 exhibitors come from outside Germany in 2008.

“Green IT” is this year’s theme and Hannover’s own green thumb (and late bookings) boosted the number of exhibitors at CeBIT to an impressive 5845 exhibitors. Everyone expected a larger drop from the 6153 exhibitors in 2007. “Since January the situation has developed much better than we had been expecting,” says Ernst Raue, Board Member of Deutsche Messe.

CeBIT 2008 offers a new concept based on four major categories: Business Solutions, Public Sector Solutions, Home & Mobile Solutions, and Technology & Infrastructure. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative hopes to reduce IT's CO2 emissions from computers by 50% from 2007 to 2010. The group, led by Dell, HP and Lenovo, and other PC makers, will show energy-efficient IT concepts in a special "green village." Climate Savers held a news conference to unveil the environmental efforts of some companies. But for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction: a Greenpeace event the next morning focused on disclosing IT makers' use of pollutants.

Go CeBIT’s Green This Year

There will be a stand at CeBIT where they will place EEG electrodes on your head to measure your brain activity. Then they will capture 3 minutes of your EEG data to train a system to control all the functions of a house via..yep, you got it!..your own brain waves.

The brain wave system allows you to switch on the TV, play music, open the doors and windows, operate a camera at the door, walk through the house, and many other activities.

More importantly, this device may prove (although this research is not the intention of the maker) that we still have brain waves after being in this I.T. business for years. Think ahead with Brain Control.

In "Operation Infrastructure," coordinated U.S. and European authorities seized thousands of counterfeit computer components in November and December.

About 360,000 items, mostly computer networking hardware and ICs, were seized by the U.S. Customs and EC Taxation and Customs Union Directorate General.

The U.S. and EU said last year that they would establish the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to encourage countries to follow intellectual property rights established by the World Trade Organization and other global trade groups. The agreement focuses on improved international cooperation, best practices and the establishment of a legal framework to tackle counterfeiting and protect IP rights.
Counterfeit chips bite into sales of hardware companies selling genuine chips. A common counterfeiting practice is re-marking of chips, in which counterfeiters replace the label with a different brand name and different part number.

More than 130 million counterfeit items were seized in 2006, according to a study released by the European Commission last year.

ACTA to Stop Counterfeit Chips