Apple was charged with colluding with publishers to fix e-book prices. At the root of the dispute lie two different ways that publishers can sell books to retailers.

First, there's the wholesale model, the way that book publishers have sold printed books to bookstores and other outlets for years. The publisher sets a cover price for a book, sells it to a retailer at a discount (typically 50 percent) and then the retailer can sell the book to consumers for whatever price it chooses.

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But in a few years, that image may be replaced by one of young Mormons sitting with an iPad, typing messages on Facebook.

Recognizing the world has changed, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leaders announced Sunday night that missionaries will do less door-to-door proselytizing, and instead, use the Internet to recruit new church members.

The strategy shift reflects the growing importance of social media and people's preference to connect over sites such as Facebook rather than opening their homes to strangers, church leaders said.

"The way in which we fulfill our responsibilities to share the gospel must adapt to a changing world," said Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during a presentation to mission presidents in Provo, Utah, that was broadcast worldwide.

The move is the latest example of the LDS church's gradual embrace of the digital age, and a recognition that door-to-door proselytizing is not the most effective way to expand church membership, church scholars said.

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Samsung Electronics Co., the second-largest maker of tablets after Apple, on Monday said it is putting three new tablets in the Galaxy Tab 3 series on sale in the U.S. on July 7. The cheapest, a $199 device, will have a screen that measures 7 inches diagonally. An 8-inch model will go for $299 and a 10-inch one for $399.

"Our goal is to attract Galaxy smartphone users, and to make it the ultimate smartphone accessory," said Shoneel Kolhatkar, director of product planning at Samsung Mobile.

The "Tab" line is Samsung's value brand, undercutting the price of similar Apple models. Samsung's premium tablets are in the "Note" line, which include styluses. The 7-inch and 10-inch tablets had "Tab 2" equivalents, but the 8-inch model is new, and coincides closely in size with Apple's iPad Mini, which came out late last year.

The new tablets have the same three buttons on the front as the Galaxy smartphones. Last year's Tab 2 had no physical buttons on the front, as encouraged by Google, which supplies the Android software.

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The Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday approved the purchase of $30 million worth of iPads as the first part of a multi-year commitment. It found that the iPad was the least expensive option that met its specifications.

The initial order is for more than 31,000 iPads, Apple said. The Los Angeles Unified School District has more than 640,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The textbooks will be delivered through an application from Pearson, a major publisher, rather than through Apple's own iBooks. Apple and its publisher partners launched a suite of textbooks for iBooks in early 2012.

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"All the work that I have done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm 50. Apple II is obsolete now. Apple I was obsolete many years ago. The Macintosh is on the verge of becoming obsolete in the next few years. This is not a field in which one writes a Principia which holds up for 200 years. This is not a field where one paints a painting that will be looked at for centuries, or builds a church that will be admired and looked at with astonishment for centuries. No, this is a field where one does one's work and in ten years it's obsolete, and really will not be usable within 10 or 20 years."

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The new album, called "Magna Carta Holy Grail," will be free for the first 1 million android phone owners who download an app for the album. Those who do so will get the album on July 4, three days before its official release, according to a Sunday statement.

Samsung is a leader in the mobile phone market and has been steadily chipping away at Apple's share of the market with its Galaxy phones. The deal with Jay-Z is yet another example of how mobile companies are using music to lure new consumers.

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Writing in Reason, Ronald Bailey cites the spread of particular liberties since the eighteenth century as evidence that the entire world is becoming libertarian. But he ignores the fact that the welfare state and business regulation have grown up together with democracy and civil liberties. The citizens of democracies prefer to vote themselves generous social insurance benefits. They also insist on using government to police business firms while benefiting from a market economy.

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The acquisition announced Tuesday ends several months of speculation as Waze flirted with potential buyers interested in its rapidly growing service. Waze blends elements of a social network into its maps to produce more precise directions and more reliable information about local traffic conditions.

Google Inc. is believed to have trumped two of its fiercest foes, Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., in the bidding for Waze, which is based in Israel but also maintains a Palo Alto, Calif., office near all three of the Silicon Valley giants.

"We evaluated many options and believe Google is the best partner," Waze CEO Noam Bardin wrote in a Tuesday blog post.

Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but The Associated Press confirmed the sale price with a person familiar with the negotiations. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the matter. Google isn't expected to disclose the price until it discusses the transaction in a formal regulatory filing.

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The announcements came at the company's annual conference for software developers in San Francisco.

Among the highlights: Apple showed off a simplified look on iPhones and iPads. It is the most radical design change since the iPhone made its debut in 2007. It's part of iOS 7, the new operating system for mobile devices coming this fall.

That system will also come with a new radio service, iTunes Radio. In the past, Apple has sold songs and albums one by one. With iTunes Radio, people will get a continuous feed of music chosen by the service based on what they've listened to and what they've purchased on iTunes. It's free, with ads.

The two-hour keynote kicked off at about 10 a.m. PDT. Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference goes through Friday.

Here's a running account of the event, presented in reverse chronological order. All times are PDT. Presenters include CEO Tim Cook; Craig Federighi, senior vice president for software engineering; and Eddie Cue, senior vice president for Internet software and services.

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Noon

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Tech companies responded to the leak by denying knowledge of PRISM, and assured the public that "we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law," as Google chair Larry Page said in a statement on Friday.

However, a recent report in the New York Times clarifies that tech companies are, indeed, aware of some surveillance program and have been negotiating over it with the government:

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.

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The ruling means a halt to all imports and sales on AT&T-sold models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G.

Many of those products are not on sale in the US anymore.

"Today's decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

Apple said it planned to appeal the decision.

Samsung said it was satisfied with the decision which overturned an earlier decision that ruled in favor of Apple.

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Though the researchers aren’t yet sharing the details of their work, a description of their talk posted to the conference website describes the results of the experiment as “alarming. Despite the plethora of defense mechanisms in [Apple] iOS, we successfully injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple devices running the latest operating system (OS) software,” their talk summary reads. “All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jailbroken device nor user interaction.”

The researchers’ malicious charger, which they’re calling “Mactans” in what seems to be a reference to the scientific name of the Black Widow spider, is built around an open-source single-board computer known as a BeagleBoard, sold by Texas Instruments for a retail price of around $45. “This hardware was selected to demonstrate the ease with which innocent-looking, malicious USB chargers can be constructed,” the researchers write.

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The revisions to Windows 8 will be released later this year. The free update, called Windows 8.1, represents Microsoft's concessions to long-time customers taken aback by the dramatic changes to an operating system that had become a staple in households and offices around the world during the past 20 years. Research group IDC has blamed Windows 8 for accelerating a decline in PC sales.

With the release of Windows 8 seven months ago, Microsoft introduced a startup screen displaying applications in a mosaic of interactive tiles instead of static icons. The shift agitated many users who wanted the option to launch the operating system in a mode that resembled the old setup. That choice will be provided in Windows 8.1.

However, Microsoft isn't bringing back the start menu on the lower left corner of the screen. Windows has offered the button for accessing all programs and settings on every previous version of the operating system since 1995. Microsoft believes the startup screen replaces the need for a button, but its omission has ranked among the biggest gripes about Windows 8.

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Jackson is a career bureaucrat who received high marks from environmentalists for her efforts to take on coal companies, implement higher fuel-economy standards, and get greenhouse gases labeled a "pollutant" under the terms of the Clean Air Act. It is difficult to see her playing the same role with Apple that your typical government regulator assumes when moving into a cushy Wall Street job: helping her new employer game existing laws or lobby for weaker oversight.

To the contrary; it's much easier to envision Jackson actually empowered to steer Apple into environmentally-friendly waters. There are obvious branding advantages for Apple here. If the company wants to continue to remain perceived as "cool" by young consumers of (relatively) high-priced mobile devices, getting some real environmental street cred can't hurt.

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First came news that two previously cable-only channels, TBS and TNT, "are about to become the first national entertainment networks in the industry to stream on-air content live across multiple platforms," likely positioning the stations to eventually (though not yet) sell their content direct to consumers on an à la carte online basis, rather than only through traditional cable TV packages. Then yesterday came word that CNN and BuzzFeed are partnering to create a YouTube channel, allowing anyone with an Internet connection -- but not necessarily a costly cable subscription -- to view the new content.

The action this (and other similar news in the television world) should prompt, of course, is cutting your cable TV cord -- or at least considering it.

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One of its contributors, Tim Worstall, recently took me to task for suggesting that a way for citizens to gain some countervailing power over large global corporations is for governments to threaten denial of market access unless corporations act responsibly.

He argues that the benefits to consumers of global corporations are so large that denial of market access would hurt citizens more than it would help them. The “value to U.S. consumers of Apple is they can buy Apple products,” Worstall writes. “Why would you want to punish U.S. consumers, by banning them from buying Apple products, just because Apple obeys the current tax laws?”

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There are at least two reasons this development is important.  First, technology and tax law have led the emergence of what international tax analyst Ed Kleinbard calls “stateless income,” a phenomenon that was on full display at the Apple hearing yesterday, where the company’s spokesperson said in so many words, “you can’t tax this income because it only exists where tax liabilities do not exist.”

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I don't condone Apple's tax-avoidance schemes, but the company is hardly alone in taking advantage of loopholes in U.S and Irish tax law. The Wikipedia page that details the two key strategies employed by Apple, the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, lists 12 other major U.S. corporations that are pulling the same flim-flam. Among them are Apple's tech sector colleagues -- Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook and Adobe Systems -- along with General Electric, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Starbucks.

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As many on Twitter have been quick to note (some in total disbelief, mind you), Paul is the very littlest bit right in his outrage: Apple isn't breaking any laws by sheltering a portion of its earnings in three empty subsidiaries in Ireland, a strategy that has allowed the company to dodge billions in corporate taxes since 2009.

If Congress is looking to place blame for Apple's legal maneuvering, Rand said, they should look in the mirror:

If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress. I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code.

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