eWeek Newsbreak, Jan. 21, 2009

Back in 2008, CNN set a record of 5.3 million live video streams during the election night. That was shattered Tuesday as CNN served up more than 25 million live video streams globally. Akamai, which has about 2,800 enterprise customers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Viacom Web sites, reported a peak of 7 million active simultaneous streams at the coverage's zenith. Just two months ago, Microsoft warned of the Conficker worm targeting a vulnerability in its Server service. A new variant of the worm is striking again. Companies such as Symantec and Kaspersky Lab are saying that the number of infections is in the millions, while F-Secure believes its near 9 million. Besides targeting the Microsoft flaw, which was patched in October, the latest variant is also spreading through removable media as well as by copying itself to network shares by guessing weak passwords. Sony is expected to announce a restructuring plan this week. The plan is likely to include $1,1 billion dollars in savings, which means Sony may cut thousands of jobs and close some of its plants. Microsoft, which is scheduled to release its fiscal second quarter results Jan. 22. They're expected to post a quarterly profit, but says the numbers are expected to be below expectations, which could mean that the software giant could begin cutting thousands of jobs as early as this week. In addition, financial analysts are expected to press Microsoft executives about the prospects of acquiring Yahoo to help expand Microsoft’s own search capabilities. Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other handset vendors are starting to cut the prices of their cell phones.