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Software

Format Standards Committee "Grinds To a Halt" 271

Posted by kdawson from the collateral-damage dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Microsoft's OOXML did not get enough votes to be approved the first time around in ISO/IEC — notwithstanding the fact that many countries joined the Document Format and Languages committee in the months before voting closed, almost all of them voting to approve OOXML. Unfortunately, many of these countries also traded up to 'P' level membership at the last minute to gain more influence. Now the collateral damage is setting in. At least 50% of P members must vote (up, down, or abstain) on every standard at each ballot — and none of the new members are bothering to vote, despite repeated pleas from the committee chair. Not a single ballot has passed since the OOXML vote closed. In the chairman's words, the committee has 'ground to a halt.' Sad to say, there's no end in sight for this (formerly) very busy and influential standards committee."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Sues Usenet, Decries it as Napster, Kazaa (wired.com) 1

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "The Recording Industry Association of America is suing usenet.com, decrying it as the next Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer, illicit file-sharing sites.

"Defendant provides essentially the same functionality that P2P services such as Napster, Aimster, Grokster and Kazaa did (prior to being enjoined by the federal courts) — knowingly providing the site and facilities for users to upload and download copyrighted works — except that defendant goes further than even the P2P services to facilitate and encourage copyright infringement by its users," said the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. "Defendant customizes its service to make it as convenient and seamless as possible for subscribers to distribute and obtain copyrighted music without authorization and without paying for that music."

The suit, comes two weeks after the RIAA won its first pirating jury trial targeting an individual. A Duluth, Minnesota jury ordered Jammie Thomas to pay the RIAA $222,000 for pirating 24 songs on the Kazaa system in 2005."
The Internet

Journal Journal: Mouseovers - as bad as popups? 8

Journal by fyngyrz

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by words and phrases in web articles that pop up boxes because my mouse pointer happened to cross them, temporarily hiding the content I was reading in the first place? I didn't click on anything, and consequently, I don't want a context change. I find these annoying to the point of noting what the site is and not going back. Anyone else feel the same? Anyone have a defense of the practice?

Privacy

Submission + - One-Click-Submission to German terror watchlist (www.bka.de) 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the German daily Der Tagesspiegel reported today, the German federal criminal agency has a new strategy to catch terrorists: they put up an informational web page about the terrorist group "militante Gruppe" ("militant group") and now look at their web logs. If someone clicks on that link, his IP address will be investigated and he will be put on the terror watchlist. It would be utter madness of us to ask you to click on THIS LINK to put a billion people on their list so we are not even going to mention the URL. In case you find it, do not click on it! Thank you.
Education

Submission + - Student Attacked After Dropping Cake (infowars.net) 17

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: "School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up. The girl, Pleajhai Mervin, told Fox News LA that she was bumped while queuing for lunch and dropped the cake. After being ordered to clean it up and then re-clean the spot three times, she attempted to leave the area out of embarrassment but was jumped on by security who forced her onto a table, breaking her wrist in the process."
Biotech

Submission + - Bringing Patients Back from the Dead (msn.com) 1

Submitted by FattyBoeBatty
FattyBoeBatty writes: Interesting article claiming that patients generally don't die from lack of oxygen — but from the rapid reintroduction of it. Cells without oxygen can conceivably live for upwards of an hour without any damage. While this idea is already proving successful in small ER trials, this may change the way emergency medicine is delivered around the world.
Privacy

Submission + - Police issue Death Threats to Man with Camera 9

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cops in St. Louis have taken objection over a local man filming their abuses of power, and have responded with death threats, and stalking. The guy they're harassing installed a pretty neat video system in his car after having received a speeding ticket that he that was unfair. What he ended up catching on tape was far worse than a speeding ticket. Luckily the news has picked up on it, so he is probably out of immediate danger.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Satellite images show Myanmar abuses (msn.com) 1

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Satellite images that resulted from a year-long study just released by The American Association for the Advancement of Science, human rights campaigners and commercial satellite providers show evidence from above that Burma's military-led government has engaged in a long campaign of destroying villages and relocating villagers. "Human-rights groups say that more than 3,000 villages have been destroyed in an effort to crush opposition to the junta. Civil unrest in Myanmar has created 1.5 million refugees and 500,000 internally displaced people, and 1,300 political prisoners are in jail, according to human-rights reports.""
Privacy

Submission + - 10 reasons to be paranoid about privacy (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
InfoWorldMike
InfoWorldMike writes: "The truth is out there ... and so is your data. And just because there are no virtual black helicopters following you doesn't mean somebody somewhere doesn't have a bead on who you are and what you are doing. From buttinski bosses to spies and spooks, there are plenty of reasons to be, well, a little paranoid about the vulnerability of your data and the potential loss of your privacy. To help you gauge the appropriate level of hysteria, we've rated each threat on our Paranoia Meter, using a scale of 1 (Don't worry, be happy) to 5 (Be afraid, be very afraid). Though we've taken a lighthearted approach, concerns about data privacy are not all fun and games. Here are 10 ways to practice your paranoia: Paranoia No. 1: Your boss is watching Paranoia No. 2: Google knows what you searched last summer Paranoia No. 3: There's a spook in your inbox Paranoia No. 4: Information brokers are bungling your data Paranoia No. 5: The Feds are on your tail Paranoia No. 6: Zombies abound Paranoia No. 7: Hollywood wants to terminate you Paranoia No. 8: Your ISP knows too much Paranoia No. 9: Your Wi-Fi net is wide open Paranoia No. 10: You are your own worst enemy"
United States

Submission + - Iraqi whistleblower imprisoned and tortured (footballfans.tv)

Submitted by wwmedia
wwmedia writes: One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling....
Censorship

Submission + - German Jews about to sue youtube (heise.de)

Submitted by
sebsa
sebsa writes: "The German news site heise.de reports that the "Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland" ("Central Council of Jews in Germany") considers to file a charge against youtube. They see the availability of videos like the nazi propaganda movie "Jud Süß" or music videos by neo nazi groups on the portal as an "incitement of the people", accusable by German law."
Nintendo

Submission + - Wii Becomes Leading Console

Submitted by Bender0x7D1
Bender0x7D1 writes: According to VG Chartz, total worldwide sales of the Nintendo Wii have surpassed those of of the XBox 360. It has been a long time since Nintendo held the lead in console sales and Sony, the sales leader of the previous generation, is lagging far behind in this current generation. The question is: Does the Wii have the staying power to keep outselling the competition, or will upcoming games like Halo 3 and GTA IV give the advantage to Microsoft and Sony?
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - What happens to a GPL work when copyrights expire? 4

Submitted by aquabat
aquabat writes: Many software projects are composed of code written by several different authors. If the various authors hold the copyright to their respective parts of the code, then it seems to me that the copyright on those parts will expire at different times. If the code is licensed under the GPL, then how does this partial expiry of copyright protection affect the rights and responsibilities of project users, distributors and contributors?
Math

Submission + - Texas Instruments doesn't know Avogadro's Number?

Submitted by lpq
lpq writes: Was watching Monk last night and some kid wrote Avogadro's number (or something that looked like it) on a blackboard. They wrote 6.0221415 * 10^23. Today I was trying to remember the extra digits (only carried around 3 digits of accuracy in brain...not a constant I need alot or alot of precision of, usually.

I remembered my Texas Instruments Solar calculator had it as a programmed in constant. All sources I've seen have the exponent as 23, but the number part varies a bit, source to source. The farthest "off" from the others is the one on my TI-36X calculator. Some values I've found:
(all scaled by 10^23, lowest to highest)

6.022 131 67 Texas Instruments (built-in to calculator):
6.022 141 5 Monk TV show (USA Network)
6.022 141 79 NIST (website)
6.022 141 79 Wikipedia Same as NIST
6.022 142 5 Google
6.022 257 Lapeer County, MI ("http://chem.lapeer.org/Chem1Docs/MolExercise.htm l")


So why all the different answers? Has the value of Av's Num been fluctuating lately like the price of gold or the stock market? Are the other answers "older, accepted values?"

Google is "close" — if they had left it at 7 digits (6.033142) I would have thought it a rounding of the NIST value, but throwing in that 7th decimal place shoots that idea out of the water.

Seems like Lapeer County is most off from everyone else (varying by .00035), being on the high side, but a _CALCULATOR_ company?

TI getting their programmed in constants, "WRONG"?!? What faith should I have in any of their other constants or their formulae and calculations? They seem to be low by ".000 010 12", or to put things in obfuscating perspective:
1.012 x 10^18 or about 1 quintillion?

Is it common for calculator manufacturers to have such different values? Haven't checked other constants — maybe they are better, but it seems "concerning" (if I needed more precise constants, my calculator could be very misleading). It reminded me of the Pentium math bug where it returned the wrong answer on some calculations. We just accept these things as "right" or "correct".
Is quality control dropping? (Calculator made in China). Is it a "foreign-made" quality issue?

Thanks for any insights on why things are so odd....

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