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Submission + - Komodo Spawns New Open Source IDE Project (techrythm.com)

Submitted by techoon
techoon writes: Development tools vendor ActiveState is opening up parts of its Komodo IDE (define) in a new effort called Open Komodo. Komodo is a Mozilla Framework-based application that uses Mozillas XUL (XML-based User Interface Language), which is Mozillas language for creating its user interface.The Open Komodo effort will take code from ActiveStates freely available, but not open source, Komodo Edit product and use it as a base for the new open source IDE.
Security

Submission + - Terrorist websites down (cnn.com)

Submitted by
sufijazz
sufijazz writes: "CNN's Kelli Arena reports that "all of the sites that we usually turn to for videos like this are down — they've been down all day." She goes on to say "...who's doing that is a matter of much speculation...some experts thought that maybe it was the government because they knew that the tape was coming and so they interfered and hacked into those sites and put them down.""
Media

Viacom Says User Infringed His Own Copyright 404

Posted by kdawson from the catch-44 dept.
Chris Knight writes "I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a 'Star Wars' theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show 'Web Junk 2.0.' Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. I thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. I just got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Maybe Bioshock's Activation is a Good Thing

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While the rest of the internet is decrying the past week of installation woes for 2K's Bioshock as the worst fumble in PC game launch history, Shawn Andrich at Gamers With Jobs thinks 2K has won a battle against pirates here, and we should be happy about it. In his piece provocatively titled "How 2k Games and Bioshock Took Back the West" he suggests:

This may be the first real strike against pirates in some time that actually slows them down without completely alienating paying customers. Even if they were to crack the game today, the damage has already been done. The lure of getting the game first has come and gone, leaving casual pirates who enjoy downloading games from their favorite sites left choosing between patience and spending their money. Even the most hardcore, savvy game pirates have little recourse short of buying the game or, oddly enough, modifying their Xbox 360. In an interesting switch, the Xbox 360 version of Bioshock was hacked and made available for download on major torrent sites on release day.
It's such a thin line between complete victory and utter ruin.
Toys

Submission + - "Michael Vicking" that Chew Toy

Submitted by
kgb
kgb writes: "Looks like Michael Vick has gone from the cover of Madden to a chew toy, put out by a small Jacksonville company and giving Michael Vick some due reciprocity. If I had my way, everyone would start using Michael Vick as a verb."
Microsoft

Submission + - HSI to reconsider its vote on OOXML (noooxml.org)

Submitted by
ens0niq
ens0niq writes: "Mr János Kóka, Minister of Economy and Transport, has sent a mail to György Pónyai, General Director of Hungarian Standards Institution (HSI), about its the Hungarian vote on OOXML issue. In this mail the minister informed the director, that the IBM Magyarországi Kft (the Hungarian subsidiary of IBM) signed concerns about the way how the Hungarian vote was decided on the OOXML issue (draft of ISO/IEC DIS 25900 standard) on the meeting of the Committee on 25th June 2007. As known, the meeting was organized breaking the internal rules of HSI on decisive meetings. The invitations for the meeting were not sent to the parties in time, then the voting rules were changed by the secretary of the Committee so that only the 50% of the votes is enough for a decision instead of the 2/3 lied down in the original rules. Because of these circumstances, the counterinterested parties were not able to vote on the meeting, therefore the official Hungarian opinion on the issue is "yes" for OOXML as ISO standard. However because of these anomalies, the minister has ordered HSI to restore the juridical situation, and repeat the vote on 31th August 2007. Since then, new members have been inaugurated to the committee of the HSI, where the only requirement of membership is a fee of 100-200 euros. Many of the new members seem to have tight relationships with Microsoft."
Software

Submission + - Microsoft admits buying Swedish OOXML votes (nyteknik.se)

Submitted by ath
ath writes: In an interview with the swedish magazine NyTeknik , a Microsoft representative admits to "recommending" business partners to vote on OOXML.
Translated quotes from the article:
-We have been informing our business partners about the process at SIS. What is going on, what the time plan is and that Microsoft thinks it is good if OOXML becomes a standard
-In a letter from Microsoft, our business partners were informed that they were 'expected' to participate in the SIS meeting and vote yes. As a compensation they would get 'market benefits' and extra support in terms of microsoft resources.
-This was a mistake and the letter was sent by a single employee on his own initiative without sanctions from Microsoft. He also quickly realised his mistake and tried to recall the letter
-I can understand the critique about coup like voting. But I claim the voters knew the issue well and had their own interest in OOXML becoming an ISO standard
(Interviewer) -Has this harmed Microsoft?
-Time will tell. But almost all customers we have been talking to thinks it would be good if OOXML became an ISO standard.
The Internet

Submission + - First Actual Case of Cyber Terrorism? (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
IANAT
IANAT writes: "In what may be the first actual case of cyber terrorism, someone hacked the video cameras of a Wal-Mart and called in a bomb threat. With the store under their control, they demanded that $10,000 be wired to their account, then demanded that all store patrons disrobe. There's no word yet on whether Wal-Mart has offered counseling to those forced to look at naked Wal-Mart patrons due to this incident."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Activist groups announce support for free software (freesoftwarefreesociety.org)

Submitted by
johnsu01
johnsu01 writes: "Activist groups Friends of the Earth International, the Green Party, People and Planet, and the New Internationalist have joined the Free Software Foundation to support a coalition statement advocating a free society based on free software and criticizing Microsoft Vista, published as part of the FSF's BadVista.org campaign. The statement highlights dangers activists face when they are dependent on proprietary software, including communications limited by DRM and surveillance, and support of companies opposed to their political goals. Judging by the number of signatures so far, Bruce Byfield may be right that this is a formal statement of the attitude already occurring in the nonprofit world."
Software

Submission + - GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?

Submitted by Scott_F
Scott_F writes: I recently reviewed several commercial, closed-source slideshow authoring packages for Windows and came across an alarming trend. Several of the packages I installed included GPL and LGPL software without any mention of the GPL, much less source code. For example, DVD Photo Slideshow (www.dvd-photo-slideshow.com) included mkisofs, cdrdao, dvdauthor, spumux, id3lib, lame, mpeg2enc and mplex (all of which are GPL or LGPL). What's worse is that the company tried to hide this by wrapping them all in DLL's! There are other violations in other packages as well. It seems that use of GPL software in commercial Windows applications is on the rise based on my testing of other software. My question is how much are GPL violations in the Windows world being pursued? Does the FSF or EFF follow-up on these if the platform is not GPL? How aware is the community of this trend?
Math

Submission + - Jessica Alba is Hot, Mathematically Speaking (telegraph.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
superslacker87
superslacker87 writes: "According to a team of mathematicians at Cambridge University performing an obviously unnecessary study, they have determined that Jessica Alba is hot. According to their calculations, a female whose body proportions equal 0.7 has the right swagger, which Jessica does. She even bested Marilyn Monroe, who only had a proportion of 0.69. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/08/25/nwiggle125.xml"

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