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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Talks up Using Printers to Make Drugs (yahoo.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Printers are already liquid delivery systems, but instead of ink, people might someday put the ingredients of different medications into printer cartridges, said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, in a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday.

The drugstore-in-a-box, as he called it, would be part of several devices that could increasingly use information technology for health diagnosis and treatment.

In an example, he envisioned a mobile phone that also contained breath analysis technology like that used to detect alcohol in the breath of drunk drivers today. But instead of just alcohol, the technology would be tweaked to determine a lot about a person's health. The handset could analyze a person's breath for diseases, chemical imbalances and other troubles, and then a clinic could provide a diagnosis.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080509/tc_pcworld/145679

(Officer, my printer is dispensing crystal meth because my OS crashed. HONEST!!!)"

The Matrix

Submission + - Video games don't cause violence (yahoo.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids.

"What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence," Kutner told Reuters.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080509/tc_nm/videogames_dc"

Netscape

Submission + - How can browsers make a buck? (bbc.co.uk)

Christopher Blanc writes: "That search box in the top right hand corner of the browser generates a big chunk of revenue — almost all of it from Google, which is the default search engine.

So Firefox is dangerously dependent on Google for its income. But now, in the "awesome bar", it's got its own search engine which could, in theory, provide a very valuable stream of data about the browsing habits of hundreds of millions of internet users. Tristan Nitot claims that Firefox is approaching a 30% market share.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/05/firefox_can_browsers_make_buck.html"

Google

Submission + - Google launches security group for open source (theregister.co.uk)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Google is spearheading a volunteer workforce it hopes will become the centralized authority for responding to security issues in open source software.

oCERT, short for the open source computer emergency response team, will aim to remediate security vulnerabilities and exploits in a wide range of open source programs by coordinating communication among publishers. According to Google's security blog, the group "will strive to contact software authors with all security reports and aid in debugging and patching, especially in cases where the author, or the reporter, doesn't have a background in security."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/google_launches_ocert/"

The Internet

Submission + - Tethered gadgets threaten Internet future (yahoo.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "The rise of gadgets such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Xbox threatens to unravel the decades of innovation which helped to build the Internet, a leading Oxford academic has warned in a new book.

Professor Jonathan Zittrain says the latest must-have devices are sealed, "sterile" boxes that stifle creativity and turn consumers into passive users of technology.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080508/tc_nm/britain_internet_life_dc"

Security

Submission + - Firefox Plugin Shipped With Malicious Code (yahoo.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. "Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," she wrote.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/145617"

Privacy

Submission + - Licensing software to be in RAM: new corp tactic (arstechnica.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Blizzard is fighting against a company that sells a bot program for use with World of WarCraft, but is doing so in a novel, and scary way: using your RAM to play games is copyright infringement, until Blizzard tells you it isn't.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080507-blizzard-attempt-to-kill-wow-bot-bad-news-for-copyright-law.html"

User Journal

Journal Journal: Actually, Vista works 1

I'm a Windows XP and FreeBSD user. The only thing I won't use is a Mac, because the Macintosh user community, as a group, behaves like a pretentious snot and I don't want to be associated with it. I think I like Windows XP okay for desktop software, but anything server-ish and most development tasks I prefer to do on the BSD box. Desktop and server really are two completely different worlds.

Microsoft

Submission + - DRM cop for Zune video (nytimes.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC's pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright "cop" to be installed on its devices.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/microsoft-may-build-a-copyright-cop-into-every-zune/"

Privacy

Submission + - End anonymity in comments, says paper (news.com)

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes: "Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post's online division, said during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference here that he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards — and if need be — automatically kick them off for good.

"I think part of the problem is that people aren't held accountable on the Web," Brady said. "People say things online they would never say when disagreeing with someone at the dinner table. I think heated debate is fine, but when there are (flame wars), many people won't take part for fear they will be attacked and bashed over the head with the (Internet-equivalent) of a steel pipe."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9936794-7.html

("Politics won't allow for the truth." — P.J. O'Rourke)"

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