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Editorial

Submission + - Boeing's 787 Dreamliner Prepares to Take Flight

Submitted by
Lizzytishl
Lizzytishl writes: "While Boeing is preparing to fly it's first 787 Dreamliner, the company opened up to editors at Design News who dug deep in the trenches to get everything you need to know from revolutionizing not only larger passenger jets, but the way complex machinery is conceived, designed and built. From the materials used to build the body of the plane itself to the technology to guarantee passengers will have a smoother ride (less of a chance of motion sickness) to larger windows and carry-on storage bins. It's fascinating. You can view it here: www.designnews.com/Boeing."
Software

Submission + - Start-ups hardest hit by Microsoft patent claims

Submitted by MsManhattan
MsManhattan writes: Microsoft's patent claims will hit start-ups and other small businesses based on the open-source model the hardest, legal experts and open-source advocates say. Even if the company pursues licensing arrangements instead of legal action, as it has indicated it would prefer, "There's no way a small company ... can compete against the patent portfolio of any big company. The very people that Microsoft's trying to collect from are the people least likely to be able to pay them any significant amount of money," says Matt Asay, vice president of business development for open-source developer Alfresco Software Inc. In general, open-source supporters view Microsoft's actions this week as "an attempt to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt and make people hesitant to use open source as an alternative to commercial products" and to mask the lackluster reception for Vista, Office 2007 and other under-performing products. And some have suggested that Microsoft will suffer a backlash effect. Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, notes "The same threat ... Microsoft is holding over open-source users' heads could be turned on the software giant, which itself has used open-source or freely available technology to develop its own commercial products. In fact, there is just as much potential patent infringement in Windows than there is in open source."
Music

Canadians Overpay Millions on Copyright Tax 144

Posted by Zonk from the helping-the-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist has up a post on his site about the Copyright Board of Canada's decision last week on the controversial private copying levy, which functions like a tax on blank media. The good news? The Board reduced the levy on certain media such as CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio, and MiniDiscs. The bad news? The millions of dollars in overpayment from these media will go into the pockets of manufacturers, importers, and retailers, not back to the consumers who paid in the first place. 'In addition to the overpayment issue, the decision contains several interesting revelations ... the decision sheds some light on the CPCC's enforcement program. The collective has aggressively targeted those parties that do not pay the levy, with 21 claims over the past three years. In fact, the enforcement program has been so effective that the Board found that concerns about the emergence of a gray or black market for blank CDs has not materialized.'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - A picture is worth a thousand.... dollars?

Submitted by
losethisurl
losethisurl writes: "Apparently, selling pictures on Ebay can bring considerable profits. Someone actually has a picture of a Galaxy 2517 10 METER HAM RADIO for sale with several bidders taking the bait. The current bid is $1025! The seller, awesome_electroincs, has 8 other pictures for sale. The Galaxy Radio is the only one to find it's sucker however."
Microsoft

Submission + - Why Microsoft will lose patent war

Submitted by
javacowboy
javacowboy writes: "According to Roughly Drafted, Microsoft's patent war on open source will end up being counter-productive. Among the factors the author cites are the three different philosophical perspectives on operating systems and software (Windows, Linux, OS X) and the trend toward open standards in the software industry. It's a very meaty article, with lots of historical perspective and technical analysis, but is well worth reading."
The Internet

Submission + - Political awareness raised by 40.000 blowjobs

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Our campaign which addresses false promises made by politicians has reached millions of people worldwide and is currently the most discussed topic on the internet ( http://www.nee-antwerpen.be/index-eng.htm ). Over the course of two days more than 100.000 people have signed up for the initiative. At this moment our website is the most visited political site in the world. Our modest homepage http://www.nee-antwerpen.be/ receives twice as many visitors as whitehouse.gov and ten times as many as England's labour party website (statistics available on http://www.alexa.com/ ).With this humoristic campaign we bring politics closer to the people worldwide.

NEE is an impartial protest movement running for senate in the Belgian elections of June 10th 2007.

NEE works around political awareness and offers voters in Belgium the option to vote 'no' if they find that none of the parties deserve their vote. NEE-votes would simply create empty seats in parliament, resulting in a loss of income and power for the other parties and giving the voters the power to sanction politicians if needed.

This concept has never before been implemented in any political system worldwide and with this stunt it is now being debated internationally.

Sincerely,
Tania Derveaux

Contact:
e-mail: info@nee-antwerpen.be
tel. Tania: +32 (0) 495 48 84 35"
Music

Prof. Johan Pouwelse To Take On RIAA Expert 184

Posted by kdawson from the knows-whereof-he-speaks dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Marie Lindor has retained an expert witness of her own to fight the RIAA, and to debunk the testimony and reports of the RIAA's 'expert' Dr. Doug Jacobson, whose reliability has been challenged by Ms. Lindor in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. Ms. Lindor's expert is none other than Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology. It was Prof. Pouwelse's scathing analysis of the RIAA's MediaSentry 'investigations' (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands that caused the courts in that country to direct the ISPs there not to turn over their subscribers' information (PDF), thus nipping in the bud the RIAA's intended litigation juggernaut in that country."

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