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Microsoft

Chinese Court Rules Microsoft Violated IP Rights 237

Posted by kdawson from the shut-down-the-pirated-versions-and-that-would-really-hurt dept.
angry tapir writes "A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, including Windows XP. Microsoft plans to appeal the case. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property in eight versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 are not involved."

Submission + - The terminator sends a creative & subtle F* Yo (sfgate.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a letter to the California assembly, Arnold sent either an amazing coincidence or unmistakable message to the California assembly.

According to the article on Foxnews, when his spokesman was asked about the message the reply was "My goodness. What a coincidence, I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen." Check out the original here.

Accident or the work of an incredibly talented writer? I loved this message!
Windows

Submission + - Shuttleworth praises "excellent" Windows 7 (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: In a rare piece of praise from the Linux world, Canonical boss Mark Shuttleworth has described Windows 7 as an "excellent release". Speaking on a conference call to announce that Ubuntu 9.10 will be released on Thursday, Shuttleworth labelled Windows 7 "a substantial improvement on the past. Even on netbooks, it's a credible release." However, he remains confident Ubuntu retains the upper hand. "I am delighted that Windows 7 is out. Now that Windows 7 is out, we can compete head to head," he added.
Linux

Submission + - Linux desktop usability after 15 years

Submitted by pele
pele writes: After 5 years of sabbatical from unix desktops and having decided that it was time to check back in. What struck me the most is that, beneath all those themes and eye candy (wobbly windows etc) Linux desktop didn't get that far after 15 years of development. Sure it detected that I had NVIDIA graphics card on my laptop and downloaded the latest and greatest proprietary (yuck, shudder) drivers for it. OpenOffice is fast and pretty. Mozilla and Chrome play ball (up to a point). But then GRUB loads in one resolution and font, Linux boots a completely different resolution and font. Then Ubuntu takes over and gets rid of all that, replacing it with a simple logo, then the desktop appears. It should've taken over even before GRUB as far as I'm concerned. But then those fonts still don't feel right.
Then mouse clicks don't feel right. Now how is that possible? I have noticed 16 years ago that there was something wrong with mouse clicks on linux desktops (back then it was slackware that named your machine "gonzo" with openwindows-like WM and widgets, forgot their names now), they somehow felt "heavy", you needed to click the mouse twice as hard as on other operating systems for it to do something. Right-clicks were even worse. Back then Windows 3.x was similarly crude but slightly better. NEXTSTEP was half way there. SunOS/Solaris and Irix boxen were nice.
Icons still don't feel right. Their aspect is somehow off and they aren't as sharp as they were even 16 years ago on OpenWindows and Windows 3.x. I remember OS/2 Warp 4 or whatever that thing was called was similar, looked horrible, not elegant, not pretty.
I don't know but somehow it seems to me that 16 years of development effort has been wasted on themes, multiple email clients of which not one does it's job properly, GNOME and KDE kerfufle, neither of which is consistent across the board (you inevitably find one or two dialog windows that haven't changed their theme, have a check-box that wandered off to a side, window decoration that didn't refresh properly etc) and millions upon trillions of gadgets that all seem to do the same thing — show a pretty graph or icon and have a configuration/preferences panel that's either too simple and offers no configuration options or simply scares you with its multitude of check boxes and useless configuration options.
Video finally plays but then it looses synch sometimes, sometimes refresh rate is horrible.
I also had a look at Haiku and while I didn't want or need an OS to play with (I need something to live with) at least the boys made it consistent across the board. Mouse feel is ok. Fonts are right. Icons are ok, ugly but ok. Snazzy, fast, clean, everything checks. No apps though so no go, not for me anyway.

So, what exactly needs to be done to kill of either GNOME or KDE, GTK or QT, Upstart (or was it startup?) or GRUB, n-1 email client, n-1 shutdown button, n-1 network and load monitor, concentrate on "doing one thing and doing it right" tm and get it over and done with?!
Software

Submission + - Software development on a netbook 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My current laptop is slowly approaching it's EOL as the pieces of plastic are starting to come off, the battery doesn't hold charges as good anymore and the screen has accumulated various scratches and damages. My old machine was a very powerful 12" laptop with a C2D 2.4 GHz processor, 4 Gb memory and 7200 rpm hard drive. The problem was it's battery life. With the 4 cell battery it barely managed an hour and with the 8 cell pack you got 2 hours. The quality of the batteries turned out to be of low quality, quickly losing the maximum capacity.
This lead to that I couldn't use the laptop as I wanted and constantly having to power manage it in order to conserve power.

I'm now investigating what alternatives that are out there. As I commute by train 2 hours every day I want a small laptop with good battery life that lets me be productive the whole trip. I'm currently thinking of buying a netbook due to the cheap price and the small size but I'm having concerns on compile and response times. What are your experiences? Is it feasible to develop software efficiently on a netbook or am I better of buying a conventional laptop with an low voltage processor for a much higher price?
Patents

Submission + - SPAM: ACLU fights patents blocking cancer research 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: The ACLU joined 20 plaintiffs — including the Public Patent Office — fighting to invalidate an exclusive patent on the genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. The patent has given Myriad Genetics exclusive rights to diagnostic tests — which they sell for over $3,000 — plus control over the rights to even conduct experiments on these genes. "Gene patents undermine the free exchange of information and scientific freedom," argues the ACLU, saying the patents also compromise the integrity of our bodies and eventually our health. Ultimately this case could answer the question of whether it's legal to patent a gene.
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 7 First Impressions (unibia.com)

Submitted by tuaris
tuaris writes: Microsoft Windows 7 is suppose to undo the Windows Vista failure and make Windows "cool" again. Microsoft has supposedly spent the last 2 years fixing and changing features based on feedback given by it's customers. Now, two years later Windows 7 is ready, and it's being marketed as a "major improvement" over Windows Vista.

Is Windows 7 everything it's hyped up to be?

Submission + - The Software Router as MiFi Killer (connectify.me) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The MiFi Mobile Router has been a lot of positive reviews these days, for combining a cellular modem, wifi radio and battery pack in a portable device. But playing with a beta release of a software based wireless router for Windows 7 has me wondering if there's any future to these dedicated, multiradio routers. Is the future that every PC should be a router? Or is that a job best left to a cell phone?

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