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Patents

Submission + - HTML5 now officially devoid of Ogg Vorbis / Theora (rudd-o.com) 4

Submitted by
Rudd-O
Rudd-O writes: "It's official. Ogg technology has been removed from the HTML5 spec, after Ian caved in the face of pressure from Apple and Nokia. Unless massive pressure is exerted on the HTML5 spec editing process, the Web authoring world will continue to endure our modern proprietary Tower of Babel.

Note that HTML5 in no way required Ogg (as denoted by the word "should" instead of "must" in the earlier draft). Adding this to the fact that there are widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg technology, there is really no excuse for Apple and Nokia to say that they couldn't in good faith implement HTML5 as previously formulated."
Programming

Submission + - Indian AI unmasked using second order turing test (daz.com)

Submitted by
jacquesm
jacquesm writes: "Indian IT experts have been testing a new generation of highly intelligent bots in IRC channels. One such bot was unmasked in an irc room after failing to pass a second order Turing Test. The bot had to be tricked into accepting the challenge and tried every trick in the book to avoid detection.

The full transcript of the interaction with the bot (called 'asterix') is here : http://ww.com/asterixbot.html , the really interesting breakthrough I think is the fact that the bot uses 'broken english' to masquerade its lack of genuine understanding, but we have become so accustomed to that because of the outsourcing of jobs that it is no longer politically correct to accept nothing less than passable english. This psychological loophole has been used to great profit by the team involved.

It's only a matter of time before you'll have to administer Turing Tests to your chat room friends to see if they are not too tired of communicating with you face to face and have replaced their online identities with bots to keep up appearances."
Data Storage

Recovering a Wrecked RAID 175

Posted by Zonk from the undead-data dept.
Dr. Eggman writes "Tom's Hardware recently posted an article specifying how the professionals at Kroll Ontrack recover data from a RAID array that has suffered a hard drive failure, allowing for recovery of even RAID 5 arrays suffering two failures. The article is quick to warn this is costly, however, and points out the different types of hard drive failures that occur, only some of which are repairable. Ultimately the article concludes that consistent backups and other good practices are the best solution. Still, it provides an interesting look into the world of data after death."
Editorial

Submission + - Many Eyes on Cereal Nutrition and Fertility Rates

Submitted by Adi Lane
Adi Lane writes: Share and contribute interesting findings, ask questions, and more with Many Eyes service, a set of interactive visualizations providing insight into topics varying from cereal nutrition data to fertility rates of countries worldwide. In addition, visitors are able to upload new data sets and create their own visualizations.
Space

Submission + - Remembering Apollo 1

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: On January 27, 1967, (forty years ago tomorrow) Apollo 1's crew — Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee — was killed when their capsule, which had a pure oxygen atmosphere, caught fire during testing. Articles from Wikipedia and Nasa.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Can Game Companies Be Held Liable For Bad Updates?

Submitted by
SoccerClaus
SoccerClaus writes: "Yesterday, I read in a Half-Life 2 forum that the owner of a large game server hosting company was considering legal action against Valve Software, following a Steam update that essentially made his customer's abilities to manage their HL2 servers impossible, and resulted in customers cancelling their hosting service. The proposed suit centers around a newly-introduced CVAR, "cl_restrict_server_commands", which was pushed by Valve to game clients without prior warning. Jokes about Valve's propensity for pushing updates that break clients aside, it raises an interesting question — Should game companies like Valve be on the hook for damages incurred by updates that may disrupt game hosting services? What differentiates a legitimate (but detrimental) software update from a DoS attack, if the net result (losing business, money, etc.) is the same?"
Security

Submission + - Complete windows XP lockdown? Can it be done?

Submitted by
stretch80
stretch80 writes: "I am working on a project to make Windows XP systems 100% locked down. What I mean is that I wish to disable all communications methods in XP, dis-allow any external devices (ie: usb nics, wireless, etc.), no networking, no support for USB, serial and parallel devices, no Internet Explorer, MSN, etc... The computers should allow authorized users to install software off CD, but for all other users, they get to use whatever software the admin has made available. That is all. Has anyone been successful in this level of security??? Am I safe to assume that windows XP Pro is more suited for this than XP home? I look forward to your observations!"
Education

Submission + - Microsoft copies, then patents IDE technology

Submitted by
Michael Kolling
Michael Kolling writes: "Not content with a monopoly only in the office, Microsoft goes after the schools and university market.

A while ago, Microsoft caused a minor ripple in the world of educational software when it appeared that they were blatantly copying features from the small, but reasonably popular BlueJ IDE.

Now they are about to make bigger waves by applying for a patent for the technologies they copied, potentially muscling the environment that orignially popularized these features out of the market.

BlueJ is a not-for-profit project at the University of Kent, and the software is distributed free. It is doubtful that the University could or would sustain a court clash with the Redmond giant.

Microsoft have long tried to increase their share in the beginners' programming market, where BlueJ is at home. Now they are getting into a position to sue the competitor out of the market. Using the technologies they copied as the weapon against the competitor is a twist worthy of Conan The Barbarian.

Details of the case are here."
Windows

Submission + - The Costs of Vista's Content Protection Scheme

Submitted by gregorsamsa11
gregorsamsa11 writes: Peter Guttmann has written a very nice analysis of the costs of Windows Vista's ultra-restrictive content protection scheme:

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
AMD/OSTG

Vendor Bundles featuring AMD chips with ATI graphics discounted

Submitted by OSTG Marketing
AMD has a special deal for you. They are offering bundles featuring AMD chips with ATI graphics at a discounted price. The strategy will help AMD sell more CPUs and graphic cards while giving consumers a price break. "This is the way to compete with Intel and Intel has been able to do this for years. Why not attack it where it hurts the most - right in its beloved platformace business? Centrino and Intel desktop platfor
Windows

Submission + - Upgrade from Windows XP to Vista

Submitted by
ThinSkin
ThinSkin writes: "Joel Durham Jr. over at ExtremeTech has come up with several convincing reasons why users who plan on adopting Windows Vista, at one time or another, should choose the path of upgrade, rather than a clean installation of the new OS. In this how-to of upgrading from Windows XP to Vista, Joel discusses important topics that are crucial during the installation process, such as if your current OS is in fact upgradeable, what you need to do to prepare for that big switch, and how, step-by-step, you install Vista."
Security

Submission + - MS Sneaks Out Patch for Critical Vulnerability

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently Microsoft tried to sneak out an extra patch, with the January security bulletins, correcting another critical vulnerability affecting everything from Internet Explorer 6/7 to the Outlook email client. According to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-004 only one vulnerability was fixed. However, looking at this Secunia security advisory updated today an additional vulnerability was fixed: "2) A signedness error in the Vector Markup Language (VML) implementation when handling shape types can be exploited to reference user-controlled memory and cause a memory corruption, which may allow execution of arbitrary code."
Upgrades

Submission + - Why is RAM so much more expensive than flash?

Submitted by
johnmrowe
johnmrowe writes: "Crucial quote $37 for a 2GB Secure Digital card but $626 for 2GB RAM for a Mac Pro — seventeen times the price! We all know about economies of scale but this is something else. Why is RAM so much more expensive than flash? Is there some fundamental difference in the cost of manufacture or did they catastrophically over-switch from RAM to flash production? And can we expect to see RAM prices coming down as manufacturers switch back?

Surely this must be effecting everyone.

John"
Portables

Submission + - $100 Laptops to be sold to public

Submitted by mianne
mianne writes: At the Consumer Electronics Show, the One Laptop Per Child project announced that it plans to sell the $100 laptop to the general public next year. According to a BBC article the consumer will actually purchase two laptops with one going to a child in a developing nation, making the buyer, in essense, the child's sponsor.

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