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Holy See Declares a "Unique Copyright" On the Pope 447

Posted by kdawson from the vatican-rag dept.
An anonymous reader sends in news of what must be some kind of record in overreaching intellectual property claims: the Vatican has declared that the name, image, and any symbols of the Pope are for exclusive use of the Holy See. They may have a point if, as the declaration hints, some have used "ecclesiastical or pontifical symbols and logos to attribute credibility and authority to initiatives" unrelated to the Vatican. But how much room will they allow for fair use? Will high school newspapers have to remove the Papal Coat of Arms from their Vatican news columns? The royalty schedule was not released, so it's not clear how much Slashdot will have to pay to run this story (or if there will be a penalty for the accompanying pagan idol).
Firefox

Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide 422

Posted by kdawson from the press-the-advantage dept.
gQuigs notes a graph up at StatCounter Global Statistics, which shows that in the last few days Firefox 3.5 became the most used browser version worldwide, edging ahead of IE7. IE8 is rising fast (along with Windows 7), but over the last few months the slope of Firefox's worldwide curve has been steeper. (In the US, IE8 has always been ahead of Firefox 3.5; in Europe Firefox has led since late summer.) The submitter suggests using the time when Firefox rules the roost, globally speaking, to put the final nail in the coffin of IE6, which still has a 14% global share (5%-7% in the US and EU; China and Korea are holding up IE6's numbers).
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Trying to Patent Parallel Processing 2

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Microsoft may have been a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to parallel programming, but that's not stopping the software giant from trying to patent it. This week, the USPTO revealed that Microsoft has three additional parallel-processing patents pending — 1. Partitioning and Repartitioning for Data Parallel Operations, 2. Data Parallel Searching, and 3. Data Parallel Production and Consumption. Informing the USPTO that 'Software programs have been written to run sequentially since the beginning days of software development,' Microsoft adds there's been a '[recent] shift away from sequential execution toward parallel execution.' Before they grant the patents, let's hope the USPTO gets a second opinion on the novelty of Microsoft's parallel-processing patent claims."
Censorship

Submission + - Microsoft Censoring the Search Term "Sex" 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One more reason not to use the new Microsoft search engine bing — apparently Microsoft is censoring search results for bing in India and other countries. If you try to search for the term "sex," along with lots of variations, from India using Microsoft's new search engine, an error message is returned that says, "the search sex may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms." There's no preference setting or toggle on or off choice, you simply cannot search for the term "sex" in India if you are using bing. While a user still can change their country and try the non-Indian version of bing, this seems like an unnecessary step and unnecessary censorship on the part of Microsoft. Apparently Google has no problem with Indians searching for the term "sex." http://thomashawk.com/2009/06/microsoft-doesnt-think-people-in-india-should-be-allowed-to-search-for-the-term-sex.html

Comment Re:Let's Reiterate... (Score 1) 898

by Juln (#26254231) Attached to: First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1

The Linux kernel was overhauled majorly towards the release of 2.0, and then massively for 2.2. Major portions were rewritten for 2.4, which had some big advantages. It bears no resemblance to Minix under the hood - that's a joke.

But that's not fair for a comparison to 'Windows', which is much more than a kernel. Have the codebases to KDE or GNOME have been overhauled? Yes, each has been undergoing massive development in the past 10 years, and they are more stable and sophisticated than ever.

In the Windows world, MS was so sure that even XP was not much of an advance over Win 2000, that they didn't even give it a new version number... let's count. NT 4... NT 5 (win2K), XP (?), Vista (Windows 6), windows 7. Where did the extra number go? Ah yes, XP is basically Windows 2000. They spent that 18 months fixing bugs and dreaming up a new name.

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