166463
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
US News and world report is running a piece on the lessons Microsoft can learn from Vista. The story talks about dealing with bloggers, making sure that the hardware specs listed for Vista are really up to the task, and making alternatives (i.e. Windows XP work) easily available. It ends with this:
Vista is not New Coke, says Microsoft's Brooks, because it's not going away. There may have been missteps in Vista's development and release, and Microsoft is studying what it can learn for future releases. But, overall, Microsoft is happy with the system and will base future Windows upgrades on Vista, Brooks says: "It is the future."
149895
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Apple has issued a software update that addresses battery performance issues concerning MacBooks and MacBook Pros bought between February 2006 and May 2007. It is a software update only; battery safety is not an issue. Even so, the notice does state that if you experience the listed symptoms, including "Battery pack is visibly deformed," that you should take your notebook in for service.
124393
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Over at CNN is a report that a blogger (or "freelance journalist") has been freed after spending 226 days in jail — a record for a journalist held in contempt. FTA:
Wolf had been found in contempt for refusing to obey a subpoena to turn over his video from a July 2005 protest during the G-8 economic summit where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a San Francisco police car. One city officer was struck during the rally and his skull was fractured.
He goes on to say that "Now that the fences of the law and the tradition that has protected the press are broken down, the people are the victims. The First Amendment, as I read it, was designed precisely to prevent that tragedy." How does a subpoena for video footage of a public event in a criminal investigation violate the First Amendment?
122197
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Apple has announced the availability of high-quality, DRM-free EMI tracks at the iTunes Music Store. From the Apple press release:
DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today — 128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM — at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.
118993
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Apple's iTunes Music Store has started to allow single track purchases to apply to future album sales The deal is this: if you buy a track and within six months decide to buy the rest of the album, your previous tracks are credited towards the album purchase. To go a step further, according to the Boston Herald, this offer is retroactive to any track purchased since the opening of the iTunes Music Store for the next 90 days.
115187
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
IHT is running an opinion piece on 'net neutrality.' Christopher Wolf writes about the harm of net neutrality legislation, ending with:
The astonishing growth of the Internet has been due to a "hands off" policy, with the marketplace and existing laws creating the parameters rather than rigid regulatory edicts whose adverse side-effects could well be severe. Let's hope lawmakers and policymakers keep that in mind.
114147
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
As a follow-up to a recent story, CNN is reporting that Movie pirates have placed a bounty on the heads of two DVD-sniffing dogs. FTA:
The New Straits Times said syndicate bosses had offered an unspecified reward for the killing of the two dogs.
"As a result of the extent of loss to the pirate syndicate, we have information from the domestic trade ministry that the Johor syndicate is intent on killing Lucky and Flo," said Neil Gane, an official of the Motion Picture Association.
111541
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
ITWire is reporting that Microsoft is paying companies to use Live Search instead of other search engines. FTA:
Microsoft's new program is called "Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search" and has been unveiled by John Batelle's
'SearchBlog'. The money on offer is significant, especially when multiplied across thousands of PCs. The deal means that companies can earn between US $2 and US $10 per computer on an annual basis, plus a US $25,000 "enrollment credit" which is a nice big wad of cash that will likely need a large-ish, strong and sturdy brown paper bag to hold securely while being passed under the table.
78772
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Apple has released what appears to be the first security update as a result of the "Month of Apple Bugs." While the Apple site doesn't explicitly say that the fix was a result of the MOAB, it does point to a sample Quicktime file that triggers the overflow flaw (weel, sort of...it says the file is there but doesn't provide any links).
73128
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
After getting frusterated for the last time with MS Word corrupting documents with embedded objects (pictures, tables, equations, etc.) I started using NeoOffice and saving everything in the OpenDocument format. With the upcoming release of Office 2007 (and later, 2008 for Mac) and support for Office OpenXML, which format does the community see as better from a technical and licensing perspective? I've read some Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDo cument_and_Microsoft_Office_Open_XML_formats#_note -0) and Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051125 144611543) articles on the topic, but I'm really not sure what to make of most of it, yet. Please try to put pro- and anti-MS biases to the side; think of it as a VHS vs. Betamax question. The goal is some reassurance that whatever format I use, it's not going to become useless should I choose to stick with NeoOffice, use MS Office 2008 for Mac, or even both and swap back and forth.
70766
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
Who didn't see this coming? Cisco is suing Apple for trademark infringement over the just-release iPhone (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&r efer=home&sid=as8jWrr0Bv2g). FTA: "Cisco filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to prevent Apple from using the iPhone name, according to a statement today. Cisco, based in San Jose, California, has owned the iPhone trademark for six years." Has anybody heard of this trademark being used by Cisco? I ask because I honestly have not.
66838
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
It seems that Bluetooth technology has come into the crosshairs (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=11376 3&print=true) of the Washington Research Foundation, which manages tech patents for the Univ. of Washington and state research institutes. FTA: "The patents at issue were filed between 1996 and 2003, and involve "certain RF receiver technology used in that wireless data communication system known commercially as 'Bluetooth technology,' " according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Now held by the WRF, the patents were originally issued to Edwin Suominen, an undergraduate at the University of Washington in the mid-1990s, when he developed the technology covered by them."
60060
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
The iPhone has arrived, but not by Apple. Linksys has launched the iPhone line (the Linksys press release is on their website at http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_News_ C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1165633352046&pag ename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper) of VOIP handsets that work with such services as Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. It should be noted that these units are limited to VOIP, and do not have any sort of cellular capability. I wonder how long it will take Apple to launch a phalanx of lawyers to protect the iTrademark. I would think that this would be considered trademark infringement, since the iName format is associated with Apple, and this is essentially a computer network product.
55214
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
In the Dec. 11th edition of Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15994151/site/newswee k/) there is a column on the effect of "cheap, portable video recording and broadband Internet" on public behavior. Steven Levy writes that this "little brother" effect can be good in that it would stop some public transgressions. FTA: "Maybe more people will pick up after their puppies. Certainly there's a benefit to documenting instances of police brutality and schoolbus bullying. If everyone knew that such transgressions might be broadcast to the world, surely we would see fewer of them." He goes on to say that this could be a bad thing: "If you were an edgy comedian trying out material in small clubs, maybe you'd keep a safe distance from the edge — and be less funny. And it would be a shame if politicians took the lesson from George Allen that spontaneity could be deadly — every appearance before a small group would be as guarded and bland as a performance in a presidential debate."
There is lots of talk about the evils of a "surveillance society," yet the public at large can (and frequently does) participate in this, with ultraportable digital videocameras (video-capturing cellphones in particular) and sites such as YouTube.
It's called "evil" when done by the government, even if the spaces watched are public. What do you call it when the surveillance is conducted on the public, by the public?
23626
submission
frdmfghtr writes:
The October 30 issue of Forbes Magazine has an article speculating that Richard Stallman's efforts to rewrite the GPL could threaten to "tear it apart." (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1030/104_print. html) The article describes how the GPLv3 is expected to be incompatible with the GPLv2, causing trouble for Linux vendors such as Novell and Red Hat. The article wraps it up: "And a big loser, eventually, could be Stallman himself. If he relents now, he likely would be branded a sellout by his hard-core followers, who might abandon him. If he stands his ground, customers and tech firms may suffer for a few years but ultimately could find a way to work around him. Either way, Stallman risks becoming irrelevant, a strange footnote in the history of computing: a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission against his own program and went down in flames, albeit after causing great turmoil for the people around him."
