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Patents

Amazon Goes Web 2.0 Wild to Defend 1-Click Patent 77

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-really-it's-cool-when-we-do-it dept.
theodp writes "Six years ago, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly urged the masses to give-patent-reform-a-chance as Richard Stallman called for an Amazon boycott. On Monday, the pair will reunite to kick off O'Reilly's new Amazon-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo with A Conversation with Jeff Bezos. Be interesting if the conversation turned to Amazon's ongoing battle against an actor's effort to topple Bezos' 1-Click patent, which The Register notes included dumping 58 lbs. of paperwork on the patent examiner, including dozens of articles from the oh-so-Web-2.0 Wikipedia, which the USPTO had already deemed an un acceptable source of information ('From a legal point of view, a Wiki citation is toilet paper,' quipped patent expert Greg Aharonian)."

Feed Cell Phones Qualify As Hazardous Waste (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
The cell telephones that consumers in the United States discard by the millions each year classify as hazardous waste, according to a study published in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Feed Bisphenol A On Trial (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Bisphenol A (BPA), a weak synthetic estrogen used in a variety of consumer products ranging from baby bottles to resins that line food and beverage containers, has been linked in some studies to adverse health effects in rodents, including obesity, cancer and insulin resistance. There is growing concern that the chemical may cause similar adverse effects in humans, particularly in babies and young children.

Feed The Samsung and Intel PC design winner: the Egg (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops

What you're looking at up there is the winner of a recent Samsung and Intel PC design contest in Korea. Those three "eggs" on the tabletop are actually a media player, disk drive, and digital camera. Just place them on top of the bed-tray PC to initiate communications. Nice, a la some Bluetooth 2.1 near-field communications we presume. But seriously, is that Intel Inside sticker really necessary on a freakin' concept? Check out a few more concepts after the break.

Continue reading The Samsung and Intel PC design winner: the Egg

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Privacy

Surveillance Cameras Get Smarter 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the walk-without-rhythm-and-you-won't-attract-the-one dept.
kog777 writes to mention that the IB Times is taking a look at where surveillance camera technology is headed. Soon researchers tell us that cameras will be available that not only record, but are able to interpret what they see. "The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before."
Perl

Submission + - Randal Schwartz Pardoned

Submitted by
friedo
friedo writes: "Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has expunged the criminal record of Perl author and guru Randal "merlyn" Schwartz. Schwartz was fired from his job and convicted of three felonies after cracking some passwords while working for Intel."
Announcements

Submission + - $25 Mill for solution to removing greenhouse gases

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Virgin Earth Challenge (of Virgin Airlines fame) is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate. http://www.virginearth.com/"
Education

Submission + - Jakon Nielson on Life-Long Computer Skills

Submitted by
khendron
khendron writes: "The Jakob Nielson's latest newsletter, he laments the fact that schools appear to be teaching kids how to use specific computer application (he cites Excel in his example). What a waste of time, since these skills will be useless by the time the kids graduate. Instead, he lists a number of "life-long" computer skills that we should be teaching kids: Search Strategies, Information Credibility, Information Overload, Writing for Online Readers, Computerized Presentation Skills, Workspace Ergonomics, Debugging, and User Testing and other Basic Usability Guidelines.

From the article about Debugging: "We shouldn't turn everyone into a programmer, but the basic debugging concept is a fundamental survival skill in the computer era. Most spreadsheets contain formula errors, for example, and unless people know how to find such mistakes, they'll make decisions based on the wrong numbers."

Who thinks his list is accurate? Or complete?"

Drupal Gets Non-Profit Backing 77

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the and-they-need-your-money dept.
DrupalAssociation writes "Drupal, the popular and widely used CMS, now has the backing of a non-profit association. Having grown in size and scope for the last six years, the Drupal software project needs more structured support with infrastructure, marketing and funding. The Drupal Association will help with these needs but will not be directly involved with Drupal software development. Donations are now being solicited. Plans for Corporate and individual membership are being drawn and will be announced at a later time. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal and the President of the Association, announced the Association on Drupal.org today."
Security

Submission + - Modern Day Witch-Hunt in Connecticut

Submitted by zhenya00
zhenya00 writes: USAToday is reporting on a story most of us are already familiar with; the case of Julie Amero, a 40 year old Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher who has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor when the un-patched Windows 98 computer she had used to check her email began to display a flurry of pornographic pop-ups to the students in her classroom. She faces up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced this Friday March 2.
From the article:

"Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it."
Can this country really allow something like this to happen? Why isn't there general outrage on the front page of every newspaper? Why aren't those responsible being flooded with calls and emails from angry citizens?
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedians are 42% Liberal, 8% Conservative

Submitted by
Jon
Jon writes: "Jimmy Wales has claimed that Wikipedians are more likely to be liberal, and Wikipedia has been accused of liberal bias. But a sampling of 901 Wikipedians reveals surprising statistics. 42% of Wikipedians self-identify as liberal (49% is current American average) 8% of Wikipedians self-identify as conservative (41% is current American average) 42% of Wikipedians self-identify as libertarian (5% is a rough American average) So liberals are proportionately represented on Wikipedia, conservatives are very under-represented, and libertarians are extremely over-represented."
Patents

Submission + - Sequoia Claims VC Firm Ripped Off its Website

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "VC giant Sequoia Capital has sued ComVentures, accusing it of copyright infringment related to the firm's website design: http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/?p=622 ________________________ The VSP Capital Memorial trophy is awarded each year to the venture capital firm that most effectively turns itself into a punching bag. The 2007 frontrunner is ComVentures. First came the recent FilmLoop flap, in which ComVentures engineered the sale of one portfolio company to another. Now comes another troubling development: While ComVentures was working to sell FilmLoop last December, it also was being sued by Sequoia Capital for copyright infringement. ComVentures says the case has since been "resolved amicably," even though no resolution has yet appeared in the court's online records system. Neither Sequoia nor its attorney returned request for comment or confirmation (download all relevant court filings after the jump). This is a bizarre story for two reasons. First, because of how dumb ComVentures seems to have been. Second, because such cases generally get resolved long before they reach litigation. According to court documents, both Sequoia and ComVentures redesigned their websites last year. Sequoia went first with an August 30 launch, and even took the unusual step of registering the site as an original work of authorship with the U.S. Copyright Office. Soon after, the firm's servers began "to detect significant and prolonged access to the site from someone sharing the IP address for, and presumably within, the ComVentures network." A printout of Sequoia's server logs were filed with the court, and can be downloaded below as Docs 2. In all there were 373 recorded visits. Six weeks later, ComVentures unveiled its own redesign. The new site had a number of striking similarities to the Sequoia site, in terms of both setup and style. For example, check out this ComVentures page and this Sequoia Capital page. Pay particular attention to the geography and company-stage navigation bars. Had the complaint stopped here, I would have assumed that some ComVentures lackey/designer had simply made a mistake in not knowing that you can't rip off someone else's site. He/she was told that the ComVentures brain-trust admired the Sequoia site, and took that to mean "copy it." After all, the first question any web designer asks when building a new site is: "What other sites do you like?" And maybe that's exactly what happened. But what happened next is bizarre. Sequoia's Mike Moritz called ComVentures chief Roland van der Meer to complain on at least two separate occasions. Sequoia's outside counsel also formalized the request in a letter to ComVentures' outside counsel. The complaint alleges that ComVentures agreed to make "certain changes," but then that the only real changes made were that the offending pages were not directly linkable from the ComVentures homepage. In other words, the alleged copyright infringement remained, but was just a bit harder to find. Again, I would like to think this was a slip up (sometimes hard to find all legacy pages) — except that the offending pages STILL are online nearly three months after the suit was filed. Maybe there was concern that full retreat would be perceived as admittance of guilt, but ComVentures isn't willing to get into that level of detail with me (not that I blame them). Sequoia had been seeking both real and punitive damages, and I do not know if any money changed hands via the apparent settlement. But I do know that this is just one more headache ComVentures did not need right now..."

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