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Submission + - Apple vs. Adobe vs. Content Creators (oreilly.com)

Submitted by macslocum
macslocum writes: Publishers may have gotten ahead of themselves when they rolled out pre-iPad tablet demos. At least one relied on Adobe Air, which the iPad won't support. And the ongoing spat between Apple and Adobe could soon influence publishers' decision making.

Submission + - ATT to allow SlingPlayer app to stream over 3G (dailytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times reports that AT&T is now also reversing the ban of 3G streaming on the iPhone for the SlingPlayer app. AT&T announced today that it would now let the SlingPlayer app be used for 3G streaming.

The updated SlingPlayer app with 3G streaming will reportedly still need to be approved by Apple...

Submission + - Baby DNA stored by state -- possibly indefinitely (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CNN reports that as part of the mandatory genetic testing conducted on babies, states store DNA samples for long periods of times — indefinitely in some cases. Further, the results may be shared with your insurance company if they paid for it. Is this a violation of privacy? Were you aware of this? Could it lead to "genetic profiling" (as in discriminating based on genetic makeup) in the future.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Presents Office 2010 RC to Select Few (pcmag.com)

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Microsoft has made the release candidate (RC) for its Office 2010 productivity suite available to a select few in its tech adoption program. A company official also confirmed that they do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly. Office 2010 was originally made available to the public last November at the company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC). The final version is set to release in June. It includes a number of changes including a ribbon interface for Outlook, new typographic features in Word, and in-cell graphing in Excel.
Idle

Submission + - Would Leonardo Da Vinci get a job today? (wired.co.uk) 1

Submitted by McBacon
McBacon writes: After Leonardo Da Vinci's resume was transcribed, Wired asked Gordon Chesterman, Director of the Careers Service at the University of Cambridge, if Da Vinci would get hired today. "What about commercial awareness? No mention of any budgetary control, meeting financial targets or a good return on capital. Few companies can afford 'blue sky' stuff at any cost these days."

Submission + - Romania to host US missile shield 1

Submitted by Reber Is Reber
Reber Is Reber writes: Romania has agreed to host missile interceptors as part of a new US defence shield, its president says. President Traian Basescu said the plan was approved by the supreme defence council. It still needs parliamentary approval. President Barack Obama last year scrapped a previous version of the shield, based in Poland and the Czech Republic, which had infuriated Russia.

He said the US would now concentrate on a smaller-scale version. Mr Basescu said the system would "protect the whole of Romania's territory", but stressed that it "is not directed against Russia".

The US has insisted that its defence shield was designed to protect its allies against attack from "rogue states" like Iran, and was not aimed at Russia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, however, said the system would upset the strategic balance. They threatened to train nuclear warheads on Poland and the Czech Republic in response.
Microsoft

Submission + - IE Flaw Gives Hackers Access to User Files (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Microsoft warned that a flaw in IE gives attackers access to files stored on a PC under certain conditions. 'Our investigation so far has shown that if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location,' Microsoft said in a security advisory. The vulnerability requires that an attacker knows the name of the file they want to access, according to the company. The disclosure is the latest security problem to affect IE. Last month, an undisclosed vulnerability in IE 6 was used in attacks that targeted more than 20 U.S. companies, including Google, which blamed China. The vulnerability has since been fixed by Microsoft. The attacks led Google to announce last week that it would phase out support for IE 6, starting with Google Apps and Google Sites in March."
Google

Submission + - Could Nexus One Mark Beginning of End of Google (daniweb.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: Google has pissed off some powerful people of late, but none so much as the CEO of Apple. Jobs is unhappy about the Nexus One and gunning for Google. Could Google live to regret the day it decided to go into the phone business?

Submission + - Microsoft Declining (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Greg Hullender
Greg Hullender writes: Former MS VP Dick Brass (full disclosure: he was my boss for a while) writes in today's NY Times that Microsoft has lost its edge due to a combination of internal politics and lack of vision. He describes how ClearType took ten years to get into MS products because some groups simply didn't want change at all while at least one group would only accept it if the whole ClearType team was transfered to them. He describes some of the troubles of Tablet PC, in particular the Office team's fierce resistance to it. (To this day, it's hard to use Office on a Tablet PC.)

I note that he omits at least one problem that he himself caused; one of the biggest headaches with Tablet PC was simply logging into it. Trying to use handwriting recognition to input a password was nearly impossible. The most natural solution would have been signature verification, but one of the key members of Dick's staff was determined to use fingerprint recognition instead, and successfully blocked any attempt to even evaluate signature verification. As is often the case at MS these days (meaning, the last ten years), no amount of rational argument had any impact on this person, nor could upper management be bothered to take a position. Ultimately, nothing at all was done, and that pattern repeats all across the company. Dick definitely got that part right
Moon

Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches 450

Posted by timothy from the worth-it-at-any-price dept.
couchslug writes with this excerpt from the not-yet-paywalled New York Times: "President Obama will end NASA's return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday. The shift would 'put NASA on a more sustainable and ambitious path to the future' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But the changes have angered some members of Congress, particularly from Texas, the location of the Johnson Space Center, and Florida, the location of the Kennedy Space Center. 'My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight program,' Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement." If true, this won't please the federal panel that recommended against just such privatization.

Comment Re:More than likely. (Score 5, Interesting) 162

by Greg Hullender (#30935604) Attached to: Ballmer Defends Microsoft In China
Actually, at least when it comes to Search Engine censorship, China always gave Microsoft a pass. I was responsible for the team inside MSN Search (now Bing) that developed the software to filter "objectionable content". (The "safe search" feature.) In places like the US, customers can turn it off, but in places like Germany and China, where there are laws, the customers cannot. I was uneasily expecting to have to incorporate a list of banned sites from the Chinese government, and while I didn't like it, I didn't see any way around it, and I spoke to our VP privately about it to make sure he understood my position. That my loyalty was to the company and I'd do what had to be done, even if I didn't like it.

Much to my surprise, he was upset with me. He had VERY strong feelings about this issue, and he insisted China wasn't going to make us do it. That was the same month when China's president visited Microsoft before he visited George Bush, and in his speech on campus, he said, "China is a friend of Microsoft because Microsoft has always been a friend of China." Sure enough, whatever China made Google do, they didn't make US do anything special. Germany was a much bigger headache.

So I guess I'd say, that, no, you actually don't have to go by those laws if you're in a country that puts personal relationships above the law. Apparently they really don't think of the law the same way we do, and that was a real eye-opener. For me, anyway.

Or maybe the real truth was that the Chinese government figured out that our poor little search engine couldn't find the objectionable stuff anyway except by accident, and they just felt sorry for us. :-)

--Greg (happily retired from it all now)

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