An anonymous reader writes "Given the OpeniBoot project is just a breath away from getting Android onto the iPhone, maybe Apple should consider opening up the platform. This post has five reasons, but I think there are far more. Without open source, Apple will find itself in the same position as today's Microsoft in seven years."

Christopher Cashell writes "As noted on Perlbuzz, Mark Jason Dominus's amazing book, Higher-Order Perl, is now available for free download. This is a great book that goes way beyond your normal programming reference. This will change the way you look at programs, and make you a better programmer in any language. It sits on that special shelf reserved for books like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, The C Programming Language, and The Practice of Programming."

CWmike was one of several readers to point out the release of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, the first version of its flagship browser to switch on the much faster TraceMonkey JavaScript engine and sport a working privacy mode dubbed "Private Browsing." An ancillary addition to Private Browsing is a new addition to the "Clear Recent History" dialog box allowing users selectively to erase the last hour, the last two hours, the last four hours, today's, or all browsing history — previously, the wipe was all or nothing. This beta includes support for "web worker threads," a developing specification that will let Web-based application developers run background processes to speed up their apps. One feature present in Beta 1 is gone in the new beta: Ctrl-Tab switching. According to the developer, the UI needs more work; the feature probably won't be in the final 3.1.

An anonymous reader was one of several to note a bizarre story in which an Australian judge ruled that drawings can be child porn. In this case, it was knock off drawings of the Simpsons doing naughty things. Good thing they're going to be censoring the Down Undernet soon. Who knows what damage this could cause.

vintagepc writes "Having written a piece of software as part of my research employment, I now face (and will later face again, with other software I've developed), the issue of intellectual property rights. The legal department stated that if I was paid by the University to produce the software, the University would own all rights to it. This is supposedly black and white, not a gray area. However, I was hired as a research student, not directly by the University, and also via a research award (NSERC). Furthermore, it turns out that faculty members here, in fact, retain their intellectual rights to any software they write. At this point, I can still back out, since I have not explicitly agreed to the conditions, but this decision must be made soon. So, I turn to the Slashdot community to ask: Are they allowed to completely strip my rights to the software? If anyone has had any similar experiences, then what was the outcome? Additionally, is this a normal action, or do I have some maneuvering room?"

An anonymous reader writes "Thinking about upgrading to an HDTV this holiday season? The prices might be great, but some people won't be appreciating the technology as much as everyone else. A report by Leichtman Research Group is claiming that 18% of consumers who are watching standard definition channels on a HDTV think that the feed is in hi-def." (Here's the original story at PC World.)

Michael J. Ross writes "As perhaps the only substantial computer language embedded inside of the major Web browsers, JavaScript has brought an unprecedented level of power to client-side programming for the Internet. Yet as a result of cross-browser incompatibilities and other problems, it has probably also resulted in an unprecedented number of headaches for Web developers. JavaScript libraries attempt to mitigate much of these difficulties. One of the most popular such libraries, jQuery, is explored in a book by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz, titled jQuery in Action." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News and CNET Cutting Edge are reporting on a new play starring at Osaka University, in which two Mitsubishi Wakamaru robots interact with human actors and move around the stage. Named 'Hataraku Watashi' ('I, Worker'), the play is authored by Oriza Hirata, a renowned playwright. It focuses on a robot who complains about his boring and demeaning jobs."

theodp writes "In an Onion-worthy move, the USPTO has decided that IBM inventors deserve a patent for splitting a restaurant bill. Ending an 8+ year battle with the USPTO, self-anointed patent system savior IBM got a less-than-impressed USPTO Examiner's final rejection overruled in June and snagged US Patent No. 7,457,767 Tuesday for its Pay at the Table System. From the patent: 'Though US Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity, it does not provide an ability for the check to be split among the various patrons, and for those individual patrons to then pay their desired portion of the bill. This deficiency is addressed by the present invention.'"

Afforess writes "For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project. It is a runtime library for websites that run Silverlight. It should allow PCs running Linux to view sites that use Siverlight. Betanews reports 'In the next stage of what has turned out to be a more successful project than even its creators envisioned, the public beta of Moonlight — a runtime library for Linux supporting sites that expect Silverlight — is expected within days.' Moonlight 2.0 is already in the works."

Da Massive writes "Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it's complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, 'the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.'"

Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent months, the concept of 'cloud computing' was all the buzz. European researchers think about another name, the World Wide Grid, which could run on top of the Internet. In an article to appear soon, ICT Results will report about the g-Eclipse project. As the scientists said, 'the g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development.' The project started in July 2006 and was successfully completed in June 2008 for a total cost of €2.5 million, including a EU contribution of €1.96 million."

SnT2k writes "Adobe recently released the beta version of Alchemy which compiles C/C++ code into AS3 bytecode (which runs on AVM2) that can run on the Flash or Flex platform and boasts increased performance for computationally-intensive tasks (but still slower than native C/C++). It was demonstrated last year during the Chicago MAX 2007 to run Quake. A few months later it has been demonstrated to run a Python interpreter and Nintendo Emulator. One interesting tidbit is that the thing is built upon the open source LLVM Compiler Infrastructure."

thricenightly writes "After more than 20 years in IT I've learned that the most valuable people in a team are frequently the old timers. Young pups straight out of college might (think they) know all the latest buzzwords and techniques, but in the real world, where getting working products delivered on time and on budget is of paramount importance, people who have been doing the job for a decade or two tend to be the people I'd rather be working alongside. I've recently been elevated to a position where I get to interview and choose those who get hired in my department. Although I'm very much focused on choosing the right person for the role regardless of age, experience or whatever, it's probably fair to say the more mature applicants will get a more sympathetic hearing from me than they might from most other interviewers for IT roles. The question is, what do I ask older applicants to get them to demonstrate the value of their experience? My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?' This gets responses ranging from the vague to the truly enlightened. All next week I'm interviewing for a number of senior software designer and developer roles. What should I be asking of the more experienced applicants, and what responses should I be looking out for?"

JTRipper writes "Monty Python seems to have done the right thing. Instead of issuing take down notices of their videos on YouTube, they are doing it better themselves with their own YouTube channel. They are putting all their clips (including snips from their movies) up in a decent resolution, with the only caveat being a link to buying the movies and TV episodes from Amazon."