Submission + - Microsoft furthers open source patent threats (groklaw.net)
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft furthers open source patent threats. See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071008205138925 .
Feed Engadget: Keepin' it real fake, Part LXXXVI: iPod nano rip-off does double duty as camera (engadget.com)
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Portable Audio, Portable Video
You can tell the Chinese PMP knock-off factories are getting a little bored. They're starting to mutate their typically staid, blatant thefts into something just a little bit more exciting. Enter the UE-Technology UE-M4088, a totally fresh new entry that rips off both the new iPod nano, and a generic digital camera. Of course, it has all your favorite Chinese PMP features, like a 2.4-inch LCD display, FM radio, playback of MPEG-4, ASF, MP3, WMA, WAV and MIDI files, an SD slot, and of course that 1.3-megapixel camera. The player seems to be available now, though no word on price. Finally, you can have it all... just don't let the authorities see you having it all.[Via PMPToday]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Feed Microsoft sued over DVR patent negotiations (engadget.com)
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Microsoft has been sued by a group of interactive television patent holders who claim that Microsoft duped them into granting a royalty-free license on the grounds that the company was not planning to release its own DVR system. Only weeks after negotiations took place between the group of patent holders -- operating under the name Intellivision, unrelated to the 90s game console -- and Microsoft, the corporation launched and started advertising for its Ultimate TV DVR product. The negotiations apparently took place way back in 2001, so it's slightly odd that the inventors waited until January of this year to file their claim to revoke the original licensing deal (and gain unspecified damages, naturally). Microsoft hasn't yet responded to the case other than to file a purely procedural motion, so we'll have to wait to see how this one plays out.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - Why are webmasters stupid about foreign addresses?
EWAdams writes: I don't know how many websites I've tried to register on that assume that I live in America. They demand that I pick a state from one of the 50 listed, and provide no alternative if I live elsewhere. They demand that I enter a ZIP code in exactly five digits, no letters allowed. (Canada and the UK use letters in their postal codes. Ireland does not use postal codes at all — the entire population of Ireland is less than that of New York city, so why bother?)
They demand that I enter a phone number in the form XXX-XXX-XXXX and no other. Sometimes they do this even when they provide a field to indicate that the country I live in is not the USA. The international standard format for a phone number is +[country code]-[city code]-[local number]. There are no guarantees about how long any of those will be in any given country.
What's this about? Are webmasters just routinely narrow-minded, blinkered, pig-ignorant morons, or is there some vast American conspiracy to pretend that it's the American Web rather than the World Wide Web? I'm not just talking about mom-and-pop operations here; some of the worst offenders are multinationals! I'm usually forced to resort to the telephone to straighten it out — a waste of their time, my time, and my money. What can be done about it? How does one get the message through to the idiot who programmed, and maintains, the site?
They demand that I enter a phone number in the form XXX-XXX-XXXX and no other. Sometimes they do this even when they provide a field to indicate that the country I live in is not the USA. The international standard format for a phone number is +[country code]-[city code]-[local number]. There are no guarantees about how long any of those will be in any given country.
What's this about? Are webmasters just routinely narrow-minded, blinkered, pig-ignorant morons, or is there some vast American conspiracy to pretend that it's the American Web rather than the World Wide Web? I'm not just talking about mom-and-pop operations here; some of the worst offenders are multinationals! I'm usually forced to resort to the telephone to straighten it out — a waste of their time, my time, and my money. What can be done about it? How does one get the message through to the idiot who programmed, and maintains, the site?
Submission + - Baby Vista is born, 5 pounds and 11 ounces
jollyreaper writes: File this under the category "Will parents never learn?" Naming your kid after an operating system. It'd be geeky enough if the kid was named Linux or OSX but no, this poor kid is named Vista. The proud father says: "Okay, first I know that most of you are reading this on the bus, at home, at work, and you're laughing. Some people are shocked and probably scratching your head why a nerd would potentially put their child through the slings and arrows of naming their spawn after an operating system. Hopefully by the time she's old enough for someone to make fun of her name, nobody will remember where it came from."
He might want to ask Moon Unit Zappa about that.
Feed Intel reveals quad-core laptop chip in the pipeline for 2008 (engadget.com)
Confirming something that we had already seen hints of, Intel has announced that it is looking forward to quad core laptops hitting the scene throughout 2008. Mooly Eden, GM of Intel's mobile platform group, said that we won't see these quad cores in business class laptops for a while, even being honest enough to admit that there aren't enough multi-threaded applications out there to justify it. In practically the same breath, PC World mentions that the chip will target high-level gaming laptops, which is cool because gamers will no doubt lap the new chips up: even if gaming is for the moment a very much single-threaded activity. Architecturally the new chip will have to differ from Intel's current offerings such as Santa Rosa, so you can probably expect to pay quite a premium until they hit the mainstream. (Not that you didn't know that already.)
[Image credit]
P.S. Bonus points for most imaginative insult in response to the fatal mistake of using Apple's Intel logos to illustrate this post.
[Image credit]
P.S. Bonus points for most imaginative insult in response to the fatal mistake of using Apple's Intel logos to illustrate this post.
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure 348
Music publishers are stepping up their campaign to remove guitar tablature from the Net. Recently Guitartabs.com received a nastygram from lawyers for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. These organizations want to stretch the definition of their intellectual property to include by-ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature while the owner evaluates his legal options.
Journal Journal: McCain would hire Steve Ballmer to US Cabinet if Elected. 431
Astute blogger and part time programmer RMS found an interesting summary of John McCain's technical blunders from May 30th. While most people jumped all over McCain's wrong headed view of the network neutrality issue, fe
Space Elevator Company LiftPort In Trouble 257
TropicalCoder writes "The LiftPort Group, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has seemingly reached the end the line. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit. Elevator cars would be robotic 'lifters' which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now LiftPort has all but run out of funds, and the State of Washington's Securities Division has entered a Statement of Charges (PDF) against LiftPort Inc. dba LiftPort Group and founder Michael Laine."
Feed TurboLinux Wizpy on sale 'worldwide' this month (engadget.com)
Filed under: Portable Audio
Good news for folks waiting patiently for a DAP that allows them to carry a complete Linux desktop in their pocket, as TurboLinux has announced that its Wizpy device will go on sale to most of the world sometime this month. Users in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, India, and Singapore can expect the final unit to include a 1.7-inch color OLED display, text viewer, FM radio, and play nice with Ogg, MP3, WMA, XviD, MPEG4, and JPEG formats. Although the aforementioned countries should receive shipments sometime this month, a non-English language version should ship to other countries in late 2007 or early 2008. Interestingly, it sounds like the 2GB flavor will only be available to Japanese customers, while the other locales will have to be happy with a 4GB iteration that will cost around $278.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - Putin Threatens US Missile Bases in Europe (forbes.com)
Melugo writes: "Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to target its weapons against Europe.
"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Putin said, according to Corriere. "It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles."
It feels like the Cold War all over again.
See the rest of the article at: Forbes or a comment on it at alittlebitoffreedom.blogspot.com."
Submission + - Turning cars into wireless network nodes
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Everyday, our cars are using more computing technology, primarily for safety reasons. So why not turning them into computer nodes of a mobile network? This is what UCLA engineers are working on. According to them, this would just need the relatively low-cost addition of sensors to the vehicle's roof and bumpers. They say their mobile ad-hoc networking platform (MANET) would allow 'moving vehicles within a range of 100 to 300 meters of each other to connect and create a network of cars.' Of course, not every driver would like to be part of this network because of privacy concerns. This is why 'the first mobile networks will be implemented in emergency response vehicles such as police cars, ambulances and hazardous materials response units.' But read more for additional details about these upcoming vehicular sensor networks (VSNs)."
Submission + - Do We Need Online Reputation? (informationweek.com)
Symblized writes: A new article from InformationWeek argues that not only does the Web need ways to verify identity, it also needs better ways to measure reputation. The article uses Digg, Wikipedia and eBay as examples and discusses that their models could be applied more widely. Choice quote from a source in the article: 'the idea of a transferable, semantic reputation is identity nirvana.'
High Def Microphone for Mobile Computing 72
morpheus83 writes "Akustica today introduced the first High Definition Microphone that enables HD voice quality in laptop PCs and other broadband mobile devices. The AKU2103 is a digital-output microphone with a guaranteed wideband frequency response. It is the first digital microphone to guarantee compliance with the TIA-920 audio performance requirement for wideband transmission in applications such as Voiceover-Internet Protocol (VoIP)."
The Man Behind Google's Ranking Algorithm 115
nbauman writes "New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparison shopping site."
