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Microsoft

Microsoft Deprecating Some OOXML Functionality 138

Posted by Zonk from the dotting-the-is-crossing-the-ts dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "According to open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver, Microsoft will be deprecating certain functionality in its Microsoft Office Open XML specification. Ossendryver says the move is an attempt to quiet critics of the specification in the run up to the crucial February ISO vote. The Microsoft-led industry standards group formally offering OOXML confirms in a 21 December 2007 announcement that issues related to the 'leap year bug', VML, compatibility settings such as 'AutoSpaceLikeWord95' and others will be 'extracted from the main specification and relocated to an independent annex in DIS 29500 for deprecated functionality.'"
Software

Submission + - Shareaza Site Hijacked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The site shareaza.com has been hijacked and now redirects to shareazaweb.com. The download on the shareaza.com site now points to a file that installs spyware and malware. The real Shareaza software, still open source and GPL'ed, is at http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/. The sordid history of how this occurred is at http://torrentfreak.com/shareazacom-hijacked-and-turned-into-a-scam-site-071224/. This points out a problem with some open source projects: there is not a well-financed and structured organization to fight for online rights. As an individual domain holder, how can you respond when a determined entity tries to take it from you, either through the legal system or other means?

Feed Engadget: Bluetooth headset helps foil Wendy's robbery (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wireless

An armed robbery at a Columbus, Ohio Wendy's restaurant on Wednesday morning was thwarted mid-progress, partly due to an employee's Bluetooth headset automatically answering a call because of the robber screaming at her to do just the opposite. We've all learned to live with the wonky voice command features in our headsets and handsets, but on this occasion it actually turned out to be a benefit, as 35-year-old Keith Allen Sturgill's screams to NOT pick up an incoming call actually opened the connection, while the parolee and his three hostages waited for the safe to unlock before customers arrived . The caller, a friend of the employee who worked at a nearby bank, heard the screaming and called police, who were eventually able to talk Sturgill into surrendering -- but not before he had "rammed the gun to his own forehead until he bled," as you can see from his mugshot. Luckily for the habitual offender, he'll soon be back in a familiar place where neither cellphones nor their many accessories will bother him for a very long time.

[Via UPI]

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Books

Submission + - Identity of Antichrist Revealed: Emperor Titus (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
luxusgr
luxusgr writes: "Titus matches so amazingly with "666", we are forced to disregard Revelation as a prophetic text. It warns about political matters and a existing person of its time of writing. Unhappily, it's nothing more than some kind of underground Christian agitprop of its time!"
Space

Submission + - Physicists Wonder if Time is Slowing Down

Submitted by
Time Slows Down
Time Slows Down writes: "Scientists have come up with the radical suggestion that the universe's end may come not with a bang but a standstill — that time could be literally running out and could, one day, stop altogether. A decade ago, astronomers noticed that distant supernovae — exploding stars on the very fringes of the universe — seemed to be moving faster than those nearer to the center, suggesting that they were accelerating as they shot through space. One team of scientists says the appearance of acceleration my be caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding. If time is indeed slowing down, so that according to this new suggestion our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension, then the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would, from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating. While the theory is outlandish some cosmologists believe the idea has merit. "We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear — that's just the reverse effect," says Professor Gary Gibbons."

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