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Comment Re:ya but (Score 1) 852

by nebopolis (#18241666) Attached to: 30 Days With Ubuntu Linux
>I'm not much of a PC gamer these days, but unless Linux gets real support (not Cedega, nor Wine, >nor any other form of emulation/non-native method) of WoW, there's no reason for me to drop my XP >box. not to be picky, but wine is native. Wine Is Not An Emulator (W.I.N.E.). Wine can run games at native speeds, so what is the problem really? I have heard that Wow isn't that hard to install in linux. If that is the only thing holding you back, why not spend a little time to drop the habit forever? That said, I would welcome the day that games are made for both Linux and Windows.
Communications

UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MPs 290

Posted by Zonk from the note-quite-enough dept.
JPMH writes "With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
Media (Apple)

Music Execs Think DRM Slows the Marketplace 224

Posted by kdawson from the well-duh dept.
MacGod writes "From BBC News comes a story about a Jupiter Research survey conducted before Steve Jobs's anti-DRM essay, indicating that most music industry execs see DRM-free music as a way to expand sales on digital tracks. The survey covered large and small record labels, rights bodies, digital stores, and technology providers. To summarize: 54% of music execs think that current DRM is too restrictive and 62% think selling unencumbered music would be a way to boost sales. Even limiting the survey to the record labels themselves, 48% believe this. Yet, many also believe it's not going to happen without significant governmental intervention — even though most insiders think DRM is harmful, the labels are keen to stick with it. Is this yet another sign of the typical media industry 'head in the sand, refuse to change' approach, or might we be seeing the early stages or some actual change?"
Space

Predicting Space Weather 97

Posted by Hemos from the but-don't-use-space-based-lasers dept.
eldavojohn writes "Recently, a new discovery has been made explaining how & predicting when space weather occurs. Hopefully this will allow us to predict when and where these extreme forces of magnetic flux occur so that we can prepare to repair satellites or shut them down for safety reasons. Recent activities on the sun have surprised scientists including the explosive "solar tsunami" that happened last week. From the article, "The new study shows that the Northern Lights, also called aurora, and other space weather near Earth are driven by the rate at which the Earth's and Sun's magnetic fields connect, or merge, and not just by the solar wind's electric field. The merging occurs way out in space, at a spot between the Earth and Sun, roughly 40,000 miles above our planet's surface. Researchers have now developed a formula that describes the merging rate of the magnetic field lines and accurately predicts 10 different types of near-Earth space weather activity, such as the aurora and magnetic disturbances.""
Editorial

Greatest Task of Web 2.x: Meta-Validation 161

Posted by kdawson from the vetting-the-metadata dept.
CexpTretical writes "This Technology Review article about Web 2.x problems fails to mention the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to fulfilling the dreams of the Semantic Web — i.e., assumptions about the validity of metadata or tagging schemes. We can add all of the metadata and/or tags we want to web resources but that does not mean that the 'data about the data' honestly or accurately describe the resource or are 'about the data' at all. This is why Google does not place much importance on the metadata already contained in HTML document headers for search ranking, because it cannot be trusted. And to validate it would require more effort than to search and index that data from scratch. Ensuring or verifying the validity of metadata would be a task equal to that of initially creating it, but would have to be repeated on an ongoing basis. Hence all of the talk about 'trusted networks,' which then require trusting the gatekeepers of those networks. Talk about 'semantics.'" Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

Implications of the Mozilla/Adobe Partnership 104

Posted by Zonk from the joint-company-picnics dept.
Fraggle writes "Recently the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe announced a partnership, working together on the next generation JavaScript/ActionScript JIT Virtual Machine. The Browser Den looks at what this means for the future of scripting in Mozilla, and how this partnership with Adobe may affect Mozilla's support for other technologies such as SVG." From the article: "On the Mozilla side the plan is to integrate to code with SpiderMonkey which is Mozilla's current JavaScript implementation that is written in C. This is needed because Tamarin is not a drop-in replacement for SpiderMonkey as it provides necessary features that are not available in Tamarin. The combined SpiderMonkey with integrated Tamarin should not have any problems with old JavaScript and should show a performance boost for most. However, skilled scripters are sure to find ways of optimising performance to get even more gains."

Novell Gets $348 Million From Microsoft 308

Posted by kdawson from the money-is-the-root-of-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "Novell has published additional details about its agreements with Microsoft concerning Windows and Linux interoperability and patents. It seems the company is receiving an up-front payment of $348 million from Microsoft, for SLES subscription certificates and for patent cross-licensing. Microsoft will make an upfront payment to Novell of $240 million for SLES subscription 'certificates' that Microsoft can use, resell, or distribute over the term of the agreement. Regarding the patent cooperation agreement, Microsoft will make an up-front net payment to Novell of $108 million, and Novell will make ongoing payments totaling at least $40 million over five years to Microsoft."

LimeWire Sues RIAA for Antitrust Violations 406

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the everyone-seems-to-know-except-the-lawmakers dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes to tell us that in a recent court battle, Arista v. LimeWire, LimeWire has filed counterclaims against the RIAA for 'antitrust violations, consumer fraud, and other misconduct.' From the article: "LimeWire alleged that the RIAA's 'goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers.'"

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