An anonymous reader writes "The American Mathematical society has an opinion piece about open source software vs propietary software used in mathematics. From the article : "Increasingly, proprietary software and the algorithms used are an essential part of mathematical proofs. To quote J. Neubüser, 'with this situation two of the most basic rules of conduct in mathematics are violated: In mathematics information is passed on free of charge and everything is laid open for checking.'""

Joystiq is reporting that Microsoft's Xbox Live service will be offering some great party favors soon, as the company celebrates the service's second birthday. Starting at 12:01 a.m. EST on November 15th, and lasting for 48 hours, users will be able to download the most-excellent board game Carcassonne for free. They've also announced their intent to allow us to download original Xbox titles to the 360 console. "In its press release, Microsoft explicitly named Halo, Psychonauts, Crimson Skies and Fable as titles for the Xbox Originals initiative, but did not confirm exactly which games will serve as the jumpoff: 'This new service will launch with an array of blockbuster titles spanning the most popular genres from action-adventure to classic role-playing games.' Third-party reports claim the preliminary lineup will also include ... Indigo Prophecy ... Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3."

An anonymous reader sends word of a dustup involving the publisher John Wiley and Sons and Wikipedia. Two pages from a Wiley book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a verbatim copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing. This is the publisher that touched off a fair use brouhaha earlier this year when they threatened to sue a blogger who had reproduced a chart and a table (fully attributed) from one of their journals.

Munchkinguy writes "First, they dropped support for their namesake OpenDocument Format and declared a switch to the W3C's 'Compound Document Format.' Then, W3C's Chris Lilley clarified that CDF 'was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use as, an office format.' Now, the Foundation has mysteriously closed up shop, leaving the following message: 'The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. is closed. We sincerely wish our friends and associates in the OpenDocument Community all the best and much success going forward. Good-bye and good luck.'"

Google85 writes in with a brief Enquirer piece reporting on an announcement on a German site that SlySoft claims to have cracked BD+, the extra copy-protection layer in Blu-ray. Here is the German original.

Viper95 writes "Samsung has announced that it has developed the world's first 64Gb(8GB) NAND flash memory chip using a 30nm production process, which opens the door for companies to produce memory cards with upto 128GB capacity"

Gamasutra is reporting that a serious security breach caused the closure of EVE Online this past weekend. A previously-unnoticed anomaly in a database prompted CCP, makers of the game, to close down the game world and their website while the issue was examined. The flaw was rectified, and service restored the same day. No credit card or billing information was exposed in the breach. "Explained [CCP chief of operations Jón Hörðdal], 'What we discovered was an indication that one of our databases was being accessed through a security breach. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation.' Hörðdal said that the taskforce concluded that going completely dark so that an exhaustive scan could be performed was the best course of action. 'While some may feel that such a drastic reaction was not warranted, it is always our approach to err on the side of caution in order to protect the players,' he said."

GameDaily has the NPD numbers for September, and they're impressive if only because for the first time in months Nintendo isn't dominating the top of every list. Total sales across the industry hit $1.36 billion (a 74% bump over last year), mostly fueled by Halo 3 sales. The game (across all skus) sold some 3.3 million units, while Xbox 360 platforms hit about 528,000 units sold last month. Ironically, the Wii had its second best month ever and the DS sold big numbers thanks to Phantom Hourglass. "Nintendo's Wii, despite not really having any significant new software releases, was close behind with 501K units sold. The DS handheld also did quite well, selling another 495.8K. Looking at Sony's platforms, the PS3 sold just 119.4K units, while the surging PSP sold 284.5K and the PS2 maintained healthy sales at 215K." The piece also offers up analysis from an NPD researcher, who feels Microsoft is likely to maintain some good momentum through the holidays.

Technical Writing Geek writes "A number of states have moved to extend antitrust judgments against Microsoft until the year 2012. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia are all contributing to the decision, and have released a report on the factors that lead to the extension. 'The report laments the state of OEM web browser bundling, saying that no major OEM currently distributes a browser other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). This is important due to the rise of new middleware platforms (such as Adobe's AIR and Microsoft's own Silverlight) that can create rich, OS-independent, web-based applications.' The report is slightly self-contradictory, but raises some valid points."

Daneal writes "Ars Technica has some interesting analysis of the RIAA's lawsuit against Usenet.com. There's reason to believe that Usenet.com — and most other Usenet providers — could qualify for protection under the DMCA's Safe Harbor provision. 'The DMCA's Safe Harbor provision provides protection for ISPs from copyright infringement lawsuits as long as they take down offending material once they are served with a notice of infringement. "Whether the Safe Harbor applies is the central legal question that is going to be raised," EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann told Ars. An RIAA spokesperson tells Ars that the group has issued "many" takedown notices to Usenet.com, but von Lohmann says that the volume of takedown notices isn't what counts. "The DMCA's Safe Harbor makes it very clear," von Lohmann said. "The number of notices doesn't matter as long as you take the infringing content down."'"

An anonymous reader writes "Web developers increasingly grow weary of having to put so much effort into designing their sites according to the whims of the Google search engine. When the most important thing is 'getting indexed' it is increasingly difficult for web site designers to offer the simple, uncluttered user experience they'd like to. Reminiscent of the famed what if Microsoft designed the iPod box here is a humorous look at what would happen to that famed, clean, uncluttered look if Google had to design for the Google Search Engine."

Anenome writes "Google has a track record of buying startups and integrating them into its portfolio. But sometimes those acquisitions go terribly wrong, as Ars Technica argues has been the case with Google's 2005 purchase of web-analytics firm Urchin Software Corp. 'In the wake of Google's purchase of the company, inquiring customers (including Ars Technica) were told that support and updates would continue. Companies that had purchased support contracts were expecting version 6 any day, including Ars. What really happened is this: Google focused its attention on Google Analytics, put all updates to Urchin's other products on the back burner, and rolled out a skeleton support team. Everyone who forked over for upgrades via a support contract never got them, even though things weren't supposed to have changed. The support experience has been awful. Since the acquisition, we have had two major issues with Urchin, and neither issue was solved by Google's support team. In fact, with one issue, we were helped up until the point it got difficult, and then the help vanished. The support team literally just stopped responding.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"

sjdurfey writes "Microsoft recently decided to open up IE7 to all users of Windows, not just the ones with legitimate copies of Windows. They claim it is in the 'end-users best interest'. As a result, Microsoft has decided to mark IE7 as a 'High-priority' update. This is essentially a forced update. Granted, its only a forced update if you are running Windows and have windows update set to automatically install all updates, but nevertheless, it's unnecessary. You can however uninstall IE7 from the Add/Remove Programs menu after its been installed. 'A blocking tool kit is still available for companies and organizations that don't use Windows Server Update Services and want to permanently prevent IE7 from automatically installing on PCs equipped with IE6.'" Update: 10/06 21:19 GMT by Z :Sorry if this seems a bit familiar.

An anonymous reader writes "The foreign exchange company Travelex has invented a unit of currency designed to be used in space commerce, the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (QUID). The QUID is made of a space-qualified plastic, with round edges to prevent injuries in zero gravity. One QUID is equivalent to about 6.25 pounds, 12.50 dollars or 8.68 Euros. Of course, space currencies are already a staple of science fiction, with 'credits' being the most popular."