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12 Steps To Regain Industry Confidence 55

Posted by Zonk from the take-it-to-them dept.
Next Generation has a piece with some lessons drawn from the Game Marketing Conference. The article offers at 12-step program for restoring the game industry's self-confidence. A good idea, in the wake of Hot Coffee and in the face of angry legislators. From the article: "4. Publicize that history shows we never embrace new media. This is true for silent movies, radio, pulp magazines, comic books and every new music wave including Mozart. Videogames are not the devil incarnate, and not capable of half the deviltry our critics claim for them."

GPL 3 As Bonfire of the Vanities 426

Posted by Zonk from the one-life-to-live dept.
morganew writes "Jonathan Zuck has written a CNET Op-ed stating that the GPL 3 is about returning the flock to the faith, and is reminiscent of Savonarola's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', urging true believers to burn things that took their eyes off God. From Article: 'The commercial humanists such as Lawrence Lessig with his Creative Commons initiative have turned away from the Old Testament, and the GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities'. Given the reaction by Linus Torvalds and nearly all the OSS business community to the GPL 3, are we going to see a break in the church?"

Firefox 2 To Have Anti-Phishing Technology 229

Posted by Zonk from the i-like-to-catch-phish dept.
Mitchell Bronze writes "Mozilla's Mike Shaver said in an interview that the upcoming Firefox 2 will have anti-phishing capability using technology that might come from Google." From the article: "With the continued rise in online attacks, security tools have become something Web browser makers can use to try to stand out. Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers against online scams in Internet Explorer 7, due later in 2006. Similar functionality is already in Netscape 8 and Opera 8, both released last year. 'It is another example of the energy that has returned to the browser market,' Shaver said."

Google Faces Wall Street Revolt 445

Posted by Zonk from the don't-pull-down-the-o dept.
Fred Flange wrote to mention a Times of London article, which explains a minor rebellion against GOOG on Wall Street. The company, which has always refused to offer guidance for its stock, is now being peppered with requests to do just that. From the article: "Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's founders and biggest shareholders, made plain in their listing prospectus that the company would reject many of the orthodox methods of doing business with Wall Street and instead adopt a mantra to encourage its employees to do good and not 'evil'. Other Wall Street analysts last night were also preparing reports that agreed with RBC, The Times has learnt. 'The time has come for Google to step into line,' one analyst said. 'It is in the interest of all shareholders, including the company's employees and officers, that the share price achieves some stability.'"

Microsoft Origami Unfolds 469

Posted by Zonk from the still-wish-it-played-games dept.
College Student writes "Microsoft has officially unveiled 'Origami', a paperback-book sized portable hybrid (laptop & PDA). From article: 'The new machines will connect wirelessly to the Internet and carry full-sized hard drives, but they are not intended to replace current PCs....The new PCs are expected to sell for between $599 to $999, but Microsoft said it is possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.'" More details at the official Microsoft site, and via Channel 9 a look at the system with the UMPC general manager.

Lab Produces 3.6 Billion Degree Gas 594

Posted by samzenpus from the hotter-than-the-sun dept.
starexplorer2001 writes "LiveScience is reporting how scientists at Sandia's Z laboratory have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2 billion kelvins). That's hotter than the interior of our sun, which is only 15 million degrees F. And they don't know how they did it. Do we want anything that hot on our planet?"

Treo 700w Review 45

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sprinting-backwards dept.
bart_scriv writes "Business Week has a review of Palm's Treo 700w (the first Palm device to run Windows). Aside from network performance, the reviewer was fairly disappointed. From the article: 'The best Windows Mobile device ever, but a cut below Palm's 650."

Does Using GPL Software Violate Sarbanes-Oxley? 272

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the dispelling-fud dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "eWeek is reporting that The Software Freedom Law Center has published a white paper that dismisses recent publications from embedded systems seller Wasabi Systems. Wasabi recently released statements focusing on alleged GNU General Public License violations in relation to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The white paper, titled "Sarbanes-Oxley and the GPL: No Special Risk," essentially counsels users of the free software license that they have no need to worry."

When A Blogger Meets Public Relations 193

Posted by Zonk from the protons-and-anti-protons dept.
fermion writes "The New York Times is running a story on the evolving relationship between PR departments and bloggers, specifically between the Wal*Mart PR people and sympathetic bloggers. The interesting thing in this story is not so much the astroturfing, which is old news, but the transformation of blogging from a personal statement to a corporate bullhorn. The bloggers mentioned in the story, who presumably are able to articulate their own opinions, received Wal*Mart email and began to simply copy the PR text into the blogs. What is the use of a blog if bloggers are just going to copy sentences and sentiments from the puppetmaster's email?"

OSL Gets Bandwidth Donation from TDS 73

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the take-advantage-while-oss-is-still-a-buzzword dept.
kveton writes "The OSL is pleased to announce that TDS Telecom has donated 600 Mbits of connectivity in order to ramp up their mirror infrastructure. The projects hosted at the OSL can now upload to the mirrors co-located in the TDS facilities in Chicago and Atlanta via their main data center in Corvallis, OR."

Take Two Shareholders to sue over Hot Coffee 85

Posted by Zonk from the controversy-is-good-fo-business dept.
casualsax3 writes "Take Two, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is facing more legal action over the game. Separately, two law firms have filed class-action lawsuits on behalf of shareholders who they say lost money due to the controversy about the game. This comes right on the heels of news that the Sex Workers Outreach Program is calling for a boycott of the game."

Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista 851

Posted by CowboyNeal from the lesser-of-evils dept.
pennconservative writes "Michael Desmond, writing for PCWorld.com, gives us ten reasons to buy the next version of Microsoft Windows. Some of his reasons sound compelling, and it definitely sounds like Microsoft has found yet another way to ensure market dominance for a few more years. Desmond also gives a few reasons not to buy Vista, but the most compelling of those is the hardware required to run it. Since Vista will likely ship on every new computer anyone buys, I don't see that being a major roadblock."

Creating a Backboneless Internet? 370

Posted by Cliff from the tricky-part-is-finding-the-right-medium dept.
Peter Trepan asks: "The Internet is the best thing to happen to the free exchange of ideas since... well... maybe ever. But it can also be used as a tool for media control and universal surveillance, perhaps turning that benefit into a liability. Imagine, for instance, if Senator McCarthy had been able to steam open every letter in the United States. In the age of ubiquitous e-mail and filtering software, budding McCarthys are able and willing to do so. I Am Not A Network Professional, but it seems like all this potential for abuse depends upon bottlenecks at the level of ISPs and backbone providers. Is it possible to create an internet that relies instead on peer-to-peer connectivity? How would the hardware work? How would the information be passed? What would be the incentive for average people to buy into it if it meant they'd have to host someone else's packets on their hard drive? In short, what would have to be done to ensure that at least one internet remains completely free, anonymous, and democratized?"

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