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Intel

Submission + - Why do companies forget about 64bit ports? 5

Submitted by Vincenzo "Enzo" Romano
Vincenzo "Enzo" Romano writes: It's clear that 64bit CPUs are here to stay.
When almost 25 years ago 32bit CPUs started being used into PCs, 32bit OSes were available only to academic and large corporate data centers.
It took years to get a fully working 32bit environment on the desk and on the laps.
Nowadays, instead, almost all closed and open source OSes have a 64bit port available. What's still lacking is full native 64bit port for applications.
Well, there's nothing wrong with 32bit applications in a 64bit OS!
Skype, Acrobat Reader and Google Gears are just few among famous and ubuquitous applications that do not directly support the 64bit architectures, thanks to the ability to be run in 32bit mode.
On the other hand, a number of other equally famous applications do support it, namely Mozilla Firefox and Flash Player.
My question to you all is: why on Earth?
Is it a matter of laziness or what? Are all those applications so tightly tied to the 32bit world that a port would be imprectical?
Or is it just an "I don't care yet" approach?
Microsoft

Submission + - MS releases new concurrent programming language (microsoft.com)

Submitted by zokier
zokier writes: Microsoft has released new programming language Axum based on the actor model. It's meant to ease development of concurrent applications and thus making better use of multi-core processors. Axum does not have capabilities to define classes, but as it runs on the .NET platform, Axum can use classes made with eg. C#. Axum is in an incubation phase of development and needs feedback from developers.
The Media

Submission + - Phony Wikipedia Entry Used by Worldwide Press

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media published in the Guardian, the London Independent, on the BBC Music Magazine website and in Indian and Australian newspapers. "One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear," Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. "I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning," The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. "I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.""

Comment Welcome to the club. (Score 1) 2

by mindcorrosive (#27850257) Attached to: New Irish Internet Tax?
Oh, we already have this in Sweden. 15 EUR/month if you own anything capable of receiving TV signals (link). I admit, the Irish get a bit over the edge, though - the Swedish agency still doesn't charge if you watch TV over the internet. But hey, they are definitely getting an idea, come to think of it..
Microsoft

Submission + - High school kid's team wins U.S. Imagine Cup (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes: "A high school kid and his two college-aged brothers have won the U.S. Microsoft Imagine Cup finals. They built a Silverlight app that allows multiple students to use the same computer at the same time. The project, dubbed MultiPoint Web, also lets users store lessons and activities to be shared around the world in multiple languages. Team Multipoint will now compete at the world finals in Cairo, Egypt, in July for a share of $180,000 in cash awards. This is the seventh-annual Imagine Cup contest in which students write applications that attempt solve social, political or environmental problems. Many projects were cool. Team Safe Teen Driving, for instance, developed a Windows mobile app that blocks users from texting while driving while also alerting the teen (and the parents) if a teen is driving erratically."
The Internet

Submission + - Internet access is a fundamental right, EP says (laquadrature.net)

Submitted by theocrite
theocrite writes: For the fifth time[1], the European Parliament has rejected "the graduated response" (aka "three strikes [and you're out] approach").

This is a (good) surprise considering that the rapporteurs betrayed the European citizens :

Both rapporteurs of the main directives of the Telecoms Package, Malcolm Harbour (IMCO report) and Catherine Trautmann (ITRE report) sacrificed the effective protection of citizens fundamental rights. [...] In the ITRE report by C. Trautmann, amendment 138/46, adopted by 88% of the EP in first reading, and by 40 to 4 in committee last week, was abandoned. This article was crucial for protecting EU citizens against parallel arbitrary justice. Three-strike schemes against filesharers such as the HADOPI law proposal in France are not clearly forbidden by the new compromise. Even though these schemes remain contrary to the due process of law, one will wait years to have it confirmed in front of a court. In this clear attempt to please to N. Sarkozy, C. Trautmann agreed to a major step back in citizens' rights protection.

3 days later, la Quadrature du Net alerted the citizen about a last minute trick :

In the Harbour report, amendment 166 was replaced by an empty version that has no more protective value. [...] In the Trautmann report, amendment 138/46 was turned down into a weaker version (yet still a clear political sign and legal reminder against the French "three strikes" HADOPI bill), that may require interpretation from an EU court of justice, and years of challenge, to counter "graduated response"/"three strikes" schemes.

In the end, Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net welcomes this adoption

A formidable campaign from the citizens put the issues of freedoms on the Internet at the center of the debates of the Telecoms Package. This is a victory by itself. It started with the declaration of commissioner Viviane Reding considering access to Internet as a fundamental right1. The massive re-adoption of amendment 138/462 rather than the softer compromise negotiated by rapporteur Trautmann with the Council is an even stronger statement. These two elements alone confirm that the French 'three strikes' scheme, HADOPI, is dead already.

Viviane Reding, the EU Telecoms Commissioner, requests that the Council, and especially France, cease to block the package :

Now the ball is in the court of the Council of Telecoms Ministers to decide whether or not to accept this package of reforms. There was one amendment voted by the Parliament today that was not included in the initial deal agreed between the three EU institutions. This amendment is an important restatement of the fundamental rights of EU citizens. For many, it is of very high symbolic and political value. I call on the Council of Ministers to assess the situation very carefully, also in the light of the importance of the telecoms reform for the sector and for the recovery of our European economy

See also :

[1] Previously rejected on April 10th, 2008, September 26th, 2008, March 26th, 2009 and April 21th, 2009
Networking

Submission + - New Irish Internet Tax? (wordpress.com) 2

Submitted by
MarkDennehy
MarkDennehy writes: "The Broadcasting Bill 2009 (currently in the last stages of becoming the Broadcasting Act 2009 and then being commenced into law in Ireland) has thrown up a rather unpleasant little nugget for broadband users in Ireland. It now defines a television set as being electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or "any software or assembly comprising such apparatus" which would mean that even if you haven't got a television set, even if you don't watch streaming content from RTE.ie (the state broadcaster's website), you'd still have to pay 160 euro a year for a television licence for your iPhone, or netbook, or laptop or desktop if you have fixed or mobile broadband. Outrage and confusion here and here and here..."
Security

Submission + - Virginia Health Database Held for Ransom (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Washington Post's Security Fix is reporting that hackers broke into servers at the Virginia health department that monitors prescription drug abuse and replaced the homepage with a ransom demand. The attackers claimed they had deleted the backups, and demanded $10 million for the return of prescription data on more than 8 million Virginians. Virginia isn't saying much about the attacks at the moment, except to acknowledge that they've involved the FBI, and that they've shut down e-mail and a whole mess of servers for the state department of health professionals. The Post piece credits Wikileaks as the source, which has a copy of the ransom note left behind by the attackers.
United States

Submission + - FTC to investigate Apple, Google board ties (nytimes.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology's most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry.

Apple and Google share two directors, Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits a person's presence on the board of two rival companies when it would reduce competition between them. The two companies increasingly compete in the cellphone and operating systems markets.

Mr. Schmidt campaigned for then-Senator Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and advised the transition team and the administration on various matters. He was recently appointed to President Obama's advisory council on science and technology.

Christine A. Varney, who was recently confirmed as the head of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, last year singled out Google as a probable source of future antitrust concerns because of its near monopoly on Internet search and advertising.

NY Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/technology/companies/05apple.html
Security

Submission + - Leaked Copies Of Windows 7 RC Contain A Trojan (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Pirated copies of Windows 7 RC on file-sharing sites contain malware, according to users who have downloaded the upgrade. Windows 7 RC, which Microsoft will officially launch tomorrow, leaked two weeks ago. 'Just a warning for anyone downloading the new RC builds of windows 7. Quiet [sic] a lot of the downloads have a trojan inbedded [sic] in the setup EXE,' said someone identified as Frank Fontaine on a Neowin.net discussion thread. 'The Setup EXE is actually a container, it appears to be a self-extracting EXE. There are 2 files inside, Setup.exe and codec.exe.' Fontaine's antivirus software identified the codec.exe file as a generic Trojan. Another Mininova commenter, 'WuNgUn,' identified the malware as the 'Falder' Trojan, which downloads fake security software, dubbed 'scareware,' to PCs and installs a rootkit to hide from legitimate antivirus products. Hey, Microsoft warned you."

Comment Duh (Score 1) 133

by mindcorrosive (#27797885) Attached to: Disney-Hulu Deal Is Ominous For YouTube

Please excuse me for not being exactly thrilled by the news, as Hulu is not available outside the USA (and many other content providers). For all the rest of us mere mortals, the "news" is as useful as the information about the weather last week in Tahiti.

You wouldn't guess which popular video site I'd be watching then.
The Internet

Submission + - 'Pirates' Could Storm the European Parliament

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pirate Bay verdict has backfired, sending more traffic and illegal downloaders to the Pirate Bay's site than ever. While the defendants have been fined and sentenced with a year in jail, the grassroots support for the pirating cause has grown immensely, including the growth of a "Pirate Party" in Sweden — a political party based on the issues brought out in the trial. The Pirate Party has grown to 40,000 members in a matter of days. With twenty candidates seeking election for the June 2009 European elections, the party plans to demand sweeping changes to copyright laws, and to end all patents.

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