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Comment Re:Yeah, but... (Score 1) 205

by SuperSlacker64 (#36535008) Attached to: US House Takes Up Major Overhaul of Patent System

Patenting something like the GIF encoding algorithm nowadays would be extremely difficult.

Seeing as GIF (and the LZW compression which was the patented part of it) could be claimed as prior art, I would certainly hope so. Unfortunately, what I've seen of the current patent system still makes me somewhat skeptic about how that would work out.
Government

EG8 Publishes Report In Noninteractive, Nonquotable Format 148

Posted by CmdrTaco from the of-course-they-did dept.
pbahra writes "You could not come up with a better illustration of the clash of cultures that was the eG8 than the post-forum report. Was the output of the two-day gathering in Paris published on a website so people could link to it? Or perhaps a blog so that people could comment on it? Or even a wiki, so the people who attended could contribute and correct mistakes? No it wasn't. The report is a book. Or rather it is an eBook. Except it isn't even an eBook, in the sense of something that you can read on your Kindle or other eBook reader. It's actually a Flash-based page turner, the sort of thing that was all the rage five years ago. It is a digital facsimile of a book. It is the triumph of design over access. Being Flash, you can't even cut and paste what is in the file. And being Flash it gives complete and total control to the authors. As a user all you get to do is to read it, in exactly the way the authors want you to. It looks good, but you can't do anything with it, except what the authors tell you to do. Metaphor anyone?"
Google

An IP Address For Every Light Bulb 457

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-yeah-that'll-be-fine dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday NXP and Green Wave Reality announced to the world that they plan to give every lightbulb an IPV6 address. Hot on the heels of Google's 900 mhz announcement, Green Wave Reality already has iPhone / Android / and Web-based support. Looks like the lighting wars have started."
Facebook

Bing Adds 'Like' Button 119

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-waiting-for-hate-button dept.
Tiek00n wrote in with something that might sound familiar, saying, "Microsoft on Monday expanded its use of Facebook within its Bing search engine, adding 'likes' and recommendations from friends and strangers into search results. Going forward, if you search for something one of your Facebook friends has 'liked,' Bing will note that in its search results. Did your sister and roommate 'like' a nearby Italian restaurant? A small photo, the Facebook 'thumbs up' icon, and a note that said they approve will show up in search results, Microsoft said."
Linux

Boot Linux In Your Browser 393

Posted by Soulskill from the year-of-linux-in-the-browser dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Fabrice Bellard, the initiator of the QEMU emulator, wrote a PC emulator in JavaScript. You can now boot Linux in your browser, provided it is recent enough (Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 11 are reported to work)."
Linux

The Great Linux World Map 113

Posted by Soulskill from the continental-drift dept.
N1ckR writes "Mrk has posted a fun Linux world map including 'The Suse Lake,' 'Noob Desert' and the 'Forbidden Land of Gentoo.' He said, 'The Great Linux World Map is a fun endeavor trying to portray the world of the Linux desktop as a sort of a Typus Orbis Terrarum. The map is no way representative in terms of actual market share usage or popularity. It's just a wild envisioning of how I see things, more or less.'"
Facebook

Assange: Facebook 'the Most Appalling Spy Machine' Ever 520

Posted by Soulskill from the you're-just-jealous-about-the-time-magazine-thing dept.
i4u points out an interview with Julian Assange in which the controversial WikiLeaks spokesman calls Facebook "the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented." He continues, "Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use. Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them."
Idle

A Game Played In the URL Bar 156

Posted by samzenpus from the wasting-time dept.
Kilrah_il writes "Whether you think it is useful or useless, you can't ignored the sheer cool geekiness of a game played entirely in the URL bar. From the article: '... While getting lost in a three dimensional virtual world amongst increasingly thoughtful plot and character development may be an adequate pastime for some, the only new title the gaming world should be talking about is URL Hunter, an experimental keyboard-character based game played entirely in your browser's URL bar.'"

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