An anonymous reader notes an initiative by the New Zealand Open Source Society to weigh in on the question of standardizing Microsoft's OOXML. The organization has authored a white paper (available in several formats, HTML here) laying out the ways in which the OOXML spec falls short of what a standard should be. From the article: "'If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will [be] encumbered with a 6,000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities' said New Zealand OSS President Don Christie. 'Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organizations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this development track.'"

After Nintendo's very ... different ... press conference, you may be wondering what's going on. In a roundtable discussion with Nintendo, folks like Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto discussed Zelda, Mario Galaxy and WiiFit , giving some context to the message the company had on Wednesday. The balance board begged the question from the people there, is Nintendo ditching the hardcore? According to the Nintendo folks, not at all: "Aonuma believes that control can be pick-up-and-play, but that doesn't necessarily mean a game overall has to be easier. But he still states that his 'goal was always to appeal to...a vast audience.' One attendee pushed the issue further, asking if all Zelda games from now on are going to cater to the more casual crowd--will we ever again need a strategy guide to complete a Zelda game? Aonuma says that judging by Japanese sales so far, accessible 'stream-lined play has been effective,' but he wants to see how Western audiences react to the new Zelda before making a final decision on future games' difficulty levels. Aunoma also hopes to venture into new territory and create a wholly original game at some point in his career." For a lengthy treat, check out Kotaku's series of interview clips with Mr. Miyamoto.

Zephyros writes "The AP is reporting on a scientist who has found a way to get caffeine into donuts, bagels, and other baked goods without the bitter flavor. Each piece has as much caffeine as two cups of coffee. No word on when or where they will be available, but for those of us that just don't get the same kick from the morning cuppa that we used to, this may be another tasty delivery vector to look forward to for that jump-start."

TheRealFritz writes "It's that time of year again and ModDB has released the winners of their annual Mod of the Year contest. Gamers who like to go beyond their initial investment have chosen their favorites for 2006: Point of Existence and Project Reality according to ModDB's Mod of the Year competition. The contest took in over 80,000 votes and narrowed the field from 4,000 mods to the Top 5 released and unreleased mods, as well as a handful of genre awards and the Editor's Choice awards. Perhaps it is ironic that the two top mods of 2006 are both for the Battlefield 2 platform, which has been abandoned by its developer and is notoriously buggy and difficult to mod. Despite these problems, both mods went on to beat out mods from the ever popular Half-Life 2 platform. The much better maintained Source engine is represented with the winners of the third through fifth places: Goldeneye: Source, The Hidden: Source and Minerva."

reporter writes "According to a front-page story by The Guardian, British authorities have identified Andrei Lugovoi to be the murderer who used radioactive pollonium-210 to kill Andrei Litvinenko. The British government will ask Moscow to extradite Lugovoi. The Guardian states: 'Associates of the dead man have repeatedly accused President Vladimir Putin's government of being behind his murder, a claim the Kremlin rejects. While it is known that detectives believe they have uncovered evidence pointing to Mr Lugovoi's involvement, it is not clear whether they have established a motive for the murder'"

Fry-kun asks: "I recently became interested in setting up a 2-factor authentication system for my laptop. With that in mind, I bought a fairly inexpensive USB key. Although it seems to work, I can't bring myself to trust it completely: Kensington claims that the system is secure, but there is no independent security lab analysis of the product. In other words, for all I know, there may be a gaping hole in their security setup. Worse yet, there are apparently no reviews of the product, no mention of anyone trying to test it and no hardware hackers tried to make it work in Linux, even though it's been out for over 2 years. How would you go about making sure that a security product does what it claims to?"

Roland Piquepaille writes "Computer scientists at Brigham Young University (BYU) have developed a new software tool to perform 'virtual surgery'. This tool, dubbed 'Live Surface,' will allow surgeons to visualize in 3-D any part of a patient's anatomy with just a few clicks of a mouse. Similar software already exists, but according to the Deseret Morning News, Live Surface is interactive and fast. This software can be used for better diagnosis by physicians, but it might even suppress the need for some exploratory surgeries. The researchers add that Live Surface might even been used for special-effects in movies or games by extracting an actor's performance from a video clip."

v3xt0r writes "It seems that 'the Open Source Development Model' is to be blamed for the recent increase in botnet development. 'We're not taking aim at the open-source movement; we're talking about the full-disclosure model and how that effectively serves malware development,' the spokesman for McAfee says. Why not just blame the IRC Protocol? Or simply admit that Proprietary vendors cannot keep pace with the Open Source Model?"

digitalhermit writes "I guess many folks are of very little brain, and big words bother them... There's a push for simpler spelling. Instead of 'weigh' it would be 'way.' 'Dictionary' would be 'dikshunery' and so forth. Dunno if it's a joke, but it seems in earnest. Mark Twain must be spinning around somewhere." Twain is often credited with the satirical call for spelling reform called "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling," though according to Wikipedia, Twain was "actually a supporter of reform," and the piece may have been written by M.J. Shields. Benjamin Franklin was another champion of spelling reform, and even came up with a phonetic alphabet to implement such reform.

An anonymous reader writes "The recently released Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a comprehensive set of APIs and tools that lets you create dynamic Web applications almost entirely in Java code. However, GWT is something of an all-or-nothing approach, targeted at a relatively small niche in Web application development market. This article shows you what GWT can do and will help you decide if it's the best tool to use for your web development."

bab00n writes According to this article at The Engineer Online, researchers led by the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology in Italy are developing robots that evolve their own language, bypassing the limits of imposing human rule-based communication. The technology, dubbed Embedded and Communicating Agents, has allowed researchers at Sony's Computer Science Laboratory in France to add a new level of intelligence to the AIBO dog. The robot dog has learnt to see a ball and tell another one where the ball is, if it's moving and what colour it is, and the other is capable of recognising it.

lseltzer writes "Adobe has threatened an antitrust suit against Microsoft, over PDF writing in Office 2007. Adobe wants Microsoft to separate the feature and charge extra for it. Microsoft has agreed to remove PDF writing, but won't charge extra." From the eWeek article: "In February, Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen told Reuters he considered Microsoft to be the company's biggest concern. 'The competitor I worry about most is Microsoft,' Chizen said at the time. Adobe's PDF technology lets producers create and distribute documents digitally that retain designs, pictures and formatting. "