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Piracy

Submission + - US urges EU to rubber-stamp ACTA anti-piracy pact (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Th'Inquisitor
Th'Inquisitor writes: The US ambassador to the EU has urged legislators to pass the secretive international anti-piracy agreement, ACTA saying that transparency comes second to the need for action.

William E. Kennard made the remarks concerning ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, to the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade today.

When asked by Swedish MEP Carl Schlyter why the ACTA negotiations were not being conducted in public, the ambassador replied that negotiations needed to remain confidential because there were commercial interests at stake, reports Swedish web site ACTA blog (unfortunately in Swedish).

The contents of the ACTA agreement, which have never been made public, concern international cooperation over the enforcement of copyright measures – described by the negotiators as "strong intellectual property protection".
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft man: my job is to destroy IE6 (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: The man in charge of Internet Explorer has told PC Pro that he's been tasked with destroying IE6. Internet Explorer 6 continues to be the most used browser version in the world at the ripe old age of nine. IE6's position as the default browser in Windows XP means many companies still cling to the browser. "Part of my job is to get IE6 share down to zero as soon as possible," said Ryan Gavin, head of the Internet Explorer business group. Microsoft has also been giving further previews of Internet Explorer 9, with demonstrations showing two 720p HD videos running simultaneously on a netbook, thanks to IE9's GPU-accelerated graphics.
Games

Submission + - Blizzard Boss Says DRM Is A Waste Of Time (thinq.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Blizzard founder, Frank Pearce reckons that fighting piracy with DRM is a losing battle.

His company — which is responsible for the biggest videogame of all time, the worryingly-addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft — is to release Starcraft 2 on July 27th and Pearce has told Videogamer that the title won't be hobbled with the kind of crazy copy protection schemes which have made Ubisoft very unpopular in gaming circles of late.

Starcraft 2 will require a single online activation using the company's Battle.net servers, after which players will be allowed to play the single-player game to their hearts' content, without being forced to have a persistent Internet connection.
Businesses

Submission + - PhysX Founder to Lead AMD's Fusion Program (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: AMD has officially confirmed yesterday's reports about nabbing Ageia founder Manju Hegde from Nvidia. However, it looks as though Hegde is going to have very little to do with hardware-accelerated gaming physics after all.

As our sources indicated yesterday, Hegde has indeed joined AMD at the vice president level, but he's now heading up AMD's Fusion Experience Program[me], rather than working specifically on physics gaming features.

The Fusion Experience Programme has the specific role of finding out which software can take advantage of GPGPU acceleration in Fusion CPUs, as well as working out how to implement it.
Music

Submission + - Researcher studies musical earworms (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by Julie188
Julie188 writes: Some 99 percent of the population has, at some point, been "infected" with a song they just can't seem to shake off. In most cases, earworms will disappear after a few minutes or hours, but some can last days. Researcher Andréane McNally-Gagnon is also a musician and finds herself a frequent earworm sufferer. So she launched a study into which songs were most infectious and under what circumstances earworms occur. (And, if I add the words "Hey, Jude" ... will you catch an earworm right now?)
Biotech

Submission + - Precious Lessons to Learn from Brazil on Biotech

Submitted by
GMOs
GMOs writes: "Lately, two major events, with profound implications to developing countries struggling to embrace genetically modified organisms (GMOs), have happened in Brazil. On February 28, 2007, MarketWatch, a leading provider of business news, financial information and analytical tools, reported that the Brazilian Senate had eased rules that regulate GMOs. Approval of GMOs by the Brazil Biosafety Commission (CTNBio) will no longer be by two-thirds majority, but by a simple majority. The law awaits President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva's approval. Then, on March 9, 2007, Brazil and the U.S. signed a landmark agreement to cooperate on biofuels development, to reduce the two countries' over-dependence on foreign oil. Biofuel is primarily produced from agricultural products such as corn and soybeans. Brazil is, therefore, expected to adopt modern agricultural technologies such as biotechnology, to double or triple corn and soybeans production to sustain its biofuels industry. Brazil isn't behind in this. The country is already a major grower of genetically modified cotton and soy. Biotech companies Bayer CropScience and Syngenta Seeds have made applications for transgenic corn, and await approval from CTNBio. It's expected that Brazilian farmers will be growing GM corn soon, with the entry of new GMOs rules. Brazil must be applauded for exercising good judgment about GMOs. The country didn't wait for anti-biotechnology activists to lecture it on GMOs. Brazil evidently knows what's good for its people. Other developing countries, especially in Africa, have precious lessons to learn from Brazil. First, they must completely change their perceptions and attitude towards GMOs. Secondly, they must enact laws that don't stifle, but encourage investments in biotechnology. I have heard anti-technology activists whine about multinational biotechnology companies seeking to use Africans as guinea pigs. GMOs, as Brazil has demonstrated, are not all about food and pharmaceuticals. GMOs can also meet energy needs. If Africa and the rest of the developing world passionately believe that GMOs pose health risks, I would propose that they grow them for biofuels! This way, they'll stop relying on multinational oil companies for fuel, and will generate millions of jobs to their people."
AMD

Submission + - AMD running dry?

Submitted by SoTuA
SoTuA writes: Analysts report that AMD is in financial problems. The fierce battles with Intel in the past years have taken its toll, with AMD showing a important stock price drop during the last 12 months, while Intel remains steady. Reportedly AMD is cash-strapped after buying out ATi and upgrading their factories. Will AMD turn this trend around with the launch of Barcelona, or will Intel regain the ground recently lost in the CPU market?
Programming

How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People 241

Posted by Hemos from the these-people-have-a-poison-aoe-need-totems-to-cleanse dept.
CoolVibe writes "Two Subversion developers talk at Google about how to keep pests and malcontents out of your open source projects. From the abstract: 'Every open source project runs into people who are selfish, uncooperative, and disrespectful. These people can silently poison the atmosphere of a happy developer community. Come learn how to identify these people and peacefully de-fuse them before they derail your project. Told through a series of (often amusing) real-life anecdotes and experiences.'"
The Courts

Submission + - The Brain on the Stand

Submitted by odyaws
odyaws writes: The New York Times is carrying a long article on the up-and-coming methodology of using techniques from neuroscience, particularly fMRI, in criminal cases. As defendants are winning trials or gaining leniency based on brain abnormalities ("the tumor made me do it"), it brings to light difficult questions of legal culpability for criminals with neurological problems, a natural extension of the insanity defense. Particularly chilling is the speculation on the future use of brain scans to determine likelihood of future criminal activity in potential parolees and others such as terrorism suspects.
Space

Submission + - The search for dark matter and dark energy

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy, popular article on dark matter and dark energy, discussing the past, present, and future: 'Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic ["meaning that it doesn't consist of the protons and neutrons of 'normal' matter"]. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it's not "normal," either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.'
Slashback

Submission + - Distributed Proofreaders + /. = 10,000 eBooks

Submitted by Jagged
Jagged writes: This week Distributed Proofreaders commemorated their digital transcription of 10,000 written works. Back on November 8, 2002, Slashdot posted an article on Distributed Proofreaders. That initial Slashdotting smashed records, wore out the DP admins, and started changes in the way the volunteers worked that made Distributed Proofreaders what it is today.

Distributed Proofreaders, a wholly volunteer organization, was established in 2000 for the purpose of producing quality transcriptions of machine-readable texts from public domain sources. The resulting texts are published on Project Gutenberg.

True to its international nature, Distributed Proofreaders, while respecting U.S. copyright laws, does not limit itself to preserving solely English language content. Nearly 15% of completed titles, to date, represent over 20 languages beyond English. A look to DPs 10,000th title set reveals the diversity of world cultural content in the public domain. Among this commemorative collection are a French translation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice; the chronicle of Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto's African expeditions; a pair of illustrated children stories from Germany; the first part of 'Species Plantarum', a 17th century Latin botanical reference work and a translation of a 17th century Guatemalan Maya manuscript.

The fifteen titles released today are not a cheer towards the past accomplishments of Distributed Proofreaders, nor are they pat on the back for deeds fulfilled on this day. What these titles so clearly represent, of their own merits, is the future and what awaits within the world's public domain yet to be rescued from obscurity and re-presented to an audience hungry to rediscover the cultural treasures of previous ages.
Input Devices

Submission + - Cool interface technology

Submitted by Tom
Tom writes: Defense Tech and SFGate.com have a video demonstrating use of "Perceptive Pixel"'s interface technology. They don't want you to call it "The Minority Report" tech, but that's probably the easiest way to describe it to mainstream users. Either that or "a touchscreen that doesn't suck". Looks like a cool way to organize your photos. (Or it would be, without the 6-figure price tag.)
Security

Submission + - OSSEC v1.1 available

Submitted by
Daniel Cid
Daniel Cid writes: "OSSEC is an Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System. It
performs log analysis, file integrity checking, Windows registry
monitoring, rootkit detection, time-based alerting and active
response. It runs on most operating systems, including Linux, *BSD,
Solaris, Windows and Mac.

We are pleased to announce the availability of OSSEC v1.1. This new version
comes with numerous new features, including support for Microsoft
IIS6, Cisco VPN concentrator, Cisco PIX VPN AAA, Cisco FWSM and
Solaris 10 "su" logs. We also added more granular e-mail alerting options, a
new Windows agent installer and more advanced log analysis rules options.

A list of all new features (and big fixes) is available below:
http://www.ossec.net/announcements/v1.1-2007-03-12 .txt

Download it from:
http://www.ossec.net/en/downloads.html"

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