todd450 pointed us to a nifty visualization of Wikipedia and controversial articles in it. The image started with a network of 650,000 articles color coded to indicate activity. The original image is apparently 5' square, but the sample image they have is still pretty neat.

mw13068 writes "In a recent article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer FSF General Council Eben Moglen points out that the Microsoft SUSE coupons have no expiration date. The result? 'Microsoft can be sure that some coupons will be turned into Novell in return for software after the effective date of GPL 3. Once that has happened, patent defenses will, under the license, have moved out into the broad community and be available to anybody who Microsoft should ever sue for infringement.' Groklaw is also covering the story in it's inimitable way."

RzUpAnmsCwrds writes "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Marie Lindor has retained an expert witness of her own to fight the RIAA, and to debunk the testimony and reports of the RIAA's 'expert' Dr. Doug Jacobson, whose reliability has been challenged by Ms. Lindor in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. Ms. Lindor's expert is none other than Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology. It was Prof. Pouwelse's scathing analysis of the RIAA's MediaSentry 'investigations' (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands that caused the courts in that country to direct the ISPs there not to turn over their subscribers' information (PDF), thus nipping in the bud the RIAA's intended litigation juggernaut in that country."

holy_calamity writes "A Canadian firm has launched a device that can track the gaze of multiple people from up to 10 metres away. Originally developed at Queen's University, Ontario, they hope to sell it to advertisers to allow them to monitor how many people look at their ads. Admittedly they are trying more benign stuff too like better hearing aids, but I doubt that will make up for movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way."

A number of readers let us know that Reuters and others are reporting that Warner Brothers is canceling movie previews in Canadian theaters, starting with Oceans Thirteen. A Warner VP said, "Within the first week of a film's release, you can almost be certain that somewhere out there a Canadian copy will show up." Recently, the International Intellectual Property Association placed Canada on its Priority Watch List, along with the likes of Argentina, China, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. This community knows, thanks to Michael Geist, that the claim is mostly ficiton.

TheTony writes "With long-term projects like manned Mars exploration on the horizon, NASA has begun discussing previously taboo subjects. Ethical and practical questions involving illness, death, genetic profiling, and astronaut relations and behavior in space need to be addressed, as NASA begins to consider new policies with these extended missions in mind." From the article: "One topic that is evidently too hot to handle: How do you cope with sexual desire among healthy young men and women during a mission years long?"

An anonymous reader writes "A member of Canada's ruling Conservative party has pledged to "clean up" the Internet with new bill that would mandate ISP licensing, know-your-subscriber rules, and allow the government to order ISPs to block content. ISPs that fail to block would faces possible jail time for the company's directors and officers."

cyberianpan writes "Imagine a world where advertisers would be able to predict your detailed behavior online. They would know when you are about to buy a song, a car, a present for your spouse — they would know virtually everything you are thinking. With the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google now has access to the cookies and subsequently browsing history of vast numbers of web users. It would be fair to say that greater than 85% of Internet users frequently come into contact with ads served by DoubleClick. Google could potentially have access to not only the majority of the world's search history but its browsing and e-commerce history as well. The company could know more about web surfers than they know about themselves."

phase_9 writes "The latest version of Mozilla Thunderbird may still only be in beta but already the user community have started creating an extensive set of viable Exchange killers. One such example is the latest mashup between Thunderbird and Google Calendars, providing bi-directional syncing of calendar information from both the client and internet. How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current imposes?"

Martin_Sturm writes "A $175 1GB USB stick designed to protect your data turns out to be a very insecure. According to the distributer of the Secustick, the safety of the data is ensured: 'Due to its unique technology it has the ability to destroy itself once an incorrect password is entered.' The Secustick is used by various European governments and organizations to secure data on USB sticks. Tweakers.net shows how easy it is to break the protection of the stick. Quoting: 'It should be clear that the stick's security is quite useless: a simple program can be used to fool the Secustick into sending its unlock command without knowing the password. Besides, the password.exe application can be adapted so that it accepts arbitrary passwords.' The manufacturer got the message and took the Secustick website offline. The site give a message (translated from Dutch): 'Dear visitor, this site is currently unavailable due to security issues of the Secustick. We are currently working on an improved version of the Secustick.'"

gadgetopia writes "On Russian state television, cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin tells journalists in a live video interview from the ISS that "Charles said that Bill Gates is also preparing to visit space"." Gotta wonder what that insurance premium is going to look like.

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes in with with an essay that starts "On March 22nd, District Court Judge Lowell Reed ruled that the Child Online Protection Act was unconstitutional, partly because the judge called it 'vague and overbroad,' and partly because less restrictive means existed, such as Internet blocking software. I'll leave others to comment on the legal issues, but blocking software is something that I've studied, and it's important to make sure this decision is not seen as some kind of vindication for the 'censorware' industry." Tap that link below to read the rest of his story.

Simon P. Chappell writes "These days, Brazil is no longer just on the map for its fine coffee and martial arts. They have a few other reasons and one of them is called Lua. Lua is an open-source scripting language that was originally designed for small size and excellent portability to support its use in embedded systems. Like anything good, it didn't take long for it to be discovered by others looking for a small and efficient scripting language."

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spo0nman writes "The PythonOnPlanes release team has just published PythonOnPlanes-1.3.07 aka. 'the SuperSunday' release. For those in the know PythonOnPlanes is a rapid development framework for Python which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association DataMapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables Python users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.'Major highlights in the release include Active Scrum Manager 1, Sanity Preserver 3.13 and Lart 22.21. This is also the first release with the *PythonOnPlanes Live CD Installer* officially debuting on the x86 platform.'"