The Federal Communications Commission on Friday ruled 3-2 against Comcast and declared that it overstepped its network management authority by blocking BitTorrent peer to peer traffic. This is the first official ruling on major network shaping and throttling by the FCC. While it did not fine Comcast, it clearly defines boundaries and sends the message that the FCC enforces network neutrality principles. This also

Today Adobe systems made an announcement that it has provided technology and information to Google and Yahoo! to help the two search engine rivals index Shockwave Flash (SWF) file formats. According to the company, this will provide more relevant search rankings of the millions pieces of flash content. Until now, developers had to implement workarounds for exposing text co

Microsoft has announced they are planning to have an open workshop for developers interested in their adoption of the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Microsoft has recently announced support for ODF in the next service pack for Office (SP2 for Office 2007, expected to be released in the first half of 2009). In conj

As reported by the BBC, Microsoft has drawn the ire of the European Union who have levied a fine against the Redmond Software giant for $1.4 billion USD (originally 899m Euros). The fine is based upon Microsoft defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft must now pay after a ruling it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its position.

As Reported by Andy Upgrove, "the Wall Street Journal and Information Week reported this morning that EU regulators have announced a third investigation into Microsoft's conduct on the desktop. This latest action demonstrates that while the EU has settled the case against Microsoft that ran for almost a decade, it remains as suspicious as ever re

It is official. As Jim King himself blogged today, Adobe has received word that the Ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13 yes votes and only 1 negative. The report breaks down as follows:

I have become concerned over the last few years of the growing tendency for Wikipedia to censor or delete information they make a sole determination is irrelevant. I have always been a fan of Wikipedia in general, but feel that someone needs to stand up and state clearly that the Emperor has no clothes on. Wikipedia is a volunteer driven organization and there are lots of good editors however there seems to be a vast discrepancy towards content. Lately, there seem to be incidents where editors a

For those of you who love a challenge, Adobe has sponsored a whopper. The Semaphore art project in San Jose is where art meets technology. Four large round glyphs rotate their position every 7.2 seconds while a simultaneous low power radio broadcast emits a coded message. Artist Ben Rubin's mind shred's message seems to follow a pattern. Each broadcast segment contains an

In a surprise move, Microsoft is bending to pressure from governments and will sponsor an open source project to build tools that enable conversion between its Open XML formats in Office 2007 and OpenDocument (ODF). The forthcoming Office suite will also support an add-in for saving directly to ODF.

A recent story on CNET discusses the US Senate proposal that "Web site operators posting sexually explicit information must slap warning labels on their pages or face prison terms of up to five years." Senator Conrad Burns goes on to declare that "This will protect children from accidentally typing in the wrong address and immediately viewing indecent

Early rebuff to Gartner's use of the term SOA 2.0 seems to be gathering significant steam on both a grassroots and mainstream level. Several bloggers shared similar comments that the "SOA 2.0" term/buzzword was not something the tech community should just lie down and take. A resulting petition - SOA 2.0 - No Thanks! reflects the "Stop the Madness

A new week, a new Buzzword. This time it is different - "SOA 2.0" is a version qualified buzzword that makes people finally speak out! I have observed a really cool phenomena - normally, when someone comes out with a new buzzword that doesn't really have any substance, most people merely complain quietly and go about their business. With certain components going public with their term "SOA 2.0", the collective disgust seems to have finally reached the tipping point where people can no longer ke

I was recently amused by reading a blog of a group who apparently defeated PDF's DRM system by using GMail's "convert to HTML" option. I nearly fell off my chair when I read the claim " (it) works regardless of the files usage restrictions..". Yes - under certain circumstances you can gain access to text or other components of a PDF document that has policy protection on it, but *only*

I cannot believe this is actually being contemplated: "A mandatory rating system will "prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at an event in Alexandria, Va. How about a labeling law for not so bright politicians who flunked logic and ontology classes in high school? Can you imagine? Which o