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Cellphones

Submission + - Apple rejects iPhone app, files a patent for it (tuaw.com) 1

Submitted by recoiledsnake
recoiledsnake writes: Yet another app has been buried in the iPhone Application Graveyard . While this is nothing new, the kicker this time is that Apple has filed a patent on karaoke functionality in the iPod application a few weeks after rejecting the iKaraoke app for duplicating functionality that doesn't exist... yet. Maybe the $99 iPhone Developer Program fee should include a crystal ball for testing apps for duplicating Apple programs' functionality before submitting them so that precious time and resources of app developeres is not unnecessarily wasted. Jobs himself had responded to accusations of political censorship of iPhone applications in the past.
The Courts

Submission + - The Catcher's Sequel Goes Awry

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "US District Court Judge Deborah Batts issued a preliminary injunction this week barring the US publication and sale of a parody of J. D. Salinger's famous 1951 coming of age novel "Catcher in the Rye" called "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" by Swedish author Frederik Colting. Colting's lawyer had argued at a hearing that, like a previous parody of "Gone with the Wind" called "The Wind Done Gone" his client's work was covered by fair use provisions because it is a critical parody of Salinger's iconic novel and was therefore tranformative, rather than derivative of the original work by the reclusive author. During the hearing Judge Batts expressed skepticism toward that argument and while acknowledging that Colting's book is mildly tranformative of the original work--mainly because it includes Salinger himself as a character bent on killing off the septuagenarian Holden Caulfield. But Caulfield may have bigger problems than the insults of irreverent parodists. While still a staple of the high school curriculum, beloved by many teachers who read and reread it in their own youth, teachers say young readers today don't like Holden as much as they used to and what once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as "weird," "whiny" and "immature." In the meantime Colting's attorney said he plans to seek an expedited appeal of the ruling with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit so the book, already published in the UK can be published in the United States.. "Members of the public are deprived of the chance to read the book and decide for themselves whether it adds to their understanding of Salinger and his work.""
Caldera

Submission + - SCO Head sued for trade secret theft and fraud 1

Submitted by akahige
akahige writes: In what can only be described as a massive turning of the karmic wheel, Darl McBride (SCO), Robert Brazell (founder of Overstock.com), Stephen Norris (an investment capital guy), and Bryan Cave (former Pelican Equity attorney) are all listed as defendants in a lawsuit filed that alleges they conspired to steal trade secrets from Pelican Equity which they used to establish Talos Partners, a stock lending business. Among the charges are fraud, conspiracy, and violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Groklaw posted about this last night and has since pulled the story, though the PDF of the complaint is still available, and there's a summary on Courthouse News Service.
Government

Submission + - Valencia (Spain) moves to free software

Submitted by diegocgteleline.es
diegocgteleline.es writes: A LWN article talks about the adoption of free software in the Valencia Autonomous Community (Spain): "Over the last decade or so there have been multiple reports of governments making the switch to free software. Some have been relatively successful, like Munich, others have been less so. A recent report from Valencia provides a nice look inside the transition to free software that has been going on since 2003. The department manager noted that the biggest problem faced was the "fear of change [...] we have faced up to the challenge with well-laid plans, training and an alternative plan of action just in case"
Earth

Ocean Currents Proposed As Cause of Magnetic Field 333

Posted by kdawson from the round-and-round-and-round-in-the-circle-game dept.
pjt33 notes a recently published paper proposing that ocean currents could account for Earth's magnetic field. The wrteup appears on the Institute of Physics site; the IOP is co-owner, with the German Physical Society, of the open-access journal in which the paper appears. This reader adds, "The currently predominant theory is that the cause of Earth's magnetic field is molten iron flowing in the outer core. There is at present no direct evidence for either theory." "Professor Gregory Ryskin from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Illinois, US, has defied the long-standing convention by applying equations from magnetohydrodynamics to our oceans' salt water (which conducts electricity) and found that the long-term changes (the secular variation) in the Earth's main magnetic field are possibly induced by our oceans' circulation."

Comment Re:No radioactivity involved? (Score 3, Funny) 221

by hullabalucination (#27234599) Attached to: Spider Bite Allows Man To Walk Again

You know, all you had to do was check the Yellow Pages for the Sutter Buttes/Tarantula Junction exchange, and there right under the "World Domination, Evil Genetic Engineering Consultants" heading was this listing:

"Tarantek: Your one-stop source for mutants, clones, evil world domination schemes, improbability manipulation and 'unapproved' research. Arachnids our specialty. We're also California's largest wholesaler of Chia Pets. We take MasterCard, Discover Card and VISA."

* * * * *

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
—Abraham Lincoln

Comment Funny... (Score 1) 614

by hullabalucination (#26726905) Attached to: Software Piracy At the Beijing Branch Office?

..but I run an advertising agency that uses "free replacements" (on Linux) and am today wrapping up my fourth high-quality print project of the young year and a Website upgrade. Just for your edification, GIMP's had a very good CMYK export plugin for several years now, and I'll put my print portfolio up against anyone's.

Comment Re:And Somewhere... (Score 2, Funny) 526

by hullabalucination (#26716859) Attached to: Comcast Apologizes For Super Bowl Porn Glitch

And somewhere in that mess, someone was enjoying some porno only to have their fantasy broken by the defensive line of the Cardinals.

OK, so I'm confused now. When Al Michaels talked about "going long," was he referring to action on the field or in the porn clip?

* * * * *

NOTE: my normal sig line has been replaced by 30 seconds of Richard Feynman discussing quantum electrodynamics. We apologize for this interruption.

Comment Useful Idiot (Score 1) 249

by hullabalucination (#26679355) Attached to: Exchange Comes To Linux As OpenChange

The quote is "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run," as told to Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reporter James Wallace by a Microsoft developer while Wallace was doing interviews gathering material for the book Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire:

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233430962&sr=1-1

From one review of the book:

According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on DOS 2.0 had a saying at the time that "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into DOS 2.0 that caused Lotus 1-2-3 to breakdown when it was loaded. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader.

The Kremlin had a term for people like you back during the Soviet era: "useful idiot."

Comment Re:win32 a first-class citizen? (Score 1) 117

by hullabalucination (#26020065) Attached to: Free Resources for Windows Perl Development

Windows Mobile is everywhere.

You're joking, right? Are we talking about the same Windows Mobile that got its doors blown off in the mobile market by OS X on the iPhone in a mere two quarters?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1163

* * * * *

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." —Groucho Marx

The Internet

An Inside Look at the Great Firewall of China 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the must-protect-general's-secret-recipe dept.
alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?

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