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The Courts

Submission + - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, GoDaddy subpoenaed

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Grisoft has filed subpoenas under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Internet domain registrar GoDaddy. The antivirus company is seeking the identities of search advertisers responsible for fraudulently promoting AVG antivirus products through sponsored text ads. It is also seeking domain registration information associated with these search advertisers in order to identify those behind the sites selling counterfeit AVG software.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - What a dumb a year it's been!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Fortune's "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" is out for 2007. And what a banner year it has been! Everything from CEO excesses (playing *LOTS* of golf while Merrill Lynch posts the first quarterly loss ever), fancy restaurants with expensive desserts (then the restaurant fails health inspection), sleazy business practices (e.g., Best Buy setting up an in-store web server with higher priced specials), and loads of hilariously defective or just plain unlucky technological stuff (e.g., 365 Main's 3-backup power failure). Apparently you can't be charged with DUI in New Jersey if you are driving a Zamboni (who knew?). Oh, and of course, there's Comcast's surprise porn.
Government

Submission + - Canadian Song Writers push for legal P2P (songwriters.ca) 1

Submitted by spiri
spiri writes: The songwriters association of Canada is proposing a new law that will compensate artists when their songs are downloaded on p2p networks.

"The plan we propose would not change or interfere with the way Canadians receive their music. No one would be sued for the online sharing of songs. On the contrary, the sharing of music on Peer-to-Peer networks and similar technologies would become perfectly legal. In addition, Music Publishers and Record Labels would be fairly compensated for the crucial role they play in supporting Canadian music creators."

Will Canada be one of the first to think of its citizens before the recording industry? You can view the proposal here.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Blizzard Taking It To Gold Sellers and Buyers

Submitted by Samalie
Samalie writes: It appears Blizzard may finally be taking a fatal shot at IGE, providers of WoW Gold & Powerleveling.

The State of Florida has issued a subponea demanding pretty much everything IGE has on their own operations, as well as account/player names for everyone they've ever sold gold or services to.

Looks like the lamighty banstick may be coming out at Blizzard....but estimates are that upwards of 25% of their monthly paying customers have at one time bought gold. Will Blizzard really chop out 1/4 of their subscriber base?

Read the subponea here, and the full article here.
Toys

Submission + - Teens Kill Child While Acting Out Mortal Kombat (wired.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A teenage girl and her boyfriend have been charged with beating the girl's 7-year-old sister to death while imitating moves from Mortal Kombat.

Heather Trujillo, 16, and her boyfriend Lamar Roberts, 17, were babysitting young Zoe and her 3-year-old twin sisters. According to Trujillo, the two teens began practicing Mortal Kombat moves on Zoe, who later died from blunt force trauma to her brain and central nervous system.

According to the police, Trujillo admitted that she punched Zoe "in the stomach, karate chopped her lower arms, punched and pinched the victim's thighs, kicked her in the shins, slapped her stomach and buttocks and poked at the victim's chest." Roberts told police that Zoe asked the pair to stop hurting her, but that he didn't because he was drunk.

Trujillo and Roberts are being held on $100,000 bail each, and are being charged as adults.
Supercomputing

Submission + - The History of NTP (Network Time Protocol) (galsys.co.uk)

Submitted by
UKDave
UKDave writes: "Without NTP, time would not be consistent over any two computers, let alone a network of hundreds, or thousands. Seconds would be lost here and more seconds would be gained there. It would cause major confusion. This article takes a look at the history of NTP, right from the beginning at Delaware University."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Global Orgasm Dec 22 2007 6:08GMT

Submitted by cavedwler
cavedwler writes: From wired.com
http://blog.wired.com/sex/2006/11/global_orgasm_a.html

"Global Orgasm, a winter solstice event conceived to "effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy," takes place on December 22.

This is one of those projects that can only have global impact because of the internet. You just couldn't get the word out to all the people open to this sort of thing without the technology — and without the culture that has shaped around this technology."
Microsoft

Submission + - Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentati (samba.org)

Submitted by
Jeremy Allison - Sam
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes: "Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation
                        —

December 20th 2007. Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation
(PFIF), a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law
Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol
documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows
workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software
projects such as Samba.

Microsoft was required to make this information available to
competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004
Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against
that decision on September 17th 2007.

Andrew Tridgell, creator of Samba, said, "We are very pleased to be
able to get access to the technical information necessary to continue
to develop Samba as a Free Software project. Although we were
disappointed the decision did not address the issue of patent claims
over the protocols, it was a great achievement for the European
Commission and for enforcement of antitrust laws in Europe. The
agreement allows us to keep Samba up to date with recent changes in
Microsoft Windows, and also helps other Free Software projects that
need to interoperate with Windows".

Jeremy Allison, co-creator of Samba said, "Andrew did a superb job in
negotiating the agreement with Microsoft. We will be able to use the
information obtained to continue to develop Samba and create more Free
Software. We are hoping to get back to the productive relationship we
had with Microsoft during the early 1990's when we shared information
about these protocols. The agreement also clarifies the exact patent
numbers concerned so there is no possibility of misunderstandings
around this issue."

Volker Lendecke, head of the Samba Team in Europe said, "I am very
pleased to see that the European Commission acknowledged Free Software
as a valid competitor in the IT industry and that the License
conditions on the protocol information offered to the Free Software
world are indeed compatible with the GPL. This is much better than
what we have seen in similar cases in other countries and the
Commission has done a great job to push the case to this point."

Compatible with Free Software
—

After paying Microsoft a one-time sum of 10,000 Euros, the PFIF will
make available to the Samba Team under non-disclosure terms the
documentation needed for implementation of all of the workgroup server
protocols covered by the EU decision.

Although the documentation itself will be held in confidence by the
PFIF and Samba Team engineers, the agreement allows the publication of
the source code of the implementation of these protocols without any
further restrictions. This is fully compatible with versions two and
three of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Samba is published
under the GNU GPL which is the most widely used of all Free Software
licenses. In addition it allows discussion of the protocol information
amongst implementers which will aid technical cooperation between
engineers.

Under the agreement, Microsoft is required to make available and keep
current a list of patent numbers it believes are related to the
Microsoft implementation of the workgroup server protocols, without
granting an implicit patent license to any Free Software
implementation.

No per-copy royalties are required from the PFIF, Samba developers,
third party vendors or users and no acknowledgement of any patent
infringement by Free Software implementations is expressed or implied
in the agreement.

The patent list provides us with a bounded set of work needed to
ensure non-infringement of Samba and other Free Software projects
that implement the protocols documented by Microsoft under this
agreement. Any patents outside this list cannot be asserted by
Microsoft against any implementation developed using the supplied
documentation. Unlike the highly dubious patent covenants recently
announced by some companies this warranty extends to all third
parties. Also unlike past agreements, this agreement has been
carefully scrutinized by the Software Freedom Law Center, the premier
legal experts for the GPL and Free Software.

Microsoft must keep the documentation up to date with new products and
provide error correction assistance to parties signing the
agreement. Disputes will be resolved by the Trustee appointed by the
Commission as part of the court decision.

The Samba Team would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Carlo
Piana from the Free Software Foundation Europe and Eben Moglen of the
Software Freedom Law Center, who have been our legal representation on
this case. They have provided world-class legal services for many
years and we are sincerely grateful.

The Samba Team.
20th December 2007.

Contact: press@samba.org

Samba Web site: http://www.samba.org/

For more information on the agreement see:

http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/

An article on the history of the case:

http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html

An article explaining some details of the agreement:

http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.html

The Protocol Freedom Information Foundation Web site:

http://www.protocolfreedom.org/

The PFIF agreement text:

http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_agreement.pdf"
Announcements

Submission + - Linux Productivity Magazine (troubleshooters.com)

Submitted by
Homer Whittaker
Homer Whittaker writes: "This is the very best magazine for knowledgeable dummies like me. http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/index.htm I have been working with Linux exclusively for approximately 10 years, and still do not know how to upgrade the kernel, and/or most other things. I depend upon magazines or books that have specific HOWTO's (or better yet helping hands). I am a business person, with some 23 years of computer experience in many, many areas. I use the word experience in that extremely dangerous way, in other words don't let me in on your next install :)"
Space

Submission + - Cosmic explosion detonates in empty space (newscientist.com)

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: According to an article in NewScientist, "Astronomers are puzzling over a powerful cosmic explosion that seems to have detonated in a region of empty space, far away from any nearby galaxy." The leading theory is that the explosion was a star exploding in the gas trail that is yanked out of a galaxy when it passes or begins merging with another. Said the lead author of the study, "Even if the galaxies have stopped forming stars, in the tidal tails you can trigger new episodes of star formation [not to mention detonation]," and indeed the authors have identified two candidate galaxies that give weight to their theory.
Programming

Submission + - Apple hires author of the unofficial iPhone SDK

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple is apparently starting to hire inside the unofficial, jailbreak-savvy iPhone development community. The company has snagged Lucas Newmann from Delicious Monster as an "iPhone engineer." Newman wrote the first native game for the iPhone ("Lights Out!") and also put together an unofficial SDK for the device months ago.
Security

Submission + - FTC: $50k fine for dumping customer info in trash (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A mortgage company that left loan documents with consumers' sensitive personal and financial information in and around an unsecured dumpster today agreed it had violated Federal Trade Commission information protection statutes today said it would pay $50,000 in civil penalties. Specifically the FTC said the American United Mortgage Company violated the Disposal, Safeguards, and Privacy rules by failing to properly dispose of credit reports or information taken from credit reports, failing to develop or implement reasonable safeguards to protect customer information, and not providing customers with privacy notices. The agreement gave the FTC its first victory in a Disposal Rule case... http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23157"
Enlightenment

Submission + - Speed Trap Exchange and Mashup Using MS Maps (njection.com)

Submitted by
Tetsujin28go
Tetsujin28go writes: "Speed Trap, is a mashup (Web application hybrid) that combines Microsoft Live Maps and the ability to pinpoint and review speed traps located anywhere on the planet. In addition to the location of the trap, detailed information such as the type of speed detection used, posted speed limit, and level of enforcement. Future revisions of the site will allow for uploading to mobile GPS devices and GPS Enabled Phones."

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