168209
story
wjamesau writes
"Sun and IBM have launched intranet metaverses designed for business and built to work behind their corporate firewalls, so their worldwide employees can use them to collaborate together. Most interesting to game developers, IBM (which also runs a private, no public access Second Life island as a development lab) created their intranet world from the 3D Torque engine from Garage Games. Will the metaverse actually be thousands of gated community metaverses?"
168375
submission
ballmerfud writes:
I am sure that by now everyone is tired of hearing about the Microsoft patent FUD, but Eben Moglen, professor of law and head honcho at the Software Freedom Law Center, touched on this issue just last week in a speech he gave in San Diego. Eben's statement is so eloquent and succinct that it might be worthwhile for those who haven't found it by other means to hear it. In this clip he explains the in-depth mechanics of the MS patent threat and specifically how it relates to the Novell deal. The intent is essentially to threaten open source developers while simultaneously evading any backlash from enterprise customers (and even make a buck from it). This may be nothing new to many here, but Eben explains it beautifully.
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/14/summit-20 07-eben-moglen-on-microsofts-summer-of-fear/
168367
submission
Morty writes:
There was a previous slashdot story announcing the future availability of the Hitachi 1TB hard drive. A mere 9 months later, you can now buy the 1TB hard disk retail! Or, if you're like me, you can at least read the Anandtech review of the 1TB hard disk after you pay your mortgage. This is a milestone I will remember for a long time.
168363
submission
Nymz writes:
A recent wave of cyber-attacks has been directed at multiple Estonian institutions, including government ministries, political parties, news organizations, and banks. The scope of attacks suggest the entire country is the target, and with no clear solution for dealing with this type of situation, one has to wonder if an escalation to a conventional-attack or war is far off.
166653
submission
Talthor writes:
It was first in 2003 that XGI Technology had made their appearance with a Volari Duo V8 Ultra and then their manufacturing and design had continued with a V3XT and other low end graphics cards. While XGI never really gained much market share, in 2005 they had released their 2D driver code. But where is XGI Technology today? According to Phoronix: "XGI Technology once presented a glimmer of hope to desktop users wishing to find a cheap yet reliable discrete graphics card with official open-source drivers. Thanks in part to IBM, the XGI open-source driver is becoming a reality, but with XGI having refocused their business operations on the embedded and server markets, the days of XGI on the desktop are no more."
166627
submission
thefickler writes:
The recent "Downloader" trojan that was distributed through spam email in Germany used the same technique as Windows Update to load itself onto unsuspecting users' computers, according to security company Symantec.
166623
submission
phoey writes:
It appears that patents on business processes have finally struck a chord with lawyers, specifically tax lawyers. There is currently a court case (Wealth Transfer Group v. Rowe No. 3:2006cv00024) that will decide (if not settled) whether business processes apply to tax law strategies. It will be interesting to see if the ruling is in favor of carving out an exception for tax law strategies, overturning the ruling from State Street making business processes unpatentable, or neither. State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. Jul. 23, 1998).
With little real world experience in law (currently in my second year of law school concentrating in Intellectual Property), I was surprised by the analogy drawn by the patent attorney in the article. He mentions that doctor's have learned to deal with patents on the medical devices they use, so lawyers will have to learn to deal with patents on business processes. The better analogy would be if Doctor's could not perform a particular surgery or surgical technique because it had a business patent. This would most certainly cause outrage in the medical community.
As a software engineer, I have seen first hand how patents on business processes (especially obvious ones) can limit innovation in the software development field. It will be interesting to see how the "self-regulating" field of law will resolve this question of patentability of business processes.
