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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Wants OLPC's XO Redesigned For Windows

Submitted by Preedit
Preedit writes: There's an Infoweek story today that says Microsoft has asked Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child organization to redesign its Linux-based XO laptop so it can accommodate Windows XP. Specifically, Microsoft wants slots added so extra memory can be introduced to the system via an SD Card. The story notes that the XO was previously chided as unusable by Bill Gates, so this might be tacit admission that Microsoft and Intel's Classmate PC for emerging markets has failed to catch on.
Software

Submission + - Sage wins Award for Free Mathematical Software

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Since 2003, Cetril has organised the Trophées du Libre contest to reward innovative free software and this year Sage won first place in the Scientific Software category. Sage faced initial skepticism from the mathematics and education communities. "I've had a surprisingly large number of people tell me that something like Sage couldn't be done — that it just wasn't possible," said William Stein, lead developer of the tool. "I'm hearing that less now." The big commercial programs — Matlab, Maple, Mathematica and Magma — charge license fees. The Mathematica Web page, for example, charges $2,495 for a regular license. But the frustrations aren't only financial. Commercial programs don't always reveal how the calculations are performed. This means that other mathematicians can't scrutinize the code to see how a computer-based calculation arrived at a result. "Not being able to check the code of a computer-based calculation is like not publishing proofs for a mathematical theorem," Stein said. "It's ludicrous.""

Feed Engadget: Additional Automotive X-Prize details revealed (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Transportation

For a competition that still hasn't officially launched, the Automotive X-Prize has certainly been doing a pretty good job of making itself known, and we've now got yet more details on it courtesy of the folks at CNET. First up, it seems that the X-Prize Foundation will finally get official with the competition "sometime next year," although likely not before the New York Auto Show in the spring. Before that, however, the Foundation will be showing off some or all of the 43 contenders currently signed up at the Detroit Auto Show in January including, among others, Aptera's 300 mile-per-gallon car pictured above. What's more, given that the competition only seeks to find a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon, it would seem that Aptera would have a considerable advantage -- assuming it can actually back up its claims, that is. Hit up the read link below for a peek at some of the other competitors.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Techdirt: YouTube Suspends Egyptian Anti-Torture Activist's Account (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
YouTube is catching a lot of flack for suspending the account of an Egyptian activist who had captured evidence of police brutality on video and uploaded it to the site. YouTube's "community guidelines" state that "graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed" on YouTube. Apparently, that includes graphic or gratuitous violence perpetrated by governments against innocent civilians. I have to say I don't understand why YouTube goes to so much trouble to censor "objectionable" content. If the goal is to keep such materials away from children, there are effective ways to do that without censoring the material altogether. Flickr, for example, permits pornographic photographs to be uploaded to its site, but it restricts access to them in various ways that helps prevent children from inadvertently stumbling across them. YouTube should be able to implement a similar system. Instead of deleting objectionable content, it should flag it as objectionable. Objectionable content might not show up on the home page or in the default search results. It might also require clicking through a warning page before viewing it. But it's hard to see what purpose is served by deleting the content entirely. The content will be posted somewhere else, where someone else will derive advertising revenue from it. And in the process, YouTube is inadvertently giving the impression that it is helping oppressive governments squelch criticism of their regimes.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.



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Government

Submission + - Swiss DMCA quietly adopted (boingboing.net)

Submitted by roady
roady writes: We have seen a lot of talk about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers, not even the Swiss people. The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50'000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law can be read here.

Feed Engadget: Patent Office upholds Tivo's "time warp" patent, EchoStar not so happy (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Home Entertainment

The long-running dispute between Tivo and EchoStar inched a little closer to resolution today, with the United States Patent Office issuing a non-appealable ruling saying that Tivo's DVR-enabling "time warp" patent is valid. You might remember that Tivo sued EchoStar for violating that patent in Dish Network DVRs at the beginning of 2006, and won a $90M judgment and an injunction requiring EchoStar to turn off existing DVR functionality and stop selling DVRs in the future. That injunction was then stayed pending EchoStar's appeals before the Patent Office and the Federal Court of Appeals, so sadly, this ruling doesn't mean the case is over yet -- now it's the Court of Appeals' turn to try and sort this out.

[Thanks, Dennis]

Disclaimer: Although this post was written by an attorney, it is not to constitute legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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