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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft (probably) didn't just buy Unix (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: Word came down this morning that, when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were.
Google

Submission + - Google Warns Irish Government Against Tax Increase

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The Irish government has been given a stark warning from some of the biggest American companies in Ireland on the risk of a mass exodus if the country's controversial low corporate tax rate is raised in return for an IMF/EU bailout to shore up the country's beleaguered banking system. According to The Telegraph, a statement signed by senior execs at Microsoft, HP, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and Intel points out that although Ireland's tax rate may be low in European terms, it is not when compared with locations such as Singapore, India and China. Separately, the head of Google's 2,000-strong European HQ in Dublin told the Belfast Telegraph that 'anything that impinges on Ireland's competitiveness is going to be a big thing for Google,' adding that, 'anything that increases the cost-base of a business is negative for competitiveness.' Or, as Tony Soprano might say, 'You'll be dead to me'.

Submission + - Estonian economist: abandon cash (uudised.err.ee)

Submitted by J-Georg
J-Georg writes: Professor of macroeconomics at the University of Tartu, Raul Eamets proposed today during his TEDx talk that Estonia should stop using cash at all when adopting the Euro as the national currency. He also pointed out that abandoning cash would not be only important for the Estonian economy as a whole but also is a real challenge for both IT and banking sectors and would also improve Estonian image as an IT-tiger.
AMD

Submission + - AMD Caught Cheating with Radeon Drivers (benchmarkreviews.com)

Submitted by ocoles
ocoles writes: Benchmark Reviews: Benchmark Reviews: Several review websites have discovered that AMD Catalyst Drivers reduce image quality in order to boost frame rate performance. Did AMD just get caught using the oldest trick in the book?
Science

LHC Scientists Create and Capture Antimatter 269

Posted by samzenpus from the I-want-my-warp-drive dept.
Velcroman1 writes "Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have created antimatter in the form of antihydrogen, demonstrating how it's possible to capture and release it. The development could help researchers devise laboratory experiments to learn more about this strange substance, which mostly disappeared from the universe shortly after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. Trapping any form of antimatter is difficult, because as soon as it meets normal matter — the stuff Earth and everything on it is made out of — the two annihilate each other in powerful explosions. 'We are getting close to the point at which we can do some classes of experiments on the properties of antihydrogen,' said Joel Fajans, a University of California, Berkeley professor of physics, and LBNL faculty scientist. 'Since no one has been able to make these types of measurements on antimatter atoms at all, it's a good start.'"
Google

Submission + - History repeating as Android tablets are pulled (pcpro.co.uk) 3

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: PC World has pulled the Toshiba Folio 100 tablet from its shelves because of high return rates, echoing the early retail experience of Linux on netbooks. The Toshiba tablet runs on Android, but it seems customers are unhappy with the user experience offered by Google's OS. PC Pro editor Tim Danton thinks it's a case of history repeating. "Remember when Linux-based netbooks first went on sale? Soon afterwards, reports appeared saying customers were returning them because they didn’t work as expected – that is, they didn’t run Windows software," Danton writes. "I suspect we’re seeing exactly the same pattern here: people are buying the Folio expecting the same smooth user experience as with an iPad, with the same link to a richly populated software store. It's months away from offering that experience."

Submission + - Muscle Mice 3

Submitted by
SilasMortimer
SilasMortimer writes: "Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have accomplished that for which humankind has been desperate for untold millenia: turning sad, injured regular mice into angry, beefed-up super-mice. Well, okay, there's no official word in TFA on the rodents' emotional states, but certainly when stem cells were injected into mice with leg injuries, the muscle grew back... almost twice as big as it was before the injury. This has many exciting implications, from better healing for injuries, to slowing down the aging process, to a spike in the number of cases of Generalized Anxiety Disorder among cats. I, for one, refuse to perpetuate lame, outdated memes. (But feel free to make up for the lack.)"
Businesses

China To Build Its Own Large Jetliner 332

Posted by timothy from the rising-tide-lifting-boats dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "China's domestic airlines will need to buy an estimated 4,330 new aircraft valued at $480 billion over the next two decades to meet demand in commercial aviation. Now the LA Times reports that the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China expects to begin producing its 156-seat C919 by 2016, competing with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. China has staked billions of dollars and national pride on the effort but what may surprise some Americans worried about slipping US competitiveness is that some well-known US companies are aiding China, putting US and European suppliers in a tough spot: Be willing to hand over advanced technology to Chinese firms that could one day be rivals or miss out on what's likely to be the biggest aviation bonanza of the next half a century. 'If they launch a commercial aviation industry, you've got to be part of it,' says Roger Seager, GE Aviation's vice president and general manager for China, whose company has garnered contracts worth about $6 billion for the C919. 'You can't take a pass and come back in 10 years.'"
Java

Submission + - Apple joins Oracle's OpenJDK project (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Apple has said it will join Oracle's OpenJDK and contribute "most of the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X." The announcement gives OpenJDK another prominent backer. IBM said last month it would work alongside Oracle to make OpenJDK "the primary location for open source Java SE development.""
Wikipedia

Submission + - Wikipedia could block 67 million Verizon customers (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A particularly nasty Wikipedia vandal has forced a discussion to take place over whether to block a range used by over 67 million Verizon customers from editing the site. Verizon has not responded to abusive Wikipedia users on their network before, even though the abusive Verizon users have released private information (phone numbers, etc.) of numerous individuals, and made countless threats that have also been reported to law enforcement. Wikipedia has done something similar in the past with users on the AOL network, which used proxy servers and thus allowed vandals to continue disrupting the site. says that AOL neglected to act on complaints by Wikipedia and individual users, and the resulting massive blocks by Wikipedia resulted in AOL changing their anonymizing system, according to . Discussion is also taking place on alternate solutions to deal with abuse from this Verizon user, named "Zsfgseg" on Wikipedia. If a block of millions is enacted, Verizon could potentially change how they assign IP addresses, or be forced at least to address a PR nightmare.

Comment Re:Party like it's 1988 (Score 2, Informative) 385

by avaik6 (#34212616) Attached to: CDE — Making Linux Portability Easy
I would LOVE to have mod points and vote this up... I always loved the fact that the applications use the existing blocks on the system to do their magic, and by sharing the blocks you can have more apps in less space than other platform$. But with this... if you install every f*cking package with this.. you will end up having 12 different glibc versions (hey, maybe 12 times the same glibc version, each for each app that requires it), and 81725 times each library.. I think it's a _GREAT_ tool to perform a fast-and-no-brains-available deployment of some in-development app, or to debug some weird shit. But please, do not pretend to install all my software like this.. I don't want gedit to weight 100mb.
GNOME

Ubuntu Moves Away From GNOME 514

Posted by CmdrTaco from the end-of-an-era dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named 'Unity' interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. Or at least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be 'GNOME,' even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?"
Microsoft

Windows 8 To Be Released In October 2012 337

Posted by CmdrTaco from the save-the-date dept.
dkd903 writes "Microsoft has been very secretive about the next version of its Windows operating system. After the success of Windows 7, everyone is very interested in the next iteration – Windows 8. A few leaks have been the only source of news about Windows 8 till now. However, a slip up from Microsoft Netherlands has put the release date in October 2012."

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