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Submission + - Patent trolls finally bite the wrong organization (realtor.org)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: Patent trolls have long been a thorn in the side of the tech industry. No serious effort has taken place in Washington DC to rein them in. Until now. It seems that a patent troll has decided to lock horns with the 5th largest all time contributor to federal politicians, the National Association of Realtors. It is this unfortunate choice of target that has encouraged federal politicians to act. From the article:

Several lawmakers have introduced legislation to curb patent abuses, and President Obama has also moved on the administrative front, but comprehensive legislation is really what’s required to curb the practice. And that’s what NAR is calling for in the letter with its partners.

Submission + - Microsoft to Share Attack Data With Incident Responders

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Microsoft is expanding its MAPP program that shares attack and protection information with other security vendors and will now be sharing some data with incident responders, as well. The new system will enable organizations such as CERTs and internal IR teams to exchange information on specific attacks and general threats.

Now, Microsoft is expanding and changing the MAPP program so that more people will have access to some of the data and the information will be available earlier. Until now, MAPP members get access to patch data 24 hours before the release. Microsoft will be giving that information to MAPP companies three business days before Patch Tuesday going forward. The new MAPP for Responders program is an extension of the existing system and is designed to allow incident response teams to share information among themselves and to benefit from the threat intelligence that Microsoft has, as well.

Submission + - Is the Ubuntu Edge a good fit for the enterprise? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: The tech community has been abuzz over the past week over Canoncial's Ubuntu Edge campaign — enough so for a lively Ask Me Anything interview on Reddit with the company's CEO, Mark Shuttleworth. There's no denying that the company's vision of a cutting-edge "superphone" that doubles as a PC and that runs both desktop Ubuntu and Android is intriguing to gadget-loving geeks, open source advocates, and developers. While Canonical is understandably focused on securing buy-in from those groups, the company also has its sights set on a market that could make or break the project: enterprise users.
Just how eager is Canonical to secure enterprise backing? One of the packages (or "perks") in the company's $32 million Indiegogo campaign is called the Enterprise 100 Bundle. For $80,000, a contributor will receive "100 Ubuntu Edge smartphones, plus access to best-practice workshops and 30 days of online support to help CIOs and IT managers integrate Ubuntu for Android into the workplace."
InfoWorld challenged Canonical to lay out the business case for the Ubuntu Edge, both from a technology and financial perspective. The company's head of engineering Victor Palau (read: an actually in-the-trenches techie, not a marketing executive) accepted the challenge.

Submission + - Metadata on Open Education Resources Raises Legal and Ethical Questions (opensource.com)

Submitted by ectoman
ectoman writes: Open education resources (OER) are valuable for teachers all over the world. But organizing those resources takes work—and produces a good deal of metadata. Lisa Petrides, president and founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), writes about the legal and ethical issued raised by OER metadata.

Organizations like ours (and we are not alone) are having second thoughts about how much metadata we share and with whom. Some are becoming skittish, because the tides have turned once again and quality metadata is in high demand. We decided at OER Commons, for example, to place an "all rights reserved" notice on our website (meaning, you can’t scrape metadata and reuse it), and a license for non-commercial use on our metadata, with the goal of working with partners who desire something more than faux collaboration.

Submission + - Americans Think Courts Failing to Limit Government Surveillance (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: More than half of Americans believe that the federal courts have failed to limit the U.S. government’s collection of personal information via phone records and the Internet, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. But that’s nothing compared to the 70 percent who believe that the government “uses this data for purposes other than investigating terrorism,” according to the organization’s summary of its survey. Another 63 percent of respondents indicated they thought the government is collecting information about the content of their communications. The Pew Research Center surveyed 1,480 adults over the course of five days in July. “The public’s views of the government’s anti-terrorism efforts are complex, and many who believe the reach of the government’s data collection program is expansive still approve of the effort overall,” the organization’s summary added. “In every case, however, those who view the government’s data collection as far-reaching are less likely to approve of the program than those who do not.” Some 47 percent of those surveyed approved of the government’s collection of phone and Internet data, while 50 percent disapproved. Among those who thought the government is reading their personal email or listening to their phone calls, some 40 percent approved of the data collection, even as 58 percent disapproved. There’s much more, including how opinions of government surveillance break across political party lines on the Pew Research Center’s Website.

Submission + - 22nd IOCCC starts Thursday 1 Aug 2013

Submitted by achowe
achowe writes: The 22nd International Obfuscated C Code Contest opens 2013-Aug-01 03:14:15 UTC through to 2013-Oct-03 09:26:53 UTC.

The rules have been updated, in particular Rule 2 (size rule) has changed. The draft rules and guidelines are available online. In addition there is now an IOCCC Size Rule Tool to aid with counting the secondary size rule.

Questions and comments for the Judges can be emailed to "q.2013@ioccc.org" and must include "IOCCC 2013" in the subject. Or contact them via Twitter @IOCCC.
Privacy

Submission + - Ubuntu Will Now Have Amazon Ads Pre-installed 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scheduled to be released next month, Ubuntu 12.10 now includes both amazon ads in the user's dash and by default an amazon store in the user's launcher. The reason for these "features"? Affiliate revenue. Despite previous controversies with Banshee and Yahoo, Canonical is "confident it will be an interesting and useful feature for
our 12.10 users." But are the "users" becoming products?
EU

Submission + - Google Faces Heavy Antitrust Fines in the EU (networkworld.com)

Submitted by SquarePixel
SquarePixel writes: Europe's competition watchdog is considering formal proceedings against Google over antitrust complaints about the way it promotes its own services in search results, potentially exposing the company to a fine of 10 percent of its global turnover. Google is accused of using its search service to direct users to its own services and to reduce the visibility of competing websites and services. If the Commission found Google guilty of breaking E.U. competition rules, it could restrict Google's business activities in Europe and fine the company up to 10 percent of its annual global revenue (US$37.9 billion last year).
Cloud

Submission + - Intel talks Cloud Gaming (intel.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel researcher Daniel Pohl (also known from projects like Wolfenstein Ray Traced) talked at the Cloud Gaming USA conference about three challenges in cloud gaming today. First cloud games are just the same as their PC and console versions and don't make use of a potential, more powerful cloud to enable more features and higher quality rendering. Second the topic of latency, not only regarding internet, but along the full way from user input to the screen is analyzed in detail. Last an outlook discusses the huge increase in screen resolutions over the next years and therefore the challenge regarding bandwidth and compute. Both slides and a video of the talk are available.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Any chance we might see Retina-like displays on desktop monitors? 1

Submitted by BadassFractal
BadassFractal writes: This is a follow up to a post from a few months ago on Slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0117208/where-are-all-the-high-resolution-desktop-displays

I was wondering if the situation has changed at all ever since Apple released the first high-ppi laptop. As as developer, being able to fit a lot of windows on the screen(s) is a great productivity boost and it's unfortunate that the best we can do so far is a measly 1920x1200 unless we go to 27" monitors.

I'd be surprised if someone out there wasn't already working on super-high-resolution desktop monitors. Any news?
Hardware

Submission + - Meet the Mozilla OS Developer Phone (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It’s no secret that Mozilla has been working on a mobile OS. Previously codenmed Boot2Gecko, the project focused on a purely HTML5 based system that worked in many ways like current mobile devices. As the project grew into Mozilla OS, the company has laid out a partnership with ZTE that will have real world devices in certain markets early next year. Testing for this OS had previously consisted of a compiled ROM that would be flashed over a handful of Android devices. Now, Mozilla has moved into full fledged product evaluation mode with their own custom developer phone.

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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis

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