Comment Re:Suicide? (Score 1) 785
Finally, the launch of Microsoft Y2K Bug.
The Battle For Wikipedia's Soul 471
njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."
German Police Raid 51 CeBIT Stands Over Patent Claims 191
LeCaddie writes "Last week German investigators raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBIT, the German information technology fair in Hanover, looking for goods suspected of infringing patents. Some 183 police, customs officers, and prosecutors raided the fair on Wednesday and carried off 68 boxes of electronic goods and documents including cellphones, navigation devices, digital picture frames, and flat-screen monitors. Of the 51 companies raided, 24 were Chinese. Most of the patents concerned were related to devices with MP3, MP4, and DVB standard functions for digital audio and video, blank CDs, and DVD copiers, police said." In the US there are no criminal penalties associated with patents, and such a raid could not be conducted, especially in the absence of a court ruling of infringement.
Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista 662
bfwebster writes "Microsoft is currently facing a class-action suit over its designation of allegedly under-powered hardware as being 'Vista Capable.' The discovery process of that lawsuit has now compelled Microsoft to produce some internal emails discussing those issues. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published extracts of some of those emails, along with a link to a a PDF file containing a more extensive email exchange. The emails reflect a lot of frustration among senior Microsoft personnel about Vista's performance problems and hardware incompatibilities. They also appear to indicate that Microsoft lowered the hardware requirements for 'Vista Capable' in order to include certain lower-end Intel chipsets, apparently as a favor to Intel: 'In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded.' Read the whole PDF; it is informative, interesting, and at times (unintentionally) funny."
Submission + - Australia cracked US combat aircraft codes (news.com.au)
SpamSlapper writes: FORMER defence minister Kim Beazley has told how Australia cracked top-secret American combat aircraft codes to enable the shooting down of enemy aircraft in the 1980s. The radar on Australia's Hornets could not identify most potentially hostile aircraft in the region, but dispite many requests, the codes were not provided, so "In the end we spied on them and we extracted the codes ourselves".
The Americans knew what the Australians were doing and were intrigued by the progress they made.
Submission + - Coop Discourages Notetaking in Bookstore (thecrimson.com) 1
mikesd81 writes: "The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the Coop after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial he hopes to take. The apparent new policy could be a response to efforts by Crimsonreading.org — an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers — from writing down the ISBN identification numbers for books at the Coop and then using that information for their Web site. The coop claims the prices are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. "We don't think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students," said Tom D. Hadfield, co-creator of the site. According to UC President Ryan A. Petersen, discussions with an intellectual property lawyer have confirmed Crimson Reading's position."
Submission + - Microsoft fails to get Office Open XML recognized
timrichardson writes: A panel of software experts unexpectedly rebuffed Microsoft's bid to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard. Free link to the NY Times coverage
Submission + - Firefox gets full zoom
Solarius writes: "Today, Gecko got full page zoom functionality, which is similair to Operas.
Daniel Kirsch said:
Eli, Roc, dbaron and all the contributors: Congratulations and a big "Thank
you" for all your efforts. This was probably one of the top 10 wishes of a lot
of moz developers and users. Great to see this marked as "FIXED". Cheers!
You can see it here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4821"
Submission + - Second Life shuts down casinos (theinquirer.net)
Tech.Luver writes: "theinquirer reports,
( http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41240 )
" LINDEN LAB, hallowed creator of the Second Life virtual world, has
announced that all in-world casinos and miscellaneous gambling joints
are herewith to be shut down.
That means that the large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world
casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside
the game world will now have nothing left to do.
Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the
revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game,
the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden
coffers through currency fees and land rental. ""
Submission + - AI Poker shows machines can bluff
timrichardson writes: Computers playing poker can now give strong human players a real challenge (NY Times free link) , which is quite a surprise given the element of bluffing and risk-taking. In the first of a new annual human-machine challenge. Interestingly, the program has a range of different personalities (such as highly aggressive), which a supervisor module would monitor and select according to performance against the humans.
Submission + - Google Is Evil, A Full List of Privacy Concerns (lowesoftware.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has been growing and consuming information like no other entity in history. With this consolidation of public, personal, and trend data in a single searchable, cross-referenceable database there is a new threat to privacy. There are numerous Google privacy concerns that have been published and discussed over the years. Here's the formula: Google is pervasive and peddles seemingly free wares and services that only ask to record information about you; the Google privacy policy is broad in what Google will collect and what Google will do with the data; Google has proved it will violate privacy rights and use your information. Finally, there is much more possibility for abuse and therefore this is something we should be cognizent of.
Submission + - UK rejects lengthening of copyright (yahoo.com)
timrichardson writes: The British Government has rejected extending copyright for sound recordings. This is an important development in the face of trends to extend copyright duration, although it leaves British copyright protection for music recordings at a shorter duration than for written works. The decision was despite fierce lobbying from the large British music industry. The music industry will now lobby direct to the European Commission, but without the support of the national government, its position is significantly weakened. British copyright for music recordings therefore remains at 50 years after the death of the artist, in contrast to 95 years in the US and 70 years in Australia.
Submission + - Intel joins One Laptop per Child (pressesc.com)
Drawoc Mous writes: "The war is over. Negroponte and Barrett have decided to kiss and make up. The folks who make the "$100 gadget" will now work with the folks who "should be ashamed of themselves". Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content. Intel will also join the board of OLPC."
Submission + - Blu-ray Backers launch deceptive "HiDef News&# (valleywag.com)
An anonymous reader writes: There is a new web site focused on unbiased coverage of high-def discs. The only problem: it's a Blu-ray promotional campaign — exclusively covering Blu-ray — created by Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, and other backers of the format. Sony, of course, should know better... they've been caught creating a fake blog promoting the PSP last December and fake critics for its movies six years ago.
