An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, LSI was granted patent number 7028023. This is a patent on a stunning new technique in data structures ... the concept that a linked list can in fact have multiple orderings. Of course, this has been used since the beginning of (computer) time in the form of doubly-linked lists. Even if LSI wants to (somehow) claim that the doubly-linked list doesn't count as prior art, maintaining linked lists of graphical objects sorted by both x and y co-ordinates for collision detection has been done since "graphical objects" meant ASCII characters on a green-on-black screen, and has probably been widespread in databases for probably even longer."

F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

cultrhetor writes "In a story released by the BBC, Richard Thomas, the information commissioner for Great Britain, says that fears of the nation's 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society' have become reality. Surveillance ranges from data monitoring (credit cards, mobiles, and loyalty card information), US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic, to key stroke logging at work. From the article, the report 'predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.' The report's co-author, Dr. David Murakami-Wood, told BBC News that, compared to other Western nations, Britain was the 'most surveilled country.' He goes on to note: 'We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us.'"

jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.