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Comment Re:I can't wait for the morons to appear here (Score 3, Informative) 360

by holloway (#25783233) Attached to: Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India

How is that even possible? Isn't Mono supposed to be OSS?

Seems like it's Microsoft licensed tech QUOTE:

[Miguel] de Icaza explained that while anyone who downloaded Moonlight from Novell was protected by the company's licensing of Silverlight codecs from Microsoft through the company's own cross-licensing agreement.

Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering from Mozilla, then raised the question that if he downloads and then distributes the code for Moonlight, would he get the patent protection?

"There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell," answered de Icaza, who then acknowledged that "as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft."

So Novell/Microsoft use software patents to remove some/most of the benefits of OSS.
Microsoft

Submission + - South Africa appeals to ISO against OOXML (openmalaysiablog.com)

Submitted by
yoonkit
yoonkit writes: "The South African national body (SABS) has submitted an official appeal against DIS 29500 (Microsoft Office OpenXML) to ISO and IEC stating "deep concerns" on the contradictions raised early in the process, "challenges" the interpretation of the ISO directives on the conduct of the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) and the inappropriateness of the fast-tracking of the large DIS. [PDF and transcript available.] Steve Pepper, ex-Chair of the Norwegian TC who lead the demonstration against OOXML, also urges "other national body members of JTC1 to declare their support for this appeal. Let's make it impossible for ISO and IEC to simply wave it aside.""
Government

Submission + - Microsoft's View of Standards as Tools of War (boycottnovell.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "Tech media maven Roy Schestowitz and Pamela Jones of Groklaw have unearthed 1997 documents from the Iowa anti-trust case of 'Comes v. Microsoft,' in which Microsoft Technical Evangelist James Plamondon talks about the importance of stacking seemingly 'neutral' panels to assure that Microsoft platforms are adopted as de facto standards. In a 'Highly Confidential' document entitled 'Evangelism is War', Plamondon justifies his step-by-step strategy for stacking 'neutral' panels as a necessary act of 'war.' He suggests ways to enhance the apparent popularity of Microsoft platforms as standards for the purpose of convincing 'enemies' that adoption of the Microsoft platform as a standard is inevitable, and 'surrender' is the only option. Groklaw's Pamela Jones draws a parallel to the current-day work of Technical Evangelist Rick Jelliffe, who says that he has been hired by Microsoft to act as a 'Devil's Advocate' for the National Board of Australia in Microsoft's upcoming bid to have Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) accepted as a second international electronic document format ISO standard. Recent efforts by Microsoft to change the composition of the ISO national panels have resulted in some controversy and have spawned a new EU probe into potential anti-trust claims based on the way that Microsoft influenced the composition of some of the national boards to vote in the upcoming ISO ballot."
Government

Submission + - NY State could shape the global OOXML - ODF debate (fanaticattack.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "As was reported first here on Slashdot on 18 December 2007, the State of New York has opened a Request For Public Comment (RFPC) on whether it should adopt ODF (the current ISO standard) or Microsoft's OOXML as a standard for electronic documents for the State's government agencies. The public comment period will end on 28 December 20007. In response to that Slashdot article, open format advocate Russell Ossendryver has updated a previous open letter that he had penned to the National Boards of the countries eligible to vote in the upcoming February Microsoft OOXML ISO contest. In the update, Ossendryver urges New York State CIO Melodie Mayberry-Stewart to consider the impact that her report could have on the subsequent ISO vote: Says Ossendryver,

'The timing of the due date for the release of the report, 15 January 2008, places New York State in a position to have an impact on the international vote in late February, a mere 40 days or so later. The eyes of the world will be watching you, New York! '
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see that update."
Government

Submission + - New Zealand Justice Ministry prefers Open Source (nzoss.org.nz)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "In a paper dated 11 Dec. 2007, the New Zealand Justice Ministry has taken a position favoring Free Open Source Software if all other aspects of the proprietary competitor are comparable. The policy does not rule out proprietary software; but it does state a clear preference for FOSS where all other things are equal. The nine-page paper (PDF warning) does not purport to express any sort of legal or commercial commitment by the Ministry, but instead 'is believed to be consistent with existing MoJ policies.' The most salient reasons given for the preference are summarized in one sentence: 'Given two equivalent packages, one open and one proprietary, the OSS one would be the preferable choice for reasons of better supportability and lower lifecycle cost.'"
Software

Submission + - A short history of Microsoft's OOXML ISO campaign (fanaticattack.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "Russell Ossendryver is the open format advocate whose open letter to the GNOME Foundation touched off a widespread debate about whether and to what extent GNOME is supporting Microsoft's drive for ISO status for its OOXML office productivity data format. Now, Ossendryver has published the first in a concise three-part series aimed at examining Microsoft's strategy in opposing ODF's rapid growth as an open international data standard. It is not news that Microsoft has vigorously lobbied to have its OOXML standard supplant ODF, the current international office productivity data format standard, such as its recent efforts to halt the adoption of ODF by the Dutch Parliament. But Ossendryver's summary gives a bird's eye overview of that history, based on his extensive involvement in those debates as a long-time member of the OpenDocument Fellowship."
Software

Submission + - IP Lawyer writing an e-book on ODF v. OOXML (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "IP lawyer and popular FOSS blogger Andy Updegrove has announced that he is writing an e-book, entitled 'ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words', which will chronicle the slug-fest between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML format. Calling it a 'a standards war of truly epic proportions' that he predicts will be 'studied in business schools and by economists for decades to come', Updegrove says that his goal in writing the book is to document this process now, as it is unfolding, rather than wait for the passage of time to cause memories to fade, witnesses to scatter, and the bias of history to confirm what we think we already know about the past. Updegrove makes no attempt to mask his pro-ODF bias, which is actually a refreshing and useful aid for his readers, who will begin this multi-chapter on-line journey with advance knowledge of the lens that Updegrove will use to point out sights (and sites) along the way. Updegrove wastes no time in delivering on his promise, and rolls out his first chapter, called 'Out of Nowhere', along with his announcement."
Patents

Submission + - Redhat sued for Patent Infringement

Submitted by
tqft
tqft writes: "http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071011205044141
"The first ever patent infringement litigation regarding Linux. Here's the patent, for those who can look at it without risk. If in doubt, don't. "
For those who can without fear read a patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=3tUkAAAAEBAJ&dq=5,072,412

http://www.setexasrecord.com/news/202417-recent-copyrightpatent-infringement-cases-filed-in-u.s.-district-courts

"Plaintiffs IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp. claim to have the rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412 for a User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects issued Dec. 10, 1991 along with two other similar patents.
"

Get your game faces on. Party Time."
Programming

Programmer's Language-Aware Spell Checker? 452

Posted by kdawson from the hands-off-my-camelcase dept.
Jerry Asher writes "Not all of my coworkers are careful about spelling errors. Sometimes this causes real embarrassment as spelling errors creep into software interfaces. Does anyone know of spell checkers for programming languages? I don't want a text spell checker, I want a programming-language-aware spell checker. A spell checker that I can pass all of my code through and will flag spelling errors in function names, variable names, and comments, but will ignore language keywords, language constructs and expressions, and various programming styles (camel code, or underscores, or...). I want a spell checker that knows that void *functionSigniture(char *myRoutine) contains one spelling error. Does anyone have such a thing for Java or C++? Are there any Eclipse plugins that do this?"
The Media

Submission + - NBCU wants the internet "filtered"

Submitted by yet another steve
yet another steve writes: NBC/Universal wants far more than filtering of material uploaded to YouTube. They want broadband providers (ISPs) themselves to be required to filter internet content. Putting aside the obvious technical reasons why it won't work, the idea of mandatory filtering by your provider of everything you send and receive on the internet sounds a lot like... China. Killing freedom on the net to protect the sitcom.

This seems dangerous, intrusive and unprecedented... and I'm a little surprised it hasn't received more attention.

Check out: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1019
and http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9745325-7.html?ta g=blog.2

Honestly, I haven't found a single source that seems to understand the gravity of the precedent. People are outraged that a corporation in a broadcast it controlled censored some words (not defending that act, btw), but this is the idea that EVERY packet you send and receive will be required to be monitored and FILTERED. It seems an unbelieveable proposal no matter what the intent.

They do this in China, right?
Portables

Submission + - Archos 405 with DVR Functionality Reviewed (cooltechzone.com)

Submitted by
toby
toby writes: "CoolTechZone.com's Gundeep Hora reviews Archos' latest 405 portable media player that can record movies and TV shows directly from your DVR recorder, and it can also show movies, music, photos and PDF files on your TV. He writes, "Audio and video performance was excellent in our tests. As we stated earlier, video and images were crisp and vibrant on a matte display. And there's no difference between audio and video quality. They are both topnotch, a miracle for a dedicated portable video player (PVP). According to Archos, the battery life can last approximately 5x hours for video and 16x hours for audio. It met those times comfortably in our performance lab. Despite that, however, these aren't the best times we have seen with other PVP's, but we can let it slide for now. Of course, equalizer options and other customizations are present for you to tinker with, if that's your thing. With that said, we are absolutely appalled at the 2GB onboard memory capacity. Is Archos serious about this? How could you possibly sell such a loaded device, but skimp on integrated storage? Wow, just wow! Thanks to Archos, you should now budget the price of SD cards for expandable storage in the final price."
Software

Submission + - AFNOR will vote "No" with comments to OOXM (afnor.fr)

Submitted by BlueYoshi
BlueYoshi writes: The french normalisation organisation AFNOR will vote "no" with comment for the proposition of OOXML as an ISO standard. The AFNOR is asking to some change in the specifiction to have a convergence between ODF and OOXML.

They propose to separate in 2 the specification (core and compatibilty). the press communication in french. Microsoft France reacted on this communication but is looking forward to collaborate.

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