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Cingular, Others Fined For Using Adware 109

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 29, 2007 @10:28PM from the about-time dept.

amigoro writes "Cingular, Priceline, and Travelocity have been fined for using adware by the New York Attorney General. The companies will each pay $30K to $35K as penalties and investigatory costs. More importantly, the companies agreed to a series of restrictions and best practices that, while they make eminent sense to consumers, will be loathsome to businesses accustomed to having their way with our computers."

Submission + - Thailand replicates AIDS drugs instead of buying

Submitted by unchiujar on Monday January 29, 2007 @08:16PM

unchiujar writes: "Thailand's health ministry says it has approved the production of cheaper versions of patented anti-Aids and heart disease drugs.

Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said the step was necessary to make the cost of the medicines — Kaletra and Plavix — more affordable.

The move was criticised by pharmaceutical companies but drew praise from Aids campaigners."

Submission + - Vista Under Fire in Europe

Submitted by Daeward on Monday January 29, 2007 @08:13PM

Daeward writes: A coalition of Microsoft's rivals is complaining that the Windows Vista operating system will perpetuate practices found illegal in the European Union nearly three years ago. The group, which includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle and Red Hat, said its complaints made last year were yet to be addressed just days before Vista is due for release. "Microsoft has clearly chosen to ignore the fundamental principles of the Commission's March 2004 decision," said Simon Awde, chairman of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). Microsoft said it had no comment.

Submission + - Mac OS X and Font Smoothing

Submitted by Piroca on Saturday January 06, 2007 @11:09AM

Piroca writes: Font smoothing in OS X is one of the worst aspects of the system, yet few users dare to complain about it. The rationale behind Quartz font rendering is that anything in the screen should be rendered as they would while printing. Apple decided to turn off font hinting and perform anti-aliasing indiscriminately, thus adding artifacts to horizontal and vertical lines. It happens the end result is that fonts at small sizes are blurry and not very easy to read (which is exactly the opposite result expected from the anti-aliasing strategy, and renders the crispness of LCDs useless). Apple has been heavy-handed about this issue since OS X 10.1 by not acknowledging it and not providing configuration options to turn off anti-aliasing in small fonts while providing font hinting and choices for system fonts (the ubiquitous Lucida Grande is not hinted therefore it looks wrong when anti-aliased) as the old System 9 and Windows do. This situation is unlikely to change anytime soon (Leopard won't do anything about it, at least). For me, this is a problem because I have to develop on OS X and keep starring at blurry fonts the whole day gives me headaches. I'm pretty sure other developers out there have the same problem, therefore here goes my question: what do you do to cope with the troublesome font smoothing in OS X?

Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista 697

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday January 06, 2007 @10:19AM from the no-holds-barred dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With Macworld set to start Jan. 8, InformationWeek has a detailed comparison that pits Mac OS X against Vista. According to reviewer John Welch, OS X wins hands down. The important point: he doesn't say Vista is bad, just that technically speaking, OS X remains way ahead. Do you agree?"

Journal Journal: Lauren Weinstein slams Vista Anti-Piracy

Journal by toby on Saturday January 06, 2007 @12:06AM

From her blog:

Submission + - 5 Reasons Apple Has Survived for 30 Years

Submitted by Gammu on Saturday January 06, 2007 @12:03AM

Gammu writes: Apple turned thirty last year and it has endured and even thrived despite a series of incompetent leaders, poor products and inexplicable business decisions. MacObserver has compiled a list of the top 5 Apple decisions that have allowed the company to survive and grow over thirty years.

Submission + - Image Spam Becoming a Growing Challenge

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05, 2007 @07:08PM

An anonymous reader writes: Image spam is a serious and growing problem, not least because of its ability to circumvent traditional email spam filters to clog servers and inboxes. In just half a year, the problem of image spam has become general enough to be representative of 35 per cent of all junk mail. Not only this, but image spam is taking up 70 per cent of the bandwidth bulge on account of the large file sizes every single one represents.

Submission + - The birth of vi

Submitted by

lanc

on Friday January 05, 2007 @06:00PM

lanc writes: "Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun, contributor to BSD Unix, the UltraSparc technology, NFS and even Java, tells the story in an article at TheRegister about how he wrote vi and what the motives were. In the interview he says:

"It was really hard to do because you've got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That's also the reason you have all these funny commands. It just barely worked to use a screen editor over a modem. It was just barely fast enough. A 1200 baud modem was an upgrade. 1200 baud now is pretty slow."

...and so my son begun The Holy Editor War."

Submission + - Open source Flickr-like app?

Submitted by Zanguinar on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:57PM

Zanguinar writes: I've been a Gallery user for years now. I have a ton of photos, organized by albums, mainly just for use by my family and close friends. However, some of my friends have begun using Flickr. I can't say I blame them. It's got a great design, and I love the tagging concept. However, I'm not eager to store my photos on somebody else's server, and don't want to pay for the privilege, especially since I already run my own web server. But I can't find any Flickr-like software to run on my home LAMP setup. All I want is to be able to tag my photos like Flickr and be able to display them by tag, tag intersection, date, etc. Why hasn't anybody published some OSS to do this yet?

Submission + - No more Fedora Core, Extras

Submitted by

netbuzz

on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:45PM

netbuzz writes: ""It's time to bite the bullet," says Red Hat engineer and Fedora Project board member Bill Nottingham. "Starting with Fedora 7, there is no more Core, and no more Extras;
there is only Fedora. One single repository, built in the community
on open source tools, assembled into whatever spins the Fedora community
desires." There are 28 new features being targeted for the release, which can be seen at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7/Features.

Finally, Nottingham says of Fedora 7: "Name TBD, but probably not 'Bride of Zod'."

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2 007-January/msg00091.html"

Submission + - Macworld Expo 2007 Keynote Bingo

Submitted by

Henriok

on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:35PM

Henriok writes: "Keynote Bingo is the game you play as you tune in to enjoy Steve Jobs' keynotes. It's the ideal companion while enjoying the events that are celebrated as holidays by Mac fanatics all over the world. The Bingo cards are randomized out of a pool of 50 more or less likely keynote events. When an event occurs, press a button. If you get five buttons in a row, column or diagonally you yell: Bingo! Every card is coupled with a number that will prove to your friends and blog readers that your scream of Bingo! was justified. Download it now and prepare a card of your choice well in advance for the Macworld Expo stevenote this coming Tuesday."

Submission + - Linux is legal again for the European Commission

Submitted by

lancho

on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:16PM

lancho writes: "The streaming service of the Council of the EU had a legal restriction related to Linux: "We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux". A Spanish association of lawyers and programmers filed a complaint at the Council and the immediate answer was: "The FAQ you refer to in your email has an error in its English version compared to the original French version. The sentence mentioning Linux does not exist in the original French version. So, the English version has been modified". Now the FAQ shows also the legal translation omitted."

How ExxonMobil Funded Global Warming Skeptics 625

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 05, 2007 @02:51PM from the gotta-keep-our-minds-open dept.

Erik Moeller writes "According to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, oil company ExxonMobil 'has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.' The report compares the tactics employed by the oil giant to those used by the tobacco industry in previous decades, and identifies key individuals who have worked on both campaigns. Would a 'global warming controversy' exist without the millions of dollars spent by fossil fuel companies to discredit scientific conclusions?"

New Version of Xbox 360 Rumoured 102

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 05, 2007 @02:46PM from the maybe-maybe-not dept.

Carlo Becchi writes "According to Engadget a new version of the Xbox 360 is on the way. The next version of the console is codenamed 'Zephyr', and sports a bigger disk (120 Gb), better manufacturing process (65nm) and HDMI digital out up to 1080p. From the article: 'The 120GB drive may or may not come bundled with the kit, we don't yet know, just as we also don't yet know how much a Zephyr 360 is going to run (we imagine it'll go for the same price as currently so they can keep up a little on their expanding margin).'" It should be pointed out at this point the whole story is a fairly convincing photo and leaks from 'a source'. Take with a grain of salt.

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