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Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? 240

Glyn Moody writes "Google always plays down suggestions that there's any looming clash of the titans between itself and Microsoft. Meanwhile, the search giant is pushing open source in every way it can. They're contributing directly by contributing code to projects and employing top hackers like Andrew Morton, Jeremy Allison and Guido van Rossum, and indirectly through the $60 million fees it pays Mozilla, its Summer of Code scheme and various open source summits held at its offices. Google+OSS: could this be the killer combination that finally breaks Microsoft?"
Microsoft

Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats 555

time961 writes "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source. Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward 'Do you really want to do this?' dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats ... many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives."
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube censoring atheists. (youtube.com)

Metaleks writes: 'Tis the season to be jolly. But all is not well. It would seem that YouTube is censoring those who lack Christmas spirit. One after another, atheists on YouTube are being removed from Top 100 lists, and having their channels stripped of any honours. To prove this wasn't some sort of YouTube glitch, one atheist went as far as creating another account. As soon as he was "discovered" of being an atheist his videos were stripped of any honours and his name taken off of the Top 100 lists. Why is YouTube censoring atheists?
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Radical New 64-bit PC Operating System (losethos.com)

losethos writes: "LoseThos V3.12 has been released. It's a 64-bit, open source, free, PC operating system. It's designed for programming as entertainment. There is no user mode, just kernel, so you have free access to everything. The command line, editor, help system, start menu, all use a document format that allows links, graphics, trees, and more. Your source code can have graphics and links. You can output links or graphics to the command line. Unlike Linux, this operating system can be understood by average people and you can tinker with it. It's ideal for amateurs wishing to write their own video games because it's far simpler... like the old days, except on modern hardware with multicore support."
Biotech

Submission + - Girl's heart regenerates due to artificial assist (www.cbc.ca) 1

Socguy writes: "A 15-year-old girl has become the first Canadian to have an artificial heart removed after her own heart healed itself.
Doctors at the Stollery Children's hospital implanted the Berlin Heart, a portable mechanical device that keeps blood pumping in an ailing heart, so she could survive until a transplant became available.
But over the next few months, Melissa's overall condition improved dramatically, and her heart muscle regained much of its strength. After 146 days on the Berlin Heart, Melissa underwent surgery to have the device removed.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/08/28/ artificial-heart.html"

Enlightenment

Submission + - Air pollution creates troubles for Bejing Olympics

morpheus83 writes: The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) yesterday gave a statement that some of the events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics could be postponed due to air pollution. He said, "Sports with short durations would not be a problem, but endurance sports like cycling are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed." Billions of dollars have been spent to reduce the pollution but to no effect. Even extreme steps such as shifting of factories out-of-town to even shutting some down have been taken, but non-stop construction and heavy car sales are just increasing air pollution by the day.
Security

Submission + - New AACS Processing Key Discovered

An anonymous reader writes: The movie studios recently released new HD-DVDs that can no longer be circumvented using the infamous 09 F9... AACS processing key that floated around the Net last month, but today a new key has surfaced. Like hundreds of other readers of Freedom-To-Tinker's "Own Your Own Integer" story, someone named BtCB posted his "randomly generated" number in the comments, asking, "What are the odds that this is the new processing key?" As it turns out, BtCB's key was not so random, and, a week after he posted it, the hackers over at doom9 realized that it really is the new processing key. With this kind of hacker "luck," it doesn't look like AACS will last for long.
Media

Submission + - AACS Body Responds to Key Postings

massivefoot writes: Bloggers "crossed the line" when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said. An AACS executive said it was looking at "legal and technical tools" to confront those who published the key.
Software

Submission + - Pidgin 2.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes: After nearly two years of development, Pidgin 2.0 has finally been released! Originally called Gaim, Pidgin is a powerful and robust open source instant messaging client that supports many protocols. Pidgin 2.0 features a completely redesigned interface with attractive new icons and and a new status management system that was designed for optimal usability. Pidgin 2.0 also adds support for universal buddy icon management and smooth-scroll functionality for conversation windows. A comprehensive review at Ars Technica explores the new features in Pidgin 2.0 and demonstrates how to use the new D-Bus bindings with Python to make Pidgin's status system send updates to Twitter.
The Internet

Registerfly's Accreditation Terminated by ICANN 111

Punker22 writes "Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly.com's accreditation. Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously. 'Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,' Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today."
Music

Best Practices for a Lossless Music Archive? 176

Sparagmei asks: "I'm a big music fan, and I like listening to the music I own on various pieces of digital gear. Right now, my library's at about 20,000 tracks, ripped from CDs to MP3 at 256kbps (enough that I can't tell the difference on my low-end playback gear). However, with the MP3 judgement rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital 'master library' that could be (relatively) easily down-sampled to a compressed format?"
United States

Submission + - How can we convert the US to the metric system?

thesolo writes: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on "our way" of measuring.

I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

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