Comment Re:Even Linus registered the Linux trademark long (Score 1) 122
No, it is possible to register a trademark for the whole European Community.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Trade_Mark
Comment Re:Bad news for ya, kid (Score 1) 605
(Yes, I realize I used the passive voice there, but English is the only language I know where language teachers frown on the passive voice.)
This is probably because you don't know language teachers of other languages who frown on using passive voice in their respective languages. I, for one, know that teachers of the German language equally frown upon (excessive) use of passive voice.
Comment So, have you filed a bug report yet? (Score 1) 249
No? No further questions.
Comment Please mod parent up! :-) (Score 0) 311
No mod points today
Comment Re:Natural gas (Score 1) 644
We do produce more gas. But it's not the saussages, it's the sauerkraut!
Comment Vhat? I strongly reject ... (Score 1) 644
the sugestion that ve in Germoney have more than one sun! Not true!
Comment Care to prove any of your allegations? (Score 1) 480
How about some of the bugs? Or are you posting as AC for a reason?
Comment This is not about software quality. (Score 5, Informative) 480
Other cities like Munich (LibreOffice) and Leipzig (OpenOffice) are doing just fine with the same family of office software. Without further information it is moot to guess if a) the Freiburg admins were not willing or capable of installing and configuring OpenOffice in a way that was satisfying to users or b) the users were unwilling to use the software (something different? something new? no way!) or c) some city managers decided to rather put some money in Microsoft's purse for any number of reasons (similar things happened to other public offices in Germany before).
Comment OpenOffice forecast, 42 style (Score 2) 71
Mostly cloudy.
SCNR
Submission + - OpenGertie - Open Hardware relative of Pixar's Luxo Junior (opengertie.org)
zapyon writes: Fabian Gerlinghaus has constructed a robotic desklamp that includes a camera and a microphone as a "flexible and low-cost resource for conducting research into cognitive products and human-robot interaction." As it is open hardware all plans are available and you may make your own if you have a 3D printer available.
Submission + - Twitter Survives Election after Ruby-to-Java Move
mc10 writes: As the results of the 2012 US Presidential election were being announced Tuesday night, Twitter experienced record traffic to its website, but the service never faltered despite the increased load – something Twitter engineers credit to the company's move from Ruby to Java for its backend software. Unlike in the past, Twitter did not experience service outages, even as the website generated 874,560 posts in a single minute at its peak in traffic.
Submission + - Canada Supreme judges want free Viagra (canlii.ca)
Seeteufel writes: Bad news for Pfizer. The Canadian supreme court declared their Viagra patent void: "the disclosure in the specification would not have enabled the public “to make the same successful use of the invention as the inventor could at the time of his application”.
Submission + - Proteins made to order (nature.com)
ananyo writes: "Proteins are an enormous molecular achievement: chains of amino acids that fold spontaneously into a precise conformation, time after time, optimized by evolution for their particular function. Yet given the exponential number of contortions possible for any chain of amino acids, dictating a sequence that will fold into a predictable structure has been a daunting task.
Now researchers report that they can do just that. By following a set of rules described in a paper published in Nature (abstract), a husband and wife team from David Baker’s laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins from scratch that fold reliably into predicted conformations. The work could eventually allow scientists to custom design proteins with specific functions."
Now researchers report that they can do just that. By following a set of rules described in a paper published in Nature (abstract), a husband and wife team from David Baker’s laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins from scratch that fold reliably into predicted conformations. The work could eventually allow scientists to custom design proteins with specific functions."
Submission + - Cloud version of OpenOffice (apache.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The Apache Foundation revealed in Sinsheim, Germany their plans for a cloud version of OpenOffice.org based on html5. Chinese and German engineers use OpenOffice in "headless" mode as a base.
Comment Re:Wake on LAN: Press any key to continue ... (Score 2) 308
Considering how things usually go, this will only be an option for a limited time. And will not apply to ARM machines as for these MS requires UEFI to be obligatory.
