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Submission + - Bill Gates funds anti-net neutrality Congressman

Submitted by

amigoro

on Monday January 08, 2007 @01:41PM

amigoro writes: "It has emerged that Bill Gates funded an anti-neutrality Congressman at the last election. He gave $2,000, the maximum possible, to Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), who voted against Markey's "Net Neutrality Act of 2006". He also meant to be working closely with another anti-net neutrality Congressman, Cliff Stearns.

This is hardly surprising, considering the fact that Microsoft stands to lose, not gain, from net neutrality."

Submission + - Sony Unveils eInk Electronic Book Reader

Submitted by

TomAnthony

on Monday January 08, 2007 @01:31PM

TomAnthony writes: "Sony have unveiled their Sony Reader at the CES show. The device, capable of holding up to 80 books at a time, is about the same size as a regular paperback, and weighs only 9 ounces. Using an eInk based display there is no backlight to strain the eyes, and battery power is consumed only to 'turn the page'. CNET have more details and report that the price will be $349.

Sony will provide books from an accompanying store, which they've yet to announce pricing for. However, with Project Gutenberg already established, there will already be a huge pool of books to get started on."

Pegasus and Mercury Circling the Drain 217

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 08, 2007 @01:24PM from the check-is-in-the-mail dept.

Daemon Duck writes "One of the web's oldest and most respected email clients is flickering out of existence. Pegasus mail and its companion SMTP server, Mercury32, have been discontinued due to lack of funding for the ongoing development. On the website, the author David Harris states that if some funding becomes available he would consider opening the source code or continuing the development."

Submission + - Second Life Goes GPL

Submitted by

paniq

on Monday January 08, 2007 @01:00PM

paniq writes: "According to the Linden Blog, Linden Labs released the client software to their Second Life Online Game as open source, licenced under the GPL v2. From the Article: "A lot of the Second Life development work currently in progress is focused on building the Second Life Grid — a vision of a globally interconnected grid with clients and servers published and managed by different groups. Expect many changes and updates in the coming months in support of this architecture." While the open source community might be positively surprised about this move, will it also mean a new wave of exploits on Second Life servers?

— if you reject this story, please privmsg me with a short explanation — i write stories on an occasional base, they usually get rejected, and i never have a clue why. linking the faq is not enough — thank you."

Submission + - Every German Creditcard has been screened!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08, 2007 @12:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: just read it at "spiegel online": http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,45784 4,00.html the police screened about 22 million creditcards. in search for child porn customers. its good, that they are trying to get those people, but its not okay to screen 22 million non-guilty customers. heise.de also wrote an article about it at: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/83376 sorry. my english is not good enough to translate the whole article

US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI 503

Posted by Hemos on Monday January 08, 2007 @12:46PM from the probably-not-at-this-point dept.

stair69 writes "Since 2004 many visitors to the United States have had 2 fingerprints taken under the US-VISIT scheme. Now there are new plans to extend this scheme — under the proposal all 10 fingerprints will be taken, and they will be stored permanently on the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The fingerprints will also be made available to police forces in other countries. The scheme is due to be introduced by the end of 2008, but it will be trialled in 10 of the bigger airports initially." Of course, it is worth pointing out that given the recent change in Congress, I suspect that a number of countries will get a "bye" on this round,

Submission + - Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard

Submitted by lizzyben on Monday January 08, 2007 @12:28PM

lizzyben writes: The history of software development is marked by missed deadlines, blown budgets and broken promises. Author Scott Rosenberg, founding editor of Salon discusses this dysfunctional culture, and why it persists.

From the interview: "Software is basically entirely abstract, except for the screens, and the screens are what business people always end up focusing on. The insubstantiality of the product promotes the idea that, hey, why should it take so long? There's nothing there."

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