Henri Poole writes "In an interview with Groklaw's Sean Daly at GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona, RMS talks with passion about the dangers of DRM. From the article: 'the point is, we shouldn't be passive victims! We should decide that it will not happen! And the way we decide that is by activism. We have to do everything possible to make sure that those products are rejected, that they fail, that they give bad reputations to whoever makes them.' He closed the interview with a far reaching goal for the Free Software Movement: 'the goal is to liberate everyone in cyberspace.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A laptop reported to be a Dell burst into flame and was caught on camera during a recent Japanese conference. Guess this laptop could be a poster child to prove that laptops really can cause sterility if they are on your lap."

Dominic Hargreaves writes "This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's Summer of Code program, yet none were from women. As a result, they've decided to address this imbalance by launching an outreach program to sponsor three female students to work on GNOME-related projects this summer." Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?

Gamespot and GameDaily have additional details on Nintendo's upcoming console. Gamespot reports on comments by Nintendo President Iwata that they were specifically not going for high-end graphics with the Wii. He goes on to say that some of their staff initially disagreed with the adoption of the Wiimote, but public and internal reaction has allayed the fears of detractors. GameDaily reports on comments from ATI, who says there is still a lot left to see from Wii's graphical output. What was shown at E3 was 'just the tip of the iceberg.' From the article: "Industry sources have said that the Wii GPU would be moderately more powerful than the GameCube's GPU, but how much more we don't know. Conservative estimates from developers have placed the Wii console as a whole at 2 - 2.5 times more powerful than the GameCube."

In the "everything old is new again" spirit of the 21st century, there have been many bad remakes, remixes, and 'reinvisionings'. The gaming industry is especially guilty, with endless sequels and a lack of imagination being oft-discussed elements at developer get-togethers. Despite all this, it does appear you can go home again. Nintendo has competently revived the series that made it a household name in the U.S., with New Super Mario Bros.. A classic 2D platformer with plenty of new tricks, Mario comes bounding to the DS with a focus on what he does best. New Super Mario Bros. is not going to make you rethink what is possible in a game; It's not going to make you cry or change your life. It will, however, make you smile. Read on for my impressions of the pudgy plumber's newest adventure.

daria42 writes "As Microsoft moves its internal desktop systems to Windows Vista, the company is contemplating whether to change a long running tradition and take away admin rights from its employees in order to improve security." From the article: "'We haven't made that final determination yet. We would like to absolutely look at scenarios where we can look at elements of User Access Control -- that is the feature in Vista -- so that we can start moving in that direction ... It is a tough balance and every company has to decide what is right for them,' said Estberg. However, Estberg said that for the moment, the company will continue to leave the responsibility of installing software with its employees."

sufijazz writes to mention an AP story about Google's plan to start distributing online video ads. From the article: "The video expansion, announced late Monday, will affect thousands of Web sites that rely on Google to post ads related to the surrounding material on a page. For instance, a news story about housing might prompt Google to display an ad for real estate agents. Google isn't allowing the video ads to appear on its own Web site -- a heavily trafficked destination that produced 58 percent of its $2.25 billion in revenue during the first three months of this year."

What do a space tourist, a skinny dipper, politics, and code have in common? This year's DebConf, of course! Robin 'Roblimo' Miller has the writeup over on NewsForge (Also owned by VA). From the article: "Shuttleworth was back in Oaxtepec Wednesday, hanging out and chatting with individuals and small groups, checking his email, and otherwise behaving like most other DebConf attendees. It was obvious that even if not all of them loved him -- or Ubuntu, or his for-profit company, Canonical Ltd. -- he considered this small group important enough to be worth more of his time than the 14,000 people who went to JavaOne."

Exter-C writes "News.com is reporting that Jonathan Murray, the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe has made claims that 'some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model.'"

Goalie_Ca writes "Groklaw just posted that the OpenDocument Foundation is offering Massachusetts a plugin that could 'allow Microsoft Office to easily open, render, and save to ODF files, and also allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF ... The testing has been extensive and thorough. As far as we can tell there isn't a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.'"

iny0urbrain writes "The New York Times reports that the US government has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties lawsuit against the AT&T Corporation because 'of a possibility that military and state secrets would otherwise be disclosed.' The statement concludes by saying: 'Finally, because the United States intends to assert the state secrets privilege and file a dispositive motion to dismiss this action, the United States requests that discovery proceedings be deferred until the government's submission has been considered and heard.' You can view the full text of the government's statement of interest (PDF) on the EFF's website." Sorry, hadn't had my coffee yet this morning, and double posted this one. Sadly, the first one is a mere two stories down. It's also still pouring into the submissions bin, so I'm not the only one not yet awake.