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Patents

Submission + - Yahoo issued a patent that can kill Google.

Submitted by
RembrandtX
RembrandtX writes: "Yahoo recently received an issued patent that firmly stakes claims on any online, customizable feed readers and AJAX template websites. Google's success with Personalized Home Pages with integrated GMail, Google Maps is clearly a firm target and if history is any indication, Yahoo may seek another ownership stake in Google. Yahoo's new patent has far reaching implications for web developers interested in providing online, customizable websites with real-time information. Assuming this is a valid patent, Yahoo is going to have to make a choice between developers and shareholders. More coverage at PatentMonkey."
Businesses

Submission + - Reducing drug development costs

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "As it now costs a whopping $800 million to develop a new drug, American researchers have developed a forecasting computer model which could reduce drug development costs, saving hundreds of millions of dollars per new drug. Their Bayesian network model is based on publicly available data about 500 successful and failed new drugs. And they say that the application of their model would reduce mean capitalized expenditures by an average of $283 million per successful new drug (from $727 to $444 million). Now it remains to be seen if the pharmaceutical industry will use this forecasting tool. Read more for additional references and a chart showing the pharmaceutical industry performance for delivering new drugs when analyzed with this computer model."
Software

Submission + - Has open-source lost its halo?

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "Open-source software development once had a reputation as a grassroots movement, but it is increasingly a mainstream IT profit center, and according to Computerworld, some in the industry are asking whether "open source" has become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior. Citing an online opinion piece by Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., the article notes that HP and IBM have not only profited from open-source at the expense of competitors, but have also boosted their images in the open-source community. The Computerworld article also mentions the efforts by the Microsoft/Windows camp to promote open-source credentials:

[InfoWorld columnist Dave] Rosenberg is more disturbed by the bandwagon jumpers: the companies, mostly startups, belatedly going open-source in order to "ride a trend," while paying only lip service to the community and its values. Take Aras Corp., a provider of Windows-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software that in January decided to go open-source. Rosenberg depicted the firm in his blog as an opportunistic Johnny-Come-Lately. "I'm not impressed when a company whose software is totally built on Microsoft technologies goes open-source," said Rosenberg, who even suspects that the company is being promoted by Microsoft "as a shill" to burnish Redmond's image in open-source circles.
"
Software

Submission + - Obama's Campaign 2.0

Submitted by
Slaryn
Slaryn writes: "Barack Obama's campaign website is taking a very unusual spin for a typical presidential campaign homepage, allowing users to create blogs, plan events, and interact with other users in an almost MySpace/Facebook fashion. From the site:

"This site — and this campaign in general — will always be a work in progress. We're going to experiment, we're going to try new things. Sometimes it will inevitably be a little rough around the edges, for sure, but that's the risk we're going to have to take if we're going to run this campaign in a new way."

Is social networking the way of the future in elections and voter-politician interaction?"
Microsoft

Submission + - What is Microsoft's appeal?

Submitted by
beerdini
beerdini writes: "It seems like most people I talk to in the IT industry have a sour impression of Microsoft. How is it that if 90% of the world uses their products, many of the business IT administrators always talk about it with disgust and frustration? If superior, better cost effective alternatives exist, what was the reason for implementing a Microsoft solution over that alternative. I know many companies have one major piece of software that most likely runs on a MS system, but if a complete overhaul of the network is being implemented more companies are migrating from their current systems (Novell, Mac, etc) to Microsoft than the other way. Are the people that are expected to maintain the system (IT dept.) even a part of the decision making process to migrate or is a management decision that falls to brand name familiarity? Why is it administrators allow the implementation of a product that they know will provide endless frustration and "what do you expect, its Windows/Microsoft" types of support issues, and probably subject themselves to an intense product training (probably out of their own pocket) just to keep their job?"
Patents

Submission + - Drug patents threatening cheap medicines to poor

Submitted by
GillBates0
GillBates0 writes: "The BBC is reporting that a recent court challenge to India's patent laws by pharmaceutical giant Novartis may cut the supply of affordable medicines to treat AIDS and other epidemics in the developing world. Based on the rejection of it's patent on a drug, Novartis is arguing that India's requirement for drugs to be "new and innovative" is not in line with the WTO TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement that India is party to. India came to be called the "pharmacy of the world's poor" since it stopped issuing patents for medicines in 1970 allowing its many drug producers to create generic copies of medicines still patent-protected in other countries — at a fraction of the price charged by Western drug firms. In 2005, however, it changed it's patent laws to comply with international regulations. NGOs including Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Oxfam say that if Novartis succeeds, pharmaceutical firms will be able to put newer AIDS treatments based on existing drugs under patent protection in India, preventing cheap generic versions being exported to Africa and elsewhere. In 2005, Slashdot carried a story about efforts to put India's ancient traditional medicine and Yoga online, so as to make it visible as public domain to patent examiners. More recently, Slashdot carried a similar story about Tiwan's decision to violate Roche's patent on a bird flu drug for the benefit of it's people."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft, IBM in slap-fight over open documents

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Microsoft went on the offensive Wednesday with a Valentine's Day attack on IBM openly accusing its rival of trying to subvert Microsoft's efforts to standardize its new document format and in turn destabilize customer choices. "A lot of hype — and smoke and mirrors obfuscation — surrounds interoperability these days," Microsoft wrote in an open letter published on its Web site. Meanwhile, Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and open standards, wrote on his blog: "The OpenDocument Format ISO standard is vastly superior to the Open XML spec." Sutor also said in his post: "ODF is what the world needs today to drive competition, innovation and lower costs for customers. It is an example of a real open standard versus a vendor-dictated spec that documents proprietary products via XML. ODF is about the future, Open XML is about the past. We voted for the future." http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/021407-micro soft-ibm-formats.html"
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple does not like DRM?

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "If Steve Jobs says (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/) that it's not Apple best interest but the music industry's intension to use DRM on iTunes music. If so then, why is it that Apple Games DRM protected?"
The Internet

Submission + - Jyte: The Numbers Agree With Me

Submitted by
devv_null
devv_null writes: "Jyte is a new social-networking site supporting the new OpenID framework that centers around users making claims about anything. Then users can vote on whether they agree with the claim or not, as well as make comments on the claim. Users may also give "cred", points that are awarded to a claimant based on whatever expertise he or she has demonstrated in posting the claim. The kinds of claims are all over the map, from programming language holy wars to assertions about vegetarians to the proper usage of the word "anal". In addition to serving as an unabashed push of OpenID, Jyte is especially noteworthy in that it encourages users to use critical thinking, has some use for collecting polling data and might even help you write your term paper."
Space

Submission + - Skymania News: Here's YOUR chance to find Beagle 2

Submitted by
suthers
suthers writes: "Space fans are being challenged to find lost UK probe Beagle 2. Nasa has just released the first close-up photographs of the region where the unmanned probe should have landed on Mars. They were taken with the HiRise camera aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but scouring them could be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Despite that, and the enormous size of the images, The Planetary Society is urging everyone to have a go! http://skymania.blogspot.com/2007/02/heres-your-ch ance-to-find-beagle-2.html"
The Internet

Submission + - Canadian P2P downloaders asked to stop

Submitted by
Jabrwock
Jabrwock writes: "Unsatisfied with the Canadian government's attitude towards file sharing, the industry is taking a new approach towards P2P file sharing in Canada. After providing Canadian ISPs with IP addresses of suspected offenders, major ISPs agree to forward an email to the user of that address on behalf of the industry that warns them that they are potentially infringing on copyright. No legal action is mentioned, but the Business Software Alliance claims the warnings are a wake-up call to users. In contrast in the US the ISP is the one receiving the email, along with threats of legal action if it is not dealt with.

The Canadian version seems more of a 'Please stop, eh?'"
Security

Submission + - Critical flaw in current Firefox discovered

Submitted by HuckleCom
HuckleCom writes: F-Secure has a blog post regarding the latest version of Firefox and a vulnerability that allows malicious javascript code to manipulate any of your cookies.

From the Blog: "There's a new bug reported in the way Firefox handles writes to the 'location.hostname' DOM property. The vulnerability could potentially allow a malicious website to manipulate the authentication cookies for a third-party site."

From what I can recollect, this seems to be the first vulnerability discovered in the actual current version of Firefox — at least for a good long time.

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