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Comment: Re:This was done last year (Score 2, Insightful) 93

by Bootle (#31269574) Attached to: Cell Phone Data Predicts Movement Patterns

That's nice.

The study picked 50k people who each average 2 or more calls per hour for a six month period and make at least one call for every hour of the week. That's a lot of calls.

If anything, the main criticism should be that people who make that many calls are not a representative population...

The Courts

RIAA To Stop Prosecuting Individual File Sharers 619

Posted by kdawson
from the declare-victory-and-withdraw dept.
debatem1 writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign." An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."
Medicine

Why Climbers Die On Mount Everest 417

Posted by timothy
from the failure-to-be-born-sherpas dept.
Science Daily reports that researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They found that most deaths occur during descents from the summit in the so-called "death zone" above 8,000 meters, and also identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema. The big surprise that the data indicate those deaths aren't primarily from avalanches or falling ice, as had long been believed.
Software

Dropbox Launches Linux Client->

Submitted by
frenetic3
frenetic3 writes "Dropbox came out of private beta today and finally made its Linux client available for download. It's kind of like rsync and svn but totally seamless and integrated into nautilus, and also lets you sync/share folders with other people (including on Windows or Mac.) Perfect if you're sick of hacking cron scripts to push files around or carrying USB drives."
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

MS To Become Open Source Friendly Post Gates 424

Posted by timothy
from the certainly-possible dept.
ruphus13 writes "Now that Gates has 'retired' from Microsoft, ZDNet is speculating that Microsoft will become much more Open Source friendly. From the article, 'We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji's group [which is] doing a great job in establishing dialog,' said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. 'With Gates' departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.'" Microsoft could become the world's largest open source company; they've certainly made some concessions to it lately.
Software

Microsoft Spokesman Says ODF "Clearly Won" Standard War 289

Posted by kdawson
from the it's-just-better dept.
Elektroschock writes "At a Red Hat retrospective panel on the ODF vs. OOXML struggle panel, a Microsoft representative, Stuart McKee, admitted that ODF had 'clearly won.' The Redmond company is going to add native support of ODF 1.1 with its Office 2007 service pack 2. Its yet unpublished format ISO OOXML will not be supported before the release of the next Office generation. Whether or not OOXML ever gets published is an open question after four national bodies appealed the ISO decision."
Social Networks

Aboriginal Archive Uses New DRM 182

Posted by kdawson
from the serving-the-suser-for-a-change dept.
ianare writes "An application that gives fresh new meaning to 'digital rights management' has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians. It relies on a user's profile to control access to a multimedia archive. The need to create profiles based on a user's name, age, sex and standing within their community comes from traditions over what can and cannot be viewed. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families. These requirements threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also about how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people, and where they were situated."
Microsoft

The Final CES Keynote From Bill Gates 182

Posted by Zonk
from the won't-be-the-same-without-him dept.
Sunday evening saw the final CES keynote delivered by Bill Gates in his current role with the Microsoft corporation. Speculation about big announcements generally seemed to be for naught, as his last address at the show focused more on broad concepts than blockbuster news. "Gates outlined three major themes for the second digital decade-high definition displays with 3D experiences and high quality video and audio, connected services and the power of natural interfaces. Gates had a vision early of those themes, but his quest to make the Tablet PC, Media Center PCs and natural interfaces, such as speech and touch, more mainstream has not been realized." A full description of the talk, including his Guitar Hero finale with Slash, is available in Engadget's liveblog of the event.

But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain