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Community voting results and a summary report have been published from OpenAjax Alliance's recent "community wishlist for future browsers" effort. When the voting closed on July 13th, 222 people participated in this open community initiative, with 143 people voted, 55 feature requests being written up, and contribution from many industry leaders. The voting indentified and prioritized 37 features. The top 10 are related to vector graphics, security, performance, layout, rich text editing, Comet, audio and video. Among all the feature requests, 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics is clearly the most desired feature by the community. It received most votes (110 people voted for it), and highest total score (over 10% higher than the second feature request). Looks like that it is time for all browsers, in particular, IE, to seriously consider supporting standards-based vector graphics...
http://www.coachwei.com/blog/2008/07/17/openajax-publishes-future-browser-feature-wish-list-results.html

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Motion Picture Association of America said in a brief filed Friday that intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement. "It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial where last October a jury found Thomas liable for $222,000 for "making available" 24 songs on the Kazaa network. Judge Davis suggested last month that he might have erred in giving the "making available" jury instruction, and invited briefing from the community at large. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the United States Internet Industry Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association all jointly filed a brief, saying the law did not allow damages for "attempted" copyright infringement."

An anonymous reader writes "I just read that "it is not advisable to keep your laptop AC-charging full-time, it's not good for the batteries" If I keep my laptop running, connected to the AC Adapter, should I simply remove the battery, once it is fully charged? And keep the laptop running on the AC Adapter? — Use the laptop on battery, until it discharges — plug the AC Adapter/Charger, until the battery is full — still running on AC, remove the battery and store it for future use Is that so?"

motang writes "Reddit, the popular social news site has gone open source. Arstechnica has the full scoop on why this decision was made and of course the new reddit image proves it."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-reddit-social-news-site-goes-transparent-open-source.html

The situation with the Associated Press and its rapidly disintegrating relationship with bloggers keeps getting worse. First up, as a bunch of folks have sent in, some bloggers are noting that, despite the AP's own claims about quotes over five words long no longer being fair use, AP reporters often quote huge chunks of text from bloggers. That link discusses an AP article just this week that quoted 154 words from a blog. So will these "new guidelines" that the AP is supposedly working on with bloggers include guidelines for itself? What about payment and licensing terms? And, honestly, what happens if a blog now quotes the passages quoted in the AP article itself. At 154 words, will they receive a DMCA takedown notice?

Oh, and as for that supposed "meeting" to hammer out guidelines with the "Media Bloggers Association," it turns out that's quite an exaggeration as well. With a bunch of folks questioning who put the previously unheard of "Media Bloggers Association" in charge of determining what bloggers will accept, an interview with the head of that group shows that his meeting isn't to hammer out any such guidelines -- but was simply intended to present the Drudge Retort's side of the story. Rogers Cadenhead asked the head of the group to speak on his behalf to the AP. It's the AP that's turned this meeting into the Media Bloggers Association representing all bloggers, rather than just Cadenhead.

So, now we've got the AP caught not just breaking its own rules (by a wide, wide margin), but also exaggerating the nature of the "conversation" it's supposedly having with the bloggers who are upset by its actions. Do people still think that bloggers were overreacting in calling the AP out on its actions?

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http://techdirt.com/articles/20080617/2052581436.shtml

Ferret55 writes "Wine has been released after fifteen years of development 1.0 is here! from the site "The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of development and beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who helped us along that long road!" rejoice people, we are on step further away from windows!"

Andreaskem writes ""The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of development and beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who helped us along that long road!""

austin987 writes "The Wine team is proud to announce that Wine 1.0 is now available. This is the first stable release of Wine after 15 years of development and beta testing. Many thanks to everybody who helped us along that long road!

While compatibility is not perfect yet, thousands of applications have been reported to work very well. Check http://appdb.winehq.org/ to see the details for your favorite applications."
http://winehq.org/?announce=1.0

TheRealDamion writes "Today* sees the launch of Wine 1.0 after 15 years of development, see http://winehq.com/ for more details. *Unlike Firefox3 which launches at 10am Pacific time apparently, lame americans, I mean it's already the 18th for the majority of the world's population!"
http://winehq.com/

After 15 years of development, Wine version 1.0 has been released. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. While perfect windows compatibility has not yet been achieved, full support for Photoshop CS2, Excel Viewer 2003, Word Viewer 2003 and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 have been among the goals prior to the release. For further information about supported applications, head over to the appdb. Get it (source) while it's hot.

TDyl writes "I read this story in my local rag which hasn't published it on their website yet. Last year Higgs was found guilty of selling console mod chips (26 offences under the British Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (2003)). Now the Appeals Court judges have overturned the verdict — they'll give their reasons at a later date — but their decision could set a precedent for the video games industry in Britain, if selling a modcip is not deemed to be illegal."
http://kotaku.com/tag/neil-higgs/

Nrbelex writes "Wikipedia beat The Associated Press and all other major media outlets on the news of Tim Russert's death by about half an hour. The post was made from an IP belonging to Internet Broadcasting Systems, the same company which operates NBC's website. Wikipedia had the scoop at 3:01pm EST, whereas other reports started coming in around 3:30pm EST. The first post was made to Wikinews at 3:59pm EST."
http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/06/16/wikipedia-first-with-news-of-tim-russerts-death/

The Associated Press, the non-profit news gathering and distribution service, has filed DMCA takedown notices against social news/blog The Drudge Retort for posting short excerpts of AP stories. The website has complied with the notices, and has described some additional details. In a letter to Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of The Retort, the AP believes 'the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use.' Another comment, posted by AP staff on multiple blogs and news sites, says the news service gets concerned when 'we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.'
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/13/ap-sues-blogger-too-long-excerpts

In a bold move to connect with the next generation of young British voters, the House of Lords has launched a YouTube video series that will detail what it does and try to connect it to the younger generation. Accompanying it is a blog titled Lords of the Blog where various Lords blog about political issues and can receive feedback from anyone around the world. From the article: "We're trying to engage with younger people and people who may not be interested in politics," said spokesman Owen Williams. "We looked at YouTube because it appeals to people outside the political elite."

What do you think, Slashdot? Is this doomed to failure, or should more governments be doing something similar?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_LORDS_TV?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

It's no accident that "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" is one of the most common tags applied by Slashdotters to stories about proposed ideas or laws; the ability to spot and predict faults is a big part of what makes a great engineer. It starts with having a healthy skepticism about the world, which leads to actual critical thinking. Many books and courses teach critical thinking skills, but what is the best way to encourage and teach someone to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism? Is it even teachable, or is it just an innate part of the geek personality?