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Google warns Australia over 'Net filters->

Submitted by Tyler Too
Tyler Too writes "A day after redirecting google.cn to Hong Kong servers, Google has come out in opposition to Australia's Internet filtering system. 'Google is unlikely to come right out and compare Australia to China, but the implication is obvious—and has been made explicit by other groups. Reporters Without Borders said recently that Australia would "be joining an Internet censors' club that includes such countries as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia."'"
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Linux

Microsoft: Don't Cry For Linux Lawsuit, Argentina ->

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes "Microsoft is facing a legal challenge in Argentina from an open source company which alleges the software giant used its cut-down Windows XP Starter Edition to unfairly dominate the country’s operating system market. Microsoft, which has been accused of dominating software markets in Switzerland, Hungary and other countries, is dismissive: "We believe the complaint is baseless. We offer Windows at competitive prices and the complainant, Pixart, is upset about this competition on the merits and wants an order that requires Microsoft to set its prices higher in order to help their sales.”"
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Sci-Fi

Does This Headline Know You're Reading It?-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes ""Not yet, but it could." German artificial intelligence researchers are combining JavaScript with eye-tracking hardware to create "text 2.0," which "infers user intentions." Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and a bookmark automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of footnotes or even translations, biographies, definitions, and sound effects or animations, almost like the truly interactive books in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. "With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents effects just in time," the researchers explain in a video. Meanwhile, DFKI has already created a free "Processing Easy Eye Tracker plugin" (or PEEP) to manipulate windows with what they call "gaze-controlled tab expose," while there's speculation similar technology may be adopted by Apple. Apple has already purchased Tobii's eye-tracking hardware, and "Whether these are for internal research only or for a future product, Apple is characteristically not saying."
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Operating Systems

Pop. of Virtualization a reflection of poor OS's? 1

Submitted by gooneybird
gooneybird writes "It occurred to me to ask a question underlying the popularity of virtualization:

Virtualization seems to deliver on its promise of better utilization of hardware resources, which equates to better overall efficiency. I can't help but wonder why — at least for Enterprise/IT users. (This wouldn't necessarily apply to developers).

Are the majority of operating systems so inefficient in their use of hardware resources that the resulting increased efficiency justifies the cost?

Or is this just another indication that the OS and application developers just don't know how to take advantage of the increase in the number of CPU/cores now available.

Is this one of the very rare cases where adding an extra layer of code (i.e. the hypervisor) results in improved overall performance?

Personally, as a developer, I love virtualization. I run everything in a vm, including my corporate desktop/apps and my many development environments. I don't know how anybody gets along without doing so. I think we live in the golden age, right now, where technology (hardware and software) supports pretty darn good virtualization and the applications are not so advanced that they detect/prevent operation in a vm (I predict this is coming soon, unfortunately)."

The only two things that motivate me and that matter to me are revenge and guilt. -- Elvis Costello