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BigLug writes "Back in May 2006, PBL's Australian Nine Network brought a case against local PVR purveyor IceTV claiming that IceTV's EPG breached Nine's copyright on their TV schedule. Justice Annabelle Bennett ruled in favour of IceTV (pdf).

PBL appealed the decision and yesterday the Federal Court granted the appeal and has ordered that Ice must pay PBL's appeal costs. The case is now referred back to Justice Bennett and Ice will have to argue the case all over again.

Of course, PBL's problem here isn't the EPG. It's IceTV's PVR that can skip advertisements that bring in revenue for PBL. But you can't take that to court when recording TV was recently decriminalized in Australia.

But ignoring that, the court case was about the copyright on a schedule. Should a schedule be copywritable? Does PBL have a case here? The show descriptions have not been copied, only the times, program names and ratings. We all know you can't copyright the title of a work, but should you be able to copyright the association of a title with a time and date?"
http://www.icetv.com.au/news/?p=162

ejoe_mac writes "Every day I rely on Insight.com to provide my customers with a complete product suite and competitive pricing (and credit terms). I was amazed to hear and now see that they are no longer carrying Apple products. My understanding is that since Insight wasn't going to take an Apple-centric sales approach, they were not going to be able to sell Apple products. Apple-centric sales — yea, forget that pc thing and here's a Mac Mini — come on! For Apple to try to dictate to a tier 1 vendor how their products are sold to Corporate customers is ludicrous! Apple doesn't target big business (by their own mouth) so to cut off an existing established sales channel to big businesses (CEO's assistant wants a Macbook Air) is wrong.

Check out the brands that they list — notice no Apple? I purchase everything from them, due to ease, availability, and shopping around doesn't count as billable hours. I trust that I'm getting a fair price, and can be certain that if I need something delivered on Saturday, it will be there. Figure it out Apple!"

Yesterday we discussed Skype's appeal of a German court's ruling against them regarding a violation of the GPL. Harald Welte (the plaintiff) now reports that following oral argument, Skype decided to drop the appeal and accept the lower court ruling in his favour. More details and analysis at Groklaw. Congratulations to Mr. Welte and GPL-violations.org!
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080508212535665

tech sites say "Beware of XP SP3".

According to Information Week, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has drawn hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their computers.

said one user a Microsoft newsgroup.

Other sites, including IT Wire are also reporting problems, which include include random reboots or the inability to boot at all.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207600950

HockeyPuck writes "In a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation's Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images. The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site's support forums. Within the hackers' posts were small flashing pictures and links — masquerading as helpful — to pages that exploded with kaleidoscopic images pulsating with different colors. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_hi_te/techbit_epilepsy_foundation_hacked"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080507/ap_on_hi_te/techbit_epilepsy_foundation_hacked

Microprocessors from portable electronics like iPods could yield low-cost, low-power supercomputers for specialised scientific applications, according to computer scientist John Shalf. Along with a research team from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Shalf is designing a supercomputer based on low-power embedded microprocessors, which has the sole purpose of improving global climate change predictions.

In an interview with iTnews, Shalf spoke about the desktop and embedded chip markets, inefficiencies in current supercomputing designs, and how the Berkeley design will achieve a peak performance of 200 petaflops while consuming less than four megawatts of power.
http://www.itnews.com.au/Feature/4482,researcher-discusses-ipod-supercomputer.aspx

senthil_velan writes "Security researcher Aviv Raff has published code that would allow someone to take control of a computer running Internet Explorer, but there's a catch. He's not saying exactly where he's hidden the attack. "Somewhere in my blog, I embedded a proof-of-concept code that exploits this zero-day vulnerability," Raff wrote in a Wednesday blog posting. A zero-day attack is a previously undisclosed software flaw that has not been fixed by the software maker."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/07/Zero-day-treasure-hunt-researcher-hides-IE-attack-on-Web_1.html

Crtic2 writes "It has been known for months that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, originally conceived by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, is opening an office in Australia. Now that the news has gone mainstream, questions arise as to why? In an interview with iTWire, OLPC Australia board director Jeff Waugh provides some answers and says why Microsoft Windows has no role. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/18143/1023/"

While having to distribute load between several servers, round robin, or any other technique which balances load equally, is usually the most common approach because of its simplicity. But a recent study shows that trying to accumulate load on some servers can improve energy efficiency because the other servers will be mostly unused during off-peak periods and then able to make better use of power saving methods. Specially where load involves lots of concurrent power-consuming TCP connections which was the study case when a new load balancing algorithm resulted in an overall 30% power savings.

Google's shareholders on advice from their board have voted down two proposals on Thursday that would have compelled the search giant to change its human rights policies, with the issue dominating the company's annual shareholder meeting. Several US-based technology companies have been criticized for their activities in China, with Google coming under fire for operating a version of its search engine that complies with China's censorship rules. Google argues that it's better for it to have a presence in the country and to offer people some information, rather than for it to not be active in China at all. However, shareholders and rights groups including Amnesty International and the office of the Comptroller of New York City continue to push Google to improve its policies in countries known for human rights abuses and limits on freedom of speech, and offered several methods for the entity that is Google to consider in order to make those improvements. Sergey Brin, cofounder and president of technology for Google, abstained from voting on either of the proposals. "I agreed with the spirit of these proposals," Brin said. But he said he didn't fully support them as they were written, and so did not want to vote for them.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1767888348

flieghund writes "According to the BBC, "At least one of Britain's birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food... Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars...Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same birds in the Netherlands have not managed to adjust. Understanding why some species in some places are affected more than others by climatic shifts is vital, they say...The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) commented that other species are likely to fare much worse than great tits as temperatures rise.""
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7390109.stm

Ravalox writes "Proprietor of some of today's most popular PC games Valve Software may be adding something more substantive to the turning rumor mill, scuttlebutt at Phoronix, perennial favorite linux publication, is that there is an earnest effort to make the SOURCE Engine run natively in linux. Though the Source engine's predecessor, GoldSrc, which in turn was based on the original Quake engine, was able to render both OpenGL and Direct3D. The Source Engine is designed to be highly modular, and this is hopefully how the OpenGL support will be introduced, which is needed for any Linux or Mac OS X support. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=source_linux&num=1"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I find the Firehose software to be infuriating. It seems to have no 'stickiness' but constantly reverts to other views and searches than what I was looking at. I'm about ready to give up on it unless they tell me they recognize it's dumb and are doing something to make it work right. Am I the only one who feels this way?"

Stony Stevenson writes "The One Laptop Per Child initiative has set up shop in Australia with a local board planning to lobby State and Federal governments to fund a roll-out into local communities. Based in Sydney, the OLPC Australia board will also co-ordinate efforts to bring the organisation's low-cost XO laptops — designed for needy children aged six to 11 — into other Pacific territories such as Papua New Guinea. The Australian Northern Territory Government has already conducted a small-scale pilot of the laptops but has not yet committed to a broader trial. Right now, OLPC Australia is conducting trial programs across the country to prepare for a hopeful launch of June or July. The initial goal is a 5,000 laptop trial period, which ideally the government would buy and provide to students for free."