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Microsoft

Microsoft Promises To Fully Support OOXML ... Later 163

Posted by Soulskill
from the sounds-like-a-government-timetable dept.
Raul654 writes "OOXML is the Word document format that Microsoft rammed through the ISO last year. Last week, we discussed a blog post by Alex Brown, who was instrumental in getting OOXML approved by the ISO. Brown criticized Microsoft for reneging on its promise to support OOXML in the upcoming release of Office 2010, and for its lackadaisical approach to fixing the many bugs which still remain in the specification. Now, Doug Mahugh has responded to Brown's post, promising that Microsoft will support OOXML 'no later than the initial release of Office 15.'"
Government

USPTO Won't Accept Upside Down Faxes 427

Posted by samzenpus
from the left-handed-reading-glasses dept.
bizwriter writes "This may seem like a joke, but it's not. The US Patent and Trademark Office will not accept patent filings faxed in if they arrive upside down. That's right, the home of innovation of the federal government is incapable of rotating an incoming fax file, whether electronically or on paper."
Space

Amazing New Movies of Saturn's Moons 32

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the that's-a-lot-of-flowery-words dept.
RobGoldsmith writes "Like sugar plum fairies in 'The Nutcracker,' the moons of Saturn performed a celestial ballet before the eyes of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. New movies frame the moons' silent dance against the majestic sweep of the planet's rings and show as many as four moons gliding around one another."
United States

Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned 670

Posted by samzenpus
from the let-me-see-what-you-got-there dept.
schwit1 writes "The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Government

Two Senators Call For ACTA Transparency 214

Posted by kdawson
from the we-got-more-senators-than-that dept.
angry tapir writes "Two US senators have asked President Barack Obama's administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, argue in the letter."
Image

OpenGL Shading Language 3rd Edition 46

Posted by samzenpus
from the read-all-about-it dept.
Martin Ecker writes "The “OpenGL Shading Language” (also called the Orange Book because of its orange cover) is back in its third edition, with updated discussions of the OpenGL shading language (up to version 1.40, introduced with OpenGL 3.1). Like the previous edition, the third edition of the book is one of the best introductions to GLSL — the OpenGL Shading Language — that not only teaches the ins and outs of GLSL itself but also explains in-depth how to develop shaders in GLSL for lighting, shadows, animation, and other topics relevant to real-time computer graphics." Keep reading for the rest of Martin's review.
Google

Google Releases Open Source JavaScript Tools 158

Posted by timothy
from the see-not-evil dept.
Dan Jones writes "Google has open sourced several of its key JavaScript application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications. According to Google, by enabling and allowing developers to use the same tools that Google uses, they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really fast. The Closure JavaScript compiler and library are used as the standard Javascript library for pretty much any large, public Web application that Google is serving today, including some of its most popular Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps. Google has also released Closure Templates which are designed to automate the dynamic creation of HTML. The announcement comes a few months after Google released and open sourced the NX server."
Google

+ - Google releases open source JavaScript tools-> 1

Submitted by Dan Jones
Dan Jones writes "Google has open sourced several of its key JavaScript application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications. According to Google, by enabling and allowing developers to use the same tools that Google uses, they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really fast. The Closure JavaScript compiler and library are used as the standard Javascript library for pretty much any large, public Web application that Google is serving today, including some of its most popular Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps. Google has also released Closure Templates which are designed to automate the dynamic creation of HTML. The announcement comes a few months after Google released and open source NX server."
Link to Original Source

+ - 4th-gen Apple iPhone dimensions leaked->

Submitted by clonewriter
clonewriter writes "Parts supplier China Ontrade has listed what it claims is the "Apple iPhone 4 Generation Midboard", complete with height and width dimensions and a few other particulars. Listed as being delivered from Foxconn (manufacturer of Apple’s iPhone) a few days ago, China Ontrade does have a history of leaking info early, posting details of parts fitted to the iPhone 3GS a month before that product was launched by Apple. Shanzai.com has some of the details of how the parts differ from the current 3GS. This includes "Apple iTablet iPhone 4 Generation SIM Tray" perhaps suggesting that Apple’s rumoured iTablet product will also have a SIM card slot."
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

+ - Windows 7 sales beat Vista's by 234% in first week

Submitted by Bimal
Bimal writes "Ars Technica reports:

Initial sales of Windows 7 boxed software surpassed those of Vista's by 234 percent in the first few days of the operating system's availability on the US market, according to data collected by NPD's weekly tracking service. NPD compares sales numbers for the week of October 18, 2009 to October 24, 2009 as well as Windows 7 preorders sales and compared them to the first few days of Vista's sales. This seems like great news for Microsoft, but it wasn't all positive.

NPD claims that revenue growth wasn't very strong for Microsoft, due to two main factors: early discounts on the preorder copies and no promotional activity for the Ultimate edition (the most expensive one). As a result, the dollar sales were only 82 percent higher than Vista. The average selling price was $76 for Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade, $147 for Windows 7 Professional Upgrade, and $149 for the Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack (three upgrade licenses)."
Music

Going Head To Head With Genius On Playlists 174

Posted by timothy
from the put-that-man-down dept.
brownerthanu writes "Engineers at the University of California, San Diego are developing a system to include an ignored sector of music, dubbed the 'long tail,' in music recommendations. It's well known that radio suffers from a popularity bias, where the most popular songs receive an inordinate amount of exposure. In Apple's music recommender system, iTunes' Genius, this bias is magnified. An underground artist will never be recommended in a playlist due to insufficient data. It's an artifact of the popular collaborative filtering recommender algorithm, which Genius is based on. In order to establish a more holistic model of the music world, Luke Barrington and researchers at the Computer Audition Laboratory have created a machine learning system which classifies songs in an automated, Pandora-like, fashion. Instead of using humans to explicitly categorize individual songs, they capture the wisdom of the crowds via a Facebook game, Herd It, and use the data to train statistical models. The machine can then 'listen to,' describe and recommend any song, popular or not. As more people play the game, the machines get smarter. Their experiments show that automatic recommendations work at least as well as Genius for recommending undiscovered music."
Apple

+ - Steve Jobs’ Legacy Will Be Saving Journalism->

Submitted by jacob1984
jacob1984 writes "Wired has an interesting story on why the mythical iTablet may not only solidify Steve Job's legacy, but possibly save the decaying journalism industry to boot. Wired writes, "Pulling it off would take characteristic Apple hardware/software flair — and a bit of uncharacteristic magnanimity. But the “X” factor is Jobs himself. Whatever you believe about his health, Jobs will not live forever. We’re guessing that he, like all high achievers, believes that yesterday’s accomplishments, however fantastic, are also yesterday's news. If he is looking for One Last Thing, saving journalism would be the Holy Grail.""
Link to Original Source

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one. -- Marcus Procius Cato

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