gemal writes "I just saw a project called Tamarin (AVM2 open source) Flash9_DotReleases_Branch initial revision checked into the Mozilla CVS repository. Shortly afterwards came the following press release: ' Adobe and the Mozilla Foundation today announced that Adobe has contributed source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine, the powerful standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe Flash Player, to the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla will host a new open source project, called Tamarin, to accelerate the development of this standards-based approach for creating rich and engaging Web applications. This is a major milestone in bringing together the broader HTML and Flash development communities around a common language, and empowering the creation of even more innovative applications in the Web 2.0 world.' You can read about the Tamarin project on the Mozilla site."

mikesd81 writes "The Seattle Time reports that NTP is now going after Palm for patent infringement on technology used in their devices. The suit asks the court to bar Palm from continuing to infringe on NTP's patents and seeks monetary damages for the alleged past infringements. At issues are eleven patents, dating from 1995 to 2001, according to the lawsuit. Five of the patents were part of NTP's lawsuit against RIM. The Palm complaint also centers on products, services and systems that integrate e-mail systems with wireless communications, including the Treo, Palm VII, Palm i700 and Tungsten products." You may recall NTP from the just-finished Blackberry case. Good to know they're staying busy.

jaunty writes "A private members bill has passed the Australian senate which paves the way for the cloning of embryos to gather stem cells. While it only passed by a narrow margin it is expected to gain support in the House. From the article: 'The final shape of the bill is now subject to further debate on amendments including measures to toughen penalties for breaches of cloning regulations, and possibly a move to stop the use of animal tissue in the cloning process.'"

arenam writes to tell us Australian IT is reporting that a recent briefing for the Attorney-General's Department prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology draws certain piracy statistics into question. From the article: "The draft of the institute's intellectual property crime report, sighted by The Australian shows that copyright owners 'failed to explain' how they reached financial loss statistics used in lobbying activities and court cases. Figures for 2005 from the global Business Software Association showing $361 million a year of lost sales in Australia are 'unverified and epistemologically unreliable,' the report says."

dptalia writes "Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced that they have engineered a strain of the AIDS virus that fights AIDS. This strain of AIDS works like a vaccine and improved the immune system of the test subjects. After three years on this new therapy, no side effects have been observed."

An anonymous reader writes "A German federal court decided today that T-Online, one of the largest ISPs in Germany, was obligated to delete all IP logs of a customer upon request to guarantee their privacy. From the article: 'The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter (German) to make this process easier.'"

n3hat writes "Reuters reports that the next Space Shuttle mission may have to be deferred if it gets too close to the New Year because the onboard computers do not handle the changing of the date in the same way as the ground computers. From the article: '"The shuttle computers were never envisioned to fly through a year-end changeover," space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told a briefing. The problem, according to Hale, is that the shuttle's computers do not reset to day one, as ground-based systems that support shuttle navigation do. Instead, after December 31, the 365th day of the year, shuttle computers figure January 1 is just day 366."

lewiz writes "The BBC is reporting that music purchased at MSN Music will not play on the new Zune music player." From the article: "The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with the specifications of the Plays For Sure initiative. This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver. In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: 'Since Zune is a separate offering that is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays For Sure devices.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Many people love and use open source software. Open source has made an impact in just about every place imaginable; education, hardware, coke, beer, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, search engines and encyclopedias. However, OpenHuman takes it one step further and invites you to open source yourself to experiment with the open human idea. This may sound crazy and rife with privacy concerns but as the author asks, do you still believe in Internet privacy in the age of blogs, MySpace, LinkedIn, Meetup, and Flickr?"

robin writes "With another Halloween here and gone, the fall NetHack season is open once again. The 8th annual /dev/null/nethack Tournament started at midnight on November 1st, and will last through the rest of the month. You may wish to read the instructions and see what trophies are available this year before registering to compete."

prostoalex writes "HBO's controversial special 'Hacking Democracy' on issues with Diebold voting machines is now available in full on Google Video." Covered earlier on Slashdot, the documentary seems to have gathered quite a bit of heat from Diebold in addition to the one that didn't air.

An anonymous reader writes "A Wordpress blogger wrote up a guide to camping out on launch day. From the article: 'This is a download of my experience of over twenty-plus years of gaming and having been a part of six console launch days. No, I've never had to stand on line without knowing that my system was reserved. But I've spoken to enough people and accumulated enough knowledge to share. And with that said, here's my list of guidelines to insure that your camp-out in front of Best Buy, Target, Circuit City or Toys R Us is safe and not in vain.' Good luck to all the readers waiting outside for a PS3 or Wii next week." A lot of it is common-sense, but he has some good advice on pre-planning.

Gearoid_Murphy writes, "BBC news has the story of a scientist who has been using computational models of bacteria to advance our understanding of actual bacteria — a step towards simulating fully fledged organisms in virtual environments and potentially an extraordinarily powerful tool for medical science."

1up and EGM have had some time in the last month with the next iteration of Microsoft's Halo series. Several folks at the site have put up their impressions of the current build of the game, including some multiplayer feelings from EGM editor-in-chief Dan Hsu, a bunch of nice crunchy details from Mark Macdonald, a nostalgia-laiden look at the game from Luke Smith, and a potpourri of details from Crispin Boyer. From Luke's writeup: "Maybe it was the first shooter I played that had some substance? Maybe it was that my best friend bought me a copy of the game for my birthday and I didn't even have the console yet. Maybe it was all of the traveling to play in Halo tournaments on weekends in college, but somewhere between Halo: Combat Evolved's release and now, Halo became my Mario. It is the game that made me care about video games like I did when I was 10."

An anonymous reader writes, "Freedom of speech, the future of the Net, you name it. In October, a U.S. vigilante group asked Verizon to cut off Net access to Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults. Shortly thereafter, Verizon gave 30 days notice to Epifora, ending a 5 year relationship. Telecos have traditionally refrained from censoring legal content, arguing that as 'common carriers' it is outside of their scope to make such decisions. Furthermore, they have refrained because if they did so in some cases, they might be legally liable for other cases where they did not exercise censorship. The questions are: has Verizon forfeited their claim to common-carrier status by selectively censoring legal speech that they do not like? And can the net effectively route around censorship if the trunk carriers are allowed to pick and choose whom they allow to connect?"