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Role Playing (Games)

When Tax Day Comes to Azeroth 141

Posted by Zonk from the i'm-a-level-30-taxman dept.
1up is running a short piece originally from Games For Windows: The Official Magazine. It discusses the inevitability of taxation coming to virtual worlds, and a little bit about what that might mean in the indeterminate future: "Taxable income includes everything from tangibles like cookies to more ephemeral and subjective things like works of art, concert tickets, or advice. Those big, scary books that most sane people pay accountants to understand for them don't really narrow down what counts as taxable income so much as meticulously define it as damn near any piece of matter, energy, or information that should happen to pass into your possession over the course of the year. That goofy World of WarCraft gnome that GFW editor-in-chief Jeff Green's been leveling isn't any more intangible than, say, stocks."
Patents

Submission + - New Patent Reform - A Good Thing?

Submitted by
Patent-Monkey
Patent-Monkey writes: "BetaNews reports that new legislation is being proposed by Congress today that promises to "change the very fabric of patent law" by limiting damages to lost economic profit by a company and define an invention on its novel merits without taking credit for prior art. The article also notes that "Open source advocates may appreciate the amplified language that would prohibit any organization from claiming patentability over a concept that was "in public use or sale" (note the distinction) prior to the claim." Something the Peer to Patent project also hopes to help with.

This bill clearly limits the impact of future NTP v RIM style cases, but could also have the potential to allow large companies (e.g. IBM, Microsoft and Google) to copy a number of smaller company's ideas since the damages would be limited to that small company's lost earnings.

Are patent damage limits a good solution? For all of you to answer..."
Media

Submission + - Enforced ad-watching coming to Flash video players

Submitted by Dominare
Dominare writes: The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) e.g. to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. From TFA:

But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.

This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video.
Wii

Submission + - Seniors love the Wii

Submitted by textureglitch
textureglitch writes: Nintendo's mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers is well under way. The Wii's focus on intuitive gameplay rather than high-powered graphics has made it outsell the more expensive Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 so far, and now CNN reports that retirees love the Wii.

"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it," Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.

Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee of Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament.

"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have to throw a 16-pound bowling ball to get results."
Linux Business

Submission + - Desktop Linux Gotchas

Submitted by
stinkymountain
stinkymountain writes: "Desktop Linux isn't exactly a no-brainer for corporate users, as least not yet. An article in Network World http://www.networkworld.com/techinsider/2007/03260 7-guide-linux-migration-tips.html. lists six different issues that need to be addressed before desktop Linux can be successfully deployed. That includes everything from addressing end users fears about their pet macros not working to making sure basic corporate apps are supported to ironing out links between the desktop OS and backend directories."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia co-founder starting over

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, will be moving in a new direction starting this week. He will be unveiling Citizendium, a competitor to Wikipedia which he hopes will have far fewer warts than Wikipedia does.

The difference this time is that those who contribute will be required to use their real names and experts in a given field will be asked to verify the facts. From the article:

"If there's going to be a free encyclopedia, I'd like there to be a better free encyclopedia," says Sanger, 38, who has a doctorate in philosophy and speaks slowly, as if cautiously choosing every word. "It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving."

Feed Turkey Lifts YouTube Ban (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
An official for Turk Telekom says the court is lifting the block on YouTube, imposed because of videos insulting to the founder of modern Turkey. By the Associated Press.


The Internet

Submission + - My Yahoo! Gets Web 2.0 Makeover

Submitted by
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Yahoo has announced a new version of its long-running personalized homepage, My Yahoo!. It features a new design that is similar to the beta yahoo.com released last year. It has a lot more Ajax interactivity, a full-text RSS Reader, and more personalization options (e.g. sharing). My Yahoo currently gets 50 million monthly users worldwide and so it is the biggest "personalized homepage" on the market. As such Yahoo is careful about rolling out new ajax and web 2.0 features — in order to avoid the user backlash that Netscape.com, and recently, USAToday received. The My Yahoo! beta will at first only be available to a limited number of users, but over the coming months it'll gradually be rolled out to all users."
Graphics

Submission + - No more JPEG?

Submitted by
Critical Facilities
Critical Facilities writes: "According to this story: Microsoft Corp. will soon submit a new photo format to an international standards organization that it says offers higher quality images with better compression, the company said on Thursday.
While light on the details, this is an interesting development that begs the question, is this another attempt to gain a proprietary foothold. That is, if this turns out to be true and catches on (and that's a big IF), would that mean yet another reason people would "need" Windows?"
Biotech

Submission + - Fall Back, Spring Forward, and DIE!!!

Submitted by
docinthemachine
docinthemachine writes: "It's Y2K all over again thanks to the new daylight savings time schedule. A pair of advisories from the FDA warns patients that the new daylight savings time calendar could kill you! The FDA warns "If you have any medical equipment that uses, creates or records time information about your diagnosis or treatment and the manufacturer has not updated it, the equipment may not work properly when the new Daylight Savings Time (DST) starts and ends this year and in future years." Lucky for us the healthcare provider advisory lists the days your equipment is most likely to fail and kill you and how to troubleshoot. Heck, Microsoft is charging for their fix why should your pacemaker work? full details at http://docinthemachine.com/2007/03/07/dstdeath/"
Security

Submission + - Guess he should have used PGP

Submitted by
gkearney
gkearney writes: "A man is suing Microsoft because the FBI was able to read his "secure" hard drive. He was arrested for selling an air rifle with silencer (Why an air rifle would need a silencer is another story.) when the ATF seized his porn ladened computer which he had secured with various software. When the FBI computer lab was able to read his drive he file d suit. Interesting that HP and Circuit City settled with him. Now about those silencer equipped air rifles...

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=197700861&cid=RSSfeed_TechWeb"

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