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Patents

Software Now Un-Patentable In New Zealand 221

Posted by CmdrTaco from the make-up-your-mind-people dept.
A few weeks ago New Zealand Software decided to grant software patents. But now "Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn't be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be un-patentable once the Bill passes into law. This is significant. As we've previously pointed out software patents aren't black and white, and there are certainly pros and cons. However on balance, we believe they represent a far greater risk to smaller NZ-based software providers than opportunity, and there are many cases where they have significantly stifled innovation. We believe it's near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, hence many software companies in New Zealand, creating outstanding and innovative software, live a constant risk that their entire business will be wound up overnight due to litigious action by a patent holder. This has led to many a 'patent troll' company, primarily in the US. These are non-software companies who exist only to buy up old patents with the sole intention of suing innovative software companies for apparent breach of these patents. The effects of this have been chilling."
PC Games (Games)

Activision Wants Consoles To Be Replaced By PCs 344

Posted by Soulskill from the oppose-on-principle dept.
thsoundman writes with this excerpt from thegamersblog: "We live in a world where we have multiple platforms for gaming: PC, PS3, 360, Wii, etc. Each platform has varying amounts of power when it comes to playing games. Activision, one of the leading cross-platform publishers, wishes to move away from the 'walled gardens' set by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. ... [Activision CEO Bobby] Kotick’s solution is to turn to the PC, where it can set its own model for pricing — not unlike what Blizzard has done with World of Warcraft and Battle.net. Kotick stated that Activision would 'very aggressively' support the likes of HP and Dell in any attempt at making an easy 'plug-and-play' PC that would hook up directly to the TV."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Killzone 3 Announced 58

Posted by Soulskill from the more-zones-and-more-kill dept.
Sony has officially taken the wraps off of Killzone 3, providing a ton of information about the third installment in the popular FPS franchise. The game will pick up where Killzone 2 left off, the levels will be much larger than in the past, and it will contain support for 3-D mode. Eurogamer has a detailed hands-on report about the game. Quoting: "Encounters have lost much of their predictability. More open design gives the AI more options, as well as freeing the player from the necessity of hide and peek. This means that it's now a much more viable option to get up close and personal with the Higs, unleashing the multi-stage and context-sensitive CQC kills with rifle butts and the trusty knife. ... For stage three of the hands-on we're introduced to perhaps the most exciting piece of new hardware — the jetpack. Initially only coming attached to a Helghan shock trooper, this insectoid assault platform is a four-winged, one-man affair, complete with a unlimited supply of ammunition for the attached large-calibre machine gun. Fighting them from the ground puts you in a precarious situation, putting you on the backfoot as you balance the necessity of looking upwards with the dangers of the sheer ice-cliffs around you. ... From the ground the pack will propel you upwards to around 15 feet, with the glide period afterward giving you the freedom to traverse sizable gaps. There's a booster, too — squirting you forward in short bursts if you're falling just short of an edge. Controls are light and agile, with the disconcerting verticality soon becoming second nature. "
Linux

New Linux Petabyte-Scale Distributed File System 132

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data."
Cellphones

Review of HTC Desire As Alternative To iPhone 544

Posted by timothy from the not-exactly-a-ringing-endorsement dept.
Andrew Smith writes "My search for an alternative to the iPhone has been long and frustrating. On paper, the HTC Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone's reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use? There is much good and much bad. (This review is primarily for UK readers as HTC's new handset, the Incredible, will not be available [in the UK].)"
Operating Systems

Sony Refuses To Sanction PS3 "Other OS" Refunds 396

Posted by Soulskill from the you-paid-for-what-we-say-you-paid-for dept.
Stoobalou writes "Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer users partial refunds for fat PS3s. Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console. The user quoted European law in order to persuade the online retailer that the goods he had bought in good faith were no longer fit for his purposes because of the enforcement of firmware update 3.21, which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."
Canada

The Pirate Party of Canada Is Official 430

Posted by kdawson from the arrrr-eh dept.
wasme writes "The Pirate Party of Canada has become the first Pirate Party outside of Europe to become an official political party. Elections Canada confirmed with the party that the PPCA has gained 'eligible for registration' status, and can run in elections starting June 14. From the PPCA's official announcement: 'We are pleased to announce that as of April 12, 2010, the Pirate Party of Canada is officially eligible for Party Status. After 10 months of dedication and hard work, we have reached eligible status, which only leaves a 60-day "purgatory" period. After that, we will field candidates in subsequent federal elections, and begin the real work of a political party.'"
Earth

Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen 187

Posted by timothy from the what's-shakin'? dept.
MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson from the non-obfuscated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"
Movies

Sony Begins Selling HD Movies On Its PSN 153

Posted by Soulskill from the pants-and-cheeseburgers-to-follow dept.
itwbennett writes "Sony on Tuesday 'rolled out the ability to buy HD movies from the PlayStation Network,' writes blogger Peter Smith. Sony claims they're the first service to offer HD titles to own from all six major movie studios. Smith runs the numbers on 'standard' pricing for titles ($19.99 for new releases; $17.99 for older movies), file sizes (ranging from 4 GB for Zombieland to 7.5 GB for 2012), and resolution (720P as far as he can tell)."
Yahoo!

Ubuntu Moves To Yahoo For Default Firefox Search 370

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-say-bing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Starting in Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx release, Firefox's default search engine will be switched from Google to Yahoo. The switch was made after Canonical 'negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo.' Google will still be available as a choice. Since Yahoo search is now powered by Microsoft's Bing, this would seem to mean that Microsoft will be paying people for using Ubuntu."

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