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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 47 declined, 14 accepted (61 total, 22.95% accepted)

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The Internet

Submission + - Publishers Join Forces Against Open Access (linux.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "The American Association of Publishers announced the creation of the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine. This new partnership, PRISM, will lobby against open access to scientific research on the grounds that science has less integrity when you don't have to pay outrageous fees for access to important journals. They are especially against bills like the Federal Research Public Access Act which could cause a decline in their sales numbers and an "undermining of copyright holders." Y'arr, matey."
Microsoft

Submission + - OSI Asks Microsoft to Change the MS-PL (eweek.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "The OSI has identified two significant flaws in the Microsoft Permissive License, and is unlikely to approve it as an OSI license in its current state. Specifically, the OSI is worried about the way the MS-PL is incompatible with so many other OSI-approved licenses and how misleading that makes the term "permissive" in the license's name. Now the ball is in Microsoft's court and they can choose to amend or withdraw it from consideration."
The Internet

Submission + - Leaks Prove MediaDefender's Deception (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Who will defend the defenders?
Who will defend the defenders? writes: "Ars Technica has posted the first installment in their analysis of the leaked MediaDefender emails and found some very interesting things. Apparently, the New York Attorney General's office is working on a big anti-piracy sting and they were working on finding viable targets. It also discusses how some of the emails show MediaDefender trying to spy on their competitors, sanitize their own Wikipedia entry, deal with the hackers targeting their systems, and to quash the MiiVi story even while they were rebuilding it as Viide. Oh yes, they definitely read "techie, geek web sites where everybody already hates us" like Slashdot, too."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft "Hell-Bent" on Advertising Reven (com.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "According to a statement made by Steve Ballmer at Microsoft's Financial Analysts Day, "We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business." Presumably, that's what they plan to use their now patented "Mother of All Adware" system for. How long until we need an adblock extension for Windows itself?"
Microsoft

Submission + - OOXML Denied INCITS V1 Approval (robweir.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "INCITS V1, the US group responsible for the US vote over whether or not ANSI will grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's OOXML format, failed to reach the 2/3 consensus required to recommend OOXML to ANSI. What makes this vote interesting is the graph in the article, showing all the new Microsoft business partners who joined INCITS just this year to vote for OOXML. They will now deliberate further, until they can come to some agreement on what to recommend to ANSI, but it's pretty clear that Microsoft is pushing OOXML as hard as it can."
Microsoft

Submission + - OOXML's "Formula for Failure" (robweir.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "As Microsoft fights for the standardization of it's OOXML document format, one of it's most touted strengths is the documentation of its formulas. But how good are they, really? According to Rob Weir, OOXML's formula specification is very wrong. In short, there are many locale issues and several numerical functions don't match the mathematical definitions at all. Even if you don't care about OOXML vs. ODF at all, it's probably still worth a read if you're like me and want to know why some of your old Excel spreadsheet formulas never came out right."
Caldera

Submission + - SCO vs. IBM Leaks Exposed

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "Remember all the fuss about SCO subpoenaing PJ of Groklaw, where they allege that she's funded by IBM because she once got a publicly available document from a volunteer at the courthouse a little before it hit the Court's website? That's nothing. Groklaw has a story evidence that other materials have been leaked in this case — but they weren't leaked to Groklaw, and they weren't leaked by IBM. Information about the sealed materials in question made its way to Maureen O'Gara, who wrote a story based on inside information, displaying a positively uncanny insight into what SCO was planning, including far more than just the sealed document a SCO lawyer read out loud in open court. Interestingly, several witnesses report that Maureen O'Gara did not even attend that hearing, leaving us to speculate about her source."
Microsoft

Submission + - DaVinci Notebooks for Vista Users Only?

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "Apparently bereft of better ways to sell Vista, Bill Gates plans to digitize the DaVinci notebooks he owns and make them available online. The catch? You'll have to be running Microsoft Vista in order to view them. From the article, "While Gates and Microsoft emphasized the project as opening knowledge and education to the world, only users of Vista will be able to access the 35 pages owned by Gates, who is making the digital version available to British Library for six months. Gates paid $30 million for the manuscript in 1994." One wonders just what manner of DRM is supposed to keep people from copying those pages."
Security

Submission + - DOD Bars HTML Email and Outlook Web Access

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "In a bid to increase their security, the DOD is now blocking HTML email and barring the use of Outlook Web Access. This coincides with them increasing INFOCON from 5 to 4, indicating that they are experiencing methodical and sophisticated attacks directed at them. Of course, this raises the question of what INFOCON level is required before they ban the use of Outlook and Windows entirely?"
The Courts

Submission + - Six DMCA Exemptions Granted

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "The US Copyright Office has just announced six new categories of works exempt from the DMCA's prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to the copyrighted works. This is good news for anyone stuck with old computer dongles or games for game consoles that are no longer available, blind people trying to read ebooks, those trying to unlock cellphones, media studies professors, and anyone who was struck by Sony's rootkit. The bad news is that the exceptions are exceedingly narrow due to their limited authority to grant exceptions. For example, the rootkit exception apparently only allows you to circumvent the access controls caused by a rootkit-laden CD, but not to circumvent any usage controls, nor to circumvent the exact same access controls were they on a DVD instead of a CD..."

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