Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft

Submission + - Copyright Gurus Scoff at Microsoft's Claims

Submitted by
jeevesbond
jeevesbond writes: "Copyright experts scoffed Tuesday at attempts by a top Microsoft lawyer to discredit Google's approach to copyrighted material. Most believed Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin's speech before a book conference — as well as his opinion piece in the Financial Times — had a lot more to do with Microsoft's vicious competition with Google than about solid legal arguments."
Unix

Submission + - SCO continues its pattern of dubious claims

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SCO claims exclusive license to the UNIX trademark, but The Open Group, which owns the trademark, says very specifically that other licensees (including IBM) have the right to use the mark in connection with their products.

It should also be interesting for those of you following SCO v. World that The Open Group holds not only the trademark, but also the rights to specify and publish specifications for the UNIX system. It gained this right from Novell around the same time the source code of the SVR4 implementation went to SCO. Some of SCO's claims that have yet to be tossed rest on the idea that things like file names, names of constants, and such within SVR4 are SCO's property. It's odd that it could be SCO's property when it's a freely licensed standard published by the group that bought that very right separate from what SCO bought.

SCO's claims so far have not held up well. They're down from claims against IBM of millions of lines of code, methods, concepts, and patents being misappropriated wholesale to arguing whether "#define EPERM 1" is copyrightable. The Daimler-Chrysler case has already closed with the dismissal of the last pending claim. It seems now that, with multiple cases partly or completely on hold for the outcome of the Novell case, that SCO's time may finally be drawing short.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - LinuxBIOS with X11 server, completely in Flash ROM

Submitted by LWATCDR
LWATCDR writes: http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/linuxbios-with-x11- server-completely-in-flash-rom Has a great write up on putting combining LinuxBios + a Linux kernel, busybox, X, a window manager, and rxvt into a two meg flash chip. So what does get you? A six second boot time for one. All sorts of uses come to mind. Terminals to use with the Linux Terminal server. A very fast booting embedded system like a Car computer. With every one pushing for multi-core cpus, mega gigabyte drives and many gigabytes of ram it is interesting to see how small you can go.
Education

Submission + - Wilkes University Going All-Mac

Submitted by Snowgen
Snowgen writes: In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Wilkes University issued a press release stating that "...over the next three years, Wilkes University will become an all-Mac campus." Another article covering the same story states that "Apple overtook Dell in the UK education market as report indicated gaining popularity among students at college campuses." If that wasn't enough, "Apple also announced that it landed two particularly large educational institutional sales during the September quarter, but did not provide details."
Linux Business

Submission + - Dell to Linux users: Not so fast

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "After all the hubbub over Dell's note about manufacturing Linux-friendly Dells and choosing distros, the company is now telling users not to expect factory-installed Linux laptops and desktops anytime soon:

The company said today that the note was just about certifying the hardware for being ready to work with Novell SUSE Linux, not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future.
According to the article, Dell says that lining up certification, support and training will 'take a lot of work.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux distribution....

Submitted by tiredofnick
tiredofnick writes: Have any slash dotters done mass depolyment of linux builds? I'm talking the Symantec Ghost for Linux... Is there any sort of solution for linux in terms of mass distribution over Ethernet? Let me know slash dotters!
HP

Submission + - HP voids warrenty if linux is installed

Submitted by ShadowHywind
ShadowHywind writes: Having Hardware failures, I decided to call the HP tech support for help. They asked If i Had any other operating System installed, other then Windows. Because I duel boot, I said yes, I have linux and windows installed. He then quickly stated that If you install another operating system other then Windows, It will void your warranty. I quickly hung up the phone hoping that he wouldn't create a file sense i am working on month 4 of 3 years of my warranty. Is it right for a company to void a warranty just because you decide to install something other then windows?
Businesses

Submission + - Pre-Installed Linux tops Dell customer requests

Submitted by
dhart
dhart writes: "Within only a few days of opening a new customer feedback website, Dell has discovered the feature most requested (by a wide margin!) as an option on all new Dell PCs: Pre-installed Linux. I believe they'll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra "there's no customer demand for Linux"."
Programming

Submission + - How do you change careers into programming?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I have worked in tech support for the last several years, but find myself wanting to move on to something else — programming. I've written some small programs in my limited spare time but nothing particularly impressive; just functional stuff to make my life easier. I've spent a lot of time recently working through programming books, and feel I'm ready to make the switch in my career. That said, I don't have a CS degree, and find that responses to my resume have been along the lines of "Thanks, but we aren't hiring for tech support positions." Surely someone from the slashdot crowd has been in the same position — what would you recommend?
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Wants Patent on Indentation

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Throw some text in a worksheet, make the columns small, and color the cells to denote a hierarchy. Like this. That, my friend, may constitute patent infringement for the next twenty years if the USPTO grants Microsoft the patent it's seeking for Minimizing Indenting (actual patent image). Just one more example of how Microsoft's lawyers are making the world a better place through more joyful and inclusive design."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple to re-enter the sub-notebook market

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has plans to reenter the sub-notebook market this year. FTFA: "This new tiny MacBook, people familiar with the project say, remains in development ahead of its target launch date around the time WWDC rolls around mid-year. It will be both lighter and more compact than any other Mac portable Apple has put forth in recent years, bundling a display of similarly smaller proportions."

http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2500
Operating Systems

Submission + - OpenBSD: Linux's "Free Driver Offer" is a

Submitted by microbee
microbee writes: KernelTrap reports that Greg Kroah-Hartman's offer for free GPL drivers has caused criticisms from OpenBSD developers, including founder Theo de Raadt who calls it a farce. Their reason is that this move will make companies even more reluctant to provide open specs and will hurt free software in the long run. Greg is not convinced, but given his track record of being wrong once, maybe the OpenBSD folks have a point?
SuSE

Submission + - Microsoft exec: SUSE guest support, interop coming

Submitted by
Max Kincora
Max Kincora writes: "http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalCon tent/0,289142,sid39_gci1243601,00.html This spring, Novell and Microsoft will release a virtualization tool that bridges the chasm between Linux and Windows, says a Microsoft exec in this Q&A. He also discusses hardware virtualization and the upcoming open standards that should boost ISVs' releases of Linux-Windows interoperability tools."

Slashdot Top Deals

Make sure your code does nothing gracefully.

Close