fjanss - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft agrees over interoperability with Europe (europa.eu)

Submitted by

fjanss

on Monday October 22, 2007 @07:58AM

fjanss writes: "Microsoft has finally agreed to three substantial changes to bring them into compliance with the decision. First, 'open source' software developers will be able to access and use the interoperability information. Second, the royalties payable for this information will be reduced to a nominal one-off payment of 10 000. Third, the royalties for a worldwide licence including patents will be reduced from 5.95% to 0.4% — less than 7% of the royalty originally claimed. In these agreements between third party developers and Microsoft, Microsoft will guarantee the completeness and accuracy of the information provided. The agreements will be enforceable before the High Court in London, and will provide for effective remedies, including damages, for third party developers in the event that Microsoft breaches those agreements. Effective private enforcement will therefore complement the Commission's public enforcement powers."

Submission + - EU court crushes Microsoft's antitrust appeal

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Monday September 17, 2007 @06:59AM

Stony Stevenson writes: European antitrust regulators have won a historic victory over Microsoft when an EU court upheld the European Commission's 2004 ruling that the U.S. software giant abused its market dominance. The European Union's second-highest court dismissed Microsoft's appeal on all substantive points, but threw the company a small bone by reversing the Commission on the creation and funding of a monitoring trustee to ensure implementation of one of the remedies.

In a crucial finding backing the Commission's order that Microsoft change its business practices, the court said the company was unjustified in tying new applications to its Windows operating system in a way that harmed consumer choice. In a revealing detail, the judges ordered Microsoft to pay most of the costs including some of its business rivals' which had supported the Commission's case.

Submission + - New Storm Worm twist uses Tor as a vector (hermetix.org)

Submitted by on Saturday September 08, 2007 @09:44AM

An anonymous reader writes: Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications. They "kindly" provide a link to download a trojaned version of Tor. This blog entry has a link to the original post on or-talk mailing list which has some samples of the messages.

Submission + - Samba 4 has reached Alpha Stage (samba.org)

Submitted by DaMattster on Saturday September 08, 2007 @09:06AM

DaMattster writes: Samba4 alpha1 is the culmination of 4.5 years of development under our belt since Tridge first proposed a new Virtual File System (VFS) layer for Samba3 (a project which eventually lead to our Active Directory efforts), and 1.5 years since we first released a Technology Preview. We wish to allow users, managers and developers to see how we have progressed, and to invite feedback and support.

Submission + - Google Earth Flight Simulator (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

marcog123

on Friday August 31, 2007 @05:03PM

marcog123 writes: "Last week Google launched Google Sky as an addition to Google Earth. However, what they didn't tell us is that the sneaked in another key addition — a flight simulator. They appear to have held back on publicising this new feature, although it could be considered by some as more useful than Google Sky. It is currently limited to an F16 and SR22, but the selection of runways is impressive for an under-the-radar release. It's a great new addition that complements Google Earth well!"

Submission + - The Great Iraq Swindle

Submitted by Drahgkar on Sunday August 26, 2007 @06:25PM

Drahgkar writes: Have you ever wondered where all the money the government has spent on the war in Iraq has gone? Wonder no more as you read The Great Iraq Swindle on Rolling Stone's website. "How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq."

Submission + - Latest US OOXML Vote on OOXML is Yes - And More (consortiuminfo.org) 3

Submitted by

Andy Updegrove

on Friday August 24, 2007 @05:33PM

Andy Updegrove writes: "The latest step in the US voting on OOXML was to circulate two ballots — one to approve, with comments, and one to abstain, with comments. Those votes are now back in, with the approval vote getting enough to pass (12), plus three "nos" and one abstention. The ballot to abstain with comments came back unanimously approved. A "resolution meeting" will be held on August 29, at which the approval vote may stand, or one or more votes may switch. Meantime, as votes (yes and no) begin to be announced around the world, there has been a sudden, last minute influx of countries that have suddenly decided that they want to upgrade their status within ISO/IEC JTC1 in order to be be able to vote on specifications — such as OOXML. Six so far, in fact: Cypress, Ecuador, Pakistan, Trinidad/Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela, with perhaps more on the way. Under the rules, they will be able to exercise their new rights immediately. Coincidence? http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articl e.php?story=2007082413463944"

Submission + - Who Owns a Hosted Open Source Project? 1

Submitted by on Thursday August 23, 2007 @06:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: Just over a year ago I convinced my company to release a framework we had created, under an open source license. Since then, a lot of hard work has been put in by myself and others outside of normal work hours and we've managed to turn it into a fairly substantial project with a solid user base. Now I've reached a point where I'm going to move on to something else and the company I work for is taking the typical corporate position that they own the project and everything related to it. Since it's hosted on a popular project hosting site, I'm curious who actually owns the project and it's SVN repository? I originally established the project and no one but the core developers have access to it, so can we refuse to hand over full access to the open source project? Clearly, it's within my right to fork it, but that seems like a bad solution especially since the company just wants to shut it down. I've spent sometime looking around for information on this, but it seems like this either hasn't happened before or it's happened behind closed doors. Does the slashdot community have any thoughts on this?

Submission + - India rejects Microsoft OOXML in favor of ODF (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Thursday August 23, 2007 @05:38PM

slashthedot writes: "In a major setback to Microsoft's effort to further its OOXML standard, India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents. In a tense meeting at Delhi's Manak Bhawan, the 21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a 'no' against Microsoft's Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in Geneva on September 2.
The Open Document Format (ODF) alliance — enjoying widespread support from academia and corporates like Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Google — were in a jubilant mood having succeeded in stalling OOXML from being accepted as a standard in India.
Microsoft,however, is still hopeful that India's 'No' vote will become a 'Yes' if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO.
The voting was a hot issue in India for some weeks, with most of the institutions, including IITs and IIMs, supporting ODF, and only a few favoring OOXML as a choice. During the days before voting, there were reports that both the parties were offering director-level jobs at 200% hike to each other to help switch votes in their favour."

Submission + - India overtakes U.S. as Nokia's No.2 Market

Submitted by alphakappa on Thursday August 23, 2007 @04:20PM

alphakappa writes: Nokia today announced that India has overtaken the U.S. to become its second largest market by sales, coming up behind China. In the past 18 months, Nokia has shipped 60 million cellphones from its Chennai factory, and they expected it to become the second largest (volume) by 2010.
Quoting from the story, "India has quickly become one of the largest markets," he told reporters in New Delhi, adding he expects demand will not be limited to cheaper phones. "India is not a low-end market. It is a very versatile market in all price points, in all segments," he said. The story also reports that "India had 185 million mobile customers at the end of July, with more than 6 million new customers signing every month, lured by call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute" Nokia has a design studio and a factory in India.

Submission + - Citrix acquires XenSource

Submitted by Huh? on Friday August 17, 2007 @10:20AM

Huh? writes: Network world reports Citrix acquires XenSource for desktop and server virtualization

Citrix Systems agreed to acquire XenSource today in a deal valued at $500 million. The recently rumored deal will let Citrix enter the server and desktop virtualization markets, long dominated by VMware, who went public yesterday and whose shares are trading at $51 at the close of trading. Investment banking firm Jefferies & Company issued a report Tuesday on Citrix titled "Citrix-Xen Makes Perfect Strategic Sense." The company says Citrix's close relationship with Microsoft — the two have worked together for years on thin-client technology — is key in that Citrix could help Microsoft make up ground on VMware, whose successful IPO on Tuesday confirmed its leadership role in the emerging virtualization market.

Submission + - OOXML won't get fast-track ISO standardization (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by realdodgeman on Saturday August 11, 2007 @04:21PM

realdodgeman writes: International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format.

Submission + - Russia never went to the northpole?

Submitted by

Maomao

on Thursday August 09, 2007 @06:51PM

Maomao writes: "We all know America was the first nation to set foot on the Moon. Some say it was with the help of Hollywood.
Now Russia seems to be following in the same footsteps, but this time beneath the north pole. Recently video images, broadcast by russian broadcasting company PTR, showed how one of the two submarines placed a russian flag at the bottom of the ocean, deep beaneath the Arctic ice. Another clip shows both submarines cruising through the dark and cold waters. This is where Hollywood comes in. According to this article in finish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet PTR used a sequence from James Camerons blockbuster movie Titanic. This is troublesome on so many levels. Even if Russia did reach the bottom their credability is now severely damaged. And maybe this will be the first case where Hollywood sues a nation for copyright violation?

The article is in Swedish but here my translation of the article.

Russian newsphotage stolen from movie Titanic

It was a grand political show as the two Mir-submarines placed the russian flag at the bottom of the ocean beneath the north pole one week ago. One part of the show was even of Hollywood class.

The russian state controlled broadcasting company PTR used a sequence from James Camerons Academy Award winning blockbuster Titanic as "photo proof" for submarines Mir-1 and Mir-2 landing on 4261 meters depth beneath the North Pole. News photage was even distributed by reliable news bereau Reuters. The sequence showed how the two submarines were lowered into the sea by the northpole and was followed by a clip from Camerons movie. A reader tipped newspaper Ilta-Sanomat about the images similarity and Ilta-Sanomat could today reveal that it was in fact a stole image sequence.

The russian broadcasting company has not answered any requests.

On the image from the film both of the deep diving submarines are visible, silly enough, since there wasn't a third deep diving submarine where the camera should have been. Apart from that the theft wasn't too bad: James Cameron used made Mir-1 and Mir-2, made in Finland by Rauma-Repola Oceanics, when he filmed the wreck of Titanic in the mid 90's.

The false propaganda images are embarassing for Russia since the media circus around the expedition was part of the russian attempt to lay hands on the part of the arctic wich is located on the russian continetal shelf. It is supposed to contain large amounts of oil and gas. Link to article in Ilsa-Sanomat (In finish) http://www.iltasanomat.fi/uutiset/ulkomaat/uutinen .asp?id=1418793
Link to article in Hufvudstadsbladet (In swedish) http://www.hbl.fi/text/utrikes/2007/8/9/d4792.php"

Submission + - Open source to define the future, says Sun's CEO (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, 2007 @05:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: "We're in the second wave of the Internet. The companies that will win will be those that define this next phase. Open source will define it," says Sun's CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, in this interview during LinuxWorld. Sun's Schwartz repeatedly chastises the old guard of software for focusing on monetization of every software user, and instead suggests that adoption of free software today will result in tomorrow's great software businesses. While Schwartz suggests that the perfect business model has yet to be discovered for open source, he concludes, "[I]f you don't have adoption, it won't matter what business model you use. Companies that sell open source are prioritizing community and adoption over instant monetization. We will win."

Submission + - IBM and Novell strengthen Linux ties

Submitted by Robert on Thursday August 09, 2007 @05:20PM

Robert writes: IBM and Novell have rekindle their long-term Linux relationships with deals to push IBM software on Novell's desktop and server operating systems among a number of announcements from both companies at Linux World. Novell may have flirted with Microsoft in recent months but its long-term commitment is to IBM, which invested $50m in Novell's as part of its $210m acquisition of SUSE Linux back in 2003.

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