qcomp - Slashdot User

Submission + - Tracking the status of Office Open XML (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

hweimer

on Sunday September 02, 2007 @12:36PM

hweimer writes: "The ISO voting deadline on OOXML is drawing near, yet there are still many countries that haven't published their results so far. Finally, someone has started to put all the pieces together and maintains a scoreboard of all OOXML votes."

Submission + - Eolas vs. Microsoft Lawsuit Settled and Sealed

Submitted by

theodp

on Friday August 31, 2007 @03:07AM

theodp writes: "The Seattle P-I's Todd Bishop reports that Microsoft has settled its 8-year-old web browser plug-in patent dispute with Eolas. The spat begat the click-to-activate Web after Microsoft was slapped with a $500+ million patent infringement judgement. Neither Eolas nor Microsoft will be disclosing terms of the deal, although Eolas told investors to expect a dividend (PDF). Microsoft didn't say whether or how the settlement would affect its approach to the underlying technology in IE or other programs. Just last month, the USPTO issued a non-final rejection of the patent's claims, citing the work of Pei-Yuan Wei as prior art."

Submission + - States seek more oversight of Microsoft

Submitted by taoman1 on Thursday August 30, 2007 @10:31PM

taoman1 writes: A group of states led by California said in a court filing Thursday that ending oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of Windows Vista.

Submission + - Hungary Reconsiders OOXML Vote

Submitted by

Rob Isn't Weird

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @08:35PM

Rob Isn't Weird writes: "Hot on the heels of Sweden's change of heart, Hungary is reconsidering its OOXML vote. Because of certain irregularities, namely invitations that were not sent to the parties on time and a last-minute rules change to allow OOXML through with only 50% approval instead of the usual 66% approval. They intend to hold a new vote on August 31st, although there is no word on what they intend to do about the sudden influx of Microsoft partners who have paid the 200 Euro membership fee just to be able to vote on this particular issue."

Submission + - Lobbying Could Cause Legal Trouble for Microsoft (robweir.com) 2

Submitted by

Rob Isn't Weird

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @05:39PM

Rob Isn't Weird writes: "After the smoking gun memo exposing how Microsoft tried to buy Sweden's vote on OOXML and Sweden's annulment of that vote due to the irregularities, IBM's Rob Weir points out that the fiasco could cause anti-trust worries for Microsoft. He quotes ALLIED TUBE & CONDUIT CORP. v. INDIAN HEAD, INC., 486 U.S. 492 (1988), which says "What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decision makers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition.""

Submission + - Retaining copyright on software written for hire? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10, 2007 @10:09AM

An anonymous reader writes: Has anyone besides RMS had any success with this? I'm a student who's read most of the books beforehand and is seriously considering dropping out and starting my own business, writing stuff in Java and C#. I've read RMS's biography, "Free as in Freedom", and a lot of his other stuff, and the idea of writing software under the GPL or so, retaining its copyright, instead of assigning it automatically to the person hiring me, a la RMS, sounds quite good.

Has anyone else tried it? Has anyone got any war stories, horror stories, etc, to tell about it? If so, what would you advise against, what would you advise to be done?

Submission + - Schneier: Police data-mining done right (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by

enharmonix

on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:56AM

enharmonix writes: "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, "started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.""

Submission + - How to moderate an underlying story

Submitted by

cprael

on Sunday May 27, 2007 @01:40PM

cprael writes: "So, it's rather obvious how to moderate comments that are good or bad, crap or interesting. But how does one do same to the underlying article? I'm not suggesting on a regular basis, but every once in a while, some of the top-level story stuff that gets posted just cries out to be moderated. Man bites dog journalism, slow news day... it's still crap. And deserves to mod'd accordingly."

Submission + - Google Maps for the Brain

Submitted by

azonips

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @07:06PM

azonips writes: "From EurekAlert: Explore your brain, literally, at the largest online atlast of the brain! BrainMaps.org features the highest resolution whole-brain atlases ever constructed, with over 50 terabytes of brain image data directly accessible online. Users can explore the brains of humans and a variety of other species at an unprecedented level of detail, from a broad view of the brain to the fine details of nerves and connections. The website also includes a suite of free, downloadable tools for navigating and analyzing brain data. The high-resolution maps will enable researchers to use "virtual microscopy" to compare healthy brains with others, looking at structure, gene expression and the distribution of different proteins. They will enable better understanding of the organization of normal brains, and could help researchers in identifying fine morphological and chemical abnormalities underlying Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases."

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