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Sun Microsystems

Torvalds vs Schwartz GPL Wars 335

Posted by CmdrTaco from the which-one-is-han-solo dept.
javipas writes "The controversial message published by Linus Torvalds (mirrored) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List was from the beginning to the end an open attack to Sun and its Open Source strategy. Linus criticized Sun's real position on GPL, and claimed that Linux could be dangerous to Sun. Upon his words, "they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing." Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way. Sun's CEO notes that "Companies compete, communities simply fracture", and tries to explain why using GPL licenses is taking so long."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft May Be Investigated By Attorneys General (cnn.com)

Submitted by
Null Nihils
Null Nihils writes: "Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has announced that a group of state attorneys general will decide later this week whether to pursue legal action against Microsoft over allegations of anticompetitive conduct that were brought on by Google.

From the article: "Google has complained that Microsoft's new operating system puts it, and other rivals, at a disadvantage. Google said that Vista makes it harder for consumers to use non-Microsoft versions of a desktop search function, which enables users to search the contents of their hard drives.

A group of state attorneys general including Connecticut and California is now determining how to react to the claims made by Google.""
Music

Submission + - Universal exec says 'music artists need us!' (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Jared
Jared writes: Max Hole, President, Asia Pacific Region and Executive Vice-President, Marketing and A&R for Universal Music Group International recently gave his insight as to what he sees for the future of record companies. Says that record companies should get a cut of concerts, merchandising, sponsorship, song-writing, etc to make up for declining revenue in other areas, and that artists need them so they can take care of the business and marketing side so they can focus on their music.
Programming

Submission + - No iPhone SDK Means No iPhone Killer Apps (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by iPhoneLover/Hater
iPhoneLover/Hater writes: Gizmodo is running an article analyzing the potential failure of the iPhone as a truly revolutionary platform. The reason: no SDK to harness the true power of Mac OS X and the frameworks contained in Apple's smart cell. From the article: "According to Apple, "no software developer kit is required for the iPhone." However, the truth is that the lack of an SDK means that there won't be a killer application for the iPhone. It also means the iPhone's potential as an amazing computing and communication platform will never be realized. And because of this and no matter how Apple tries to sell it, the iPhone won't make a revolution happen."
Bug

Apple Safari On Windows Broken On First Day 595

Posted by kdawson from the bigger-they-come dept.
An anonymous reader writes "David Maynor, infamous for the Apple Wi-Fi hack, has discovered bugs in the Windows version of Safari mere hours after it was released. He notes in the blog that his company does not report vulnerabilities to Apple. His claimed catch for 'an afternoon of idle futzing': 4 DoS bugs and 2 remote execution vulnerabilities." Separately, within 2 hours Thor Larholm found a URL protocol handler command injection vulnerability that allows remote command execution.
Programming

Submission + - C vs. C++/OOP Paradigm

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I just started work for a small start-up company that does R&D software for media. I quickly discovered that my boss is very resistant to using C++ and object-oriented programming; he insists that we standardize on using C. This goes against the last eight years of my education in being trained to use OOP and also arises concerns for the company in creating and maintaining reusable and scalable software. My boss states that he had bad experiences at previous companies that used C++ and OOP that resulted in less readable code. I suspect that he has little knowledge of the OOP paradigm and its advantages in writing good software. I'm wondering if the Slashdot community can provide some suggestions on how to approach a boss with strong convictions on this issue. Why should we be using C++ vs. C? What are the benefits of OOP? Why is it important for a start-up company to address these issues early on in order to develop good coding practices?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft playing dirty in Virtualization (vmware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In this whitepaer from VMWare:
( http://www.vmware.com/solutions/whitepapers/msoft_ licensing_wp.html )
They detail the various things Microsoft is doing to ensure they own the virtualization market. This sounds like the usual questionable business tactics that has put Microsoft in trouble with the various competition watchdogs around the world. Is the open source virtualization world concerned about these moves by Microsoft? Has anyone started any legal actions against these activities?
Republicans

Submission + - Citizen detainees still have habeas rights (yahoo.com)

Submitted by rocketgoldstar1962
rocketgoldstar1962 writes: The 4th Circuit ruled today that the Military Commissions Act cannot strip citizens classed as enemy combatants of their habeas corpus rights. Perhaps the most fundamental principle in western jurisprudence, habeas corpus allows a detained person to challenge their detention in court.
Space

Submission + - Planetary Society Debunks "Puddles" on Mar

Submitted by
Rei
Rei writes: "Yesterday, Slashdot posted about what appeared to be puddles of water sitting on Mars. Unfortunately, according to the Planetary Society's blog, the authors of the paper didn't even bother to check the context in which the "water" photos were taken. The article notes that one shouldn't trust papers that haven't yet gone through peer review. "The white square shows you where the image comes from. It's in the middle of Opportunity's Burns Cliff panorama, on some of the steepest slopes that Opportunity saw before arriving at Victoria crater! Those can't be puddles — unless the amazing "liquid" that puddles here on Mars in a freezing near-vacuum also has antigravity properties.""
Music

Submission + - RIAA uses local cops in Oregon fleamarket raid

Submitted by
newtley
newtley writes: "Fake cops employed by the RIAA started acting like real police officers quite a while ago, one of the earliest examples coming in Los Angeles in 2004. From a distance, the bust, "looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black 'raid' vests the unit members wore," said the LA Weekly. That their yellow stenciled lettering read 'RIAA' instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency, "was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo." But it's also SOP for the RIAA to tout genuine officers paid for entirely from citizen taxes as copyright cops. Police were used in an RIAA-inspired raid at two flea markets in Beaverton, Oregon. "Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000," says The Oregonian. But this is merely the tiny tip of an iceberg of absolutely staggering dimensions, an example of the extent coming in a GrayZone report slugged RIAA Anti-Piracy Seizure Information."
United States

Classified US Intel Budget Revealed Via Powerpoint 364

Posted by CmdrTaco from the woops-they-did-it-again dept.
Atario writes "In a holdover from the Cold War when the number really did matter to national security, the size of the US national intelligence budget remains one of the government's most closely guarded secrets. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the highest intelligence agency in the country that oversees all federal intelligence agencies, appears to have inadvertently released the keys to that number in an unclassified PowerPoint presentation now posted on the website of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By reverse engineering the numbers in an underlying data element embedded in the presentation, it seems that the total budget of the 16 US intelligence agencies in fiscal year 2005 was $60 billion, almost 25% higher than previously believed."
Censorship

Submission + - Pirates protected in Sweden (aftonbladet.se)

Submitted by mno
mno writes: The Swedish Chambers Court (Kammarrätten) has ordered Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish version of MPA, to stop collecting IP-address of file sharers. Basically, the Swedish privacy law states that companies cannot collect personal information without your consent or proof of business relation. Since an IP-address can be used to uniquely identify a person, it is now considered as personal information. This is the second time that Antipiratbyrån lost this case. Most likely they will appeal to the highest instance, but it's uncertain if that appeal will be granted. The implications of this ruling is that the hunt for Swedish file sharers is effectively stopped. Since the Swedish privacy law is based on EU law, the whole of Europe was just granted a shimmer of hope for similar rulings. The article is in Swedish.
Classic Games (Games)

Soviet Video Games from the 70s 66

Posted by Zonk from the really-really-old-skool dept.
vigmeister writes "A group of Russian kids have uncovered and rebuilt some arcade games from the Soviet era. These games apparently offered free play when someone played well, but no list of hi-scores. Roughly 32 of them have been found and although they are based on other arcade games, I hope these games were unique enough to offer playability for the present day arcade game lovers. 'Based largely (and crudely) on early Japanese designs, the games were distributed -- in the words of one military manual -- for the purposes of "entertainment and active leisure, as well as the development of visual-estimation abilities." Production of the games ceased with the collapse of communism, and as Nintendo consoles and PCs flooded the former Soviet states, the old arcade games were either destroyed or disappeared into warehouses and basements. It was mostly out of nostalgia that four friends at Moscow State Technical University began scouring the country to rescue these old games. '"
Power

Submission + - MIT powers lightbulb wirelessly

Submitted by kcurtis
kcurtis writes: According to the Boston Globe, MIT Researchers lit a light bulb remotely. The successful experiment to lit a 60-watt light bulb from a power source two meters away, with no physical connection between the power source and the light bulb. Details about WiTricity, or wireless electricity, are scheduled to be reported today in Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said.

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