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Microsoft

Microsoft Wanted To Drop Mac Office To Hurt Apple 479

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the airing-the-dirty-laundry dept.
Overly Critical Guy writes to mention that more documents in the Iowa antitrust case have come out. This time, it's revealed that Microsoft considered dumping the Mac Office Suite entirely in a move to harm Apple. "The email complains at poor sales of Office, which it attributes to a lack of focus on making such sales among reps at that time. It describes dumping development of the product as: 'The strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately.' The document also confirms that Microsoft at the time saw Office for the Mac as a chance to test new features in the product before they appeared in Windows, 'because it is so much less critical to our business than Windows.'"
Power

Scotland Building Wave Power Farms 211

Posted by Zonk from the rats-water-and-wind-now-we-need-to-harness-dorks dept.
eldavojohn writes "Scottish engineers are taking advantage of the huge ocean coast that Scotland enjoys by building a 'wave farm' to harvest electricity from the ocean's powerful waves. These big red tubes have been named the Pelamis System after a sea snake. Max Carcas, the business developer for the firm, says it is 'a bit like a ship at anchor or a flag on a flagpole, it self orientates into the waves ... Waves then travel down the length of the machine and in doing so each of the sections, each of these train carriages, moves up and down and side to side.' These snake-like movements push hydraulic fluid through generators to produce electricity."
Music

Music Execs Say Apple's DRM Hurting Industry 405

Posted by Zonk from the reference-the-pot-and-the-kettle's-similar-color-here dept.
EMB Numbers writes "C-Net says last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue. Some executives at this week's Digital Music Forum East conference lashed out at Jobs, blaming Apple and its CEO for their troubles. The impression at the conference was that Jobs' call three weeks ago for DRM-free music was anything but sincere. As the article puts it, 'Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM ... and "it's causing everybody else who is participating in the marketplace — the other service providers, the labels, the users — a lot of pain. If they could simply open it up, everybody would love them.""
Security

Hacker May Be Exposing eBay Back Door 73

Posted by Zonk from the maybe-buy-a-hackerproof-door dept.
pacopico writes "A hacker specializing in eBay cracks has once again managed to masquerade as a company official on the site's message boards, according to The Register. A company spokesman denies that 'Vladuz's' repeated assaults on eBay point to a larger problem with the site's security. Of course, eBay two days ago claimed to have found a way to block Vladuz altogether, only to see him pop up again. The hacker himself made comments indicating that the company's email servers are connected somehow to the financial information eBay hosts."
Windows

Submission + - Vista's UAC Warnings Can't Be Trusted, Symantec ..

Submitted by
duckzin
duckzin writes: "Well the article just proves what we all know, Vistas changes on security don't worth a penny and Microsoft not looking at this breach as a problem just proves another thing, they must like having their OS hacked...

Well, they might, they make pretty good money when they launch a service pack, we should start a pool to see how long will vista last without a S.P., I would say 6 months...

Anyone who have ever used a Linux desktop and now Vista can see that MS didn't have any original ideas, except for that search engine, and worst, using the google gadget idea, was just... uhhh...

Unix
Staroffice
Netscape


and now Google, but I don't think google will fail to compete with MS, they are even putting their own office on the market for 50$ per computer...

Well I will let you guys take your own conclusions about the MS.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129268/article.h tml"
Republicans

Submission + - Conservapedia replaces Wikipedia with anti-science

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Some conservatives have launched an alternative to Wikipedia due to bias: http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_W ikipedia

The new resource is still small (only about 3200 articles, many weak and with gaps in coverage such as having an entry for mathematical "crisp sets" but not for "sets"), and understandably endorses religious and conservative points of view. But the encyclopedia also undercuts the search for knowledge with statements such as "But historical facts, or their absence, are irrelevant since we all know He existed. Historical sources and scientific facts are unnecessary," in the entry for Jesus (http://www.conservapedia.com/Christ), and bizarre anti-science entries (http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/02/conserva pedia_and_math_1.php).
Displays

Submission + - HDCP prevents PC from playing 1080p on TV

Submitted by
motherball
motherball writes: "Will hardware manufacturers and the movie industry stop at nothing to fight the consumer? An article in EDN mentions that newer TVs deliberately do not include the common HDMI connector but instead have the HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content-protection) connector which is intended to make it impossible to hook up your PC to your TV and render 1080p! Who stands to gain from this? Doesn't the consumer (I hate that word) have any rights?"
Security

Submission + - Cybercrime on the rise in Japan

Submitted by
dido
dido writes: "The Mainichi Daily News reports that the incidence of cybercrime in Japan has increased 40% in 2006 from the previous year, including incidences of online fraud, phishing, and Internet-assisted child prostitution. From the article: 'Police departments across the country cracked down on a record 4425 cybercrimes in 2006. A total of 1597 cases involved online fraud, accounting for 36.1% of the total and was up 13.4% from the previous year. In 703 cases, the suspects illegally accessed websites using other people's ID and passwords, up a hefty 153.8 percent from 2005.'"
The Internet

Submission + - Amazon launches answers service (beta)

Submitted by
Fennec
Fennec writes: "Amazon.com has launched a beta of a new service called Askville, yet another online answers service, flavored with "Experience Points, Levels, and Quest Coins." These coins will supposedly become useful some day on another Amazon service that's not actually open yet, Questville. If this virtual currency becomes useful, could Askville fill a place between strictly volunteer systems and pay-for-answer services like the now-defunct Google Answers? Or is it destined to fail in the already-saturated online Q&A market?"
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple: the best and worst

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: silicon.com is running a two-part column on the 10 best and 10 worst things about Cupertino — and it would seem Steve Jobs' latest magic trick is the ability to create products that are simultaneously Mitchell and Webb... Take the iPod — it's apparently blessed with "usability and simplicity". Yet has also "long been dogged by accusations of dodgy battery life, defective mechanics, easily scratched or cracked screens and a general lack of longevity"... Or the iPhone — a flagrant example of 'style over substance', says writer Seb Janacek, before really sticking the boot in: "A clutch of mobile devices have been offering the same services for the last year or so at a fraction of the price. And it doesn't arrive for another six months or so. And when it does there will be just one operator to choose from. The latest example of Steve Jobs snake oil?"... But wait! "The gloriously sexy iPhone was worth the wait"... gushes the same author... "Apple spent two and a half years developing a device that makes the usual phone functions, MP3 playing and internet browsing work as a whole"... Confused? It seems Steve Jobs is not the only one guilty of a 'reality distortion field'...
Music

Submission + - Puretracks music store drops DRM

Submitted by
khendron
khendron writes: "The Canadian online music store Puretracks (a store I have generally avoided because of their Microsoft specific solutions) has announced that it will immediately start selling part of its catalog as DRM-free mp3 files. The site's unprotected catalog, which includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, will initially feature only 50,000 of its 1.3 million tracks, but will grow weekly.

More also from the Globe and Mail. If this endeavour is successful, maybe we will see the larger music labels jumping on board."
Communications

Submission + - AT&T's Fiber "Cuts" Off Central Illino

Submitted by mozzwald
mozzwald writes: Virtually all phone services (cellular and land-line) were disrupted Tuesday in Central Illinois because of a cut fiber line near Joliet Illinois. "Officials also said a separate piece of equipment that serves as backup near Decatur also went down, causing disruption to 309, 815, and 217 area codes." This caused major problems for businesses that use credit and debit card machines. It even caused sporadic problems with 911 services.
iMac

Submission + - Tons of Mac hardware updates in Q2? iMac Black?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "...tipsters well placed at Apple informed MacScoop that the company is preparing to make the fight harder for its competitors of the Windows world with several Mac hardware releases scheduled for calendar Q2." [...] "a black version of the iMac could make its way with the next update of the company's all-in-one consumer desktop Macs." Full article here. Just a rumor though.
The Media

Submission + - Games as scapegoat

Submitted by Megnatron
Megnatron writes: Penny Arcade has a letter from the stepmother of one of the kids who was recently charged with killing a homeless guy, defending the parents, and, in a refreshing twist, the games industry.
Biotech

Brain Scanner Can Read People's Intentions 338

Posted by CowboyNeal from the you-might-be-up-to-something dept.
Vainglorious Coward writes "Reality continues to catch up with Nineteen Eighty-Four with the announcement of the development of a brain scanner that can read a person's intentions. 'It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,' said the leader of the project, Professor John-Dylan Haynes . Demonstrating his own mastery of doublethink, Haynes continued 'We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence.'"

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