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Canada

Wikileaks Says Public Forced Canadian DMCA Delay 177

Posted by timothy from the political-economy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that a new WikiLeaks cable confirms that the Canadian Conservative government delayed introducing a Canadian DMCA in early 2008 due to public opposition. The US cable notes confirmation came directly from then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who told US Ambassador David Wilkins that cabinet colleagues and Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral implications of copyright reform."

Comment Re:Crowd pleasing article (Score 5, Informative) 152

by freakingme (#35823018) Attached to: Groklaw: Microsoft Cloud Services Aren't FISMA Certified

Groklaw is actually wrong on the basic fact of certification. Google Apps for Government is not FISMA certified and google itself has stated it hopes to get the certification "updated soon"

Groklaw is right on this. Google Apps has been FISMA certified, and as such Google Apps for governments is too since it's the same platform. What they want to have updated is the explicit mention of 'google apps for govs' which is currently not in the certs.
Medicine

Bringing Open Source To Biomedicine 60

Posted by Soulskill from the given-enough-eyeballs,-all-diseases-are-shallow dept.
waderoush writes "'Facebook and Twitter may have proven that humans have a deep-seated desire for sharing, [but] this impulse is still widely suppressed in biomedicine,' biotech reporter Luke Timmerman observes in this column on Sage Bionetworks founder Stephen Friend. Friend is working to convince drugmakers and academic researchers to pool their experimental genomic data in a shared database called the Sage Commons. The database could be used to track adverse drug events, or to 'visually display network models of disease that connect the dots between genes, proteins, and clinical manifestations of disease in ways that [scientific] journals are not equipped to handle,' Timmerman says. Researchers from Stanford, Columbia, UCSF, and UCSD are already contributing to the Sage Commons, and Friend is now calling for a community effort by drugmakers, academic scientists, doctors, regulators, insurers, and patients to 'grab this platform and run with it on their own."
Businesses

Apple's Secret Weapon To Win the Tablet Wars 716

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-steve-jobs-is-tired dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "International Business Times reports that when manufacturers trotted out their Android tablet prototypes during the CES show two months ago, pundits were happy to toll the death knell for the Apple's iPad, but now manufacturers are discovering that simply making a good tablet does not guarantee that it will sell — much to the chagrin of Motorola and its Xoom product. Now it is plain for all to see that Apple's secret weapon is their network of dedicated Apple stores worldwide where dedicated sales people are not only able to better explain its tablet to consumers but Apple also captures more margin than competitors who have to share margin with retail partners. Apparently, we are not going to see a repeat of the Android ambush of the smartphone market where the combined, price, savvy marketing, and modulated supply releases of the iPhone created so much aspirational demand in the market that buyers simply surged at the chance to buy what was perceived to be an equivalent product at lower prices. 'Motorola's Xoom is only the first to face these problems,' writes AA Defensor. 'Soon RIM's Playbook, and HP's TouchPad will hit the shelves and unless they can do something drastic over the short term, it might remain to be an iPad market. But not because they did not build a good product.'"
Space

Amateurs Spy On US Spy Plane 172

Posted by timothy from the doesn't-actually-exist dept.
arshadk writes with this excerpt from Wired's Danger Room: "The X-37B has generated intense interest, long before it ever left the ground. Boeing originally developed the 29-foot unmanned craft — a kind of miniature Space Shuttle — for NASA. Then, the military took over in 2004, and the space plane went black. Its payloads were classified, its missions hush-hush. ... You can even see the space plane for yourself: The X-37B is traveling in a slightly elliptical orbit more than 200 miles up, swooping from 43 degrees north latitude to 43 degrees south."
Businesses

Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance 732

Posted by samzenpus from the do-no-evil dept.
theodp writes "If Vivek Wadhwa remade Pinocchio, instead of The Coachman luring naughty boys to Pleasure Island to engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into donkeys, you might find Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein luring bright engineering grads to Wall Street to engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into, well, asses. While the practice of poaching engineering talent slowed after the economy tanked in 2008, Wadhwa is dismayed to report that thanks to hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts, investment banks have recovered and gone back to their old, greedy ways, snagging engineering grads who might otherwise solve the world's problems, making them financial offers they can't refuse, and morphing them into quants, investment bankers and management consultants. 'Not only are the investment banks siphoning off hundreds of billions of dollars from our economy with financial gimmicks like CDOs,' writes Wadhwa, 'they are using our best engineering graduates [25% of MIT grads in '06] to help them do it. This is the talent that our country has invested so much resource in producing.' He concludes: 'Let's save the world by keeping our engineers out of finance. We need them to, instead, develop new types of medical devices, renewable energy sources, and ways for sustaining the environment and purifying water, and to start companies that help America keep its innovative edge.' Amen, but how 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the Engineering farm after they've seen Wall Street?"
Apple

Submission + - It's Steve Jobs Turn (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twelve years ago Bill Gates had to deal with lawyers questioning him in regards to the Microsoft antitrust case. Now it might be that other tech mogul's turn. Steve Jobs has been ordered to answer questions regarding Apple's iTunes music monopoly.

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