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Google

Submission + - Google Seeks U.S. Ban on iPhones, iPads, Macs 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Following up on an announcement that it would rid itself of 4,000 employees world-wide and renege on a deal with the State of Illinois, Google’s Motorola Mobility unit said it has filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple, which seeks a ban on U.S. imports of devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. 'Apple’s unwillingness to work out a license leaves us little choice but to defend ourselves and our engineers' innovations,' Motorola Mobility said in an e-mailed statement. All of this doing-no-evil may have taken its toll on Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who traded in some GOOG stock for a little walking-around-money and reportedly jetted off to Fiji on their very own 767 for a little R&R with friends and family on a superyacht.
GNOME

Submission + - Why GNOME Needs To Think Big (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The GNOME project as it exists today is the result of a big dream: To create a free GUI desktop that would match Windows and the Mac. Having achieved that amibtion, though, the project has been somewhat rudderless; as open source advocate Brian Proffitt points out, 'make it better' is not a goal. He thinks GNOME needs much bigger ambitions if it wants to stay relevant. What do you think GNOME should aim for next?"
Android

Submission + - The word "ToDo" has been trademarked ! (bgr.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: An iOS app developer is threatening to sue an Android app developer over the word "ToDo"

Apparently, according to the iOS app developer, he "owns the trademark for the word “ToDo”"

As if the patent trolls haven't given us enough headaches, now we have trademark trolls
Games

Submission + - Hey PS2 Fans, PCSX2 1.0 Is Out

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After over a decade of development, version 1.0 of PCSX2, an open-source PlayStation 2 (PS2) emulator, has finally been made available for Windows and Linux. The first version (0.026) was released on March 23, 2002. That's more than 10 years ago. Version 1.0.0 (r5350) was released on August 3, 2012.
Advertising

Submission + - Australian rules Facebook pages responsible for comments (google.com.au) 1

Submitted by jibjibjib
jibjibjib writes: The Australian reports that brands in Australia could be forced to abandon their social media campaigns, after the Advertising Standards Bureau ruled that they were responsible for comments posted on their pages. According to the article, the ASB is poised to release a report attacking Carlton & United Breweries for derogatory comments posted on one of their official Facebook pages, despite CUB monitoring and removing those comments twice daily. Legal expert John Swinson commented on the decision, saying "You simply can no longer have two-way conversations with your customers."
The Internet

Submission + - US will Oppose Bid to Hand Control of Internet to United Nations (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The United States has said that it is going to oppose and reject any proposal that might seek handing over control of the internet to the United Nations at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) convened by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) from December 3 to 14, 2012. United States is going to submit first group of proposals about changes to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) treaty today, which hasn’t been revised since the 1988. The treaty is due for revision not only because it needs a modern touch but because fundamentally there have been major changes in the telecommunications world like adoption of packet switching over circuit switching, cellular roaming and broadening of the Internet. Many nations, as per leaked proposals, are of the view point that control of the internet's technical specifications should be relinquished from a select group of non-profit US companies and be given to UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This hasn’t gone down well with the United States and Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the WCIT, believes that the current multi-stakeholder structure is working well and is effectively maintaining the health of the Internet. "The United States believes that the existing multi-stakeholder institutions, incorporating industry and civil society, have functioned effectively and will continue to ensure the health and growth of the internet and all of its benefits," he said.
Android

Submission + - RIM CEO says company 'seriously' considered switch to Android (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: RIM CEO Thorsten Heins’s interview with the Telegraph on Thursday made headlines for his admission that the company can’t keep up with Apple and Samsung without outside help. But there’s another interesting nugget buried within the interview that didn’t get quite as much attention: Heins says that RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10...
Android

Submission + - Dead Trigger Goes free on iOS as well. What is to blame this time? (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Dead Trigger, first-person shooter game for mobiles developed by Madfinger Games, has gone free on iOS as well after it was made free on Android Play Store for reasons of rampant piracy on Android. Madfinger Games CEO Marek Rabas might not have the same reasons to blame when it comes to iDevices. iOS piracy rates are not high as compared to Android and when it comes to putting down piracy in numbers of iOS devices, it is just about 1 per cent of all iDevices out there. The CEO said, “the number of pirates on iOS is comparable with the amount of jailbroken devices." Rabas has spoken out through an article on GameZebo and points out to quite a few things about game developers, freemium models and piracy. Rabas says that in the past developers were more into developing games than being worried about piracy and how to defend against such a menace.
SuSE

Submission + - openSUSE 12.2 RC 2 Released (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Thinkcloud
Thinkcloud writes: Changes include the removal of legacy symlinks to removable disk devices, systemd improvements to autofs and rsync, and some fixes to Plymouth, the new splash screen in 12.2.
The Courts

Submission + - Patent And Copyright Wars Gone Wild (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "While Apple and Samsung fight over patents and prototypes, other copyright trolls are waging an X-rated battle on innocent users, as lawyers representing some adult movie companies are sending letters accusing users of illegally downloading their movies and saying that, for a price, they can make the charges go away. "Cases like this, usually involving pornographic content, are very common," Mitch Stoltz, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. At least 250,000 individuals have been named in group lawsuits over the last few years. There's a very common belief that if someone pirates your Wi-Fi connection or uses your computer without your permission, you are responsible for illegal downloads of copyrighted material. That's not true, says Stoltz; the law is quite clear. However, the lawyers who bring those cases use that misperception to convince innocent people that they had better pay up. Since $3,500 is just a fraction of the money it would take to fight a case in court, most people simply settle."
Science

Submission + - New discovery reveals Antarctica had a rainforest 52 million years ago (tech-stew.com) 1

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "Scientists drilling into the seabed off Antarctica revealed that a rainforest grew in the icy continent 52 million years ago. Scientists warn that Antarctica could be ice-free again within decades. This new discovery is published in the journal Nature.

Kevin Welsh, an Australian scientist who was with the 2010 expedition, said that analysis of sediment cores containing fossil pollen showed it was "very warm" 52 million years ago, at 20 degrees Celsius (68 F). "There were forests existing on the land, there wouldn't have been any ice, it would have been very warm."

Higher levels of carbon dioxide are thought to be the major reason for ice-free conditions during the period. The CO2 estimates were between 990 to a couple of thousand parts per million.

The current CO2 level is 395 ppm and the most extreme predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) see Antarctica being ice free by the end of the century."
Microsoft

Submission + - Analyst calls Microsoft's Surface tablet the next Zune (bgr.com)

Submitted by redkemper
redkemper writes: Just about the last thing Microsoft wants to hear right now is comparisons of any of its products to the Zune, its failed iPod killer that mercifully got the axe last year. But InformationWeek reports that Canalys analyst Tim Coulling this week dropped the Z-bomb when discussing Microsoft’s highly-anticipated Surface tablets, writing that ”the information available to date suggests the prices of both will be too high to capture significant market share, and a direct sales approach will prove inadequate” and that “we expect the Surface pads to have a similar impact on the PC industry as Zune did in portable music players.”...
Twitter

Submission + - Anonymous helps turn in hacker who targeted charity (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "A hacker who defaced and disabled the website of a New Zealand film company known for helping poor children could find himself in legal hot water in his home country of Spain after his attack spurred a Facebook/Twitter posse that included members of Anonymous, who the hacker may have been trying to impress. "Apparently, one of the (Anonymous) rules is you don't hack charity sites, you don't hack sites of people trying to help kids,” says the owner of the damaged site. “This guy was trying to impress them, to try and get into their group and boasting about what he'd done — but they turned on him, they chased him.""

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