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Amazon One-Click Patent to be Re-Examined 132

Posted by Zonk from the more-than-one-click dept.
timrichardson writes "A New Zealand actor, frustrated by a poor shopping experience, has successfully requested that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review the correctness of Amazon's infamous One-Click patent. An examiner for the agency ruled that the re-examination requested by Peter Calveley had raised a 'substantial new question of patentability' affecting Amazon's patent, according to a document outlining the agency's decision."

Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux? 1483

Posted by Zonk from the do-or-do-not-there-is-no-try dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Mark Golden, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, tried to switch from Windows to Linux, and found it too complex for his liking. He writes: 'For me, though, using the Linux systems didn't make sense. I often send documents and spreadsheets between my home PC and the one at work, which uses Microsoft Office. And the files are sometimes complex. Meanwhile, for both personal and professional computer use, I want access to all multimedia functions. While solutions may exist to almost every problem I encountered, I was willing to invest only a limited amount of time as a system administrator. Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.'"

Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the if-you-can't-beat-em-get-a-bigger-stick dept.
HangingChad writes "ComputerWorld is running an article about Microsoft's latest type of sales force scare tactic. Apparently Microsoft is using the new title of 'engagement manager' to attempt sales via intimidation. From the article: 'Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts."'"

Busting People for Pointing Out Security Flaws 350

Posted by Hemos
gsch writes "'In 2004, Bret McDanel was convicted of violating section 1030 when he e-mailed truthful information about a security problem to the customers of his former employer. The prosecution argued that McDanel had accessed the company e-mail server by sending the messages, and that the access was unauthorized within the meaning of the law because the company didn't want this information distributed. They even claimed the integrity of the system was impaired because a lot more people (customers) now knew that the system was insecure. Notwithstanding the First Amendment's free speech guarantees, the trial judge convicted and sentenced McDanel to 16 months in prison. I represented him on appeal, and argued that reporting on security flaws doesn't impair the integrity of computer systems. In an extremely unusual turn of events, the prosecution did not defend its actions, but voluntarily moved to vacate the conviction.'"

Google Wins Rights to Aussie Algorithm 211

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the new-tool-for-the-belt dept.
rcbutcher writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Google has just acquired the rights to a brand new text search algorithm invented by a University of NSW student. From the article: "Orion works as an add-on to existing search engines to improve the relevance of search and won praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates last year. [...] Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant."

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