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Patents

Microsoft Patents the Censoring of Speech 192

Posted by Soulskill from the %$!#-!%-!%!$-##%-$@#! dept.
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Microsoft a patent for the Automatic Censorship of Audio Data for Broadcast, an invention that addresses 'producing censored speech that has been altered so that undesired words or phrases are either unintelligible or inaudible.' The patent describes methods for muting offensive words and replacing them with less offensive versions, and 'a third alternative provides for overwriting the undesired word with a masking sound, i.e., "bleeping" the undesired word with a tone.' After all, there's nothing worse than being subjected to offensive speech when you're shooting someone in the head."
Networking

Submission + - "Mafiaboy" releases autobiography

Submitted by vieux schnock
vieux schnock writes: Seems that "Mafiaboy", the young Canadian that paralysed multiples sites in 2000, including CNN, has been getting some press lately. Security Portal has a story that he is releasing his autobiography The site has these Wise Words though: "Commercialdom peeks through, though, as apparently the book was "co-written" by Craig Silverman, an established journalist rom [sic] Montreal."
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Starcraft 2 To Be a Trilogy 253

Posted by Soulskill from the three-is-better-than-one dept.
The Starcraft 2 gameplay panel was an eventful one at Blizzcon today. The developers faced an obstacle when designing the game; the plans they had were just too massive to implement in a single game on anything approaching a reasonable timeline. Their solution was to divide the game up into three separate, stand-alone titles: Terran: Wings of Libery, Zerg: Heart of the Swarm, and Protoss: Legacy of the Void. Read on for further details.
Bug

e1000e Bug Squashed — Linux Kernel Patch Released 111

Posted by Soulskill from the good-news-everyone dept.
ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"
Education

Submission + - Boy finds 1981 Smithsonian error

Submitted by
vieux schnock
vieux schnock writes: "Yahoo News has an interesting story about a fifth grader who found an error in the museum's Tower of Time where the Precambrian was mistakenly labeled as an era. He received a letter of commendation for his discovery. The Smithsonian's solution to the problem? '(S)imply painting over the word "era"'.

P.S. No lame jokes about being less smart than a fifth grader. Yahoo News already did it. ;-)"
The Internet

Submission + - Hacking Scam Called "Largest in Canadian Histo (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by vieux schnock
vieux schnock writes: It's strange that no one noticed the recent crackdown of computer hackers in Quebec.

From the article: "Police raided several homes across Quebec on Wednesday and arrested 16 people in their investigation, which they say uncovered the largest hacking scam in Canadian history. (...) The hackers collaborated online to attack and take control of as many as one million computers around the world that were not equipped with anti-virus software or firewalls (...)"

Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows 407

Posted by CmdrTaco from the last-years-model-sucks dept.
mjasay writes "I stumbled across this fascinating Microsoft tutorial entitled "How to Justify a Desktop Upgrade." It's an attempt to coach IT professionals on how to sell Windows desktop upgrades internally. Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent, requiring detailed instructions on how to connive and cajole into an upgrade from XP. The most intriguing thing about the tutorial is its implicit rejection of Microsoft's older technology. Just a few years ago Microsoft was pitching the world on how secure and cool XP was. Now it's telling us largely the opposite, implying that XP is a security threat, costs too much to run, and so on. With Microsoft marketing against itself, perhaps the Mac and Linux camps can simply wait for Microsoft to self-destruct?"
Education

Submission + - Russian schools abandon Windows?

Submitted by
atamyrat
atamyrat writes: "http://www.rlhc.net/blog/?p=272

From the article

In a strange twist of events which include former Russian President and Nobel Prize winner, Mikhail Gorbachev, calling Bill Gates and current Russian President Vladimir Putin making comments on software piracy, Russian school may be moving to Linux very soon. It almost sounds like a cold war spy novel. Anyways, the Russian school system is looking to move to ASPLinux, a localized Linux disto, to combat software piracy.
http://eng.cnews.ru/news/top/indexEn.shtml?2007/02 /05/234178

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37 460"

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