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Patents

Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents 357

Posted by timothy from the no-problems-there-nothing-to-worry-about dept.
theodp writes "Embrace. Extend. Patent. On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted US Patent No. 7,571,169 for its 'invention' of the Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML. Presumably developers are protected by Microsoft's 'covenant not to sue,' so the biggest question raised by this patent is: How in the world was it granted in light of the 40-year history of document markup languages? Next thing you know, the USPTO will give Microsoft a patent for Providing Emergency Data in XML format. Oops, too late."
Patents

Company Awarded "The Patent For Podcasting" 202

Posted by samzenpus from the patent-for-obtaining-patents dept.
Chris Albrecht writes "VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it called the 'patent for podcasting.' According to the press announcement, patent number 7,568,213, titled 'Method for Providing Episodic Media,' covers: '...the fundamental mechanisms of podcasting, including providing consumer subscription to a show, automatically downloading media to a computer, prioritizing downloads, providing users with status indication, deleting episodes, and synchronizing episodes to a portable media device.'"
Politics

New York Wants To Tax Internet Downloads 485

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bits-for-bucks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NY is considering taxing 'video and music' downloads to offset a burgeoning budget deficit." How long before we all have meters on our routers? This version is just a 4% tax on movies and songs downloaded from services like iTunes, but I'm sure if they could figure out a bit tax, they would.
Nintendo

Nintendo Files Patent For Game That Plays Itself 152

Posted by Soulskill from the say-what-now dept.
Kotaku points out a recent patent filed by Nintendo which automates gameplay unless the user specifically chooses to play a particular part of the game. Quoting: "The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today, looks to solve the issue of casual gamers losing interest in a game before they complete it, while still maintaining the interest of hardcore gamers. The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating."
Data Storage

Why Mirroring Is Not a Backup Solution 711

Posted by kdawson from the pointed-lesson dept.
Craig writes "Journalspace.com has fallen and can't get up. The post on their site describes how their entire database was overwritten through either some inconceivable OS or application bug, or more likely a malicious act. Regardless of how the data was lost, their undoing appears to have been that they treated drive mirroring as a backup and have now paid the ultimate price for not having point-in-time backups of the data that was their business." The site had been in business since 2002 and had an Alexa page rank of 106,881. Quantcast said they had 14,000 monthly visitors recently. No word on how many thousands of bloggers' entire output has evaporated.
Patents

Troll Patents Lists In Databases, Sues Everyone 305

Posted by kdawson from the you-wish dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Florida patent troll called Channel Intelligence is suing everyone from Lemonade to Remember the Milk for infringing on patent 6,917,941, which covers storing a wishlist in a database. Amazon and eBay are absent from the list of targets, even though they very likely store users' wishlists in a database. With any luck, perhaps one of the defendants will get to use that precedent PJ found the other day from In re Lintner, which said, '[c]laims which are broad enough to read on obvious subject matter are unpatentable even though they also read on non-obvious subject matter.'"
Data Storage

A Yottabyte of Storage Per Year by 2013 246

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-bits-please dept.
Lucas123 writes "David Roberson, general manager of Hewlett-Packard's StorageWorks division, predicts that by 2013 the storage industry will be shipping a yottabyte (a billion gigabytes) of storage capacity annually. Roberson made the comment in conjunction with HP introducing a new rack system that clusters together four blade servers and three storage arrays with 820TB of capacity. Many vendors are moving toward this kind of platform, including IBM, with its recent acquisition of Israeli startup XIV, according to Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Peters."
Software

Microsoft Quietly Offering Ad-Funded Version of Works 122

Posted by timothy from the nielsen-ratings-are-next dept.
mikesd81 writes "News.com reports Microsoft has finally started offering an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in some countries. Users who run the software see a small ad as they are writing their document or editing their spreadsheet. Although the program has the ability to update its set of ads online, today it runs mostly ads for Microsoft and a few partners, all of which ship with the product itself. Microsoft remains cagey on the details of where you can find Works SE. The company has been testing Works SE in 5 countries: The United States, France, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdom. It is available only through select computer makers and Microsoft won't say which computer makers those are. However, it seems Sony is offering it in the US."
The Almighty Buck

Toshiba To Halt HD-DVD Production 494

Posted by Soulskill from the one-format-to-rule-them-all dept.
Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose "hundreds of millions of dollars" as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba's plans to withdraw from fight.
Perl

perl6 and Parrot 0.5.2 Released 229

Posted by Zonk from the for-camels-with-time-on-their-hands dept.
mAriuZ writes "Bob Rogers just released Parrot 0.5.2. This monthly release includes a couple of interesting new features. First, we've bundled Patrick Michaud's Rakudo (thats the implementation of Perl 6 on Parrot) such that you can type make perl6 on Unixy platforms and make perl6.exe on Windows and get a working standalone Perl 6 binary. This is experimental and we hope to iron out some installation and deployment issues by next months release, but it was important to demonstrate our progress. The second new feature is a toolkit for starting your own compiler. Max Mohun built a prototype several months ago, and we've added a stripped-down version for now that builds the skeleton of a compiler for you using the Parrot Compiler Tools. I mentioned the LOLCODE compiler in What the Perl 6 and Parrot Hackers Did on Their Christmas Vacation; this is how Simon and Company were able to get LOLCODE up and running so quickly."

Comment My idea on the matter (Score 1) 709

by Anonycat (#21884460) Attached to: Copyright Cutback Proposed As RIAA Solution
Each copyright will be initially assigned to an individual with a role in the creation of the work. Upon being granted, this copyright lasts for the life of the assigned individual, and no longer.

Distribution rights can be licensed from the individual to any entity, corporate or otherwise, but (exclusivity aside) no such right may be contractually removed from the holder except via a full transfer of copyright (so "You allow us to package and sell the work" is fine, but "You grant us distribution rights and agree to halt distribution of your own" will have no legal force). This transfer is permitted, but once a copyright has been transferred, its duration then drops to 5 years from date of first issuance.

Anything else that needs covering/fixing in this plan?
Encryption

Loophole in Windows Random Number Generator 305

Posted by CmdrTaco from the heads-i-win-tails-you-lose dept.
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "A security loophole in the pseudo-random number generator used by Windows was recently detailed in a paper presented by researchers at the University of Haifa. The team found a way to decipher how the number generator works, and thus compute previous and future encryption keys used by the computer, and eavesdrop on private communication. Their conclusion is that Microsoft needs to improve the way it encodes information. They recommend that Microsoft publish the code of their random number generators as well as of other elements of the Windows security system to enable computer security experts outside Microsoft to evaluate their effectiveness. Although they only checked Windows 2000, they assume that XP and Vista use similar random number generators and may also be vulnerable. The full text of the paper is available in PDF format."
Caldera

SCO Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy 421

Posted by Zonk from the a-true-catastrophy dept.
Can you say "the SCO, the" in German? writes "Trading of SCO's stock has been halted on news that SCO has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. This move just so happens to fall on the eve of SCO's trial with Novell. One would think that their prior boasts were mostly bluster, that they believe they have almost no chance of prevailing at trial, and that they're now desperate to protect their executives from SCO's creditors while seeking yet another delay. From the release: 'The SCO Group intends to maintain all normal business operations throughout the bankruptcy proceedings. Subject to court approval, SCO and its subsidiaries will use the cash flow from their consolidated operations to meet their capital needs during the reorganization process. "We want to assure our customers and partners that they can continue to rely on SCO products, support and services for their business critical operations," said Darl McBride, President and CEO, The SCO Group. "Chapter 11 reorganization provides the Company with an opportunity to protect its assets during this time while focusing on building our future plans."'"

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