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Programming

Submission + - Are Amazon's web services going Open Source? (ostatic.com)

ruphus13 writes: Amazon has been one of the early movers in the cloud computing space, with its AWS offerings, including S3 and EC2. Now, there is a lot of chatter around the imminent open sourcing of all its APIs and services and the impact that will have on the other 'clouds' out there — public or private. From the article, "Amazon faces significant threats from open source cloud computing efforts if it pursues a purely proprietary path...Amazon can't ignore the cost advantages and diversity of product offerings that open source players are already offering in the cloud computing space. The company's best move is to open source its tools, which will end up diversifying them, play on a level field in terms of cost with the open source alternatives, and charge for services. Absent these moves, the company will lose potential customers to free, open source alternatives...Word is Amazon's legal team is currently 'investigating' open sourcing their various web services API's including EC2, S3, etc.", although these have not been confirmed by Amazon.
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla Mulls Dropping Firefox For Win2K, Early XP (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: "Mozilla is pondering dropping support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP without Service Pack 3 when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, show discussions on the mozilla.dev.planning forum by developers and Mozilla executives, including the company's chief engineer and its director of Firefox. 'Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher,' said Michael Conner, one of the company's software engineers, to start the discussion. Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, the still-in-development browser the company hopes to release at some point in the second quarter. Gecko 1.9.2, and the successor to Firefox 3.5 built on it — dubbed 'Firefox.next' and code named 'Namoroka' — are slated to wrap up in 'early-to-mid 2010,' according to Mozilla."
Google

Submission + - Android 1.5 SDK is Released (blogspot.com)

RadiusK writes: Starting today, developers can get an early look at the SDK for the next version of the Android platform. Version 1.5 introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition. At the developer site, you can download the early-look Android 1.5 SDK, read important information about upgrading your Eclipse plugin and existing projects, and learn about what's new and improved in Android 1.5.
Education

Submission + - College Police: Using Linux is suspicious behavior (eff.org)

FutureDomain writes: The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is "a computer science major" and he uses "two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on." The EFF is currently representing him.
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA takes Ethernet deeper into space

coondoggie writes: "While Ethernet technology has gone places no one would have envisioned 36 years ago, NASA today signed an agreement with a German Ethernet vendor to build highly fault-tolerant networks for space-based applications. TTTech builds a set of time-triggered services called TTEthernet that is implemented on top of standard IEEE802.3 Ethernet. Its technology is designed to enable design of synchronous, highly dependable embedded computing and networking, capable of tolerating multiple faults, the company said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Math

Submission + - Strings Link the Ultracold with the Superhot (sciencenews.org)

gabrlknght writes: "Superstring theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment. Lately, though, string math has helped explain a couple of surprising experiments creating "perfect liquids" at cosmic extremes of hot and cold."
Music

Submission + - Canada may tax legal music downloads 3

FuriousBalancing writes: MacNN reports:

Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription. The new tax would be retroactive to January 1st, 1996.
Google

Submission + - Lookout! Google watches your gaming activity

Tookis writes: In a recent patent filing sure to shock some, Google has proposed a real time profiling of players of online games such as World of Warcraft. Soon players of such games may see in game ads directly designed to appeal to their persona. Last month Google filed a patent in both Europe and the US which outlined plans to psychologically profile people simply by their style of play in popular online games. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12152/1092/
Microsoft

Why Microsoft Won't List Claimed Patent Violations 626

BlueOni0n writes "Earlier today, Microsoft announced it will begin actively seeking reparations for claimed patent infringement by Linux and the open source community in general. One opinion on why Microsoft won't reveal these 235 alleged IP infringements to the public is that they're afraid of having the claims debunked or challenged — so instead they're waiting until the OS community comes to the bargaining table. But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to list these supposed violations because it knows the patents can be worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and dry without any leverage at all."

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