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The Courts

Microsoft Trial Misconduct Cost $40 Million 231

Posted by timothy from the at-least-he-wasn't-feeling-vindictive dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "The judge who banned Microsoft from selling its Word document program in the US due to a patent violation tacked an additional $40 million onto a jury's $200 million verdict because the software maker's lawyers engaged in trial misconduct, court records reveal. In a written ruling, Judge Leonard Davis, of US District Court for Eastern Texas, chastised Microsoft's attorneys for repeatedly misrepresenting the law in presentations to jurors.'Throughout the course of trial Microsoft's trial counsel persisted in arguing that it was somehow improper for a non-practicing patent owner to sue for money damages,' Davis wrote. The judge cited a particular incident in which a Microsoft lawyer compared plaintiff i4i, Inc. to banks that sought bailout money from the federal government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. 'He further persisted in improperly trying to equate i4i's infringement case with the current national banking crisis implying that i4i was a banker seeking a "bailout,"' Davis said."
Education

Science, Technology, Natural History Museums? 435

Posted by timothy from the your-neck-of-the-woods dept.
beadfulthings writes "An unexpected windfall has enabled my husband and me to plan a road trip next year. He's expressed a wish to visit some good science, technology, and natural history museums along the way. Of course it's easy to obtain a long list of them via Google, but I'd like some insight and input. What does your area or city in the US or Canada have in the way of science museums? Are they worth traveling to visit? Do you have any particular favorite exhibits or 'must see' recommendations? This man was brought up in Philadelphia and apparently spent most of his boyhood and adolescence at the Franklin Institute and its Fels Planetarium, so I guess that would be his 'gold standard.' I grew up going to the Smithsonian. Any area of science, math, technology, natural history, or even industrial stuff would be fair game. I think we'll probably want to miss out on the 'creation science' stuff."
Handhelds

First Look At Palm's Mojo SDK 128

Posted by timothy from the commodity-bits-making-a-new-whole dept.
snydeq writes "Peter Wayner puts Palm's Mojo SDK through its paces and finds the general outline of the system solid and usable despite 'numerous rough edges and dark, undocumented corners.' The main draw, of course, is the reliance on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which lower the barriers to entry, though with Mojo, HTML and JavaScript do at times work against each other, with JavaScript occasionally 'wiping out anything you do with HTML.' But more than anything, Wayner sees the current version of Mojo as 'merely the start of access to a very fertile platform. 'Developers are actively digging into the Linux foundations of the Pre and finding they can build tools that work with the raw guts of the machine. Some are talking about writing Java services underneath,' Wayner writes, pointing to sites such as PalmOpenSource.com and PreCentral.net that are cataloging dozens of apps that come complete with the source code. 'I know people are doing similar things with the iPhone — such as selling the source to people who must install it themselves — but the entire scene emerging around Palm has a much more organic and creative vibe. It's not getting hung up on parsing and reparsing the App Store rules.'"
Graphics

WebGL Standard To Bring 3D Acceleration To Browsers? 239

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the need-faster-delivery-of-js-already dept.
Several sources are reporting that while native audio/video support has been dropped from the HTML 5 spec, the Khronos Group has released a few details about their up and coming WebGL 3D acceleration standard. "The general principle behind WebGL is to offer a JavaScript binding to the group's OpenGL ES 2.0 system, allowing code run within the browser to access the graphics hardware directly in the same way as a standalone application can. As the technology would rely solely on JavaScript to do the heavy lifting, no browser plugin would be required — and it would be compatible with any browser which supports the scripting language alongside the HTML 5 'Canvas' element."

Comment It's a balance (Score 1) 634

by ComputerDruid (#28818431) Attached to: The Best First Language For a Young Programmer

This is very similar to some of the strongly typed versus weakly typed language debates that seem to happen all the time. Should ease of use and fun programming come before or after learning about what's going on?

As a fan of both python and C/C++, I believe there needs to be a balance. When teaching a language to students new to CS, you have to gloss over some of the details in order to give them a basic understanding and excitement about what is going on.

My guess is that languages like scheme may inhibit this initial step, so that it is hard for students to catch on.
Privacy

Eye In the Sky For City Crime Fighting 389

Posted by kdawson from the lawn-forcement-panopticon dept.
Tiger4 writes "The mayor of the City of Lancaster in the Antelope Valley of southern California is considering a high-definition video flying platform to aid in crime fighting. The aircraft, would circle the city constantly, able to zoom in on activity spots instantly. 'You never know when you are being watched or followed. It would be stupid to commit a crime. You see it with such detail,' said Mayor R. Rex Parris, who took a ride last week in a camera-equipped airplane with pilot Dick Rutan. 'I have every hope that Lancaster will be the first city to deploy it. I've never been so excited about anything.' Dick Rutan is the same pilot who flew around the world non-stop in the Voyager, custom built by his brother Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites in Mojave." The aircraft is nothing special, a garden-variety Cessna or the like, but "the camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."

Can Bill Gates Prevent the Next Katrina? 380

Posted by timothy from the you-can-have-6-billion-guesses dept.
theodp writes "He once controlled the world's PCs. Now Bill Gates has set his sights on controlling the world's weather. And patenting it. On Thursday, the USPTO revealed that Gates and ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold have filed five patent applications that propose using large fleets of vessels to suppress hurricanes through various methods of mixing warm water from the surface of the ocean with colder water at greater depths. The idea is to decrease the surface temperature, reducing or eliminating the heat-driven condensation that fuels the giant storms. Hey, a guy can only play so much golf in retirement."

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