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Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

Comment give Canonical a chance for changing things up (Score 1) 272

( sorry for repeat, did not mean to post as anon ) I consider myself to be a power user ( been running Ubuntu since dapper, installed and run it on many desktops, laptops, netbooks and even a few servers ), and am a developer by trade. I was highly skeptical at first, ready to switch to Mint when I first heard that Unity was going to be the default, but just like the "window buttons on the left-gate" of the previous version I was willing to give Canonical a chance. I'll admit the first hours were an exercise in frustration, mostly due to having to unlearn many old habits. The one thing I did to alleviate that frustration was to prevent the launcher from auto-hiding. After a couple of days of daily use I realised that it had clicked for me, and now I wouldn't go back. Looking forward to see more possibilities of customisation in the future, but as is, I find that Unity really works.
Communications

Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again 329

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the cut-me-twice-shame-on-you dept.
miller60 writes "Three undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea have failed within minutes of each other in an incident that is eerily similar to a series of cable cuts in the region in early 2008. The cable cuts are already causing serious service problems in the Middle East and Asia. See coverage at the Internet Storm Center, Data Center Knowledge and Bloomberg. The February 2008 cable cuts triggered rampant speculation about sabotage, but were later attributed to ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place."

Comment Re:Language is a funny thing (Score 1) 385

by ExKoopaTroopa (#20160159) Attached to: Largest-Known Planet Befuddles Scientists
Beware the pedant brigade ... Although your interpretation is correct, as a French speaker I will add that "fort" has other meanings, including indicating a person has a large build ("il est assez fort" ~= "he is quite large", but depending on the context it could mean "he is quite strong"). This would be even more appropriate, however the whole joke falls flat because in French a "four" is an oven
KDE

KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 249

Posted by Zonk from the and-they-are-just-giving-it-away-this-time dept.
dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."
Microsoft

Microsoft's HD Photo to Become JPEG Standard? 369

Posted by Zonk from the what's-wrong-with-jpeg dept.
Mortimer.CA writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has submitted their HD Photo to the JPEG committee: 'Microsoft's ongoing attempt to establish its own photo format as a JPEG alternative (and potential successor) took another step forward today when the JPEG standards group agreed to consider HD Photo (originally named Windows Media Photo) as a standard. If successful, the new file standard will be known as JPEG XR.' Microsoft has made a 'commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge.' While JPEG 2000 exists, HD Photo has several advantages (not the least of which is a lot less CPU power is needed). Is this a big of an issue as ODF/OOXML?"

Dvorak Rants on CSS 522

Posted by CmdrTaco from the internets-most-successful-troll dept.
John Dvorak writes on CSS after working on redesigning his weblog, the article ended up being extremely funny. From the write-up:
As we move into the age of Vista, multimedia's domination on the desktop, and Web sites controlled by cascading style sheets running under improved browsers, when will someone wake up and figure out that none of this stuff works at all?!

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