256129
submission
Down-with-the-patents writes:
As reported by Slashdot earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office is collaborating with the Peer-to-Patent program to stop bad patents from issuing. Brigid Quinn, spokesperson for the USPTO explains the motivation of the USPTO to open a behind-closed-doors process to public. Groklaw's Pamela Jones admits "that when it comes to software, there is more knowledge outside of USPTO than inside it." While some of Jones' readers are stayong away away from the pilot program, to let the patent system collapse, Jones says that's a goal she understands but don't view as realistic. The project seems to doing pretty well with over a 1,000 active contributors and plans to replicate it in other Patent Offices starting with the UK Patent Office next year.
168615
submission
DuracellFan writes:
Intel recently released its PowerTOP utility, which builds on work done by kernel developers to make the Linux kernel power-efficient. PowerTOP gives a snapshot of what apps are consuming the most power. The PowerTOP website also hosts patches for several Linux apps and the kernel. In the article, which also details PowerTOP, lead-developer, Arjan van de Ven of Intel, says that PowerTOP could soon show which applications keep the disk busy.
163533
submission
BuggyUser writes:
Bugzilla, the popular application to track and manage software development bug reports, has moved up to version 3.0. The 2.x series has been in service for the last nine years. From the article "According to the Bugzilla 3.0 release announcement, some of the new features in this version include custom fields, support for the Apache mod_perl module, per-product permissions, an XML-RPC interface, and the ability to create and edit bugs via email. A demo site has been set up where users can test the new version before downloading."
