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Comment Re:Patent titles in the summary are meaningless (Score 2, Interesting) 243

So if you look at 7,251,653, it basically describes a method for implementing customization of multi-tenancy for databases. (pivot tables) If this is allowed to stand then it basically means most companies delivering SaaS offerings can be sued. I see it was filed in 2004. I'm thinking maybe Salesforce was already using this prior to the patent filing.
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Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687

garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"

Comment Apples to Oranges (Score 1) 515

OpenGL is about graphics. DirectX is alot more than that. Should be comparing Direct3D and OpenGL

Also, Direct3D is pushed by Microsoft (heavy PR and community support), unlike the openGL committee (no PR and fragmented community support) so the base spec is perceived to be slower/inferior.

Comment Newsprint == Yesterday's distrubution medium (Score 1) 290

News used to be primarily distributed through newspapers as a medium and each newspaper generally was distributed in a smaller geographic market (minus some of the big papers). Ad spaces were sold for a high price because of that (and I could say because of the more locally focused content) Now the Internet is the dominant distribution mechanism along with search engines like Google enabling us to find our content. The newspaper companies don't hold the power they had once. People can read national/international news stories quite easily now. The news organizations that will continue to have a healthy future will be dealing heavily with LOCAL content. (These "national" or "international" news organizations have been cutting back on this for years and its their OWN fault now). Business models change and margins on the Internet are not going to be as high EVER as they were in the TV or news print ages. You have a large potential audience, but at the same time face a larger pool of competition. This will force the price lower always unless you are providing something of REAL differentiating value.

Comment Re:stop the never ending struggle (Score 1) 200

Mod parent up. I totally think this would be the ideal solution. The more immediate answer would be to SPLIT UP these Telco's wholesale and retail businesses. Let Bell Sympatico internet be a completely separate company from the wholesale business. Let Bell Sympatico etc buy access at the same price that Techsavvy does. It is a conflict of interest to be your own retail arm, and the gatekeeper for any other competing retailers.
United States

Submission + - FCC Probing Apple, AT&T Rejection of Google Vo (cnet.com) 4

suraj.sun writes: FCC Probing Apple, AT&T Rejection of Google Voice App

Already having raised the ire of some developers and customers, the decision to disallow the Google Voice application on Apple's App Store has also attracted the attention of the FCC.

According to a Dow Jones Newswire report, on Friday afternoon the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google. The FCC inquiry asks Apple why the Google Voice application was rejected from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and why it removed third-party applications built on the Google app that had been previously approved.

The FCC also asks whether AT&T was allowed to weigh in on the application before it was rejected, and seeks a description of the application from its creator, Google, according to the report.

CNET News : http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10301259-37.html

Security

Linux, Twitter, and Red Hat "Win" Big At Pwnie Awards 63

hugmeplz writes "The third annual Pwnie Awards took place last night at Black Hat in Las Vegas, and a full list of the winners has been posted. 'Most Epic Fail' honors went to the notorious Twitter/Google Apps hack from earlier this month that raised all sorts of questions about cloud computing security. Red Hat got skewered with the 'Mass 0wnage' award, also known as the 'Pwnie for Breaking the Internet,' for issuing a version of OpenSSH that left a backdoor open to hackers. The Linux development team earned 'Lamest Vendor Response' recognition for 'continually assuming that all kernel memory corruption bugs are only Denial-of-Service.' Naturally, Microsoft didn't slip past judges' eyes. Its vulnerability that enabled the Conficker worm to do its thing earned honors as the 'Most Overhyped Bug.' On the more positive side, the Pwnie Awards recognized security pros Wei Yongjun, sgrakkyu, Sebastian Kramer and Bernhard Mueller for accomplishments such as discovering bugs and demonstrating exploits. The Pwnie for Best Song went to Doctor Braid for his song Nice Report. Solar Designer snagged the Lifetime Achievement Award, for among other things, being the first to demonstrate heap buffer overflow exploitation, according to the Pwnie Awards Web site."
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Ethics of selling GPLed software for the iPhone 11

SeanCier writes: "We're a small (two-person) iPhone app developer whose first game has recently been released in the app store. In the process, we've inadvertently stepped in it, bringing up a question of the GPL and free software ethics that I'm hoping the Slashdot community can help us clear up, one way or the other.

XPilot, a unique and groundbreaking UNIX-based game from the early/mid nineties, was a classic in its day but was forgotten and has been dead for years, both in terms of use and development. My college roommate and I were addicted to it at the time, even running game servers and publishing custom maps. As it's fully open source (GPLv2), and the iPhone has well over twice the graphics power of the SGI workstations we'd used in college, we decided it was a moral imperative to port it to our cellphones. In the process, we hoped, we could breathe life back into this forgotten classic (not to mention turning a years-old joke into reality). So we did so, and the result was more playable than we'd hoped, despite the physical limitations of the phone. We priced it at $2.99 on the app store (we don't expect it to become the Next Big Thing, but hoped to recoup our costs — such as server charges and Apple's annual $99 developer fee), released the source on our web page, then enthusiastically tracked down every member of the original community we could find to let them know of the hoped-for renaissance.

Which is where things got muddy. After it hit the app store, one of the original developers of XPilot told us he feels adamantly that we're betraying the spirit of the GPL by charging for the app (hopefully he'll chime in with a comment below; I'll leave him anonymous for now to avoid further stepping on toes).

That left us in a terrible spot. We'd thought we were contributing to the community and legacy of this game by reviving it, not stealing from them by charging for it — and didn't think $2.99 was unreasonable (and, again, the source is available for free from our page). It never occurred to us that one of the original creators would feel that we were betraying their contribution. We've discussed the philosophical fine points of free-as-in-speech vs. free-as-in-freedom with him, and have suggested a number of remedies — such as reducing the price (it's now $1.99), profit-sharing with previous contributors, making the game free at some point in the future (once we'd at least recouped our costs), or going "freemium" (offering a fully-functional free version plus a paid version with enhancements we added ourselves, with both GPLed of course). But in each case, the bottom line is that this developer feels the app should be free-as-in-beer period, and anything less is a sleazy betrayal of anybody that made contributions under that license. Which is a shame, because we deeply respect his work on this game and would love for him to be on board with the port — but at the same time this was months' worth of work and we honestly believe we're going about this in a reasonable way.

Obviously one of us has a non-mainstream understanding of open source ethos, but it's become clear we can't come to a consensus on which of us it is, and whether the "spirit of the GPL" allows selling GPLed software (especially when one wasn't the original creator of the software but a more recent contributor). The only way to determine that, it seems, is to poll the open source community itself.

We're determined to do the right thing by the GPL and the community. So here's our plan: we'd like anybody with an opinion on this to vote, and if the community feels that ethically this should be free-as-in-beer, we'll fix it by making it free, end of story. In order to make the vote clear and transparent to all participants, we'll use twitter. Remember, we're not talking about whether it's practical to base a business on GPLed software, nor the best business model for doing so, and certainly not whether the source must be distributed for free (obviously it must be), but just whether charging the binary version of an enhanced/ported version of a GPLed app (while releasing the corresponding source for free) is an ethically defensible thing to do.

If you feel that, ethically, any GPLed app must be given away for $0, include "#xpilot #freeasinbeer" in a tweet.

If you believe a binary version of a GPLed app may be sold with a clear conscience (as long as the source is distributed free of charge), include "#xpilot #freeasinspeech" in a tweet.

We'll count the tweets from unique accounts in one week and behave accordingly."

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