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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft XML fast-tracked despite complaints

Submitted by Lars Skovlund
Lars Skovlund writes: Groklaw reports that the Office XML standard is being put on the fast track in ISO despite the detailed complaints from national standards bodies. The move seems to be the decision of one person, Lisa Rachjel, secretariat of the ISO Joint Technical Committee, according to a comment made by her.
Censorship

Submission + - Law student web forum: Free speech gone too far?

Submitted by
The Xoxo Reader
The Xoxo Reader writes: "Today's Washington Post carries a front-page article on the internet message board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth), which proclaims itself the "most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." The message board has recently come under fire for emphasizing a free speech policy that allows its users to discuss, criticize, and attack other law students and lawyers by name. Is this an example of free speech and anonymity gone too far, or is internet trolling just a necessary side effect of a policy that otherwise promotes insightful discussion of the legal community?"
United States

Submission + - Senators smack down WIPO Broadcast Treaty

Submitted by Tighthead
Tighthead writes: The US will be supporting a pared-down version of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty. In a letter sent to the US delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Arlen Specter expressed their concerns that the Broadcast Treaty 'would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt United States copyright law,' and instructed them to work towards a treaty that is '"significantly narrower in scope," one that would provide no more protection than that necessary to protect the signals of broadcasters.' The next meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee will be in June.
Announcements

Submission + - South Korea drafting ethical code for robotic age

Submitted by
goldaryn
goldaryn writes: "The BBC have reported that the South Korean government are working on an ethical code for human/robot relations, "to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa"

The article describes the creation of the Robot Ethics Charter, which "will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007."

The article continues: "It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer."

"In the 21st Century humanity will coexist with the first alien intelligence we have ever come into contact with — robots. "It will be an event rich in ethical, social and economic problems." "
Linux Business

Submission + - HP Sees Huge Linux Desktop Deals

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: With all the talk about Dell and desktop Linux, HP has quietly been cutting some deals to provide "multi-thousands" of Linux-installed desktops, and, according to CRN, is suggesting factory-loaded Linux PCs are getting closer by the day.
Security

Submission + - Remote Control To Prevent Aircraft Hijacking

Submitted by
Snad
Snad writes: "The UK's Evening Standard is reporting that Boeing plans to roll out aircraft remote controls systems in a bid to eliminate the threat of terrorist hijackings, and prevent any repetition of the events of September 11 2001.

"Scientists at aircraft giant Boeing are testing the tamper-proof autopilot system which uses state-of-the-art computer and satellite technology. It will be activated by the pilot flicking a simple switch or by pressure sensors fitted to the cockpit door that will respond to any excessive force as terrorists try to break into the flight deck.
Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system. Currently, all autopilots are manually switched on and off at the discretion of pilots. A threatened airliner could be flown to a secure military base or a commercial airport, where it would touch down using existing landing aids known as 'autoland function'.""
Upgrades

Submission + - First Retail Water-Cooled DDR2 Memory Tested

Submitted by Twistedmelon
Twistedmelon writes: We've all heard of water cooling for processors and even graphics processors, in today's high end PCs. However, a water cooled memory module is something that hasn't been done until now. OCZ Technology recently announced their line of Flex XLC Water-Cooled RAM, with its integrated heat-spreaders that can be connected to any standard water cooling system. The memory operates much cooler under load with tight timings at DDR2-800 speeds. For those with water-cooling setups, these DIMMs could easily be tapped into an existing system allowing for quiet and robust cooling for your system memory as well.
Software

Submission + - source control for bills in congress ?

Submitted by
grepya
grepya writes: "This slate article talks about the sneaky way a major change in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill was made by (possibly) a congressional staffer without even his boss knowing about it. Now, I write software for a large and complex system containing millions of lines of code and I know that nobody could slip in a single of code into my project without my knowledge because every thing that goes into the build has to go into a source control system and email notification is generated to interested parties. This is for a body of work that affects perhaps a few hundred thousand people at most (our company and the combined population of all our customer organizations). Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in front of congress/parliament that affects potentially hundreds of millions of people?"
Privacy

Submission + - Beware how much your WiFi is sharing about you!

Submitted by
QuantumCrypto
QuantumCrypto writes: "Errata has developed a new network sniffer that looks for traffic using 25 protocols, including those for the popular instant message clients as well as DHCP, SNMP, DNS and HTTP. This means the sniffer will capture requests for network addresses, network management tools, Web sites queries, Web traffic and more. "You don't realize how much you're making public, so I wrote a tool that tells you," said Robert Graham, Errata's chief executive. The tool will soon be released publicly on the Black Hat Web site. Anyone with a wireless card will be able to run it, Graham said. Errata also plans to release the source code on its Web site."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - NASA can't pay for killer asteroid hunt

Submitted by
CGISecurity.com
CGISecurity.com writes: "NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done. "We know what to do, we just don't have the money," said Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center.""
The Internet

Submission + - U.S. Senators Pressure Canada on Canadian DMCA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. copyright lobby brought out some heavy artillery last week as it continued to pressure Canada to introduce a Canadian DMCA. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins gave a public talk in which he described Canadian copyright law as the weakest in the G7, while Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to urge him to bring in movie piracy legislation.
Graphics

Open Source Image De-Noising 205

Posted by kdawson from the fuzz-be-gone dept.
GREYCstoration is an open-source tool able to de-noise, inpaint, or resize 2D color images. This is a command-line program developed by the IMAGE team of the GREYC Lab in France and is available for Unix, Mac, and Windows systems under the CeCILL license. The algorithm is based on anisotropic diffusion partial differential equations. These equations are able to smooth an image while preserving its main structures. The demo page presents interesting examples of color image de-noising and reconstruction. This is a serious free alternative to commercial products like Noise Ninja or Neat Image that perform the same kinds of operations. The tool is still a little bit hard to use (command-line based), but I hope the simple C++ API will ease the integration of the algorithm in more user-friendly interfaces. Previous versions of GREYCstoration are already available in Digikam and Krita.
Space

Submission + - Cassini Returns Amazing New Imagery from Saturn

Submitted by SeaDour
SeaDour writes: The Cassini spacecraft has recently entered a highly-inclined orbit around Saturn, revealing some never-before-seen images of the planet's ring system as seen from above and below the planet. "Finally, here are the views that we've waited years for," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute. "Sailing high above Saturn and seeing the rings spread out beneath us like a giant, copper medallion is like exploring an alien world we've never seen before. It just doesn't look like the same place. It's so utterly breath-taking, it almost gives you vertigo." The spacecraft will eventually return to its standard orbit parallel to the ring plane in late June.

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