46466351
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has sustained Monsanto Co.'s claim that an Indiana farmer violated the company's patents on soybean seeds that are resistant to its weed-killer.
The justices, in a unanimous vote Monday, rejected the farmer's argument that cheap soybeans he bought from a grain elevator are not covered by the Monsanto patents, even though most of them also were genetically modified to resist the company's Roundup herbicide.
Justice Elena Kagan says a farmer who buys patented seeds must have the patent holder's permission. More than 90 percent of American soybean farms use Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" seeds, which first came on the market in 1996.
34692359
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Jonathan Mayer had a hunch.
A gifted computer scientist, Mayer suspected that online advertisers might be getting around browser settings that are designed to block tracking devices known as cookies. If his instinct was right, advertisers were following people as they moved from one website to another even though their browsers were configured to prevent this sort of digital shadowing. Working long hours at his office, Mayer ran a series of clever tests in which he purchased ads that acted as sniffers for the sort of unauthorized cookies he was looking for. He hit the jackpot, unearthing one of the biggest privacy scandals of the past year: Google was secretly planting cookies on a vast number of iPhone browsers. Mayer thinks millions of iPhones were targeted by Google.
34429329
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page has reassured employees about his health, but the company on Friday shed little additional light on an unspecified condition affecting his voice that will sideline him from two high-profile events in the coming weeks.
Page told employees in an email on Thursday that there was "nothing seriously wrong with me," according to a source who had seen an internal staff memo.
The 39-year-old Google co-founder sat out his company's annual shareholders' meeting on Thursday because he had "lost his voice," according to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who informed attendees of the news at the start of the event.
24469178
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Microsoft's proposed $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype has earned the approval of the European Union, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
The European Commissioner for Competition, Joaquin Almunia, is expected to rule that the acquisition won't harm competition or turn Skype into a Microsoft-exclusive platform.
The decision ignores accusations that Microsoft is simply bundling services on Windows to drown out smaller competitors, as argued by Italian Skype rival Messagenet last week. Messagenet also urged the Commission to require Microsoft to unbundle Skype from its Windows Office Suite.
The FT reports that Microsoft "promised" the Commission it would keep Skype interoperable and supported on rival operating systems.
"We're committed to the Skype user base," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer back in May, addressing antitrust concerns at the time. "We want to continue to build and engage that base. Part of that commitment is continuing to support Skype on non-Microsoft platforms."
20451926
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Microsoft has expanded its vulnerability disclosure policy to include not only those in its own products, but also flaws in third party software that runs on Microsoft operating systems. These will follow the same practices as the advisories issued for Microsoft's products, and it makes sense, because many users look to Microsoft to ensure that their computers are secure, even when the problem lies with a third party program. The company will coordinate with the third party vendor.
20313238
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
This week at Microsoft's MIX11 Web developer conference, the company surprised many by making a pre-release version of Internet Explorer 10 available—less than a month after IE9 came out in its final form. But another surprise was uncovered by Computerworld's Gregg Keizer: the next IE won't run on any OS before Windows 7, including Vista.
Microsoft took some heat when it came out that Internet Explorer 9 would leave millions of Windows XP users in the lurch, as the new browser would only run on Windows 7 and Vista. But the company confirmed that IE10 won't even run on Vista. In a statement to Computerworld, the company said "Windows Vista customers have a great browsing experience with IE9, but in building IE10 we are focused on continuing to drive the kind of innovation that only happens when you take advantage of the ongoing improvements in modern operating systems and modern hardware."
19883982
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Never want to read another story about Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen? Now there's an app for that.
"Silence of the Celebs," a program created by Manhattan web design studio Gesture Theory, lets you filter out all mentions of a celebrity from online news sources just by entering their names.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2011/03/23/2011-03-23_tired_of_charlie_sheen_and_lindsay_lohan_new_app_shields_you_from_stories_about_.html#ixzz1HQD3SHhi
19180296
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
Microsoft has released a Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome so as to enable H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using built-in capabilities available on Windows 7. As you may recall, less than two months ago, Microsoft released the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in with the same goal in mind. Even though Firefox and Chrome are big competitors to Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, the software giant has decided Windows 7 users should be able to play back H.264 video even if they aren't using IE9.
Here's the current state of HTML5 video: Microsoft and Apple are betting on H.264, while Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are rooting for WebM. Google was actually in favor of both H.264 and WebM up until earlier this month, when the search giant decided to drop H.264 support completely, even though the former is widely used and the latter is not. The company also announced that it would release WebM plugins for Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. Although IE9 supports H.264, excluding all other codecs, Microsoft is making an exception for WebM, as long as the user installs the corresponding codec, and is helping Google ensure the plug-in works properly.
8584736
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
On the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station they use Microsoft Outlook 2003, but not quite in the same way that us earthbound Earthlings do.
The space shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the earth right now and the crew exchange emails with the ground a few times each day. Bandwidth is a constraint and you don’t want the busy crewmembers bothered with spam or unnecessary messages so NASA has a special system in place.
The crew use fairly standard laptops running Microsoft Outlook (currently Outlook 2003) with Exchange Server as the email host, but they don’t link to the server using any of the standard methods.
4740717
submission
Pigskin-Referee writes:
On May 6, Microsoft issued an update to .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for the .NET Framework Assistant 1.0 for Firefox. It is available at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cecc62dc-96a7-4657-af91-6383ba034eab
It adds an uninstall button to the add-on. Further information is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=963707
