Khuffie writes "It seems that the upcoming version of Opera 10, of which the first Alpha has recently been released, has already passed the Acid 3 test with a 100/100. The only other rendering engine to have a complete score is WebKit, which can be seen in Google Chrome's nightly build. Opera 10 Alpha 1 will also finally include auto-updates, inline spell checking, and see some improvements to its built-in mail client, including much-requested rich text composition."

licorna writes "The 3.0 version of Python (also known as Python3k and Python3000) just got released few hours ago. It's the first ever intentionally backwards-incompatible Python release."

trichard tips a column on the editorial page at that most traditional of mainstream media, the Wall Street Journal, arguing the point (obvious to this community for a decade) that the US patent system costs more than the value it delivers. The columnist is L. Gordon Crovitz and here is an excerpt: "New drugs require great specificity to earn a patent, whereas patents are often granted to broad, thus vague, innovations in software, communications, and other technologies. Ironically, the aggregate value of these technology patents is then wiped out through litigation costs. Our patent system [is] a disincentive at a time when we expect software and other technology companies to be the growth engine of the economy. Imagine how much more productive our information-driven economy would be if the patent system lived up to the intention of the Founders, by encouraging progress instead of suppressing it."

An anonymous reader points out an announcement up at Attrition.org, that going forward their Data Loss Database will be taken over and maintained by the Open Security Foundation. From the news release: "...OSF is pleased to announce that the DataLossDB (also known as the Data Loss Database — Open Source [DLDOS] currently run by Attrition.org) will be formally maintained as an ongoing project under the OSF umbrella organization as of July 15, 2008... The project's core mission is to track the loss or theft of personally identifying information not just from the United States, but across the world. As of June 4, 2008, DataLossDB contains information on over 1,000 breaches of personal identifying information covering over 330 million records. The... DataLossDB will be free for download and use in non-profit work and research. The new website launch builds off of the current data set and provides an extensive list of new features."

mlimber writes "The NYTimes has a story about how Congress has quietly begun to press for an equal number of women in the hard sciences and engineering under Title IX, which is best known for mandating numerical equality for boys' and girls' sports for institutions that accept federal funding. The problem is, the article says, it is not merely that women face discrimination from male colleagues, though that is often true, or that they are discouraged from pursuing these fields. Rather, women with aptitude in these areas often simply have other interests and so pursue their education and careers in other fields like law, education, or biology. Opponents of this plan, including many women in scientific fields, say implementing sex-based quotas will actually be detrimental because it will communicate that the women can't compete on even terms with men and will be 'devastating' to the quality of science 'if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women's level of interest.'"

An anonymous reader recommends Computerworld's look at the rise and fall of CAPTCHAs, and at some of the ways bad guys are leveraging broken CAPTCHAs to ply their evil trade. "CAPTCHA used to be an easy and useful way for Web administrators to authenticate users. Now it's an easy and useful way for malware authors and spammers to do their dirty work. By January 2008, Yahoo Mail's CAPTCHA had been cracked. Gmail was ripped open soon thereafter. Hotmail's top got popped in April. And then things got bad. There are now programs available online (no, we will not tell you where) that automate CAPTCHA attacks. You don't need to have any cracking skills. All you need is a desire to spread spam, make anonymous online attacks against your enemies, propagate malware or, in general, be an online jerk. And it's not just free e-mail sites that can be made to suffer..."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With SCO in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and there being little to read other than status reports and the boring financial details of how the company is wasting its last few dollars, one could be excused for thinking the SCO lawsuits had lost their zip. But things just got a bit more interesting. Jonathan Lee Riches has asked the court to take over. Yes, the man also known as inmate #40948-018 is now bringing his legal experience to the table, having previously filed pro se lawsuits against such entities as Michael Vick, Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, the Lincoln Memorial, the Thirteen Tribes of Israel, 'Various Buddhist Monks,' Mein Kampf, Denny's, George W. Bush, the Soviet Gulag Archipelago, Bellevue Hospital, Iran's Evin Prison, Auschwitz, and Plato. In his hand-written pro se motion (PDF), he asks to intervene as Plaintiff pursuant to FRCP 24(a)(2). As best anyone can read the motion, it appears that he offered Novell some 'royalty payments' and they refused them, so he wants to protect his UnixWare rights. He also claims to have proof of SCO's claims, but he wants take over part of the case via FRCP 24 because SCO isn't competent, and allegedly he could do a better job. To be fair, between him and Darl, it's something of a toss-up."

A new child protection curriculum being implemented by the Education Department in Australia urges teachers to give children safety messages after reading them fairytales. The goal is to make sure that children understand not to engage in unsafe behaviors such as talking to strangers like Little Red Riding Hood and not to enter strange houses like Hansel and Gretel. While I can see the value in teaching kids not to talk to strangers, I want my kids to know that is is perfectly acceptable to push any elderly cannibal into an oven should they be kidnapped and kept in cages.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Malware writers have been obfuscating their JavaScript exploit code for a long time now and SANS is reporting that they've come up with some new tricks. While early obfuscations were easy enough to undo by changing eval() to alert(), they soon shifted to clever use of arguments.callee() in a simple cipher to block it. Worse, now they're using document.referrer, document.location, and location.href to make site-specific versions, too. But SANS managed to stop all that with an 8-line patch to SpiderMonkey that prints out any arguments to eval() before executing them. It seems that malware writers still haven't internalized the lesson of DRM — if my computer can access something in plaintext, I can too."

Reader The other A.N. Other, among others, alerts us to the news that Apple has filed suit against Psystar, the unauthorized clonemaker. (We've been discussing Psystar from the start.) The suit alleges violation of Apple's shrink wrap license and trademarks, and also copyright infringement. News of the lawsuit, filed on July 3, first surfaced on a legal blog. There's speculation that the case has been sealed.

Gibson writes "A team of 57 engineers at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight center feel that the Ares rocket is not the best solution for launching the new CEV. They are currently working on their own time developing an alternative launch system known as Jupiter. The 131 page proposal, along with other information, is available on the project website. Proponents of the project say that it is 'simpler, safer, and sooner' than the Ares project, predicting the ability for a return to the moon in 2017, two years before the current goal. Ares management has so far dismissed the proposal as a 'napkin drawing.'"

This week we have a few new functions for you comment readers guaranteed to amaze and enchant. Or at least to make your day a little more efficient. The biggest update is that the system should remember what comments you've already read (for a few weeks anyway) but there's some other less interesting stuff as well. Hit the link below to read more.

Barence, following up on yesterday's news that Viacom is looking for videos uploaded by Google staff, links to an article at PC Pro, excerpting: "Google and Viacom have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers. Earlier this month, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom and other plaintiffs to help them prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site. Google claims it had now agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys with a version of a massive viewership database that blanks out YouTube usernames and IP addresses that could be used to identify individual video watchers."