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Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

Comment ksplice anyone (Score 1) 287

So as one project aim to help with linux uptime(http://www.ksplice.com/) another aims to shoot it down?! I love linux but can't we all agree that reboots should only be forced when actually required(and maybe not then even, just say "Hey reboot pal"), otherwise just restart the effected programs/services

Comment Re:um... (Score 0) 287

as far as i can tell its not, looks kinda like another ploy to make linux look/feel windows like... personally i like my machine to have massive amounts of uptime... and then hear about my friends needing to reboot every other day because of some update :)
Businesses

Submission + - Ready for your payroll software update? (hotair.com)

SEWilco writes: A federal payroll tax reduction for two months is being pushed by the President. Paying less money to the government seems good, but if the law is changed it will change the payroll taxes in January and February. Here in Slashdot many of us can well imagine what that will do to the many payroll systems which are already programmed with the 2012 tax rates.
Communications

WikiLeaks Publishes Cable Archive In Full 296

We recently discussed news that WikiLeaks had complained of a password leak which threatened the encryption of unredacted documents contained in the Cablegate archive. Now, reader solanum writes with this update: "According to the Guardian, 'WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention, harm or putting their lives in danger. The move has been strongly condemned by the five previous media partners – the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde – who have worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.' In the same article The Guardian gives further explanation of the controversy reported earlier, suggesting that Assange went against standard protocol in providing the master password to the newspaper."

Comment Re:Buncha keys should go (Score 0) 968

function keys- few programs use them but they serve on my netbook for things like brightening and dimming the screen, locking the screen, ajusting sound levels, etc caps lock- a few games use it and there are situations were it is legitimatly used (some have pointed out database programming) windows key- i use that one because of its lack of use, its my push to talk button in teamspeak since it seams to have no other use menu key- it can die

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