Blackboard Patent Invalidated By Appellate Court 142

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:30AM from the mechanism-for-doing-stuff-described-herein dept.

Arguendo writes "A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Blackboard Inc.'s patent on a learning management system is invalid in light of the inventors' own prior software product. We have previously discussed the patent and Blackboard's trial court victory against Desire2Learn. It's not completely over, but this is almost certainly the death knell for Blackboard's patent. If so inclined, you may read the appellate court's decision here (PDF) or on scribd."

Comment Re:v2? why not v3? (Score 1) 218

by Rewd on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @10:45PM (#28790907) Attached to: Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Release

That is not quite correct (and was incorrectly stated on the Microsoft press release):

Moodle 1.x is GPLv2 *or later*.
Moodle 2.x is GPLv3 *or later*.

The plugin is totally compatible for users to use, the only problem is for distributing the current MS plugin with Moodle 2.x

Comment Re:Not contribution; use (Score 1) 218

by Rewd on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @10:39PM (#28790871) Attached to: Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Release

Good summary, but some more clarification (I'm the founder of Moodle):

- The MS plugin can not be distributed with the upcoming Moodle 2.0 or later (GPLv3+).
- The MS plugin CAN be distributed with the current Moodle 1.9 (GPLv2+)
- The MS plugin CAN be downloaded separately and used with any version of Moodle.

One can't really blame MS here - this is actually a problem caused by incompatible messiness of GPL versions. MS have told me that they would of course love to have their module in core Moodle 2.0, and they will work on releasing this under GPLv3 at a later date (big companies have big legal teams that take a long time). I imagine the patent things in GPLv3 will need a lot of careful examination.

Comment Moodle is a good example of this (Score 3, Interesting) 222

by Rewd on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @09:35PM (#18341893) Attached to: Microsoft Cracking Open the Door To OSS

Moodle is a large GPL PHP project that has benefited from Microsoft funding. Last year Microsoft paid Moodle core developers to add MS SQL Server support in Moodle to let it work better in institutions used to Microsoft platforms.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=57989

The developers actually used the chance to revamp their whole database abstraction layer, effectively adding support for a number of other commercial databases as well (Oracle, Interbase etc). ;-)

Microsoft also developed Sharepoint web parts for Moodle, and an extension for Word that allows teachers to publish straight into Moodle.

http://www.codeplex.com/Moodle2003WP

Yes, it's true there was a business case for Microsoft, because some very high profile institutions can now switch to using MS SQL, but I think overall it was a win-win for all concerned.

Microsoft Cracking Open the Door To OSS 222

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:31PM from the competition-and-coexistence dept.

AlexGr sends us to a long piece in Redmond Magazine on Microsoft's changing relationship to open source. The article centers around a profile of Bill Hilf, Microsoft's internal and external evangelist for OSS. It's an even-handed piece that fully reflects the continuing deep skepticism in the community of Microsoft's motives and actions.

Subliminal Messages Might Actually Work 172

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 10, 2007 @10:17PM from the buy-popcorn-now dept.

GrumpySimon writes "New research indicates that subliminal messages may actually work. In a paper titled Attentional Load Modulates Responses of Human Primary Visual Cortex to Invisible Stimuli, Bahrani et al. demonstrate that even though stimuli may not be available to consciousness, they are processed by the visual cortex. While I'm sure that marketing agencies all over the world are rubbing their hands in glee at this news, the authors report that there's no evidence that this can make people buy things against their will. So with any luck the use of subliminal messages in advertising will remain an urban legend."

Comment Re:So much fud (Score 1) 147

by dwgranth on Tuesday March 07, 2006 @11:34AM (#14866506) Attached to: SAP vs. Oracle, Battle Royale

Dang, that is right on man. I've been an Oracle DBA and Basis Admin before... and there certainly is that issue. If you don't hire a competent person and are willing to pay that person for their skills, they will flounder and that part of your implementation will suffer (and if Basis suffers everyone does).

Journal Journal: Why the heck doesn't Slashdot put YEARS on any of the dates?

Journal by Rewd on Monday February 02, 2004 @02:33AM

Why the heck doesn't Slashdot put YEARS on any of the dates?

It's a pain when going through old stuff to know when it actually was ...

Journal Journal: wow... im lazy

Journal by dwgranth on Thursday April 24, 2003 @06:25PM

man oh man this is the first time ive written in the journal..... hrmmmm ... whats to say

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