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Software

Submission + - Amateur programmer meets software patents (google.com)

Roy van Rijn writes: A couple of weeks ago, in a spare weekend, I wrote software that could recognise music through listening to the microphone, much like SoundHound and Shazam. After populair demand I was just about to release the code into the open source community when I got an email from Landmark Digital Services LLC. They claim my hobby project is infringing their patents. This took me on a journey to find out more about software patents and the validity of the requests I got from the company.
Transportation

Solar-Powered Plane Making 24-hour Flight 85

After technical glitches threw a kink in its schedule, Solar Impulse, the solar-powered plane first mentioned here in June, has finally taken off. Reader asukasoryu writes "An experimental solar-powered plane took off from western Switzerland on Wednesday for a 24-hour test flight — a key step in a historic effort to one day circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun. The plane left Payerne airfield shortly before 7 a.m. after overcoming an equipment problem that delayed a previous attempt. Although the goal is to show that emissions-free air travel is possible, the team says it doesn't see solar technology replacing conventional jet propulsion any time soon. Instead, the project is designed to test and promote new energy-efficient technologies." You can follow the flight's progress at the project's site.

Comment We don't document because ... (Score 1) 769

Static documentation is idiotic for dynamic systems. To the extent that GNU/Linux is dynamic, it *should not* be documented staticly. As a coder I never duplicate code (cut-and-paste) because that creates a non-obvious dependency -- if I changed the code in one place I'd have to change it in the other.

Same applies to documentation: if something can change, and lots of code does, I do not want to have to change both code and documentation in the same, dependent, way. There are two ways out: 1) automatically generated documentation, which admittedly is pretty ugly and schematic; and 2) archived searchable forums and discussions.

Windows

Ballmer Sets Loose Windows 7 Public Beta At CES 672

CWmike writes "The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft will release a public beta this week of its next desktop operating system, Windows 7, hoping it will address the problems that have made Windows Vista perhaps the least popular OS in its history. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will launch the beta during his speech at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Preston Gralla reviewed Windows 7 beta 1, noting 'Fast and stable, Beta 1 of Windows 7 unveils some intriguing user-interface improvements, including the much-anticipated new task bar.' MSDN and Technet subscribers should be able to get the public data tonight. The general public will have to wait until Friday."

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