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The Courts

Ted "A Series of Tubes" Stevens Found Guilty 565

techmuse writes "According to a series of tubes sites, Senator Ted Stevens has been found guilty of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor. He faces up to 5 years in jail, and the outcome of his current reelection bid is now in doubt. 'The conviction came after a tumultuous week in the jury room. First there were complaints about an unruly juror, then another had to be replaced when she left Washington following the death of her father. Finally, jurors on Monday discovered a discrepancy in the indictment that had been overlooked by prosecutors. Jury deliberations in this historic trial have at times been as contentious as some of the proceedings The Justice Department indicted Stevens on July 29, and the Alaska Republican took a huge legal gamble and asked for a speedy trial in order to resolve the charges before Election Day. Judge Emmet Sullivan complied with Stevens' request, and in less than three months from the time of his indictment, Stevens was found guilty.'"
Music

Submission + - Putting Piracy in Perspective

An anonymous reader writes: Over the past year, Slashdot has pointed to many industry claims and governmental pressure (here, here, and here) arguing that Canada as a piracy haven. Canadian law prof Michael Geist has produced Putting Canadian "Piracy" in Perspective, a video that demonstrates how the claims are hugely exaggerated. For example, it shows how despite the MPAA's claim of movie piracy, Canada was the industry's fastest growing market last year. Similarly, while the recording industry says Canada is the world's top P2P country, the data shows that the Canadian music industry is experiencing record gains and that most of the decline from the major labels is due to retail pricing pressures.
Linux Business

Turns Out Ubuntu Dell Costs $225 More 361

An anonymous reader writes "One week ago this community discussed the apparent price advantage of Ubuntu Dell over Vista. The article linked to a Dell IdeaStorm page with the status: 'Implemented.' Today the status has changed on that page to 'Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell.' The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is indeed $50 cheaper than the identical hardware configuration with Vista — except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and a 160-GB hard drive is available for Windows only."
Microsoft

Microsoft's OOXML Formulas Could Be Dangerous 360

hill101 writes "According to Rob Weir's blog, Microsoft's 325-page OOXML specification for spreadsheet formulas is deeply flawed. From basic trigonometric functions that forget to specify units, to statistical functions, to critical financial functions — the specification does not contain correct formulas that could possibly be implemented in an interoperable way. Quoting Mr. Weir: 'It has incorrect formulas that, if implemented according to the standard, may cause loss of life, property, and capital... Shame on all those who praised and continue to praise the OOXML formula specification without actually reading it.'"
Education

Submission + - Canadian University students protecting their IP

innocent_white_lamb writes: Graduate students at Carleton University (Ottawa) are taking steps to protect their intellectual property and insuring that they are being properly recognized for their work, according to this article. This is in response to the increased commercialization of research done at universities, and high-profile cases of copyright infringement by professors at the University of Toronto and Indiana University.
Novell

Submission + - openSUSE Hobbled by Microsoft Patents

kripkenstein writes: "openSUSE 10.2 no longer enables ClearType (which improves the appearance of fonts). The reason given on the openSUSE mailing list for not enabling it is:

Note that this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library.
As reported on and discussed here and here, this matter may be connected to the Microsoft-Novell deal. If so, Novell should have received a license for the Microsoft patents, assuming the deal covered all relevant patents. Does the license therefore extend only to SUSE, but not openSUSE?"
Patents

EFF Patent Busting - Prior Art Needed for VOIP 170

JumperCable writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to bust an overly broad patent by a company called Acceris. Acceris claims patents on processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints. These patents cover telephone calls over the Internet. Specifically, the claims describe a system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in part through the Internet or any other 'public computer network'. The calls must also be 'full duplex', meaning that both parties can listen and talk at the same time, like in an ordinary phone call. To bust these overly broad claims, we need 'prior art' — any publication, article, patent or other public writing that describes the same or similar ideas being implemented before September 20, 1995."
Microsoft

Submission + - EU Rejects Microsoft Royalty Proposal

pallmall1 writes: According to MSNBC, The Financial Times has reported that the EU is going to drastically reduce or even eliminate Microsoft's proposed royalties on interoperability information required to be released by the EU's antitrust ruling issued three years ago. According to a confidential EU document, "Microsoft will be forced to hand over to rivals what the group claims is sensitive and valuable technical information about its Windows operating system for next to no compensation...". Even Neil Barrett, the expert picked by both Microsoft and the EU to oversee Microsoft's compliance with the 2004 ruling, says a zero percent royalty would be "better".
Security

Submission + - Hackers offer subscription, support for malware

Stony Stevenson writes: Organised gangs are taking a page out of security vendors' books and setting up their own websites that offer support and subscriptions for malware and spyware.

From the article: "For subscriptions starting as low as $20 per month, enterprises can sell "fully managed exploit engines" that spyware distributors and spammers can use to infiltrate systems worldwide, said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategies at IBM's ISS X-Force team.

Many exploit providers simply wait for Microsoft's monthly patches, which they then reverse engineer to develop new exploit code against the disclosed vulnerabilities, Ollmann said. "Then all you've got to do is just subscribe to them on a monthly basis."

RMS Explains GPLv3 Draft 3 139

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "A transcript is now online of a talk Richard Stallman gave in Brussels earlier this week about the discussion draft 3 of GPLv3. Among other things, he explained how it will address the Novell-MS deal, from Novell's point of view and from Microsoft's, and he explained how the tivoisation clause was narrowed to make it more acceptable in the hope that it will be used by more people. After the talk he also gave an interview, and yesterday, draft 2 of LGPLv3 was released."

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