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Privacy

Submission + - Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued

RobertB-DC writes: "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."
Windows

Submission + - New $298 Wal-Mart PC with OO.org, no crapware (arstechnica.com)

cristarol writes: Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 Everex IMPACT GC3502 PC. It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2, as well as a complete lack of crapware: 'Users accustomed to being bombarded with trialware offers and seeing their would-be pristine Windows desktops littered with shortcuts to AOL and other applications will likely be pleased at their absence from the GC3502. "In creating the eco-friendly GC3602, our main focus was to build a no-compromise, back-to-school PC with all the software applications a typical student would require, without resorting to bundling frivolous trial versions or increasing prices 30 percent," said Everex product manager Eugene Chang.' The hardware is nothing to write home about: a 1.5GHz Via C7 with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics, but as Ars points out, it should be more than capable of performing basic tasks.
Businesses

eBay Bargains Soon To Be A Thing Of The Past? 488

ScaredOfTheMan writes to mention that, as expected, companies are utilizing the decision in Leegin Creative Leater Products v. PSKS to force the take-down of auctions on eBay because auctions are priced too low or even stating the auction itself is an infringement of their intellectual property rights.
Microsoft

Microsoft Excludes GPLv3 From Linspire Deal 342

rs232 writes to tell us that Microsoft is excluding any software licensed under the new GPLv3 from their recent patent protection deal with Linspire. "Microsoft has since been treating GPLv3 software as though it were radioactive. 'Microsoft isn't a party to the GPLv3 license and none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license,' the company said in a statement released shortly after GPLv3 was published on June 29. In addition to excluding GPLv3 software from the Linspire deal, Microsoft recently said that it wouldn't distribute any GPLv3 software under its SUSE Linux alliance with Novell, even as it maintains in public statements that the antilawsuit provisions in the license have no legal weight. "
Patents

Patents Don't Pay 210

tarball_tinkerbell sends us to the NY Times for word on a book due out next year that claims that beginning in the late 1990s, on average patents cost companies more than they earned them. A big exception was pharmaceuticals, which accounted for 2/3 of the revenues attributable to patents. The authors of the book Do Patents Work? (synopsis and sample chapters), James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer of the Boston University School of Law, have crunched the numbers and say that, especially in the IT industry, patents no longer make economic sense. Their views are less radical than those of a pair of Washington University at St. Louis economists who argue that the patent system should be abolished outright.

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