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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft migrating Live Spaces users to WordPress (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has decided it can’t compete with the established blogging platforms out there and will instead embrace one of them.

Talking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Product Management for Windows Live announced that all existing Windows Live Spaces users will be migrated over to an account at WordPress.com.

This decision is one Microsoft has prepared for, and Automattic CEO, Toni Schneider, the company that runs and develops the WordPress platform, was also present on stage with Mehta. The two companies have worked together to ensure Spaces users will take all of their data with them when migrating and have visitors automatically forwarded to the new URL associated with their blog.

Submission + - Researchers Create 4nm Transistor with 7 Atoms (dailytech.com)

Submitted by
EmagGeek
EmagGeek writes: "University researchers have created a transistor by replacing just seven atoms of silicon with phosphorous. The seven-atom transistor has very hopeful implications for the future of quantum cryptography, nuclear and weather modeling, and other applications.

"The significance of this achievement is that we are not just moving atoms around or looking at them through a microscope," says Professor Michelle Simmons, a co-author of a paper on the subject that is being published by Nature Nanotechnology. The paper is entitled "Spectroscopy of Few-Electron Single-Crystal Silicon Quantum Dots".

"We are manipulating individual atoms and placing them with atomic precision, in order to make a working electronic device," elaborated Simmons. "We have replaced just seven individual silicon atoms with phosphorus atoms. That is amazing exactness"."
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Google releases Chrome 5.0 for Win/Mac/Linux (h-online.com)

Submitted by ddfall
ddfall writes: Four months after the release of version 4.0 for Windows, Google has announced the availability of Chrome 5.0 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux — the first stable release to be available on all three major platforms
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Can Employer Usurp Copyright On GPL-derived Work? 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am a recent graduate, and I've been working on my own on a project that uses GPL-licensed libraries. Later a university department hired me to develop this project into a solution that they needed, on a part-time basis. The project's size increased over time and soliciting help from the open source community seemed like the natural way to go, however when I suggested this, my boss was not interested, and it was made clear to me that the department's position was that copyright of the whole thing belonged to them. Indeed by default work created for an employer belongs to the employer, so I may have found myself in the same trap as described in this story: "http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/03/21/0139244/Beware-Employment-Contracts". Even though I want to release my code to the public I don't know whether I have the legal right to do so, and many people are likely in the same position, working for a university without realizing that their work may not belong to them.

I am wondering whether there is room for hope, since
(1) I started the project on my own, and since no written or verbal agreement was ever made to transfer copyright over to my employer I question whether they can claim that they now own the extended version of the project.
(2) The whole project relies on GPL libraries, since from the start I intended to release it under GPL, and without those libraries it would be useless. Can they still claim copyright and prevent me from publishing the source code even though it is derived from GPL software?
The Gimp

Submission + - GIMP Resynth vs Photoshop content aware (ultradownloads.com.br)

Submitted by
aylons
" rel="nofollow">aylons writes: "Just after Adobe releasing their videos showing off the content-aware feature of Photoshop CS5, the GIMP community answered (in /. comments also) showing the resynthesizer plugin, which is available for some time and can do a similar job. However, are they really comparable? This article (in portuguese, google translation here, but really, the images are pretty much self-explaining) compare then side by side removing the same objects from different kinds of images. Results do vary, but the most interesting part may be seeing the different results and trying to understand the logic of each algorithm."
Upgrades

NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games 155

Posted by Soulskill from the i-thought-this-only-happened-to-ati dept.
After a group of StarCraft II beta testers reported technical difficulties following the installation of NVIDIA driver update 196.75, Blizzard tech support found that the update introduced fan control problems that were causing video cards to overheat in 3D applications. "This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics." NVIDIA said they were investigating the problem, took down links to the new drivers, and advised users to revert to 196.21 until the problem can be fixed.
Google

Google Buzz — First Reactions 310

Posted by kdawson from the what-it-is dept.
Google announced Buzz today, as we anticipated this morning. CNET has a workmanlike description of the social-networking service, which is integrated into gmail. CNET identifies a central obstacle Buzz will have to overcome to gain traction: "The problem, however, will be the increasing backlash Google is seeing from the general public over how much data the company already controls on their online habits." Buzz is being rolled out over the next few days so some people will see a Buzz folder in their gmail, but most won't yet (this Twitter post explains how Safari users can get an early glimpse). A blog posting up at O'Reilly Answers points out some of the distinguishing characteristics of Google Buzz — one interesting one being its ability to post an update either publicly or privately, at the user's option. This design choice places it between the public-by-default Twitter and the private-by-default Facebook. Lauren Weinstein sounds a note of caution about the inherent privacy risks of Google's method of filling out initial friend profiles by automatic friending.
Science

Submission + - Universe closer to heat death than once thought? (arxiv.org)

Submitted by TapeCutter
TapeCutter writes: In a paper soon to be published in the Astrophisical journal Australian researchers have estimated the entrophy of the universe is about 30 times higher than current estimates. For those of us who like their science in the form of a car analogy Dr. Lineweaver compared their results to a car's gas tank. He states, "It's a bit like looking at your gas gauge and saying `I thought I had half a gas tank, but I only have a quarter of a tank."

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