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Microsoft

US Court Tells Microsoft To Stop Selling Word 403

Posted by Soulskill from the somebody's-not-having-a-good-day dept.
oranghutan writes "A judge in a Texas court has given Microsoft 60 days to comply with an order to stop selling Word products in their existing state as the result of a patent infringement suit filed by i4i. According to the injunction, Microsoft is forbidden from selling Word products that let people create XML documents, which both the 2003 and 2007 versions let you do. Michael Cherry, an analyst quoted in the article, said, 'It's going to take a long time for this kind of thing to get sorted out.' Few believe the injunction will actually stop Word from being sold because there are ways of working around it. In early 2009, a jury in the Texas court ordered Microsoft to pay i4i $200 million for infringing on the patent. ZDNet has a look at the patent itself, saying it 'sounds a bit generic.'"

Comment my tips... (Score 1) 702

by naChoZ (#25667743) Attached to: (Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks?

Here's some that I a lot...

Visual *block* mode
Instead of just regular visual mode 'v', you can use CTRL-v for visual block mode. I tend to use this as a quick way to comment out lines. type [0] for beginning of line, then [CTRL-v], arrow down, [Shift-i], [#], then [Esc] and it will stick a # at the beginning of the every line in the visual block. But one of the nice things is that you don't have to be at the beginning of a line. You can indent everything after column 40, for example, across your selected lines and it will move everything after your visual block. It's also very handle for visually selecting a single column of text in a file and then using the [x] to delete it.

<< and >>
In normal mode, hitting the key [>] twice will indent the whole current line (or visually selected area) to the next tabstop.

[v][i][p]
This visually selects the current paragraph in its entirety (a paragraph being lines of text separated by a blank line). One that I type all the time is [v][i][p][=] because I have my "equalprog" value set to perltidy and this reformats my current block of code. I just prefer not to run perltidy across a whole file of my code at once. I also use this one a lot with shell commands like !sort.

And a couple for your ~/.vimrc:

map zz za
I use folds a lot and I just find it more convenient to hit zz to open/close the current fold.

nmap :wincmd w
If you use split windows a lot, this let's you just hit the Tab key while in normal mode to switch through regions.

Geez, I just noticed my ~/.vimrc file is up to 29K...
Spam

Submission + - Building a better spam trap (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
SpiritGod21
SpiritGod21 writes: "Steven T. Kirsch, the developer of the optical mouse, has been thinking about the spam problem for a number of years. After filing several patents covering other approaches, Mr. Kirsch hit on the idea underlying his latest invention, Abaca, quite by accident.

The approach underlying the Abaca technique is the recognition that the ratio of spam to legitimate e-mail is individually unique. It is also a singular identifier that a spammer cannot manipulate easily. By assessing the combined reputations of the recipients of any individual message, the Abaca system determines the "spaminess" of a particular message. Mr. Kirsch asserts this provides a high degree of accuracy in deciding whether the message is spam."

TB-Sized Solid State Drives Announced 130

Posted by Zonk from the soon-to-be-implantable dept.
prostoalex writes "Several companies have announced solid state hard drives in excess of one terrabyte in size. ComputerWorld describes one from BitMicro that's just 3.5". Their flash drive will support up to 4 Gbps data transfer rate. From the article: 'SSDs access data in microseconds, instead of the millliseconds that traditional hard drives use to retrieve data. The BitMicro E-Disk Altima 4Gb FC delivers more than 55,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and has a sustained data transfer rate over 230MB/sec. By comparison, a fast hard drive for example will run at around 300 IOPS.'" Ah, the speed of tech. Seems like only last month we were talking about 500GB drives.
Announcements

Submission + - High-quality YouTube videos coming soon (webware.com)

Submitted by
mlauzon
mlauzon writes: "YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference today, confirmed that high-quality YouTube video streams are coming soon. Although YouTube's goal, he said, is to make the site's vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer's Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if viewers want it.

Why wouldn't they? Because the need to buffer the video before it starts playing will change the experience. Hence the experiment, rather than just a rapid rollout of this technology. On stage, he said the current resolution of YouTube videos has been "good enough" for the site untill now.

Chen told me he expects that high-quality YouTube videos will be available to everyone within three months.

Chen also confirmed that in YouTube's internal archive, all video is stored at the native resolution in which it was sent. However, he said, a large portion of YouTube videos are pretty poor quality to begin with — 320x240. Streaming them in high-quality mode isn't going to help much."
The Courts

Comcast Sued Over P2P Blocking 268

Posted by samzenpus from the let-us-pirate-music-at-a-reasonable-speed dept.
CRISTAROL writes "Comcast has been sued by a California resident for blocking BitTorrent and other traffic. 'John Hart describes himself as a Comcast customer who has seen performance hits when using "Blocked Applications" targeted by Comcast's traffic management application, Sandvine. In his complaint, Hart says that Comcast severely limits "the speed of certain internet applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing and lotus notes [sic]." Comcast accomplishes this by "transmitting unauthorized hidden messages" to the PCs of those using the applications.' The lawsuit comes on the heels of an FCC complaint over the same issue."
Censorship

SQL-Ledger Relicensed, Community Gagged 194

Posted by kdawson from the i-can't-heear-you dept.
Ashley Gittins writes "Users of the popular accounting package SQL-Ledger were being kept in the dark about a recent license change. Two weeks ago a new version of the software was released but along with it came the silent change of license from GPLv2 to the 'SQL-Ledger Open Source License' — presumably in an effort to prevent future forks like LedgerSMB. As it turns out, the author was making deliberate attempts to prevent the community from finding out about the license change. No posts to the SQL-Ledger mailing lists asking about the license change were getting past moderation and direct questions to the author were going unanswered. Just recently the license was switched back to GPLv2. This behavior is not a first for this particular project, and is part of the reason for the original LedgerSMB fork. Does a project maintainer have an ethical obligation to notify his or her community of a license change? What about a legal obligation?"

Feed Epson wins ink ruling; ITC recommends banning third-party imports (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Peripherals

While we're still not sure whether refilling those empty ink cartridges is indeed a criminal act (or a waste of money), Epson has taken one more step towards forcing the average consumer to purchase name-brand carts at sky-high prices. Of course, Epson would have you believe that it's simply protecting its patents, but in a recent preliminary ruling that deemed some 24 suppliers that "import and sell Epson-compatible cartridges" as in the wrong, it could spell higher prices and less choices for consumers with Epson printers. Nevertheless, if the final ruling (set for July 30th) follows the same path as this one, a "general exclusion order on the cartridges" would be enforced, barring any future imports of the presumably lower-cost alternatives into the States. It looks we're almost down to two choices when it comes to printing: break the law, or break the bank?

[Via TGDaily]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Software

Discipline in Open Source Projects? 85

Posted by Cliff from the handling-disruptive-elements dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I've recently been elected (with another project member) to lead an open source project that we helped start several years ago. One of our goals as project leads is to implement some way to discipline project members who are disruptive to the project. In the past, the project has been slowed by flames, trolls, and even filibustering. Everyone says they want to work together, but some refuse to accept majority opinion. This passive-aggressiveness, coupled with growing despair on the part of other members, would have caused the project to dissolve if a vote had not taken place to elect new leadership (which the project has been lacking for some time). As co-leads we want the project to continue and grow, and we welcome all opinions, but how can disruptive members be told 'enough is enough'? We've read Ubuntu's Code of Conduct, but how can it or something similar be enforced?"
Censorship

Submission + - Amazon Hangs Up on Anti-Cockfighting Customers

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "TheStreet.com reports that those who bombarded Amazon's main number to express outrage over the e-tailer's selling of animal-fighting magazines that has prompted a Humane Society lawsuit found themselves greeted with a terse lecture on free-speech rights and were not even allowed to leave a voice message. An Amazon spokeswoman scoffed at the suggestion that Amazon consider donating to charities any profit derived from publications like Feathered Warrior and The Gamecock, saying 'So you should only profit from popular speech?'"
Biotech

Journal Journal: Temporary blood vessel shunt to be used to save limbs in war 157

Journal by Stile 65

The FDA has just approved for military use a shunt which allows partially-severed limbs to continue to get circulation. According to the article, "For most, it won't be a matter of saving a limb outright but rather salvaging the quality of a wounded leg or arm." This is because "The tubelike device is designed to connect the two ends of a severed blood vessel, providing a temporary bridge or shunt around a wound to restore blood flow to an

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