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Submission + - Judge rejects SCO's motion for a new trial (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A judge has rejected SCO's motion for a new trial in the company's dispute over UNIX intellectual property ownership. The ruling validates a verdict that was issued in April by a jury which determined that Novell, and not SCO, is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This means that SCO cannot continue to pursue its litigation against IBM and other Linux users. "There was substantial evidence that Novell made an intentional decision to retain ownership of the copyrights," the Judge wrote in his decision. "The Court finds that the verdict is not clearly, decidedly, or overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence. Therefore, SCO is not entitled to a new trial."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu One gets iPhone app for contact sync (arstechnica.com)

oneone writes: Canonical is bringing its Ubuntu One cloud service to handheld devices with a new mobile contact synchronization feature that is powered by Funambol. Canonical's Ubuntu One application for the iPhone is now available from the iTunes Music Store. Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application. The mobile sync feature is currently in the beta testing stage but will be generally available to Ubuntu One subscribers when Ubuntu 10.04 is released later this month. Canonical says that it is boosting its Ubuntu One server infrastructure in order to support what it anticipates will be record loads.

Submission + - Tentacular, tentacular! (arstechnica.com)

Tyler Too writes: "Beware, mortals: Cthulhu has returned, and he's armed with bacon and an unhealthy obsession with geek brains." It's a really bizarre and hilarious choose your own adventure saga starring the Great Old One himself, Sergey Brin, Anonymous, David Pogue, and non-Euclidian tacos with bacon.

Submission + - Ubuntu dumps the brown, gets new visual identity (arstechnica.com) 4

buntcake writes: Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, "light" is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the "human" concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information.
Television

Submission + - MPAA pushes for HD-disabling SOC once again (arstechnica.com) 2

Tyler Too writes: The MPAA is once again trying to badger the FCC into approving Selectable Output Control, which would plug the 'analog hole' during broadcasts of some prerelease HD movies. MPAA bigshots met with seven staffers from the FCC Media Bureau last week, calling the petition a 'pro-consumer' move designed to 'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.' At least the studios are now acknowledging that SOC would break the functionality of some HDTVs, an admission they were previously unwilling to make: 'What's interesting about the group's latest filing, however, is that it effectively concedes that the output changes it wants could, in fact, hobble some home video systems. "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA's" request, the group assures the FCC.'
Google

Submission + - Google brings 3D to web with open source plugin (arstechnica.com) 1

maxheadroom writes: Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google's plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space.
Programming

Submission + - Project aims for 5x increase in Python performance (arstechnica.com)

cocoanaut writes: A new project launched by Google's Python engineers could make the popular programming language five times faster. The project, which is called Unladen Swallow, seeks to replace the Python interpreter's virtual machine with a new just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine that is built on LLVM. The first milestone release, which was announced at PyCon, already offers a 15-25% performance increase over the standard CPython implementation. The source code is available from the Google Code web site.
GNOME

Submission + - Review of GNOME 2.26 and GTK+ 2.16 (arstechnica.com)

devg writes: The GNOME development community recently announced the official release GNOME 2.26, the latest version of the open source desktop environment for Linux. It adds the Brasero disc burning software, UPnP support in the Totem media player, and basic support for video chat in the Empathy instant messaging client. GNOME 2.26 will be shipped in upcoming Linux distributions, including Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. Some early reviews show that it is an incremental improvement with some good additions. GNOME 2.26 is accompanied by the release of GTK+ 2.16, a new version of the widget toolkit that is used to build the desktop environment. Ars Technica has published a detailed programming tutorial with code examples that demonstrate how developers can use the new features of GTK+ 2.16 in their own applications. Users can test GNOME 2.26 by downloading one of the official Foresight-based VM or ISO images via BitTorrent.

Comment Re:What is the EFF defending? (Score 3, Insightful) 217

Your first point isn't relevant to anything at all, because taking pictures doesn't constitute infringment. Publishing those pictures constitutes infringement under French law, but the pictures weren't distributed in France, they were distributed on the Internet by an American company. Under those conditions, French law is only applicable under the terms of comity. International copyright treaties like the Berne Convention don't even give protected status to fashions, so publication of the images in this case is only infringement if you argue that the Internet as a whole is subject to the regulatory practices of every nation simeltaneously.

By enforcing a foreign intellectual property law on content hosted and distributed by an American server, the court would essentially be creating a legal precedent that would allow other countries to enforce other kinds of laws on American servers. Doing so would fundamentally alter the definitive nature of comity. Are you arguing that only intellectual property laws should be enforced this way, but not other laws regarding content regulation?

I didn't twist your point, I just addressed implications that you obviously never considered.

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