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Google

Submission + - YouTube set to filter content

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer world reports that Google is racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube and will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing. But YouTube has also said the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and requires the cooperation of media company partners.
The Internet

Telecom Refunds $8 Million for Bad Service 57

Posted by CowboyNeal from the whoops-our-bad dept.
Gearu writes in with an article about a hefty refund coming to New Zealanders. It opens, "Telecom New Zealand has admitted it made an error with its Go Large broadband plan and is to credit customers of the service. An internal technical review of the service, launched in October, identified an issue with how internet traffic was being managed on the plan. The Go Large plan was promoted as having traffic management applied to certain applications, but since December the traffic management process had affected all forms of activity. With around 60,000 customers on the Go Large service, the refunds were expected to total $7.5 million to $8.5 million."
Databases

Submission + - MSFT Plays up Open Source

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the longest running open source databases — Postgres — has been around for nearly 11 years (I think.) The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it? Thursday, Microsoft's open source software lab posted PostgreSQL on Windows: A Primer. At first, I get Redmond's interest in promoting anything that runs on Windows as a platform. But looking at this week's news: Ian Murdock visits Redmond, Microsoft and Novell announced their technical roadmap & Red Hat joins Microsoft's Interop Vendor program — is something bigger brewing in Bill's backyard? And how does Ballmer feel about this? The post is located at: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/02/22/postg resql-on-windows-a-primer.aspx
Google

Submission + - Second Google Desktop vulnerability uncovered

Submitted by
zakkie
zakkie writes: "According to InfoWorld, Google's Desktop indexing engine is vulnerable to an exploit (the second such flaw to be found) that could allow crackers to read files or execute code. By exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on Google.com, an attacker can grab all the data off a Google Desktop. Google is said to be "investigating"."
Software

Software Deletes Files to Defend Against Piracy 544

Posted by CowboyNeal from the users-delete-software-to-defend-against-idiocy dept.
teamhasnoi writes "Back in 2004, we discussed a program that deleted your home directory on entry of a pirated serial number. Now, a new developer is using the same method to protect his software, aptly named Display Eater. In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'"
Software

Journal Journal: Symbian freeware

Journal by yohanes

I was actually rather affraid that the software signing limitation on symbian 9 (specifically Series 60 3rd edtion) will make freeware and open source developers stay away from that platform. Well, compared to the previous platform, the number of open source projects has declined (many projects not yet ported to 3rd edition). The number of freeware is still low, but slowly increasing.
Windows

Submission + - XP on 8MHz Intel Pentium and 20MB RAM

Submitted by
swehack
swehack writes: "The germans over at Winhistory.de managed to get their Windows XP Professional to run on an Intel Pentium clocked down to 8MHz and 20MB RAM. Here is the english version of their article, with plenty of pictures. On a related note they also won the golden hourglass for 'extreme waste of time'. What obscure hardware configurations have you managed to get Windows running on?"
Patents

Amazon Using Patent Reform to Strengthen 1-Click 71

Posted by Zonk from the song-and-dance-routine dept.
theodp writes "As some predicted, lawyers for Amazon.com have recently submitted 1-Click prior art solicited by Tim O'Reilly under the auspices of Jeff Bezos' patent reform effort to the USPTO, soliciting a 'favorable action' that would help bulletproof the patent. Last June, an Amazon lobbyist referred to deficiencies with the same prior art as he tried to convince Congress that 1-Click was novel, prompting Rep. Howard Berman to call BS."
Books

Submission + - Wordpress Complete

Submitted by
Ravi
Ravi writes: "Anyone who is net savvy will be aware that there are special software available which make it possible to publish ones thoughts on the web without even an iota of coding skills. These new fangled tech tools are popularly known as blogs. In recent times, blogs have empowered numerous individuals and groups by allowing them a platform to air their thoughts. This has been made possible because of the development of numerous blogging tools and one of the foremost blogging tool which has gained mass appeal in the blogging community is Wordpress. What is exciting about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time. More over, for its basic use, you do not need any coding skills.

The book titled "Wordpress Complete" authored by Hasin Hayder and published by Packt Publishing is a book ideal for any beginner in blogging who intends to set up his/her own Wordpress blog. The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with each chapter describing a particular feature of the Wordpress blog.

I found the book unique in that instead of straight away jumping into installing and configuring Wordpress, the author takes time to explain the concept of a blog and the different ways in which you can blog. All the blogs irrespective of the blogging engine being used share some common terminology. And this is also clearly explained in the very first chapter. In the same chapter, the readers are given a bird's eye view of the different blogging engines — both the free ones and those which cost money. And in limited words the readers are made aware of the pros and cons of each of them.

Installing Wordpress is considered easy. More so because it is a two step install process. But when you intend to host a Wordpress blog on a remote host, a few factors come into play depending upon what is offered by your web hosting provider. So there is more than one way of installing a Wordpress blog on a remote host which is dealt with clearly in the second chapter.

Each individual chapters of the book address a specific part of Wordpress. The third chapter dwells on choosing and installing themes where the author goes into the details of themes, the different types of themes and their file composition.

Having gone through the book, I am of the opinion that each and every aspect of Wordpress has been given due weightage by the author. Each chapter includes numerous screenshots of the Wordpress interface where ever applicable with a description of the options seen on the screenshot. I feel, this sort of reduce the learning curve of the person new to the blogging world.

In the fourth chapter titled "Blogging your heart out", the author embarks on an extensive trip explaining the concept of posts and different ways of adding posts in Wordpress such as posting via email. Apart from that, this chapter contains an exhaustive introduction to the rich text editing interface which is the default editor used to write the posts. One also gets to know more about the features common to all blogs such as trackbacks, pinging as well as some Wordpress specific features.

While at first glance, one might be tempted to think why one should buy a Wordpress book when the bulk of the documentation is freely available online, on further reading, you will find this book to be a very good asset for beginner Wordpress bloggers because the author introduces a wealth of information which will require a lot of digging online to find it that too only if you know what you are looking for. For example, the author explains how to put together an image gallery in Wordpress which I was not aware of before I read the book.

Chapter 6 deals with the all important topic of Feeds and Podcasts. There are four different feed formats and Wordpress supports all of them. Feeds are an easy way for the visitors of a site to keep track of the most recent changes in the content of a website.

While the first 6 chapters are targeted at Wordpress users, the remaining 4 chapters are more useful for Wordpress developers. On that note, developing themes form the basis of the 7th chapter of this book. Here the author demonstrates how to build a theme from grounds up by starting from scratch. Wordpress is essentially an amalgamation of PHP code, CSS and standards compliant HTML and this chapter has a fair sprinkling of code snippets with explanation. After going through the chapter, I was able to get a very good idea of the different files and their contents which form the heart of Wordpress.

Another very good feature of this book is that while explaining the concepts, the author has liberally used snippets of PHP code which imparts an idea about the different programming functions which play a specific role in Wordpress.

The next chapter titled "Community Blogging" provides a brief outline of a parallel project of Wordpress which is the Multi-user Wordpress which goes by the name Wordpress MU.

Chapter 9 titled "Developing plug-ins and widgets" is a very interesting chapter with the author explaining the process of creating ones own widgets which are small bits of code which incorporate third party functionality.

There is also an exclusive chapter which acts as an administrative reference where a number of problems that Wordpress administrators might face and their possible solutions are listed.

The book takes a reader right from the installation to the configuration of each and every aspect of Wordpress to eventually give some troubleshooting tips. There is no dearth of relevant screenshots. And the language used in explaining the concepts is clear and to the point. The author also provides Web references in many places which will help in broadening ones knowledge of Wordpress. In short, I found this book to be an ideal resource for bloggers who wish to host their blog on Wordpress.

Ravi Kumar likes to share his thoughts on all things related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software on his blog linuxhelp.blogspot.com."

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