Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "A slew of Chinese web portals have pledged to self-police even more, after signing on to a Beijing plan to 'clean up the internet'. Google and MSN have not joined the group." From the article: "The firms' pledge states that the Internet has become an important source of information and entertainment in China, now the world's second-biggest market with more than 100 million Web surfers. 'At the same time as the Web develops quickly, certain sites are transmitting unhealthy news ... and uncivilized voice services, including pornographic content that can be harmful to society,' said the pledge, which was dated earlier this month in a posting on Sina's Web site."

An anonymous reader writes "Representative Lamar Smith is sponsoring the Intellectual Property Protection Act. The new bill is designed to give the Justice Department 'tools to combat IP crime' which which are used to 'quite frankly, fund terrorism activities,' according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Among the provisions is lowering the standards for 'willful copyright violation' and increasing the corresponding prison term to 10 years." More information is also available at publicknowledge.org.

C|Net has a story up looking at ways TV stations are moving online. An event on the subject was held during the annual marketing conference sponsored by the Television Bureau of Advertising. From the article: "For the first time, the conference was devoted to a single topic: the importance of the 'multiplatform'--that is, offering content and advertising not only on local broadcast stations but also online, on cell phones and other wireless devices, through video on demand and video iPods. The sole topic was intended to underscore that 'advertisers and their agencies are increasingly demanding a multiplatform strategy from all their media partners,' said Christopher Rohrs, president of the bureau, in a speech he gave to almost 1,200 attendees to begin the conference. "

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has an article up discussing a new way to win the patent race; hook up with the inventors." From the article: "'They are more concept type of patents. It is a very blue sky kind of thing,' Langer said of the patents that Intellectual Ventures is trying to develop. By contrast, the type of patents that Langer continues to file on his own are typically based on several years of lab research and targeted at very specific ideas, he said. Other researchers working with the firm include Eric Leuthardt, a neurosurgeon with St. Louis' Washington University, and Muriel Ishikawa, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "

bumgutts writes "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has suggested a mandatory website self-rating system. The system, very similar to one suggested under Clinton's administration, would require by law all commercial websites to place 'marks and notices' on each page containing 'sexually explicit' content, with penalty up to 5 years imprisonment." From the article: "A second new crime would threaten with imprisonment Web site operators who mislead visitors about sex with deceptive 'words or digital images' in their source code--for instance, a site that might pop up in searches for Barbie dolls or Teletubbies but actually features sexually explicit photographs. A third new crime appears to require that commercial Web sites not post sexually explicit material on their home page if it can be seen 'absent any further actions by the viewer.'"

mrops writes "CNET has up a short article about IBM's reaction to Oracle's recent acquisitions. From the article: 'Handy was responding to comments made by Oracle CEO Ellison to the Financial Times, where he said that he wanted Oracle to control a 'full stack' of software, including the Linux operating system. If Oracle did try to buy a Linux distributor, such as Red Hat or Novell, Handy said 'we'd stick to our strategy of having two or more independent distributors and have to wait and see what happens.'" It should be pointed out, as noted in yesterday's Slashback, that Ellison has no intentions of purchasing Red Hat.

timeOday writes "News.com reports that Dell's PC sales are growing more slowly than the overall PC market for the first time on record. Gartner's Charles Smulders blames Dell's decline on their allegiance to Intel, and cites Hewlett Packard's embrace of AMD as a key to their growing sales. Can Dell continue to shun AMD, or is a breakthrough imminent for the #2 chipmaker?"

Ant writes "CNET News.com reports that there is a new pair of "hearing glasses," hearing-impaired people might both see and hear better--and have better social lives. A novel pair of glasses recently released on the market not only improve bad eyesight, but also work as a hearing aid. Developed by the Delft University of Technology and Dutch company Varibel, the glasses promise to keep hearing-impaired people active and social. While in-ear hearing aids usually work well for conversation in quiet surroundings, many people who wear them face problems in more lively environments. Since all incoming sounds are amplified, background noises easily take over, cause discomfort and make conversations difficult. Varibel says its glasses can detect which direction sounds come from, amplifying words spoken directly to the wearer while dampening background noise."

An anonymous reader writes "PayPal is bringing the eastern use of the cellphone as a payment method to the United States. The company's mobile service aims to use secure text messages as a payment method for direct-marketing initiatives and other 'on-the-spot' mercantile opportunities." From the article: "To the extent that digital money doesn't feel like real money, it may increase spontaneous purchasing ... " This story offers more details on a discussion we had last month.

theodp writes to mention a C|Net article about Chinese President Hu Jintao's historic first visit to the U.S.. The catch is that his first dinner won't be at the White House. It will be at Bill Gates' manse. From the article: "The approximately 100-person guest list is a who's who of the U.S. Pacific Northwest power elite, including Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz and Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire, said event organizers. The guests will undergo strict security checks before entering Gates' lodge-style, 66,000-square-foot home overlooking Lake Washington with a reported seven bedrooms, six kitchens, 24 bathrooms, a domed library, a reception hall and an artificial estuary stocked with salmon and trout. Gates and Gregoire are expected to introduce and welcome Hu, who will then offer a toast in front of the gathering."

DahBaker writes to mention a News.com story about an ingenious way to de-ice a surface. From the article: "Dartmouth College engineering professor Victor Petrenko, not to be confused with one of the Champions on Ice, has devised a way to use a burst of electricity to remove ice caked on walls or windows. For surfaces coated with a special film, the jolt gets rid of ice in less than a second, far less time than it takes to hack at it with an ice scraper. While drivers might find easy-cleaning windshields convenient, the technology--called thin-film pulse electrothermal de-icing, or PETD--could have significant economic impact if widely deployed. It could, for example, cut the costs of repairing power lines downed by ice storms and keep plane windshields frost-free, decreasing fuel consumption."

An anonymous reader writes "Notebooks and Desktops are both staying strong in brick-and-mortar sales, according to C|Net. While laptops have mostly fueled the market these last few years, Desktops actually had a little bit of a comeback." From the article: "The first quarter is always a bit slower than the fourth, when holiday shoppers often drive PC and chip companies to their strongest results of the year. This year, the drop from fourth quarter to first was a little more pronounced, echoing Intel's warning in March that earnings would fall short of expectations. But when compared with the first quarter of last year, PC shipments were up 28 percent, versus growth of 19.4 percent recorded during last year's first quarter."

chill wrote to mention a C|Net article about an upswell in support for a mandatory data retention policy here in the U.S. From the article: "Top Bush administration officials have endorsed the concept, and some members of the U.S. Congress have said federal legislation is needed to aid law enforcement investigations into child pornography. A bill is already pending in the Colorado State Senate. Mandatory data retention requirements worry privacy advocates because they permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity that normally would have been discarded after a few months."

Mediacitizen writes "AOL was accused yesterday of censoring email to AOL customers that included a link to a site opposing AOL's proposed 'email tax.' Over 300 people reported that they had tried sending AOL subscribers messages that contained a link to www.DearAOL.com, but received a bounceback message informing them that their email 'failed permanently.' After the DearAOL.com Coalition -- 600 organizations convened by Free Press, MoveOn and EFF -- notified the press of this blocking, AOL quickly cleared the opposition URL from their filters, alleging a 'software glitch.'"

evdubs writes "15 states and the District of Columbia currently tax online media, with others eager to begin their own taxes. The RIAA estimates that domestic sales totaled $503 million last year, but that figure doesn't include movies, e-books, online video games and other forms of digital media. Perhaps the most interesting point in this article is the way states, looking to start taxing online media, are trying to use the interpretation of previous law and apply it to digital media. In Washington, politicians are using their definition of software (already taxable), 'a set of coded instructions designed to cause a computer...to perform a task,' to justify taxation of online media because 'they cause some action by a piece of hardware to play them.'"

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net's running an article about the threat free television on the internet poses to traditional telecoms and cable companies." From the article: "No one is expecting Internet television to cannibalize traditional TV models overnight. Despite advancements in streaming technology, video delivered on the Web can still be choppy, with frequent interruptions as data packets buffer and reload on the screen. In fact many viewers who watched the NCAA tournament aired by CBS on the Internet last month complained about the network being overloaded."

An anonymous reader writes "Users thinking of pirating the next version of Windows may have a surprise in store: no Aero for you. The upcoming Microsoft OS will run a check to ensure the copy was legally purchased. If it comes up short, the shiniest part of the OS will not be available." From the article: "At first an optional program, the piracy check eventually became mandatory for many types of Windows XP downloads, but was not required to run any aspect of the operating system itself. Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers. But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system."

marct22 writes to tell us CNet is reporting that the next weapons coming out of the US arsenal could be stepping right off the pages of science fiction to be there. From the article: "By the end of this year, the Air Force plans to conduct a first, fully loaded test flight of its Airborne Laser, a jumbo jet packed with gear designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light. The ABL also packs a megawatt-class punch--it's not exactly your garden-variety laser pointer."

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has an article on Microsoft's upcoming appeal of the EU antitrust decision. Their argument is essentially that they shouldn't be penalized for becoming successful in a marketplace." From the article: "Microsoft relies on the fact that its communication protocols are technologically innovative and are covered by intellectual-property rights ... [the company] had designed its Windows server operating systems from the outset to interoperate with non-Microsoft server operating systems"

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on a protestation by Dell's CTO, Kevin Kettler, who says quite loudly that they are not Microsoft and Intel's puppet." From the article: "Essentially, Kettler argued, Dell was responsible for selecting, if not necessarily developing, many of the technologies in today's desktop computers and servers. Among standards for which he said Dell deserves credit are 802.11 wireless networking, PCI Express communications technology and 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 line of processors."

zenwarrior writes "Reported by CNET, a new chip technology termed Secure Blue by IBM will keep users' data encrypted and secured at virtually every moment on essentially anything in which the chip can be used. Data is even encrypted in RAM, leaving display for users' viewing as almost the last place it isn't encrypted. This has to be considered decidedly anti-Homeland Defense by the current administration. If so, when will we see it if ever?"

Cadef writes "According to a story on CNet News.com, Nicholas Negroponte says that Linux has gotten too fat, and will have to be slimmed down before it will be practical for the $100 laptop project. From the article: 'Suddenly it's like a very fat person [who] uses most of the energy to move the fat. And Linux is no exception. Linux has gotten fat, too.'"

mosel-saar-ruwer writes "A recent conference, hosted by UC-Berkeley's College of Environmental Design, sought to 'examin[e] the need and role for drawing today in the design professions and fine arts'. In this Reuters summary, via C-NET, the participants seem to agree that the emergence of sophisticated graphics software has coincided with a startling decline in the basic drawing skills of university students. Apparently teenaged boys don't need to practice drawing their nudes when they can just download them off the web."

LiquidEdge writes "A Republican controlled committee has defeated a bill that would have guaranteed fair access and stopped companies like AT&T and Verizon from charging high-bandwidth sites for allowing their customers to have priority access to them."

Gosalia writes "In order to increase its presence in the business intelligence market, Microsoft announced its plan to acquire business analytics software developer ProClarity. 'This acquisition advances our (business intelligence) strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers,' Jeff Raikes, Microsoft business division president, said in a statement."

Poppler writes "Intel has announced it will produce a PC aimed at developing nations, the 'Community PC.' Instead of giving out minimal PCs to as many individuals as possible, Intel wants to sell these machines to 'kiosk owners' who will rent out use to their village. Price TBA. How does this stack up against the $100 laptop, in terms of helping the developing world?"

News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."

Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."

An anonymous reader wrote to mention a C|Net article about a possible replacement for the DVR. Called RS-DVR, it allows customers to record shows on centrally located business-owned servers. From the article: "One uncertainty is reaction to Cablevision's service by programming networks, which have bristled at some of the cable industry's previous attempts to record shows on their systems before negotiating new broadcasting rights. Cablevision argues nothing will be recorded on its network unless the viewer orders it from the remote control--an important difference from other failed experiments. Earlier controversies had centered on Time Warner Cable's aborted Maestro service, which had proposed to automatically store programs on its network so viewers could order up just about any show that had been previously broadcasted." There are a number of possible media ownership issues here, I think. Personally, I'm happy having the shows right here on a hard drive in my home.

An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a large article up exploring the increase in 'pork barrel'-style technology projects floating through government spending bills. The water-free urinals discussed on Slashdot last year are one such project, as is a 'Virtual Reality Spray Paint Simulator'." From the article: "Earmarks for favored recipients--known colloquially as pork--have become easier than ever for politicians to secure because of the rapid growth in homeland security and military spending, especially if they can find some plausible technological veneer. Exact figures are difficult to obtain, mostly because spending bills tend to be intentionally obfuscated and specifics are usually absent from legislative text. Government watchdogs, however, say earmarks ostensibly related to technology are clearly on the rise."

thomas2you writes "Microsoft has just started its beta testing on a new program, made to have Microsoft's hotmail on your own desktop according to an article on CNET. It's going to be free software, you're going to be able to manage multiple accounts and they are attempting to include the ability to also just control all pop3 and smtp accounts you have, including Google's gmail as well as Windows Live Mail, the successor to Hotmail. From the article, 'The move is a shift for the Hotmail business, which in the past, has charged users who wanted to read their mail using desktop software, rather than a Web browser. Microsoft charged $20 and up for its paid service.'"

cnet-declan writes "Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, but now the Bush administration wants to use them for domestic surveillance. A top Homeland Security official told Congress today, according to this CNET News.com article, that: "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory." One county in North Carolina is already using UAVs to monitor public gatherings. But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? A pilot's association is worried."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including Microsoft denies Vista rewrite, Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it, MS Virtual Server slips and VMWare fills the gap, Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges, Tux in retail part 2, a renewed bid to register the Linux trademark in Australia, OpenSPARC.net shades of the past, and a follow up on Mac botnets -- Read on for details.

Microsoft denies Vista rewrite. moochfish writes "Contrary to a heavily doubted feature earlier this week, Business 2.0 magazine reports that Microsoft will not be rewriting large portions of its operating system. From the article, 'Microsoft's own blogger Robert Scoble checked into the story and got a denial from an executive at Microsoft's PR firm, who says he's not aware of any Xbox programmers working on Windows.'"

Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it. gEvil (beta) writes "The Register has posted a followup to this past week's wonderfully humorous story about Tuttle, Oklahoma's technically inept city manager, Jerry Taylor. It appears that Mr. Taylor is not pleased with the publicity he has received due to the incident, despite his prior statement of, 'I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.' He sent an email to the Register's marketing team asking that people stop emailing him and making fun of him."

MS Virtual Server Slips and VMWare fills in the gap. nizo writes "On the heels of the announcement that Microsoft Virtual Server is slipping to 2007, VMware has announced the beta release of the VMware Virtual Machine Importer, which has the capability to convert system images stored in 3rd party formats (including Microsoft Virtual Server images) to VMware virtual machines. The good news is VMware released the importer as a free download."

Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges. bdotcdot writes "Electronics News is running a story on Samsung executives who have plead guilty to the price fixing of DRAM. From the story 'According to the one-count felony charge filed in federal court in San Francisco, at various times during the period from April 1, 1999, to June 15, 2002, these three Samsung employees conspired with unnamed employees from other memory makers to fix the prices of DRAM sold to certain computer and server manufacturers in the U.S., in violation of the Sherman Act. The conspiracy directly affected sales to U.S. computer makers Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Compaq Computer Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Gateway Inc., the charge said.'"

Tux in retail part 2. silentbob4 writes "Mad Penguin brings us the second and final installment in their 'Tux in Retail' series, in which they interview Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony; Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos; Mepis Linux founder Warren Woodford; and Kevin Jones, Micro Center Vice President of Merchandising, to get their take Tux's jump into big box retail. The first installment was run as an earlier Slashdot article."

Renewed bid to register Linux trademark in Australia? daria42 writes "A renewed bid to register the word 'Linux' as an Australian trademark must meet an early April deadline or face defeat." From the article: "'The deadline to file a response to the Examiner's rejection has not yet passed, and LMI and its attorneys are still determining if they will respond,' a spokesperson for the body told ZDNet Australia in an emailed statement."

OpenSPARC.net, shades of the past. Andy Updegrove writes "In what must have seemed to many as a bold move, Sun Microsystems recently announced that it would release the source code for its UltraSparc T1 processor under the GPL, supported by a new organization that it calls OpenSPARC.net. But to those that have been around for a while, the announcement had an eerily familiar sound to it, and that sound was the echo of an organization called SPARC International. Formed 18 years ago to license the SPARC chip design to multiple vendors to ensure second sourcing for the hardware vendors that Sun hoped would adopt it, SPARC International seemed to be every bit as revolutionary for its time as Sun's new initiative does today. Motorola launched a somewhat similar group called 88open to support its own RISC chip design, and later IBM, Motorola and Apple launched the PowerOpen Association to promote the PowerPC. The Websites of the PowerOpen Association and 88open are long gone, and seem to have escaped even the WayBack Machine's reach. But SPARC International's site, looking very retro and neglected, can still be seen - at least for now."

Follow up on Mac botnets. An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com has an interesting follow up to skeptical claims as a result of a previous Slashdot story. Mac OS X systems have indeed been spotted in botnets, thanks largely to several worms going around that take advantage of Web-based applications running vulnerable PHP software. From the article: 'By leveraging this PHP flaw, the attackers were able to seed the Mac systems with several tools designed to turn them into drones for use in waging destructive distributed denial of service attacks.'

Eric Giguere writes "CNet is reporting that according to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn 'the lax dress code of the open-source community is one of the reasons behind the software's slow uptake in commercial environments.' In particular, Quinn blames the 'sandal and ponytail set' for sluggish adoption of Linux by businesses and governments." From the article: "Quinn, who faced plenty of scrutiny over his support of the OpenDocument standards-based office document format, said proponents of open source in government faced formidable opposition from vested interests if they went public."

News.com reports that Second Life, the virtual world run by Linden Labs, has netted $11 Million in venture capital funding from the Globespan Capital Partners group. From the article: "The company makes its money by charging players use fees for land they buy and build on. For now, the company isn't profitable, and it's not clear when it will be, said Catherine Smith, Linden Lab's director of marketing. However, she told CNET News.com that Linden Lab plans to use its new funding for aggressive international expansion, as well as for hiring intended to boost its infrastructure. "

CNet is reporting that a newly created branch within the Homeland Security Department that brings together many different federal agency employees and private sector players has been given the go-ahead to disregard a law requiring meetings to be open and proceedings public. From the article: "The 1972 law generally requires such groups to meet in open sessions, make written meeting materials publicly available, and deliver a 15-day notice of any decision to close a meeting to the public. The last is a particular point of concern for Homeland Security officials, who anticipate that private emergency meetings may need to be scheduled on short notice."

KingSkippus writes "According to CNet, a company named Posit Science has produced an online test using Flash that uses sounds to measure the speed of your brain down to the millisecond. According to the company, the test 'measures auditory processing (listening) speed—one of many measures of brain function...The faster we can take in information accurately, the better we can keep up with, respond to and remember what we hear.'"

CNet is reporting that the Federal Election Commission released a 96-page volume of internet regulations last Friday. From the article: "The rules [PDF] say that paid Web advertising, including banner ads and sponsored links on search engines, will be regulated like political advertising in other types of media. They also say bloggers can enjoy the freedoms of traditional news organizations when endorsing a candidate or engaging in political speech.

CNet is reporting that the Federal Election Commission released a 96-page volume of internet regulations last Friday. From the article: "The rules [PDF] say that paid Web advertising, including banner ads and sponsored links on search engines, will be regulated like political advertising in other types of media. They also say bloggers can enjoy the freedoms of traditional news organizations when endorsing a candidate or engaging in political speech.

feronti writes "So, it didn't take long... CNET is reporting that Sun's new Grid computing service (reported yesterday) has already been the victim of a DDOS attack. "

CNet is reporting that with the telecommunication industry's annual powwow coming up the hot button seems to be television rather than phones. From the article: "Judging from the diverse list of keynote speakers, it's easy to see that the phone business is readying itself for cataclysmic change. The traditional telecommunications market has already begun consolidating in anticipation. [...] Putting itself back together two decades after being broken apart, the new AT&T faces an entirely different competitive environment. Phone companies and cable companies will soon be competing directly with each other not just for broadband customers, but also for TV and phone customers."

Ant wrote to mention a C|Net article with an interesting premise: Windows Vista's tough approach to spyware may put anti-spyware companies out of business. From the article: "While this may be good news for buyers of Vista, it is not for anyone who makes a living from selling anti-spyware software. The worldwide market has boomed recently, reaching $97 million in revenue in 2004, up 240.4 percent from a year earlier, according to IDC. However, companies such as Webroot Software and Sunbelt Software are in for tough times, analysts said."

Anonymous Coward writes "In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena sent to Google orders the turnover of the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."

CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead?

illeism writes "News.com is reporting that a California judge may force Google to give the feds at least some of the information it wanted. The feds may get some of Google's index of sites but none of the user search terms. From the article, the judge said he was 'reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny" when they type search terms into Google.com.'"

what about writes "News.com is reporting that the European Union still doesn't consider Microsoft in compliance with its anti-trust ruling." From the article: "Should the Commission issue a final decision against Microsoft, the software giant would face a retroactive fine of $2.36 million a day for the period between Dec. 15 and the date the final decision is issued. The Commission may then take additional steps to extend the daily fine until Microsoft complies with the order. The Commission's letter is just the latest action it has taken in the closely watched antitrust case. "

morganew writes "Jonathan Zuck has written a CNET Op-ed stating that the GPL 3 is about returning the flock to the faith, and is reminiscent of Savonarola's 'Bonfire of the Vanities', urging true believers to burn things that took their eyes off God. From Article: 'The commercial humanists such as Lawrence Lessig with his Creative Commons initiative have turned away from the Old Testament, and the GPL 3.0 license is a call to the faithful to reject these vanities'. Given the reaction by Linus Torvalds and nearly all the OSS business community to the GPL 3, are we going to see a break in the church?"

Steve Wilson writes "Cassatt Corporation has released new software that enables administrators with large J2EE farms to much more efficiently use their resources. In order to do this, it leverages the virtualization capabilities inherent in the JVM to create a single shared pool of hardware resources which which all J2EE applications can draw."

anadgouda writes "Aladdin Technologies is using cardio patterns to confirm identities. This can be eventually used for authentication and they say it offers better performance, cost and reliability. From the article: 'The technology reads intrinsic human electro-biometric dynamic signals acquired by touching a small conductive surface. The signature, called the BioDynamic Signature, is based on electronic signals produced from the human body, including the heart.'"

mytrip wrote to mention a C|Net article stating that Vista will not have a security backdoor after all. From the article: "'The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."