Byte Into It - 29 Oct 08

Hands on: Fennec alpha 1 puts Firefox on your handheld

Mozilla has announced the availability of the first Mobile Firefox alpha release. The project, which is codenamed Fennec, aims to bring the desktop Firefox browsing experience to mobile devices like MIDs and phone handsets. This early alpha release delivers a compelling user interface and demonstrates the impressive scope of the browser’s potential on diminutive devices, but suffers from performance limitations and instability that reflect the need for significant refinement before it’s mature enough for mainstream adoption.

Startup chipmaker hopes to hook enterprise with 1Gbps WiFi

Startup chipmaker Quantenna Communications says that it can push 1Gbps over regular WiFi without defying the laws of physics. This isn’t as hyped up as it sounds at first glance. The company’s initial goal is to cover houses with a combination of high bandwidth and mesh networking, making it possible to push multiple streams of video and data without glitches at slower rates—as fast as 100 to 200Mbps. Their future sights are set on the enterprise market where 1Gbps might mean something.

40 brilliant Gmail hints, hacks and secrets | News | TechRadar UK

Gmail goes from strength to strength as Google rolls out new features every few months.We’ve dug deep to bring you 40 top tips that’ll make you a Gmail super-user, with total control over every aspect of the service.

How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 1) [Mac Only] | MakeUseOf.com

I love my music and everything else that goes along with it. I love the fact that in my iTunes, every song is properly labelled, is nicely arranged alphabetically by artist and have their particular album artwork attached in high resolution. It is so much easier to search for the songs you want when almost all the fields (i.e. genre, artist, album, year) are completed. Every little bit of information helps Genius to find the songs which match the ones you are listening to, creating a playlist which suits your current musical mood.I grimace when I browse though some of my friends’ playlists and most of the songs are labelled “Track 1, Track 2…. Untitled Artist”. They must have some kind of ESP or monumental memorizing ability to remember what track is by which artist.

Listening to music on iTunes can be more than simply “listening”. It can turn into a pretty interactive hobby which for me, has become an obsession. A fairly rewarding one, at least. Here’s how you can convert from mere music-listening to actively interacting and expanding your music experience. In this part 1, I’ll show you how to enjoy your current music collection.

25 essential Firefox add-ons for power users | News | TechRadar UK

A bare copy of Firefox is a wonderful thing, but when you start stuffing it with add-ons it gets even better.So what are the best add-ons for power users? Here’s our top 25:

Featured Download: LastPass Adds Form Filler, Syncs Form Profiles and Passwords

Windows/Mac/Linux: Previously mentioned Firefox extension and Internet Explorer plugin LastPass has updated, adding an automatic form filler to help you save more time filling out forms on the web. We’ve been on a bit of a password syncing kick lately, what with Foxmarks adding support for password syncing and our own guide to syncing passwords with Dropbox, but LastPass’ seamless browser integration for syncing both passwords and forms could attract a lot of people. After all, these useful features earned LastPass its honorable mention in our Hive Five Best Password Managers less than a week after we covered it. LastPass is a free download, works anywhere Firefox and IE do.

Featured Firefox Extension: Foxmarks Updates, Adds Password Syncing

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Popular bookmark-syncing Firefox extension Foxmarks has expanded to support password syncing between your browsers. Many of you have been looking for a good way to sync your passwords since Google discontinued Browser Sync, and now Foxmarks is filling that very need. We told you Foxmarks had been testing password sync a few weeks ago, and now the latest version of the extension bears the fruits of that labor. Once you’ve updated, syncing your passwords is as simple as ticking the checkbox next to Passwords in the Sync tab of the Foxmarks preferences. You’ll need to set a pin to secure your passwords (Foxmarks uses AES 256-bit encryption), but Foxmarks takes care of the rest. It’s not as comprehensive as syncing your passwords with Dropbox and KeePass or 1Password since Foxmarks only syncs browser passwords, but if that’s all you need, this one’s a winner.

Google Operating System: How to start a linked YouTube video at a specific
point
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/embed-part-of-youtube-video.html<http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/10/13/start_a_linked_youtube_video_at_a_specific_point.html>

Digg - 52 Things To Do With Google

You can do a lot more than search the web with Google nowadays, from reading newspapers in languages you don’t speak to seeing the natural habitat of Komodo dragons.

Asustek to introduce Eee motherboards - TechSpot News

Asustek’s success with the Eee has led them to expand the line in numerous fashions, from creating desktop PC versions to making higher-power ultra slim versions available.

Now, Asustek is planning to expand the Eee line even further, with the introduction of Asustek Eee motherboards. No system specifications are available yet, but it’s easy to imagine that the boards would be similar in spec to existing Eee hardware. It’ll be interesting to see where they intend to compete with this board. They will most likely go up against the Atom and Pico-ITX platform.

Future Eee projects include potential touch screen units and more. What was just a short while ago nothing more than a cheap laptop has turned into an entire portfolio of hardware.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Cocoa Finder and 64-Bit Changes - Mac Rumors

With the broad seeding of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, a few more details have been revealed about the direction Apple is going with Snow Leopard. According to the seed notes, Apple is migrating more towards Cocoa (rather than Carbon) and continues the transitioning of Mac OS X to 64-bit operating system. AppleInsider recently explored some of the details surrounding the changes.

Apple states that almost all user-facing applications in Mac OS X have been written in Cocoa with Finder being the notable exception. Apple will finally be migrating Finder to Cocoa in Snow Leopard. Despite Cocoa having a reputation amongst end-users that it is "better" than Carbon, AppleInsider notes that both will continue to coexist.

For users, the move to Cocoa means that applications will have more consistent appearance and behavior. Apps that make use of standardized interface controls rather than building their own will not only be more familiar, but users will also benefit from the code exercise and reuse, which removes bugs and allows for centralized optimizations. In other words, Apple can address user interface problems that in turn impact all apps.
Apple is, however, focusing on Cocoa and is now requiring 64-bit applications to make the switch from Carbon. This new requirement announced at the 2007 WWDC caught some developers off-guard and is why Adobe's Photoshop CS4 remains a 32-bit application, while Windows CS4 already offers 64-bit support.

Apple - Business - Theater

Apple Shortcuts explained

http://www.apple.com/business/theater/#tutorial=shortcutsexplained?sr=hotnews?sr=hotnews.rss

plus a whole bunch of other interesting tid bits including Leopard server stuff

People Over Process » Getting used to a Mac - Applications and Behaviors for Every Day Use & Work

Much more so than when I used Windows, I use tons of third party applications on the Mac. On the one hand this is a (positive) testament to the integrated nature of Windows, on the other, it’s a testament to the vibrant third party ecosystem in Mac land.

There is no great, over-riding care for open source on the Mac as there is on Linux desktops. That said, there are many applications that are open source and still more that seem to follow the pre-OSS philosophies of freeware and shareware. What this means is that you often have to pay for software, but it’s also often free. The payments are trivial (usually US$5-30) and, at the same time, the open source software is often high quality.

Here are applications I often recommend for “business users” switching to Macs:

iTunes Folder Watch

This program is a companion for iTunes (Windows XP or Vista).
Are you frustrated that iTunes does not automatically detect new tracks in certain nominated folders and add them to the library automatically? This program does exactly that. It allows you to set up "Watch Folders" and to evaluate whether there are any new tracks in them which do not exist in iTunes, and allows you to add them selectively or fully automatically.

Firefly Media Server :: Home Page

The purpose of this project is built the best server software to serve digital music to the Roku Soundbridge and iTunes; to be able to serve the widest variety of digital music content over the widest range of devices. Current stable releases have been reported to run on Linux, all the BSDs, Solaris, AIX, and a variety of embedded devices such as the Linksys NSLU2, the Maxtor MSS, and the Buffalo Linkstation, to name but a few.

Current beta (or "nightly") versions run on Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP, as well.

Anapod Explorer™ iPod Software, iPod Backup, iTunes Alternative, iPod Transfer, iPod Manager, iPod Management, iPod Explorer, iPod Utility, iTunes Replacement, iPod Copy, iPod Freeware, iPod Managing, PC Software, Windows Software, Windows Vista Software,

Anapod Explorer, our flagship iPod product, is composed of Anapod Explorer itself, Anapod CopyGear, and Anapod PhotoSync. Anapod offers iPod management through full Windows Explorer integration under My Computer, drag and drop iPod copy, iPod transfer and iPod backup, PDA function support, photo and video transfer, web page interface access to your iPod through a built-in web server, search and reporting capabilities using a built-in SQL database

Hamachi Features From LogMeIn

LogMeIn Hamachi is a flexible VPN service that enables anyone to easily connect multiple internet-enabled computers into their own secure virtual network.

Jing Project: Visual conversation starts here. Mac or Windows.

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere. It's free.

Password Manager + Automatic Form Filler for Mac OS X

Too Many Passwords to Remember?

Byte Into It - 22 Oct 08

Keren's list of virtual worlds via the browser:

http://www.rocketon.com/

http://www.lively.com

http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html

http://www.multiverse.net/index.html

http://www.smeet.com

http://www.exitreality.com

Ballmer's tongue again causes trouble for Microsoft - Network World

Microsoft Thursday issued a statement saying it still has no interest in Yahoo after CEO Steve Ballmer said that for shareholders a deal would make economic sense.The company issued a terse statement to media around mid-day: "Our position hasn't changed. Microsoft has no interest in acquiring Yahoo; there are no discussions between the companies."
Read the latest WhitePaper - A Guide to Troubleshooting Application Problems

Ballmer's words alone were a decent deal for Yahoo shareholders, who saw the stock rise $2.19 per share in just more than 60 minutes following the CEO's remarks during his appearance at the Gartner Symposium in Florida. In the same time frame, Microsoft stock was up $2.10.

Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' figures revealed - Music | thevine.com.au

Radiohead's publishing company Warner Chappell is set to release the exact figures behind the 'pay what you like' model for In Rainbows.The band have been quiet on how many copies of the album they'd actually sold. The album was digitally released in October of 2007 and ever since the official response from management has been only that a "substantial" amount had been sold.

According to musically.com, Warner Chappell will reveal today that a total of three million copies of In Rainbows were offloaded, including box sets, CDs and all downloads including iTunes and pay-what-you-like downloads via the official site. Meaning that the venture was far a more successful release than previous albums Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, all of which instead sold in the low hundreds of thousands. In fact they made more money from In Rainbows on digital copies alone - before the CD even hit shops - than they did in total for previous album Hail To The Thief. And despite figures showing that more people downloaded it from BitTorrent search engines than bought it via legal means, the album has still gone on to shift 1.75 million copies of the physical release. Makes you feel a bit better about paying nothing?

The article states: "Really there seems little doubt that the experiment was a success fromboth Warner’s and the band’s perspective. For Warner it served to provea point that by licensing directly (ie outside the collecting societynetwork) and by offering a genuine one stop shop for licensing (iecombining all the digital rights into one offer from a single entity)the publisher was able to generate far more money for both themselvesand the band than would have been possible under the traditional system."

MPAA to EFF on RealDVD lawsuit: you're living in the past

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is firing back at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) over accusations that the organization is trying to limit innovation with its lawsuit over RealDVD. The MPAA said that the EFF's claims are "disingenuous and wrongheaded," and that Hollywood isn't "living in the past" like the EFF apparently is.
Related Stories* Judge temporarily halts sales of RealDVD in wake of lawsuit

"Forgive us if we take offense when the EFF and other activist organizations that continually take the side of those who profit from widespread copyright infringement attack our industry," wrote MPAA chief technology officer Jim Williams, according to a copy of the letter published by CNet. "It's a desperate throwback to the Napster days of old when (EFF would) pull out this tired and weathered playbook. It's not 2001 anymore. We've moved on. So should you."

Report: Motorola planning to join the social with Android (Updated)

Motorola is no stranger to open mobile platforms. Being a founding member of the LiMo Foundation, the Symbian Foundation, and the Open Handset Alliance, we weren't surprised when the company officially announced its plans earlier this month to introduce an Android phone. New rumors, however, say that the company is customizing the much-buzzed mobile OS to offer a "social smartphone."
Related Stories* Motorola's Linux strategy evolves with Android

As has become par for the course in the smartphone space, Motorola's phone is said to have a large iPhone-like touchscreen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a focus on social networking, according to BusinessWeek. Motorola is said to have been shopping spec sheets and mockups to carriers around the world for the past couple of months. The Android phone is slated to land in the US sometime around the second quarter 2009, carrying expectations that it can help reenergize Motorola's slumping handset division.

Hands on: Fennec alpha 1 puts Firefox on your handheld

Mozilla has announced the availability of the first Mobile Firefox alpha release. The project, which is codenamed Fennec, aims to bring the desktop Firefox browsing experience to mobile devices like MIDs and phone handsets. This early alpha release delivers a compelling user interface and demonstrates the impressive scope of the browser's potential on diminutive devices, but suffers from performance limitations and instability that reflect the need for significant refinement before it's mature enough for mainstream adoption.

RIAA now wants to avoid trial in innocent infringement case

The RIAA has apparently had a change of heart towards a Texas woman accused of sharing music over KaZaA when she was 16 years old. In Maverick v. Harper, the industry group has backed off its demand for a jury trial and has instead opted to accept a judge's $7,400 damage award: $200 for each of 37 songs downloaded in whole or in part by the RIAA's hired investigative gun, MediaSentry.
Related Stories* Judge: RIAA damages too high in innocent infringement case
* RIAA rejects damage award, forces trial, looks hypocritical
* Exonerated defendant sues RIAA for malicious prosecution
* Battle over attorneys fees' brewing between RIAA, ex-defendant

Whitney Harper admits to using KaZaA, but said that she had no idea that it was illegal to download and share music over P2P. She cited a lack of warnings from the KaZaA software that the music contained on the popular network was "stolen or abused copyrighted material" and a general lack of understanding of copyright infringement, P2P applications, and P2P networks.

The week in Microsoft: Vista SP2, Silverlight 2, Windows 7

Related Stories* The week in Microsoft: I'm a PC, Windows Live and Windows 7, and Delish
* The week in Microsoft: boy band, US economy, and Windows 7
* The week in Microsoft: Windows XP, Live Search, Silverlight
* Journals week in review: news from One Microsoft Way

Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2: watch this space. Microsoft has put up a knowledge base article placeholder for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2. Details are still scarce on the upcoming service pack, which may be released either in 2009 or 2010.

It's official: Windows 7 to ship as... Windows 7. Codename Windows 7 will be called Windows 7 when it is released. I bet you had to do a double take on that one, but yes, it is true.

Final release of Windows 7 to have kernel version 6.1. Windows 7 will be shipping with kernel version number 6.1, despite the fact that the name implies it will be 7.0. Microsoft's reasoning is that this will help with application compatibility.

Silverlight 2 lands for IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Silverlight 2 RTW (Release to Web) has now arrived for both Windows and Mac. The new version supports IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Opera and Konqueror support is still nowhere to be seen.

BBC NEWS | Health | Internet use 'good for the brain'

For middle-aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centres in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning.

The researchers say this might even help to counteract the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.

Startup chipmaker hopes to hook enterprise with 1Gbps WiFi

Startup chipmaker Quantenna Communications says that it can push 1Gbps over regular WiFi without defying the laws of physics. This isn't as hyped up as it sounds at first glance. The company's initial goal is to cover houses with a combination of high bandwidth and mesh networking, making it possible to push multiple streams of video and data without glitches at slower rates—as fast as 100 to 200Mbps. Their future sights are set on the enterprise market where 1Gbps might mean something.

15 Linux Music Players - Download your Favorite

There are a lot of great music players out there for Windows and Mac operating systems but so does Linux. Some of these players support almost anything, some don’t. Some are heavy on the system, some aren’t. I’ve compiled a list of most used Linux based music/media/audio players

40 brilliant Gmail hints, hacks and secrets | News | TechRadar UK

Gmail goes from strength to strength as Google rolls out new features every few months.We've dug deep to bring you 40 top tips that'll make you a Gmail super-user, with total control over every aspect of the service.

How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 1) [Mac Only] | MakeUseOf.com

I love my music and everything else that goes along with it. I love the fact that in my iTunes, every song is properly labelled, is nicely arranged alphabetically by artist and have their particular album artwork attached in high resolution. It is so much easier to search for the songs you want when almost all the fields (i.e. genre, artist, album, year) are completed. Every little bit of information helps Genius to find the songs which match the ones you are listening to, creating a playlist which suits your current musical mood.I grimace when I browse though some of my friends’ playlists and most of the songs are labelled “Track 1, Track 2…. Untitled Artist”. They must have some kind of ESP or monumental memorizing ability to remember what track is by which artist.

Listening to music on iTunes can be more than simply “listening”. It can turn into a pretty interactive hobby which for me, has become an obsession. A fairly rewarding one, at least. Here’s how you can convert from mere music-listening to actively interacting and expanding your music experience. In this part 1, I’ll show you how to enjoy your current music collection.

Record Label ‘Infringes’ Own Copyright, Site Pulled | TorrentFreak

The website of a record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself “The First Ever Donation Based Record Label”, but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug.QuoteUnquoteQuote Unquote Records is an Internet based record label, run by Bomb the Music Industry! and ‘The Arrogant Sons of Bitches’ frontman Jeff Rosenstock. A forward looking outfit, all artists on the label give their music away for free on the label’s website. Well, they would, if the webhost hadn’t have taken down the site for alleged copyright infringement

TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL: From Evil to Good: List of Formerly Closed-source Software

Increasing number of software applications are going the free/open-source way these days. Looks like more and more software companies and developers have seen the barriers of closed-source programs and have now fully realized the significance of freedom.Here are some of the most notable software packages which were published under a proprietary software license but later released as free and open source software. Note that some software from this list are still published commercially alongside their free and open-source version.

Adobe Flex
Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross platform, rich Internet applications based on the proprietary Adobe Flash platform. The initial release in March 2004 by Macromedia included a software development kit, an IDE, and a J2EE integration application known as Flex Data Services.

Adobe Flex was relicensed in 2007 under Mozilla Public License.

Apache Derby
Apache Derby is a Java relational database management system that can be embedded in Java programs and used for online transaction processing. It has a 2 MB disk-space footprint.

It was released as free and open-source software by IBM in 2004 and donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

Bitstream Vera
Bitstream Vera is a typeface (font) with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from Bitstream, and is closely based on Bitstream's Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It is a TrueType font with full hinting instructions, which improve its rendering quality on low-resolution devices such as computer monitors. The font has also been repackaged as a Type 1 PostScript font for LaTeX users, and is called Bera.

It was relicensed in 2003 through the efforts of Bitstream and the GNOME Foundation.

Blender
Blender is a 3D animation program which can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications.

Released in 1996 as proprietary, it was relicensed under GNU General Public License (GPL) in 2003.

Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by Apogee Software. It was released on January 29, 1996. Duke Nukem 3D features the adventures of Duke Nukem, a character that had previously appeared in the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II which were also published by Apogee.

Duke Nukem 3D was relicensed under GPL in 2003.

Doom
Doom is a 1993 computer game by id Software that is a landmark title in the first-person shooter genre, and in first person gaming in general. It is widely recognized for pioneering immersive 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming on the PC platform, and support for custom expansions (WADs).

Doom's source code was originally released under a restrictive license in 1997, but was later relicensed under GPL in 1999.

Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator, also known as Netscape, was once a proprietary web browser that was popular during the 1990s. Once the flagship product of Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant browser in usage share, its user base had almost completely evaporated by 2002, partly due to the inclusion of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser with the Windows operating system, but also due to lack of significant innovation after the late 1990s.

Netscape Navigator was later open-sourced in 1998 under Mozilla Public License.

id Tech
id Tech 2 and id Tech 3, formerly known as Quake II engine and Quake III Arena are game engines developed by id Software for use in their games, most notably the first-person shooter game Quake . Since its release, id Tech has been licensed for use in several other games.

id Tech 2 and id Tech 3 were relicensed in 2001 and 2005 respectively. They are both under GNU General Public License.

Java
Java is a programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun's Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode which can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture.

On 13 November 2006, Sun Microsystems released much of Java as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On 8 May 2007 Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code free and open source, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.

Movable Type
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on 3 September 2001, and version 1.0 was publicly released on 8 October 2001.

On 12 December 2007, Movable Type was relicensed as free software, under the GNU General Public License.

Qt
Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs (in which case it is known as a Widget toolkit), and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers. Qt is most notably used in KDE, the web browser Opera, Google Earth, Skype, Qtopia, Photoshop Elements and OPIE.

Released in 1991, Qt was relicensed in 1999 under Q Public License (QPL).

Open Sound System
The Open Sound System (OSS) is a standard interface for making and capturing sound in Unix operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices. The term also refers sometimes to the software in a Unix kernel that provides the OSS interface; in that sense it can be thought of as a device driver or collection of device drivers for sound controller hardware. The goal of OSS is to allow one to write a sound-based application program that works with any sound controller hardware, even though the hardware interface varies greatly from one type to another.

In July 2007, 4Front Technologies released sources for OSS under Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) for OpenSolaris and GPL for Linux. In January 2008, 4Front Technologies released OSS for FreeBSD (and other BSD systems) under BSD License.

Second Life
Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007.[4][5] A downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.

Second Life started as proprietary software in 2003, but was relicensed under GPL v2 in 2007.

SimCity
SimCity is a city-building simulation game, first released in 1989 and designed by Will Wright. SimCity was Maxis' first product, which has since been ported into various personal computers and game consoles, and enhanced into several different versions including SimCity 2000 in 1993, SimCity 3000 in 1999, SimCity 4 in 2003, and SimCity DS & SimCity Societies in 2007. The original SimCity was later renamed SimCity Classic. Until the release of The Sims in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of computer games made by Maxis.

On January 10 2008 the SimCity source code was released under the free software GPL 3 license. The release of the source code was related to the donation of SimCity software to the One Laptop Per Child laptop, as one of the principles of the OLPC laptop is the use of free and open source software.

Solaris
The Solaris Operating System, usually known simply as Solaris, is a free Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1992 as the successor to SunOS.

Solaris is certified against the Single Unix Specification. Although it was historically developed as proprietary software, a majority of its codebase is now open source software as OpenSolaris.

Watcom C compiler
The Watcom C/C++ compiler is esteemed amongst DOS developers by the high execution speed of the compiled code it produces and for having been one of the first compilers to support the Intel 80386 "protected mode". In the mid-1990s, some of the most technically ambitious DOS games such as Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were built using Watcom C.

The Free version was released as OpenWatcom in 2003.

TechBlog: T-Mobile's G1 with Google is no iPhone – but it's close

Having been an iPhone 3G owner since July, I was prepared to not be too impressed with the T-Mobile G1, the very first mobile phone to use Google's Android software as its operating system. The photos from its unveiling made it look big and clunky, and screen shots of the software seemed almost cartoonish in design.But as a product manager for T-Mobile admitted to me, the G1 "doesn't photograph well". It's a lot more exciting in person -- it's sleeker than you think, and the software is quite impressive for an initial version. No, neither the hardware nor the software are as elegant as that of the iPhone, but the G1 is a close runner-up. Of the smartphones out there, it's the closest contender yet.

I've been using a review unit for about a week, long enough to find both things I like and things I think need fixing. The best news about the G1 is that not only can T-Mobile fix its flaws, so can any other skilled programmer.

That's because, like the iPhone, the G1 has a place you can go to download new applications for it. The G1 Market, like the iTunes App Store, is increasingly full of useful programs. But unlike the App Store, there's no gatekeeper for the applications. Anyone can write a program and add it to the Market.

What this means is that, yes, quality is going to vary wildly. But G1 users will be able to rate and review apps, and it should become quickly apparent when a program is junk. This open system also means that features that are missing or don't work well could be overcome by downloadable applications.

25 essential Firefox add-ons for power users | News | TechRadar UK

A bare copy of Firefox is a wonderful thing, but when you start stuffing it with add-ons it gets even better.So what are the best add-ons for power users? Here's our top 25:

Featured Download: LastPass Adds Form Filler, Syncs Form Profiles and Passwords

Windows/Mac/Linux: Previously mentioned Firefox extension and Internet Explorer plugin LastPass has updated, adding an automatic form filler to help you save more time filling out forms on the web. We've been on a bit of a password syncing kick lately, what with Foxmarks adding support for password syncing and our own guide to syncing passwords with Dropbox, but LastPass' seamless browser integration for syncing both passwords and forms could attract a lot of people. After all, these useful features earned LastPass its honorable mention in our Hive Five Best Password Managers less than a week after we covered it. LastPass is a free download, works anywhere Firefox and IE do.

Featured Firefox Extension: Foxmarks Updates, Adds Password Syncing

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Popular bookmark-syncing Firefox extension Foxmarks has expanded to support password syncing between your browsers. Many of you have been looking for a good way to sync your passwords since Google discontinued Browser Sync, and now Foxmarks is filling that very need. We told you Foxmarks had been testing password sync a few weeks ago, and now the latest version of the extension bears the fruits of that labor. Once you've updated, syncing your passwords is as simple as ticking the checkbox next to Passwords in the Sync tab of the Foxmarks preferences. You'll need to set a pin to secure your passwords (Foxmarks uses AES 256-bit encryption), but Foxmarks takes care of the rest. It's not as comprehensive as syncing your passwords with Dropbox and KeePass or 1Password since Foxmarks only syncs browser passwords, but if that's all you need, this one's a winner.

Byte Into It - 15 Oct 08

Interview with Jeff Waugh.

Jeff Waugh:
http://bethesignal.org/

http://www.olpc.org.au/
**
News:
OzPoliCon 2008: Australia's politico bloggers and online activists
conference
http://www.australianpoliticstv.com/ozpolicon08

Blog Action Day 2008
http://www.blogactionday.org/

The Learn About Poverty Blog Action Day Competition
http://learnaboutpoverty.org/2008/10/09/blog-action-day-competition/

Lawrence Lessig: In defense of piracy
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB122367645363324303.html

Google Operating System: How to start a linked YouTube video at a specific
point
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/embed-part-of-youtube-video.html<http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/10/13/start_a_linked_youtube_video_at_a_specific_point.html>

Russian researchers achieve 100-fold increase in WPA2 cracking speed - Security and the Net

Russian security company Elcomsoft just posted a press release (original PDF) detailing a new method to crack WPA and WPA2 keys:

With the latest version of Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery, it is now possible to crack WPA and WPA2 protection on Wi-Fi networks up to 100 times quicker with the use of massively parallel computational power of the newest NVIDIA chips. Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery only needs a few packets intercepted in order to perform the attack.

The 100-fold increase in speed is achieved with two GeForct GTX280’s per workstation; for €599 you can build a network of 20 workstations dedicated to “recovering” your “lost” WPA keys. This means that a WPA or WPA2 key could be cracked in days or weeks instead of years.

Slashdot | Bugs Delay Release of Debian Lenny

over 200 release-critical bugs continue to push back Debian Lenny's release date. Originally slated for a September release, there is still a long road to be traveled before Lenny sees the light of day. Project leader Steve McIntyre says they may consider dropping some packages for the release if they continue to cause problems, and while an end of October release is the goal, only time will tell.

Screenshots of Firefox Mobile for Windows Mobile Finally Surface - ReadWriteWeb

Firefox Mobile looks to be coming to a Windows Mobile device near you very soon. With a reported Acid3 Test score of 88/100, the mobile web browser looks nearly complete in the screenshots that have surfaced. The address bar is reminiscent of Safari on the iPhone. However, it takes a visual cue from Firefox 3 with the addition of website favicons. Screenshots also show a really unique way for web surfers to visualize what tabs are open in Firefox Mobile. Mozilla may be foregoing traditional 'forward', 'stop', and 'back' buttons located in the address bar. Instead, the screenshots show on-page text boxes that indicate these actions.

Digg - Why OpenOffice 3.0 Just Became An Even Better Alternative

OpenOffice.org is a free, open-source office suite that's a serious alternative to pricey products such as Microsoft Office. It strikes me as a no-brainer to at least try it when you're in the market for an updated productivity suite, because it costs you nothing but your time. OpenOffice 3.0 is a significant upgrade and, again, is completely free.

What's Next After Web 2.0 - ReadWriteWeb

e're clearly now at a point where the financial problems of the world will have a big impact on where Web Technology is headed. Indeed, it looks like we've arrived at one of those giant inflexion points - where one Web era is usurped by another.

Of course this last happened when Web 2.0 was coined by O'Reilly Media in about 2004. Luckily not long before that ReadWriteWeb was born (early 2003). So ReadWriteWeb has been documenting Web 2.0 ever since. Over the past couple of years, we've been focusing on other, perhaps more meaningful, trends - Semantic Web, recommendation technologies, web sites becoming web services, Mobile Web and more. We've documented these meta trends in a number of big posts, some of which are in our Best of ReadWriteWeb page and copied here:

* Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond
* What's Next on the Web: a ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008
* 2008 Web Predictions
* 10 Future Web Trends
* 10 More Future Web Trends

Slashdot | Microsoft's New Programming Language, "M"

"Microsoft announced Friday their new 'M' language, designed especially for building textual domain-specific languages and software models with XAML. Microsoft will also announce Quadrant, for building and viewing models visually, and a repository for storing and combining models using a SQL Server database. While some say the language is simply their 'D' language renamed to a further letter down the alphabet, the language is criticized for lack of a promised cross-platform function because of its ties to MS SQL server, which only runs on Windows."

Digg - 52 Things To Do With Google

You can do a lot more than search the web with Google nowadays, from reading newspapers in languages you don't speak to seeing the natural habitat of Komodo dragons.

Artists See a Future With BitTorrent | TorrentFreak

Giving away music for free might not sound like a very solid business model to most people, but it is. Most artists make most money from concerts and merchandise, not so much album sales. Even more so, the key to success are the fans, and what better way to introduce people to your music by giving it away for free?

A whole new generation of artists, most of who grew up with Napster, Limewire and BitTorrent, are starting to utilize the power of filesharing networks. This year alone, thousands of albums were released online for free, and this number is growing at an increasing rate. The possibilities are endless. Some artists use sites like Jamendo, others go for mainstream BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova, and yet another group prefers niche BitTorrent communities such as What.cd.

On What.cd, one of the larger music communities with over 60,000 members, artists have found a particularly successful outlet. In fact, the free albums are particularly popular, and often among the most downloaded. The music minded members, of which quite a few are artists themselves, are very appreciative of every new album. This August a compilation CD was released with tracks from 19 artists who uploaded their music to the site. This CD, titled “The What CD” is the most active torrent of all time on the tracker.

Linux Summit will preview new advanced file system

The problem with contemporary file systems, Ts'o said, is that -- following Moore's Law -- file sizes have grown bigger, and disk drives have doubled in capacity every couple of years. While the file system error rate per megabyte has remained constant, the increase in volume has created performance and quality control problems for large data centers, which find data more difficult to manage, he said.

In addition, data centers today want to be able to do things they didn't dream of in the 1970s, like merge data from multiple hard drives, Ts'o said. Another challenge is the switch from conventional hard drives to solid-state disks, which use less power and retrieve data at a uniform rate irrespective of location but have lower overall performance than hard drives, he said. So file systems today need to be adaptable to the hardware people want to use and how they actually use it, he said.

But changing the file system to fix the scalability and functional limitations of ext3, the default file system in many popular Linux distributions, requires a significant education outreach. Because the consequences of data loss are so severe, data center managers are reluctant to trust their data to new file systems, Ts'o said. New-system information needs to be shared well ahead of time, including a roadmap of coming features so IT professionals know what to expect, he said. That's where the Linux Foundation's event hopes to make inroads.

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for October 2008: 11 bulletins

Microsoft will issue four Security Bulletins on Tuesday, and it will host a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins the following day (October 15 at 11:00 AM PDT, if you're interested). Four of the vulnerabilities are marked as "Critical," six are rated "Important," and one is considered to be "Moderate." The first four earned the rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. Eight of the 11 updates will require a restart.

New Zealand's copyright minister starts screaming when asked whether it's fair to cut people off from the Internet on the basis of three unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringement - Boing Boing

When we suggested that natural justice would imply that it was unreasonable to withdraw Internet access based on an accusation, she reiterated her position that something had to be done and that ISPs had to do it. ISPs, she said, need to negotiate with the licence holders to put in a regime to prevent copyright infringements. The licence holders’ associations had assured her that they would not be unreasonable.

In response to being told that it is technically impossible for ISPs to tell what people are doing, Judith said that it had been done for child pornography and that ISPs need to apply the same standards. It was pointed out that the state defines objectionable material, possession of which is a crime, but there’s no equivalent definition for copyright, infringement of which is a civil matter to be determined by courts.

Of all the unreasonable and awful proposals to come out of the entertainment industry, none is so bad as the three-strikes rule, a rule that would leave everyday people vulnerable to having the connection that brings them freedom of speech, of assembly and the press, the link that connects them to family, school, work and government, terminated because someone, somewhere made three accusations of copyright infringement, without having to offer a shred of evidence.

WalMart now says they'll keep the DRM servers on forever - Boing Boing

After announcing that they'd be shutting off their DRM servers and nuking their customers' music collections, Wal*Mart has changed their mind. Now they've told their customers that they'll be keeping these servers online indefinitely -- which means that they'll be paying forever for their mistaken kowtowing to the entertainment industry's DRM mania.

All those companies (cough Amazon cough Apple cough) that say they're only doing DRM for now, until they can convince the stupid entertainment execs to ditch it, heed this lesson: you will spend the rest of your corporate life paying for this mistake, maintaining infrastructure whose sole purpose is to lock your customers into a technology restriction that no one really believes in. Welcome to the infinite cost of doing business with Hollywood.

Entertainment industry made up $250 billion/750,000 jobs losses due to piracy - Boing Boing

With Customs a dead end, we dove into press archives, hoping to find the earliest public mention of the elusive 750,000 jobs number. And we found it in—this is not a typo—1986. Yes, back in the days when "Papa Don't Preach" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" topped the charts, The Christian Science Monitor quoted then-Commerce Secretary Malcom Baldridge, trumpeting Ronald Reagan's own precursor to the recently passed PRO-IP bill. Baldridge estimated the number of jobs lost to the counterfeiting of U.S. goods at "anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000."

Where did that preposterously broad range come from? As with the number of licks needed to denude a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Ars submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Commerce this summer, hoping to uncover the basis of Baldridge's claim—or any other Commerce Department estimates of job losses to piracy—but came up empty. So whatever marvelous proof the late secretary discovered was not to be found in the margins of any document in the government's vaults. But no matter: By 1987, that Brobdignagian statistical span had been reduced, as far as the press were concerned, to "as many as 750,000" jobs. Subsequent reportage dropped the qualifier. The 750,000 figure was still being bandied about this summer in support of the aforementioned PRO-IP bill...

XKCD strip explains how DRM creates piracy - Boing Boing

XKCD strip explains how DRM creates piracy

BBC NEWS | Technology | Firefox users gain location tool

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps websites detect the physical location of computers.

The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town.

The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Users will have control over how much location information they give.

It uses technology from a firm called Skyhook which works out a computer's location from nearby wireless networks.

Its so-called Loki system can determine location within seconds with an accuracy of about 10 to 20 metres.

YouTube fumbles remote with full-length TV shows

As part of YouTube's ongoing effort to make some money, the site has begun testing full-length TV episodes. For YouTube, a video portal built almost entirely on user-generated content (UGC), this is another important step into a realm where Big Content giants stomp about and offer their magic beans only to the worthy. But the move also betrays just how much more work YouTube needs to do; offering a bit of Sulu won't be enough to best Hulu.
Related Stories

* Rumors fly about Google acquisition of YouTube
* Google buys YouTube
* YouTube's future (or lack thereof)

During this test run, YouTube features a handful of complete episodes from four TV shows: Beverly Hills 90210, MacGyver, Star Trek: The Original Series, and The Young and The Restless. Shows can be displayed in the typical YouTube video player or broken out in a new "Theater View" that widens the player horizontally, knocks most other elements down the page, and "dims the lights" on the rest of the page (save for a banner ad just above the video). Various pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads are placed in an episode's typical TV commercial spots, and the timeline controls dim during ads so that they cannot be paused, skipped, or muted.

OpenOffice 3.0 released amid fears of development stagnation

As the OOo project increases in relevance, some friction has emerged between the growing number of stakeholders with different agendas. Allegations continually emerge that Sun's management of the project is impeding acceptance of some third-party code contributions and is deterring additional corporate involvement. Novell's Michael Meeks, a very active OpenOffice.org developer and a frequent critic of Sun, expressed some new concerns last week in anticipation of the release.

Novell maintains an OOo patchset which includes a number of changes that developers haven't been able to push upstream to Sun's version for a variety of reasons. Many of these patches maintained by Novell provide important features that are valuable to Linux users, including support for embedded multimedia via GStreamer, faster startup time, improved Excel interoperability, support for 3D slide transitions in Impress, and support for Mono-based automation and scripting. Many mainstream desktop Linux distributions now package Novell's version instead of the one from Sun, because of these improvements.

Sun's process for vetting new features is often viewed as excessively bureaucratic by third-party contributors and some are also concerned about Sun's copyright assignment requirements. Novell's patchset ensures that the improvements made by users who are unwilling to accommodate Sun's procedural requirements will eventually reach users and don't just languish indefinitely in the bug report system. Sun has responded to concerns from the third-party developer community by improving the contributor agreement and making an effort to act on community feedback. Critics, however, argue that Sun needs to turn over control to an independent foundation so that contributors will not have to assign copyright directly to Sun.

EU reminds us to lose the distraction, turn the volume down

The European Commission, concerned about the fate of all those Parisian teens drowning out the noise of le Metro with bad techno, asked the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks to look at the issue of personal music players and hearing loss. That report, released today, concludes that headphones "produce minimal risk of hearing impairment for the majority of PMP [personal music player] users."

But the players aren't without risk, The combination of duration and high volume is a toxic one, and it has long been recognized in industrial settings that noise can damage people's hearings. The EU therefore says that factories cannot expose workers to noise above 80dB(A) for more than 40 hours a week. And each additional 3dB(A) of volume increase means that the duration has to be cut in half; at 83dB(A), workers can only be exposed for 20 hours a week.

With earbuds capable of pumping out maximum volume levels of 80-115dB(A), it's clear that people need to be careful with their music. At 115dB(A), the limit is a mere half a minute.

Few people listen this loudly, but the EU does find that 5-10 percent of PMP users "are at high risk of developing permanent hearing loss after five or more years of exposure. Those are the individuals listening to music over one hour a day at high volume control setting [sic]."

The results of taking Spinal Tap's advice, turning it up to 11
(Table based on WHO data)

These aren't epidemic-type numbers, but the report does go on to point out that hearing loss isn't the only side effect of noise exposure. Reading acquisition, for instance, is affected in children. Almost 20 studies have found that chronic noise exposure leads to delayed reading skills in kids, and "there are no contradictory findings." Noise (airplanes overhead, loud motorways) may also lead to decreased performance in school, less motivation to achieve, and even higher blood pressure.

But, for my purposes as a writer, the most interesting result is buried in a brief paragraph on page 56. "The more boring, repetitive, and simple a task is, the more will it benefit, both in quality and quantity, from being performed in noise (Kryter 1994). On the other hand, the more complex and difficult a task is, the more it is prone to be hampered by excessive sounds."

BBC blames Apple DRM for holding up iPlayer downloads

The BBC gas updated its iPlayer offerins once again, adding the ability to download TV shows for viewing on portable media players. Unfortunately, the BBC is using Windows Media DRM for the content, meaning that iPod and iPhone owners are still out of luck. The BBC's Online Media Group head, Anthony Rose, even made a comment about the situation, chiding Apple for keeping its DRM under lock and key rather than licensing it.

The BBC has had to work around the iPhone's lack of DRM support before, although the result was somewhat less than ideal. In this case, it seems that there's a restriction preventing the BBC from offering DRM-free downloads, so we're not going to see a similar concession this time. Rose claims that the issue has the BBC's "full attention," since the inability of iPod owners to download the iPlayer content is a pretty big omission. The BBC is a large organization, so it might be able to work out some sort of deal with Apple that would let the content work on iPods. Or it might not.

Additionally, the TV downloads only work through Windows for the time being. iPlayer uses a method called "sideloading" (downloading and then copying) to get content on to media players, therefore it still requires a computer that works with the Windows Media Protected content. Because of this, neither OS X nor Linux can be used to download the TV shows at the moment, although the BBC has a release coming "very soon" that will improve iPlayer options for users of those two operating systems. Whether that means TV downloads on the Mac is anyone's guess, but I'm betting that the answer is "no."

Asustek to introduce Eee motherboards - TechSpot News

Asustek's success with the Eee has led them to expand the line in numerous fashions, from creating desktop PC versions to making higher-power ultra slim versions available.

Now, Asustek is planning to expand the Eee line even further, with the introduction of Asustek Eee motherboards. No system specifications are available yet, but it's easy to imagine that the boards would be similar in spec to existing Eee hardware. It'll be interesting to see where they intend to compete with this board. They will most likely go up against the Atom and Pico-ITX platform.

Future Eee projects include potential touch screen units and more. What was just a short while ago nothing more than a cheap laptop has turned into an entire portfolio of hardware.

Windows 7 to be officially named... Windows 7 - TechSpot News

As the Professional Developers Conference approaches, Microsoft plans not only to discuss their currently code-named Windows 7 product but also to distribute a pre-beta version among attendees. Many have been wondering what the official name will be once the next release of Windows hits the streets.

In a quick announcement today on the company’s Windows Vista Team Blog, Mike Nash, the corporate vice president of Windows product management revealed what some already suspected: Windows 7 will be officially called… Windows 7. He went on to explain that the company opted to keep the '7' name for simplicity – as this is the seventh release of Windows – and because Microsoft doesn't want to come up with a new “aspirational” name that simply wouldn’t do justice to their goal of staying firmly rooted in the ideas of Vista while evolving and refining the operating system.

MacBook Pro updated: now sports integrated and discrete GPU

While the MacBook Pros have been made out of aluminum since their inception, the manufacturing process has changed in this carnation of Apple's high-end laptop. The machines are now being made using the company's new unibody manufacturing technique, which involves using a solid piece of aluminum and then removing chunks, rather than joining what would have been multiple parts together and then welding. Also new to the exterior is the iMac-inspired black bezel surrounding the screen. Speaking of the screen, the resolution nor the size have changed; however, you now have no choice in screen finish: you will be buying a LED-backlit glossy model if you want to sport a new MacBook Pro. Also immediately apparent is the buttonless, glass, multi-touch trackpad.Unlike the MacBooks, the MacBook Pro line did not see a brand change in GPU as the Pro was already using NVIDIA chipsets. What it did see is kind of an unusual turn that I'm not sure anyone saw coming: the new line has both integrated and discrete graphics processors. Under normal use, the portables will use NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M integrated (read: shared) processor with 256MB of RAM, but when needed, it can be ramped up to the discrete GeForce 9600M GT with either 256MB of memory on the low end and 512MB on the highend. The reason for this departure from the norm seems to be battery life. Apple claims that while using the 9400M, users can see up to a full hour more of battery-powered use.

Byte Into It - 08 Oct 08

Mozilla CEO John Lilly: Firefox Mobile Alphas coming “in a few weeks” » Unwired View

Mozilla CEO John Lilly: Firefox Mobile Alphas coming “in a few weeks”

In an interview that started with Mozilla CEO John Lilly explaining how he runs the company to San Jose Mercury News reporter Pete Carey, it was revealed that the first Firefox Mobile alphas could be released in “a few weeks.”

Pictured: The amazing bendy TV screen that folds up to fit in your pocket | Mail Online

Bendy screen

In operation: A snapshot of the running all-organic 2D-display

Traditional flat-screen televisions could soon become a thing of the past, as scientists have revealed an ultra-thin, flexible screen that could fold up and fit in your pocket.

The bendy screens - less than a millimetre thick - could be used for televisions, computers and phones, and may pave the way for easy-to-carry digital newspaper displays, which readers could upload their news on to daily.

Some speculate that the technology could even lead to wearable TV jackets, flexible laptop screens, and TV blankets.

Google contributes more code to WINE

With the recent release of Picasa 3 Beta for Linux, Google has contributed more code to the WINE project.

WINE is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems). It can be thought of as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs on Linux. WINE does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code. With WINE you can run such programs as Microsoft Office and games like Counter Strike on your Linux machine.

Another popular application is Adobe’s Photoshop CS2 and here Google has been very active.

In January 2006, Google (working with CodeWeavers the commerical arm of the WINE project) improved WINE so Picasa 2.2 would run. This effort resulted in 225 patches committed to the WINE project.

Their work continued in 2007, committing a few dozen patches and they also worked again with CodeWeavers to improve Wine so it could run Photoshop CS2 properly. As a result, about 200 patches were committed to the WINE project.

Torvalds talks about his brand new blog | NetworkWorld.com Community

We tend to think that everybody who's anybody in the tech world has a blog, right? Well, Linus Torvalds didn't have a blog, at least not until dipping his toe into the waters with this one -- "Linus' Blog" -- which launched last Thursday.

Linus TorvaldsThere's not a lot there yet -- three posts -- and Torvalds tells me that he sees the undertaking as an experimental outlet for personal thoughts and family expressions. However, with the Torvalds name being practically synonymous with Linux, people are already beginning to take notice.

Australian ISPs offer US advice, smugness, on net neutrality

For years, US Internet service providers have been offering their users unlimited access to the web, creating high expectations among customers who have never had to think before accessing content. As that content has shifted from text to music to video, however, ISPs have found that living up to the promise of "all-you-can-eat" broadband can be expensive in a nation of gluttons.

One symptom of this problem is the industry's opposition to net neutrality, which would prevent ISPs from profiting on specific services or content, or degrading and blocking others. In the midst of this fight, the executives of several ISPs in Australia have weighed in, suggesting that they've solved this problem already and that their US counterparts should pay attention to their model.

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection -- only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans - Boing Boing

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.

Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

MPAA spokeslawyers insist that they not be identified by name in reports from press-conference - Boing Boing

The MPAA is suing RealNetworks for making a product that will rip a DVD, crap it up with DRM, and store it on your hard-drive. The MPAA says that only their stupid DRM, and not RealNetworks' stupid DRM, can be used to cripple DVDs. My take? A pox on both their houses.

Except this:

Lawyers for the MPAA, in a teleconference with reporters, said Kaleidesape and RealDVD are circumventing "technology designed to prevent copying."

The lawyers, who asked that their names not be published, said they were concerned "Consumers will think this is a legal product...when in fact it is totally illegal."

US Customs: Sketching an SUV makes you a copyright infringer - Boing Boing

"A woman stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the border, over a drawing of an SUV in her notebook. They thought the artist and college professor was an industrial spy and copyright infringer."

IFPI Loses Another P2P ‘Wireless Defense’ Case | TorrentFreak

A man accused of being a music pirate has been cleared by a Danish court. The man denied the claims of the IFPI, based on his assertion that someone else must have accessed his wireless router to commit the infringements. This is the second major defeat for the IFPI in Denmark over the so-called ‘wireless defense’.

The music industry anti-piracy lobby IFPI has taken a severe beating in Denmark recently. In September the major Danish ISPs issued a joint statement rejecting the IFPI’s demands for a ‘3 strikes’ agreement aimed at ultimately disconnecting alleged pirates from the Internet, labeling it as a “contravention of the law”. However, the defeats don’t end there.

The IFPI also accused two Danish women of being Internet pirates, after they claimed to have monitored illicit file-sharing activities on an IP address registered to one of them. The IFPI demanded $62,000 in compensation from the pair, stating that even if their Wi-Fi had been used without their knowledge, they are ultimately responsible for what happens on their Internet connection. Eventually a court ruled in favor of the women and acquitted them of all charges, much to the displeasure of the IFPI.

Data-mining sucks: official report - Boing Boing

A multi-year National Research Council review of data-mining as a means of discovering terrorists has concluded that this just doesn't work very well, and that it ends up harming and harassing -- and terrorizing -- innocents whose only crime is to have a profile that some database-designer thinks is hinky.

The report was written by a committee whose members include William Perry, a professor at Stanford University; Charles Vest, the former president of MIT; W. Earl Boebert, a retired senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories; Cynthia Dwork of Microsoft Research; R. Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle's police chief; and Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google.

They admit that far more Americans live their lives online, using everything from VoIP phones to Facebook to RFID tags in automobiles, than a decade ago, and the databases created by those activities are tempting targets for federal agencies. And they draw a distinction between subject-based data mining (starting with one individual and looking for connections) compared with pattern-based data mining (looking for anomalous activities that could show illegal activities).

But the authors conclude the type of data mining that government bureaucrats would like to do--perhaps inspired by watching too many episodes of the Fox series 24--can't work. "If it were possible to automatically find the digital tracks of terrorists and automatically monitor only the communications of terrorists, public policy choices in this domain would be much simpler. But it is not possible to do so."

Michael Moore on Slacker Uprising’s Piracy ‘Problem’ | TorrentFreak

Michael Moore decided to give away his latest film ‘Slacker Uprising’ for free, but only to people in the US and Canada. However, since he chose to use BitTorrent, and open trackers such as The Pirate Bay, it was fairly easy for the rest of the world to download it as well. Was this done on purpose? Moore respond

Ballmer denies involvement in Vista Capable - Software - iTnews Australia

n a written deposition to court Steve Ballmer has denied all knowledge of the Vista Capable marketing program that resulted in a class action suit against his company.

The prosecution had been hoping to get Ballmer on the stand to justify the program but this now seems unlikely in light of his written statement.

In his deposition Ballmer said he was kept informed on the campaign by Jim Allchin, Microsoft's retired co-president for platforms, products and services, and Will Poole, the former senior vice president for Windows client business, who has since left the company.

“I was not involved in establishing the requirements computers must satisfy to qualify for the Windows Vista Capable program,” the deposition reads.

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Computer game boosts maths scores

A daily dose of computer games can boost maths attainment, according to a study carried out in Scottish schools.

Learning and Teaching Scotland - the main organisation for the development of the curriculum - analysed the effect of a "brain training" game.

It also found improvements in pupils' concentration and behaviour.

The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scotland using the Brain Training from Dr Kawashima game on the Nintendo DS every day.

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Oxbridge lectures play on iTunes

Oxford and Cambridge University are to make lectures by leading academics available through iTunes.

Cambridge says it will bring the work of its Nobel prize-winning academics in reach of a much wider public.

Oxford University says it will publish 150 hours of video and audio material of lectures and ideas from "world-leading thinkers".

These are the latest UK universities to provide free education content through the online downloading software.

YouTube intros links to buy music featured in videos

The next time you see a video on Google and wonder to yourself, "What is that awesome song they're using in the soundtrack?" you may be able to find out, and even buy it directly from the page. Google has begun adding links to some of its video pages that point users to where they can purchase the media found in the videos they're watching, starting with partner videos (those uploaded directly by companies and content owners who have an agreement with YouTube). Now, when you watch music videos from EMI, for example, you'll see links to buy the featured song on Amazon or iTunes.

Motorola's Linux strategy evolves with Android

Motorola was one of the first major handset makers to embrace the Linux platform. Its earliest Linux-based phones were popular in China, enabling the company to sell over 5 million of the penguin-powered devices by 2006. Following that initial victory, Motorola brought its Linux phones to the US with its global launch of the Razr2 in 2007. Motorola's current Linux lineup features eight LiMo-compatible handsets and the company boasts that its total sales of Linux-based phones has exceeded 14 million as of this year.

Plunging costs show there's plenty of backbone bandwidth

Prices for data transit continue to plunge, according to new research out from TeleGeography, and they're falling by almost 40 percent a year. Despite all the doom-and-gloom from ISPs, who claim they need to impose bandwidth caps and throttling in order to keep the bits flowing, the news is a reminder that the world's backbone providers actually have huge surpluses of capacity and that transit costs are plummeting faster than the US stock market.

Not all ISPs pay for transit, of course; the larger ones are able to "peer" freely with other large ISPs. "Transit" applies between ISPs who don't agree to freely swap data from each other's networks, and it's a major expense for local ISPs that need to purchase all of their bandwidth. (See our in-depth guide to peering and transit for a detailed discussion of the pricing and politics of the process.)

MySpace, Facebook holding mobile social networking back

Social networking made the leap from desktops to mobile phones a long time ago, and a new report suggests that MySpace and Facebook still dominate even on the small screen. Too bad the two market leaders may be doing more harm than good to mobile social networking.

The report, published by ABI Research, says that nearly half (46 percent) of social networking users have visited one such network on a mobile phone. Among these mobile socializers, almost 70 percent of them visited MySpace, while another 67 percent hit Facebook. Even though the mobile social networking landscape is rich with competitors, especially those innovating with location-based services, no other network garnered even 15 percent of mobile adoption.

It should come as no surprise that the most important activities to mobile socializers are checking on new messages and comments from friends (50 percent of users), and posting status updates (45 percent) to let others know what they are doing.

“The social network is increasingly becoming a central hub for communication across online and mobile domains for many consumers,” said research director Michael Wolf. “To a degree, it allows them to centralize messaging, communication and even digital media consumption through a centralized property on various screens. We believe this centralization of a consumer’s digital lifestyle through social networks will only increase adoption of mobile social networking in coming years.”

750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on P2P: Page 1

If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you'll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion. The first is the number of U.S. jobs supposedly lost to intellectual property theft; the second is the annual dollar cost of IP infringement to the U.S. economy. These statistics are brandished like a talisman each time Congress is asked to step up enforcement to protect the ever-beleaguered U.S. content industry. And both, as far as an extended investigation by Ars Technica has been able to determine, are utterly bogus.

Apple finally drops NDA, iPhone developers rejoice

Apple has announced via its Apple Developer Connection website that it has dropped the NDA that has left iPhone developers frustrated since the release of iPhone OS 2.0 this past July. In a note addressed "To Our Developers," Apple finally admitted that the NDA had "created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success."

Apple snoozes, researcher discloses risky iPhone UI flaws

Apple is arguably getting more proactive about iPhone security exploits. The iPhone OS 2.0 release fixed quite a few bugs, and last month's 2.1 update was no security slouch either. Still, in the face of Apple recruiting full-time iPhone hackers, an Israeli researcher has released details on two potentially dangerous—though seemingly innocuous—design flaws that he says the company has ignored for too long.

Ex

Infinite reboots plague some early Apple TV 2.2 adopters (Updated)

Remember that Apple TV 2.2 update that we were all fawning over this morning? The one with all the awesome new features, like buying HD TV episodes straight from the device and the ability to play music video playlists? It turns out that once again, not all that glitters is gold in the Apple world, because this update is breaking many users' Apple TVs.

iPhone gives Pandora twice as many new users daily

The Pandora personalized radio streaming service was already a popular destination before Apple's App Store launched over the summer, but the launch of the Pandora iPhone application has apparently caused the site to really take off. Founder Tim Westergren spoke about the iPhone's effect on Pandora and a variety of other topics during his keynote at the Digital Music Forum West conference and, according to paidContent, revealed that the device has caused a substantial increase in the amount of new Pandora users.

Apple Brick rumours building - Business - iTnews Australia

The web has been buzzing with rumours that a new Apple product, code-named Brick, would be announced in an industry keynote on October 14th.

Some commentators have guessed that the announcement, which is likely to become one of Steve Jobs' infamous 'just one more thing' teasers, would be a new notebook design, or even a refresh of the Mac Mini.

One wag even suggested that Brick would be a new OS and that it was so named because it would 'smash Windows'.

But the latest mumblings from the rumour mill point to something altogether more substantial.

The 'brick' in question is a block of aircraft-grade aluminium and, rather than a new product, we're looking at a new manufacturing process according to some sources within Apple.

The new manufacturing process, which apparently will allow Apple to carve cases and components from a single block of lightweight metal using high pressure water jets and three-dimensional lasers, could be a game changer for the laptop industry.

It means that chassis and cases will no longer have to be folded or joined, adding huge strength and making the next generation of Mac laptops seamless and virtually screwless.