SCO Wants Summary Ruling, Wants To Appeal Unix Ownership Decision

A recent post from Slashdot…
“SCO is asking the court to enter a final judgment on the Unix ownership issues so that it can seek an immediate appeal. The logic for this, according to Groklaw Editor Pamela Jones, is that SCO would rather appeal right away so it can try all its claims at IBM, should [...]

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What Vista SP1 Means to You

From Slashdot…
“Geek.com has an interview with Nick White, Microsoft’s Vista Product Manager, covering the upcoming release of Vista SP1. The interview goes over some of the new features, how the change will affect admins, and how Microsoft decides if a change should be rolled out as an update or as part of the service pack. [...]

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Microsoft Forces Shutdown of Autopatcher

From Slashdot…
“Posts on Neowin and Autopatcher’s site announce Microsoft has forced the closure of the Autopatcher download section. Details are scarce as to the exact reason for the take down after over 4 years of availability, but an official from Microsoft legal says that it has nothing to do with Windows Genuine Advantage. Goodbye to [...]

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Can Apple + AT&T Shut Down iPhone Unlockers?

From Slashdot…
“Do Apple and AT&T have the legal right to stop hackers from selling unlocked iPhones? Under their terms, only AT&T may sell iPhones, and Apple gets a commission. When unlocked iPhones are used on other providers’ networks, AT&T and hence Apple get nothing beyond what they earned on the initial sale of the hardware. [...]

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Solar Power Headed For 45% Annual Growth

From Slashdot…
“USA Today is running a pretty good article on solar power that gives an overview of the current state of the industry. Highlight include production costs of $1.19/Watt for First Solar, 40% annual cost reductions over the last five years, revenues expected to triple in three years, and a prediction for 2014 as the [...]

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Got a problem? Ask the public schools to solve it!

A recent post from The Carpetbagger Report…
Just in time for back to school, I was pleased to see the latest issue of “Harper’s” run an article on one of my favorite themes: dumb attacks on public education.
Peter Schrag’s piece, “Schoolhouse crock: Fifty years of blaming America’s educational system for our stupidity,” makes several important points. [...]

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Google at work on desktop Linux

This story has been going around for some time, here is the version from The Register…
Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business – desktop software.
A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the [...]

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The “Loudness War” and the Future of Music

From the folks at Slashdot…
“The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudness thanks to advances in digital [...]

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Highway Safety Agency Silences Engineers

A recent posting on Slashdot…
“Nichole R. Nason, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, put a new rule into effect that NHTSA officials, including scientists and engineers, are no longer allowed to be quoted by reporters, according to the New York Times. If the officials want to say anything it has to be off [...]

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Monster.com Attacked, User Data Stolen

A recent post on Slashdot…
“The BBC has an article detailing a successful attack on the US recruitment site, Monster.com. According to the article, ‘A computer program was used to access the employers’ section of the website using stolen log-in credentials’ and that the stolen details were ‘uploaded to a remote web server’. Apparently, this remote [...]

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Wal-Mart Ditches DRM, Keeps Censorship

From Slashdot…
“Wal-Mart has hopped on the DRM-free bandwagon with today’s announcement that it will be participating in Universal’s DRM-free sales pilot. The quality looks good: 256Kbps MP3 for 94 cents apiece, but customers are likely to be turned off by the retail chain’s continued censorship. ‘It’s a bit hard to believe that all the customers [...]

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How Much Does a New Internet Cost?

A recent post from Slashdot…
“Given the recent flurry of articles concerning ISP over subscription, increasing bandwidth needs, and lack of infrastructure spending on the part of cable companies, I’m forced to wonder, what is the solution? How much would a properly upgraded internet backbone cost? How long would it take to make it happen? Will [...]

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YouTube for Science?

A recent post from Slashdot…
“The National Science Foundation, Public Library of Science and the San Diego Supercomputing Center have partnered to set up what can best be described as a “YouTube for scientists”, SciVee”. Scientists can upload their research papers, accompanied by a video where they describe the work in the form of a short [...]

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Comcast Hinders BitTorrent Traffic

A recent post from Slashdot…
“Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn’t seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren’t helping. If more [...]

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IBM embraces – wtf – Sun’s Solaris across x86 server line

From the folks at The Register we see this developing news…
Sun Microsystems has nailed its biggest Solaris x86 win to date by lining up IBM as a firm backer of the operating system.
The two companies today revealed that IBM will offer Solaris x86 as an option on a number of its Xeon- and Opteron-based servers [...]

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