Kaizenlog

18 05 2007

[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-05-16

Posted by: kaizenlog in Computer

By N2H

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Slashdot Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
* Why Microsoft Won’t List Claimed Patent Violations
* Performance Evaluation of Xen Vs. OpenVZ
* SHPEGS — DIY Solar/Geothermal Electricity
* Landline Holders Increasingly Older, More Affluent
* USPTO Examiner Rejected 1-Click Claims As "Obvious"
* AMD’s Radeon HD 2900 XT Reviewed
* Prof. Johan Pouwelse To Take On RIAA Expert
* Canadians Overpay Millions on Copyright Tax
* Congress May Outlaw ‘Attempted Piracy’
* Microsoft Details FOSS Patent Breaches
* MIT Media Lab Making Programming Fun For Kids
* Videogames Turn 40
* A Detailed Profile of the Hadron Super Collider
* The Clueless Newbie Rides Again
* Will Dell Be Bad For Ubuntu?
* Comcast Drops Microsoft
* Students Embarrass eBay With Firefox Add-On
* Linus Responds To Microsoft Patent Claims
* Toyota Going 100% Hybrid By 2020
* The Rise of "Hybrid" Vinyl-MP3s
* US Senators Question Indian Firms Over H-1Bs
* MIT Hacks XKCD Talk With AACS key

+—————————–—————————————+
| Why Microsoft Won’t List Claimed Patent Violations |
| from the only-stick-they’ve-got dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Monday May 14, @20:20 (Microsoft) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/2220246 |
+—————————–—————————————+

[0]BlueOni0n writes "Earlier today, Microsoft announced it will begin
[1]actively seeking reparations for [2]claimed patent infringement by
Linux and the open source community in general. One opinion on why
Microsoft won’t reveal these 235 alleged IP infringements to the public
is that they’re [3]afraid of having the claims debunked or challenged —
so instead they’re waiting until the OS community comes to the bargaining
table. But a more optimistic thought is that Microsoft may be afraid to
list these supposed violations because it knows [4]the patents can be
worked around by the open source community, leaving Microsoft high and
dry without any leverage at all."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/14/2220246

Links:
0. mailto://boni0n [Email address: //boni0n #AT# gmail.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm
2. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/0018242&tid=109
3. http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2007/05/its_time_for_mi.html
4. http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/microsoft-linux-patent-violations/

An anonymous reader writes "Compared to an operating-system-level
virtualization technology like OpenVZ, Xen — a hypervisor-level
virtualization technology that allows multiple operating systems to be
run with and without para-virtualization — trades off performance for
much better isolation and security. OpenVZ’s performance advantage due to
running virtual containers in a single operating system kernel can be
significant. [0]A performance evaluation study (PDF) done by researchers
at the University of Michigan and HP labs provides insight into how big a
performance penalty Zen pays and what causes the overheads (primarily L2
cache misses)." From the report: "We compare both technologies with a
base system in terms of application performance, resource consumption,
scalability, low-level system metrics like cache misses and
virtualization-specific metrics like Domain-0 consumption in Xen. Our
experiments indicate that the average response time can increase by over
400% in Xen and only a modest 100% in OpenVZ as the number of application
instances grows from one to four… A similar trend is observed in CPU
consumptions of virtual containers."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/019251

Links:
0. http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-59.pdf

[0]rohar writes "[0]SHPEGS is an open design not-for-profit project to
design and prototype a base-load [1]renewable electrical generation
system suitable for moderate climates and built from common materials.
The design centers around creating a local geothermal source with an
efficient solar thermal water heater system and can be scaled from single
residence to mega-scale. The heliostat system used in [2]Europe’s first
solar thermal plant could be used in a scaled-down SHPEGS system with
Practical Solar’s [3]small scale heliostats."

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/0124253

Links:
0. http://www.shpegs.org/
1. http://www.tfot.info/content/view/124/71/
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm
3. http://www.practicalsolar.com/

[0]netbuzz writes "More than a quarter of the under-30 crowd has decided
you only need one telephone — and it [1]sure as heck does not plug into a
wall. The [2]trend towards an all-mobile lifestyle is accelerating,
according to a new survey. Besides younger people, lower-income people
are also more likely to have cut the cord. And while businesses may be a
bit slower on the cell-only uptake, there appears to be little doubt at
this point that the traditional landline will be joining rotary dials and
party lines as a relic of the telecommunications industry."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/0021242

Links:
0. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=buzzblog
1. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/15127
2. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070514/ap_on_hi_te/cell_phones_only

[0]theodp writes "Faced with a duly unimpressed USPTO examiner who
rejected its new 1-Click patent claims as [1]‘obvious’ and ‘old and well
known,’ Amazon has taken the unusual step of [2]requesting an Oral Appeal
to plead its case. And in what might be interpreted by some as an
old-fashioned stalling tactic, the e-tailer has also [3]canceled and
refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application. As it [4]touted
the novelty of 1-Click to Congress last spring, Amazon kept the
examiner’s rejection under its hat, insisting that ’still no [1-Click]
prior art has surfaced.’ The Judiciary Committee hearing this testimony
included Rick Boucher (VA) and Howard Berman (CA), both [5]recipients of
campaign contributions from a [6]PAC funded by 1-Click inventor Jeff
Bezos, other Amazon execs, and their families."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/002238

Links:
0. mailto://theodp [Email address: //theodp #AT# aol.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/495373942_f7fb3d3f1c_o.gif
2. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/495407041_4997adc41f_o.gif
3. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/196/495407035_906411db6e_o.gif
4. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju28201.000/hju28201_0.HTM#81
5. http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expend.asp?strID=C00360354&Cycle=2006
6. http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave.asp?strID=C00360354&Cycle=2006

J. Dzhugashvili writes "The folks at The Tech Report have whipped up a
detailed expose of the new [0]AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card’s
architecture and features, with plenty of benchmarks. While the card
dazzles with 320 stream processors, a 512-bit memory bus, and oodles of
memory bandwidth, its performance and power consumption seem
disappointing in the face of Nvidia’s six-month-old GeForce 8800 graphics
cards."

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/0131230

Links:
0. http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/radeon-hd-2900xt/index.x?pg=1

[0]NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Marie Lindor has [1]retained an expert
witness of her own to fight the RIAA, and to debunk the [2]testimony
[3]and [4]reports of the RIAA’s ‘expert’ Dr. Doug Jacobson, whose
[5]reliability has been challenged by Ms. Lindor in her Brooklyn federal
court case, UMG v. Lindor. Ms. Lindor’s expert is none other than Prof.
Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of
Delft University of Technology. It was Prof. Pouwelse’s [6]scathing
analysis of the RIAA’s MediaSentry ‘investigations’ (PDF) in a case in
the Netherlands that caused the courts in that country to direct the ISPs
there [7]not to turn over their subscribers’ information (PDF), thus
nipping in the bud the RIAA’s intended litigation juggernaut in that
country."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/0145246

Links:
0. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
1. http://p2pnet.net/story/12224
2. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/deposition-of-riaas-expert-available.html
3. http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/0141221&tid=141
4. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/03/237211&tid=185
5. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/28/202206&tid=123
6. http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=foundation_upcnederland_witnessdeclaration
7. http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=foundation_upcnederland_060713AffirmanceonAppeal

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist has up a post on his site about
the Copyright Board of Canada’s decision last week on the controversial
private copying levy, which functions like a tax on blank media. The good
news? The Board [0]reduced the levy on certain media such as CD-R Audio,
CD-RW Audio, and MiniDiscs. The bad news? The millions of dollars in
overpayment from these media [1]will go into the pockets of
manufacturers, importers, and retailers, not back to the consumers who
paid in the first place. ‘In addition to the overpayment issue, the
decision contains several interesting revelations … the decision sheds
some light on the CPCC’s enforcement program. The collective has
aggressively targeted those parties that do not pay the levy, with 21
claims over the past three years. In fact, the enforcement program has
been so effective that the Board found that concerns about the emergence
of a gray or black market for blank CDs has not materialized.’"

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1228218

Links:
0. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1946/125/
1. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/decisions/c11052007-b.pdf

+—————————–—————————————+
| Congress May Outlaw ‘Attempted Piracy’ |
| from the i-see-what-you-were-trying-to-do-there dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 15, @10:03 (The Internet) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/15/1224216 |
+—————————–—————————————+

[0]cnet-declan writes "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is asking
Congress to [1]make ‘attempted’ copyright infringement a federal crime.
The [2]text of the legislation as well as the official [3]press-release
is available online. Rep. Lamar Smith, a key House Republican, said he
‘applauds’ the idea, and his Democratic counterpart is probably on board
too. In addition, the so-called Intellectual Property Protection Act of
2007 would create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated
software in some circumstances, expand the DMCA with civil asset
forfeiture, and authorize wiretaps in investigations of Americans who are
‘attempting’ to infringe copyrights. Does this go too far?"

Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1224216

Links:
0. http://www.mccullagh.org/
1. http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html
2. http://politechbot.com/docs/doj.intellectual.property.protection.act.2007.051407.pdf
3. http://politechbot.com/docs/doj.intellectual.property.protection.act.summary.051407.txt

CptRevelation writes "Microsoft has released [0]more detailed information
on the patents supposedly in breach by the open-source community. Despite
their accusations of infringement, they state they would rather do
licensing deals instead of any legal action. ‘Open-source programs step
on 235 Microsoft patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates
42 patents. Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on
the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs
touch 68 other patents, the company said. The patent figures were first
reported by Fortune magazine. Microsoft also said Open Office, an
open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes
on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.’"

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1348209

Links:
0. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MICROSOFT_OPEN_SOURCE?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

An anonymous reader passed us a link to an article on the Boston Globe’s
website, talking up efforts by MIT to make [0]programming a
non-threatening part of grade-school education. MIT has developed a new
programming language designed to encourage experimentation and play.
Called [1]Scratch, the project eschews manuals and high-level concepts in
favour of approachability. "Efforts to make computer programming
accessible to young people began in the late 1970s with the advent of the
personal PC, when another programming language with roots at MIT — Logo —
allowed young people to draw shapes by steering a turtle around a screen
by typing out commands. But the path to mastering most programming
languages has been strewn with obstacles, since students needed to figure
out not only the underlying logic but also master a brand new syntax,
observe strict rules about semicolons and bracket use, and figure out
what was causing error messages even as they learned the program."

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1420238

Links:
0. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/05/15/with_simplified_code_programming_becomes_childs_play/
1. http://scratch.mit.edu/

May 15th marks the [0]40 year anniversary of the first games hooked up to
the television. An article on the 1up site tells the story of Ralph Baer,
Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch working at the Sanders Associates company
on a little game called Pong. They go into a great deal of detail on the
development of the console, going so far as to include a number of the
group’s original notes on the project. "Baer kept the tiny lab, a former
company library in Sanders’ early days, locked at all times. Only two men
had keys: Baer and Harrison. The room would remain the base of operations
for their controversial video experiments for years to come –
experiments that, had they been known about widely at the time, might
have garnered intense ridicule from other employees of the prominent
defense contractor. Pursuing them was an utterly audacious move."

Discuss this story at:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1453204

Links:
0. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3159462

[0]davco9200 writes "The New York Times has up a [1]lengthy profile of
the Large Hadron Collider. The article covers the basics (size = 17
miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts)
and history but also provides interesting interviews of the scientists
who work with the facility every day. The piece also goes into some
detail on the expected experiments. ‘The physicists, wearing hardhats,
kneepads and safety harnesses, are scrambling like Spiderman over this
assembly, appropriately named Atlas, ducking under waterfalls of cables
and tubes and crawling into hidden room-size cavities stuffed with
electronics. They are getting ready to see the universe born again.’
There are [2]photos, [3]video and a [4]nifty interactive graphic."

Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1545220

Links:
0. http://www.roughgroove.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/science/15cern.html?ex=1336881600&en=7c25f6782d7029e7&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
2. http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/05/14/science/20070515_CERN_SLIDESHOW_1.html
3. http://nytimes.feedroom.com/?fr_story=7d3e1fbe3b5d0d4bfc5f413456818c69906eb192
4. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/science/20070514_CERN_GRAPHIC.html

overshoot writes "Anyone remember [0]The Clueless Newbie’s Linux Odyssey?
As it happens, she’s come back to [1]have a go at Ubuntu Feisty. ‘Four
years ago I tried about a dozen Linux distributions, to see if they were
ready for an ordinary user to install as an escape from the Windows
world. None of the distros performed well enough for me to recommend them
to a non-geek unless they were going to hire someone to install it. After
hearing Dell’s recent announcement that it will sell computers with
pre-installed Ubuntu Linux, I decided to see if Ubuntu was
user-friendly.’"

Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1619251

Links:
0. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/05/2138238&tid=106
1. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/233123/migrating_to_ubuntu_linux_from_microsoft.html

vcore writes "Many people are excited for Ubuntu’s upcoming release on
Dell computers, and while it is certainly good news [0]there are a few
causes for concern. Very few details have emerged so far so it is not
completely clear what impact Dell with have on the thriving Ubuntu
community. But there are questions concerning support, logistics,
pricing, and a number of other areas that are affected. From the article:
‘Dell is in the practice of filling their computers with large amounts of
"bloatware" and also all sorts of co-branding, but it remains to be seen
what they will do with Ubuntu. It has been reported that Dell will be
shipping a standard version of Ubuntu 7.04…’"

Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1738205

Links:
0. http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1053

[0]Frosty Piss writes "Comcast [1]plans to drop Microsoft’s television
software and on-screen program guide from its digital cable boxes. The
cable company will replace the Microsoft technology with [2]GuideWorks
software — Comcast is a part owner of GuideWorks. Comcast has been the
lone cable company in the US using Microsoft technology for set-top
boxes, and only in the state of Washington, Microsoft’s back yard." The
Microsoft offering has a solid presence in Latin America. The company is
no longer trying very hard to market it here at home.

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1829204

Links:
0. http://www.nojailforpot.com/
1. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/315614_msftcomcast15.html
2. http://www.guideworkstv.com/

An anonymous reader sends along a posting from the Grooveking blog on a
group of Stanford students who [0]got together to help promote Firefox
and ended up releasing a long overdue [1]eBay Toolbar for Firefox before
Mozilla and eBay could release their [2]jointly developed extension in
Europe. Mozilla’s COO said the preemptive release of the eBay Toolbar had
ruffled some feathers among European eBay execs. "Besides basic search
features, it removes external ads on the site and allows users to see
thumbnail pictures on ALL search items, even those sellers didn’t pay
for. An eBay toolbar has been long overdue… eBay can’t be too
enthusiastic about this toolbar since it cuts directly into its main
sources of revenue: ads and thumbnail fees. But eBay users get a really
good deal."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1849226

Links:
0. http://www.grooveking.com/blog/2007/05/stanford-students-beat-ebay-on-firefox.html
1. http://myebayfox.com/
2. http://en-gb.www.mozilla.com/en-GB/add-ons/ebay/

An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds [0]has a sharp retort to
Microsoft executives’ statements in a [1]Fortune article that Linux
violates 235 Microsoft patents. In an emailed response to
InformationWeek’s Charlie Babcock, Torvalds writes: ‘It’s certainly a lot
more likely that Microsoft violates patents than Linux does.’ He added:
‘Basic operating system theory was pretty much done by the end of the
1960s. IBM probably owned thousand of really "fundamental" patents… The
fundamental stuff… has long, long since lost any patent protection.’"
Torvalds also commented on Microsoft’s [2]stated intention not to sue
Linux users: "They’d have to name the patents then, and they’re probably
happier with the FUD than with any lawsuit."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/203218

Links:
0. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199600443
1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/
2. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=199501831

[0]autofan1 writes "Toyota’s vice president in charge of powertrain
development, Masatami Takimoto, has said cost cutting on the electric
motor, battery and inverter were all showing positive results in reducing
the costs of hybrid technology and that by the time Toyota’s sales goal
of one million hybrids annually is reached, it ‘expect margins to be
equal to gasoline cars.’ Takimoto also made the bold claim that by 2020,
[1]hybrids will be the standard drivetrain and account for ‘100 percent’
of Toyota’s cars as they would be no more expensive to produce than a
conventional vehicle."

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/2016231

Links:
0. mailto://nerdbustermd [Email address: //nerdbustermd #AT# yahoo.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.motorauthority.com/cars/toyota/toyota-cutting-hybrid-costs/

[0]Khyber writes to let us know that [1]First Word Records, a U.K.-based
record label, is now selling [2]vinyl records that come with codes that
allow you to download a 320-kbit MP3 of that record’s content. The
article mentions another independent label, [3]Saddle Creek, that also
offers DRM-free downloads with some vinyl records. The co-founder of
First Word is quoted on why they didn’t DRM the download: "Making a
legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated
one doesn’t make sense."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/1942207

Links:
0. mailto://khyberkitsune [Email address: //khyberkitsune #AT# gmail.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.firstwordrecords.com/
2. http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/digiwax
3. http://www.saddle-creek.com/

+—————————–—————————————+
| US Senators Question Indian Firms Over H-1Bs |
| from the you-want-more-of-these? dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 15, @18:21 (Businesses) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/15/2130224 |
+—————————–—————————————+

xzvf sends us a link to a BusinessWeek report on the campaign of two US
senators to [0]get answers to how H-1B work visas are actually being used.
Yesterday Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) sent
[1]a letter (PDF) to nine Indian outsourcing firms that, among them,
snapped up 30% of the H-1B visas issued last year. The senators want to
know, among other things, whether the H-1B program is being used to
enable the offshoring of American jobs. "Critics say outsourcing firms,
including Infosys Technologies and Wipro, are using the visas to replace
US employees with foreign workers, often cycling overseas staff through
US training programs before sending them back into jobs at home."

Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/2130224

Links:
0. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2007/db20070515_218119.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives
1. http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2007/05142007.pdf

Reader Hanji alerts us to a hack pulled off when Randall Munroe, author
of the popular webcomic [0]XKCD, spoke at MIT by invitation of the Lab
for Computer Science. MIT hackers dropped [1]hundreds of labelled playpen
balls onto the audience from hatches in the ceiling. The labels bore
XKCD’s logo as well as the recently discovered 16-byte AACS processing
key. At another point in Munroe’s talk he was stalked by
remote-controlled mechanical velociraptors; but fortunately he had been
supplied with a squirt gun full of grape juice.

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/05/15/2327248

Links:
0. http://xkcd.com/
1. http://web.mit.edu/unlocked/Public/xkcd-lecture/index_2.html

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