Microsoft, Former 'Lindows' Vendor Reach New Covenant
The company which at one time blatantly attacked Microsoft's position on the consumer desktop with what was then called "Lindows," a Linux distro aimed at low-price systems sold in major department stores, announced today a 180-degree change of tack.
Adding its name to those of Novell and Xandros, Linspire becomes the third Linux distributor to reach a patent covenant agreement with Microsoft. In finding the courage to shake hands with the enemy, Linspire's president and CEO this morning publicly compared himself to Steve Jobs.
Microsoft's .NET Evangelist Spells Out Future Role for Dynamic Languages
In a very real sense, Microsoft may have had more to do with the creation of the so-called "dynamic language" than most any other company. Back when the BASIC language interpreter shipped as part of the ROM of machines like Radio Shack's breakthrough TRS-80, I and many other novice developers first experimented with the prospects of code that changes itself to suit the specific needs of users. It involved statements with terms like "POKE," which was exactly as dangerous as it sounds.
Today, the re-emergence of dynamic applications through Web-oriented languages like Python and Ruby has awakened an old spirit within Microsoft, which is rediscovering a concept it helped create decades ago...and after years of denying its presence and usefulness, has now come around to embracing it.
AOL Opens Up Xdrive
AOL said it is opening up the APIs for its free Xdrive service to allow developers to incorporate the service into their applications. Consumers are given 5GB of space to upload any type of content they wish, with an option to upgrade to a 50GB account for $9.95 per month. AOL says that the API allows use of Xdrive in both web and desktop applications.
"Rich media management and online storage increases engagement. Giving consumers the ability to share their media assets help Website owners build awareness and increase their audience," said David Liu, Senior Vice President of AOL Portals. The API is available from the AOL Developer Network, Liu said.
Zimbabwe Legislation May Filter Internet
While much ire in the fight against net censorship and free speech restrictions falls squarely at the feet of the Chinese government, a new law in Zimbabwe should raise some eyebrows.
The lower house of the country's parliament passed the so-called "Interception of Communications" act on Wednesday, clearing the way for the government to begin monitoring of phone calls, mail and Internet for "national security" purposes.
AT&T, Viacom to Jointly Deploy Anti-piracy Technology
During a seminar at the Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles this morning, AT&T Senior Vice President James Cicconi disclosed that his company began meeting with Viacom last week to discuss the deployment of technology that somehow will combat the spread of piracy over its digital networks, the Los Angeles Times revealed this afternoon.
Transcripts from the seminar have not yet been made available, and the Times account of the talk was vague on detail. From what we know at present, it isn't even clear whether AT&T's new anti-piracy technology would be limited to just the Internet, or would extend to its own private digital fiberoptic lines as well.
Sun to Linux: Can't We All Just Get Along?
Sun is reaching out to Linux, and specially Linus Torvalds, in an effort to explain its motives in placing Solaris under GPLv3, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Wednesday.
Torvalds in recent days has indicated that he was suspicious of Sun's motives surrounding the upcoming version 3 of the General Public License. He has expressed interest in Sun's ZFS, however he felt that Sun might use the protections afforded to patent holders in GPLv3 to keep it out of Linux.
eBay Pulls US Ads from Google Pages
Tensions between eBay and Google rose on Wednesday after the auction site decided to pull some of its ads from the search engine's AdWords program.
The move only affects ads within the United States. eBay will continue to run ads through the program outside of the country. While the company is saying the move is part of a regular switch in strategies to determine the best use of advertising dollars, some are saying differently.
Sony in Talks with Church of England
Hoping to smooth things over with the Church of England, Sony Computer Entertainment said Wednesday that it was in talks with the church over its use of the cathedral in its PlayStation 3 title Resistance: Fall of Man. Church officials find the scene offensive where the main character enters the building and then proceeds to shoot at enemies, and has demanded both an apology and monetary compensation.
Sony declined to give specifics of the talks, calling the situation "complex." However, it added that the church was not necessarily meant to be the Church of England although the building in the game is quite similar to the historic structure. Calls for action first arose last week after the Bishop of Manchester, the Right Reverend Nigel McCulloch called the scene "beyond belief and highly irresponsible."
Successful Halo 3 Beta Concludes
Microsoft said Wednesday that it had ended its multiplayer beta of Halo 3, adding that it had attracted over 820,000 unique participants contributing over 12 million hours of game play.
The company now turns its focus to promotion through Halo-themed merchandise, such as a special edition wireless controller and wireless headset. While the accessories are not available until September, Microsoft is building buzz by permitting pre-orders.
YouTube to Test Video ID System
YouTube plans to launch a video identification system that will help the company sniff out copyrighted material, it said earlier this week. Tests begin initially with Walt Disney and Time Warner.
In about a month, the company will start using clips supplied by the media companies to identify unique characteristics within clips posted by users. If a match is found, the content owner is alerted.
Tech Companies Join to Promote Green PCs
Intel and Google are heading a group comprised of both technology and environmental groups aimed at promoting energy efficient computing.
Called the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, the group also includes Dell, HP, Microsoft, The World Wildlife Fund and about 20 other companies and groups. Altogether, the group aims to save $5.5 billion USD in energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons.
Sprint Scoops up Another Affiliate
Sprint said Wednesday it had reached an agreement with Northern PCS of Minnesota to acquire the company for $312.5 million in a continuing effort to appease regional affiliates that objected to its merger with Nextel in 2005. The company serves about 167,000 customers across Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
The Northern PCS deal follows similar deals with various other providers. Sprint paid $3.4 billion for its largest affiliate Alamosa Holdings, as well $1.3 billion for UbiquiTel, a combined $2 billion for US Unwired, IWO Holdings, Enterprise PCS and Gulf Coast Wireless, and $6.5 billion for Nextel partner Nextel Partners, which served rural areas with Nextel's "push-to-talk" technology.
Windows Home Server Reaches RC1
One of Microsoft's most ambitious new projects is taking off more rapidly than many expected, perhaps due to popular demand. Windows Home Server -- one of the stars of WinHEC last month and a surprise standout at TechEd last week -- has officially moved to Release Candidate 1 status.
Essentially, WHS is a retooled Windows Server 2003, with new services including one that pools multiple hard drive spaces together as an easier-to-manage partition, and browser-based management software whose ambitious goal is to be easy enough to be understood by the same guy who loses his remote under the couch every week.
Microsoft Issues Patches for 15 Flaws
Microsoft released six updates to address various issues across its products on Tuesday, including four which were rated critical, and three that affected Windows Vista.
The first is an important fix that addresses two issues within Microsoft's Visio product. The first is a remote code execution vulnerability in how the product handles a specially-crafted version number within a Visio file. The other revolves around an issue in how Visio handles parsing of packed objects.
Yahoo Shareholders Defeat Human Rights, Censorship Resolutions
This afternoon, Reuters reports, shareholders of Yahoo defeated two resolutions offered by representatives of New York City's pension funds, one of which would have mandated it would no longer store personally identifying data on servers housed in any country where Internet use among citizens is monitored by its government. An identical proposal was defeated by Google's shareholders last month.
The data storage policy and anti-censorship proposal was defeated by a vote of 15% in favor to 74% in opposition, with the remainder abstaining. A separate proposal advanced by a single shareholder - a John C. Harrington of Napa, California - that would have established an independent human rights committee of the Board of Directors, went down in something less than a blaze of glory: 4% in favor, 80% opposed. Both proposals were argued down by Yahoo annual proxy statement, whose recommendations shareholders do tend to follow.
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