2003 October

“Proposals to make US patents harder to obtain and easier to challenge were put forward this week by the US Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC has issued a report calling on the US Patent and Trademark Office to apply tougher standards in granting patents. Congress should also establish a mechanism to permit companies to challenge […]

“International fashion designer Julien Macdonald has created three exclusive laptop bag designs for Intel, to celebrate the growing role that technology plays in women’s lives. The Julien Macdonald laptop bag for Intel compliments the new generation of laptops and the unwired lifestyle enabled by Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology.
The bags are designed to be […]

“Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel crept a little closer to reality as the Open Source Development Lab Inc. (OSDL) on Monday made available a test version of the technology aimed primarily at enterprise developers.
The OSDL is calling on all major Linux users, developers, and systems providers to focus on the new release, called Test9, […]

“The Pocket Video 550 and 750 aren’t likely to challenge either big-brand digital camcorders, or even mid- to high-end digicams that can take small video clips, Logitech admits. Instead they’ve been designed as basic take-anywhere moviecams capable of taking email and web-friendly footage.”

You have to watch a short ad to read this very good review. “…Strikingly, knowing what’s going to happen — and one can only assume that the audience for ‘Alien: The Director’s Cut’ mostly won’t be virgins — does little to dampen the experience. If anything, this digitally cleaned-up and remastered version, with a […]

“Microsoft Corp. has settled antitrust class action lawsuits with five states and the District of Columbia, the company announced.
“We’ve worked hard over the last few months, and indeed over the last two years, to address these legal challenges and to move forward to build more constructive relationships with the government and with others in industry,” […]

“Microsoft introduced the next version of Windows, code-named ‘Longhorn,’ at its Professional Developers Conference this week in Los Angeles. Although Microsoft has leaked details of Longhorn before, the conference offered the first official look at many of the technologies coming when the operating system ships sometime in 2005 or 2006.
Delivery is somewhere between two and […]

“The Center for Internet Security (CIS), a consortium for setting security
best practices and standards, earlier this week released significant
upgrades of its security benchmarks for Cisco Router IOS and the Linux and
HP-UX operating systems.
The CISO IOS Router Audit Tool has more than 10 new items, including
checks for SSH, automated timeouts, the reuse of passwords, restrictions
for usernames, […]

It’s a desktop environment(XPde) and a window manager(XPwm) for Linux. It tries to make easier for Windows XP users to use a Linux box. Nothing more, no clipboard compatibility between Gtk and Qt applications, no emulation of Windows applications, no unification on the widgets of X applications, just a desktop environment and a window manager.

From refurbished hardware and eBay deals to do-it-yourself setups, everything you need to know about buying equipment on the cheap.

For the first time, a traffic light preemption emitter that is compact, mobile, and practical. “MIRT” (MOBILE INFRARED TRANSMITTER) can be securely positioned on the dash or inside windshield and moved from vehicle to vehicle with no installation required. Just plug it in and go! Its infrared technology emits no visible light, making it discrete […]

The default dock now includes Safari (instead of Internet Explorer), as well as Mail, iChat, Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, QuickTime Player, and System Preferences.
Application switching (command-tab) no longer uses the Dock, but instead pops up a pseudo-window displaying the currently running applications (like Windows). You can navigate through the applications by repeatedly pressing […]

The U.S. Library of Congress created on Tuesday four narrow exemptions to a controversial digital-piracy statute but was criticized by free-speech activists, who had hoped for more exceptions.
As part of a regular process of reviewing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, regulators created four new instances in which it is legal to crack digital copyright […]

Following in the footsteps of the World’s Smallest Film Festival, London’s Raindance Film Festival is showcasing films made for mobile phones– that means a maximum of 15 seconds in length. The entries in the festival’s Nokia Shorts competition will be screened for visitors on Nokia 3650 phones in the festival’s foyer. The festival’s director calls […]

In an attempt to keep other companies from offering lower-cost replacement toner cartridges for its fax machines and printers, Lexmark invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act late last year. Static Control Components (SCC) had reverse engineered the chip used by Lexmark in its toner cartridges so that it could offer a cheaper alternative to Lexmark’s […]

QuirksMode.org is the personal and professional site of Peter-Paul Koch, freelance web developer in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It contains more than 150 pages with CSS and JavaScript tips and tricks, and is one of the best sources on the WWW for studying and defeating browser incompatibilities.
It is free of charge and ads, and largely free […]

Thought this was an interesting link, courtesy of our friends at NASA.

A MAN WHO DARED to express his own opinion on his own web site but who worked for Microsoft found himself peremptorily dismissed, he claims.
Microsoft Security apparently accused the chap of violating Microsoft insecurity by writing a story saying “Even Microsoft wants G5″. And for taking a picture.

Spyware is probably one of the most irritating if not ontologically evil things to hit the web to date. It’s responsible for mountains of jacked-up computers, misled consumers, hijacked referrals to commerce sites, and invaded privacy. One company that’s certainly used to being accused of producing spyware is Gator. The eponymous application they produce is […]

Wippit is the world’s first legitimate P2P music subscription service with a wide range of recordings for you to download to your PC or MediaterminalTM and play at your leisure. We’ve got everything from Rock to Rap to Classical to Audio Books. Even Wippit Ringtones! And currently, Wippit is the only service that allows you […]