operating-systems
Pretty Microsoft baubles
Microsoft’s, “up to its old tricks of offering pretty baubles to the innocent with The Microsoft Biology Foundation ,” writes Gly Moody (right) in Open going on »»» The bioinformatics community has developed a strong tradition of open development, code sharing, and cross-platform support, and a number of language-specific bioinformatics toolkits are now available. These toolkits serve as valuable nucleation points for the community, promoting the sharing of code and establishing de facto standards. The Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF) is a language-neutral bioinformatics toolkit built as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework.
Continue reading »Tags: extensibility, freedom, mahatma-gandhi, microsoft, misleading, open-source, operating-systems, platforms, project, stuff, windows
OpenNap P2P file sharing returns …
The original Napster P2P file sharing service comprised a protocol which let users to move files computer to computer. Music industry pressure buried it in 2001. But soon after, it was disinterred as a pale facsimile of its former self and is today owned by Best Buy which, after spending $121 million to buy what amounts to little more than a name, is determined to become the first concern to actually make money out of the file sharing app that started it all.
Continue reading »Tags: buy, citizen, fate-as-napster, industry, life-as-opennap, mac, mahatma-gandhi, napster, open-source, operating-systems, protocol, work
Texas Instruments: still harassing hobbyists
Texas Instruments has dropped its spurious DMCA threats against hobbyists who’d blogged about potential mods to the company’s programmable graphing calculators. Researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys , “allowing modders to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators’ hardware,” said the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). In response , “TI unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys,” it said.
Continue reading »Tags: anti, both-the-letter, calculator, calculators, copyright, digging-holes, digital, legal, mahatma-gandhi, operating-systems, texas, texas instruments
Windows 7 Very Popular on Torrent Sites
Google Suggest is an excellent source when you’re searching for something over the Internet –it completes your search terms as you type them into the search box. Windows 7 has caused a lot of buzz before being released and just as much now that it’s got out. Typing in ‘Windows 7′ into the search box gets you to ‘Windows 7 download (107 million results)’ but there’s another darker side out there (or brighter, depending on the perspective) and you know it.
Continue reading »Tags: box, crap, latest, million-results, operating, operating-systems, result, rubbish, search, telegraph, terms, the-perspective, torrents, windows, windows-vista
Texas Instruments threatens calculator hobbyists
Texas Instruments should stop using the DMCA to threaten hobbyists who blogged about potential mods to the company’s programmable graphing calculators, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). TI’s calculators perform a “signature check” that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded onto the hardware, says the story. But, “researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys, allowing modders to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators’ hardware,” it says, going on: “In response to this discovery, TI unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys.” The EFF says it’s representing three men who received threatening letters.
Continue reading »Tags: between-the-use, calculators, clients, code, digital, discovery, dmca, freedom, instruments, mahatma-gandhi, operating-systems, texas, using-the-dmca
