In the News Archive

I wanted to post this just because Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com are heroes of mine. Any savvy internet user knows that their web site is a great source for unraveling the never-ending stream of false internet rumors. The New York Times article also mentions FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, which are two other truth-telling sites that educated people ought to be aware of.

There is an ongoing discussion on a Gnome mailing list which points out that Gnome and KDE might collaborate for a new project: a FLOSS alternative to Dropbox.The Gnome and KDE approach is more towards an collaboration tool, but which is very close to Dropbox. The DE independent FLOSS Dropbox alternative idea came because Google Summer of Code is approaching and both Gnome and KDE have a collaboration tool on their list.

"In this article, the authors investigate the impact of DRM restrictions on the demand for music downloads. estimates the impact of DRM on consumers' willingness to pay for songs (both favorites and nonfavorites) and on the producer revenues and profits. Based on two studies of more 2000 college students, the results suggest that despite the potential advantages offered by some DRM restrictions, on balance the elimination of DRM has a net positive impact on producer revenue, profit, and consumer welfare."

And thus, our true colours reveal. Since Obama was the young newcomer, technically savvy, many of us were hoping that he might support patent and/or copyright reform. In case our story earlier on this subject didn't already tip you off, this certainly will: Obama has sided squarely with the RIAA/MPAA lobby, and backs ACTA. No copyright and/or patent reform for you, American citizens!

If you thought the growing criticism directed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office would force them to rethink their strategies in granting patents, you're most likely wrong. After a re-examination that took more than four years, the USPTO has reconfirmed Amazon's ominous one-click patent.

Cisco Systems says it will make a major announcement on Tuesday, news that the technology giant says "will forever change the Internet". Shares of Cisco gained 3.65% to close at $26.13 Monday, hitting a new 52-week high of $26.36 intraday, as some analysts speculated that the tech giant is rolling out new gear to help wireless phone companies cope with rising video Web traffic. Cisco had sent out invitations to analysts and the media for a "significant announcement" that it says "will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments". Let the speculation begin!

I figured the whole "Windows-7-ate-my-RAM!"-thing would be one-item only, but apparently, it won't be. Over the weekend, the situation got a lot murkier. As it turns out, Craig Barth, the supposed CTO of Devil Mountain Software, was actually an InfoWorld blogger/editor - who has been fired from InfoWorld over all this. Someone on the web who isn't who he claims to be? Surely you jest! Update: Ars' Peter Bright has published an article about this as well.

NetApplications has released its latest browser market share figures, and these figures show that Chrome has overtaken Safari as the number three browser worldwide, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. IE, by the way, continues to lose popularity rather fast.

It is no secret that Microsoft is doing whatever it can to eat away at Google's immense market share of the search market, with Bing being its most ambitious effort yet. Well, it seems the battle just got a whole lot dirtier, as The Financial Times has uncovered news that Microsoft has approached several news content providers, offering them money if they "de-index" their sites from Google.

InfoWorld has compiled a list of 10 not yet widely adopted enterprise technologies that will have the greatest impact on IT in the years to come. From whitelisting, to NoSQL, to I/O virtualization, each class of technology is analyzed for its potential to solve significant IT challenges - mobile app dev, power conservation, data glut - over the long haul, as opposed to how it may currently be implemented or how today's iterations currently perform.

As much as we like to stay away from letting real-world politics bleed over into our ongoing discussion of tech politics, I found an interesting essay over at The Economist's "Democracy in America" blog that draws a parallel between Apple's Mac/iPhone user-friendly ecosystem and the Microsoft Windows freer-but-more-chaotic ecosystem and how that lines up along the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum of real-world political division. They don't mention Open Source in this essay, but I'm sure it could make an interesting addition to the discussion. The essay's main point is that, in governance, attempts to make life more user-friendly for citizens usually ends up giving them less freedom of choice, and a certain segment of the political establishment will reliably oppose such moves. The idea that the tradeoff between choice and usability persists into the world of governance really set me to thinking. What kind of country would you rather live in? An Apple one, a Microsoft one, or an Open Source one?

Forbes has an interesting article that attempts to push Crowdsourcing off its pedestal by pointing out that "crowds" don't actually invent or create anything; individuals do. What the crowdsourcing phenomenon does is put an opportunity in front of a large number of people, some of whom may be uniquely suited to solve a particular problem or achieve a particular goal. The article goes on to discuss Open Source Software, and points out that Open Source's success isn't because of crowds of anonymous people, but the largely the efforts of identifiable virtuosos.

RadioShack will be taking a leaf out of Microsoft's book (remember that Bing thing?) by renaming itself to simply "The Shack" in the hopes that it will reach out to consumers to help them understand that the store isn't just a nuts-and-bolts (batteries-and-parts, anyone?) place for the electronic era. They want people to know that they're competing with those larger retail stores in selling computers, LCD televisions, and more, and I suppose they think "The Shack" will cause droves of people to suddenly forsake BestBuy and Wal-Mart's offerings of the common consumer electronics. In a way I couldn't rewrite better, a RadioShack veteran customer writes his feelings on the subject at hand and stresses that "you can change your look, even your name, but you are still just what you are--and people notice."

It's market share/installed base/whatever time! Net Applications' figures had been under review for a while, and now we know why: they've finally done what should have been done ages ago. Namely, they've added country-level weighting to their figures. They also added this retrospectively, meaning all previous figures have been updated to reflect the change. This has devastating effects for some.