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Policemen burnt alive by Mexican mob
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Posted by mrplow (3 Comments)
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Wed Nov 24th '04 08:30:08 PM
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Quote
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An angry crowd in Mexico City has burnt alive two police officers and seriously injured another after mistaking them for child kidnappers.
The agents were taking photos of pupils at a primary school on Tuesday, where two children had recently gone missing.
Live cameras caught the mob beating the officers before dousing two of them with gasoline and setting them ablaze.
It was the latest example of mob justice by Mexicans frustrated by state corruption and soaring crime. |
Bad shit
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Software patents and the evil EU
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Posted by mcfly (0 Comments)
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Wed Nov 24th '04 08:08:25 PM
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Ive taken the whole thing from mac world as it explains the situation better than i could
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Three prominent open source software developers, including Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, have issued a statement urging the European Union Council to reject proposed legislation that would codify the practice of granting software patents in the E.U.
In the statement, issued Tuesday, the three developers argued that the legislation, called the software patent directive, would be harmful to the European economy. They argue that copyright law rather than patent law is the best way to protect software innovations.
Michael Widenius, a creator of the MySQL database, and Rasmus Lerdorf, the author of the PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) scripting language also endorsed the statement.
The patent directive is ill-advised because it unnecessarily broadens the area that could be governed by patents, Torvalds wrote in an e-mail interview. "It's not even just about software patents," he said. "Patents on ideas are wrong, whether in software or in business. You should patent some concrete machinery, not a way of doing things."
Open source software is not any more likely to infringe on software patents than is proprietary software, he said. But patent licenses can be incompatible with open source software licenses and software patents themselves put a special burden on open source developers, who are often independent contributors, often without the financial resources to fight off spurious patent claims, he said. "Clearly the open source 'way of life' is much less amenable to software patents than proprietary software is," he said.
The statement was posted on the Nosoftwarepatents.com Web site, which was launched last month to advocate against software patents. The site has received financial support from software vendors Red Hat Inc. and MySQL AB, as well as Germany-based Internet service provider 1&1 Internet AG.
With the software patent directive, the E.U. has attempted to establish an overarching patent standard for computer-implemented inventions, including but not limited to software, and bring into line the myriad interpretations given to patent law by different European national courts.
The E.U.'s executive body, the European Commission, submitted the directive, "Patentability of Computer-implemented Inventions," to the European Parliament, one of the E.U.'s legislative arms, in February 2002. The Parliament, whose members are directly elected, added amendments to the directive that would have barred the patenting of software. However, in May the E.U.'s other legislative arm, the Council of Ministers, whose members are politicians from E.U. member states' national governments, narrowly passed its own version of the directive that reintroduced software patenting.
That version of the directive is awaiting final approval from the Council, which is expected either late this month or early in December, before the proposed legislation goes back to the European Parliament for a second reading.
Last week, however, the Polish government withdrew its support of the legislation, a move that could make it impossible for the Council to muster the votes required to approve the directive, according to Florian Mueller, an independent software developer and campaign manager for Nosoftwarepatents.com.
Nosoftwarepatents.com hopes to pressure European politicians to reconsider their support of software patents, Mueller said. "We have clear indications that there are discussions going on between the member countries after Poland announced its decision last week," he said. "We think it's important to make it clear.to the public ... how we view this." |
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Porn site sues Google for allowing free access to pics
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Posted by Pud (3 Comments)
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Wed Nov 24th '04 06:25:44 PM
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A California-based pornographer says it is suing the world's most popular search engine, Google, for easing illegal access to its website.
Perfect 10, which offers pictures of "the world's most beautiful natural women", says Google's web search gives users free usernames and passwords.
It says Google also shows stolen Perfect 10 photos on other websites, enabling people to view without paying.
Google declined to comment, saying it had not seen the suit yet.
"They're showing pictures from my magazine and my website for free, so there's no reason for anyone to buy my products," Perfect 10 president Norm Zada told Reuters news agency.
He said he was suing Google for an unspecified amount of damages for violating copyright and harming his ability to make profits.
Full story
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IE falling in popularity as net users flock to Firefox
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Posted by Pud (2 Comments)
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Wed Nov 24th '04 06:15:58 PM
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The proportion of surfers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) has dropped to below 90%, say web analysts.
Net traffic monitor, OneStat.com, has reported that the open-source browser Firefox 1.0, released on 9 November, seems to be drawing users away from IE.
While IE's market share has dropped 5% since May to 88.9%, Mozilla browsers - including Firefox - have grown by 5%.
Mozilla browsers - including Firefox 1.0 - now have 7.4% of the market share, the figures suggest. Mozilla said that more than five million have downloaded the free software since its official release.
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Apple Fanboys R Chexing Out Teh London Apple Store
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Posted by donkey (9 Comments)
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Sat Nov 20th '04 05:56:46 PM
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chief fanboy
Apple has opened some swanky Apple Store on Reagent Street in Longon. Its the 1st in Europe or something.
"Some had waited 25 hours or more in bitterly cold temperatures to be at the front of the queue. By 11 in the morning - one hour after opening - police were estimating 5,000 had turned up."
"When it opened its first store in Japan two years ago, the queue outside measured a quarter of a mile long - despite a typhoon hitting the city at the time."
"The company, whose stores made $40m profit on sales of $1bn last year, is very sensitive about numbers.
It won't say how much the Regent Street investment was, nor how much it expects to make.
"We only open stores that we know are going to be profitable," said Mr Johnson. "Here in London we're going to make money from day one."
"Apple waited four years to get its hands on 235 Regent Street, with its classical stone façade.
The lease on the building is held by the British Crown, and it is understood Apple has signed for up to 15 years. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4023171.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4028363.stm
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