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The Courts

Microsoft Wins Windows XP Downgrade Lawsuit 203

CWmike writes "A federal judge has dismissed a year-old lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged antitrust violations for the 'downgrade' rules it set for Windows Vista and XP. The order put an end to the lawsuit filed by Emma Alvarado in February 2009. In her original complaint, she accused Microsoft of coercing computer makers into forcing consumers who wanted to run Windows XP to first buy Windows Vista, or later, Windows 7, before they were allowed to downgrade to XP. The judge rejected Alvarado's accusations, saying that the plaintiff had not proved Microsoft benefited from the downgrade practices that it created and that OEMs implemented."
Toys

Smart 'Lego' Set Conjures Up Virtual 3D Twin 63

philetus writes "New Scientist has up a story on Posey, a hub-and-strut construction kit that senses its configuration and communicates it wirelessly to a computer. From the article: 'If you gave Lego brains, you might get something like Posey, a new hands-on way of interacting with computers developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, US. When Posey's plastic pieces are snapped together, an exact copy of the construction appears on a computer screen. Every twist of, say, a stick figure's arm is mirrored in 3D modelling software ... Each piece's plastic shell is stuffed with chips and devices for processing these signals. They are sent wirelessly to a computer using a low-power protocol called ZigBee. This means, bending Posey's pieces can make objects on-screen respond in real time. Right now, each custom-made piece has about US$50 (£25) worth of parts, Weller estimates. But if mass produced, it could be much cheaper.'"

Comment Re:They'd better not waste it on SETI (Score 2, Informative) 88

The SKA has 5 key science goals, one of them, called 'The cradle of life' is aimed at looking for possible life in other star systems, but I believe it is mainly focusing on studying the formation of earth-like planets (to better understand our own). I think that any real SETI efforts will be done as a sort of 'piggyback' on other projects (Although I don't think the scheduling arrangements are anywhere near ready yet!).

IE7 Compatibility a Developer Nightmare 416

yavori writes "Internet Explorer 7 has kicked in at last on all MS Windows OS running PCs because of the fact M$ decided to force it's users to migrate through update. In fact this has started a IE7 Web Developers Nightmare. The article actually explains that most of the small company B2C sites may just fall from grace because of IE7 incompatibility. One of the coolest thing IE7 is unable to do is actually processing form data when clicked on an INPUT field of TYPE IMG... which is pretty uncool for those using entire payment processes with such INPUT fields."

Gotuit Launches Broadband Video Portal 65

ReadWriteWeb writes "Richard MacManus covers the launch of Gotuit.com, a new broadband video portal from VOD (video on demand) company Gotuit Media. The portal is free to use and offers instantaneous video delivery of professional media content, such as the latest popular music videos and movie trailers. Content is streamed directly to the user's PC, so there's no buffering or download. The UI is slick and navigation between videos is near seamless. But the most exciting part of Gotuit.com is perhaps its ability to search inside video items. Gotuit has built a system which enables their staff to 'tag' specific points inside each video with appropriate metadata. This allows users to create playlists of video snippets — based on keywords — and share those with other people. Gotuit is different from YouTube and Google Video in that it offers professional media content and its video streaming technology is more advanced."

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