154132569
submission
TuringTest writes:
The mixed AR/VR standalone headset Lynx R1, which is undergoing an already-funded Kickstarter campaign, got this week its first third-party hands-on review by independent reviewers Cas and Chary VR.
Check also the video that the company released yesterday demonstrating for the first time the combined color pass-through AR, VR and its incorporated Ultraleap hand-tracking capabilities of the device.
73368895
submission
TuringTest writes:
A six-year-old child was admitted to a hospital in Barcelona and diagnosed with diphtheria, which didn't occur in Spain since 1986 and was largely unheard of in western Europe. The boy had not been vaccinated despite the vaccine being avaliable in free vaccination programmes
Spanish general health secretary called anti-vaccination campaigns “irresponsible" and said: "The right to vaccination is for children, not for the parents to decide".
The child is in critical condition, though he's now being treated with a serum expressly brought from Russia through an emergency procedure.
60614707
submission
TuringTest writes:
Popular culture website Wikia originally hosted its user-contributed content under a free, sharealike Commercial Commons license (CC-BY-SA). At least as soon as 2003, some specific wikis decided to use the non-commercial CC-BY-NC license instead: hey, this license supposedly protects the authors, and anyone is free to choose how they want to license their work anyway, right?
However, in late 2012 Wikia added to its License terms of service a retroactive clause for all its non-commercial content, granting Wikia an exclusive right to use this content in commercial contexts, effectively making all CC-BY-NC content dual-licensed. And today, Wikia is publicizing a partnership with Sony to display Wikia content on Smart TVs, a clear commercial use.
A similar event happened at TV Tropes when the site owners single-handedly changed the site's copyright notice from ShareAlike to the incompatible NonCommercial, without notifying nor requesting consent from its contributors. Is this the ultimate fate of all wikis? Do Creative Commons licenses hold any weight for community websites?
18190984
submission
TuringTest writes:
A comission of the Spanish Congress has rejected a law that allowed the closure of web sites that provide no authorized downloads. The government couldn't reach enough support from its allies not because those opposed the law in principle but because of the way it was redacted and the lack of negotiation. Recently the Spanish Senate rejected a law on net neutrality. Also the Wikileaks cables disclosed pressure from the USA to the Spanish government to pass a law to reduce Internet sharing of music and media, which is legal in Spain.
12205840
submission
TuringTest writes:
BumpTop, a company providing a multi-touch physical desktop metaphor has been acquired by Google and made "no longer be available for sale". BumpTop provides a direct way to handle information through simple gestures. Some media see this acquisition as a movement by Google to position against the iPad. Will BumpTop be ported to Android?
5841591
submission
TuringTest writes:
(Found via OStatic).
European company TomTom (which recently settled a patent agreement with Microsoft) has announced a new open source format OpenLR for sharing routing data (relevant points, traffic information...) in digital maps of different vendors, to be used in GPS devices. The LR stands for Location Referencing. They aim is to push it as an open standard to build a cooperative information base, presumably in a similar way than its current TomTom Map Share technology in which end users provide map corrections on the fly. The technology to support the format will be released as GPLv2.
Does it make OpenLR a GPL GPS?
822237
submission
TuringTest writes:
In an attempt to bring the Wii closer to the hardcore gamers taste, Sega is preparing to releaseMadWorld, a violent 'hack and slash' game. This has brought attention from family-conscious lobbies: "The decision to release a violent game on a console which has based its reputation on family fun has shocked anti-violence pressure groups. Mediawatch-UK, Britains longest running pressure group campaigning for decency in TV, films and games, said MadWorld will 'spoil' the Wii."
The game features black & white cel-shaded graphics, except for the blood blobs wich are in brilliant red.
MadWorld is announced to be released in early 2009.
44246
submission
TuringTest writes:
Jensen Harris, the Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team, blogs about Microsoft's recent licensing agreement to share its new inteface IP:
"Today, we're announcing a licensing program for the 2007 Microsoft
Office system user interface which allows virtually anyone to obtain a
royalty-free license to use the new Office UI in a software product,
including the Ribbon, galleries, the Mini Toolbar, and the rest of the
user interface." (see the press release). Is there any precedent for this? Can Microsoft actually require
licensing of the UI? Is it enforceable? Is this a good precedent?
