4481777
submission
fm6 writes:
Bloomsbury Publishing, best known for the Harry Potter books, has announced a new series of science books that will be available for free online. Bloomsbury thinks they can make enough money off of hard-copy sales to turn a "small profit". The online version will be covered by a Creative Commons license which allows free non-commercial use. They've already had some success with the one book they've published this way, Larry Lessig's "Remix: Making Art and Commerce thrive in the Hybrid Economy". The series, "Science, Ethics and Innovation", will be edited by Sir John Sulston, Nobel prize winner and one of the architects of the Human Genome Project.
4433049
submission
fm6 writes:
When the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was announced, it was widely assumed that Oracle was interested only in Sun's software technology, and would sell or discontinue all its hardware businesses. Larry Ellison, in an interview (PDF) just posted on the Oracle web site, says that's not what's going to happen. In particular, SPARC isn't going anywhere: "Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days."
746295
submission
fm6 writes:
Wednesday was the 40th anniversary of the Carterfone Decision which brought to an end AT&T's monopoly on telephone terminal equipment. Ars Technica has an opinionated by informative backgrounder on this landmark, which pretty much created the telecommunications world as we currently know it.
612194
submission
fm6 writes:
According to guardian.co.uk, George Lucas is suing the designer of those Imperial Stormtrooper outfits. It seems Andrew Ainsworth has taken the original molds he used to make the props for the movies, and has been using them to make outfits that sell for up to £1,800 (US$3,600) apiece. Ainsworth has countersued for a share of the $12 billion that Star Wars merchandise has generated since the first movie.
