Open Source News

An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009.

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Cyber Cynic: "I found it more than a little sad that someone in 2010 could still think that Linux is "still a non-starter on the desktop." Please — wake up: We're all Linux desktop users now."

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daria42 writes "The Electoral Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has made plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux in the next state election in November of this year.

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Worldlabel: "The Open Clip Art Library grew from a project between Jon Phillips (of Fabricatorz) and Bryce Harrington, in early 2004.

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An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0.

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Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W.

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Free Software Magazine: "There seems to be no respite from the predations of Microsoft FUD and the machinations of Big Business.

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Electropages: "Availability of uCLinux for the APS3 family of processors has been announced by Cortus. This version of Linux is ideally suited to low-power, high-performance, embedded systems."

From the One Ping Only dept.:
Computer scientists say they've discovered a "severe vulnerability" in the world's most widely used software encryption package that allows them to retrieve a machine's secret cryptographic key.

...The scientists, from the University of Michigan's electrical engineering and computer science departments, said the bug is easily fixed by applying cryptographic "salt" to an underlying error-checking algorithm. The additional randomization would make the attack unfeasible.

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From the UI dept.:
The new style of Ubuntu is driven by the theme "Light". We've developed a comprehensive set of visual guidelines and treatments that reflect that style, and are updating key assets like the logo accordingly. The new theme takes effect in 10.04 LTS and will define our look and feel for several years.

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From the Competition dept.:
Mozilla, faced with new competitive pressures, has begun work on three separate, significant changes to Firefox.

First is a new JavaScript engine that--with a transfusion from the project behind Apple's Safari--should run Web-based programs at least 30 percent faster. Second is a new graphics engine for Windows that will take advantage of hardware acceleration for graphics and text. And third is a programming tool to help bring to fruition a new system for Firefox add-ons.

From the Share Our Pain dept.:
A lawyer for Microsoft confirmed that the software giant told the US Department of Justice and the European Commission how Google’s business practices may be harming publishers, advertisers and competition in search and online advertising.

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From the Yeah, More Committees! dept.:
The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce.

Instead, an “Internet Policy 3.0” approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, according to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance.

From the Enemy of Crap Software dept.:
... the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella group for organisations including the MPAA and RIAA, has requested with the US Trade Representative to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its "Special 301 watchlist" because they use open source software.

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From the Copy n Paste dept.:
Xerox Corp has sued Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, accusing them of infringing the document management company's patents related to Internet search.

In a lawsuit filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, Xerox said Google's Web-based services such as Google Maps, YouTube and AdSense advertising software, as well as Web tools including Yahoo Shopping, infringe patents granted as far back as 2001.

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From the Fractions dept.:
The Linux kernel would cost more than one billion EUR (about 1.4 billion USD) to develop in European Union. This is the estimate made by researchers from University of Oviedo (Spain), whereby the value annually added to this product was about 100 million EUR between 2005 and 2007 and 225 million EUR in 2008. Estimated 2008 result is comparable to 4% and 12% of Microsoft's and Google's R&D expenses on whole company products.

From the Disgrace dept.:
The inability to deflect even a simulated cyber attack or mitigate its effects shown in the exercise that took place some six days ago at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel doesn't bode well for the US.

Mike McConnell, the former Director of National Intelligence, said to the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee yesterday that if the US got involved in a cyber war at this moment, they would surely lose. "We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose," he stated.

From the FSF2Goog dept.:
With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec -- VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).

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gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later.

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Don't expect Jonathan Schwartz to go quietly.