Articles


Electronic Frontier Finland wins copyright battle

In a positive move, the Parliament of Finland has turned back the controversial European counterpart to the US's DMCA. As reported by Electronic Frontier Finland in their news release, this keeps Finland from becoming only the third member state of the EU to adopt the convention. According to EU policy …

You get the byte code you optimize for

I had to post the following quote from this week's Perl.com's This week in Perl 6 report: "Dan reported that examples/assembly/mops_p.pasm was running slower with JIT optimization than without under OSX, which doesn't seem right. Daniel Grunblatt pointed out that JIT cores that don't optimize …

Tip & Review: Microsoft Remote Desktop for Macintosh

I have to admit, when I first saw the announcement of this piece of software, I wondered: "What is Microsoft trying to do here?" For those of you unfamiliar with Microsoft Remote Desktop Client for Macintosh, it is a piece of software created and maintained by Microsoft that allows you …


Cellular phones in cars under attack

According to a new report from the California Highway Patrol, reported on by the San Jose Mercury- News in this article, cellular phone use is the leading cause of car accidents that are due to driver distraction. Further, in the past week, researchers in Utah have determined that speaking on …

USPTO cracks down on useless genome patents

According to a story in the Boston Globe, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has finally started to come to its senses over some of the meaningless patents that are being filed. So far, the area is the Human Genome and they have decided to actually require people filing …


Microsoft and Sun debate .Net vs. Java

In an article in InfoWorld, the reporter covers a debate between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft officials over the relative merits of each other's next generation programming tools. Read more for some background... .Net Microsoft's .Net architecture is based on the use of a Common Runtime Library (referred to as the …

Opera uses Safari as excuse to abandon lame browser

I read with interest an article posted about the Norwegian browser manufacturer Opera giving up on the Macintosh market after the release of Safari. The Opera claim is that they can't compete with Apple's nameplate in the Macintosh market and that because of that, they are going to bow out …

Navman to offer Bluetooth GPS

Norwegian news site InfoSync offers this article about an upcoming GPS device from Navman which will feature Bluetooth as its key communication protocol. Now, you'll be able to put your GPS where it receives a good signal without having to drape lengthy cables all over the place to reach your …


AT&T Wireless brings up 802.11b

MacCentral is reporting in an article that AT&T Wireless is teaming up with Wayport and building out their own network to provide 802.11b service (note: not a). The new service is called GoPort and will cost $69.95/mo unlimited at all locations (comparable to T-Mobile's HotSpot service …



The printer saga has a happy ending

As was written in the first week of January, I've been looking for a high- quality photo printer. At MacWorld, I was repeatedly told that the right printer to get was the Epson Stylus Photo 2200, with its 80-year archival inks and beautiful black and white reproduction, it seemed like …

Microsoft bit by own bugs

Well, according to an article on CNet, Microsoft fell prey to their own problems with the MS SQL product (exposed this weekend through the latest internet worm). I can't say this is entirely related, but I installed XP (yeah, don't talk to me about it) on Saturday and it took …


Tom's Hardware reviews GeForceFX

The summary: the card is probably too hot and noisy to justify incremental performance improvement over the comparable ATI 9700 Pro card. Of particular concern is the apparent performance degradations that occur as resolutions increase. Of course, as you expect from Tom's Hardware, the review has excruciating detail (including MP3's …


Help defeat the TIA initiative

The ACLU has created a page where you can send a fax to your Senators to encourage them to co-sponsor and support S.188 (The Data- Mining Moratorium Act) . The service alternatively will send an email or postal letter if you prefer. It's a very easy way to participate in …