The State (of South Carolina) is reporting that Microsoft is trying once again to get back into the set top box business. Their latest offering, Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, announced in this press release, is aimed at the lower-priced cable converter market, as opposed to some of the previous offerings …

An article from CNET reports that Sun and Intel announced they are teaming up to make sure that Java runs well on Intel's XScale processor, used often in PDAs and some phones. The press release from Sun's site specifically refers to some modifications to Sun's Hotspot VM and some changes …

Argonne and Brookhaven National Labs have received a patent (No 6,528,948) for a valve to close off a vacuum used in photon experiments using plasma. SlashDot referred to this as a "force field", which is arguably correct as the particles that block the flow are constrained by electromagnetic …

Wired has an article today that describes the various efforts that Microsoft has underway in order to continue their push to make Windows Media 9 the next format for digital media. They cover a number of recent efforts by the company to push into the film industry, including a recent …

According to an article on CNet, the FCC is considering leveling the playing field with dial-up and DSL by charging cable modem service providers an additional tax of 9.1% on their cable modem revenues (said tax getting pushed into the USF). I find it interesting that a conservative administration …

According to an article on Wired, a model rocketry group from Portland State University is putting together a model rocket that is running on Linux. The group is building a sophisticated rocket designed to climb to about 50,000 feet and to carry processors to control flight and send back …

The latest AIM beta for Windows from AOL contains "Encrypted IM". Following the "more info" link, we find out some more tidbits about how this is to work. It looks like the end-to-end pieces are part of AOL's move to offer enterprise AIM services on their existing infrastructure. Staying away …

There may be some hope for the music industry yet. According to an article in the New York Times, Warner Music considered the sharing of music in the negotiations with iTunes and explicitly decided to allow it for rendezvous during the contract negotiations. But, I found more interesting some of …

SlashDot pointed to an article by Bob Frankston on ZDNet describes how he thinks that Bluetooth is dead because it is basically a one trick pony in comparison to 802.11. I, on the other hand, think that until we find a better way to mesh wireless networks for different …

An article in EETimes comments on the evidence that SCO has shown to certain journalists and analysts under non-disclosure. The article details 80 lines of code that are identical, even to the comments. This brings to mind a few questions for me: What is the significance of 80 lines in …

There has been a lot of writing recently about anti-spam techniques. Much of it very recently has centered upon whether or not to employ challenge-response systems in order to create white-lists on a per user basis. My question is, why not use a distributed version of this? It seems to …

Rejoice! Number portability is at hand! The Washington Post reports that Friday an appeals court ruled against cellular providers who wanted to delay or stop the required implementation of the FCC ruling by November 2003. At this rate, I'll finally be able to get rid of my second cellular account …

Broker and financial management powerhouse Merrill Lynch states in a story from CNET that they are finding significant savings by making use of Linux as a key operating system in their deployment. Not only have they saved a bunch of money on the server side, but they are going to …

Apparently, the answer is when you conceive the horse in Kentucky and it is born in New York, as happened with Funny Cide. For those who care about horse bloodlines (and after today's third-place performance, I'm sure there are even fewer of us), it is some interest that Funny Cide's …

Thanks to Amanda, here is a really nice page describing the basis of patents and the real meaning of "ordinary skill in the art." The article goes over a patent on a solution to triangular matrices and one of the compression-related patents (leading to the Stacker case). In the end …

An article from Gnutella News summarizes Apple's meeting with independent music producers on Thursday. Lots of good information about the current state of the service and about how it is set up. Here are the points I found most interesting: 6-7 million copies of iTunes currently in use (presumedly iTunes …

If you, like I, have been wondering why some files that are clearly disk images download from Apple and leave only an application in their place, here is the answer: Internet Enabled Disk Images (or IDI's). If Then Software has released a tool to enable the bits that make IDI's …

CNET is carrying an interview with Lawrence Lessig (noted copyright and internet privacy expert from Stanford University). The interview was brought on by the petition started earlier this week (and featured here on Tuesday) which Lessig has backed. The interview contains some nice quotes, including "Before the Internet, long copyright …

According to an article on CNET, file sharing company Altnet may begin suing competitors for "violating" it's recently-licensed patent for finding identical files based on a hash of their contents. This may eventually win the prize for stupidest patent when such a prize is given, considering the whole purpose of …

Three french cellular companies have agreed to allow roaming on their WiFi networks throughout France, according to this article from IDG Hong Kong. The move is not too surprising considering the European GSM philosophy of having everybody roam on everybody else's network for reasonable prices. Unlike AT&T in the …