The Drupal open-source project has released version 5 of their content management framework. Major improvements were made in usability, looks, performance and flexibility and this is without question the best Drupal ever. It is also Drupal's 6th birthday, so congratulations to the entire community!
Read more...
DotNM writes with an article from the CBC reporting that the Canadian government is considering removing fair-use rights from Canada's copyright law. From the article:
"Exacerbating the situation is intense pressure from the United States, where Canada is considered a rogue when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. It still hasn't ratified a 1997 World Intellectual Property Organization copyright treaty... Two of the most controversial issues are [DRM] and the closely related technological protection measures."
Read more...
Tarmas writes
"For a limited time only, just like Ubuntu's ShipIt service, Sun Microsystems lets you order Solaris 10 absolutely free of charge. The operating system comes on a single DVD supporting both the x86 and SPARC versions. Also included is Sun Studio 11."
Read more...
AlanS2002 writes
"FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."
Read more...
Canon said on Friday it will buy out Toshiba in their flat-panel display venture to resolve a patent dispute with Nano-Proprietary in the United States.
Canon will now own the unit that was set up in 2004 to develop a new type of thin panels that can be used in TVs to challenge consumer electronics giants such as Samsung Electronics and Matsushita Electric Industrial.
The move is aimed at appeasing Texas-based Nano-Proprietary, which filed a lawsuit claiming that its 1999 agreement to license technology to Canon did not extend to Toshiba. Toshiba has a 50 percent stake in the joint venture, called SED Ltd.
Read more...
Satellite and Internet radio services would be required to restrict listeners' ability to record and play back individual songs, under new legislation introduced this week in the U.S. Senate.
The rules are embedded in a copyright bill called the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act, or Perform Act, which was reintroduced Thursday by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). They have pitched the proposal, which first emerged in an earlier version last spring, as a means to level the playing field among "radio-like services" available via cable, satellite and the Internet.
By their description, that means requiring all such services to pay "fair market value" for the use of copyright music libraries. The bill's sponsors argue the existing regime must change because it applies different royalty rates, depending on what medium transmits the music.
Read more...
Intel, the world's top chipmaker, plans to invest in a major new plant in China to make leading-edge chips, its biggest investment in the country to date, two sources with knowledge of the plan said.
The plant will make 65-nanometer multicore processors, the sources, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. This would make it Intel's first such manufacturing facility in Asia.
Intel, which has invested about $1 billion in China to date, already has major test and assembly plants in Shanghai and the interior city of Chengdu.
One source said the investment in the new plant would total a "couple billion" dollars. Both sources declined to give further details of the project, such as the location and timing, though one said the investment could be announced in coming months.
Read more...
Just like a phone call at 4 a.m. almost never brings good news, a press release appearing late in the day usually means something is wrong.
Advanced Micro Devices stunned the financial community late Thursday with a warning that its fourth-quarter revenue and profits would be below expectations. The warning came just weeks after a New York meeting for analysts in which the company painted a rosy picture of its prospects for 2007.
Investors punished AMD on Friday, sending its stock down $1.92, or about 10 percent, to close at $18.26 on the New York Stock Exchange. That's pretty close to the company's 52-week low set in July. Citigroup downgraded the company to a "hold," and Nollenberger Capital Partners' Hans Mosesmann lowered his price target for the stock from $13 to $8.
Read more...
Federal authorities are investigating a backdated stock option grant awarded to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs that carried a false October 2001 date, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Apple's board approved the October 19, 2001, grant at a meeting on August 29, with an exercise price of $17.83. The final terms of the grant were set on December 18, and the price was changed to $18.30. Apple shares were trading at $21.01 on that date.
The approval for the grant "was improperly recorded as occurring at a special board meeting on Oct. 19, 2001," Apple said in a filing on December 29, 2006. "Such a special board meeting did not occur."
Read more...
