“Timothy Muldowny’s lawyers decided on an unconventional approach to fight his drunken driving case: They sought computer programming information for the Intoxilyzer alcohol breath analysis machine that determined he was drunk to see whether the test was accurate. […]
The company that makes the Intoxilyzer refused to reveal the computer source code for its machine because it was a trade secret. A Seminole County judge tossed out Muldowny’s alcohol breath test – a crucial piece of evidence in a DUI case – and the ruling was upheld by an appeals court in 2004.”
St. Petersburg Times Online via The Inquirer via IRC-URLs.net
Novell Targets Enterprise Desktops with New Linux Distribution
“At the CeBIT computer show being held this week in Germany, Novell unveiled a new Linux distribution that is designed to lure corporate customers away from Microsoft Windows.
Called SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), the new distribution offers improved power-management capabilities, better desktop-search features, a better user interface, and across-the-board application improvements, according to Novell.”
Yahoo! via BlogsNow
some links added
Forbes: Linus on GPLv3
“The new version of the GNU General Public License, or GPLv3 as it is known, was authored by Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman and adds new restrictions to the license. Torvalds isn’t crazy about the new rules but says he still might sign on if changes are made.
In an interview via e-mail with Forbes, Torvalds discusses GPLv3, digital rights management and sharks with laser beams.”
Desktop Earth 2.0
“Desktop Earth is a wallpaper generator for Windows. It runs whenever you’re logged on and updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment.”
Anka claims this is free software but it isn’t; he explicitly denies redistribution.
Beyond Quartz
“In a decade, your wristwatch will be thousands of times as accurate as it is today.”
Apple Lust 2
WordPress 2.0.2 Security Release
“An important security issue has been brought to the attention of the WordPress team and we have worked diligently to bring you a new stable release that addresses it. Our latest version 2.0.2 contains several bugfixes and security fixes.”
BeatPick – FairPlay Music Label and Music Licensing
” We believe in Fair Trade. We release our music under a Creative Commons License rather than copyright. We split earnings 50/50 with our artists and they maintain full ownership of their creations.
You can listen to entire albums/tracks. We do not use DRM. Purchased music is compatible with all computers, ipods and Mp3 players.”
Matroska ja Windows ME
Matroska Pack Fullin asennus Windows ME:hen ei onnistu, vaan se ilmoittaa, että on käytettävä Lite-pakettia. Sen asennus kuitenkin kaatui runtime erroriin. Seuraavat ohjeet käsin tehtävään asennukseen löytyivät CoreCodec.org:sta.
- Asennetaan FFDShow 20041012 (SSE- tai SSE2-versio, mikäli suoritin näitä tukee, muussa tapauksessa tavallinen versio).
- Asennetaan Haali Media Splitter.
- Ladataan VSFilter ja kopioidaan avatusta paketista VSFilter.dll:n ei-unicode-versio C:\Windows\System32-kansioon.
- Suoritetaan komentokehotteessa: C:\Windows\System\regsvr32 vsfilter.dll
- Asennetaan CoreVorbis.
- Asennetaan Media Player Classic:sta ME-versio (siis versio, jonka nimessä on 98me, eikä 2kxp).
- That’s it.
Download YouTube videos with GreaseMonkey
“One of the frustrating things about websites that use Flash video is that they rarely provide links to let you download the video files for offline viewing […]. I decided to dive into Greasemonkey and create a couple scripts to expose download links on Google Video and YouTube webpages […].”