Diamond Age Solutions News for the IT Industry

Thu Sep 8 07:16:03 NZST 2005

Today Index

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explains the differences between Digital Restrictions/Rights Management (DRM) music schemes & some alternatives:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/guide/

Sun changes the licence of the OpenOffice suite from their own proprietary brand to plain old LGPL:
http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/license-change.html

Microsoft predicatably lash out against Massachusetts' requirement to support the OpenDocument standard, saying it is clearly inferior and MS won't do it:
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170700325

It turns out that Microsoft, which says it will not support OpenDocument standards, is actually one of its sponsors:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25933

The FEMA disaster website, aimed to help with the recovery efforts, is IE6-only. Recovery workers now have the additional task of installing XP:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050906-5278.html

Vodafone and NZ Telecom go head to head over mobile data. Telecom are faster but Vodafone have 1GB of NZ$149 a month vs. a 400MB monthly plan for NZ$99:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10344159

Symantec Anti Virus Corporate Edition Version 9 has a hole which could allow unauthorised access to password and user account information:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1855395,00.asp

2,460 School desktops get Linux installed in Italy, with more than 20,000 "live" CDs of the same custom distro to be distributed among students:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Linux_installed_on_2%2C460_desktops_in_Italian_schools

The FreeMind mind-mapping application takes a great leap forward with the 0.8.0 release. Runs under Java on most platforms:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/docs/features/0_8_0/Features%200.8.0.html

Philips put out the first pre-prod samples of their flexible, roll-up displays. QVGA-sized persistent monochrome with a 125mm diagonal, packs into 100x60x20mm:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=448

And finally. Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light. Schitzotypes, it seems, are prone to being highly creative, practical people:
http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_schizotypes.htm

News collated from various sources by Vik Olliver for Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. The views presented in this document are the personal opinion of the collator, and should not be taken as any more than that.