CogitoVeritas.com

The Authors Guild, Inc. has sued Google, Inc. on behalf of over 8,000 authors. The Authors Guild claims to be the nation’s largest and oldest society of published authors and the leading writers’ advocate for fair compensation, effective copyright protection, and free expression. Google Print’s stated mission is to organize the world’s information, but much of that information isn’t yet online. Google Print aims to get it there by putting book content where you can find it most easily – right in your Google search results.

 

Google, Inc., the search engine (and everything else) company has released a beta version of a blog search site that offers similar features to its most-popular web search engine. The new search engine scans blogs, the popular online journals that offer both professional journalists and citizen pundits simple access to online publication. Google Blog Search should give a bit of much-wanted visibility and authority to the burgeoning blogosphere.

 

The total cost of ownership (TCO) of Microsoft Windows for network administrators is widely acknowledged to exceed that of Unix-based systems, such as Linux and Solaris. System administrators with experience in multiple operating systems often recognize that Linux is less expensive to maintain, over the lifetime of the information system.

 

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have demonstrated a version of quantum computer memory that lasts longer than 10 seconds, more than 100,000 times longer than previous experiments with charged atoms (ions). These experiments pave the way for reliable quantum computers that will not be harnessed to the limitations of transistors and silicon-based hardware.

 

Light always travels at 186,000 miles per second (300 Million meters per second) in a vacuum. Well, almost always. A team of scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique F|AMP|eacute;d|AMP|eacute;rale de Lausanne (EPFL) has been able to control the speed of light, both decreasing and increasing it using off-the-shelf instruments under normal working conditions.

 

Commercial internet wi-fi hotspots are popping up in coffee shops and bookstores around the country. Most universities and many public libraries offer free wi-fi service. A quick drive though any but the most downtrodden neighborhoods yields signals from at least a small percentage of the residences. With wi-fi being as popular as it is, why is it that wi-fi infrastructure isn’t as well developed as cellular telephone service? Why hasn’t someone made wi-fi even more accessible?

 

The U.S. Copyright Office is soliciting opinions, through August 22d, about it’s planned website upgrade that will require the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer, effectively banning most technically-advanced users and all Linux and open-source advocates from its service.

 

Infosys Technologies, Ltd., the Bangalore-based outsource services company featured in Thomas Freidman’s book, The World is Flat, has admitted 40 interns to it’s global internship program, InStep. Rather than seeking coveted corporate internships in the United States, graduate business students are finding fertile fields abroad. Learning firsthand how outsourcing works, by viewing the process from the money-making end, future business leaders also gain an opportunity to network with peers from 70 international universities; some from the U.S., Japan, Canada, Germany and France.

 

Google, the premier internet search engine is fast becoming one of the favored sources of news on the net. Now, rather than requiring users to visit the Google News website, Google is delivering information via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom formats. Using XML (Extensible Markup Language), RSS and Atom formats enable users of aggregation software, commonly called RSS readers, to select topics and receive all available articles currently in publication that are related to that topic.

 

In the global search engine war, Google and Microsoft each thought that they were in a head-to-head race for the laurel wreath. But, after getting a late start, IBM may very well pass both competitors by moving the finish line.

 

With the upcoming change to how the United States will calculate Daylight Saving Time (DST), users of digital calendars may find themselves arriving late for appointments. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, expected to be signed into law today, will cause unexpected havoc for electronic calendars, including those in PCs, handheld computers, and even personal digital recorders. Who would have thought?

 

Microsoft Corporation requires users of it’s flagship operating system, Windows XP, to verify the authenticity of their software installation before downloading patches and updates from Microsoft’s website. The validation tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), can easily be cracked without much trouble. This allows users of pirated copies of Microsoft Windows to verify their installation and receive the extra bennies offered from the manufacturer.

 

The SANS Institute reports that 422 new vulnerabilities were discovered in the second quarter of 2005. This is an 11 percent increase over the previous quarter. The increase in the number of security vulnerabilities stems from malicious crackers changing focus from attacking operating systems to webbrowser and other connected applications, such as digital music applications.

 

Microsoft Corp. is urging Windows XP users to uninstall the new Netscape 8 webbrowser because it can conflict with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is claiming that the problem is with Netscape, rather than their own browser that invades the operating system like kudzu.

 

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 35 government partners from more than 20 countries are targeting illegal spammers who take remote control of unwitting users’ computers to serve as spam transmission zombies. By hijacking home and business computers, spam can be routed through them, thereby hiding the true source of the spam and making the enforcement of antispam laws more difficult.

 

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center has used a particle accelerator to create a highly-focused X-ray generator that is able to display hidden text that was authored by Archimedes, the Greek mathematician-scientist who was born in Syracuse in 287 BC.

 

Personalize Google and Get a Gmail Invitation
Today, in direct competition with MSN and Yahoo!, Google, Inc. announced that users may create a personalized Google homepage for news, weather, cultural tidbits, and e-mail.

 

Verizon Communications will allow current customers in the Northeast U.S. to discontinue voice telephone service while keeping DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) broadband service. Telecommunication providers have been roundly criticized for requiring DSL subscribers to also maintain voice service, thereby limiting consumer choice.

 

The American Council of Mayors and Urban Managers voted Friday to lobby the U.S. Congress in support of pending legislation that will render illegal 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks, paving the way for widespread development of the much faster 802.16 WiMAX networking protocol.

 

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a tool that doesn’t reflect the general preference of legal music downloaders. Before you read on, hoping that I will advocate for the free distribution of music, let me warn you: I’m a strong supporter of copyright and the protection of intellectual property; I want artists and distributors to make a decent living, but I’m frustrated by the current misuse of digital technology that attempts to thwart illegal distribution. In practice, DRM makes creates compatibility problems that make it excessively difficult, and in most cases, impossible, to listen to music that has been purchased online.