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Quote of the Day:
A reasonable jury could have concluded that Microsoft 'willfully' infringed the '449 patent based on the evidence presented at trial
Excerpt from the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals opinion reaffirming Microsoft's loss to i4A ...Full Story
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Latest News: |
 From the Standards Blog |
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March 12, 2010
The Alexandria Project, Chap. 8 – Face Off with Fearless Fosdick
Our story so far: Now under surveillance, Frank begins to plan his escape. Read the first chapters here…
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Latest News: From all Sources (sort by topic instead)
Increase Mobile Broadband Infrastructure Density Tenfold
Press Release
EarthTimes – March 12, 2010: A new initiative named Beyond Next-Generation Mobile Broadband (BuNGee) aimed at a tenfold increase of mobile broadband infrastructure capacity density has been launched. The €4.7 million initiative is funded in large part by the European Commission and will draw upon collaboration among the consortium members comprising European service providers, technology equipment vendors, universities, and research organizations.
Organized under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), the BuNGee consortium’s primary objective will be to increase the overall mobile network infrastructure capacity density to well beyond what current technologies are promising, targeting the challenging goal of 1 Giga bit per second per square kilometer.... ...Full Story
Court Reaffirms I4i's Patent Win Against Microsoft
Nancy Gohring
IDG News Service – March 12, 2010: The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has once again upheld a jury's verdict that Microsoft willfully infringed on patents awarded to i4i.
The verdict, which the appeals court first affirmed in December, required Microsoft to pay more than US$240 million in damages and forced it to remove a feature in versions of Microsoft Word 2007 starting in January. Microsoft had been charged with infringing a patent owned by i4i with a feature in Word 2003 and 2007 that lets people create custom XML documents....The panel will now circulate the document to the rest of the judges on the appeals court, who will decide whether to take up Microsoft's request for an en banc review. If they do, that would mean that all 12 appeals court judges will reconsider the case....If the judges decide against an en banc review, Microsoft can ask the Supreme Court to hear the case, [i4A's] Owen said.... ...Full Story
OGC Announces Earth Observation Profile for Web-based Catalogue Services
Open Geospatial Consortium – March 12, 2010: The Open Geospatial Consortium has announced adoption and availability
of the "OGC Catalogue Services Standard Extension Package for ebRIM
Application Profile: Earth Observation Products", and also the related
"Geography Markup Language (GML) Application Schema for EO Products."
Together, these standards, when implemented, will enable more efficient
data publishing and discovery for a wide range of stakeholders who
provide and use data generated by satellite-borne and aerial radar,
optical and atmospheric sensors.... ...Full Story
NIST Publishes Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL) Validation Program Test Requirements Specification
John Banghart, Stephen Quinn, David Waltermire (eds), NIST Report
NIST – March 12, 2010: Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL) Validation
Program Test Requirements." The report defines the requirements and
associated test procedures necessary for products to achieve one or
more Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL) Validations.
Validation is awarded based on testing a defined set of OVAL
capabilities by independent laboratories that have been accredited
for OVAL testing by the NIST National Voluntary Laboratory
Accreditation Program (NVLAP).
Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL) is an information
security community standard to promote open and publicly available
security content, and to standardize the transfer of this information
across security tools and services. The OVAL Language is an XML
specification for exchanging technical details on how to check systems
for security-related software flaws, configuration issues, and patches.
The OVAL Language standardizes the three main steps of the assessment
process: representing configuration information of systems for testing;
analyzing the system for the presence of the specified machine state
(vulnerability, configuration, patch state, etc.); and reporting the
results of the assessment. In this way, OVAL enables open and publicly
available security content and standardizes the transfer of this content
across the entire spectrum of information security tools and services.
OVAL is maintained by the MITRE Corporation... ...Full Story
Elliott Said to Plan Sale of Novell Business If Offer Succeeds
Aaron Ricadela
Bloomberg News – March 11, 2010: Elliott Associates LP, the fund manager that made an unsolicited $2 billion offer for Novell Inc., would sell the NetWare networking-software unit if its bid succeeds, a person familiar with the matter said.
Elliott, which owns about 8.5 percent of Novell stock, would also try to run the company more efficiently and bring about $400 million in cash that Novell holds off shore to the U.S., said the person, who asked not to be identified because details of Elliott’s offer haven’t been made public. Elliott may also try to find a buyer for Novell’s business that specializes in an open-source operating system, the person said.... ...Full Story
DMTF Submits Completed OVF Specification for ANSI/ISO Standardization
DMTF.org – March 11, 2010: DMTF has been busy extending and refining the Open Virtualization Format
(OVF) specification. The organization recently completed version 1.1 of
the specification and has submitted it for consideration as an ANSI and
ISO standard. This is an important milestone for DMTF. The specification
will be put through a number of tests to ensure it meets a complex
system of checks and balances of reviews before it is adopted as an
American and International standard. DMTF will be tracking the OVF
specification as it makes its way toward becoming a national standard
and then an international standard.
Originally proposed in September 2007, the OVF specification describes
an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the
packaging and distribution of software to run virtual machines....DMTF has also submitted OVF to the InterNational Committee for Information
Technology Standards (INCITS) 'Fast-Track' process to develop it as an
American National Standard at American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
Once it is approved as an ANSI standard, OVF will be submitted to the
International Standards Organization (ISO) for consideration as an
international standardization.... ...Full Story
What to Expect from HTML5
Neil McAllister
InfoWorld – March 11, 2010: Support for the next generation of HTML is already appearing in today's
browsers and Web pages... Anticipation is mounting for HTML5, the
overhaul of the Web markup language currently under way at the Worldwide
Web Consortium (W3C). For many, the revamping is long overdue. HTML
hasn't had a proper upgrade in more than a decade... Many claim the HTML
and XHTML standards have become outdated, and that their document-centric
focus does not adequately address the needs of modern Web applications.
HTML5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard
will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and
localization. As experimental support for HTML5 features has crept into
the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing
hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on
proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight....[but] some W3C insiders say the road ahead for
HTML5 remains a rocky one.... ...Full Story
And the winner of the Novell sweepstakes is...Microsoft?
Preston Gralla
ComputerWorld Blogs – March 11, 2010: Novell is facing a potential breakup if it's bought by Elliot Associates L.P., a hedge fund. The open source community is justifiably worried. But a chorus of people point to a potentially very unlikely white knight --- Microsoft. The company that some consider as the scourge of open source may well be Novell's savior....Microsoft would be buying more than just good will. It would gain a very substantial installed base to whom it could sell Linux services and products --- and you can be sure it would try to sell Microsoft technologies as well. So don't be surprised if Microsoft comes riding to Novell's rescue. ...Full Story
The CodePlex Foundation Announces Appointment of Permanent Board Members
Press Release
CodePlex Foundation – March 10, 2010: The CodePlex Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation formed with the mission of enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities, today announced the appointment of four members to its permanent Board of Directors.
New appointees include Jim Jagielski, Chief Architect at SpringSource, a division of VMware, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Apache Software Foundation and an Advisory Board Member at Open Source Software Institute and Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President of External Research for Microsoft Corporation.
Continuing on the Board as permanent Directors are interim Board members Sam Ramji, Vice President of Sonoa Systems, and Stephanie Davies Boesch, Director of Program Management of .NET Framework, Microsoft.
Departing from the interim CodePlex Board are Miguel de Icaza, Vice President, Novell; Shaun Walker, Co-Founder and Chief Architect of DotNetNuke Corporation; Bill Staples, General Manager of the Web Platform and Tools Engineering Groups - Microsoft; and D. Britton Johnston, SQL Server Appliance Engineering - Microsoft. Outgoing Board members will continue to work with the CodePlex Foundation on the Board of Advisors.
The permanent CodePlex Foundation Board has five members, two drawn from launch sponsor Microsoft and three chosen from the open source and corporate development communities. The fifth permanent board seat will remain open while the Foundation continues discussions with potential corporate sponsors.... ...Full Story
And…Action! Standards Play a Leading Role at the 2010 Oscars
ANSI.org – March 9, 2010: [Sunday] night, as millions of people around the globe tuned in to watch Hollywood’s who’s-who walk the red carpet for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, or “Oscars,” standards were in the house, on the screen, and behind the curtain making the magic of the movie industry’s biggest night possible.
While motion picture technology is developing in new directions â€" and dimensions â€" most movies, including many of this year’s Best Picture nominees such as The Blind Side and An Education, are still recorded on 35-millimeter (mm) film. The International Organization of Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) 36, Cinematography, Working Group (WG 1), Production technology, has developed a large number of standards related to motion picture photography, sound recording, reproduction, and projection....
In contrast to those traditionally filmed flicks, the sci-fi/fantasy box-office behemoth Avatar was shot entirely with digital cameras. INCITS/ISO/IEC 13818-2-2000 (R2006), Information Technology - Generic Coding of Moving Pictures and Associated Audio Information: Video, specifies the coded representation of picture information for digital storage media and digital video communication and specifies the decoding process....To assure that the Oscar broadcast is reliably delivered to those millions of home screens,...ANSI/SCTE 07 2006, Digital Transmission Standard For Cable Television. This ANS describes the framing structure, channel coding, and channel modulation for a digital multi-service television distribution system that is specific to a cable channel.... ...Full Story
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