A Florida patent troll called Channel Intelligence is suing everyone from Lemonade to Remember the Milk for infringing on patent 6,917,941, which covers storing a wishlist in a database. Amazon and eBay are absent from the list of targets, even though they very likely store users’ wishlists in a database. With any luck, perhaps one of the defendants will get to use that precedent PJ found the other day from In re Lintner, which said, ‘[c]laims which are broad enough to read on obvious subject matter are unpatentable even though they also read on non-obvious subject matter — via Slashdot
The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we’ve seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even Google’s search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days — when their systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once
This week, ISPs agreed to work with the BPI to reduce file-sharing in the UK. When someone gets caught
the ISPs will send out a warning, 100% based on music industry provided evidence
. Not even the ISPs know if the claims of the BPI are true, so the evidence is totally unchallenged, a perfect position for the music industry
Intel has unveiled eight new Integrated Processor chips that the company claims will yield new, higher levels of performance and energy efficiency versus traditional system-on-chip designs
Brian Aker, MySQL’s director of architecture, has unveiled Drizzle, a database project aimed at powering websites with massive concurrency as well as trimming superfluous functionality from MySQL. Drizzle will have a micro-kernel architecture with code being removed from the Drizzle core and moved through interfaces into modules. Akers has already selected particular functionality for removal: modes, views, triggers, prepared statements, stored procedures, query cache, data conversion inserts, access control lists and some data types
The spam king
was sentenced on Tuesday to 47 months in prison, with a ruling that the court hopes sends a message to other online criminals. Robert Soloway, the man known as the spam king for the massive volume of spam he sent out, pleaded guilty to fraud, spamming and tax evasion after being indicted in May 2007. After an unusually long sentencing hearing lasting two-and-a-half days, Judge Marsha Pechman handed down her sentence in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle
The historic site of Britain’s crucial code-breaking programme during the second world war is so shabby it has become a national disgrace
. Bletchley Park, which helped launch the modern computer, is in a terrible state of disrepair
because of a lack of investment, say professors and heads of science from universities across the country in a letter to the Times
The embarrassing details of Federal MPs listed on a popular online encyclopedia are being systematically removed by public servants. The politicians and their staff have also received editing instructions from Parliamentary Librarian Roxanne Missingham on how to remove “incorrect or biased” information from the Wikipedia site. Outraged members of the volunteer Wikipedia community say they frequently catch politicians trying to censor entries
The ABC’s voracious and highly successful push into the digital domain has taken another mighty leap with the launch of ABC iView. The free internet TV service, which went live last night and is available at abc.net.au/iview, is the first real attempt by an Australian network to deliver comprehensive content online
Google has announced the debut of Knol, a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia penned by authoritative sources. Here’s how Knol works. Experts in a given subject log into a Google account and use the Knol software to post an item, also known as a knol. In some senses, the process is like producing a blog post — but in this case it’s not something written off the cuff but carefully crafted to coherently explain a single subject. One key attribute: Knols are meant to be signed with the author’s actual name. With permission, Google will actually verify the writer’s identity, either by credit card or phone
Google’s Blogger service is responsible for 2% of the world’s malware hosted on the web, according to a new report from security firm Sophos. The security firm claims hackers are setting up pages on the free blogging service to host malicious code, or simply posting links to infected web sites in other bloggers’ comments
Denmark-based Danamics has developed its first product, and it looks pretty special. The LM10 is a liquid metal based CPU cooler that combines liquid metal with an electromagnetic pump. It is claimed to be the world’s best performing air-cooler and have cooling capabilities that exceed those of most water-cooling systems
Broadband has for the first time outstripped dial-up as the main gateway to the internet for households. In 2006-07, 43 per cent of Australian homes had a broadband connection compared with 20 per cent with dial-up during the same period. Broadband penetration stood at a mere 16 per cent in 2004-05
Sensis has finally allowed Google’s robots to index Yellow Pages content, meaning that Google now has access to Australian businesses which might otherwise never appear in online results
Channel Intelligence, a company based in Florida, filed a lawsuit for patent infringement in Delaware on Tuesday against a long list of startups and other companies and individuals who have one thing in common — they offer wish lists for products people may want others to buy for them. The complaint is embedded below. Our understanding is that many of these companies don’t yet know they’ve been sued, as the documents are still in the process of being delivered to them. The patent in question, No 6,917,941, appears to cover the invention of creating a list of things in a database. It was issued in July 2005. Defendants include Lemonade, Scott Aikin, de Brun Design, Listafterlist, MindValley, My Life Registry, On My List, Remember The Milk, Shimon Rura, Stylehive, Sprout, Chad Van Norman, WhiteStripe, WishCentral, WishList and Zlio. Channel Intelligence alleges that none of the defendants have licensed their patent to create lists. In a database. Notable in their absence is Amazon, eBay and most other large etailers, all of which maintain wish lists for users
The Federal Government will abolish certificates that give ministers sweeping powers to keep documents a secret as the first step in reforms to the Freedom of Information law
Telcos are resisting calls for tougher redundancy standards after last week’s communications meltdown in Queensland. Optus subscribers in Queensland and northern NSW were left without phone, mobile or internet services for more than four hours when a major fibre optic cable was severed by a Gold Coast excavator last week
More than 80 Australian businesses are alleging the defunct Gold Coast 2Clix software company is holding years of their accounting data to ransom
Researchers at Purdue University have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of solid state lighting
, a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted
Researchers say they have grown in mice the kind of functioning heart blood vessels that cardiac surgeons create with bypass operations. One ultimate goal is to replace some heart surgery with injections of laboratory-grown cells that would establish themselves in the body, providing a system of blood vessels for damaged hearts that need more oxygen
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