Greenpeace Ejected from MacExpo

Environmentalist group cries foul, MacExpo organizer claim breach of contract reasons

Environmentalist group Greenpeace was ousted from the current MaxExpo in London by event organizers who claimed they had received complaints about the exhibitor from unnamed sources.

Greenpeace purchased space for the three-day expo in an attempt to raise awareness about concerns over the alleged use of toxic chemicals in Apple’s products.

Yeah, right, exhibitors get ejected all the time...

Web Wars Redux

Last Wednesday, Microsoft released a major update to Internet Explorer, the world’s most-used Web browser. Then, earlier this week, Mozilla made a new version of Firefox, a popular alternative, available for download. The browser wars are back.

Microsoft has announced the first new version of Internet Explorer (IE) in more than five years as rival Web browsers Firefox and (to a lesser extent) Opera turn up the competitive pressure on the world’s biggest software company.

Hacker To License iPod Code

London -
Just months after Apple Computer was found guilty of breaking Norwegian law with its iTunes downloading service, a native of the nippy European country has just returned the favor.

John Lech Johansen, a 22-year-old hacker known to those of his ilk as "DVD Jon," claims to have cracked the code that Apple uses to tie iTunes files exclusively to iPod players.

Apple iPod to remain market king

Apple Computer's iPod digital music player is not expected to lose significant market share in the next 12 to 18 months, despite the challenge from Microsoft's upcoming Zune player, a market research firm said Wednesday.
The popular Apple device, which accounts for more than three quarters of portable music players sold, shows no signs of losing momentum, having conditioned users to expect and buy regular upgrades, JupiterResearch said. Strong design and ease of use is also helping to keep sales strong.

Weird Al debuts at 10

Weird Al Yankovic scored a career high in chart position and sales, debuting at No. 10 and selling 73,000 copies of "Straight Outta Lynwood" (Volcano). Of his previous 11 releases, 1996's "Bad Hair Day" had secured his previous highest position, No. 14.

If you haven't heard "Don't Download This Song", cruise on over to Weird Al's myspace page...

UPDATE: Even better, true to "Don't Download This Song" sentiments, Mr. Al has posted not one, but two complete videos on youtube.

SGI files suit against ATI

SAN JOSE, Calif. — SGI, better known as Silicon Graphics Inc., has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against ATI Technologies Inc.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, asserts that products in ATI's line of Radeon graphics processors infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,650,327. The complaint seeks unspecified damages and a court ordered injunction against future infringement by ATI.

"The Company's technology covered by the '327 patent is an important resource in achieving enhanced graphics processing demanded by today's computer systems," said Dennis McKenna, CEO of graphics workstation maker SGI, in a statement. "SGI has licensed this technology to ATI's major competitors and, as I have previously been stating publicly, SGI intends to aggressively protect and enforce its IP. This is the first visible step in that process."

Is your Mac infringing? Your Mac is definitely infringing!

United States Patent 6,650,327 Airey , et al. November 18, 2003

A floating point rasterization and frame buffer in a computer system graphics program. The rasterization, fog, lighting, texturing, blending, and antialiasing processes operate on floating point values. In one embodiment, a 16-bit floating point format consisting of one sign bit, ten mantissa bits, and five exponent bits (s10e5), is used to optimize the range and precision afforded by the 16 available bits of information. In other embodiments, the floating point format can be defined in the manner preferred in order to achieve a desired range and precision of the data stored in the frame buffer. The final floating point values corresponding to pixel attributes are stored in a frame buffer and eventually read and drawn for display. The graphics program can operate directly on the data in the frame buffer without losing any of the desired range and precision of the data.