Cody Taylor

A new report by the NPD Group indicates that Blu-ray video technology has moved “further into the mainstream.” Indeed, first quarter (Q1) sales of stand-alone Blu-ray players in the US increased by 72 percent to over 400,000 units.

clang_jangle writes “Arstechnica has a short article up describing how Microsoft and Intel have ‘goofed up’ Windows 7’s XP Mode, by ensuring many PCs will not be able to use it. (And it won’t be easy to figure out in advance if your PC is one of them.) Meanwhile, over at Infoworld, Redmond is criticized for having the ‘right idea, wrong technology’ with their latest compatibility scheme, and PC World says ‘great idea, on paper.’ With Windows 7 due to be released in 2010, and Redmond apparently eager to move on from XP, perhaps this is not really a ‘goof’ at all?”

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superdave98 writes “As a sign that a CIO has way too much time on his hands, Santa Rosa Junior College is sending emails threatening lawsuits to staff and students who have the letters ‘SRJC’ in their private email addresses. They contend that people could be confused and think these are official email addresses. Sure, I suppose people who fall for 419 scams probably could be fooled, but not any reasonable humans. I can’t believe they found a lawyer who thought this was a good idea.”

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jamie found a note on debian-administration.org, the first in a promised series on migrating off of SHA-1 in OpenPGP. “Last week at eurocrypt, a small group of researchers announced a fairly serious attack against the SHA-1 digest algorithm, which is used in many cryptosystems, including OpenPGP. The general consensus is that we should be ‘moving in an orderly fashion toward the theater exits,’ deprecating SHA-1 where possible with an eye toward abandoning it soon (one point of reference: US govt. federal agencies have been directed to cease all reliance on SHA-1 by the end of 2010, and this directive was issued before the latest results). … So what can you do to help facilitate the move away from SHA-1? I’ll outline three steps that current gpg users can do today, and then I’ll walk through how to do each one…”

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andre.david notes an AFP report that Austria has announced its intention to withdraw from CERN, citing budget concerns, adding: “Austrian particle physicists are not happy with this. From HEPHY, the Austrian Institute for High Energy Physics: ‘All of a surprise Johannes Hahn… announced that he wants to terminate the Austrian membership at CERN… This [would] affect spin-off projects like the planned cancer treatment center MedAustron… which is dependent on collaborating with CERN… Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC…’ Will other countries follow suit?” “Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The €20M (.9M) yearly membership in CERN… makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said. Hahn said he hoped Austria could find ‘a new kind of cooperation’ with CERN and described Vienna’s withdrawal from the project as a ‘pause,’ noting that some 30 states were already working together with the Geneva-based centre without being members. The newly-available funds will now allow Austria to take part in new European projects, boost its participation in old ones as well as help the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the country’s main organization funding research.”

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DaveKleiman writes “Will bloggers change the world of Supreme Court litigation by inspecting published opinions? Rachel C. Lee has an interesting take on the question in the Stanford Law Review, Ex Parte Blogging: the Legal Ethics of Supreme Court Advocacy In the Internet Era (PDF). She begins the review with: ‘Lawyers have been arguing their cases before the Supreme Court for over two centuries, while the phenomenon of legal blogs is perhaps a decade old. Yet legal blogs cannot be dismissed as merely a sideshow novelty — they are already capable of having a substantial impact on Supreme Court litigation.’ The review hits on many key points both for and against the use of blogging, but ultimately concludes that members of the Court and their staff will have to refrain from reading any blog post relating to a pending case, no matter who it is written by. It’s even possible we’ll get carefully drafted rules preventing blogging by attorneys.” It’s going to be tough to make any such prohibition work. After all, Groklaw’s PJ is not an attorney.

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ruphus13 sends in an OStatic article outlining the plans of the state of South Carolina, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project, to provide laptops to local elementary school children. “The South Carolina Department of Education and the non-profit Palmetto Project have teamed up to get a laptop in the hands of every elementary school student in South Carolina… The OLPC/SC hopes to distribute as many as 50,000 laptops this spring to eligible students. The effort is underwritten and managed by the Palmetto Project, whose mission is to ‘put new and creative ideas to work in South Carolina.’ While low-performing school districts with limited resources are a special focus for the OLPC/SC, the group is adamant on one point: There are no free laptops. In order to receive a laptop, children need to give a small monetary donation — the project coordinators say a dollar or two is sufficient.”It’s not obvious from browsing around the OLPC/SC site what software the XO laptops will be running; but by following links one gets the impression that they will be powered by Linux, not XP.

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