[Lilux-info] [Fwd: IEEE Spectrum Tech Alert] MSFT-Yahoo, and OpenSource Robots

Hi, A few articles I thought might be interesting and are related to our pole of interests... Serge PS: a few days ago, someone said that the only language used on these mailing lists is French. It may be that, of late, most people have been writing in French, but most of us are able to use more than 2 languages and we tend to adapt to the language used by the person asking a question (e.g. on the Help list). ---------------------------------------------------------- 4. MICROSOFT-YAHOO MERGER ABOUT MORE THAN JUST BATTLING GOOGLE Lost amid the shuffle in Microsoft's unprecedented offer to acquire Yahoo is that the latter has been a standard-bearer for many of the new technologies with which the next generation of the Web is being developed. From RSS to OpenID, Yahoo has found itself at the center of the Web 2.0 world. Read more at: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6034 ---------------------------------------------------------- 8. AUTOMATON: INTRODUCING AN OPEN-SOURCE PERSONAL ROBOT A start-up called Willow Garage, in California, is working on an open-source personal robot. According to Network World: "One of its immediate goals is to build 10 robots and make them available to university researchers as a common platform that can be tinkered with and improved." Willow Garage will also supply "an open-source code base integrated from the best open-source robotics software available," states the start-up's president and CEO Steve Cousins. Read more and comment at: http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/03/07/california_startup_intr… ---------------------------------------------------------- 9. THE RISK FACTOR: SECURITY RISKS WITH IMPLANTED DEVICES Losing your heart may have a whole new meaning. In a disturbing article in the Boston Globe, it appears that there are large security gaps in implanted devices that could possibly result in unauthorized commands to the device, reprogramming settings and even telling the device to deliver a high-voltage shock. Read more and comment at: http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/2008/03/losing_your_heart_may_hav… ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991: "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Serge Marelli, Luxembourg ----------------------------------------------------------------------