Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware. The RTM build is 7600, but it is not the same one that leaked less than two weeks ago (7600.16384). We speculated that Microsoft may end up recompiling build 7600 until it is satisfied, but it only took the company one more shot to get it right: 7600.16385 is the final build number.
From The Washington Post comes news that the FCC is preparing to propose net neutrality rules on Monday. Quoting: '[FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski] will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and services. ... The agency is expected to review what traffic management is reasonable and what practices are discriminatory. The guidelines are known as "principals" at the agency, which some public interest groups have sought to codify so that they would clearly be enforceable.
Reviews of Google Wave are out, and opinions are that it has potential as a development platform but is noisy to use for real-time communication. Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter
The Wikimedia blog has a new post from Erik Moeller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Erik Zachte, a data analyst, to dispute recent reports about editors leaving Wikipedia (which we discussed on Wednesday).
WhatDoIKnow sends in a story about an appeals court ruling in a singular case that might have the effect of narrowing "fair use" rights for transformative uses of artworks.
India's new copyright bill sounds like a pretty good piece of work: it declares private, personal copying to be 'fair dealing' (like US fair use) and limits the prohibition on breaking DRM so that it's only illegal to do so if you're also violating copyright.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a complaint this month with the FTC 'alleging that professional sports leagues, Hollywood studios, and book publishers were all using copyright notices that misrepresented the law'. That is, they were aggressively pursuing 'right' that they were not entitled to. Now a group, backed by companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun, and Red Hat, has launched a web site called Defend Fair Use that shows they are serious about making the complaint stick. From the article: 'In contrast to copyright notices that take no account of fair use and claim control over "all accounts and descriptions" of a game, the CCIA offers a different
Bletchley Park, the home of Station X, Britain's secret code-breaking base during World War II, is barely scraping by financially, as shown in these images compiled by ZDNet this week. The site has undergone major redevelopment as an act of remembrance for the Allied efforts to break the German Enigma code, but now its future is clouded — among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation turned them down for financial assistance (since it doesn't have to do with the Internet).
Several readers noted that the limited pilot test of Google Health has ended, and Google is now offering the service to the public at large. Google Health allows patients to enter health information, such as conditions and prescriptions, find related medical information, and share information with their health care providers (at the patient's request). Information may be entered manually or imported from partnered health care providers. The service is offered free of charge, and Google won't be including advertising. The WSJ and the NYTimes provide details about Google's numerous health partners.
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