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Internet phone and video service Skype went down in a global service outage on Wednesday, underscoring a weakness of the free online communication tool. Skype, partly owned by Web retailer eBay Inc, said some users were having problems signing on. Users in Asia and Europe complained of the outage on social network site Twitter. In its Twitter feed, the seven-year-old company apologized for the disruption and said it was investigating the cause.
Charging that Oracle has willfully disregarded the licensing terms for its own Java technology, the Apache Software Foundation has called upon other members of the Java Community Process (JCP) to vote against the next proposed version of the language, should Oracle continue to impose restrictions on open-source Java use.
The nonprofit organization has also indicated that it could end its involvement in the JCP if the licensing restrictions stay in place.
“Why would we want to be in an organization where the rules of law don’t matter? Our being on the [JCP Executive Committee] would be a sham. It would show that the community doesn’t matter, that we’d basically cave into Oracle pushing stuff through, whether or not it would be in the best interest of the community,” said Jim Jagielski, president and cofounder of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), in an interview with the IDG News Service.
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The Worldwide Web Consortium has released the results of its first HTML5 conformance tests, and according to this initial rundown, the browser that most closely adheres to the latest set of web standards is…Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.
Yes, the HTML5 spec has yet to be finalised. And yes, these tests cover only a portion of the spec. But we can still marvel at just how much Microsoft’s browser philosophy has changed in recent months.
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A straight line may be the shortest path from A to B, but it’s not always the most reliable or efficient way to go. In fact, depending on what’s traveling where, the best route may run in circles, according to a new model that bucks decades of theorizing on the subject. A team of biophysicists at Rockefeller University developed a mathematical model showing that complex sets of interconnecting loops — like the netted veins that transport water in a leaf — provide the best distribution network for supplying fluctuating loads to varying parts of the system. It also shows that such a network can best handle damage.
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