Nokia completes Symbian acquisition...terrific news!!

In Brief : Nokia has completed its acquisition of mobile platform company Symbian. The acquisition, which was announced earlier this year, will enable Nokia to continue moving forward with its plans to liberate the Symbian source code and transform the platform into a community-driven open source software project.

After the software is audited to ensure that there are no licensing problems, it will be made available to the general public under the open source Eclipse Public License (EPL). Nokia expects this process to take roughly 2 years.
The completion of Nokia's Symbian acquisition marks a major turning point for the Symbian mobile operating system.
Although Symbian is currently the dominant platform on mobile phone handsets, its relevance is beginning to decline as Apple and Linux-based alternatives gain popularity.
Opening the platform and transitioning to a radically different development model could potentially attract a new development community to the software and make it more attractive to handset makers.
The move is part of Nokia's broader software strategy, which is now dominated by open source.
Nokia also recently acquired Trolltech and has brought the company's Qt framework to Symbian. A Qt preview release for S60 was announced in October for developers who wanted to get an early start. Qt is also supported on Windows Mobile and a variety of Linux-based mobile platforms, so it provides developers with a lot of portability across the entire mobile ecosystem.
It will also enrich the S60 software ecosystem by making it possible to port over existing Qt applications from the desktop.

My experience with Nokia N-Series...there is nothing like Symbian OS...open source model ensures that there are numerous third party softwares to do practically everything you would do on your personal computer right from web browsing/blogging to playing 3d games !!
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To know more about Symbian OS....
http://www.s60.com/
http://www.symbian.com/
www.allaboutsymbian.com

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Believe it or not : world's greatest woman boxer not good enough for Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award !!

In Brief : Only 4 months of training after a two-year sabbatical may not be ideal build-up for a World Championship but that is all M C Mary Kom needed as she clinched a historic 4th gold medal to become the most successful woman boxer in the world.

Yet, the pint-sized 46kg boxer, who returned to the capital on Monday, bagged the top honour with a comprehensive 7-1 verdict over Romania ’s Steluta Duta.
When MC Mary Kom started boxing, she had to convince her father that it was okay for a woman to try and storm what was considered a male bastion. Eight years and three World championship gold medals later, Mary Kom, now a mother, had to convince herself that she still had some fight left in her.
IT HURTS

“Women boxers in India should be treated with more respect. They have been bringing laurels for the country regularly,” said the world’s most successful woman pugilist.
“I was extremely pained when I was denied the Khel Ratna Award,” she said.
“I had three world titles under my belt but the selection panel did not find me good enough to get the award.
“I was very upset because the panel had some eminent sportspersons, including the legendary Milkha Singh. At least they should have realised my contribution. It happened to me twice,” the boxer said with regret.
Mary Kom said despite being ignored time and again, she was not going to call it quits so easily.
Awards or no awards she is the real "Million Dollar Baby".

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source : PTI http://www.dnaindia.com/ The Telegraph
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MySpace web hoax case : The juror's view and hacking argument.

In Brief : The jury leader in the trial of a Missouri woman accused of an Internet hoax that ended in a teenage neighbor's suicide said most panelists favored convicting the defendant of felony conspiracy.
The jurors in Myspace internet hoax case convicted Lori Drew the accused only on federal misdemeanor charges because they were unable to agree on whether the MySpace hoax was malicious, according to forewoman Valentina Kunasz.

Drew, 49, of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, was convicted Nov. 26 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where the case was tried because MySpace has servers in the area.
Witnesses had testified that the aim of the hoax had been to find out whether Megan was spreading rumors about Drew's daughter, Sarah, who was also 13 at the time.
The "boy" dumped Megan in 2006, telling her: "The world would be a better place without you." Megan hanged herself soon afterward.
PROSECUTER's VIEW
They didn't think she intended to have this girl kill herself. But she knew she was suicidal, depressed and taking medicines and still continued to pursue this act. Whether (Drew) physically types those messages we'll never know, but she didn't make any effort to stop it, so, that was malicious.
DEFENCE's VIEW
Drew had conspired to create a fictitious teenage boy on MySpace to get Megan Meier, 13, to divulge information, not to harm her.

Megan's mother, Tina Meier, pointed out that Drew is an adult. "She knew what was going on," Meier said on "Today." "She allowed this to continue to happen."
She said she was disappointed that Drew was not found guilty of additional charges, "but that's something I can't dwell on."

THE HACKING ARGUMENT

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyberbullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.
Unfortunately for Internet users everywhere, a jury bought the theory last week and found Lori Drew guilty of three misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, punishable with up to one year in a federal prison and a $100,000 fine for each of the three counts
SENTENCE :Drew could face up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for her convictions on three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization.

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Graphic novels ain't comics : did you know ?

In Brief : Yesterday I was reading an interview of Jeff Smith in Mumbai Mirror, the creator of graphic novel Bones, and it struck me how is it different from the comics. Here is the difference....

A graphic novel is a type of comic book, usually with a lengthy and complex storyline similar to those of novels, and often aimed at mature audiences.

It also means comic short story anthologies, and in some cases bound collections of previously published comic book series (commonly referred to as trade paperbacks).
Graphic novels are typically bound in longer and more durable formats than familiar comic magazines (using the same materials and methods as printed books).

They are generally sold in bookstores and specialty comic book shops rather than at news-stands.
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