Microsoft Accused of Blackmailing UK Officials Supporting Open Document Format

We will close local facilities, Microsoft execs allegedly threatened when ODF was proposed as the new format for govt

The IT reform that the United Kingdom is working on is faced with strong opposition from tech giants operating facilities and doing business in the country, with some going as far as to blackmail MPs in order to block some changes from being adopted.

David Cameron’s former strategy chief, Steve Hilton, revealed during a public speech that Microsoft officials called MPs and tried to blackmail them to block the adoption of certain laws, threatening with the closure of local research facilities if the proposed changes go through.

“You just have to fight them off. I can give you specific examples: the thing I mentioned about IT contracts. Maybe there is someone here to confirm this from Microsoft? When we proposed this, Microsoft phoned Conservative MPs with Microsoft R&D facilities in their constituencies and said, ‘we will close them down in your constituency if this goes through,’” Hilton was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

And it appears that Microsoft is not the only large tech company that turns to scare tactics to make sure that the IT reform won’t be approved in the current form.

Hilton explained that some other companies, “sometimes a global CEO,” phoned MPs with pretty much similar threats, saying that they would close down plants in the United Kingdom.

Microsoft and open standards

Microsoft has recently lost an important battle in the United Kingdom, as the government has decided to switch to the open document format (ODF) and thus make the need for commercial software, such as Microsoft Office, less critical.

It appears that, when the government proposed the open document format, Microsoft tried a similar tactic and some company officials phoned MPs to threaten with lower spending and job cuts.

“A day or two before we were going to give a speech, a couple of backbench MPs called the office - they said Microsoft had called them saying if we went ahead with the speech on open standards, open architecture and open source, they would cut spending or maybe close research and development centers in the constituencies of the MPs they had called,” former government technology adviser Rohan Silva said last year.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft refused to comment on this report, but there’s no doubt that the software giant doesn’t want to be involved in such a scandal, especially because it’s in the middle of a transformation that would improve its gentleman sense of doing business and keep its name away from this kind of accusations.

Source: http://goo.gl/VOtTQc

Snakes with Legs Roamed Our Planet in Ancient Times, Study Reveals

The hind limbs dragging behind the ancestors of modern snakes came complete with ankles and toes, researchers say

About 128 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous period, forested lands in our planet's southern hemisphere were home to borderline alienesque and definitely bizarre snakes with legs, Yale University researchers argue in a new paper published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

When they say that these ancestral snakes had legs, the Yale University paleontologists don't just mean that they had limb-like appendages growing on the sides of their body. They mean actual legs, complete with ankles and toes.

In their report in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, the scientists propose that these early snakes were nocturnal creatures that fed on fairly large prey. Unlike anacondas and pythons, however, they didn't choke their victims to death. Instead, they relied on hooked teeth to snatch their next meal.

It is these peculiar snakes with legs that populated Earth's southern hemisphere during the Early Cretaceous period that the paleontologists believe eventually evolved into the slithering reptiles now inhabiting our planet.

“We infer that the most recent common ancestor of all snakes was a nocturnal, stealth-hunting predator targeting relatively large prey, and most likely would have lived in forested ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere,” Yale University researcher and study lead author Allison Hsiang said in a statement.

How do they know what ancient snakes look like?

To reveal the origin of modern snakes and deliver a more detailed account of the evolutionary history of these reptiles, paleontologist Allison Hsiang and colleagues looked at the genetic makeup and the anatomy of the species that now roam the Earth.

Whatever information was obtained in this manner was coupled with data provided by fossil evidence. The investigation allowed the researchers to put together a family tree documenting both living snakes and species that have long gone extinct.

Based on this family tree of living and extinct species, the Yale University team of paleontologists succeeded in identifying the major evolutionary patterns that ultimately gave rise to the slithering, legless creatures we refer to as snakes in this day and age.

The researchers found that, having started off as creatures with a complete set of legs, ancestral snakes evolved over the millennia to have just two - at which point they became the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes - and then further evolved to achieve great diversity.

As detailed by study co-author Daniel Field, “Our analyses suggest that the most recent common ancestor of all living snakes would have already lost its forelimbs, but would still have had tiny hind limbs, with complete ankles and toes.”

The Yale University team hopes that, by better understanding the evolutionary history of snakes, they might gain new insights into how and why the brain of primates - humans included - is hardwired to fear these creatures and react to their presence.

From: http://goo.gl/15ZeKk

LG Display shows off press-on 'wallpaper' TV under 1mm thick

Before you get too excited, it's only a proof-of-concept display. The unveiling is part of a broader announcement to showcase the company's plans for the future, which center on OLED tech.

​A model gently lifts the ultra-slim, detachable wallpaper OLED panel made by LG Display Co. at a media event held in Seoul on May 19, 2015. (Photo courtesy of LG Display Co.)

LG Display, the screen-making subsidiary of LG, is dedicated to OLED panels, and it has unveiled an impossibly thin television to prove it.

​

At a press event in its home country of Korea on Tuesday, LG Display showed off a "wallpaper" proof-of-concept television. The 55-inch OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display weighs 1.9 kilograms and is less than a millimeter thick. Thanks to a magnetic mat that sits behind it on the wall, the TV can be stuck to a wall. To remove the display from the wall, you peel the screen off the mat.

​

​The unveiling was part of a broader announcement by LG Display to showcase its plans for the future. The company said its display strategy will center on OLED technology. According to a press release, the head of LG Display's OLED business unit, Sang-Deog Yeo, said "OLED represents a groundbreaking technology" not only for the company, but also for the industry.

​

The comments echo the refrain consumers have been hearing for years as display technology has evolved. The HD craze kicked into high gear years ago with technologies like LCD (liquid crystal display) and plasma, but has since been moving increasingly toward LED technology.

​

​OLED is widely believed to be the next frontier. The technology adds an organic compound layer that allows not only for exceedingly thin screens, but for those displays to be curved. The organic material also emits its own light, eliminating the need for a backlight. That allows for such thin screens and has made OLED a desirable choice not only for televisions, but for a wide range of wearables and other mobile products. LG Display believes OLED could be the de facto display technology in all products in the future.

​

While some OLED screens have been used by companies like Samsung, LG and Sony, the costs are still quite high to produce the displays. Part of that cost is due to a historically low yield, or production of displays that are actually functional. More waste means higher costs on the screens that do make it through production. Those costs are then passed on to consumers. LG's 65-inch, 4K OLED TV, for instance, costs $9,000.

​

​On Tuesday, however, LG said that it has made significant headway in developing OLEDs. The company touted its position as the first to mass-produce large-screen OLEDs for televisions and said that its yield has hit 80 percent -- a strong showing, but still lower than LCDs.

​

Those issues with yield, coupled with price, mean televisions like the "wallpaper" display might not make their way to store shelves at a reasonable cost anytime soon.

​

LG Display said Tuesday it expects to sell 600,000 OLED TV panels this year and 1.5 million next year. The company also cited comments made at the press event by Ching W. Tang, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York and "the father of OLED." He said OLED displays will not become ubiquitous for another five to 10 years. At that point, Tang said, they could outpace LCDs in total shipments.

source: http://goo.gl/qZgWPp