GameSpyDaily interviews TransGaming CEO Gavriel State. State discusses gaming, particularly his company’s new Linux/Windows gaming technology, WineX.

ActiveState and members of the open source community, announced today at the Web Services Edge Conference, the Simple Web Service API. This is a standard method for scripting languages to access Web services described with the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). For the first time, leading developers from the Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl communities are working together to create a common solution. With ActiveState coordinating their activities, a consistent, high quality implementation will be available sooner to the millions of programmers that use these languages.
A beta implementation of the Simple Web Services API is available for download for Python, Perl and PHP, with support for Ruby and Tcl coming soon. This will make Web service scripting easy for the millions of programmers that rely on one or more of these languages. Scripting languages are ideal for consuming Web services due to their ease of use, rapid development, and availability on all popular computing platforms.

“Web services will create a programmable Web, the next step in the evolution of Internet technology. In the future, Web services will be the primary technology for integrating applications,” said Dick Hardt, CEO & Founder, ActiveState. “We are making programming easier and more accessible with our contributions to the Simple Web Service API and the support for Web services that we?re putting into our products.”

ActiveState has products that make it easier to both develop and deploy Web services. Programmers targeting Microsoft IIS can easily publish their Perl code as Web services using PerlEx, which will generate the necessary WSDL and glue code. Komodo, Visual Perl and Visual Python let programmers quickly build and consume Web services in Perl, Python and PHP. By dragging and dropping WSDL files into these development tools, Simple Web Service API initialization code is automatically generated, and IntelliSense and class browsing is then provided.

“I’m glad to see ActiveState presenting the Simple Web Service API at the Web Services Edge Conference. Web services are an important technology, and one we’re sure to be using for years into the future. We’ll only realize its engineering promise, though, as we marry it to such highly-productive, industrial-strength languages as Tcl, Perl, PHP, and Python. That’s the task ActiveState has set for this initiative, and more generally for itself: to help programmers use advanced scripting methods to deliver results quicker and more reliably,” said Cameron Laird, network developer and author.

“The scripting languages have always had a friendly rivalry but we?re not afraid to learn from each other. For the first time, we’ve begun working together on new technologies early in their development. By integrating great ideas from many sources we?re developing something much more functional and coherent than from working singularly,” said Paul Prescod, ActiveState.

About Web Services:
A Web service is a business function a company makes online to customers, partners, or internally via XML-based messaging (SOAP) and programming interfaces. Web services make integrating applications easier than other means of distributed computing and thus allow businesses to extend existing systems to others without having to rearchitect existing back-end infrastructure.

About ActiveState:
ActiveState is the leading provider of open source based programming products and services for cross-platform development. ActiveState’s key technologies are Perl, the Internet’s most popular programming language; Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language. The ActiveState Programmer Network (ASPN) offers these technologies with the latest information and productivity tools, empowering programmers with the freedom to work with their preferred language and development environment.

Media & Analyst Contacts:
Lori Pike, ActiveState

DaemonProjects writes “Cell phones are going the route of the diaper, the cigarette lighter and, more recently, the camera, which is to say into the trash once they’re spent. Two companies plan to hit retail shelves nationwide soon with disposable cell phones, promising to put the convenience of mobile calling into the hands of consumers who might not be able to afford traditional cellular service, or who want the safety of a cell phone for vacations and other outings without having to commit to a plan. Read More“

From Wired News: “Fueled by nostalgia, fans of two classic games from the early days of computing are busy remaking them with slick 3-D
graphics.

In an industry where computer games have a shelf life of about four months, some fan loyalties can stretch for decades.

Such is the case for The Bard’s Tale and Ultima, two classic games from the 1980s that fans are recreating with a
modern look and feel.

Trouble is, rights for the games are held by one of the biggest companies in the industry, Electronic Arts, which isn’t too
happy about grassroots revivals.”

ZDNet: “Yahoo is expected to announce a new service Tuesday that uses free software to divert
surfers from Microsoft’s Web properties by changing the preferences in Internet Explorer.

Parts of the service quietly launched Monday in conjunction with an upgrade to Yahoo’s instant
messaging software. When downloading the update, consumers were given the option to receive
the new IM client on its own or as part of a package called “Yahoo Experience.””

National Post: “Microsoft’s marketing, which has often been viewed as the company’s strength, has shifted its pitch on Windows XP.

No longer is the operating system being sold on the basis that it has the latest-and-greatest features. Now it’s about how
businesses and consumers can have the best, most cost-effective computing experience, according to Erik Moll, Microsoft’s
Canadian director of marketing for Windows XP.”

Reported by ZDNet UK: “The European Parliament’s Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home
Affairs has reasserted its earlier position on email spam by voting in favour of the Marco
Cappato report on data protection.

In a second reading of the report, the Committee voted on Monday night to leave it to the
discretion of individual member states to decide whether subscribers should be able to “opt in” or
“opt out” of unsolicited e-mail for marketing purposes. Direct marketing by fax, SMS or
automated calling systems is to be allowed only with prior consent by subscribers.”

– By Dan Berkes –
A scheduled Thursday hearing for the Security Systems Standards and
Certification Act (SSSCA) has been canceled. Staffers in the office of
the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings cited the continuing anthrax scare on Capitol Hill as reason for the cancellation. That same day, the PC industry came out swinging against his proposed legislation.According to accounts of Monday’s press briefing, PC industry executives from the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, Intel, and other major American computer companies said that they believe the Hollywood-backed SSSCA would not solve piracy concerns, but in fact stifle technological innovation.

“We couldn’t feel more strongly that the protection of intellectual property and software and all digital content is an extremely important effort,” said Business Software Alliance president Robert Holleyman. However, “we differ from some companies who wish to promote a federally legislated and mandated technology standard.”

The SSSCA is legislation proposed by Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, and backed by a Who’s Who of entertainment industry conglomerates including the Walt Disney Co., News Corp., and AOL Time Warner. The proposed legislation would mandate all “interactive digital devices” prevent users from making copies of any multimedia or other content.

The bill is of particular concern to Open Source advocates, who fear the copy protection standards would effectively outlaw Linux and a great deal of associated software.

The SSSCA’s author was under the impression that the U.S. computer and entertainment industries would work side-by-side to create their own copy protection standards. This is referenced in section 104 of the bill, granting both sides almost two years time to come up with a working standard. After Monday’s PC industry briefing, it would seem that goal is somewhat unlikely.

“[SSSCA] would be an unwarranted intrusion in the marketplace and would result in a standard that would be rejected by the marketplace,” said Ken Kay, the executive director of the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP).

There is a contingency plan hardwired into the bill that would force a shotgun wedding of cooperation between technology and entertainment companies. Should the two sides fail to agree on a standard after two years, the U.S. Department of Commerce would be free to set its own standards for copy protection.

Representatives from Compaq, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft were also on hand to showcase the industry’s voluntary technological copy protection efforts. CSPP’s Kay also criticized Hollywood’s support of the SSSCA: “It is ironic to me that the MPAA is out promoting this approach when it has been the biggest proponent of industry led solutions,” referring to the voluntary content rating systems in place for movies and television.

A press representative for Hollings said the hearings scheduled for Thursday have been canceled because of the anthrax scare. Senate buildings remained closed today while bioterrorism experts sweep offices for additional evidence of the virus; Hollings staffers were not available today to discuss if or when SSSCA hearings would take place.

Kernel Cousin KDE is back from its two-month hiatus. From Aaron J. Seigo’s introduction: “KDE3 development is progressing at a fine pace as KDE turns 5 years old. Watching the cvs commit logs, one realizes how much of the
effort is aimed at polishing KDE to a high gloss with this release. Core libraries are getting facelifts, Qt3 integration continues in an effort to provide a perfect
transition, and important bugfixes are to be found throughout the code base. Some of the more interesting things that are occuring include a new javascript API
(which will be covered in next week’s KC KDE), a renewed effort in the KDE PIM project both on the internals as well as the interface, a rewrite of the Kate
text part aimed at cleaning up the old code base, the templatization and merging of the various core library loaders and new printing extensions.”

From Slashdot: “Some people really dislike the X Window System. DirectFB
seems to be the answer to their prayers. Building on the framebuffer support
available in recent Linux kernels, DirectFB adds hardware acceleration, input
devices, and window management. It has been made (and LGPL’d) by Digital
Convergence as a Linux video/television solution, but it is much more than that. It
has the potential to replace X for Linux desktops.”