Tuesday Morning Tech News

Quote

Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs agree that the technology start-up market has come back to life during the past year. Valuations for top-tier companies are on the rise and large companies, particularly big networking equipment makers such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, are once again shopping for good acquisitions.

Quote

Kriss could not immediately be contacted for further comment, but it is clear that Massachusetts has long-standing concerns over Microsoft's XML schema. Earlier this year, in a document describing its work on open standards, the Commonwealth said that "the Microsoft "Patent License" for use of Office schemas has not been accepted as satisfactory by all parties, even if it eventually proves to satisfy the requirements of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To some, the exceptions to the 'royalty-free license ... to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise distribute Licensed Implementations solely for the purpose of reading and writing files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas' are problematic, as are the terms of use," said the Commonwealth.

Quote

While channels and ridges in the Martian landscape indicate that water once flowed across it and probes have detected ice in the soil, Bourke believes she has found topographical evidence that some of its giant dunes are about 50 percent water. "My findings do not suggest that there's more water on Mars," she told journalists at the British Association for the Advancement of Science festival in Dublin. "It's identifying a new location that has not been defined before."

Quote

A six-month slip in NASA's next shuttle mission, coupled with hurricane damage to its external tank factory in New Orleans, is prompting the agency to move a lot of hardware around Kennedy Space Center. The orbiter Atlantis was hoisted off a mobile launcher platform in the KSC Vehicle Assembly Building on Friday, the first step in taking apart a fully assembled shuttle.