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Why the fuck are you copying John's article from Ars Technica to dropbox and driving traffic to it? Websites like Ars can use the exposure & ad. revenue so people like John can make a living.

The original article is here.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars

Last year I wrote that Intellectual Ventures is a kind of reductio ad absurdum of our flawed patent system. Itâ(TM)s a firm that literally does nothing useful, its only business is the acquisition and licensing of patents. Not only does it have no intention of commercializing the technologies it âoeinvents,â its business model is based on minimizing the amount of research performed per patent obtained. In Malcolm Gladwellâ(TM)s brilliant (if inadvertent) exposé of IV, he describes how IV hires smart people to participate in brainstorming sessions and then has patent lawyers immediately file patent applications for every idea that comes up during the discussion, without bothering to actually implement any of them, or even devoting much effort to verifying that they actually work. IV then approaches firms that are doing the hard work of implementing âoetheirâ ideas and demands a cut of their profits.

Myhrvoldâ(TM)s firm illustrates in a way that no law review article could the extent to which the patent system punishes firms that actually produce useful products. Firms whose business models involve actual innovation have to show restraint in exploiting their patent portfolios. If they donâ(TM)t, thereâ(TM)s a high probability that some of their adversaries will countersue and both firms will be dragged into a legal quagmire. But if litigation is your only business, then youâ(TM)re not vulnerable to retaliatory infringement lawsuits, so you can exploit your patent portfolio much more aggressively. Many small âoepatent trollâ firms have exploited this flaw in the past, but Myhrvold is the first person to recognize that it can be exploited in a systematic, large-scale fashion.

Until recently, one of the few points Myhrvold could make in his own favor is that he hadnâ(TM)t started suing firms that declined to license his patent portfolio. I say âoeuntil recentlyâ because weâ(TM)re now learning that the lawsuits have started. IV has begun selling off chunks of its patent portfolio to people like Raymond Niro with well-deserved reputations for being âoepatent trolls.â Threatening to sell patents to a third party who will sue you is more subtle than threatening to sue you directly, but the threat is just as potent. Myhrvoldâ(TM)s âoesales pitchâ to prospective licensees just got a lot more convincing.

The fundamental question we should be asking about this business strategy is how it benefits anyone other than Myhrvold and the patent bar. Remember that the standard policy argument for patents is that they incentivize beneficial research and development. Yet IVâ(TM)s business model is based on the opposite premise: produce no innovative products, spend minimal amounts on research and development, and make a profit by compelling firms that are producing products and investing in R&D to pay up. Not only does this enrich Myhrvold at everyone elseâ(TM)s expense, but it also reduces the incentive to innovate, because anyone who produces an innovative product is forced to share his profits with Intellectual Ventures. Patents are supposed to make innovation more profitable. Myhrvold is using the patent system in a way that does just the opposite. In thinking about how to reform the patent system, a good yardstick would be to look for policy changes that would tend to put Myhrvold and his firm out of business.

Apparently, everyone has forgotten that UTIs have been in use since Tiger.

By the way, Slashdot, nice job not posting a link to Arstechnica's epic 23-page Snow Leopard review from last week. It's not like they put out the most detailed reviews in the industry or anything.

Apparently, everyone has forgotten that UTIs have been in use since Tiger.

By the way, Slashdot, nice job not posting a link to Arstechnica's epic 23-page Snow Leopard review from last week. It's not like they put out the most detailed reviews in the industry or anything.

This was studied by a mr. Rufus Pollock: A Cambridge researcher says that, according to economic calculations, the ideal length of time for copyright protection is a mere 14 years.

"...While all that pervasive multithreading made for impressive technology demos and a great user experience, it could be extremely demanding on the programmer. BeOS was all about threads, going so far as to maintain a separate thread for each window. Whether you liked it or not, your BeOS program was going to be multithreaded."

"GCD embodies a philosophy that is at the opposite end of the spectrum from BeOS's "pervasive multithreading" design. Rather than achieving responsiveness by getting every possible component of an application running concurrently on its own thread (and paying a heavy price in terms of complex data sharing and locking concerns), GCD encourages a much more limited, hierarchical approach: a main application thread where all the user events are processed and the interface is updated, and worker threads doing specific jobs as needed."
Very good in-depth article btw. http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/1

Here is the full URL since you can't determine if the shortened one is going to goatse or a Rick Roll:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/carthage/2009/09/the-cloud-that-term-does-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means.ars

I'm not against *all* patents. Some algorithms have a serious amount of R&D and ingenuity behind them.

I actually find it a bit tough to come up with a good answer to the problem of patents. The first thing that popped into my head when I read about "free software harmed by software patents" is the whole thing about H264/Theora and the HTML 5 "video" tag.

Now I don't really know what's patented in H264, but I could imagine that it may well be some algorithms with a serious amount of R&D behind them. On the other hand, free software can't legally implement those codecs, and so Firefox can't support it. Free software also can't technically (AFAIK) implement MP3 or AAC encoders/decoders without paying a patent fee.

Now I suppose you could say, "so what?" Fair enough. Still, I have it stuck in my head somewhere that these are important standards that we need to be able to use freely in order to promote the arts and sciences (which is the whole point of patents, isn't it?).

It was selling for $25 at Amazon yesterday. I think you get a lot Bang for your $25 and according to Ars you can install it over Tiger on Intel Macs. See:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/08/29-snow-leopard-retail-disc-will-install-over-tiger.ars

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/9#compilers

You can see teh speed tests in an Opera article over at ARS. Look how slooooooooow IE 8 is.

The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.

On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.

The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)

30 bucks..

a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.

apple releasing a version of osx for 30 bucks is metaphorically equivalent to an 2010 infiniti M slapped with a 20k(US) sticker price.

The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.

On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.

The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)

OpenBossa is a division of INdT, a nonprofit research institute in Brazil that was founded by Nokia and the Brazilian government. OpenBossa has close ties with Nokia and is well-known in the Maemo community

Taken from the arstechnica web site that also carried this story

Wikipedia uses Ubuntu now as its server OS. That should lay to rest any notion of Ubuntu being technically inferior to any other distro.

As opposed to, say, the RPM-Hell

Have you ever used a system that was based on packages other than RPMs? It seems like a lot of Slackware users formed their only opinions of non-Slack distros back in the mid-1990s, when Debian was comatose and Red Hat was the only other option.

Well have a look at "ACLU: 2/3 of US population lives in "Constitution-free" zone'"
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2008/10/aclu-23-of-us-population-lives-in-constitution-free-zone.ars
"the Constitution-free zone that exists a US borders and airports actually extends 100 air miles inland and encompasses two-thirds of the country's population. The US Border Patrol can set up checkpoints anywhere in this region and question citizens." So in theory, you next stop and search could be like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHqpuVetLeo

I was curious, so I checked the Apple support docs and (when for a minute I couldn't find anything there) some related stuff:
Apple Support: Battery Service
Apple Support: Replacement Batteries
Ars Technica: New Macbook Pro Battery Replacement Information
Apple KB: How to replace a Macbook battery


Investigation revealed that some of the newer Macbook Pros and the Macbook Air have an inaccessible battery. They have a replacement plan to replace the battery for you, either at the store by appointment (though probably walk in would work unless they're that busy), or mail in over a few days.

13' Macbooks look to be pretty much the same as everything else, press a latch and slide the battery out. 15' Macbooks have a slightly more annoying latch (requires a coin or screwdriver to unlock the battery area), but are otherwise basically the same.

So there you have it.

The difference though was, the floppy disk was hardware, as far as I know (and http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/968001001931 seems to say so) that there is still floppy disk support for OS X. It costs money to include a floppy disk, it does not cost any money, and probably almost no money in support, to continue supporting an un-changing platform that is "dead". Taking it out A) most likely has no space gains B) inconveniences users and C) is pointless. It cost money to continue shipping floppy disks, it does not cost any more money to keep syncing with Palm devices.

supporting article: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/02/nokia-to-finland-let-us-spy-here-or-were-going-elsewhere.ars

I don't trust nokia. why would you?

>Is it April 1st?

No, this is what happens when you vote in competent Democrats to run things instead of Republicans like Bush and Cheney.

I agree. Democrats have consistently stood up for the little guy:

• Copyright Term Extension Act (Signed by Bill Clinton)
• DMCA (Signed by Bill Clinton)
• Secret ACTA treaty negotiations (Obama administration won't let us know the details about.)

I think it's time to wake up. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are deeply, deeply corrupt.

Ars Technica speculates they wanted HD, and the only ARM processor (OMAP4) capable of decent HD is still about a year away from mass production. And they wanted to enter the market now, to make some headway. A year is a long time when it comes to marketshare.

So, nothing against Linux/Maemo, it's just that another "dumb" netbook is not what Nokia wants. The market is full of them already. You want one of those, grab an EeePC 1000H now (or Aspire One, or Dell Mini, whatever).

Nokia wanted something that stands apart, and right here and now the only choice is to go with Intel processors. The ARM-based smartbooks will come, but are still more than a year away. If you want "dumb" ARM-based netbooks, those may be closer (6 months). But I would still wait a year to get one, until all the quirks in the various interfaces and drivers are polished out. Please don't forget that OEM integration of Linux for desktop use is a comparatively very recent thing.

Unless of course it's a password to your laptop that the police want. Then you can go to jail for not providing it apparently.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/court-self-incrimination-privilege-stops-with-passwords.ars

Since Parent didn't provide a link, I will...hopefully it will enlighten people but he is correct...as of June 2009 broadband is in only 60% of households in the U.S. (so yeah...it kinda is a big deal). http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/us-20th-in-broadband-penetration-trails-s-korea-estonia.ars

It's possible. In that case, by keeping the deals they make to different developers secret, they will have better negotiating power.

But this could also be more about Apple wanting control of what the media journalists, bloggers, and commenters on internet forums can say about Apple, their policies, and decisions. (E.g. the secrecy requirements may be "defensive" in nature, standard language they could use for all developer tools, possibly)

For example, if Google revealed certain information, it could result in the media publishing critical things about Apple.

Apple is very sensitive and aggressive in controlling their public image, and they are well known for their secrecy.

They are also well known for sending armies of lawyers at web sites or people revealing information they don't want puiblished, or that are excessively critical of them. Their tools include cease and decist letters, DMCA notices, threats to sue, and actual lawsuits....

Examples in recent years:

• Apple Computer ordered to pay more than $750k in attorney fees and court costs in a case that pitted the electronics giant against a group of online journalists who posted information about an unreleased Apple product on the Web.
• Apple Broke the law by lying about Steve Jobs' health
• Apple product failure results in gagging order
• Apple Lawyers set sights on new prey (after sending cease-and-decist letters to "Podcasting" websites over alleged dilution of the "iPod" mark)
• Apple Lawyers bully bloggers over iPhone skins
• Apple Lawyers Tried To Cover-Up Exploding iPod Stories,
• Microsoft Cows To Apple Lawyers, Changes 'Laptop Hunters' Ad
• Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site, 2 (Think Secret)
• Apple lawyers nix box pix
• Apple's lawyers attack everyone over iPhone icons - "Apple's lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available."
• Apple's lawyers threaten fake Steve jobs (Parody site)
• Apple sued for threatening fan wiki - 2
• Apple sues Victoria School - over the use of a logo that is shaped like an Apple. [...] students are now afraid to give their teachers apples now because of the fruitâ(TM)s striking resemblance to the company logo.
• Apple Lawyers shutting down Iowa Bar's iPod Mondays
• Apple Cease-and-Decists Stupidity Leak
• A

Unless they plan on adding extra multiplayer goodies to the subsequent "episode", then the real driver to buy anything after the first one would have to be a nice, solid single player-experience and plot-line.

From the official Starcraft II FAQ:

How will the expansion sets impact multiplayer gameplay?

The expansion sets will add new content to each race for use in multiplayer matches. This could include additions such as new units, abilities, and structures, along with new maps and Battle.net updates.

However, they are definitely not neglecting single-player. Here's the latest news on all the work they're putting into single-player, and here's a video with a glimpse of the campaign.

where exactly is the ps3 a top seller? not here: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/npd-1108-a.png

M$ "me-too" entry in the console market continues in last place, sixth out of six as of August 2009:

• 01 Nintendo Wii - 95,357
• 02 Nintendo DS - 85,737
• 03 PlayStation Portable - 33,049
• 04 PlayStation 3 - 8760
• 05 PlayStation 2 - 3617
• 06 Xbox 360 - 3552

PS2, PSP, and PS3 fluctuate a bit, but Wii keeps climbing albeit not steadily.

The Red Ring o Death we all passed in the stores whenever Xbox was on display is only minor compared to the quality and duration of the eipc failure. The M$ console hardware failures have been around forever, on about as long as the unit has been on the market. It's not just bricked units and years of scotched discs. It's been four or five years of property damage and even occasional injury and death, with fires in many countries.

But, hey, if defective M$ hardware burns down your family, it's your fautlt. To be fair M$ is right about that: The buyers were warned in prior to purchase by the M$ brand clearly marked on the packaging. C'mon, M$ hardware is as poor as M$ software. The fault lies with those who decided to deploy xbox instead of one of the top-selling game consoles like Wii, PS2, or PS3.

Games are optional. Other activities are not. At some point families will ask the courts to ask how hospitals decided to deploy M$ products like C#-based gewgaws or for-novelty-purposes-only systems like XP on the desktop or server instead of functinal Java- or Python-based applications or systems actually designed for a networked environemnt, such as Solaris and Linux. The Microsofot brand is a warning, those who ignore that warning and deploy the product anyway are in the wrong. Multiple counts of { voluntary | criminally negligent } manslaughter. Who goes to the gas chamber, the techs deploying the known defective technology or the administrators who bullied them into doing so? "Just following orders" is not a valid defense for any politically motivated group, even one with heavy marketing and lobbying.

I use it almost exclusively as a digital sketch pad but it works great as a general browsing computer as well.

I think I've found the best possible use for a touchpad: A portal to retro RPG Nirvana. Basically, this guy found that running classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment on a touchpad is bliss. You can do it with a finger since all you need to do is tap on the screen to move and interact with the 2d isometric world. Also, there have been some major mods produced recently that allow you to play Infinity Engine games at widescreen resolutions. It's amazing how gorgeous these old games look when you're not viewing them at 640x480. I'm looking forward to playing through Planescape: Torment and enjoying the story in my RPGs again. Also, being able to do it on a train or bus is just awesome.

where exactly is the ps3 a top seller? not here: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/npd-1108-a.png

I thought the way they sell so many is mainly due to the up-front cost. Most people apparently want a PS3 with its bluray, easy going attitude to upgrades, free online play etc. If it was cheaper - and it now is - then more than twice as many would prefer it.

Amazon has restricted supply of the PS3 slim already, Marketshare for the PS is surely going to rise at the expense of the Xbox now.

No doubt they *can* make it stop working on my existing PS3 if I choose to install their update. But it doesn't say anywhere that they are planning to remove it. I highly doubt they are, since the cost of maintenance on leaving it there is zero.

In the case of choosing an alternate OS (ie. a Linux Distribution) it is rather pointless to remove the option while still supporting the previous PS3's. I did read that a John Koller, Sony's director of hardware marketing stated that they are only concerned with the PS3 OS but I have a feeling he had no real technical expertise since the same person stated that the PS3 slim would have a power brick which is clearly untrue.

I love this quote from John re PS2 backwards compatibility. "It's not coming back, so let me put that on the table, Koller says with an air of finality. But it's all people ever talk about!" - You have got to be kidding me, what arrogance or is this the reporter quoting out of context. If allot of people are talking about BC then wouldn't it be a good idea to implement it and get more people interested in purchasing a PS3. Many original PS2 owners do have games that they would still love to play on a BC PS3.

I have a BC PS3 (PAL version so it's predominately software emulation) which support well over 85% of PS2 games (6 out 60 of my PS2 games have artefacts - all work). One of the nice things about BC on the PS3 is your PS2 games are up-scaled to 720p and/or 1080p and smoothed. The difference between PS1 and PS2 games is quite significant while the difference between a PS2 game and PS3 game while not as detailed graphically is not as significantly between the graphics of a PS1 compared to the graphics of a PS2 game. I find that playing a PS2 game on my PS3 is retro gaming with very good graphics that is not hugely different and just as much fun as playing PS3 games.

Personally I do play PS2 games on my PS3 and do save a considerable amount of money. I have over 20 PS3 titles but I still like playing many of my PS2 games. As for playing PS1 games I rarely do that now, finding the graphics even though up-scaled and smoothed are nothing like what a good PS2 game looks like on my HDTV.

Yes, Ubuntu is based on Debian but Ubuntu IS NOT Debian by any stretch of the imagination.

It just uses the same software and the same versions and has a different installer. No that's sooooo tooootaly sifferent. Seriously... that is as different from Debian as Windows 7 is different from Vista, in other words totally not.

And yes, there are 'Implementations' of KDE - Kubuntu uses a self modified version of KDE and introduces changes which are NOT supported by the KDE project - and because it is modified to suit Ubuntu it qualifies as an "implementation" as they implemented their new KDE. KDEmod on Arch is an Implementation modified to work perfectly with Arch Linux (a distro which has its ups and downs, but I am experienced enough to know how to deal with them).

OK so basically KDE needs to be modified to suit the distro. What? A different package manager? C'mon... what is there for Kubuntu to 'implement'? And if every distro needs a different implementation than how can you compare Kubuntu's implementation to others? It's a different implementation, according to your words then.

And CS4 DOES NOT WORK with Wine 1.0.1 - it is missing components that CS4 needs to work properly. You sir, are full of shit. Google did not pay for Adobe's product to work either.

In your face -> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/02/google-intoxicates-linux-users-with-wine-improvements.ars

You must be confusing Adobe Photoshop with Google Picasa (which Google paid a guy to work on!) which are TOTALLY different products.

You must be confusing the truth with BS!

In my few years experience with Ubuntu and just one year with Fedora, I am definitely sure that things work a hell of a lot more reliable and easier in Fedora. Fedora, like Arch and Ubuntu has its rough edges because of the bleeding edge software but does not fail as consistently and is not put back together with dirty hacks like Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has never, ever, failed me. The entire point of a distribution is taping everything together with scripts and dirty hacks. That's what it's for! At least in Ubuntu stuff actually works!

As far as Wine stable goes - if you turn up in #winehq with a problem you will be told to upgrade to the latest development version because the amount of advancement on the ancient stable version is huge.

Dude I read through the fscking documentation and I am subscibed to the dev mailing list. Don't try to falsely educate me about Wine 'cus I do know a shitload about the project and where it's at right now.

Much more progression than regression. The stable version, in reality, is actually unsupported.

Once again; BS. The stable version has a base of what works and what doesn't, OK? It had so many bugs crushed. There has also been a tiny update to 1.0.x. You see; 1.1.x has more functionality, ofcourse, and most of the time I use it to see where it's at, but it constantly brakes everything that worked before... Wine 1.0.x doesn't have that. It has the most applications that work simultaniously like desired whereas in 1.1.14 A might work and B might not and in 1.1.24 B works better than in 1.0.x but A is broken again.

I honestly don't think Microsoft are this stupid. Getting into the hardware game will give them absolutely no advantage. If anything, it will isolate them from their strongest allies who will definitely begin to step up a unified Linux agenda if MS were to make such a mistake.

This is not speculation. Maybe you've heard of the Zune HD? The Zune HD is using a new Nvidia Tegra chip and is designed to be a competitor for iPod touch and iPhone. One of the things Microsoft is advertising is "the full internet experience." Just like Apple is going to use iPhone OS and ARM chips for their tablet, Microsoft will probably use Nvidia Tegra, which is mostly a couple ARM cores with some Video and Audio processing cores as their platform for future computing products.

Apple and Microsoft have both realized that people do not need desktop power in a portable computing device. As long as it can do decent web browsing, run javascript apps, listen to music, watch video, and read email, what more do people need to do?

The thing is, pacer records are intended to be public and supposed to be free. Lieberman has asked about this before. The creation of documents online was supposed to make them free eventually, specifically.

I think it makes sense. Instead of spending tax dollars on something very few people (in contrast to the total number of taxpayers,) it's paid with by a per-use fee. If anything there's probably more tax-paid government services that could be handled this way.

You are correct. But I think you're overlooking people that would benefit from this. People like you and I that might be good with Google and interested in generic Federal Court history, Academics looking to study it and so forth.

Check out this Ars Technica article from April entitled "The case against PACER: tearing down the courts' paywall", it says:

An important obstacle to improving PACER is the court's myopic focus on the system's current users. A recent article in the federal courts' internal newsletter promised to "survey the courts, litigants, attorneys, the media, and bulk data collectors-the people who use PACER." Conspicuously absent from the list are academics, non-profit organizations, and members of the general public: groups that would benefit from a more open PACER but which are discouraged from participating by the paywall and primitive search tools.

While I agree that at first glance a select few need this service, I also recognize that there are a select few who would benefit greatly from removing the paywall. Now, we can't come up with cold hard numbers to monetarily weigh one group against the other and optimize our tax dollars. But we can all use tools like this Firefox extension to satisfy the tax payers and help out the academics and curious general public.

Well, if they would start a very honest effort, I'm sure they could find TONS of stuff they could do without. Let's start with some really outdated things they fund? I mean, the just recently got rid of the federal excise tax that used to be on your phone bill that was used to pay for the Spanish-American war. That tax lasted from 1898 till 2006 I believe. Well, there are federal spending dollars going to things like that too. We could start there and drop all spending for programs that are outdated.

No we don't need to cut education dollars first..BUT, why not dismantle the bureaucracy layers above the teachers and schools? I mean, we pay a LOT per student, but, by the time that $$ actually reaches the student, there is very little left for him and the teacher and the school itself. If you could cut out the upteen layers of middle men, I'll be you'd find we could cut spending, and STILL have the student/teacher level realizing more dollars than they do today.

While I do support a safety net for the elderly and the truly infirmed, I don't see a need to subsidize any abled bodied person that can work. If you screwed around and didn't get an education, well the world needs fruit picked and ditches dug. If we put off all the able bodied workers on welfare and entitlement programs, we wouldn't have a need for so many ILLEGAL (there is a difference) alien workers. Taking care of that situation, would also ease the burden that feds and state have to pay for schools and social services that non-citizens use, as well as a large chunk of medical expenditures that we all pay treating illegals here in the US at the emergency rooms that they use for emergency and less than emergency tx.

Have you seen the highway system lately? It isn't looking good. Let's stop subsidizing everyone, the corn farmers, the corporations, all the special interests. We should NOT be giving money out to anyone from the tax coffers. It should only be used for basic government needs and functions. Hell, why do we give money to other countries? I mean, sure, in a time of need emergencies, I don't have a problem with it..like when the tsunami hit, sure you help out. But this constant stream of $$ out of the US is just bribe money for trying to get someone to vote or act our way. Screw that.

There is a fuck-ton load of waste in the bureaucracy of the United States govt.

Unfortunately, I think the only way to get the Fed. to stop spending like a drunken sailor on leave, is for the states to grow some balls, and STOP SENDING MONEY to the federal govt. I think we have to dry up the funds before they will cut the spending.

To get back to the original remark... "Live by the sword, die by the sword". Microsoft has taken up the cause of spreading software patents throughout the world, it's poetic justice to see software patents bite them in the ass. Whether or not Gates believed he was doing something evil by creating a patent warchest isn't really relevant ( In 1990, Microsoft had 3 patents; today they have over 6000 ).

I do stand by the quote as being very relevant since it gives a window into the mind of the leader of Microsoft as the company plunged into the software patent era. http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2007/03/analysis-microsofts-software-patent-flip-flop.ars

That just opens any Linux user up to jail time.

Including the French police ? See this

I think he was talking about Microsoft's embrace of software patents http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2007/03/analysis-microsofts-software-patent-flip-flop.ars

Microsoft has been pro-software-patent since the mid 1990s...

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Nobody realizes just how clever you are...except for me, that is. A fine pun, good sir!

And so very true, AMD hasn't funded a completely new processor architecture in years. They really should think about doing so if they want to stay relevant, because low-voltage chips are a low-volume solution that doesn't make them any money (only select dies can handle the low voltage, and the larger die area compared to Atom means a lot less profit).

A quick search shows that this is the article being quoted: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-dropping-support-for-ie6-is-not-an-option.ars

I can't find any engadget.com pages, but I did find this.

Microsoft: "dropping support for IE6 is not an option" - Ars Technica

Also, Engineering POV: IE6 - IEBlog.

Thank you for providing references to your data; however, it still does not change the fact that Desler pulled numbers out of their ass and did not provide any links to back up their claim.

Even with only 4.5 million subscribers paying approx. $15 per month, the gross would be $810 million per year. That alone puts their gross earning well over the stated $250-300 and does not take into account the Asian market, where if each of the stated 5.5 million subscribers bought just one points card per month it would add another approx. $240 million per year. Non of those numbers take new sales into account, which would include the core game and two expansions (for 2009).

The point? The largest MMO in history makes a lot of money before expenses and the game industry as a whole has been growing at a far faster rate than the movie industry in the last few years.
From: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/01/growth-of-gaming-in-2007-far-outpaces-movies-music.ars

...is Microsoft's lack of comment on video and audio. Who cares about the aside element?

The future of HTML 5 in terms of hardware, software and the law is difficult to predict:

• Mobile devices, gaming consoles, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and other consumer platforms continue to take internet market share from desktop or laptop computer browsers. (It's worth remembering that Xbox 360 TV and movie downloads consume nearly half as much bandwidth as YouTube.)
• Within the next two years, movie downloads are predicted to amount to around one billion DVDs' worth of traffic per month.
• Under European law, Microsoft may be forced to offer users a choice of browser when they install Windows.
• Firefox, Safari and Chrome have all had significant recent updates. All now support the video and audio elements, along with other HTML 5 technologies. This may boost market share as developers dream up more HTML 5 applications.
• The Adobe Air platform, Microsoft Silverlight and JavaFX and other RIA platforms are competing for dominance and blur the distinction between browser and desktop applications.
• Three increasingly popular smartphone platforms – iPhone, Palm Pre and Android – run WebKit and not Flash or Silverlight. Microsoft has, as yet, been less successful with consumers on mobile platforms.
• If widely implemented, HTTP Live Streaming might reduce the cost of video hosting and enable segmentation and clipping.
• Google Wave could encourage take-up of the Google Chrome browser and the forthcoming web-oriented Google OS could make the HTML media element and other HTML 5 technologies far more ubiquitous.
• The biggest and least predictable change may come from take up (or not) of push technologies such as Comet or Web Sockets.

of course the users who buy a MacBook, get a great OS shipped on it

*nix?

Yep.....

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/08/mac-os-x-leopard-receives-unix-03-certification.ars

There is a job on Ars posted where Canonical is wiling to hire someone to help change that situation.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2006/07/4535.ars

This discusses Windows having 28,700 bugs in RC2

They should open the code and hardware specs to reduce the understandable suspicion we have of black box judicial devices.

Link

The 750k jobs is a dubious claim from 1986 about counterfeit goods. The $250 billion is a 1993 figure given for the worldwide market of, again, counterfeit goods.

The assumption that every dollar spent worldwide on counterfeit goods is equivalent to a dollar simply thrown into the trash in the USA is mind blowing.

Link

The 750k jobs is a dubious claim from 1986 about counterfeit goods. The $250 billion is a 1993 figure given for the worldwide market of, again, counterfeit goods.

"MsWord has too large an installed base and there is too much inertia for people to change."

What?!? But Jeremy Reimer has spoken! How dare you claim we should not all follow his example into Linux bliss:
"I chose MediaWiki, the open-source software that powers Wikipedia. It was relatively easy to install on a virtual Linux server. Since everyone has read Wikipedia, the interface was familiar and so our users needed no training."

I'm glad it was easy for you to install it on your virtual Linux server, could everyone in your office do that? Could your mom? Could your replacement?

While this is a nice idea it doesn't sound like a mainstream solution. My old job had just started a wiki for the FAQs. Few people used it due to login issues and an over-complicated system of finding information. It'll take the kids of today becoming the adults of tomorrow before we can move offices into a completely wiki-type system.

I think we'll all be using Google Docs in the near future, especially if Google Chrome OS does well on netbooks. Google Docs already has a share feature and I'm sure adding a wiki wouldn't be too difficult.