Slashdot Mirror

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080814-police-nab-shadow-creators-force-botnet-to-commit-suicide.html

That may account for some of it.

X-Windows forever.

Why not? I admit, it's not a perfect solution, but it works. And it seems Apple and Microsoft keep trying to copy it.

Configuration still handled with text files, with front-end tools that try to conceal them but never quite do it all.
No, most front-ends do a good job. Which ones are bugging you? And text > database. I just love the way the windows registry works, don't you?

Ugly icons.
More like stupid distros. Have you seen Tango icons? They're very nice.

Inconsistency between GUIs of applications.
Your fault for using random applications.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.media/vista.png

Everything is beaufitul and consistent in Windows land, right? (don't even get me started on OSX. there's an image floating about for that too. and I mean, wood and chrome?? what the fuck?)

Too much need for the command line.
You're trying too hard to find it. =/

Even more kernel bloat.
Become a kernel maintainer?

• Intel's USB 3.0 xHCI goes gold

I suggest that you read the following news story. It is regarding the enforcability of copyleft agreements and will probably have much weight on this matter.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080813-court-violating-copyleft-copyright-infringement.html

So you're basically saying that people who buy on Steam are idiots and deserve what they get if Steam goes away?

Yes, people who buy anything that is protected by DRM, in a world where breaking the DRM is illegal, even if the company that made it is out of business and cant authenticate your purchase anymore is an idiot.

I'm not saying they deserve to be screwed. They deserve better.

Fuck you.

Seriously, its not =me= that's going to be responsible for your purchases not working one day.

If Valve goes away they are obligated to their consumers to provide them the products they bought. All of them, for free and forever. If that means a noCD crack, too damn bad for the creditors.

Perhaps you should look into the ugly world of failed businesses and see just what happens to their customers. Their intellectual property. I assure its VERY VERY VERY RARELY a happy ending for anyone. Hell, try these on for size:

How much longer do you think "Plays for sure" music is going to be usable, now that Microsoft has discontinued it?
"Microsoft announced that as of August 31, 2008, PlaysForSure content from their retired MSN Music store would need to be licensed to play before this date or burned permanently to CD."

Fortunately consumers were given permission to burn songs to CD, so if they act fast, they can burn it, and then rip it back in an unprotected format. What happens next month? Poof? Oh, sure there are tools to crack the files out there... but their legality in the face of the DMCA is pretty questionable.

How about another example? Major League Baseball changes DRM, and old content no longer viewable.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071107-major-league-baseballs-drm-change-strikes-out-with-fans.html

And these are both corporations that are doing well, that have said fuck-you to the consumer. You really think Valve is going to honour what you think their obligtation to you is in a bankruptcy scenario? HA. Seriously. Read the fine print of the terms of service. They have virtually no obligation to you at all.

If Ford goes out of business, you want them to steal your truck? I think not.

Isn't that cute, you think you -bought- Valve software. No. You just 'subscribe to it' (read the fine print, your a subscriber not a customer, you pay one time fees to subscribe to their games, you don't buy them). And when they go under, your 'subscription' ends.

Finally, this is the same Valve that today when its doing just fine, won't allow you to transfer something you claim you own to someone else. You can't move a title from your account to someone else. You can't transfer your entire account to someone else. Per the terms you can't have two people using your account.

Think about this: you can't even have two different people use two different online titles on one account at the same time. So, here you've bought 2 different games, and you can't use both of them online at the same time? Yeah, Valve really is honoring their obligations to your purchases NOW. Your on crack if you think they are going to suddenly honor them in their death throes.

[citation needed]

Here. AT&T wants to offer fiber, but the city won't let them.

Here's another one. AT&T gets to sell broadband in Denver for 10 years in exchange for meeting the city government's bandwidth requirements. Guess how much incentive there is to exceed that requirement?

And some more. If Verizon wants to offer FiOS, they need to get approval from local governments.

I don't know where you live, but there's a good chance you don't get to choose your broadband provider because the government chooses for you.

No, the problem is more that most of the players racked up massive debt during the .com boom and due to several factors including the erosion of customers in their land phone base and loss of long distance revenue, they have lacked money to dump into infrastructure. Every single one of the has a massive debt.

    Verizon with one of the smallest networks in the most populous part of the country invested in more infrastructure, despite its debt (something like 40 billion). AT&T merged and merged and the other player, Qwest, bought out US West (jokingly called US Worst by some customers, like me - terrible service, terrible DSL speeds priced 2-5x competition, and terrible tech support) but then had to ditch their lucrative Yellow Pages to avoid going junk in 2002.

    Basically, we now have this picture in the US: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080424-qwest-finally-gets-in-the-fiber-game-with.html

With 50Mbit service at around $150 (+ fees and tax), 200Mbps service would be over $600, so no, we'd have to pay about 30x that or about $7200 per year compared to $240 (plus WoW fees...).

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/olympics_bsod.jpg From what I can see of it, the error code does indeed suggest a driver, however drivers crashing the system just proves the entire development model of letting multiple third parties write critical pieces of code is broken.

"the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week."

You can find the Nature abstract here. And if you have a subscription, you can read the full research and see the data they collected from experiments.

According to the Ars Technica article on this, the Science link will be here.

There seems to be a few more papers and articles on this but if you're interested you can search for optical metamaterials with negative refractive indexes.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080811-meta-material-does-not-render-anything-invisible.html Oh Ars.

I really doubt that Adobe is even remotely interested in porting the whole Creative Suite 3 (now CS4 beta) to Linux. They have their work cut out for them going from Carbon to Cocoa on OS X. It's an insane amount of work for a small user base.

Sorry.

... There is no market for Linux versions of Adobe apps. There cannot be a market for what doesn't exist. There can be a demand. Demand does not create a market. Only the combination of supply and demand create a market.

If you wish to say that Adobe does not feel the demand is great enough to bother creating the market, than say so. Don't try to insinuate that Adobe hates open systems or that they are in bed with MS.

Even without using the correct definition of a market (supply + demand) you figured it out. No I do not wish to say that I think that Adobe does not feel the demand is great enough to bother creating the market. Neither you nor I can say what Adobe execs really are thinking.

What can be said is that there is demand for Adobe applications for Linux, natively. There is also enough demand that Photoshop has been a goal of WINE. There is demand, but strangely no supply.

Regardless, I don't have to insinuate. I can make accusations based on circumstances and past transgressions. It could be something as simple as an NDA for some MS SDK which prohibits work on competing platforms, like the NT SDK appeared to do for OS/2.

For several decades, MS has put pressure on software houses and OEMs to curb their activities with competing systems. Even Apple, which has an on-again, off-again, relationship with the Microsoftians was under strong pressure to drop technologies MS was gunning for. That includes Quicktime and the now defunct OLE-like OpenDoc, and quite possibly the OpenDocument Format.

the percentage of Blu-Ray that is PS3 is high. I don't know how high, but it's high, dropping a bit now though.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html

At CES, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that 3.5 million Blu-ray players had been sold to date. Of those, 3 million were PlayStation 3s, the most future-proof Blu-ray player on the market.

As for quality, the PS3 is one of the top blu-ray players, It may not have the highest picture quality, that award usually goes to samsung in the writeups, but with all the other features BD-Live,gaming etc.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/147209/the_best_bluray_players.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9874808-7.html

http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/03/blu-ray-sony-tech-personal-cx_mji_0403blu.html

http://buy.blorge.com/2008/07/15/buyers-guide-to-blu-ray-players-help-clear-up-the-confusion/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10005897-1.html

a quote:

If you've been following CNET's Blu-ray coverage, it shouldn't be shocking that standalones are struggling. The PS3 holds the top spot on our best Blu-ray players list, and every time we review a new Blu-ray player we use the PS3 as our reference. It's the best Blu-ray player we've tested so far, plus you get a high-def gaming console and a well-featured media streamer for $400. Yes, there are a few reasons why you may not want to use a PS3 as your Blu-ray player, but for the vast majority of people the PS3 is just a better value. And with standalone players at current price levels, it seems like consumers agree with us.

They're even saying forgo the dedicated video streamers like the AppleTV for PS3's and Xboxes, because you can rent and download HD content on them via PSN and XBoxLive

And even this article on six reasons NOT to use a PS3 as your blu-ray player still says it's the best one out there:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9941740-1.html

And a recent firmware update fixed some of the issues listed in that article.

And here's another thing. I'm responding to your post with Firefox 3.0.1 running on a PS3 with a Yellow Dog Linux install.

Like the PS2 Linux kit was the best $200 gaming related purchase I made all those years ago, because it increased the functionality of my PS2 even further beyond PS1 games, PS2 games and DVD's The PS3 trumps it.

From the original article at Ars Technica:

Unfortunately for Garcia, that included 20,000 photos of her, her friends, and her boyfriend. Since the laptop mostly resided in her bedroom, some of them were taken while she was not clothed.

Ars Technica had this first. They should get the credit. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080805-high-tech-peeping-tom-rigged-laptop-webcam-to-snap-nude-pics.html

As does Ars..

Here you go. Believe me,I know what you are talking about,as our piano player always wanted "the real thing",that is until I let him play my Korg 01W. The sound,and more importantly "the feel",is like a good Baldwin. And it also has some of the best older organ sounds like the Mog and the old church pipe organs. It also fits easily into the back of any van or car and makes setting up a breeze as there is nothing to tune. Mine cost $3500 new,they sell for like $1500 now on eBay.

The point is,there are ways to get around it. But they do require creative thinking,the ability to compromise,and the ability to adapt. A couple of guys I know that play upright bass have exchanged each others phone numbers and if one is going to be playing in the others city he calls first and if the one whose home city it is isn't using his upright that night he lends it to the other. Musicians will usually be more than happy to help each other out,you just have to spend a little time making the effort.But the simple fact is you can't put the digital genie back in the bottle. Attempting to do so merely makes the majority of every population with Internet access a criminal. Because the *.A.As with the unmitigated greed always take it too far like the one that said ripping your cd is illegal. And finally,you have lost the younger generation,period. They all carry iPods capable of carrying thousands of songs. Do you honestly think they can afford the $40,000 needed to fill it?

No,like the horse and buggy gave way to the car,and 45 RPM records gave way to cd,the old way will pass into history. Unless you are willing to lock up nearly everyone under 30 I just don't see it changing. And their little "breaking copyrights is wrong" ads don't work,as I asked my nephew about it when they got the little propaganda crap in school. He says his class agreed on one thing "total BS put out by greedy pigs." Because the young ones are a hell of a lot smarter and more cynical that we were when we were young. And they can smell BS from a mile away,LOL. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

You are aware that Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) is POSIX compliant and conforms to the Single UNIX Specification, right? The difference in file system layout that you're complaining about most likely has to do with user directories being in /Users instead of /home, and mounted volumes in /Volumes instead of /media, assuming that you're comparing it to Ubuntu. If you're really concerned about having exactly the same paths between OSes, you can use 'ln -s' exactly the same on Mac OS X as you can on Ubuntu. Although for a home directory, it's pretty pointless, since ~ and $HOME work exactly the same way on Mac OS X as any other *nix distro that I've ever used (including Ubuntu).

Just because your sysadmin is lost without Apple's GUI does not mean that Mac OS X encourages ignorance and obfuscation. Sure, most Mac users use GUI applications instead of terminal-based applications, but it doesn't mean that you can't. (I should know; I run both Mac OS X and Linux boxes, and probably my most-used application is Terminal.) You don't have to use the GUI. 90% of the time, I control my desktop via SSH. (If you want to do this on Ubuntu, you'd need to install the 'ssh' package. In Mac OS X, sshd is included by default, but is not running as a service until you enable it.) I watch video in my self-compiled SVN of mplayer, controlling it over SSH while doing other things on my laptop (in fact, I'm doing that as I post this). It's silly to base your assumptions of what can be done with Mac OS X based on your observations of one person. I know people who run Ubuntu who only know how to do things the GUI way, but that doesn't mean that Ubuntu encourages ignorance and obfuscation.

I've helped quite a few people migrate to Ubuntu/Kubuntu because they're sick of Windows and don't want to have to buy new hardware. I really like what Canonical is doing. But you really can't say that Canonical can't learn anything from Apple (or Apple from Canonical). Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted talking about emulating and surpassing Apple. While I currently think that Apple's Aqua is a more polished interface than Gnome and KDE, there are definitely things that Apple didn't come up with first (e.g. multiple desktops were not built into Mac OS X prior to Leopard [Spaces], although there were third-party add-ons that would enable this). And the KDE developers aren't standing still, they're continuing to innovate with KDE4. Canonical is working on an interface lift for Ubuntu 8.10. The Gnome developers continue to incrementally improve Gnome.

I don't think anyone seriously believes that Linux is suddenly trying to be a cheap knockoff of Mac OS X.

Having competition and choices is good for everyone but Microsoft.

First quad-core laptop hits U.S.

Xtremenotebooks launches quad core laptop

Quad-core notebook

Dell launches new quad-core laptop

Build your own quad-core laptop

Why was this abortion of an article selected, when there is a better ars one here, and BBC here

Today at a coder's party we had a discussion about Intel's miserable corporate communications.

Intel's introduction of "Larrabee" is an example. Where will it be used? Only in high-end gaming computers and graphics workstations? Will Larrabee provide video adapters for mid-range business desktop computers?

I'm not the only one who thinks Intel has done a terrible job communicating about Larrabee. See the ArsTechnica article, Clearing up the confusion over Intel's Larrabee. Quote: "When Intel's Pat Gelsinger finally acknowledged the existence of Larrabee at last week's IDF, he didn't exactly clear up very much about the project. In fact, some of his comments left close Larrabee-watchers more confused about the scope and nature of the project than ever before."

The Wikipedia entry about Larrabee is somewhat helpful. But I don't see anything which would help me understand the cost of the low-end Larrabee projects.

They sent a similar message to Ars Technica:

nvidia-to-ars-were-not-leaving-the-chipset-market

Proof. So there you go. Slashdot runs an article announcing China has lifted the ban, Slasdotters swallow it and then...
"But the IOC warned that while these sites may be accessible to journalists in Beijing, the rest of the country would still be subject to China's filtered version of the Internet. Additionally, certain types of sites will remain blocked across all of China, including porn and those that are considered "subversive" or against national interests (such as sites related to the Falun Gong and many Tibetan organizations). Gosper attempted to justify this by adding, "That's normal in most countries in the world." Um, yeah... right." http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080801-china-opens-crack-in-great-firewall-for-olympic-presschina-opens-internet-for-press-ioc-declares-issue-solved.html

This news report is idiotic and old news, and has been proven to be false. Yesterday. Get with the program Kdawson. On second thought, don't. That might cause some sort of apocalyptic catastrophe, as it's never happened before.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2008/08/01/nvidia-to-ars-were-not-leaving-the-chipset-market

Well, to be fair, this is about core logic chipsets (nForce). They aren't exactly core to NVIDIA's business. Besides, given how poorly AMD is fairing in the enthusiast market, the merger of ATI/AMD making NVIDIA an AMD competitor (nForce originally made its splash, and had its "glory days", for AMD), and the desire of Intel to push its own chipsets (which have also been quite good recently, lessening the room for an "enthusiast" class third party) I wouldn't be incredibly surprised to see them make this move -- even though they apparently aren't doing it now.

According to Ars, the original source was one of the motherboard manufacturers. Aside from NVIDIA themselves, they'd be most likely to know. But again, according to NVIDIA, this is a load of crap.

Joel Hruska at Ars Technia appears to have spoken to NVidia, and the article he's written says NVidia is not going to quit the chipset market anytime soon. Looks like its just a rumor... http://arstechnica.com/journals/hardware.ars/2008/08/01/nvidia-to-ars-were-not-leaving-the-chipset-market

Sigh.....I know you are probably a troll and I shouldn't feed the troll,but what the hell,this argument always stuck in my craw.

1. If you actually believe it is about musicians,I got some really nice swampland in AR to sell you,99% gator free! They rip off the bands something fierce, for example: Meatloaf had to sue for nearly 20 years because "Bat out of Hell I",which is STILL on the top 200,BTW,according to the record companies never made any money. They even have a "special" term for this,which is how widespread it is. It is called Hollywood Accounting.

2. The whole POINT of copyright was to grant a LIMITED monopoly in return for the enrichment of the people at the end of the term with a better and richer Public Domain which all of us,artists and laymen alike,could use to create new works and enrich our lives. So lets go download all that great '50s and 60's music from the Public Domain website now! Oh,wait,we can't,can we? Because thanks to the lobbyists buying off our corrupt politicians our great great grandkids will be dead before anything ever sees the Public Domain again,if ever. You see,THEY broke the contract with their greed,not We The People.

3. And finally,do you think you are honest? Do you have an MP3 player? Ever put your own store bought cd on it? Then according to RIAA you are a filthy pirate. Welcome to the club,coffee and donuts are on the table in the back. The simple facts are this: The old model doesn't work.Instead of coming up with new models that WILL work in a digital age,they think they can buy their way back to the old days. So while I haven't heard or seen anything worth stealing if you see something you want,I say help yourself.THEY broke the contract,we get NOTHING for enforcing their copyrights,and until we get a new contract,one in which BOTH sides actually get something out of it I say all bets are off. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Well,I personally can't wait to see them argue the "making available" bit,since the German RIAA is suing someone using a leecher mod. Lets be honest here:they aren't actually bothering to see if anything IS available,they are just looking for files in a "share" folder. I could put .flv files of dogs taking a dump in a share folder and relabel them "Oops I did it again.mp3" but that don't suddenly turn rover into Britney.

The problem is their "evidence" sucks and they know it. If it were any other industry they'd be laughed out of court. Sadly with the kind of money and pull that the *.A.A groups have when it looks like the courts might start having too much common sense I'm sure that they'll just pass the "Sonny Bono II pay us protection money for breathing" act. After all,these guys are the same ones that say ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing. So don't worry,even if you don't use P2P I'm sure that by the time they get done changing the laws to suit them you'll be a pirate just like everybody else. Welcome to the club,coffee and donuts are on the table in the back. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Well,I personally can't wait to see them argue the "making available" bit,since the German RIAA is suing someone using a leecher mod. Lets be honest here:they aren't actually bothering to see if anything IS available,they are just looking for files in a "share" folder. I could put .flv files of dogs taking a dump in a share folder and relabel them "Oops I did it again.mp3" but that don't suddenly turn rover into Britney.

The problem is their "evidence" sucks and they know it. If it were any other industry they'd be laughed out of court. Sadly with the kind of money and pull that the *.A.A groups have when it looks like the courts might start having too much common sense I'm sure that they'll just pass the "Sonny Bono II pay us protection money for breathing" act. After all,these guys are the same ones that say ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing. So don't worry,even if you don't use P2P I'm sure that by the time they get done changing the laws to suit them you'll be a pirate just like everybody else. Welcome to the club,coffee and donuts are on the table in the back. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption, or other reasons

Coming on the heels of the Higher Education Act, wanna bet other reasons might include "The War On Piracy"? Corporations have been allowed to infiltrate your nation's educators, so they might as well be let into the nation's gatekeepers as well, eh?

Microsoft taking down the DRM servers and TOTALLY screwing their customers

If Microsoft had stepped up and supported their customers rights to enjoy music they paid for

The act of Microsoft taking down it's DRM servers makes them so guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

I know I'm late to this flamefest, but I think it's worth mentioning that MSN Music's DRM servers will be active until at least the end of 2011. However, I'd be surprised if Microsoft did a Yahoo! and gave customers free Zune Marketplace DRM-free MP3s at the end of 2011.

Arstechnica now has a much better writeup of the situation:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080731-opt-in-or-opt-out-street-view-case-echoes-privacy-debate.html

Q. I wonder what happens if you inform a cop that you are recording him when he pulls you over.

A. The case of Brett Darrow, Missouri:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2715792117793977759&

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5591813350444656353&q=source:010563705515560372049&hl=en

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2007/100907Motorist.htm

Any other questions?, I got a whole folder dedicated to "official" ABUSE.

Related:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/128000201931?r=261000401931#261000401931

It's a load of crap, and Australia has already called bullshit on them for trying to make eBay Paypal-only: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080612-australia-calls-shenanigans-on-ebay-paypal-only-policy.html

The problem with the Intel is they have tied it to the 945GC chipset. If you look at the pictures here you'll notice the giant heatsink+ fan for the Atom.That is NOT for the CPU,that is for the chipset. That chipset has a TDP of 22 watts,which is 6 times more than the actual CPU! I just wonder if they are saving part of their market for the Celeron,otherwise somebody at Intel made a bad mistake with that chipset. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Reading through that article, I found this:

My my. Swap CentaurHauls for AuthenticAMD, and Nano's performance magically jumps about 10 percent. Swap for GenuineIntel, and memory performance goes up no less than 47.4 percent. This is not a test error or random occurance; I benchmarked each CPUID multiple times across multiple reboots on completely clean Windows XP installations. The gains themselves are not confined to a small group of tests within the memory subsystem evaluation, but stretch across the entire series of read/write tests. Only the memory latency results remain unchanged between the two CPUIDs.

Whoops! I wonder what they'll have to say about that...

...with the same findings.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/atom-nano-review.ars

...and, I wonder if everyone driving these cars will be arrested.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070522-michigan-man-arrested-for-using-cafes-free-wifi-from-his-car.html

The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday.

The Atom delivers MORE performance/watt than Via's solutions.

Atom destroys the C7 in performance/watt. The C7 has a relatively poor memory architecture and has piss-poor SSE performance in comparison to the Atom. The C7 also cannot match the low consumption of the Atom at a similar clock speed.

If you really think the C7 has good performance/watt, just see how a DESKTOP Intel Celeron keeps pace with the C7 in terms of power consumption. The power consumption is within a few watts, and the Intel chip delivers more than double the performance in some benchmarks. Never mind that the Intel board costs less than anything Via has on-offer.

The Via Nano is closer: it delivers better per-clock integer performance (2 integer units vs one on the Atom), but the two chips deliver the same per-clock SSE performance. When you consider that the Nano uses 3-10x the power of the Atom at various clock speeds, you begin to see how Via can't compete on performance/watt.

I addressed that a few posts above, but I'll address it more thoroughly now.

From IT Jungle:
"According to sources at IBM, about 1,800 of the patents that were issued to Big Blue in 2005 were for software-related inventions... IBM says that the percentage of its patents relating to software inventions has been increasing steadily in the past few years. It was 51 percent in 2003, 58 percent in 2004, and 61 percent in 2005."

-----

Second, until patent reform takes place, this is the best IBM can do. Offer their patents to others wishing patent reform on software patents while at the same time making sure they are protected

Well, it's true that despite what changes are in store, you've got to play the current game as well as you can.

However, IBM is one of the strongest supporters of software patents, and has consistently been so throughout the history of software patenting.

Here is a transcript of USPTO hearings in 1994 - back when many industry players held Slashdot-like dislike for software patents. Even back then, IBM took a pro-software-patent stance and advocated for their allowance.

(Incidentally, that transcript should be required reading for anyone who wants to participate in this debate - IBM raised some extremely persuasive points that most Slashdotters don't like to acknowledge - such as: "We can't divorce computer program-related inventions from computer hardware and other microprocessor inventions. The overlap between the two is so great that cutting back on one automatically cuts back on the other.")

IBM continues to lobby in favor of software patents - particularly in the EU. From FFII.org:
"In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability."

From Ars Technica:
"IBM and OSDL to help Patent Office get organized"
This article is about IBM's contributions to the USPTO to help it improve its search tools, and in developing a Wiki-like system for allowing the public to participate in patent examination. This initiative is hardly about deconstructing the patent system - it's about sharpening and improving it, so that better-examined patents can issue.

And from Gartner:
"IBM Uses Patents to Lead Open-Source Community"
"IBM announced that it would open access to technology covered by 500 IBM software patents to any individual, community or company working on or using software that meets the Open Source Initiative (OSI) definition of open-source software (see www.opensource.org). IBM also proposed an industrywide "patent commons" for sharing patents among technology developers."

Note: This is not "donating patents to the public domain" or "abandoning patents." This is "using patents strategically to promote a particular sector of the market," i.e., the OSI crew.

In short - you couldn't be more wrong in your summary of IBM's position on software patents. IBM is a HUGE player in this space. They know how to get them, and they know how to use them well. They have consistently supported software patenting, from its mainstream inception in the 1990's and through today, and consistently lobby for expansion in terms of allowability, regional acceptance, and enforcement power.

- David Stein

Wiki, Asteroid Deflection

NYT Study suggests mirrors best

NASA has non-nuke plans

Using a 300Kg impactor

Seems the consensus is that nukes would only be used if we discovered the asteroid too late for other methods to be effective.

Just be sure you don't get the same treatment as Joe Nocera. When he asked Jobs about his health, he got as reply: "This is Steve Jobs. You think I'm an arrogant [REDACTED] who thinks he's above the law, and I think you're a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong."

What else would they do? Do a test where it was going to fail??

No, but don't expect technically inclined people (like those who read Slashdot) to view a test with the deck so obviously stacked in Microsoft's favor as anything other than a PR stunt that proves nothing.

The upcoming SP1? If you're going to bash something, at least have a clue first.

I recommend you take your own advice, SP1 has been out since February 21st, and was apparently fully released via automatic updates in May. (That's when it showed up for me anyway.)

Install the OS themselves? How many normal people are really going to do that?

This is fair, most users wouldn't do this, however...

More than likely, they're buying a new computer and it will come with Vista. Which, by the way, will probably be well tested so that there are no driver issues.

It might not have driver issues but it's almost guaranteed to come with a ton of crap installed in addition to the OS that slows things down and makes the experience worse. So it's still not a fair comparison. If MS had taken off-the-shelf systems and just patched Vista to remove the branding only it'd have been a fair test and not just a PR stunt. But we all know (you've even admitted it already), that MS wasn't going to do a test where they'd fail, so this was simply a PR stunt. There's not really anything wrong with that but don't expect those of us who understand to consider it proof of Vista being a great OS.

Is selling a computer with working Windows also considered stacking the deck in your world?

MS wasn't selling these PCs, so I doubt the parent feels that way, but no, it's not. But we aren't talking about PCs as sold on the regular market, we're talking about ones setup by MS to ensure the users had a great experience. That is stacking the deck and proves nothing about how good or bad Vista is.

I hate going on the offensive, but some of the Vista talk is just... stupid.

Some of it is but the parent wasn't being stupid. This wasn't a fair test of Vista, it was a purposely designed event to generate positive PR for Vista, that's all. Vista certainly has its problems (and I say this as someone who's been using it since January, SP1 hasn't fixed the major issues I have and I really do hate it for legit reasons), and there are certainly some really stupid things given as reasons to hate it, but the parent's criticisms of this event are fair mostly. The part about suggesting people install the OS themselves wasn't, but suggesting they should have used stock installs from OEMs IS.

Do you people really expect MS to just roll over on this? If you do, you're more than just a little naive.

Do you expect us to just ignore everything MS does and not point out flaws in it? If you do you're very naive.

You shouldn't worry about your cable service dropping its analog signal completely until 2012 at the earliest. The FCC mandated that all local channels must be carried in analog format at least until 2012. Your non-local channels might switch to digital, however, requiring a set-top box.

Here's a Ars link with some details: FCC to cable: You must support analog TVs until 2012

And Wikipedia, see the last paragraph of "Congressional Mandate"

Ars Technica do for you?

Complete with a link to a short interview with Sam Ramji (no, unfortunately not he of Evil Dead fame)

he says: "It is not a move away from IIS as Microsoft's strategic web server technology. We have invested significantly in refactoring and adding new, state-of-the-art features to IIS, including support for PHP. We will continue to invest in IIS for the long term and are currently under way with development of IIS 8.

It is a strong endorsement of The Apache Way, and opens a new chapter in our relationship with the ASF. We have worked with Apache POI, Apache Axis2, Jakarta, and other projects in the last year, and we will continue our technical support and interoperability testing work for this open source software."

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

article link

I think he's complaining that Apple doesn't want anyone else to make syncing software for the iPod/iPhone.

But don't let that pull you out of the Jobs reality distortion field. iTunes has become a huge pig of an application although it still serves many segments of the market well enough. The problem is that Apple is trying to force iTunes on people who wouldn't use it voluntarily through their control of the hardware platform.

Are you sure you want to change the extension from ".jpg" to ".txt"?
If you make this change, your document may open in a different application.

That doesn't look to me like it's using extended attributes for file types, or like it can cope with all the extensions being the same...

Actually I am not surprised. There are enough applications which won't attach Uniform Type Identifiers or type and creator codes tupples when creating a file and therefore both OS/2 and Mac OS X support them.

Mind you I have to say that OS/2 still is ahead of any other OS in the use of extended attributes for file types and other uses - while Mac OS X even went a step back from Mac OS 9 be making extension mandatory in there user interface guideline :-( .

Also I spoke of "no extension" that is renaming the file from "foo.jpg" to just "foo". But I still expect a warning if you do that (not at home - can't test it right now). And if the "com.apple.FinderInfo" EA is not attached to the file (i.E. the Jpeg was created with GIMP) then it is very likely that you won't be able to open the file afterwards.

And last not least: My postings in this thread are a bit on the "which list side of live" and do not fully reflect present reality. Sorry if that was not clear from the beginning.

Martin

Suggested Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/11
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/uniformtypeidentifiers.html

Courtesy a few minutes of googling "Raytheon +"non lethal". I'm really surprised this wasn't on /. last year. It was on Fark and my other regular sites, and I have lousy memory. Anyway here are some links to the "non lethal" techno in the parent:

link to Raytheon's article
best title for an article so far
article about why not to be in a riot when this is used I will keep this in mind next time I'm downtown in Denver and one of the teams wins or loses...CO people like to riot?!?
a fairly descriptive article that sounds more like it should be on the food network
a tiny article about how it affected stock
this site/article is definitely not biased or anything