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trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else

We noticed

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007
http://gizmodo.com/340117/mac-os-x-market-share-at-731-and-rising
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 The #1 bug is being worked on as we speak.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3719096_1
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080104-evaluating-prospects-for-linux-growth-in-2008.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071205-microsoft-feeling-heat-from-linux-in-budget-flash-pc-market.html

For me, I am enjoying Ubuntu Studio.

trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else

We noticed

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007
http://gizmodo.com/340117/mac-os-x-market-share-at-731-and-rising
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 The #1 bug is being worked on as we speak.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3719096_1
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080104-evaluating-prospects-for-linux-growth-in-2008.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071205-microsoft-feeling-heat-from-linux-in-budget-flash-pc-market.html

For me, I am enjoying Ubuntu Studio.

Clicking on *A SINGLE LINK* just once could land you in jail in the US -- even if you have no idea where that link was going to take you.

Radiation monitoring is useful and non invasive. Unlike real domestic spying, it only identifies things that can actually be harmful. Equipment operators have a simple purpose and can be adequately trained to distinguish real threats from false alarms but every alarm is worth following. People don't have to be identified and personal information never has to be tracked to stop threats.

Radio isotope monitoring has long been done at borders and in waste disposal. These are last ditch portions of defense in depth to protect the public from real danger. Powerful sources are required for industry and medicine. They are supposed to be carefully tracked from creation to disposal but you can never be sure. There have been several ugly incidents outside the US and at least one where an isotope ended up smelted into something that was later caught at the US border. When everything else fails, road and garbage checks help.

While nothing is impossible for a corrupt administration to abuse, this is not it. The real end of civil liberty comes from tracking and harassing dissidents and creating mechanism to lock them up.

But that doesn't change the fact that many of the people who are arguing against OOXML do so with invalid arguments. Here is an example right from this current discussion. Note that I got modded "Troll" for challenging that claim while the invalid example got modded "insightful".

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080302-xml-spec-editor-ooxml-iso-process-is-unadulterated-bs.html

It's worse. Some OEMs complained to the DoJ about Vista trying to stop them from 'customizing' the user experience on first boot. Read here.

he'd probably go to jail first: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-florida-botnet-herder-sheared-by-cops-faces-10-years-in-pen.html

An interesting article on Ars Technica regarding copyrighted games:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-developer-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.html

Basically the message is that pirates were never customers and can therefore be ignored. I would take it one step further and say that piracy is a form of free advertising. More than once I've bought cd's based on mp3's I heard. The music and movie industry suits are a bunch of whining dinosaurs; all they need to do is make the disks worth buying by offering additional content liek posters, stickers, etc..

I do seem to recall that computers *started* by requiring pressure regulation. Vacuum tubes were low instead of high, but we also have plenty of experience with that.

Computers started long before vacuum tubes. Also, the most pressure difference you can get with vacuum tubes is one atmosphere, which isn't much. Sadly, the pressures required here are insanely high. So high, it seems the researchers didn't manage to create enough pressure for a this to work at room temperature.

As usual, Ars Technica has a much better article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080319-room-temperature-superconductors-a-step-closer-with-silane.html.

The highest temperature that the researchers observed superconductivity at was 20K, which is a fair bit from "room temperature".

Oh, and the *pressures* that were used here are, uh, high. 50 to 200 gigapascals. 100 gigapascals is around 14.5 million PSI, or close to a million atmospheres of pressure.

The provocative point was that for most of the pressures, the critical temperature stayed around 5-10K. But in between 100-125 GPa it spiked. There weren't a lot of data points sampled in there, but the data seemed to indicate that some high temperatures *might* be able to be achieved.

Or ARs technica

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-survey-average-broadband-speed-in-us-is-1-9mbps.html Right...

Way to steal trolls from Ars Technica.

We've established that the reality distortion field is in fact correct (TFA), and that it self-evidently (look at Apple's recent sales) is transmitted as a meme throughout technological society. We know that the human condition is regulated by culture - that the human brain is evolving to cope with the phenomenal rate-of-change-of-culture it is being exposed to. In doing so, it must also cope with (adapt to) this reality distortion field created by Apple.

Steve Jobs is screwing with your mind, people. And your children's nascent minds too. Be afraid (of non-shiny things). Be very afraid (of anything not cool).

Simon.

Bruce,

Would you be a proponent of the phrase, "OSI Certified," and discourage the use of the far more ambiguous, and non-trademarked term "open source"?

Clearly, we all have our ideals, and yours are very altruistic; but it seems the former is much more likely to convey a specific message, and cause less confusion amongst outsiders who aren't familiar with the OSI and their aims (eg "The author is providing his source code, yet it isn't 'open source' because it is for non-commercial use only? How is that possible?")

I understand you have moral objections to software not under OSI-approved licenses, and I respect that -- but at the end of the day, I feel it's of the utmost importance to treat each other with respect, regardless of ideals; and this would have the effect of reducing incendiary debates with non-FLOSS authors.

"This software is not open source" can easily be taken the wrong way if said software developer doesn't follow the OSI's interpretation of the term, whereas "This software is not OSI Certified (tm)" is very clear, specific, and completely undebatable.

If so, you have my support and I will sign your petition. I was discouraged to read that the OSI would still push for usage of the term "open source," [1] after having their request to trademark the term rejected. Like others, I feel such a heavy-handed approach is hostile, and causes more damage to the credibility of OSI than it does to help fight this impossible battle [2].

The same also applies to the term "free software," but obviously that one is out of your hands.

Thank you in advance for reading this.

[1] http://www.opensource.org/node/163
[2] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070622-osi-to-take-more-active-role-in-open-source-definition-enforcement.html

Now please stop scratching your rectum & sniffing your fingers & go read the dictionary definition of "Offtopic", will you?

I was wondering why safari's memory graph ends so much sooner than the otehrs. Is it really 7-10 times as fast???

The drop-off you see near the end of the graph is where both versions of Firefox crash. I'm excited, because unlike the old version, this now actually really helps reduce its memory usage.

It must be dark in your basement. Did you miss the most-recent Intel-AMD anti-trust http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060421-6652.html that was started in June 2005?

You must have a strange definition of "computer phone" if the N95 doesn't qualify. Nokia doesn't even sell it as a "phone" they call it a multimedia computer. It costs about twice what the iPhone does, and has sold about twice as many units. As of the beginning of last month, 7 million N95s vs. the iPhone's 4 million. The N95 did beat the iPhone to market by about two months (Another feather in Nokia's cap), but it's selling faster and generating more revenue than the iPhone, no matter how you look at it.... So.. wow... I guess you ought to consider actually looking up the numbers next time before telling someone else they don't do much reading.

It appears to me that they are trying to make the experience so miserable themselves that nobody WANTS to buy the device.

I'm not the one who bought a defective phone with no battery door. Besides, I've read much more realistic iPhone disaster scenarios in the news that I don't read. You see, what happened is some background task kept running and drained its owner's bank account of $4800. That wouldn't have happened if the iPhone wasn't locked to the American AT&T network. The owner could have just popped in a new SIM card for that locale and everything would have been peachy. But hey, it just one of many fine experiences brought to you under Apple's control. Others include, Look! I shattered my iPhone, Damn it! Why won't my headphones work? and everyone's favorite, I've been visited by the brick fairy!

Enjoy your app-less iPhone though. I'm sure you'll be kickin' it with that drug database in no time.

No, far, far, from integrated garbage. Larrabee will actually have uses as a supercomputer CPU:

"It was clear from Gelsinger's public statements at IDF and from Intel's prior closed-door presentations that the company intends to see the Larrabee architecture find uses in the supercomputing market, but it wasn't so clear that this new many-core architecture would ever see the light of day as an enthusiast GPU. This lack of clarity prompted me to speculate that Larrabee might never yield a GPU product, and others went so far as to report "Larrabee is GPGPU-only" as fact.

Subsequent to my IDF coverage, however, I was contacted by a few people who have more intimate knowledge of the project than I. These folks assured me that Intel definitely intends to release a straight-up enthusiast GPU part based on the Larrabee architecture. So while Intel won't publicly talk about any actual products that will arise from the project, it's clear that a GPU aimed at real-time 3D rendering for games will be among the first public fruits of Larrabee, with non-graphics products following later.

As for what type of GPU Larrabee will be, it's probably going to have important similarities to we're seeing out of NVIDIA with the G80. Contrary to what's implied in this Inquirer article, GPU-accelerated raster graphics are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and they won't be replaced by real-time ray-tracing engines. Actually, it's worthwhile to take a moment to look at this issue in more detail."

Shamelessly ripped from:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/clearing-up-the-confusion-over-intels-larrabee.ars/2

What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.

The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.

So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.

It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.

The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization yet have barely a million members. That's right one million uptight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people.

And the FCC allows it.

To other countries: The US is not up tight! Most of us love a good nipple on TV. It's this one organization that has been acting via the screwed up joke that is our FCC that has watered down our TV, not popular opinion.

I see. I am a simpleton. Because I understand the law AS WRITTEN, and believe that the owners of property should have the right to use, sell or license their property as they see fit?

When was the RIAA convicted of "price fixing"? I know that 5 labels were found guilty of colluding with three store chains to set a MAP, but that's not the RIAA.

You don't think copyright should be as long as it is; others think otherwise. In your oh-so-enlightened mind, that makes you God almighty correct and the rest of us simply simpletons who go along with the sheep. And if we don't agree with you we MUST be shills or trolls! Heaven forbid anyone disagree with such a towering intellect as yourself!

So, other than your PERSONAL feelings that copyright should be considerably shortened, what exactly is wrong with Sweden enforcing IP rights? What is wrong with the owners of the copyright enforcing their LEGAL rights?

And, by the way, your feet stink and your mother dresses you funny.

You forgot the word "usability" besides "cool UI" and "big multitouch screen".

It's been publicly acknowledged by Google to be a huge boost in Maps and mobile Search (50x bigger than the next most popular handset, regardless of it being a Nokia or Windows device.

It is with this knowledge that I make my "ridiculous" claim; before the iPhone, you had phones that could (but did not) access the internet, while the iPhone was a networked computer that made phone calls.

The NYCL aka Ray Beckerman gives his thoughts on these new developments over on ARS...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080313-andersen-attorney-on-riaa-suit-they-cant-run-now.html

Do you think Hollywood is going to turn over the rights to let you copy whatever you want of their stuff for a few paltry million $ that this would bring in?!?! Even if every single internet user in the United States paid $5 (much less the pathetic $1 you're suggesting), that would only be about $775 million.

Paltry? Umm... in December 2006 there were 82.5 million active broadband lines in the U.S. (see: Networked Nation: Broadband In America 2007). The proposal is $5 per month per broadband customer. This is $5 billion a year, even at December 2006 adoption rates. It will climb higher in years to come as broadband penetration increases.

For comparison this is almost half of the recording industry's revenues from 2006. And this would be essentially all profit. For this kind of gift (if they could get it) the public should demand the sky in freedom to do whatever it likes with the recording industry's products. Even a $1 fee would likely more than double its annual profits.

Slashdot comments often forget to differentiate between "worldwide" market share and "U.S." market share. That iSuppli report refers to "worldwide" market share:

• For just Q4 2007, Apple had a 2.9% share of the global market.
• For the entire year 2007, Apple has a 2.8% share of the global market.

The Mac Observer's news article about this report says "Apple's Macintosh market share in the U.S. has been climbing and is at about 8 percent," which is a pretty big chunk for a single PC manufacturer, but maybe not so big for a "platform." The Mac Observer doesn't say where they got that 8% number (it wasn't from that iSuppli report).

Now ask yourselve just how many people actually use iTunes to BUY music and not justas a way to put music they already have on it on to the iPod as nothing more then a extremely bloated uploader.

Enough to make iTunes the #2 music retailer in the United States.

TFA quotes an analyst who thinks it'll be built on Server 2008 with a significantly pared down UI. That's actually very good news - the MinWin kernel may be nothing new to Unix users but it's a very welcome break from the bloat of Vista.

Also, ECS has a sub-$500 Eee PC competitor coming, but it's probably too early in production to include in the CNET article. The ECS's key features: built-in HSDPA card, looks (from photos) slightly larger than Eee PC (but still ultraportable), MacBook-like keyboard. I think it "looks" better than the ultraportables in the CNET article, but I think I'd trust the MSI brand over ECS (or even ASUS).

Well, since Kevin Martin has said "The public interest is not what any company wants," maybe FCC heads are getting progressively closer to the truth :-)

Maybe the next chairman of the FCC can learn from these two, and say something just as eloquent, like "The public interest is what the public wants... but I don't know what the public wants."

If you drill through the articles, you see something important, and it's posted on ArsTechnica:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/07/voip-applications-on-iphone-a-possibility

Steve jobs says VOIP will be allowed... if you are using the Wifi connection, and not AT+T's data service.

Apple made the phone, but because of their contract, are making this specific limitation based on AT+T's request. That potentially has common carrier implications, because if you are going to offer data service, you should not be regulating what can or can't go across it.

No carrier would want VOIP on any phone, since almost all carriers offer an unlimited data plan at some level, and it cuts into their per minute revenues for the phone service.

It's a long shot, since no one is pursuing anti-trust these days, but you could get that clause of a business contract voided if you can convince someone in the US government to shoot down AT+Ts data restriction.

You're the exact type of person who will be the very first to blame IT for the hack/breach that'll happen if they install your unapproved software, or loosen up security because it interferes with your convenience.

We in IT security (I'm a CISSP) know you very well, in fact your type (over-demanding internal users) poses the worst security threats above and beyond external threats and malware. You are also "Cleopatra" -- Queen of Denial.

I would LOVE to see someone put actual real statistics to this thought process!

Now, about those real statistics.... anyone?

Linux market share reported as: 0.65% to 1.34%

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070903-linux-marketshare-set-to-surpass-windows-98.html

While it may appear that Windows has a larger market share, consider the following quote,

From GameDaily,
"PC gaming is in a weird position right now. Now, 60% of PCs on the market don't have a workable graphics processor at all. All the Intel integrated graphics are still incapable of running any modern games. So you really have to buy a PC knowing that you're going to play games in order to avoid being stuck with integrated graphics. This is unfortunate, and this is one of main reasons behind the decline of the PC as a gaming platform," he said. "That really has endangered high-end PC game sales. In the past, if you bought a game, it would at least work. It might not have been a great experience, but it would always work." - http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/epic-ceo-pcs-arent-good-for-gaming/?biz=1

So, Windows may have a larger market share in the PC desktop market, but only 40% of them can even play a game and even less of those can play a modern game.

You idea of actual statistics are flawed, but I like the way you were headed.

Replying to self:

It seems you are right. I'm not surprised as this kind of cynical lying, but it really is sad nonetheless.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-bad-phorm-uk-isps-to-sell-clickstream-data-to-advertisers.html
http://www.badphorm.co.uk/

Try reading the link, which is redundant in this thread.

"Support for CSS3 Selectors
We added support for all of the remaining CSS3 selectors. These include selectors like nth-child, nth-of-type, last-child, last-of-type, etc. These selectors were already implemented in KHTML, and the KHTML developers had even kindly provided patches for us in the relevant WebKit bugs. Therefore it was a simple matter of taking those patches, updating them to the WebKit codebase, and then merging them in. A big thanks to the KHTML developers for their hard work in this area."

These patches are pretty old too, Ars mentioned them in an article more than 6 months old: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/07/23/the-unforking-of-kdes-khtml-and-webkit.

Nice way to keep the mean spirited issue at hand. You piss me off. I'm thinking that anyone whose web site is powered by Joomla http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/en/Joomla!_License_Guidelines/ might actually take the hint if you kindly... KINDLY... ask them to produce the data in ODF formats.

Some of the people involved with this institution are well read and intelligent individuals. Talking like an asshat about them is not exactly an encouragement after all.

The content was put in a modifiable format, that's half the way there.

In case "Canada's non-profit and independent Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics" is reading their press, here are some suggestions:

Start here http://www.openoffice.org/

ARSTechnica http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/3/21/3278
http://www.osrc.org.pk/content/view/248/96/
http://www.fsfeurope.org/
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/10/apple-adds-supp.html
http://www.e-cology.ca/canfloss/report/CANfloss_Report.pdf
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

And this search is interesting reading http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2Bodf+software+training+canada+education&btnG=Search

Marshall's domain name registrar, eNom, is based in the US. It apparently didn't learn that his company had been blacklisted for two and a half years. When it did, however, the registrar promptly shut down Marshall's sites without notification and has since refused to release the domain names to him. Marshall has since rebuilt his business using a European registrar and the .net rather than the .com suffix, but his experience raises troubling questions.

Get rid of cd keys, license terms, eulas, and stop suing your customers!!!

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/06/apple-to-create-enterprise-appstore-for-internal-deployment

Another party trick for the Mighty Mouse: the squeezeable sides are "harder" to squeeze when the mouse isn't on a surface. Try it now...squeeze it, then pick it up off the table and squeeze again.

that's completely false. read over any of the blogs and you'll see that you can make live updates to your iPhone through XCode to test out your apps. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080306-live-coverage-of-the-iphone-software-roadmap-announcement.html snippet: -Can connect to iPhone like the remote debugger and see live performance of your app on your Mac from the iPhone -Remote debugger--plug in your iPhone, run it on the iPhone live, but debug from the Mac

NO PORN?!?!!!!!!!

(Searh for the word "porn" here on ars.)

Why else does teh internet even f'ing exist?

Thats it STEVE, I cant exist in a world where iPhones can't be used for porn... you've left me no choice. *crying* See, I have this gun... goodbye cruel worl#@#$+!##** NO CARRIER