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I'll elaborate (slightly) about ZFS if someone else will tell me who John Siracusa is and why I should care what he writes...

He just publishes a little tech blog called ars technica...

John Siracusa? He's a longtime Mac user, and that makes him statistically likely to be smarter than you.

For the record, he's absolutely right. Open source developers fail to think holistically, and this bleakness of vision is apparent in the results. As Steve Jobs says, great computer systems aren't built by great computer scientists; they're built by "musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happen to be the best computer scientists in the world."

"This is the first round and will not be the last," he added.

Well, he certainly has that part right. What he fails to appreciate is that he will be on the losing end of every single one of those rounds. Even as he tries to downplay the key by saying it has been revoked, AACS has already lost the second round (as hackers have created a hack that CAN'T be revoked).

Always a step behind, buddy. But feel free to keep wasting your money and pissing people off.

I'd say read the original article which has a very nice diagram of the decryption process.

linky

Looking at the original article there's no explanation if the initial decryption results are used in the decryption of the Volume ID. If there were I'd tend to agree with your suggestion, it wouldn't end up helping much.

But if the original decryption is just a gateway to start the (self-contained) decryption of the Volume ID using the as yet unfound 'Host Private Key', then hacking the firmware on the drive to not do the initial decryption and just go to step 2, would be an unbreakable hack.

It would also boggle my mind how stupid the MPAA and their ilk are. And how good the salesmen for the AACS are in getting MPAA people to think this would work ;-)

I'd say read the original article which has a very nice diagram of the decryption process.

linky

I think the point is that the they patched the firmware on the Xbox HD DVD drive to no longer need to do the initial decryption which is handled by the keys that can be revoked. Hence why they are calling an 'unbreakable' hack.

This isn't a solution most people can do, but it is a step towards a software program that can just read portions of an HD DVD disc with an unpatched drive, thus making the whole AACS scheme useless.

I'm throwing out the wacky idea that they are suing via random selection in the phone book

Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID#Viruses is a nice little bit, and a link to the original article. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060315-6386 .html

ArsTechnica links to http://www10.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/technology/15t ag.html?_r=5&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&ore f=slogin&oref=slogin and to the real original webpage http://www.rfidvirus.org/index.html

Basically, it uses buffer over flows to insert nasty code into a computer. The RFID chips contain the code and when read exploit problems in the reader. You can use commercially available tools to write your own RFID chips. Have fun.

According to Opera's CEO (interviewed here) Opera has around 10-15m active desktop users, 40m people with Opera on their phones, and 7m users of "Opera mini" on other devices. Other figures note 50m phones with Opera have been 'shipped', but presumably not all of these are in use.

So, yes, the non-desktop market increases Opera's base by a factor of 4-5, assuming every phone with Opera on it is being used to browse the web.

That's still a modest share of the overall market, even when you measure by installed base, rather than actual usage. Indeed, likely substantially less than Firefox (Supposedly circa 100m desktop users from not terribly good sources).

HR 2060 is, of course, the Internet Radio Equality Act. It was introduced in April by Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Don Manzullo (R-IL) and would essentially reverse the CRB's decision, returning Internet radio to its previous, percentage-based fee structure that is similar to that of satellite radio. While Internet radio stations and supporting groups didn't have much time to lobby Congress when the bill was initially introduced, the deadline extension by the CRB could give groups like SaveNetRadio just enough time to, fittingly, save 'Net radio.

If Internet radio stations are important to you, we urge you to contact your Representative and let him or her know that you support the Internet Radio Equality Act.

I really, really hope the Internet Radio Equality Act will go through ASAP for this, or it'll likely become a devastating blow to most serious Internet radio stations out there. :-/

We Americans would be less conditioned to reject new taxes if we had any faith that the money from these taxes wouldn't be wasted on irrelevant or unrelated things. Heck, just look at this idea - where do you think the money will come from? Likely from unrelated and irrelevant taxation of something else.

And, even if someone does the math behind it and proves it won't work, do you think the government will listen to the logic? No, they'll just go ahead and do it anyway, because the politicians "believe" in it. Just look at the idiotic change in daylight savings time. For those that didn't know, it was supposed to magically save the country some amount of energy... well, it didn't... and they were told it wouldn't (see: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070403-the- daylight-savings-change-no-savings-no-point.html

But back to the original question - it's all about conservation of energy. This energy has to come from somewhere, and it will simply come from the cars. If it's not creating drag on the cars, then it's too far away to be affected by them... in which case, it's just an array of wind turbines using the planet's natural winds.

This is an idiotic idea devised by politicians who clearly know nothing about physics or science.

So here is the dilemma: - I want the linux hardware and they will probably only offer it with Linux OS. But I want the Vista OS too at OEM pricing. If I buy the Vista box, that is a lost sale for Linux. If I buy the Linux box, I have to go spend extra money for Vista.

I'm assuming you already know that you can buy OEM versions of Vista Ultimate for $199 at places like Newegg.com. What you might not know is how MS defines a "system builder." According to an Arstechnica.com article titled "Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts":

• Can I buy OEM?

  Yes, you can. Microsoft licenses OEM software to "system builders," which the license defines as "an original equipment manufacturer, or an assembler, reassembler, or installer of software on computer systems" (emphasis added). You can install software on computers, right?

  When asked, Microsoft says that OEM software is not intended to be installed by end users. Off the record, Microsoft spokespeople have told me that the big concern in Redmond is for Joe Newbie. They don't want inexperienced users buying OEM software, but the fact of the matter is that anyone can buy OEM versions of Windows.

  Truth be told, Microsoft is not opposed to the practice. Rather, the company says that people who purchase OEM software will simply be expected to abide by the terms of the licensing agreements.

Actually if I remember correctly, from reading a different article, when you first download a song it will have the ad. A couple weeks later (may have been sooner) you can download a version of the song that doesn't have the ad. Ah, here we go. Found it. "Four weeks after downloading the track, the user can then download a version without the ad." From http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070430-pete r-gabriel-shakes-the-tree-ad-supported-mp3s-fall-o ut.html

You don't need to look at the compiler when you have the source code for the virtual machine:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061107-8170 .html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070429-sco- wanted-gag-order-for-linus-torvalds-groklaw-in-200 4.html

Not necessarily. Last week Dan Glickman (CEO of MPAA) was reported to have announced "a plan to let consumers rip DVDs for use on home media servers and iPods".

"So that's a bit like talking about botnets and your desperate denial of the existence of Linux botnets with tens of thousands of machines?"

Tens of thousands?

I don't really know about that, but let's take that number at face value and compare that to what Vint Cerf has calculated: he figures that 1/4 of all Windows clients are bots.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070125-8707 .html

That's 150 MILLION machines compared to your purported "tens of thousands". The Bible says something about removing a log of wood from your own eye before pointing out a speck of dust in another's. Religious or not, it's good advice.

And let's look at the attack vectors for "linux botnets" - nearly all of them are servers running vulnerable PHP code and victims of brute force attacks at the SSH port. This is _trivial_ to secure. If you run sshd on any port other than 22, all those "invalid user" messages simply go away. That's not even taking into account using Denyhosts. If you combine the two strategies, it's simply too much of a waste of time for someone to try to root the box through SSH. The other obvious strategy is to not run random PHP code without checking first online if it's massive security risk.

But that's all about server stuff. Joe and Josephine User don't run services, or at least shouldn't. Gone are the days of Linux shipping with tons of services turned on by default - they must be configured and started by the owner. Take a Linux distro like Ubuntu 7.04, and stick it on a computer bare-arsed naked to a cable modem. The likelihood of a successful attack is nearly nil, but to do the same thing to a Windows machine, a take-over is 50 percent likely within 20 minutes (I'm being generous here, I've seen most estimates below 12 minutes and 5 minutes) - before patches can be successfully installed.

So you can sit there and blame the user all you like, but it doesn't change the reality that Windows is unsafe at any speed, by design.

--
BMO

Meanwhile, Nintendo has announced an desire to increase production to get the installed base up.

Those free upgrade coupons went to home users buying "Vista Rated" PCs over the Christmas holidays. The geek who thinks those coupons aren't being redeemed is living in a dream world.

Drop the deferred income from the picture and it's still an impressive quarter--client revenue was up 30 percent over last year, at $4.1 billion. Vista, Office 2007 drive record profits for Microsoft

Look, I dislike Microsoft as much as the next Mac fanboy, but this comment is idiotic. The New York Times reports:

Microsoft reported quarterly sales and profits that surpassed Wall Street's expectations yesterday, suggesting that early sales of its new Windows Vista operating system were off to a solid start.

The company, which is the world's largest software maker, also delivered an outlook for its 2008 fiscal year, which begins in July, in the upper range of analysts' projections. Microsoft said that revenue in fiscal 2008 should reach $56.5 billion to $57.5 billion, and earnings were expected to be $1.68 to $1.72 a share.

Yes, I read the news. Perhaps more than you do I suspect.

Maybe it's because you're a massive antisemite?

You know, for the /. crowd, you guys are surprisingly uneducated on what Vista actually is. The most common perception here is that it is XP with a pretty interface that needs newer hardware. If you think that way, then you're guilty of opening your mouth before learning the facts.

Even the Vista supporters seem to think that Vista's DRM support will jump out of your monitor and punch you in the face the second you think about playing a downloaded movie - WRONG. The DRM support is only present in a very small part of the OS to do with video/audio playback (the old directshow equivalent), and will only activate if you're looking to play legitimate media with the new DRM schemes.

Hint: If you have already made a legitimate "backup" of your HD-DVD, then you've cracked the AACS and DRM won't activate. The only thing Vista will stop you doing is cracking the HD-DVD in the first place (unless you have a spare key), and it is a little unreasonable to blame M$ for this since everyone is supporting AACS. And yes I hate it as much as the next guy - but blame the MPAA.

Also, normal DVDs play fine under Vista - whether they are a "backup" (err.. or so my friend tells me) or the original.

Secondly, the "there is no reason to upgrade" crowd need to take a bit of a look at what is under the hood. Removing the database-like file structure didn't gut the OS like most people think.

Ars wrote about it far better than I could, so check out:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars

The essence of the article is that Vista is a significant technology update in every area where it really counts. OSs don't exist to provide you with a bazillion new gadgets. For example, Vista updates the user API to (finally) get rid of the GDI crap that was originally designed for NT3.1, and if you don't think this is a significant update, then you've obviously never written a graphical application in Windows.

The result? The Desktop Windows Manager draws each window to its own buffer, so the old and clunky window switching that was present in XP is gone. But that also means you need more memory and a better video card right? Good.

Frankly, I'm sick of having access to good-cheap PC hardware, and not having that hardware properly used to improve my general computing experience. I'm sick of having a scalar bitmap desktop while using a video card capable of so much more. I want my fonts to scale perfectly, thankyouverymuch. Vector-graphicsmenow.

And no, you aren't somehow more of a "geek" because you like running command line OS's on your dual-core, overclocked, 2Gb, Geforce 8 running PC.

The next most common cry is how early driver compatability will "kill the OS". Have we forgotten the great debacle that was gaming under Win2k? It took ages for 2k to overtake where 98 was gaming wise. While XP was better - it still had its share of issues.

Gaming under Vista? Seriously, it works fine. Unless you're running Fraps and performing statistical analysis on your average framerates, then you're not going to notice the difference. And apparently ATI cards run the same or better under Vista anyway - it's just nVidia that are having problems. When games like Age of Conan start coming to market at the end of the year - DirectX 10 is going to be one of the things people look for in a new PC. Why? More ph4t FX! Specifically - unified pixel and vertex shaders, and new geometry shaders.

Oh wait, I can hear the M$ conspiracy is that DirectX 10 is only supported under Vista so that they can shaft some more money out of you, right?

Wrong again. There are many technicaly reasons why DX10 wont be able to be back-ported (they may release a wrapper though), mostly to do with the way Vista has restructured the GPU API.

Other complaints

- The application runtime query - turn it off if you don't like it.

- Vista runs slower because it

1. SEC
2. DOJ
3. OMB

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."

Their job is to regulate the spectrum in the public's interest. If the public complains about [sex/language/violence/other] on the public spectrum, then isn't it the FCC's job to regulate [X]?

as Ars Technica points out.

Well, the article pointed out that TDP (typical dissipation power, or something like that) ratings are likely to remain the same. They paraphrase Intel as saying they used the reduction in process size to pack in my transistors instead of pursue the power-savings route.

The TDP numbers for Penryn desktop quad-core parts will be 95 and 130 watts, with desktop dual-core parts coming in at a 65W TDP.

I know for a fact that in Arizona selling an M rated game to a minor is illegal and actually punishable by some law

So your point is that you think that the Wii Attach Rate Statistics are outdated. Well, I linked to a google search on "wii attach rate," to which you replied with "Yes, Nintendo had a far better attach rate... in december 06... troll."

In this context, "attach rate" refers to the number of games sold for each console ("The game attach rate is defined as the average number of games purchased per game system, calculated by simply dividing the total number of games sold by the total number of consoles sold," as defined by arstechnica). Now, this number has an interesting property: It typically only ever goes up during the lifetime of a console. The reason is simple: The older a console is, the more owners you have who have owned the console for a longer time, and have thus had more time to buy games.

Or, in other words, you're very likely to own more games for your 5-years-old PS2 than for your brand-new PS3.

So, back to your argument: You're claiming that the attach rate from 4 months ago is useless. Now lets go back to what the original argument that sparked the discussion was:

It's a good thing they're not losing money on those consoles, cause they're certainly not making any on games. What's the only game 90% of the Wii owners are playing? Wii sports. And are they buying others? Nope, because the gimmick pretty much ends there.

The claim was that people who buy Wiis don't buy other games. But even the attach rate of a few months ago - which has only gone up since then - disproves that.

You still have not explained to me how what I wrote is wrong in any way. I have no idea why you keep ranting on and on about the PS3 or the Xbox or the Wii's success. This discussion has got nothing to do with success or failure, with the "console war," with crashes, with Oblivion, with game styles, with "Nintendo Fans," or with which console comes out on top. In fact, I actually own a PS3 and very much want it to succeed.

I only said that the original claim - that Wii buyers only play Wii Sports - is wrong.

In fact, I still don't quite understand what made you so angry, and why you keep ranting on and on about all those things, about which I have claimed nothing at all.

Frankly, I'm still not entirely sure what you're trying to tell me. You sound a bit like a anti-Nintendo fanboy, jumping at every chance he gets to rant about how bad Nintendo is.

Last time I checked, magnetic platter based notebook hard drives have reached 250GB. Some big Dell notebooks can be configured with two of them for "half a terabyte in a notebook."

Last time I checked, magnetic platter based notebook hard drives have reached 250GB. Some big Dell notebooks can be configured with two of them for "half a terabyte in a notebook."

Actually Penryn is mostly a die shrink of existing stuff on the 45nm process. It does have new capabilities but it wont be called Core 3 ... they will still be known as Core 2 last I heard. Nehalem is the next big thing from Intel and maybe called Core 3.

Review Intel drops a Nehalem bomb on AMD's Fusion: integrated graphics, on-die memory controller, SMT

No, it's not a hardware limitation, it's a "software thing". Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista do NOT execute 16-bit code in the hardware!

I ran into the newfangled copy protection on Casino Royale while trying to rip it to my DVD server. Luckily the folks at Ars Technica were able to point me in the right direction. A quick download and install of Ripit4Me and I was able to rip the DVD. Pain in the butt, though, since I bought the freaking disc.

I don't quite get it. When you speak of "extended register range", you refer to the fact that the registers are 64 bits wide, right?
No, love.

Let's start with this quote from Hannibal at Ars Technica (from http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/x86-64. ars):
In the case of x86-64, it's the added registers and other changes that actually account for better performance on normal apps like games.

While I must admit I'm not an expert on the i386 or AMD64 architectures and am willing to be corrected, I know that i386 has eight named 32-bit registers -- actual places that the processor can store each datum it is working on -- while AMD64 has 16 named 64-bit general-purpose registers and eight named 128-bit vector registers for Single Instruction, Multiple Data stuff, which is more commonly known as SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 and is comparable to the PowerPC AltiVec stuff. The more convenient on-the-processor storage you have (like more pigeon-holes for data) the easier it is to keep the CPU doing useful work and keep track of that work.

I assume that doubling the size of the int or float is an issue for cache exhaustion, but would assume that AMD's and Intel's engineers have the issue under control. Perhaps the reason that the dual processor AMD64 chips only have 512KiB of L2 cache is to do with chip yields and room on the silicon dies, or perhaps there isn't sufficient speed improvement to show a need for a larger cache -- I'm not sure.

or maybe the iphone as the delay is really iphoney as alluded to by this report...not flaming...just sowing some seeds of doubt...

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/04/ 14/new-eight-core-mac-pro-performance-mixed-bag

The biggest secret Apple were protecting at the time is obviously the iPhone.

Sure, there are probably some things Apple didn't show because they were not ready, interface stuff that they can build on top of resolution independent display for example, or a long list of desperately needed Finder improvements. The Mac rumor mill has been going on about secret features ever since Steve Jobs mentioned those in the Leopard feature Keynote at WWDC last year. Well, device driver support for GSM/GPRS and multi-touch displays was a pretty big secret. The Mac rumor mill will grind on about this until Leopard ships in October, then they will whine shrilly about the lack of interesting "promised" secret features.

Meanwhile, Time Machine will solve one of the most important problems with personal computers today, and the rumor mill is singularly unimpressed. I've lost track of how many people I know who have lost data to a hard disk failure because they didn't have a reasonabe backup. Time Machine will make this headache go away. It's almost guaranteed that none of the other un-announced features in Leopard will have the real world impact of Time Machine. Start setting your expectations now.

It's usually not the register width that gives you the boost, but the register count. AMD doubled both the width and the number of general purpose registers when they designed x86_64 (aka AMD64, aka IA32e). Arstechnica has a detailed overview (jump to page 3 for relevant slide and it's accompanying explanation). You are right about the larger pointers being a liability when it comes to memory bandwidth, but the size of your basic C99 "int" remains unchanged. If you want a 64-bit integer, you'll have to ask for a "long int" on x86_64, or a "long long int" on modern i386, or better yet, an "int64_t" on any architecture that supports it.

Sorry for the use of the word logic in connection with SCO, but I believe the following scenario wouldn't be too far fetched:

• AMD Donates Servers to Groklaw
• Search for an IBM/AMD connection through Google: Results 1 - 10 of about 742,000 for ibm amd partnership. (0.13 seconds) [also, note how obvious the connection is by how quickly google came up with an answer]
• Arstechnica's actual headline: "IBM and AMD partnership extended through 2008"
• SCO spin: IBM blatantly funding Groklaw!

They think they deleted it, the same way you thought you voted.

got backups?

Yesterday, we have a story where Turbo Tax's online system exposed a few tax forms for returns with similar names.

Last Friday, it was reported that the IRS lost 490 computers with potentially millions of taxpayer records. (The IRS is not sure what was lost.)

Tell me why the latter isn't a bigger story?

Answer: With TJ Max, Georgia CHIP, the CIA, and Los Alamos were all desensitized to the daily reports.

They've gone, what, 5 releases without fixing (much) in Finder; what makes you think they'll fix it this time around?

The fact that Apple had a job posting up for a finder engineer last year:
http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/1/26 /2673

Most complaints about the Finder centre on network performance (hangs on network disconnections, for example), or on a perception of flawed spatiality. The former is a localised, admittedly serious, problem. The latter is mostly a philosophical difference.

For informed arguments about the problems of the Finder, see:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars

http://daringfireball.net/2003/04/siracusa_on_the_ finder

Yes, because we all know that DVD sales are plummeting.

You meant that sarcastically, but actually, you're right.

Charging more for HD content isn't going to cut it because a lot of people *with* HDTVs like the quality of DVDs in a progressive scan player (which they are are over the last couple years).

First of all, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray movies cost the same as DVD's - about $15-$20. Some are as low as $9. So that argument doesn't hold water.

Second, nobody who has an HDTV likes the quality of DVD vs. true HDTV. DVD's are watchable, but the quality difference is pretty obvious. I have never seen any HDTV owner that says otherwise. (Maybe going back to the early days of HDTV, when the resolution of those sets was hardly better than DVD. But that's not the case anymore.)

The industry needs a replacement for DVD, and HDTV owners do want one. It will likely turn out to be some combination of digital downloads and high-def optical discs, most likely Blu-Ray in the long run.

All too often hard-drive based iPods fail after being dropped on the floor. However, iPod nanos (with flash memory) survive dropping and even being run over by a car. So for durability purposes, it would be much nicer to switch to flash memory in your existing HDD iPod.

Why are all of the links in my posts disapearing?

Here are the links for the parent post:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars

http://www.udnimweb.de/Texte/sg2002bof_apple.pdf

I'd post numbers, but I don't have a lot of time to waste on arguing with people who are unlikely to be persuaded by facts anyway. Consumer Reports puts Apple hardware reliability as #1 overall. It put them #2 for laptops, right behind Sony. The study our IT guy bought access to only covers laptops but placed them #1 for laptop reliability for 2006 of all the major vendors. I'd post links if they were not both password protected, but buy an account at Consumer reports, it is well worth it.

If you're a real cheapskate you can read an article by someone who did pay for access to consumer reports, like this Ars Technica article. The most relevant excerpt might be, "As for reliability, Apple Computer crushes the competition, at least among desktops. Based on 77,700 responses, 11 percent of Macs bought between 2002 and 2006 went in for repair or had a serious problem. Sony was next best, at 15 percent, and Gateway was last at 19 percent. Among 50,100 respondents with laptops, Apple was at 18 percent, along with the majority of manufacturers. Sony was at 15 percent, but it should be noted that 3 points or less is not considered meaningful." That reference was in regard to their survey based study which suffers from self selection (but is still better than nothing) but their spot purchasing study concluded the same. In fact, pretty much every independent study I've seen comes up with similar results. Have you ever seen a real study (not an anecdote) that ranks Apple lower than #3 for hardware reliability?

...is here.

Google on Tuesday will release a Mac version of Google Desktop.

The referenced Tuesday was yesterday, not six days from now. It's completely understandable that some stories are posted late, but is it too much to ask that they be edited to remain factual?