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I (heart) what Apple does as much as and probably more than the next guy, but you have to admit the simularities are suspicious. Apple had/has "desk accessories" in 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3, but the implementation of those desk accessories were always application level. "Dashboard Widgets" are sub-application level desktop citizens, written in Javascript -- just like "Konfabulator Widgets".

Backing up a bit, what I guess I'm trying to say is that Apple gets a lot of milage out of being the "Good Cop" to a good portion of the computer industries' "Bad Cop", and has reaped the generous benefit of this good karma over the past few years with an outpouring of support from Mac users, the open source community, the press, etc. "Borrowing" these ideas and then ingenuously pretending that competing products never truly existed (Watson, Konfabulator, LaunchBar) is simply Bad Karma, and if there's any company that should be mindful of the Karma Index, it should be Apple.

And, practically speaking, it's not like Steve doesn't have a wheelbarrow of cash handy.

~jeff

Personally, I was looking forward to the announcement about the Finder's cute little "oh hey you double-clicked on a file so now I'm going to update the folder that's listed by date modified so what you thought you opened is something entirely different" bug.

(aka, use kqueue, dammit!!)

Uh... how about the fact that nothing even remotely like that is in the statute?

You're right and I noticed after posting this. Since the german copyright explicitely contains such a provision (par. 53(1) UrhG), I assumed that Americans had the same freedom. Obviously they don't.

Copies, yes. Perfect digital reproductions, no.

Actually, the fair use clause doesn't even guarantee the right to make analog copies. Neither does it explicitely prohibit perfect reproductions so it all boils down to a matter of interpretation.

Yes, that's right: it's a big conspiracy.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Now that digital broadcasting is gaining momentum, they want legislation to make hometaping technically impossible. The copyright flag is just one step among others. E.g., the DMCA (1201 k) already requires manufacturers of analog recording devices to obey to copy control (i.e. prevention) mechanisms. The ultimate aim is that there will be no way to record a digital TV/radio broadcast if it has the copy control bit set, apart from building your own recorder. Note that the RIAA is lying again: Digital radio is - for bandwidth reasons - far from CD quality[1]. VCRs will go extinct and be replaced with devices like DVD players which aren't capable of any recording, and can be subjected to any DRM scheme from region code over expiring keys to the right to unilaterally terminate your license upon any activity which the MPAA disapproves of (this will probably be used rarely, but not be unheard of). Just take a look at the legislation, the RIAA and MPAA have pushed through in the recent years, and are now trying to establish. Here's an incomplete list:

Succeeded:

• The underestimated NET Act
• DMCA
• Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (of course this name obscures the involvement of The Walt Disney Company a little)

In progress:

• PIRATE Act
• INDUCE Act

More laws are waiting where these are coming from (well, that would be Hell, I guess). The goal is to give copyright holders (which are only rarely nowadays the actual artists) enormous power even beyond that which they already wield. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that are too lazy, gullible or indifferent to defend their freedom.

Nonsense. Macrovision doesn't even come close to meeting the definition of "access control mechanism" given in Title 17. The courts have so held, despite civil suits alleging differently.

You haven't got references? I have.

Before you can "recompress" you must "decompress," which is the same as making a perfect digital copy of the original work.

Yes, that's why even viewing a DVD is illegal. D'oh! Seriously though, at least German courts have ruled that making a transient copy of copyrighted material in order to exercise fair use rights is fair use itself. So of course this is a BS argument.

"There is no consistency as to what is acceptable in one region for the ATF that won't be acceptable somewhere else," said Wickman. "The ATF people seem, as a rule, to feel this whole idea of hobby rocketry being regulated by the (government is) a mistake and a waste of time. There's a disconnect between the ATF in Washington and the regional field offices."

What's worse, even though not much has changed about the regulations, they are subject to arbitrary interpretation in the field, said Bundick, of the National Association of Rocketry. "It's a never-ending treadmill to try to pacify the local inspector."

The Justice Department's Nowacki didn't respond to questions about the ATF's perceived inconsistency.

• (1st) free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion;
  
• (4th) unreasonable searches and seizures;
  
• (5th) freedom from self-incrimination;
  
• (6th) rights to counsel and to a speedy trial
  
• (8th) freedom from cruel and unusual punishments
  
• (9th) rights retained by the people
  
• (10th ) or rights reserved by the States

What you want is something like this . Plug it into the sound-out of a cabled media computer (or, heck, a Wireless Music/Media Player, if you feel the need to comply with the latest buzzwords). Put the computer wherever you have the space (closet, basement, attic) and keep your stereo clutter-free. Tune the FM transmitter to a free space low on the dial (89.3 or so), and listen to your streams on any stereo in/around/outside the house. So long as you aren't stepping on any other nearby frequencies, and the reception drops off significantly enough before you get more than a few houses away, you shouldn't have much worry about complaints.

Or you can drag your Wireless Music/Media Player out into the backyard the next time you want to host a barbecue. Of course, "wireless" doesn't usually apply to power cables and wall warts.

What do you think error checking is for? If you're using any RAID type other than 0 and you lose a drive the RAID will use the data on the other drives in the RAID to rebuild the information that was supposed to be on the dead drive. Whether that data was ever actually written to the platter of the now dead drive is irrelevant.

I strongly suggest you educate yourself on how RAID works. Here is a good place to start.

It's used for I/O. See here

The folks that introduced spyware EULAs

You're confusing these developers with Sharman Networks. The Kazaa developer team has absolutely nothing to do with spyware, and is only responsible of creating innovative software.

Memory Refresher:
KaZaA sold to Sharman Networks

Because, in the AMD formula above, the "work per clock cycle" is the same for each manufacturer.

No it absolutely, positively is not. Any AMD Athalon chip executes more instructions per clock cycle than a Pentium 4. A Pentium M executes more instructions per cycle than a Pentium 4. This is why an AMD chip can be (in the case of Opteron, significantly) faster than an Intel P4 running real programs while limping along at 60% of the P4's clock speed.

I think you need some education on basic computer architecture, my firend. If you read this, you'll understand why a massively super-scalar ("wide") CPU like the Opteron is faster than a deeply pipelined CPU like the P4 on a clock-per-clock basis.

So if an AMD chip running at 2.0 GHz can perform say ~2.4 floating point additions per clock cycle on average, it will be faster (for an FP-ADD heavy application) than a 3.0 GHz P4 which only performs ~1.2 floating point additions per clock cycle.

Yes, we published this several months ago, and have made no recent revisions to it. If you're going to link us up (which we always appreciate!), why not do it to our new article on the Future of Prescott?

...you guys will link up my new Prescott article that went live this morning!

(Looking back at this post with the preview function, I'm thinking, "is this a troll, flamebait, informative, funny, all four, or none of the above?" I post, you decide.)

"Just like Netscape jumping from 4 to 6 to match IE6"

From the Ars Technica interview with Scott Collins:
"We had a 'Netscape 5' that was within weeks of being ready to go, and this person said that we needed to ship something based on Gecko within 6 months instead.....And we didn't get out a 5.0, and that cost of us everything."

Netscape 5 was almost done, but one PHB convinced the other Netscape execs that trashing it and releasing a Gecko-based browser (Netscape 6) would be better.

One more example of how one idiot can trash a whole company. By the time that Netscape 6 was out, all but the die-hards had switched to IE or Opera.

First, you must decide which RAID level meets your needs/wants. To do this, you must educate yourself on the various RAID levels and the pros and cons associated with each so you can make an informed decision. I recommend reading "The Skinny on RAID" if you want to learn the various RAID levels available.

After reading that article, you should learn about hot spares and what they can and cannot do for you. A recent article has been written about setting realistic expectations on what hot spares can do for you. "The Mythical Hot-Spare - Tape/Disk/Optical Storage" will be informative on this subject matter.

Lastly, you should read "Kill SCSI II: NetCell's RAID 0 Performance + RAID 5 Security Equals SyncRAID" to look into a innovative IDE RAID card that can give you kick ass performance and reliability. Be sure to read the benchmarks on the review so you can make an informed decision.

I don't think Google would help much for that question.

OTOH, Ars Technica has a decent piece on RAID.

• The "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network" checkbox. As I recall, this is enabled by default (!?) even though the vast majority of wireless systems don't use this. (This is something completely different from WEP.) This must be off or you'll lose your connection every few minutes, as the driver tries and fails to authenticate using this protocol. This was my problem.
• XP sometimes has problems with hidden SSIDs. Make sure to broadcast yours. Yeah, it weakens your security somewhat, but it was only obscurity anyway. Use WEP or, even better, MAC address binding.
• Finally, if neither of the above work for you, you can turn off the Wireless Zero service completely and use only your manufacturer's drivers. Go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services and set Wireless Zero to "Disabled". You'll need to install the drivers from your manufacturer's CD, of course. Frankly, considering the problems with MS's drivers, I would recommend this for everybody.

It took me a long time to figure this out. I thought for a long time it was just intrinsic unreliability of 802.11b, but as I should've guessed it was Windows' fault. Having disabled Wireless Zero, my connection is now flawless on XP.

I don't believe that works. It doesn't actually connect to them, it merely drops the original connection to let you know that they are available. To quote an Ars article: "You won't fully associate with that network, but the service will pop-up and tell you that there are multiple wireless networks to join, even if you have removed all other networks from your preferred settings (this contradicts Microsoft's report, which says it only affects preferred networks)."

I would like to point all of you to this article at Ars Technica. It explains the problem and how to fix it.

Good Luck

JFMILLER

I would like to point all of you to this article at Ars Technica. It explains the problem and how to fix it.

Good Luck

JFMILLER

It is possible for dynamically compiled code to be faster than statically compiled code.

Take for example HP's Dynamo project. Dynamo is basically an interpreter of PA-8000 code, but which runs on the PA-8000 processor itself. It's as if you were running an x86 emulator on an x86. Only that Dynamo was designed to dynamically compile and optimize the code it was interpreting. It turned out that the dynamically compiled code ran faster than the static binaries running on the raw processor in almost every case!

More info on Dynamo can be found here.

1) Java has bounds checking for arrays, C++ doesn't. This is specified in the language. This affects performance.

2) Java has garbage collection, C++ doesn't. This is specified in the language. This affects performance.
Also, the specification of Java says that it should be compiled to byte code and executed in a JVM.
So the "language" certainly affects performance.

I believe I disagree with all of these.

When Transmeta's Crusoe launched, it was not widely known that they had the fastest native picojava processor on the planet.

To prove it, they compiled most of Doom down to x86 machine language, and then they compiled the exceedingly hot spots (rasterization) down to x86 for one executable and down to picojava for the other executable.

They both ran at the same speed.

You might say this is because Transmeta processors don't really run x86, but instead translate it to another format. That is correct. So does a JVM. So do Intel and AMD chips. Pentium processors haven't been native x86 processors since the original Pentium.

The trick to most on-the-fly x86 optimizations is figuring out when the strict x86 behavior is necessary, and when you can bend the rules. If you're in the middle of bending the rules, and the processor receives an IRQ or generates an exception, you need to dump everything on the floor and back up to the last time you had a valid x86 state, otherwise, as long as the x86 state is the way it's supposed to be at the end of the block or trace or however much you can get away with, it's all good.

This is true of Java bytecode as well. If you can simply trap out-of-bounds memory instead of doing an explicit bounds check on each access, your code will run very fast. If you get an exception, then it's back to the JVM. If you get lots of execptions, you can retranslate that particular block to do explicit bounds-checking and again manage to avoid calling the JVM.

If your garbage collector learns individual app behavior and tailors its behavior to a particular application runtime memory allocation track record, you can get superior performance to C++ new()/delete()'s compiled to x86, depending on how much time the app developer got to profile his memory management system, a task all too often overlooked in today's memory-is-cheap-get-it-to-market rush.

HP's Dynamo runtime actually proved that you can get better native machine language performance by running the native machine language in a runtime.

Modern JVM's aren't executing bytecode. They're making fully native x86 translations, and the x86 translations jump to each other. In fact, you're not really spending much time running the JVM at all. Your program is getting compiled, linked, and is running native. It's only going to the JVM when it has to.

The bottom line is that your Java perf is going to be wildly variable, depending on the quality of your JVM, and your x86 performance is going to be much less wildly variable, because x86 processors really became C++ bytecode processors several years ago. They're very carefully tuned to destroy benchmarks, particularly Winstone, which is a spectrum of bloated C++ Windows apps, a depressingly representative benchmark of what most of us run.

However, Intel and AMD processors can't see or remember beyond a tight window of x86 instructions. They will make the same optimization mistakes over and over again, no matter how many times you run the application. If your hot spots are longer than the size of that window, you lose. JVM's don't have this restriction. They see and can remember the entire application.

Nothing about x86 or C++ prohibits C++/x86 runtimes. This is precisely what Transmeta and VMWare are doing. They are both little companies and do not have the incredible muscle and financing of AMD and Intel, n

For even more fun, you can run a C++ program under a JIT. Although it sounds absurd, HP's Dynamo got around 20% performance improvement on binaries compiled on -O2 and even more on those compiled with -O4!

There is no way that a language that is running through simulated hardware is going to be faster than a program that is running on the hardware it was compiled for.

Really? Perhaps you need to do some reading about HP's Dynamo project. It was even posted here as an article a year or two ago. A VM that makes native code faster than running the native code by itself. Dynamic runtime profiling and optimisation is always going to result in faster code than statically optimised.

The current story should read:
Repran writes "Extremetech reports that the DVD Forum this week approved HD-DVD 1.0, [...] In related news, an arstechnica story reports that Microsoft's VC-9 codec has been included in the official HD-DVD specs."

I think it's important to keep story sources in the headline. It's a matter of politeness, and gives the reader a immediate idea on who is saying what. For stories with a zillion links, I think it's generally OK to leave the names of the sources out if it would lead to excessive clutter.

Even more annoying is this story:

An anchor tag on "The University of Tokyo" should go to the University of Tokyo's website. The link should be anchored to "illusion of invisibility" or perhaps "Optical Camouflage."

I never liked the tendency to anchor irrelevant things to stories, but it's done often enough that it's confusing when it gets mixed up. Also, the submitter's diatribe should be left out, but that's another matter.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and crusty.

As a Mac user, I find this comment quite amusing. The transition from the old spatial Finder to the new, "improved" browser interface of MacOS X, was just as big a piss-off to many Mac users, for exactly the opposite reason.

Someone @ Apple decided "spatial is passé, browsers are the way forward" and that was that. I haven't used Nautilus, but what people are bitching about here is a similar phenomenon, GNOME 2.6 gets Nautilus for its default file manager, and for some reason the onus is put on the user to get used to it. Luckily for linux users, you get a choice of GUI / file browser system to bolt on over your OS. With the Mac, we were just told this was how it was going to be, like it or lump it.

My feelings about he Finder were best summaried by Ars Technica a while back. The author of the OS News piece seems to have drawn from the same sources of reasoning. (Some of the Nautilus designers were from Apple too, as I recall).

The topic of a spatial finder has been up for many discussions when OS X went departed from a spatial finder. However I have to defer to ArsTechnica for the best information about it.

John Siracusa offers a coherent explaination of what it means to be a spatial finder and why it can be better.

I read this on Ars last night, so i would take it with a grain of salt....

Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource: "Now, your guess is as good as mine, but it sounds like this 'Intel employee,' whom the report identifies as a marketing manager, was talking out the rear, as we say in Beantown. HyperThreading, for what it's worth, might 'take off' in the future but right now what's taking off is the competition. Now, Intel may have some mojo up its sleeve that hasn't made its way through my sources, but I'll be rather surprised to see dual core Prescotts in a year's time unless Intel has managed to patent a dry ice freezer for cooling purposes. The future is quite clearly the Pentium M, unless Intel has solved power leakage problems and not told anyone about it (which is possible, but unlikely). My best guess with the information at hand is that this is Intel marketing speaking, and Intel marketing isn't going to tell you that Prescott doesn't have a future. Designing a dual-core, HT-enabled CPU that won't scale just doesn't make sense, and I can't imagine Intel doing it. "

I prefer Ars Technica's Understanding Pipelining and Superscalar Execution...

Besides, I feel HT exploits the fact that the processor is pipelined more than its superscalar nature.

Ars is covering this too. Ken Fisher makes it a point to mention that the person who made the claims is in marketing. He also speculates, quite logically, that bringing out dual core Prescotts in '05 would be a feat even for Intel. Worth reading for a more sobering take on the situation.

OR...

Could it be that they were lying about the source code delays and really were just behind schedule in the first place?

Thanks for enlightening us, Dr. Phil.

1. ISPs (and any other business that gives a workstation a "real" IP address) need to block egress port 25. Comcast is going to be doing this soon, others should soon follow suit. This plugs the zombies.
2. IP addresses that continue to send spam will be blacklisted. With the zombies effectively out of the loop this will become easier (albeit never quite perfect).
3. SPF and other authentication schemes need to be adopted to prevent "spoofing" and so called "Joe jobs".
4. E-mail providers (including small companies) need to deploy mature e-mail systems for their users. In 1995 it was fine to accept e-mail from anyone on port 25, with no authentication and no encryption. In 2004, remote clients need to have an SSL connection available (both for sending mail and accessing inboxes), and must require authentication before accepting initial mail submission (SMTP+TLS+AUTH). Not only is this more secure, but it also addresses the issues always raised by blocking egress port 25 and deploying SPF.

Appendix:
SMTP+TLS+AUTH is not that tough, no whining. All modern mail clients support it, on all platforms. There is a little bit of work to do on the server end, but that's what you pay your ISP (or IT department) for:

• postfix
• sendmail
• exchange
• qmail

Take a look at this article

Basically a P3, with more cache and some of the features of a P4 (improved branch sheduler) and none of the crud (long pipelines).

The general idea isn't so much to compete with Intel in the North American market as much as it is to undercut them massively in Asia and Latin America. You may recall that AMD killed the Duron line in 2002 only to bring it back later for sales in China (sales that they consider to be strong, and also great for branding).

You can go here to see some shots of the sign in action.

Now before "You can leave a message...", it says in yellow:

Good morning Slashdot users. Someone thought it'd be cute to link to me, which isn't a good idea with the 10 user version of IIS. Sorry for the 403.9's. For more information about my setup, go to ArsTechnica or SomethingAwful.

Hello there. Wazzup? I'm not sure if you caught my more recent posts on the subject. While unauthorized distribution may be an issue to you, the real issue here is that the industry is trying to kill any form of self distribution by criminalizing the tools that make it possible. Even to the point of attempting to restrict the band from recording and selling copies of a concert after it has finished, using the patent system. These bands(going back to at least the Gratefutl Dead) realize that copies are little more than free advertising to attract people to their next show, and it's usually pretty effective. The only people really hurt by file sharing are the unauthorized distributors who sell the copies(the real pirates), and of course the middlemen, and the RI/MPAA itself. It seems that the RIAA is trying to protect the pirate's business in addition to their own, since they do work hand in hand to acquire mindshare. You can put all the copy protection you want onto a CD or broadcast, and it won't even begin to affect the pros who can press exact copies of the original, copy protection and all. They know this, and this is why I suspect they are trying stamp out the ability for an artist to bypass them. Believe me, these people have absolutely no compassion for the artists who just signed over all their rights. This is about protecting a business model that simply no longer applies. This attitude goes back to the time of Gutenberg when the writer's guilds were trying to protect their business from the very same thing. They're trying to tell us that only they have a right to distribute anything, and if you want to get an audience, you have to go through them. I'm counting on the people's ability to see through this facade and act accordingly by not buying anything with any kind of DRM. Since this thread isn't specifically about music, this post may seem a bit off topic, but the same rules apply here. And remember if you're going to P2P, be sure to lift the lid first.

Later...

Note this understated bit in the article:

When plugging in the second drive to form the RAID array, the OS X very politely kernel panics with the Multi-Language Screen Of Death (MLSOD) declaring that you need to power off your machine.

Sorry, but you are misinformed. The I in RAID does in fact stand for inexpensive, since when RAID was created the alternative was a Single Large Expensive Disk (SLED). That fact that this alternative is now obsolete and the I has been co-opted to mean independant so that folks like you would get its meaning doesn't change the history. But then again, you probably think that the V in DVD stands for video

mushkin-inside

you can see a dirty fingerprint on the chip

Thou Shalt Not Use GIF for Screenshots!

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/004/flash/RAID0.gif

GIF really makes that screenshot look bad. The gradent in the window bar was reduced to just two colors and the icons and RAID tab are a dithered mess.

Anonymous, 'cause I ain't no karma whore.

Conclusion

When we started this review, we only had an inkling of what we might come up with. By the time we finished, our perception that USB drives were a commodity was completely erased. While every USB Flash drive is essentially the same in that they carry data, they are all slightly different and not every drive will meet everyone's needs.

Drive summaries

PNY Attache: As drives go, this one was stylish and sturdy. It comes with a full assortment of accessories, including the USB extension cable and a neck strap. Aside from that, the drive itself is a rather lackluster offering. While much faster than any USB 1.1 device, the read and write speeds are rather slow for Hi-speed USB. The other unfortunate thing about this drive is the lack of extra software outside of the Windows 98 drivers. While it may be possible to find this drive for as little as US$15 to US$20 (after Mail-in-Rebate), it typically goes for US$30+. That is too expensive for such a mediocre drive. --- Score = 5/10

SanDisk Cruzer Mini: Of all the drives in this review, this drive is the thinnest. Some might even call it sexy, but we would not go that far. Unlike most other drives, it does not block dual-stacked USB ports in the slightest. Other positive things include the excellent LED visibility, good read/write scores, and it even works in unpowered USB hubs. Even the CruzerLock encryption software was solid and pretty easy to use. Some complaints would be the lack of a write-protect switch and that the plastic loop for the lanyard is rather weak. (It's fine for hanging around your neck, but it certainly is not load bearing in the least.) That said, the prices found for the 128, 256, and 512MB models make this a good deal. --- Score = 8/10

Mushkin Flashkin: We had mixed feelings about this drive. On one hand it offered a full complement of accessories and features, such as the standard neck strap, USB extension cable, write-protect switch, security software and it even worked in unpowered USB hubs. Yet despite this, everything about the drive felt like it was cheaply made and the security software felt like it was coded as an afterthought. The plastic body was very bulky and felt extremely hollow. On top of this, the slow read/write performance was troubling and the one-year warranty made us wonder how long this drive would last. Overall, the drive is not that bad, but what really lowered the score is that the price for the drive is more expensive than most of the other drives (which are notably better equipped.) --- Score = 6/10

SimpleTech Bonzai Xpress: This drive has the best physical design of the bunch. It is both strong and sturdy, yet still compact and a comfortable to carry. While it does not come with a USB extension, it does have a write-protect switch and some very helpful file synchronization software. What makes this USB drive especially nice is the strong read/write speeds, the solid two-year warranty, and the very nice price (considering how much is included.) --- Score = 9/10

Fujifilm USB Drive 2.0: Two words: speed demon. Without a doubt, this drive is fast! With top read speeds reaching 8.5MB/sec and write performance that destroyed the competition, this drive is perfect for anybody who is impatient or never seems to have enough time. Unfortunately, this drive has its drawbacks. The drive is the largest of the bunch, has no accessories included, no write-protect switch, no low-power support, and a higher price than most. Fortunately, it does come with decent security software and a lifetime warranty. --- Score = 8/10

Verbatim Store 'n' Go: In a nutshell, this drive was consistently above average. Never spectacular, but never terrible either. Read/Write performance is definitely strong, but nothing amazing. It comes equipped with neck strap, USB extension

Don't take my word for it -- take Ars Technica's review of Panther for example:

Here's another way to look at Panther's performance. For over three years now, Mac OS X has gotten faster with every release -- and not just "faster in the experience of most end users", but faster on the same hardware. This trend is unheard of among contemporary desktop operating systems.

click...unauthorized distribution...click...unauthorized distribution...click...Yes, that's what it soulds like...a broken record. Just how many times does it need to pounded into your heads that unauthorized distribution is NOT the issue. It's about stamping out self distribution. By outlawing the tools that make it possible. Here's a little story that just might help you (the editorial you) understand what they're really are trying to do. The pirates who sell copies will continue unabated with their CD stampers that record exact copies, protection and all. It seems that the RIAA is trying to protect their business. How ironic. Other people, much more eloquent than me(I?) have posted on this. Try to look them up. They are indeed insightful.

2. For the last couple years, sales have been declining, not growing

At best, this point is not beyond dispute, and at worst, it is outright false.

It's already been done before. Quite funny and worth a read.

Is there a way to disable SSID broadcasts and still get XP laptops to connect properly? I remember reading on ars about this issue, and sure enough, when we added a wireless AP on our company network, what was mentioned in the article happened. Switching to the manufacturers' software to manage the wireless cards isn't an ideal solution, mostly because we have so many laptops with different card vendors.

Currently, we VPN using IPsec, so it's not that big of a deal to leave the broadcasts on... but it's still a bit annoying.

No one will argue that iPods aren't expensive, but to say they are overpriced is certainly up for debate. In fact, I remember an old slashdot story talking about this very issue and pointed to an article on arstechnica. Found the article here.

When I saw this on Ars Technica yesterday, I was going to put another mark on my slashdot ESP - I was sure to see this come up. Oups, I forgot it in one of my 50 browsers now open...

"We want to be artist-friendly," says Steve Simon, a Clear Channel executive vice president.

Hmmm, crispy. I just hope not everyone will run away scared by this. The patent will hopefully be invalidated, or shown not to cover the whole process.

What the hell is the matter with you guys. Microsoft got Hax0red . Where are the hordes of jubilant penguinistas? Entertain me dammit

As mentioned in the article, HFS+ does defragging on the fly when files are opened if they are less than 20MB. The source code for this is available here, as is a discussion about it that contains input from some Darwin developers.