Slashdot Mirror

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/steams-newell-windows-8-catastrophe-driving-valve-to-embrace-linux/

Yet MS wonders why they have such a comparatively tiny market share of the server market...

According to this arstechnica article (2011), Microsoft had a 25% webserver market share (IIS) as of 2010, and 15% as of 2011. For standard servers, they accounted for 71% of all quarterly server shipments (original source, IDC). According to a survey in 2010 (the only one I could find on smtp market share, and was linked in Wikipedia), Exchange is the third most popular SMTP server (17%-- behind exim @ 34% and postfix @ 21%, and just ahead of sendmail).

You can call that many things, but "comparitively tiny" it isnt. Microsoft server is remarkably popular in SMB situations, and even in larger companies, and trying to write it off as irrelevant or whatever your angle was is silly.

Also silly is the comment about "code already there"-- EVERYONE does this, from RedHat to VMWare to Adobe any other company that sells multiple tiers of its software product.

Why don't you ask the local governments that MAKE them monopolies. Them being monopolies is NOT NATURAL.

How do you figure? It was never illegal to start a new ISP. Like all infrastructure, it does naturally become a monopoly. After all, it doesn't make sense to have multiple companies each running cable to your house so you can choose your favourite. In fact, a few local governments have been sued by ISP's for trying to break their monopolies.

And it was MARKET FORCES that stopped Comcast, when they were found out they shut that down.

Not quite. In fact, the opposite. Granted, Comcast appealed the decision, and won, but it was the FCC that stopped them, not the market.

What has yet to be shown to any reasonable degree is why it is preferable to let the government dictate what goes over a network.

Ideally, net neutrality legislation wouldn't dictate what goes over a network. It would instead prevent ISP's from dictating what goes over their networks.

Just like Apple actively studied Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and tons of other designs and massively imitated them. That's how product design works.

And if one of those companies sued Apple, and produced equally compelling evidence that Apple was actively trying to copy those devices, those companies would likely receive large judgments as well. That's how intellectual property law works.

But it seems pretty unlikely. After all, Samsung and other companies were trying to copy Apple because, even though they had been in the phone market for years, Apple's designs were far more successful. Apple had far less motivation to copy these less successful companies--particularly considering that the nearly universal industry wisdom when Apple released the iPhone was that there was at most a small market for touch phones without keyboards

There is no legal requirement for designs to be original.

When other companies have trademarked and patented designs, there is indeed. That's how intellectual property law works.

Cellular phones have used the image of a telephone handset combined with the color green for over 20 years to indicate "making a call". And icons with rounded corners have been around for as long. Apple did not invent any of this and they do not deserve ownership.

Yet it was obvious to the jury that Samsung's icons were far more like Apple's than either Apple's or Samsung's icons were like the green telephone buttons on older phones, and documentation was produced demonstrating that Samsung had studied Apple's designs and tried to copy them. Moreover, the jury saw evidence that other companies's did not infringe upon Apple's designs in the same way. So it was not inadvertent overlap of universal industry practice but a deliberate pattern of copying that went far beyond that.

The first thing we learn in security training is that if you don't want your data found,
make sure there's no such data to begin with. If you read nothing else, read the paragraph
following this one, and the last one.

People's personal devices are being used to spy on them on a regular basis. In the US it
was recently rules your smartphone CAN and WILL be used against you without a warrant.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/federal-court-rules-cops-can-warantlessly-track-suspects-via-cellphone/

In Russia it was recently rules you don't need a smartphone to go to jail for "free expression"
only in a church.
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-17/world/world_europe_russia-pussy-riot-trial_1_band-members-nadezhda-tolokonnikova-russian-court

Now that we've covered the facts, more facts are that your smartphone DOES send information
about you SOMEWHERE. Be it google (standard US Android device, data sending enabled) or
Mother Russia (Russian version of Android device) if you have GPS enabled and outbound data
sending enabled... someone out there has access to the data, whether or not they keep it,
catalog it, database[ify] it, store it, or analyze it [later].

If you want your information to be kept private... KEEP IT PRIVATE. That means don't use a device that
sends that information ANYWHERE ELSE. Even if you think it "shouldn't" send it somewhere it MAY.
MAY is a percentage between 0 and 100% that if you can't afford it should be ALWAYS zero.

GPS -there are plenty of devices that will plot your location, show you a route to a destination, and have
no capability for transmission.

PHONE -there are plenty of phones that WILL GIVE YOUR LOCATION TO CELL COMPANIES WHICH
IN THE USE WILL GIVE THEM to law enforcement without a warrant.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/warrantless-gps-phone-tracking/
Feel free to have your phone either OFF or covered in a Faraday cage (aluminum foil works) until you must use it.

DATA -there is no way you can use data [which requires bidirectional packet flow] without giving away your
location unless you are using a local WiFi hotspot.

In short... in summary... put your smartphone into airplane-mode. Turn on wifi-only (android phones will allow
you to enable WiFi in airplane-mode but will leave other radios disabled). Use local hotspots. Don't install
applications that require "access to the physical device such as speaker or microphone or location-based information"... ...and welcome to the 21st Century.

E

So you are saying that Samsung deliberately planned on losing $1bn?

No, just that Samsung recklessly chose to go beyond the bounds of copying that other manufacturers, including their operating system developer Google thought reasonable. So it's hardly surprising that a jury had the same reaction that Google did.

Because Samsung's designs already were original. They shared a few design cues with Apple phones, but nothing that should constitute a violation. If these kinds of standards were imposed universally, all the tech we use would be completely incompatible and randomly different.

In the trial, evidence was produced that Samsung actively studied Apple's designs and tried to imitate them, so it's hardly surprising that a jury agreed with Apple that Samsung's designs are not original. And certainly other manufactures have managed to come up with perfectly functional phones that do not infringe upon Apple's design patents (indeed, the jury found that some of of Samsung's devices avoid infringing on some of Apple's design patents). Compatibility among different devices is assured by standards to which Apple and other manufacturers have contributed. But compatibility does not require, for example, that icons be the same shape, use a similar color screen, and be similarly arranged to those on the iPhone. So it is perfectly possible to construct a fully functional smartphone that does not infringe upon Apple's patents.

The trial was only one of the factors to consider here. The overall growth of the android ecosystem should be accounted for. Also keep in mind that smartphone sales are surging overall ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/more-than-half-of-all-handsets-will-be-smartphones-in-2013/ ) so it makes sense for Samsung's phones to sell more.

It would help to see the recent sales figures of other notable android manufacturers like HTC and LG to decide if the exposure from the trial had a noticeable effect

The U.S. government makes an even more bold claim than that. They have argued with Megaupload that the government can continue to seize their servers even if the case is dismissed. I'm halfway surprised that the government bothered to drop the charges against Rojadirecta since they feel they can keep cases like this in limbo indefinitely without any consequences.

The cost difference is not nearly an order of magnitude when you take into account all the other components of the server besides CPUs you have to pay for anyway.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/bulldozer-server-benchmarks-are-here-and-theyre-a-catastrophe/

In desktop systems and low-end servers, the processor is often the most expensive component (or second most expensive, behind the video card), and can easily be 25-30 percent of the total system cost. But as the server becomes bigger and more expensive, with hundreds of gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of storage, the processor can become a smaller part of the total cost. For example, Dell's PowerEdge R910, a 4-socket Xeon server, lets you spend up to about $22,000 on processors, if you get four of the most expensive parts offered (the Xeon E7-4870). That's a lot, but it's nothing compared to the $185,000 that equipping the machine with 2TB RAM would cost.

Not to mention that Intel wins on performance/watt and performance/core and thus in total cost of ownership when power consumption and software licensing costs are taken into account. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5279/the-opteron-6276-a-closer-look/12

If you calculate the price of a Dell R710 with the Xeon E5649 and compare it with a Dell R715 with the Opteron 6276 with similar specs, you end up more or less the same acquisition cost. However, the E5649 is an 80W TDP and should thus consume a bit less power. That is why we argued that the Opteron 6276 should at least offer a price/performance bonus and perform like an X5650. The X5650 is roughly $220 more expensive, so you end up with the dual socket Xeon system costing about $440 more. On a fully speced server, that is about a 10% price difference.

When we look at the higher end OLTP and the non low end ERP market, the cost of buying server hardware is lost in the noise. The Westmere-EX with its higher thread count and performance will be the top choice in that case: higher thread count, better RAS, and a higher number of DIMM slots.

AMD also lost the low end OLAP market: the Xeon offers a (far) superior performance/watt ratio on mySQL. In the midrange and high end OLAP market, the software costs of for example SQL Server increase the importance of performance and performance/watt and make server hardware costs a minor issue. Especially the "performance first" OLAP market will be dominated by the Xeon, which can offer up to 3.06GHz SKUs without increasing the TDP.

The competitive picture has not improved for AMD since then, with the release of the Intel Xeon E5's that are Sandy-Bridge based 6 months ago, as opposed to the Westmere-based Xeons that were benchmarked in the above reviews.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/faa-to-revisit-the-use-of-certain-personal-electronics-on-flights/

UK "justice" is pretty messed up - a private entity can prosecute individuals.

Ars has a great article about how FACT put the owner of SurfTheChannel behind bars for four years. Maybe this is why UKNova are complying with these idiots.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/private-justice-how-hollywood-money-put-a-brit-behind-bars

APK the VB3 "God" Proof here -> http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=17785597#p17785597

Where is your typing diploma APK? LOL you don't have one!

Yes, AGW is a serious problem, and denying it makes it costlier. However, the world is not ending. Green(tm) energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. It is predicted that solar will reach residential grid parity as early as 2015*. Not to mention next-generation nuclear. And, in a few decades, nuclear fusion. And if reducing emissions is not enough, we can cool Earth by increasing solar reflection** or by sequestering carbon*** or through some other action.

Also, how can people have such ridiculous short memories? The world was supposed to end in the 1970s though mass famines caused by overpopulation. Then the doomsayers changed their minds and predicted water wars. Then peak oil. Then the ozone layer hole (remember that?). Then acid rain. Then we very closely avoided Armageddon in 2000, due to the Y2K bug. Remember that? The mass societal disruptions, the nuclear wars that would be started because some digital nuclear weapon system misfired due to Y2K? Phew, that was close! But we survived.

Recently, we survived the Apocalypse in 21 May 2011, then 21 October 2011.

Now, of course, all the headlines are about climate change.

Do you know what is the single greatest cause of climate-change denialism? You. Doomsayers. Because you predict the Apocalypse every 5 years, people stopped listening.

Want to help the environment? Start talking straight.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
** http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/putting-the-breaks-on-climate-change-with-diamonds/
*** http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/25/2359234/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic

KENT
Our top story, the population of parasitic tree lizards has exploded, and local citizens couldn't be happier! It seems the rapacious reptiles have developed a taste for the common pigeon, also known as the 'feathered rat', or the 'gutter bird'. For the first time, citizens need not fear harassment by flocks of chattering disease-bags.

Later, Bart receives an award from Mayor Quimby outside the town hall. Several lizards slink past.

QUIMBY
For decimating our pigeon population, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.

Skinner talks to Lisa.

SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.

LISA
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?

SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.

LISA
But aren't the snakes even worse?

SKINNER
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

LISA
But then we're stuck with gorillas!

SKINNER
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

Messing with the environment because we messed with the environment before, what could possibly go wrong?

Just read the Ars Technica article. The Slashdot headline is ridiculously slanted, as was the previous story.

While I disagree with it in principle - I'd rather it be local, like how Firefox uses a local version of the bad-sites list, this is not in any way unusual or awful behavior, and it's mostly a good idea, and Microsoft has been completely open about how and why they're doing this and giving you an easy way to turn it off. It is not some privacy invading nightmare. Microsoft is not keeping track of what programs you download (unless, obviously, you get them through the Microsoft store.)

Slashdot stories are becoming more and more ridiculous. The summaries are never even worth reading anymore.

I see /. is in for another round of anti-Windows 8 sensationalism. Please read the Ars Technica article talking about this before commentating.

Ah, sweet irony. Your Ars Technica article links to a wired article that argues cryptocat is no more secure than using no crypto at all, because it relies on host security, and then proceeds to defend Smart Screen using a host-security argument.

If you don't care Microsoft gets access to which programs you run / trust that they will keep the data anonymized and periodically delete the logs as you claim, by all means, don't turn off Smart Screen. That said, they have all the data they need to keep a record if every program you run, and I'd rather not take them at their word that they won't do anything bad with it.

I see /. is in for another round of anti-Windows 8 sensationalism. Please read the Ars Technica article talking about this before commentating.

Ars Technica nowadays is only good for its science coverage.
For computer related stuff no way, it is plenty of apple shills and microsoft shills.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/windows-8-privacy-complaint-misses-the-forest-for-the-trees/

I see /. is in for another round of anti-Windows 8 sensationalism. Please read the Ars Technica article talking about this before commentating.

By "removing regulatory barriers", they mean Verizon can stop suing the FCC because the GOP plans to give Verizon what they want: the right to censor the internet in any way they choose, which Verizon considers a matter of corporate free speech.

sphincter says what? He says it to APK here ----> http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1047791&sid=64f2ebedb9b8c8a72c20dfaade5d4574&start=40

And NAPK OWNED you here ---> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3058625&cid=41098343 LOL

From this article "The fundraiser goal was reached in six days, put over the top by $33,333 from an anonymous donor." ... I wonder who this anonymous donor may be.

Irreversible transactions aren't necessarily a good thing. Put the wrong part in your cart and checked out? Too bad, it's irreversible. No canceling that order!

You know what funds are available for spending within seconds? Cash. Yes, this is a valid argument because we're talking about using a damn MasterCard at a point-of-sale terminal in this article. Available in minutes is shit in comparison. Oh, and since they are reliant on the MasterCard network, you get the MasterCard funds transfer speed, so it becomes a moot point.

Cost very little, especially compared to other payment networks? BULLSHIT - they're charging an extra 1% on top of using another payment network as stated in the summary. Completely fucking false - it costs exactly 1% more.

Can't be manipulated? Horseshit, it already has been manipulated. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/bitcoin-implodes-down-more-than-90-percent-from-june-peak/

This might as well be a gauge starting at zero going the other way. There's no way this ever takes a measurable fraction of volume from AMEX.

While you enjoy lugging your clunky kit computer around, I'm going to enjoy the cost and convenience benefits of modern manufacturing capabilities.

Wrong, you lose!

Going anywhere NEAR the mag-safe connector needs so many rubber-stamp approvals from Apple. They'd either never allow it, or you wouldn't live long enough to see your idea come to fruition. Case & point: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/09/apples-magsafe-lawsuit-tests-limits-of-first-sale-doctrine/

After seeing a number of approved pro-Apple stories lately and a complete omission of any negative stories pertaining to Apple, despite THIS: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/flaw-allowing-sms-spoofing-still-present-in-latest-ios-6-beta/ I'm probably saying goodbye to this site. It's not merely because I'm an Android user who is seeing a recent trend in Apple bias here among the slashdot staff. I'm becoming disenchanted with slashdot because many of the story submissions are not really newsworthy. The lack of newsworthiness started after Cowboy Neal left but lately its gotten much worse. I could care less that this post will get downmodded or that it will elicit some "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out" comments. Such comments will be ineffectual.

“Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said.”

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html

http://lightbox.time.com/2011/10/06/in-a-private-light-diana-walkers-photos-of-steve-jobs/#10

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft/

“Less than 12 hours before his big announcement, nobody here knows yet about the bombshell to come. In fact, Jobs is still negotiating it here at the Castle--on a cell phone. "Hi, Bill," you hear him say in the echo chamber of the old hall. Then his voice drops, and for nearly an hour he paces the stage, running through last-minute details with Gates. All the while, he leans over his computer, paces, lies down on the stage, paces, lurks in dark corners, paces and talks, paces and talks.

This is the fateful call for the boy titans of the personal-computer revolution, meant to settle the war. At one point, talking about Apple, Jobs says, "There are a lot of good things, happily--and a lot of screwed-up things." Then, to his crew, he yells, "Have we got satellite contact with the other side?" Assured this has been taken care of, he answers a question from Gates about what to wear on the morrow ("I'm just going to wear a white shirt," he assures him), and he finally ends the conversation with a heartfelt "Thank you for your support of this company. I think the world's a better place for it." And so that's how Apple and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, finally seal it--on a cell-phone call.

The deal is vintage Jobs. Amelio began the process of repairing relations between the two longtime rivals. But once he was out the door at Apple, Jobs contacted Gates to try to get talks started again. Gates dispatched his CFO, Gregory Maffei, who met Jobs at his home. Jobs suggested they go for a walk. Grabbing a couple of bottles of mineral water from the fridge, the two took off for a stroll around Palo Alto. Jobs was barefoot. "It was an interesting scene," Maffei recalls. "It was a pretty radical change for the relations between the two companies." The two walked for nearly an hour, through Palo Alto's green university area, as they pounded out the details of a potential deal. Jobs, Maffei says, was "expansive and charming. He said, 'These are things that we care about and that matter.' And that let us cut down the list. We had spent a lot of time with Amelio, and they had a lot of ideas that were nonstarters. Jobs had a lot more ability. He didn't ask for 23,000 terms. He looked at the whole picture, figured about what he needed. And we figured he had the credibility to bring the Apple people around and sell the deal."”

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/13/3239977/apple-and-microsoft-cross-license-agreement-includes-anti-cloning

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1292505/584.pdf

Don't tell me that there are still people around who buy the silly notion that Apple is suing Samsung just for producing touch pad with rounded corners? Apple is not suing Samsung for being similar in any one respect, but rather for a pattern of copying numerous design features of Apple's products.

Hello! Apple was threatening to SUE Motorola over swipe to unlock and others right when Microsoft threaned to sue them over FAT and ActiveSync. Motorolla fired back with actual litigation against the agressors. Please stop spreading misinformation.

Corrections:

Apple did not just threaten to sue Motorola over Swipe-to-Unlock, it actually did sue them and won. Swipe to unlock is a common idea, present long before any sort of smartphone or touch-screen device ever had it, and is entirely a software patent.

Motorola sued Apple and won over the method the 3G radio chips use to time the signals to and from the tower. A hardware and software patent that is exclusively relevant to 3G mobile devices.

Apple has been the clear aggressor all along, and their patent claims are largely trollish and petty rather than valid technical patents. Please stop spreading disinformation.

Unfortunately, Musopen provided the content in Apple lossless format instead of a widely used, open, non-patent-encumbered format such as FLAC. Plus, the official torrent contains a single gigantic zip file.

There is a torrent containing all 145 separate tracks in FLAC format here: http://pirateproxy.net/torrent/7536456/2012_Musopen_Kickstarter_Project_%5BFLAC%5D

Apple Lossless is officially open sourced by Apple. And there have been unofficial open source implementations around for six years or so.

And there are some senators in Kentucky who would argue that evolution isn't real. Just because you can argue something doesn't make it true. Facts and evidence make something true. The facts clearly show at this time that the Mac App Store is a success.

It may come as a surprise to you but developers like to make money. Apple's ecosystem (so far) allows for more developers to make more money than any other ecosystem out there. People (that is real, actual, normal people who do not spend their time reading and commenting on Slashdot) also seem to love it, and are happy to be able to find everything they want in one place.

Perhaps a critical mass will come, but we're definitely not there yet. Argue all you want.

"Yang has made about $200,000 working on this lawsuit" for Samsung

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/samsung-says-it-patented-iphones-best-features-before-apple/

The iPhone has never been more than 20-30% of total smartphone sales.

Perhaps, but what I actually said was that Apple fans *claimed* it was higher, and they would link to some page like this as evidence ("If you look at this January 2009 data, The iPhone was actually less than half of a percentage point away from owning 70 percent of the mobile browsing market.") or "iPhone grabbed 72% of smartphone market share in Japan" or "iPad owns 96% of enterprise market and iPhone share climbs to 53%". And even now we are seeing stuff like "Apple's iPhone Has Staged A Monster Comeback, Android Is Now Dead In The Water". Yes, a platform that with almost a million phones being activated every day is apparently now "dead in the water". Those Apple marketing guys are good at getting their message broadcast.

Apple's share has never amounted to a large percentage of computing device sales.

According to this, Apples market share in 1980 was 15%. Okay, that is "huge" on the scale of all PC clones combined, but it beats out the market share of individual manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo today. This article says "In 1984, the Apple II had 15% of the market, Apple's best showing ever. (When combined with the Mac, Apple had over 20% of the market that year.)". The same page says that Apple's low point in 2001 was 2.3%. So from a high of 20% to a low of 2.3%... that's a big fall, losing 88.5% of the market, which was my real point.

In the court's decision, Judge Alan Lourie writes: "Each of the claimed molecules represents a nonnaturally occurring composition of matter."

Like hell they are. This judge needs to go back to HS biology.

He's right, the molecules are made by God

ArsTechnica tried it - it works but Windows' scaling can be janky. They didn't test battery life, but judging by my plain old MBP, it's probably worse.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/windows-and-os-x-boot-camp-running-redmond-at-retina-resolution/

In regard to AGW, so what is the answer?

1. Remove the artificial barriers to Brazilian ethanol.
2. Increase the taxes on petroleum and coal
3. Decrease the taxes on wind, solar, and next-generation nuclear.

Given that the renewable technologies are already close to reaching grid parity*, the government only has to give them a small extra push.

And we can accelerate the cooling process with geo-engineering:

4. Actively cool Earth**

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
** http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/putting-the-breaks-on-climate-change-with-diamonds/

Windows 7 comes with a paid for H.264 codec while XP, and Linux? Do NOT. And yet again you are mistaking HARDWARE FOR software. dxva AND va-api are simple APIs but do NOT, I repeat do NOT give you the H.264 codec.

This is completely incorrect. The entire purpose of the DXVA, VA-API, and VDPAU APIs is to allow video bitstreams to be sent directly to the graphics hardware for decoding. See, for instance, this page on Intel Linux graphics which specifically states that Intel's newer graphics chips support H.264 hardware decoding on Linux via VA-API. Newer versions of VLC have the ability to use these protocols. The way these APIs work is that you hand them a video bitstream and they give you back pointers to decoded frames. Your software never needs to touch the patented decoding steps; that's all done in hardware and/or firmware which already has its license fees paid by the manufacturer. You said there was something on the Mozilla Blog saying the opposite of this, but I was unable to find any such article there. In fact, they are going to be supporting H.264 on mobile devices using basically the same method I outlined here (sending bitstreams to low-level APIs that talk directly to the hardware).

Not true:

https://spideroak.com/faq/questions/3/does_spideroak_use_encryption_when_storing_and_transferring_data/
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/spideroak-dropbox-for-the-security-obsessive/

Disclamer: I have not used this service.

Here are some more (same disclaimer):

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/secure-files-3-encrypted-dropbox-alternatives/

I'm still thinking "what could possibly go right". The claims made about this system are pretty hyperbolic. The FBI, for example, are stuck with a plethora of mostly non-interacting legacy systems with separate, often competing interfaces. And Trapwire supposedly integrates all these, plus a bunch from other agencies and organisations, and likes it live to CCTV with facial recognition? And they've also cracked the long-standing automated behavioural analysis problem?

It's verged striaght through "too good to be true" and right into "who is buying this nonsense?".

quite the opposite, apple holds the key - so all it takes is a gov't request to apple and they have the master key.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/apple-holds-the-master-key-when-it-comes-to-icloud-security-privacy/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/can-apple-give-police-a-key-to-your-encrypted-iphone-data-ars-investigates/

Given their policies regarding a number of things which are dinosaur-era, we don't have an answer to whether or not they will give it away or not. I don't know that an official statement has ever been made by apple. The question is - do you want to trust that information with apple? Specifically: 100% uncertainty? That's not a "apple is evil, apple is not evil".

quite the opposite, apple holds the key - so all it takes is a gov't request to apple and they have the master key.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/apple-holds-the-master-key-when-it-comes-to-icloud-security-privacy/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/04/can-apple-give-police-a-key-to-your-encrypted-iphone-data-ars-investigates/

Given their policies regarding a number of things which are dinosaur-era, we don't have an answer to whether or not they will give it away or not. I don't know that an official statement has ever been made by apple. The question is - do you want to trust that information with apple? Specifically: 100% uncertainty? That's not a "apple is evil, apple is not evil".

Isn't the iCloud stuff (specifically, the device backups) also AES encrypted with a key Apple doesn't have? I will have to dig up the article, but I'm pretty sure I saw that.

No.

Do we really care?

What's this FaceBook thing anyway?

Does it compile into native code or P-code?

Fun fact: FaceBook uses HipHop, a tool they developed themselves to convert PHP code to C++, and then compile it to native code.

And the craziest thing is that they compile everything into a single 1.5 GB binary:

Because Facebook's entire code base is compiled down to a single binary executable, the company's deployment process is quite different from what you'd normally expect in a PHP environment. Rossi told me that the binary, which represents the entire Facebook application, is approximately 1.5GB in size. When Facebook updates its code and generates a new build, the new binary has to be pushed to all of the company's servers.

So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)

That's just part of the front-end. They use a lot of Java too which is byte-code. Hadoop/Hive/HBase blah blah blah. IMO: Pig > Hive, node.js > PHP

Well, what does your intuition tell you from the circles in which you associate?

From a quick Google search 2010 appears to have been the year for these studies. There are two major ones sumarised here.

Princeton (USA): 99% illegal
Ballarat (Australia): 99.7% illegal (89% definitely, 10.7% likely)

One possible flaw is that these studies aimed at trackers, and I'm guessing Blizzard use their own tracker for Warcraft patches.

On the other hand, a Warcraft patch can be considered a single torrent and so would not affect these statistics greatly as they counted torrent files, not traffic. There is some mention of traffic but it is not clearly analysed into illegal/legal in the summary.

Do we really care?

What's this FaceBook thing anyway?

Does it compile into native code or P-code?

Fun fact: FaceBook uses HipHop, a tool they developed themselves to convert PHP code to C++, and then compile it to native code.

And the craziest thing is that they compile everything into a single 1.5 GB binary:

Because Facebook's entire code base is compiled down to a single binary executable, the company's deployment process is quite different from what you'd normally expect in a PHP environment. Rossi told me that the binary, which represents the entire Facebook application, is approximately 1.5GB in size. When Facebook updates its code and generates a new build, the new binary has to be pushed to all of the company's servers.

So, yeah, FaceBook compiles to native code! :-)

No, I was too busy laughing at Samsung's documents (that infamous 260+ pages comparison thing) that said:

The "directions for improvement" are that Samsung designers should "Remove a feeling that iPhone's menu icons are copied by differentiating design

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/apples-case-that-samsung-copied-the-iphone-and-ipad-in-pictures/

When even their own internal documents say they looked like they are copying the iPhone...

Wow that's a thoughtful, complex post. Let's deal with these issues one at a time.

Para 1: Bill is gone. Bill Gates remains the chairman of the board at Microsoft, and hand-picked all the other board members - who pick the CEO and evaluate his performance, give him goals and guidance, set his pay, bonuses and options, and set policy. Bill is still very much responsible for what goes on there, and weighs in on every big decision.

Para 2: Steve Ballmer. You neglected to mention the sea of red ink that is Microsoft's Online Services Division. I happen to like the direction Steve Ballmer is taking Microsoft. Clearly this is a man with vision and purpose who is ready and able to take the company where I want it to go. It takes Marvel Comics level superpowers to get rid of this much cash flow, to destroy a 42 percent success in mobile market share from 2007 given their advantages and high hopes, to so capably destroy the morale and productivity of the world's best developers, to put a company with this much income in $55B of debt. So let's lay off of Steve-o, mmkay? I like him where he is, sweaty shirt and all.

Para 3: No more Big, Bad MS. With the OOXML debacle that nearly ruined ISO, their recent rape of Nokia, their current ongoing rape of OEMs, retail vendors of both their products and Windows PCs, their planned rape of software distributor partners, developers and competing independent software vendors and much much more they prove every day that they have not changed. Last week they confirmed they're going to murder the advertisers they bought relationships with in an acquisition by making "Do Not Track" the default in IE. Just yesterday it came out that the new replacement for Hotmail, Outlook.com is incompatible with Android. The "new kinder, gentler Microsoft" is a myth. They have now declared war on absolutely everybody on Earth, including the people who pay for their products and excepting only the Women's Temperance Union and media executives. Naturally this means I expect them to announce an embedded bittorent feature for IE that involves a drinking game next.

Para 4. Ballmer outbound. Steve Ballmer is not retiring for another seven years at least, when his last kid goes off to college.

Para 5. Immortal desktop victory. It's not enough to take ground. Once you take ground, you have to hold it. MS won mobile with 40% share too [link above], once upon a time. And now they'r

They do have some color pictures already, just not a full panorama in color. See here. The Curiosity, unlike much space exploration stuff, actually has true-color cameras not just composite imaging or false-color cameras. The result looks... well, exactly like Nevada desert.

The Windows 7 perpetuity machine is fully fueled, and ready to roll.

Until Microsoft decides that maintaining the windows 7 activation service is too big of a hassle.
PlaysForSure, anyone? http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys/

Or until Win7 won't have support for the next generation CPU, motherboard, whatever.

Sooooo...you're proposing you move from Mac to Windows, so that you can get away from a "platform vendor trying to limit your freedom"...? Geez. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire! As for Linux, the last thing Linux needs is yet another text editor.