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Re Please find an example of an ISP trying to charge content providers for "preferential" access.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/huge-isps-want-per-gb-payments-from-netflix-youtube.ars
Pay up or risk an "internet brownout"...

Um, I am just a layman here, but I thought QT worked exactly as you describe, or darn near close to your written spec. And QT spits out Meego apps as well.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/09/nokias-cross-platform-development-strategy-evolves-with-qt-47.ars

September 22, 2010 6:30 AM

Nokia has announced the official release of Qt 4.7, a new version of the company's open source development toolkit. The update introduces an impressive new framework called "Qt Quick" that accelerates the development of mobile user interfaces that work across multiple platforms and form factors.

Remember this? Intel lost in this deal already. They are probably quite angry with Nokia for betraying the partnership they had with MeeGo. Intel has a right to criticize their former partner Nokia, and I think it's good that the Intel chief has the balls to do so for what, in the end, will probably turn out to be a terrible decision, one that harmed both Nokia and Intel all just to help Microsoft.

Hey there! Not 24 hours later, PSN hacked story on Ars Tech.

"Because you can't choose not to use it."
http://cydia.saurik.com/

Right, so you root your iPhone and then you get iPhone malware.

People keep talking about walled garden etc. I don't know if anybody has ever heard about this method I use: It's called "don't run binaries from untrustworthy places" and it's been working pretty well for about as long as I can remember.

And this is why you are likely unemployed. If not, you probably should be. As an employer, if I found out you made a comment like this recently anywhere during the due diligence that is our hiring process, your application would immediately be round-filed.

The *only* thing you really have is your honor, because when that's gone, you're toast. Ask security consultant firm HBGary Federal how they're doing now that their lax security has been exposed.

As a technology consultant myself, I frequently review articles detailing forensics behind a hack, to try to identify ways that our internal security and technologies can be improved. Reading the above article, I did find one thing in their long chain of failures that we could be doing that we aren't already. We're not hack-proof, we're just applying security best practices as best we can.

You aren't *owed* your job. If you want job security, start your own company and you'll quickly see how a truly secure job is just a fiction. Companies often have to make hard choices that result in discomfort. Get over it.

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr, which there's no reason to take at face value. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a subtle hint of a muckracking insinuation of the slightest possibility that they've been involved in physical violence.

If the death threat is real, what would make you think that it would be retracted just because Barr decided not to speak? If you and he really think there's a psychopathic killer after him, it's hard to imagine that killer being dissuaded just by the cancellation of a little lecture.

As for having no business enforcing laws, people can actually do so...[link to citizen's arrest]

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like Anonymous or WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr, which there's no reason to take at face value. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a subtle hint of a muckracking insinuation of the slightest possibility that they've been involved in physical violence.

If the death threat is real, what would make you think that it would be retracted just because Barr decided not to speak? If you and he really think there's a psychopathic killer after him, it's hard to imagine that killer being dissuaded just by the cancellation of a little lecture.

As for having no business enforcing laws, people can actually do so...[link to citizen's arrest]

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like Anonymous or WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a muckracking insinuation that they've been involved in physical violence.

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a muckracking insinuation that they've been involved in physical violence.

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

"Chess can be brute forced in a way that language can't."

I am well aware of this. I am, after all, a programmer and I understand how chess programs work.

However, there is little real difference. Watson is still just following a fixed set of rules, no matter how complex that set of rules is. Just like Deep Blue, it is completely incapable of dealing with literally anything that falls outside that specific set of rules. Which means that Watson is fundamentally no "smarter" than Deep Blue was.

"... there's no reason that a sufficiently complex artificial system couldn't eventually show similar emergent behaviour, intentional or otherwise"

Here you have hit on the crux of the matter (and prove my point for me). Even most animal brains that are of complexity near to our own are not capable of the kind of cognition and "self-awareness" that humans attribute to real consciousness.

Therefore, "sufficient complexity" appears to be extremely complex indeed, as this article clearly implies, with quite a bit of evidence to back it up.

"Your brain is nothing more than a bunch of clever software with a database of trivia..."

Not only do we not know this, there is a good bit of evidence to the contrary. The human brain is not anything like the computers we build today, except to say that they can both "compute", to varying degrees.

But even if you did believe that they worked in fundamentally the same way, THIS article from just the other day claims that the best estimate so far is that all the computing power in the world today, including Watson, Deep Blue, all the Crays, desktops, and all the way down to cell phones, added together... is equivalent to approximately the computing and storage power of a single human brain.

So... it's going to be a very long while before we can make a single computer anywhere near that powerful. Much less make it fit in a pocket.

Watson is a good demonstration of what modern software -- with the aid of an outrageous shitload of processing power, even by today's standards -- can do in the area of natural language processing. Nothing more. And even that has a long way to go.

Watson didn't have a speed advantage: http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/creators-watson-has-no-speed-advantage-as-it-crushes-humans-in-jeopardy.ars

Watson has no speed advantage on the buzzer: http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/creators-watson-has-no-speed-advantage-as-it-crushes-humans-in-jeopardy.ars

I liked this article better. Not very technical, but it does show what kind of person Aaron Barr really is. The greatest part is that he tried to play Anonymous just to drum up government business and seemed to think there would be no repercussions.

He also got caught managing a dirty tricks campaign to smear Wikileaks and critics of the US Chamber of Commerce. He was disseminating personal information about the people he wanted smeared, but threw a crybaby fit when his name came out in connection with it.

You do not really seem to be in the know. Also here is a lot moreinformation. To sum it all up for you. Mr Barr was planning on selling false information to the FBI in the name of "Research" which had wrong names connected to innocent people, and also wanted journalists of free press silenced.

You do not really seem to be in the know. Also here is a lot moreinformation. To sum it all up for you. Mr Barr was planning on selling false information to the FBI in the name of "Research" which had wrong names connected to innocent people, and also wanted journalists of free press silenced.

I liked this article better. Not very technical, but it does show what kind of person Aaron Barr really is. The greatest part is that he tried to play Anonymous just to drum up government business and seemed to think there would be no repercussions.

Ars has a really good summary of the attack that used really run-of-the-mill stuff from social engineering via e-mail to an SQL injection of HBGary's CMS using this URL: http://www.hbgaryfederal.com/pages.php?pageNav=2&page=27

No other mobile OS runs as far as I know on X86.

Yeah, not like Android or Symbian runs on X86.

A man with more than 80 belongings becomes a slave to what he owns

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/01/windows-7-growing-faster-than-vista-overtakes-mac-os.ars

1.) OSX. Apple's penultimate desktop operating system, gain billions of fans for it's tight design and nearly flawless execution.

Flawless execution? Riiight...

Actually I'm pretty sure Barr said he would sell the names to the FBI.

Yes and no. He claimed that he wasn't going to release names, and Ars Technica seems to confirm that from publicly released information related to this incident.

However, this tidbit would probably explain why Anonymous retaliated:

But Barr got his Financial Times story, and with it the publicity he sought. He also made clear that he had the real names, and Anonymous knew he would soon meet with the FBI. Though Barr apparently planned to keep his names and addresses private even at this meeting, it was easy to see why Anonymous would have doubts.

Considering that Barr mentioned elsewhere (in the leaked e-mails Ars reported) that he was doing this for publicity and to bring in money--and probably also to bolster his company's name since that wing of HBGary was going to be sold for ~$2 million--I'm not sure you could trust him as far as he could be kicked. Even his programmer expressed concerns with what Barr was doing (both to Barr as well as company executives). So no, Barr never publicly stated he would release names--maybe he did in the leaked e-mails--but the guy was an arrogant tool. I don't condone what Anonymous did, mainly because it hurt many other people in the process, but I can't imagine a more deserving target of public embarrassment than Mr. Barr.

Barr's typing was also atrocious. In a way, I think they should have gone after him for that alone, but I think that's just my inner grammar Nazi talking.

Actually I'm pretty sure Barr said he would sell the names to the FBI.

Yes and no. He claimed that he wasn't going to release names, and Ars Technica seems to confirm that from publicly released information related to this incident.

However, this tidbit would probably explain why Anonymous retaliated:

But Barr got his Financial Times story, and with it the publicity he sought. He also made clear that he had the real names, and Anonymous knew he would soon meet with the FBI. Though Barr apparently planned to keep his names and addresses private even at this meeting, it was easy to see why Anonymous would have doubts.

Considering that Barr mentioned elsewhere (in the leaked e-mails Ars reported) that he was doing this for publicity and to bring in money--and probably also to bolster his company's name since that wing of HBGary was going to be sold for ~$2 million--I'm not sure you could trust him as far as he could be kicked. Even his programmer expressed concerns with what Barr was doing (both to Barr as well as company executives). So no, Barr never publicly stated he would release names--maybe he did in the leaked e-mails--but the guy was an arrogant tool. I don't condone what Anonymous did, mainly because it hurt many other people in the process, but I can't imagine a more deserving target of public embarrassment than Mr. Barr.

Barr's typing was also atrocious. In a way, I think they should have gone after him for that alone, but I think that's just my inner grammar Nazi talking.

Apple responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009
My figures taken from Mobile App Store Market Share Based on Usage
The expectation that Android will overtake Apple is a prediction of future growth to 2015, not existing sales.

The effects of the H.264 patents are minimal, and easily addressed. It's disingenuous to act like this is some major problem.

Why, yes! In fact it's so easy to address that corporations launch lawsuits against each other over it. I'm sure they just do it for the lulz:

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/11/microsoft-sues-motorola-over-excessive-wifi-h264-pricing.ars

Please. It's disingenuous to act like this is some minor problem.

So far, it doesn't look too good, anyway: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/hand-on-duke-nukem-forever.ars .

Step 1 : Gather all the data

Step 2 : ???

Step 3 : Profit

Sort of an amusing story and very easy to see where Mr. Barr made the error of becoming part of this event (demonstration or debacle depending on your views) and seeking media attention. Pretty clear he was in over his head and doing his own thing thinking he was dealing with three individuals who were two bit morons. It almost deserves the cheesy "hunters have become the hunted" movie tag line. Well, the soft hack of HBGary Federal appears to be providing more than enough material for this to be a focus of media attention, congratulations are in order for Mr. Barr and let's all wish him the best of luck with step three. He's gonna need it!

The only problem is, they'd have to agree to the GPL.

They already did. Why else do you think the WRT54GL and WRT160NL exist?

Not quite.

As such, the ONLY reasonable assumption is they were making money left and right.

Except that the Pirate Bay has flatly denied that it makes "huge profits," and in fact they suspect that they operate at a loss overall.

What amazes me is - this is precisely the same crap the Cult of Scientology keeps doing.

Has anyone ever noticed how many MafiAA bigwigs are also Scientologists? Anyone think there might be a connection?

Stop Lying.

Nintendo Wii has NEVER been sold that way. it always has made a profit without game sales. Please educate yourself on the facts before you spout them in a public forum.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/09/7752.ars for only ONE article pointing to it. There are many more out there.

In my opinion. There is no doubt that Bobby Kotick is Evil. Bobby's greed is in part behind the death game creativity. But don't take my word for it. There has been plenty foretold about developing games strictly for the consoles and offering poorly ported PC versions would stifle advancement in graphics, game play and new creative game technology. Not only is this link important to the subject, but the subset of links within this article tell a sad story that in just over a year how bad things have degenerated already.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/activisions-bobby-kotick-brings-cash-but-not-heart.ars

Bobby was quite public in how he planed to bleed every franchise for as much as possible without any investment in advancing new innovative tech. His argument is based around a console lasting years instead of where with the PC technology advanced every year. This way he could kick out games on a revolving door manner where nothing really changes except perhaps the marketing techniques to the unwashed masses. He now controls the switch with how long any game title is to exist. His plan to fill his pockets was based around turning off an old version of a game after 12-18 months to be replaced by the latest version of the EXACT same game to keep the consoler's out there spending money on latest and greatest (anyone for football) release. His dream that 'you rent games, not own them' model, could work and be highly profitable with consoles, but not if PC's are the development platform of choice.
This eliminates the need to advance technology when you develop for the consoles. Only after years when a new console finally hits the market would there be a need to spend money on development of new ideas. Even then, he wanted to control and slow down the release of new consoles to 7-10+ years. This is his version of stabilizing the market to maximize profits. PC's get in the way of that plan. PC's to Bobby are evil because they advance creativity and introduce cost risk into the market place.

Consoles offer the brain-dead public an easy diversion to their daily dreary drone life. They now can pay a price every month to play, so Bobby's pockets are always full. The words 'New and Innovative' really mean ways to generate profit and no longer relate to something new and creative in the gaming world. No longer will the world need to live live in the 'kiotic' universe that has been the old style game industry. A new industry, of stability and profit, has dawned. The consoles lead the way. No longer will game development teams need to create, innovate and take risk in order to survive and profit from their work. Now they too can be faceless, nameless drones in the sweatshop cubicles of large corporations. They to can now go home at night and play the latest greatest console games to escape their dreary lives.

The consoler's thank the gods for Bobby Kiotic for bringing stability to the gaming universe. So what if porting is done so poorly. It's not like it matters with Bobby's vision. Loss of the PC market won't cause the cost of their games to rise. Or will it?

Better article here. One of the biggest advantages is that there is no signal processing on site and therefore no need for a hut at the bottom of the tower. The processing is done at data centres and signal sent to tower via fibre optics. Clustering the baseband units makes it easier for maintenance and also makes it easier to do load balancing across a region. When commuters are driving into work, for instance, the baseband cluster can turn its combined energy to handling the signal load coming from towers along the highways and train lines. During the day, processing could handle heavy downtown traffic, while it shifts focus to the suburbs in the evening. Such load-balancing doesn't produce any additional spectrum or data throughput, but it does mean that a carrier can operate fewer baseband processors, saving the carrier cash.

The connections are fast enough to support a standard called CoMP, or Co-ordinated Multipoint. CoMP, which is currently moving through standardization, relies on the fact that, in many locations, a user's wireless gadget is in range of multiple towers (the closer one comes to the edge of each cell, the more towers can typically see the device). This is usually a waste, since multiple towers spend bandwidth contacting the gadget but can't independently deliver different data. CoMP turns it into a bonus by dividing up requested download data and using all cells in the area to deliver a different slice of it at once—akin to the way BitTorrent operates. The phone then combines the data from all the towers in the proper order. This additive approach to using different towers means that a user's total throughput can go up substantially, but it requires centralized baseband to function.

Finally, the new lightRadio baseband bear can do software-defined protocols. Upgrading to LTE? Just upgrade the software on the baseband processor. (Traditional rack-mounted baseband processors required dedicated units for each protocol.) A new baseband chip from Freescale makes it possible, but it gets even cooler when used in conjunction with the new wideband antennas. LightRadio uses a new antenna that, in Alcatel-Lucent's words, collapses three radios into one. The radios are tiny cubes of 2.5 inches square, and each can operate between 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz. They use tiny amps that can be located atop the tower, built into the antenna enclosure, which keeps the amp size down and dramatically cuts down on the power loss.

These radio cubes are stacked in groups of 8 to 10 in order to make an antenna element, and when one cube in the array goes down, the others remain unaffected. (In a traditional system, the whole antenna unit would fail.) The amps cover enough different frequencies that, in many cases, simply changing the software configuration on the baseband unit can control whether each antenna offers a 2G, 3G, or 4G signal.

The antennas also do "beam forming"—fine-grained directional control over the radio signal—in both the horizontal and vertical dimension to better connect with local wireless devices. Alcatel-Lucent claims capacity improvements of 30 percent through the use of vertical beam-forming alone.

The end result of the system: lightRadio cell towers don't need huts, they don't need air conditioners and heaters, big amps, fans, or even local processing gear. Baseband processing moves closer to the data center model and gets cool new capabilities like CoMP and load-balancing. The system's cost savings come from power (Alcatel-Lucent claims a 50 percent reduction), along with lower construction and site rental fees. The total macro capacity of the system should double while cutting operator costs dramatically.

Yep, Motorola have been great with their devices, their Xoom isn't going to screw over customers at all.

FYI, I haven't had my iPad on a plan ever. I cut my own sim and it's on pre-paid.

About "opted in":

As part of its regular Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released an update for its various toolbars, and this update came with more than just documented fixes. The update also installs an add-on for Internet Explorer and an extension for Mozilla Firefox, both without the user's permission.

I don’t think an average consumer realizes that if they say "yes, show me suggested sites” that they’re granting Microsoft permission to send their queries and clicks on Google to Microsoft, which will then be used in Bing’s ranking.

Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.

To be fair, Google has done that (in a much bigger way) for IE.

To be fair, as you say, Google wrote the world's most secure browser and then offered you a way to insert it into the world's least secure browser. If Microsoft had made IE a paragon of customer satisfaction and choice and then written a plugin for Chrome that gave you some new toy, then I'd agree with you. They didn't. They just wrote a plugin that allows the perpetuation of the single most patent-encumbered "standard" I've ever seen. Bravo?

I read this a while back and found it thought provoking.

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/googles-dropping-h264-from-chrome-a-step-backward-for-openness.ars

Prices have /already/ been raised in most cases. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/04/e-book-prices-to-rise-as-amazon-sony-adopt-agency-model.ars [arstechnica.com]

And, at least in my case, my purchasing rates have taken a nosedive. Why?

Well, I mostly buy paperbacks. Matter of fact, I normally buy paperbacks when deals come up that make them 20-25% cheaper than list price. Right now, most ebooks I've seen are hovering somewhere between 10% less than paperback list to full hardcover list.

Basically, ebooks would be a good deal if I was only looking at hardcovers or paperbacks selling for full retail. But walk into any bookstore and you'll have a massive selection of dead-tree books that are being sold for serious amounts below retail. Heck, B&N sends out coupons all the time for 20-25% off the book of my choice(not including ebooks).

As such, the paper versions are, on average, cheaper than the ebook versions. Plus, I can at least sell them to recover EVEN MORE of the cost.

Why should I be buying ebooks? Right now I'm back to buying from Baen. Why is it that the right-libertarian leaning publisher seems to be the only one getting it?

Take "Fires of Heaven" by Robert Jordan. Picked because it's fairly popular, but an older book in the series, available in reprint - $7.99 for the ebook from amazon or B&N. How much for the paperback? $7.99 from amazon, $7.83 from B&N. Figure I can get at least a 20% discount between membership and emailed specials - the paperback would end up costing me only $6.26, saving me $1.73 over the ebook.

Sorry guys, it's costing you LOTS of sales. Meanwhile Baen is selling "Worlds of Weber" for $6, an earlier anthology "Worlds of Honor" for $4. They're getting lots of my money.

So, right now, on my iPhone app, Apple gets nothing when I purchase a book through Safari on my iPhone. Amazon gets the fee (30%) from the publisher for handling the transaction. Apples wants that transaction fee, or at least a portion of it, for itself. Further, Apple probably wants publishers to release more titles to its own book store ... and is holding other book stores' apps hostage in order to increase its own catalogue -- potentially surpassing Amazon's catalogue.

What will be interesting to see is what happens to Amazon's web site -- currently, if you purchase a Kindle book, you can choose where you want it sent (an actual Kindle, or any other device, including an iPhone, that's registered to your account). If you choose your iPhone, the book will automatically be downloaded the next time you open the Kindle app (honestly, it's pretty slick).

Apple is embarking down a sleazy path that makes MS at its worst look downright tame. MS just wanted to destroy other software companies. Apple has its sights set on: retailers; hardware manufacturers; OS developers (especially on small devices); it wants a cut of ALL media and software sold for its devices; it possibly even has cable TV in its sights. And it's getting there by creating an "ecosystem" that ties its different hardware, software, and sales platforms together. And then it's using its muscle to force even its competitors to adopt models that favour Apple.

Ouch.

I saw this article on Ars yesterday which is much better.

There is one very interesting bit covered in the Ars article which is not covered in the pcmag one. Verizon is asking for the same court that ruled in favor of Comcast and has hired the same lawyer that represented Comcast. The FCC wants the court chosen by lottery.

Isn't that the Android Notification bar in the first picture in Ars' article? http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/01/ngp.ars

This is law, not code, so "probably will" ;-) But yes - a GPL violation is a copyright violation, and the FSF and SFLC know just how to communicate that. So it's all good,

In the case of Android tablets violating the GPL, Matthew Garrett has been doing sterling work chasing up violators and ... asking for their code. And guess what, it often works fine. Mind you, he's the guy who successfully DMCAed the MPAA.

Except the case where the judgement for GPL violation included the physical televisions containing the violating code. Which was a bankruptcy default (and the real legal lesson is: show up in court), but nevertheless establishes that a GPL violation suit can attract the same sort of penalties as any other copyright suit.

Seems it might not just be MS

Ars Technica actually just did a great story on placeholders in scientific discovery, or why sometimes we wind up observing things that we can't yet explain: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/01/this-space-left-blank-the-role-of-placeholders-in-science.ars

Not saying that is what is happening here or that these guys are credible (because I have no idea), but the idea that you have to be able to explain something before you can observe it isn't true.

It isn't just a problem with retailers not stocking the game. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all prohibit AO content on their consoles. It is almost as bad as if MPEG-LA refused to license DVD patents to companies that that make NC-17 movies. That leaves the PC as the only place you can sell AO games, which is why publishers would rather modify their games rather than cut out 2/3 of their market.

It isn't just a problem with retailers not stocking the game. Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all prohibit AO content on their consoles. It is almost as bad as if MPEG-LA refused to license DVD patents to companies that that make NC-17 movies. That leaves the PC as the only place you can sell AO games, which is why publishers would rather modify their games rather than cut out 2/3 of their market.

One real world example of how open source is actually saving money France's Gendarmerie Nationale switched to Ubuntu to replace Windows XP. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu.ars Training cost is factored in however this is also pointed out as here: "Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. "Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority." They claim that Microsoft said you require training to switch from XP to Vista. By switching to open source they're saving 70% on their IT budget.

I have. There have been independent analyses that call the patent status of VP8 into question.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/05/google-support-aside-webm-carries-patent-risks-from-mpeg-la.ars