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I say this because just last week I helped a friend set up his new HP machine, and noticed that it came bundled with 30 day trials of Norton firewall/AV, some anti-adware, and some antispyware. I replaced all three with free/OS versions. But many users don't know about this, don't know where to get it, and don't know how to use them. In fact, removal of these 'trials' was a pain, even for me.

KOA

Anchorage, Alaska Will Host National Policy Meeting on Technology

I am also baffled by this senseless turn of events and have written on the subject from a slightly different angle called Switching is a loser's game at The CDCer blog.

I am all for supporting Intel, but Mac OS X is platform-neutral by design, which is a huge advantage for our platform and shouldn't be casually thrown away.

I wonder whether someone should start a petition to save the PPC Mac, maybe SJ will listen this time.

I am also baffled by this senseless turn of events and have written on the subject from a slightly different angle called Switching is a loser's game at The CDCer blog.

I am all for supporting Intel, but Mac OS X is platform-neutral by design, which is a huge advantage for our platform and shouldn't be casually thrown away.

I wonder whether someone should start a petition to save the PPC Mac, maybe SJ will listen this time.

I hope that the school paid the public showing fees and license fees to disney and the mpaa for that viewing of "black beauty"

I for one sure hope they're showing kids the right Black Beauty, and not other kinds.

What you people don't realise is that the key to understanding the entire Star Wars "Cosm" is not by geekish (and quite frankly idiotic) invocation of statistically idiotic phrases, neologisms and haphazard gratuitious use of irrelevant terminology, but by simple apprehension of Lucas's insane zen consciousness

thus: Each episode considered alone is in fact a momentary reality whose self-editing narrative creates an implied past, the retrocausality of the present not presenting a unique history but a most probable one of which the antecedent Lucasian installment is not. Subsequent installments are equally manifold. The only consistancy required is to invariant facts(technomythic archetypes) of our own choosing(like IG-88)

am i making any sense yet? like the parent said:"your prefered movie-installment defines your reality"

All Palindromic Recursive Acronyms Like APRALARPA Require Pronounceable Abbreviations

There are many reasons. Yes, it can be abused, just as a stick or a rock can be abused.

KOA

Giant Missile Defense Radar Sails

Yes.

Have I said too much?

KOA

Giant Missile Defense Radar Sails

That's actually supposed to be Tarkin himself, played by Wayne Pygram (Scorpius) of Farscape fame. http://scifidaily.blogspot.com/2005/03/scorpius-me et-tarkin.html

Cringely is one of the most profound columnists on earth and knows the computer industry inside out, so pay attention to his analysis.

The reason his theory sounds so strange is because Apple had done something even stranger.

Unless Robert X. Cringely is correct with his profound analysis, this could be the greatest strategic blunder in the history of technology, for at least 4 reasons.

Firstly, there is zero, nada, diddly-squat technological reason for switching horses. The top range Power Mac G5 outperforms the best x86 PC for many computational tasks, based on benchmarks from System X at Virginia Tech, Digital Video Editing and Apple. PowerPC also benefits from a clean and elegant RISC architecture, free from the archaic x86 legacy ISA hated by virtually everyone except Intel designers. For comparable performance, the G5 (PowerPC 970FX) chip is half the size and consumes half the power of the Intel Xeon P4 , with 58 million transistors in G5 instead of 169 million in P4.

Secondly, the PowerPC has more headroom to evolve, which is why even Microsoft has chosen IBM over Intel for its next generation Xbox 360 game console, not to mention Sony's PowerPC based Cell processor for the revolutionary PlayStation 3. With a small sum from Apple's $7 billion war chest, IBM should be more than happy to match whatever roadmap that Intel can offer, without the worry or the bad blood.

Thirdly, Apple has the technology to consolidate its core PowerPC base and simultaneously carve out a new market in the x86 world. That would be the best for all worlds and make everyone happy.

Lastly, it doesn't make any sense to destroy you core business for the next 2 years by announcing the transition 12 months in advance, This is so uncharacteristic of Apple. Maybe Steve Jobs is too tired, but is he concerned about the inevitable Osborne effect or has he lost the plot entirely?

Read more Switching is a loser's game at The CDCer.

Cringely is one of the most profound columnists on earth and knows the computer industry inside out, so pay attention to his analysis.

The reason his theory sounds so strange is because Apple had done something even stranger.

Unless Robert X. Cringely is correct with his profound analysis, this could be the greatest strategic blunder in the history of technology, for at least 4 reasons.

Firstly, there is zero, nada, diddly-squat technological reason for switching horses. The top range Power Mac G5 outperforms the best x86 PC for many computational tasks, based on benchmarks from System X at Virginia Tech, Digital Video Editing and Apple. PowerPC also benefits from a clean and elegant RISC architecture, free from the archaic x86 legacy ISA hated by virtually everyone except Intel designers. For comparable performance, the G5 (PowerPC 970FX) chip is half the size and consumes half the power of the Intel Xeon P4 , with 58 million transistors in G5 instead of 169 million in P4.

Secondly, the PowerPC has more headroom to evolve, which is why even Microsoft has chosen IBM over Intel for its next generation Xbox 360 game console, not to mention Sony's PowerPC based Cell processor for the revolutionary PlayStation 3. With a small sum from Apple's $7 billion war chest, IBM should be more than happy to match whatever roadmap that Intel can offer, without the worry or the bad blood.

Thirdly, Apple has the technology to consolidate its core PowerPC base and simultaneously carve out a new market in the x86 world. That would be the best for all worlds and make everyone happy.

Lastly, it doesn't make any sense to destroy you core business for the next 2 years by announcing the transition 12 months in advance, This is so uncharacteristic of Apple. Maybe Steve Jobs is too tired, but is he concerned about the inevitable Osborne effect or has he lost the plot entirely?

Read more Switching is a loser's game at The CDCer.

KOA

KOA

A Case for Traditional Monarchy

A more serious problem in a 'democracy', or a 'republic', is the apathy. I read that something like 50% or less of people registered to vote actually register, and that many of those that ARE registered don't vote. (I also read the election results, even for 'small', local elections). In essence, those that don't vote are giving power to the minority, to special interests, and to others that they complain about. I suspect that a complaint against electronic voting, despite its flaws, is another excuse to avoid voting.

KOA

A Case for Traditional Monarchy

I'm intrigued by the concept of having a mac that runs windows too. Although we'll probably get those next year, with the new Mactels, has anyone come up with a PC inside a working G4 Powermac?
That would rock, 2 machines in a single box, seperate power, video out, and monitors etc... maybe a keyboard/mouse thing you can use to work on both.
Thoughts?
Charlie

it can be difficult to convince buyers to buy an unprotected format because they can simply get a copy from a friend/p2p

http://www.corbyisguilty.blogspot.com/

just to give more perspective to you all

disclaimer: yes i am an indonesian...

KOA

Giant Missile Defense Radar Sails to Alaska

I've been talking about this for a while, and wrote a blog entry about the need for such a filesystem months ago...
http://obsessiveatbest.blogspot.com/2005/02/change -is-needed.html

I can afford either Cable, DTV, or satellite, and have had 2 of the 3. I got rid of them, simply because I felt that all I got for the money was 10 times the crap. I'll admit, at first I had some withdrawal, but I soon found other, more useful, and even creative uses for my time.

If the FCC stops broadcast of the few shows I actually watch (Stargate, Nova, and NCIS), then I'll just use the TV for watching DVD's, since I also long ago stopped going to the movies. After, it's TV, not air, food, water, shelter, or sex.

What if the networks actually made something worth watching? I'm not concerned, as that is highly unlikely.

KOA

The Northwest Passage Gets State Funding

Think home directories shared from a central server to a bunch of desktops. AFS, Coda, NFS....

No worries, I'm thinking just fine. To the *desktop user* there's no reason to mount the directories directly into the file system. Windows doesn't do it today, and people don't complain (except for server side work where it would be really nice).

I think what you'll see in the next few years is that server side technology and desktop technology will grow apart, yet have a symbionic relationship. Most of the Unix style concepts work great on a server. So there's no need to get rid of those. Yet those same concepts tend not to work very well for a desktop. So there, we'll see a different interface. The two will meet when they need to work together. e.g. The server will happily provide a database file repository (i.e. File Server) to the desktops with full support for meta-data. However, the server itself could care less about the meta-data, and only provides tools to manage the repository.

Make sense? One of these days, I'm going to do a write up of the neat directions I think desktops vs. servers will go on my new blog. So keep an eye out, you should see a lot more detail very soon.

I think what we are seeing instead of what happens when poor software designs are applied to building houses is what happens when poor webserver configuration is applied to a website.. It's slashdotted with 1 post!

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Hey now, don't try and pressure them to reform. You know very well that if the Department of Homeland Security is forced to spend the resources to make its network more secure, the terrorists win. Do you really want the terrorists to win? Why do you hate America so much?

Who says that old piece of paper blocks anything, anyway?

"It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution. We are free at last, free at last. There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands."
--Antonin Scalia

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2005/06/what- rational-person-thinks.html

For an example, just look at the recent Supreme Court case on medical marijuana. Look at Clarence Thomas's dissent. The Constitution says the feds have no right to regulate something not involved in interstate commerce...and the majority said screw it, let's regulate anyway.

Oh, really?

And yes, it worked well for two hunderd years, but so did the preceding systems.

1. A post to the official Google blog: http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/2005/04/m apscraigslist-mashup.html

1. A post to the official Google blog: http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/2005/04/m apscraigslist-mashup.html

KOA

Giant sea-based radar that looks like something out of a science fiction movie

Standard hardware from Apple will help kill Windows. Linux will be a lot easier to develop when the hardware is standard.

I think Apple should/will open the hardware to software developers. This will allow them to say: "Run OSX, it's already installed. Or you can take a chance with Linux".

Linux distros which have a standard set of hardware to program and debug for will accelerate and stablize development.

Here are two pieces of evidence that Google does *not* disapprove of Google Maps hacks:

1. A post to the official Google blog: http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/2005/04/m apscraigslist-mashup.html

"While we have no official API for Maps yet, work like this really is amazing and deserves recognition."

2. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/05/google_m aps_hac.html

"They responded that they had every intention to not shut them down as long as their licenses permit it, and one of the engineers insinuated that they might be working on a Google Maps API or a similar way to build on top of Maps (he actually said, "to make them not hacks," by which I think he meant not unauthorized)."

Disclaimer: I'm the guy that did chicagocrime.org, so I'm biased in favor of openness.

I agree completely. The mouse is imprecise and takes too long, requires very good hand/eye coordination. When I have to work on a repetitive task I can either write a macro or have the exact sequence of key-strokes down and do the job much faster.

The mouse is better when the datasets that you are working on are not localized / scattered around the screen (it's like a cassette tape vs. cd-rom which can quickly access random parts of data without rewinding)

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Seems to be in preliminary conceptual stages, but KDE is having ambitious plans for these kind of things in KDE 4 with Tenor http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/581 6/1/ http://dot.kde.org/1113428593/ http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005/04/tenor-for-devel opers.html

Not to be a drone or anything but at work you should be working, not reading/sending non-business-related email. Oh wait, what am I doing posting on Slashdot?

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

At that rate, anyone could open up a small printing-press, producing about 10,000 copies of a 150 page book in a week or so...

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

This is old news. I don't know if anyone noticed but there's only about 20 mil. Jews in the world which is statistically a drop in a bucket (probably around 0.2 - 0.4% of the world population) and yet Jews, especially the Ashkenazi camp has done exceptionally well producing many thinkers, philosophers, and so forth. Also Jews have a lot of power in the world, just think Allen Greenspan... Gee what could possibly have created such a group of people? Well perhaps if everyone had to suffer what we suffered through the ages, being persecuted without end, then maybe everyone else would mutate and become a higher being at the same rate as well? Oh wait, did I just make a non-PC statement? I'm sorry...

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

The pre-show speeches were as funny as the show. I was lucky to have been there for the first invited Dress rehearsal. Eric Idol came out to introduce show and said "Hello, I'm Eric Idol. If you expected Billy Idol, then F**k Off!" Mike Nichols appeared next saying the reason he chose such a talented production team was that he could do the least amount of work and still get paid. http://woodstockgen.blogspot.com/

example: The energy field generated by the midichlorians on the skin epidermis allows a jedi to withstand most falls, the very same force maintains structural integrity during force-leaps, in effect making high-g escapades near intertia-less as far as the jedi is concerned

example: The energy field generated by the midichlorians on the skin epidermis allows a jedi to withstand most falls, the very same force maintains structural integrity during force-leaps, in effect making high-g escapades near intertia-less as far as the jedi is concerned

From your blog: "But most content themselves with the weapons nature gave them: they go naked into battle..."

You gotta have balls to fight naked. Someone had to say it.

History tells us that many of the Celts went into battle naked. This was disconcerting to their foes. I wonder how popular That comic would be?

On another note, "Holy Men in Tights!" sounds like the next scandal.

The King

Rural Alaska nuclear power gets legislative backing

I take very measured risks, I do not trade based on "technical analysis" and other crap. I do not work on wall street, I am private. I make a comfortable 7 figures, on track to do almost 8 this year - this is all from trading profits, not salary. People like you take for granted the value of real traders such as myself, who get paid by the market to make it more efficient (think arbitrage, market making). I love it how people shoot down others when they have no idea what they're talking about, how do you plan to buy your 1000 shares of GE once every 3 years when no one will sell it to you for a reasonable price? Oh yea, me. Idiots. http://themarkettruth.blogspot.com/

P.

I added a chapter track to the keynote movie so you can skip the filler bits more easily:
WWDC keynote in chunks

What is interesting is that this comes about a month after the theft of about 600,000 customer records by TimeWarner cable (http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtm l?articleID=162101437/).

The data went missing while in transit to an Iron Mountain facility by a truck. Sounds like a very similar incident here. In the TimeWarner article, the Iron Mountain corp was quoted as saying that they have the technology that would allow companies to use incremental backups to copy their data to the Iron Mountain center electronically thus eliminating the truck but I guess companies are either not listening or finding it cheaper to ground-ship the data... Perhaps after all these massive thefts at TimeWarner, Bank of America, Wachovia, and now Citigroup, companies will reconsider how they back up their data..

Perhaps they will start to use Armor trucks instead of UPS ground to ship their customer's records, once the law-suits start streaming in...

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

• Call-in shows on CSPAN
• Uninformative puff piece letters from my Congressperson
• The replacement for the old Emergency Broadcast System. EBS had cooler sounds

video.google.com makes this service irrelevant?

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Are there any plans to simulate the Multiple Personality Disroder (MPD) with their flagship e-server z/OS?

Or, perhaps start replacing employees with these bad boys... 607 employees cut in IGS, so far. ref: http://www.allianceibm.org/

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http://unk1911.blogspot.com/

Mark Windholtz - Member of Team 32.

Jim Weirich - Member of Team 8.

That goes directly to the video; you will want to prepare to adjust speaker volume and your blood pressure as you watch.

Linked from Hullabaloo.

We don't like disrespecting authority in this country. Nor do we like open documentation of how police methods work:

For years, Taser maintained that its stun guns never caused a death or serious injury. As proof, Taser officials said no medical examiner had ever cited the weapon in an autopsy report.

But Taser did not have those autopsy reports and didn't start collecting them until April [2004]. Using computer searches, autopsy reports, police reports, media reports and Taser's own records, The Republic has identified 88 deaths after police Taser strikes in the United States and Canada since 1999.

If the Switch to Intel news is true, I would expect Mac sales to slow and this wouldn't be good news for the bottom line and of couse the APPL stock. I know I wouldn't want to purchase a new Mac if I knew the processors were going to change. Besides, what are the developers to do? Are they going to want to go through this?

Another point ... how will Apple support OS X on the PowerPC for existing systems/customers and OS X on Intel for new systems/customers? I would think that Apple would need to ramp up on numerous levels ... developers, management, support, sales, etc ... That isn't going to be cheap.

Switch To A Mac

http://switchtoamac.blogspot.com/