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To me, this is the kind of electronic cash that should be the future. Total privacy, total anonymity, total freedom to use your own money as and how you like, absolute security against identity theft through reckless banks or merchants, hard limits to card misuse if stolen (and none of it attributable to you), relatively proof against electronic attacks such as keystroke monitors and viruses.

The French already do this. Everyone can use it and it's called a Moneo card.

Why is this experiment different then? Because the underlying technology is different (and I can't say inferior): "By placing an NFC (near field communication) chip near a reader, up to a distance of a centimetre or two away, data can be transmitted to and from the chip." bidirectional and contactless.

This chart from the article says it all.

Ben Mickle, Matt Edwards, and Kshipra Bhawalkar looked as though they had just emerged from a minor auto wreck. The members of Duke University's computer programming team had solved only one problem in the world finals of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in San Antonio on Apr. 12. The winning team, from Saratov State University in Russia, solved six puzzles over the course of the grueling five-hour contest. Afterward, Duke coach Owen Astrachan tried to cheer up his team by pointing out that they were among ``the best of the best'' student programmers in the world. Edwards, 20, still distraught, couldn't resist a self-deprecating dig: ``We're the worst of the best of the best.'' Duke wasn't the only U.S. school to be skunked at the prestigious computing contest. Of the home teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.

Complete article.

The poster neglected to link to the sites involved.

Here's a fully linked version:

"BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has just raised another $25M from Venture Capital. Along the same lines, Rupert Murdoch has bought a minority stake in SimplyHired and just two days ago the social networking site, Visible Path said it raised $17M from Venture Capitals."

The poster neglected to link to the sites involved.

Here's a fully linked version:

"BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has just raised another $25M from Venture Capital. Along the same lines, Rupert Murdoch has bought a minority stake in SimplyHired and just two days ago the social networking site, Visible Path said it raised $17M from Venture Capitals."

Business week carrying this story. But it has a couple of snippets missing from the wired report:

1) Its not An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that...., its an alliance of British companies (and British subsiduries of US companies)

2) The wired article makes no mention of what the actual rules are. From business week: Those rules include limits on hate speech, advertising and the kind of content that can be broadcast to children.

I'm not a big fan of censorship by any stretch of the imagination & I don't particularly support these rules - but I do find wired's reporting of this situation a little skewed (I wonder if wired thinks they'll be effected by this?)

Is it me or is /. running more and more advertising "stories". These is not exactly "News for Nerds" Hell it is not even news! Justifacation for using CRM maybe... I hope /. got cut a nice big fat check for this drivel.

Also, ABC doesn't get a dime from your cable bill.

I hate to nitpick, but that's (probably) inaccurate. Almost all channels carried by cable get a chunk of the bill. It's true that premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, and so forth get a lot more, but even basic cable channels usually take between 10 cents and $2 per subscriber. For example, BusinessWeek reported in 2003 that ESPN charges an average of $1.93 per subscriber per month.

Now, ABC itself usually doesn't get paid by your cable company, but the local broadcast affiliate that carries ABC probably does. Federal law provides both "must carry" and "retransmission consent" provisions that cable companies have to abide by. In essence, a local broadcaster can try to negotiate with the cable company to permit transmission in exchange for a fee. If the cable company refuses to pay, the broadcaster has the choice to block the cable company from transmitting its signal, or to demand that it do so for free. Early this year, a dispute with an ABC affiliate caused the cable company to pull the station off the cable system at the station's request.

With these provisions, the amount of money a broadcaster can get from the cable company depends on how popular the station is. Local affiliates of the "big 5" networks usually have bargaining power to compel the cable companies to pay. Independent broadcasters and religious stations, on the other hand, usually opt for more viewers through asserting the "must carry" rule.

I agree with the rest of your post; I just wanted to point out these facts, which most people don't seem to know about.

>BTW, if you think it is an accident that bad patents are issued left and right,
>think again. You won't find Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon spending millions of
>dollars lobbying Congress to properly fund the patent office. The patent office
>is underfunded because the people who get face time with our leaders like it
>that way.

Yes, and clearly they want the rest of the world similarly hamstrung.

Big technology firms, such as Philips, Nokia, Microsoft, Siemens, and telecoms firm Ericsson, continued to voice their support for the original bill.
BBC article on attempts to grant European Software Patents

Also see the comments made against the business week columnist's pro-software patents piece.

During Amelio's tenure, Apple's stock hit a 12-year low, and in the second quarter of 1997, the company lost $708 million. Amelio was widely criticized as lacking vision and marketing ability. Many did not appreciate his "wooziness" (Ed Fullenmauker 1997). Board member Ed Woolard announced his termination on July 4, 1997, and Amelio left the company the next day. He was replaced by Steve Jobs.

The deliberate intrasigience of the feddies is not the last word. Technology to combat catastrophic climate change is the next big economic opportunity. The only question is whether we make it here and sell it there, or vice versa.

As long as our political leadership are tied to old-fashioned energy sources, they have no incentive to develop & implement the new technologies that will replace the old ... it's a classic "Innovator's Dilemma".

And it has an "Innovator's Dilemma" solution: outsiders develop small, nimble technologies, some of which fail, some of which succeed; eventually they eat the dinosaurs (...sorta like the desktop PC in the era of the mainframe.) You, yourself, can probably figure out a few clever ways to create or implent a green tech in your own city. Give it a try! [A few suggestions here]

What is better than making an honest buck while thumbing your nose at the anti-scientists!

Business week reports "Apple stock up on Windows-based Macs".

"Hey, there's a worm in my Apple!"

You are talking about the poorest among the poorest. You are right about that. But the $100 laptop project is not aimed at the poorest of the poorest. It is aimed at those for whom such a tool would be of great help. Take the cell phone experience in India:

http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_18/b3627035.ht m

Sure the money spent for building a cell phone infrastructure could go for buying drugs, but when you only give food and medecine, people cannot help themselves to get out of poverty. Give the tools to get themselves out. That is the aim of such projects. Empower the people. And once they have an economy going, you can tax them to pay for food and medecine for the poorest.

That said, you still need to provide food and medecine when crisis hit. There I agree with you. But rich countries cannot limit their help to food and medecine. We must help 3rd world countries to get out of their misery by themselves.

Since they started dumping money into political campaigns and hired their own lobbying group about ten years ago Microsoft has become one of the most generous contributors to politicians in the country:


LXer: How Microsoft wastes its money on anything but software
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/55497/index.h tml


Election 2004: How to Excel in DC
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0438/040922_news _microsoft.php


A Bug in Windows GOP (Seattle Weekly)
http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0522/050601_news _microsoft.php


Microsoft And The G.O.P.: Antitrust Insurance?
http://www.time.com/time/reports/gatesbook/lobbyin g.html


Microsoft's lobbying efforts eclipse Enron
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-835267.html


Redmond | Feature Article: Following Microsoft's Money
http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?Editori alsID=440


News Alert 9/6/01: Microsoft
http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/alertv6_26.as p


Commentary: It's Back to Charm School for Microsoft
http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_45/b3654183.ht m


"The Think Tank As Flack" by David Callahan
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1999/991 1.callahan.think.html

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_02 /b3966074.htm

As a soon-to-be-newly-minted MBA at a pretty decent program, I'll second QuantumG's thoughts, and add some more for the "MBAs suck" crowd:

I agree that there now seems to be a glut of MBA programs out there on the marketplace. I pass at least four or five signs advertising such driving along I-85 in the Southeast. However, a lot of them (especially the ones from the for-profit tech-ed places) do not seem to be taken that seriously at all. Even with the ones that actually pass accrediation muster, the job marketplace has sifted out the degrees into different tiers. So the marketplace at least has its own ideas for determining a high-quality degree from a good-quality one from a no-quality one. Whether the marketplace actually has the right choices is an exercise left to the reader, but at least it's good information to have when considering what kinds and which programs to apply for.

My decision to go out and grab an MBA was realizing, after my third dot-com-related layoff in one year (the annus horribilis of 2001), that the business types seemed to be able to quickly land elsewhere, whereas us techies had to scrape and claw for work. That, and what seemed like a huge threat of offshoring in 2002.

I do have some quick advice for you techies out there thinking about the MBA path: if you're interested in simply moving up the corporate ladder where you are, consider a local (and accredited by AACSB!) program and/or one that focuses on engineering or technology management (Duke has a great MEM program). If, however, you're intent on switching career paths (say, from technology to marketing, finance or management consulting), then try to get four or five good solid years of work experience with a nice "trajectory", score at least a 700 on the GMAT, and apply to as many of the top fulltime programs that you think you can get into.

Look at the Japanese.... no one can sell electronics to them except Japanese.

Really? Sony will be glad to hear that it no longer has to try to compete with iPod.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

It's apparent that Thomas Jefferson had this understanding that patents can include ways of doing things, because he was apparently pissed off for the same reason we are. Here's a Jefferson quote from this article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_02 /b3966086.htm/

A man "has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject?" -- Thomas Jefferson

Ok, it might be me but I've been able to read this article after reloading for SIX times because of a OKI banner overlapping a large piece of text on the site

Next to that, there are THREE banners for the C5800 printer of OKI.
Isn't that a little bit over the top?

Business Week is much better. Forbes is fluff (and all the proof needed is that they let Apple Fanboys write articles for them).

CATO was once upon a time a libertarian think-tank. Now they are to a very large degree responsible for the reprehensible right-siding of American libertarianism.

Check out their RSS commentary feed. Not one of the ten is about civil liberty. No true libertarian think-tank would simply ignore the recent news regarding warrantless spying on US citizens in their commentary.

CATO posted a incredibly acquiescent acceptance of the 2002 FBI guidelines allowing their agents to monitor Internet sites, libraries, and religious institutions without first showing cause. The author is Roger Pilon, CATO's vice president for legal affairs, a reagancomic, who "held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a National Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution".

CATO has shown itself to be afflicted with the same moral relativism as contemporary conservatism, when they unfurled their banner onstage behind the hand-wringing homophobe, and probably most anally retentive US Senator, Rickey Santorum. They haven fallen far from the Libertarian grace that they once basked in. Three of CATO's best foreign policy analysts have departed in the recent past.

Leon Hader is the earliest think-tank criticizer of Neoconservatism I am aware of:

• Cato Policy Analysis No. 125 December 29, 1989
• "Creating a U.S Policy of Constructive Disengagement in the Middle East"
• by Leon T. Hadar

Charles Pena was always anti-imperialist, whether it emerged from liberals or conservatives:

• Cato Policy Analysis No. 502: December 15, 2003
• "Iraq: The Wrong War"
• by Charles V. Peña

Ivan Eland was prescient as a CATO old schooler:

• Cato Policy Analysis No. 306 May 5, 1998
• "Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense Is to Give No Offense"
• by Ivan Eland
• --*--
• Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 50 December 17, 1998
• "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?"
• by Ivan Eland

Another anti-foreign interventionist, albeit second stringer, Doug Bandow, was recently righteously terminated from CATO, for his less than ethical moonlighting. Now there are just two remaining, Ted Galen Carpenter, and Christopher Preble.

CATO has sold their birthright for a fancy new house within the beltway. In this era of an executive administration, so arrogant, ignorant and incompetent, that the WTC destruction occurred on their watch, which has furthered dishonored itself by callously ignoring Constitutional restrictions, CATO has instead focused upon property rights, social security reform, and slandering the Federal Judiciary, while barely mentioning Republican hypocrisy inherent in the rampant deficit spending, and the increase of governmental invasion of personal liberty in the name of religion.

Office usually doesn't ship exactly on time either. See this article about 2003. Even 2007 is behind schedule. However, we're usually talking weeks or months with Office and often years with Windows.

The original link is to the images and captions. Here's a link to the actual article.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar20 06/id20060317_074043.htm

We're headed to a duopoly on the pipes to the home, cable and ILEC. Of course, with FiOS, Verizon's figured out the way to block out alternate DSL providers... once the phone companies don't have to share IP access, and the cable companies don't (see NCTA v. Brand X), they'll have control of both pipes into the home.

WiMax might have a place out in the burbs, but in New York, I can't see how it can possibly serve the populace without interfering with its competition.

With QoS, Vonage is going to slowly go down the tubes, as Time Warner, Cablevision, Comcast, AT&T, et al provide themselves better IP service than their competitors. (We know what Ed Whitacre, AT&T CEO thinks about this... http://www.businessweek.com/@@n34h*IUQu7KtOwgA/mag azine/content/05_45/b3958092.htm

Oh, well. Squeeze your buttcheeks together.

Nonsense. If anything cancer drug development in the US is too profitable.

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/aug20 05/pi20050825_0233_pi041.htm

Here's an article in Business Week (a US publication) extolling the profits to be had from cancer drug development.

Besides, even when drugs are developed outside the US, they are still counting on the profits in the US market to produce a return on their investment. The US is the only country that values drugs highly enough to pay for expensive research. All other first-world countries really just get a free ride, and without the US free market the research worldwide wouldn't be nearly as prolific.

is not that sharp according to Business Week :)

After all, this guy is 31 and this guy is 30. Hell, at 37, I might be able to squeak by :)

is not that sharp according to Business Week :)

After all, this guy is 31 and this guy is 30. Hell, at 37, I might be able to squeak by :)

I'd never heard of a "Net promoter score", so I asked Google, and it pointed me to another Businessweek article.

...companies measure customer loyalty by asking one simple question rather than relying on lengthy satisfaction surveys: "On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to your friends or colleagues?"

"net promoter scores," ... [are] ... the difference between the percentage of customers who give high responses ("promoters") and those who give low ones ("detractors"),

Two companies.

And it seems to be working for them... even if Wall Street doesn't believe it.

Reviews Without Fullpage Advertisements

Woo, mod parent up! Open-source routers have been around since the late eighties transition of the BSD codebase away from its license-encumbered AT&T history.

Any posix-compliant geek can and will shove a few NICs into a box with BSD or Linux on it, and turn it into a router. "Sure", you say, "but what about the user interface?", a valid point! XORP has been working on this for http://www.xorp.org/">years, and as far back as 2004, XORP was seen to be making some trouble for Cisco.

Imagestream has been touting their Rebel routers for a few years too, and they, like Digium, have an impressive array of interface hardware to support your box's position within the network. It's a fine market position to be in, and it's certainly not news. That being said, perhaps poking it back into people's brains is a good idea, and anything that helps dilute Cisco's software monoculture in the enterprise routing market can only be a good thing.

to better themselves. In terms of gadgets, Japan is a tough market with lots of competitors, but like fighting any tough opponent, it would have made them better.

It looks like they kept trying to push themselves onto the Japanese instead of adapting themselves, what with not adopting 3G and using a brickphone profile for their phones. How dumb is that? Was it a result of purely top-down leadership without some bottom-up feedback? I don't know but it looks that way if they are pulling out of Sweden too. Many companies try to do that when entering a foreign market, but they are usually spanked early on for their mistakes. I believe McDonalds serves lamb in India and wherever they go conform their menu to the locality.

But the idea that an American company can't do well in Japan is false, look at Apple:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2 006/gb20060302_547553.htm?campaign_id=topStories_s si_5

FIGHTING WORDS. Meantime, AMD is digging in for a nasty antitrust fight with Intel. AMD said on Mar. 1 that its lawyers have subpoenaed executives of the Internet calling service Skype, now a unit of eBay (EBAY). AMD wants the lowdown on a deal between Skype and Intel that involves a feature on the new Skype 2.0 service available only to customers whose computers contain Intel chips.

Ruiz finds Intel's deal with Skype legally troubling. "We're trying to answer one question and one question only," he says. "Is this an instance where Intel has abused its monopoly position? If you're a consumer sitting at home, and you just bought a computer that you're real happy with, and now you find you cannot use this feature because someone has done a deal that locks you out -- I think that is not fair to the consumer."

Intel has repeatedly denied AMD's allegations, and described its behavior in the marketplace as perfectly legal, if aggressive. "Skype is one of 50 companies [that] have been subpoenaed so far in this antitrust matter," says Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "At the end of the day, this case will be litigated in court, and we hope that people will understand that our business practices are fair and lawful."

Meanwhile Apple is hosting today a special event for fun new products - Wake me up when the fun arrives...

that was a joke. but now its for real.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep200 5/nf20050915_1654_db035.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8FIG FB00.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db has a story about Overstock.com.
==Begin quote==
  In its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said its net loss for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2005, widened to $18.41 million, up from a loss of $10.63 million during the same period the previous year. Net cash provided by operations was negative $28.15 million for the recent period, a sharp turn from $9.53 million cash generated the previous year.

An upgrade of the company's information technology system that Byrne said was "the equivalent of a heart, lung and kidney transplant" didn't go smoothly. In September, the company said it hadn't loaded new products onto its Web site in five weeks.
==End quote==

    So rather than admitting that they screwed up...

==Begin quote==
Patrick Byrne, the Internet retailer's chief executive officer, has called short selling of his company's shares -- essentially a bet their price will fall -- a conspiracy orchestrated by a "Sith Lord." He later likened the conspiracy to an organization structured like al-Qaida and said his stock has been targeted by "naked short-sellers," a practice he said has ties to Italian, Russian and Israeli mafia.
==End quote==

    If Overstock ran their operation properly and showed a profit next quarter, the naked short-sellers would be in for a world of hurt, financially. Instead, Mr. Byrne is whining about web boards just like Darl McBride whines about Groklaw and Rumsfeld whines about Al Jazeera.

    The USA seems to have the same mentality. The Bush administration doesn't admit that they earned their bad reputation by invading a country that they knew didn't have WMD, and holding prisoners incommunicado and torturing them. Rather than actually acting kinder-and-gentler, the US wants propaganda to show that it's kinder and gentler.

    That mentailty seems to be pervasive in the USA. Overstock and SCOX have had bad financial results. But they blame their falling stock prices on web boards and short sellers. If a company is found to be distributing spyware, they'll SLAPP the anti-spyware companies that fingered them. And let's not forget how spam^H^H^H^H ethikul email marketeers SLAPPed the MAPS RBL into uselessness.

    Corporate USA, and its puppet administration, seem to believe that rather than acting nicer, they merely have to spend money on propaganda, and lawyers for injunctions to shut down websites that expose their misdeeds. They're acting uncannily like Soviet Russia, which spent 10 times as much money trying to jam BBC broadcasts as the BBC spent on broadcasting to the Soviets. Remember what happened to the USSR.

...the losses they were going to be taking on the PS2 and Xbox, but apparently those bets worked out OK.

Well, it helps if you've got a massively profitable company behind you to help cover the losses. There's an intersting read here : Microsoft's Red-Ink Game.

One tidbit from the article says "...the Xbox console, which contained about $323 worth of parts and materials when released, but sold at retail for $299. [The 360 is] certainly not going to help Microsoft reverse the trend of losses in its home-entertainment segment. In the fiscal year ended June 30, [the Xbox] lost $391 million on sales just shy of $3.25 billion. That's a little more than 8% of Microsoft's total sales of $39.8 billion."

Much more likely scenario, from Business Week (marginally more reliable than ML, perhaps?):

Exclusive: PS3 HUB; September Launch: Next Generation reveals that, in addition to the PlayStation 3 -- now expected to launch in September -- Sony is planning an online games service ...

&laz;

It is interesting to note, also, that Edwin Black is an otherwise failed businessman who used to be an OS/2 reseller, so he apparently had no problem with IBM while it made him money, but once IBM killed off OS/2, he had to find something else to profit from.

And people said the Slashdot effect was dead...

We forget so often that the chinese government isn't stupid, and maybe not even evil.

Maybe not evil? Are you serious? Please go learn about some of the things the "warm and fuzzy" Chinese government has done before posting such BS.

They have reasons for why they do what they do.

And they are all wrong.

3 mio.? 4 mio.? maybe 5 mio. people could die during an all-china civil unrest.

Is it better to die that to live as a slave? How many millions of people has the Chinese regime already killed in the 50+ years that it has been in power?

... in the case of China, I believe that you need to trust that the first node is legit

There is plenty of case law that has upheld the constitutionality of anti-discrimination laws such as the fair housing act. Congress did not intend to give online companies a pass on those acts and intentionally facilitate discrimination.

There's also plenty of case law saying that online services are not responsible for the content of messages published. There is no evidence that Craigslist itself was discriminating against anyone - particularly since they have procedures for removing any ads which trigger complaints.

Wonder what they'll do with the smaller companies they're lined up to acquire. Business Week says they'll be snapping up Zend (PHP), JBoss, and something called "Sleepycat".

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb 2006/tc20060209_810527.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb 2006/tc20060209_810527.htm

Yep, was just reading about this yesterday:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb 2006/tc20060208_094930.htm

There are other articles talking about a huge number of other companies migrating to Cell.

But Stallman's "facts" are impractial in the real world.

Last time I checked, copyright goes completely against the laws of physics. It's a human construct designed to make bits uncopyable. In the words of Bruce Schneier, it's akin to trying to make water not wet.

Now maybe in a reality-free zone where everybody works for the common good and nobody takes more than his* fair share, that would be a reasonable thing to pass off as a fact.

Well, no. What you do, as with free software, is accept -- indeed welcome -- the fact that bits can be copied. You then charge people for your time. Sure - you won't be the next Microsoft doing this. But the good old capitalist economy will be better off if the Microsoft tax on basic business goes away. There's no communism here. This is the free market at work. Without artificial monopolies.

Rich.

Nobody makes an investement that will pay off only after 10 years.

How fast, you suppose, does an air liner pay for itself? An oil-exploration program? An Internet startup?

A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support

That is only a requirement if you want to run the Aero user interface (it must also support Windows Display Driver Model). I can't believe I haven't seen any "Score:3+" comments mentioning Vista's "Classic" UI mode, which doesn't require a powerful GPU. In fact, it looks a lot like Windows XP with its "Luna" interface deactivated. According to that Wikipedia article (don't use as a final source), Vista's "classic mode" only has the same graphics card requirements as Windows 2000.

Here's what I think is a better Microsoft page describing (and providing links to) Vista's likely requirements:

Windows Vista Capable PC Hardware Guidelines

• CPU -- PC systems should have a modern CPU.
• RAM -- PC systems should have 512MB of memory or more.
• GPU -- PC systems should have a graphics processor that will support Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM).

Windows Vista offers significant improvements to the graphics user experience. To take advantage of these advances in the graphics user experience, graphics processor will need to support WDDM. Graphics processors capable of supporting WDDM:

• Are designed to ensure that graphics user experience scales up with hardware capabilities.
• Offer improved graphic stability and performance.
• May be able to support additional desktop productivity features.

Systems that meet and/or exceed the above requirements should be able to provide a good experience while running Windows Vista. PC systems that do not meet the above hardware requirements for CPU, RAM and GPU may support running Windows Vista. However, such systems may not offer all the features and benefits of Windows Vista. For example, PC systems with GPUs that do not support WDDM will only be able to provide a Windows XP-comparable desktop graphics experience, with regards to features, stability, and performance.

So to answer the freakin' article's question: Yes, if your Core Duo or Solo notebook had integrated Intel graphics, it will work with Vista because GMA 950 supports WDDM. Heck, it will likely work with the new Aero UI. But since the reader specifically stated he "doesn't care about semitransparent windows and cool animations," even an old Pentium M or Celeron M notebook with the 915GM chipset (GMA 900 graphics) will work with Vista in "classic mode." Here's a link to an Intel page on mobile minimum recommendations for Vista:

Windows Vista and Intel Mobile Platforms for Business

After the launch of Windows Vista, laptop PCs with Mobile Intel® 915GM Express Chipset will be able to run Windows Vista providing a Windows* XP-comparable graphics experience.

Well, Businessweek http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb20 06/id20060201_359519.htm ran a story on 1 Feb about Star Gate becoming a MMOG. Interesting that James Cameron is now being interviewed. Wonder if the Sci-Fi Channel might be jumping into the fray at some point?