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"One of the world's major manufacturers of LCDs, Toshiba announced on Wednesday its first prototype of a polymer OLED display that supports 260,000 colors. The 2.85-inch display is targeted for production in portable devices, such as cell phones and handheld computers, in April 2002."

Where the hell does a company with this pisspoor outlook come up with money to start filing lawsuits? Maybe their legal department should start communicating with their sales or finance departments. Oh thats right... It's because of napster that they are doing so shoddy in the market. What a pile of crap. -Bob

from c|net: "MediaBay, a seller of old-time radio shows over the Internet and in retail stores, on Thursday said it filed a complaint against Napster, the popular song-swap service, charging copyright infringement and unfair competition."

they filed a complaint, not a suit.

I think you'll find that's wrong. VISA recently released a statistic that ecommerce accounted for 4% of transactions but 50% of fraud. Some mentions are here and here etc. Take for example CD Universe having 350,000 credit card details stolen as told here... how many can a waiter copy down?

You are reimbursed both online and offline to the tune of $50 (£50 in UK) for now, but credit card companies aren't charities. The costs *will* be passed on.

In the offline world fraud is less common because in transactions with non-reputable parties you usually use cash (if you are sensible). This new scheme is there to provide you with the equivalent service. I'm all in favour of the digital equivalent of cash, and will be watching this new scheme with interest!

Phillip.

Ok, I read more details about this on the bus on the way home at 6:30 this evening , and 5 hours later no one's mentioned them? Slackers... :)

From C|NET:

The site's "shell server" was compromised May 22 after a SourceForge employee logged on to an outside Internet service provider that had already been taken over by the intruder, said Pat McGovern, site director of SourceForge.net. When the staff member logged on to SourceForge remotely, the intruder captured the password.

[snip...]

Although illicit modifications to the programming projects are a concern, McGovern said the intruder didn't get that far.

From this, I'd have to guess that SourceForge allowed telnet in, and the cracker was sniffing on the cracked ISP's box. It's also possible that the admin was tricked into using a trojaned ssh client from the ISP's box, but the former sounds a little more likely from the limited details in the article. If so, I'd have to blame SourceForge for allowing incoming telnet.

If it's the latter, it gets harder to blame SourceForge, but we still can. :) If the admin was doing admin-type functions, he shouldn't have been using an ssh client that he didn't have complete control over.

Gumbo

I have one of these. Works great under linux (Just plug it in!) and sounds amazing... It wasn't even that expensive. Their homepage seems to be down right now though, so maybe they went out of business.

Even though a couple of days back I read that Flash was no longer doing so well in the market, today the net is rife with many articles claiming flash to be the next hot thing as it becomes associated with the TV.

They skipped gnutella because, as far as peer to peer systems go, it sucks. Research papers such as Free Riding on Gnutella and Why Gnutella Can't Scale, No, Really articulate this much better than I can. The success rate of pirating music via Gnutella is much less than those of napster, aimster, and community-based hotline servers.

The RIAA admitted this, if you remember :)

Well, that, and they fired their CEO a couple days ago. That's usually a tipoff.

PocketPC (aka WindowsCE) JUST hit 1 million units (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-6004696.html ?tag=mn_hd and they expect this obscure device that's just black and white with no email app to sell that many units in a year!? Not in this lifetime...

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Heck, it's hard to find another 21"+ LCD at all. For example, Outpost has an NEC 20" that only gets 1280x1024 and costs $3279. Mysimon and cNet Shopper both list exactly one LCD larger than 18" ... care to guess?

Also, Slashdot previously discussed the Samsung 240T. It costs over twice as much, and came from the drool-flows-continuously dept. Apple's 15" is a bit over the average LCD price (about $500), and the 17" is dead on ($999), but the Cinema Display is an amazing deal (if you can afford it).

Here is some reality for you, actually: Apple claims 9 percent of the personal computer OS market. That leaves 91 percent, not 95 percent for Windows, right? Wrong. That claim is based on very skewed data. All non-Apple personal computers are shipped with Windows. However, some unknown but clearly substantial number of those machines are then wiped to put other operating systems on. Further, a large portion of open source operating system users buy their computers piecemeal to be assembled personally, and those sales typically would not be included in market demographic research, because of the difficulty in tracking down and questioning the purchasers. There is simply no way that you can be certain what percentage of the market is actually using *nux. To be fair, MS does have the bulk of the market at this time, but that is rapidly changing, with MacOS gaining fairly steadily on WIN, and *nux making leaps and bounds. I think that you will find that the personal computing landscape is going to be a very different place in a very short period of time, and you would do well to learn to use tools that will be worthwhile if your preferred platform tanks. Just my .02.

This c|net article states that Palm's market share slipped from 65% to 60.5% and Handspring's from 27% to 26%. It also says that the iPaq's market share has incredibly doubled... from 2% to 4%. This is hardly equivalent to iPaq cannibalizing Palm sales, and the numbers are exactly in line with my previous post.

Kevin Fox
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Let's see.. the Palm OS accounts for 89% of the retail market.. And, that's a problem?

Alex Bischoff

FireWire PCI cards only run about $30-40 these days. And you won't need it if you already get it built-in to your mobo (most high ends do). Change that to 'FireWire ~$50' and we'll call it even. :-)

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FireWire PCI cards only run about $30-40 these days. And you won't need it if you already get it built-in to your mobo (most high ends do). Change that to 'FireWire ~$50' and we'll call it even. :-)

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FireWire PCI cards only run about $30-40 these days. And you won't need it if you already get it built-in to your mobo (most high ends do). Change that to 'FireWire ~$50' and we'll call it even. :-)

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also:
these links have some additional information about H.R. 1542

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43709,00 .html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-5881148.html

http://www.broadbandweek.com/news/010507/print/010 507_news_tauzin.htm

_f

if they're implementing an ID system like this, then you know it's the correct technological solution.

What? Huh?!

I cannot imagine how mandatory identification for use of the Internet (as though it's a drug like alcohol) would not stifle the civil liberties of the good people of Mumbai.

Politics and agendas play large roles even in "forwards" nations. If such measures were introduced in the States, neither you nor I would be very likely to "know it's the correct technological solution." I don't know where all this naivete is coming from, but I do know that you your subjective opinion places too much trust in the government for your own good.

A law punishing pornography shows that the government of Mumbai is far more succeptible to extremist moral standards than interested in preserving civil liberties.

Journalism in this case is immune from criticism, as there was only a letter published, much like the first few pages of any magazine off the shelf. The letter itself was purely factual and to the point, only making one subjective argument about the tentative state of anonymity in Mumbai. If you prefer an alternate editorial format, don't let us stop you.

"A mature individual" realizes his or her priorities, and civil liberty really should become one of yours.

Well, actually, if you look at this cnet article - http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5924503.html you'll see that Microsoft has decided to release USB 2.0 support for Windows XP as a separate patch.
Which isn't to say that everything's quiet behind the curtain. Similar "protection" schemes can probably be tunneled on top of USB as well as on top of IEEE1394.

Late Tuesday, Microsoft responded to the open letter. "We appreciate the dialog on this issue--it's exactly the type of discussion Craig was hoping to foster," the company said in a statement.

Um, no. You have a faulty memory. Allow me to show you how wrong you are. This news.com article from yesterday explains how this is a case of Yahoo! reposting news from a year ago. This news.com article from April 2000 contains the initial Microsoft reaction, and I quote, "Microsoft said its engineers included a secret back door including the phrase 'Netscape engineers are weenies!' in Web site authoring software that could allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to potentially thousands of Web sites." Once they actually looked at it instead of reacting to media questions, they realized there was a hole there but not some secret backdoor.

Know why you couldn't find that Yahoo! article anymore? Because they removed it after realizing they screwed up.

Cheers,

Um, no. You have a faulty memory. Allow me to show you how wrong you are. This news.com article from yesterday explains how this is a case of Yahoo! reposting news from a year ago. This news.com article from April 2000 contains the initial Microsoft reaction, and I quote, "Microsoft said its engineers included a secret back door including the phrase 'Netscape engineers are weenies!' in Web site authoring software that could allow hackers to gain unauthorized access to potentially thousands of Web sites." Once they actually looked at it instead of reacting to media questions, they realized there was a hole there but not some secret backdoor.

Know why you couldn't find that Yahoo! article anymore? Because they removed it after realizing they screwed up.

Cheers,

It seems that perhaps Amazon's CEO has come to the same conclusion.

Or perhaps he just realized his company's valuation is a joke.

Under the organization's rules, Rambus was required to disclose that it had patents that potentially entitled it to royalties for DRAM and DDR DRAM. It didn't. Rambus, however, defended itself by stating that the rules were unclear and not enforced by JEDEC. Evidence uncovered during the case showed that JEDEC's enforcement procedures were less than perfect.

Funny you should mention it, but there is a CNet story about IBM doing exactly that (RSX builds em, IBM sells em). It is supposed to find a niche in the California power consumption market.

This applies equally to the "enterprise" and Joe User audiences.

The article states that the Toshiba will use a polysilicon display, which, according to this article, is one of the new low-power display technologies that is competing against the new organic displays.

As long as this new laptop does not include CD, floppy, or DVD drives, it should be very power efficient. I wonder what the power bottle kneck for such a laptop is. Does the 10GB harddrive zap too much juice? Or is it the graphics chipset? I bet the speakers are the most energy hungry parts on laptops such as this new Toshiba and the newer Sony Powerbooks.

The stock lost 23% today as insiders were released from their 1 year lockup-IPO deal and sold. This story suggests that Transmeta is not viewed with great enthusiasm by the people on the inside. Of course some of this selling could be attributed to pressures from other losses to raise capital, but you cant read it as good news regardless.

It'll be part of Hailstorm, integrated into their instant messenger. I think Napster's trying to squeeze $ out of Microsoft for committing to .NET/Hailstorm technologies. It would be a big win for .NET. Microsoft is looking for big Internet players to commit to .NET. They've already got eBay and buy.com for commerce.

No hardware to buy

THOUSANDS of national access numbers

You can make a tidy profit in rural areas by simply running a newspaper ad.

How:In the area I just moved to, there is very little DSL/Cable. The only local ISP charges $24.95 per month. I have just signed with a vISP tp provide service here, and I am being charged $8.00 per account. I can charge a paltry $15.00 per month, make a decent profit, undercut the other ISP, and offer the user the SAME phone number the local guy uses, as well as a 10mb website, 2 email addresses and free tech support
Amount of work by me?

Run a 16th page ad in the local paper. Setup a website with a signup form. Create a set of FAQs, mainly based off the thousands of available ISP websites and my personal experience in Tech Support.

Microsoft is pushing people to buy Office XP not for the new features but because it hides Clippy. That's pretty much it. $300 for an upgrade just to hide the Office Assistants (they'll still be on the help menu, just not on by default). Microsoft could release a 100KB patch to do the same thing. [Also see News.com, The Register, and MSBC NewsSource.]

So what does XP stand for? eXtra Profits, of course.

Don't get me wrong - what he said was true - but it would have more meaning for me if someone like RMS had said it.

Sorta makes one wonder about the fundamental engineering behind Dell's notebooks. To be fair, a similar problem plagued certain Compaq notebooks.

Sorta makes one wonder about the fundamental engineering behind Dell's notebooks. To be fair, a similar problem plagued certain Compaq notebooks.

Story w/out annoying Flash ad here.

Wired also has the story.

I love the preemptive strike (although I worry about Boies' track record as of late), but what I love the most is how one of the founders pimps out his 16 year old daughter! She is cute though...what do you think /.ers (asked w/ no fear now that I know that 95% of you are also male)?

This is pretty funny.

Now...who wants to create a css plugin for my email client so I can use it to legitimately protect my copyrighted correspondence (say, samples of my bad poetry) to select friends? That way, I can legally have decss to UNencrypt my own messages. Or is there some rule that ONLY the MPAA can use CSS? W
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The real reason, the simputer has been created is, the existing content on the web is not useful for an illiterate person. By producing low cost computers in local language,(in 2 languages at present) it gives an opportunity for content providers to target these groups with specialised content.
More links - Cnet article
Pc World article

BTW, the simputer comes with it's own license called the Simputer Public License. The Indian Institute of Science (IISC) and Encore, organisations behind the Simputer are not selling it & the news, is Manufacturers from other developing countries like venezuela, brazil, et al are keen on producing this Simputer.

What is the point of omitting Microsoft's name from the post? It is true that some people have not heard about this story but I knew about it since last week from this link at dslreports. Similar stories were posted at cnet and other news sites.

You're not a geek. Nothing we can do about it. You won't understand.

Just notice those are news for geeks. We are the ones who don't explore computers for pure application purposes. We enjoy our little addictions. There are plenty of business-man directed reviews on CNET -- here we strive to find others who appreciate the same things we appreciate as geeks. And part of our impression of a product is it's geek "coolness" factor.

this article today which says that Napster is dramatically stepping up its filters, to the point of major over-filtering (ie, false positives).

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5753893.html? tag=lthd
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

To develop scud missle controllers!

can be found here.

This was in response from another article in 1997 predicting a majory industry consolidation. The small ISPs were going to be gobbled up, they claimed. Well, there was a bit of truth of both sides.

What do I recommend? Go with a regional ISP of moderate size. They're not going to have a silly dot-com based business model (let's grab market share and throw money to the wind) and they're not going to be small enough to run themselves into the ground (how do we run a business, again?). The price will probably be on-par, and you stand a better chance of getting better service.

This was in response from another article in 1997 predicting a majory industry consolidation. The small ISPs were going to be gobbled up, they claimed. Well, there was a bit of truth of both sides.

What do I recommend? Go with a regional ISP of moderate size. They're not going to have a silly dot-com based business model (let's grab market share and throw money to the wind) and they're not going to be small enough to run themselves into the ground (how do we run a business, again?). The price will probably be on-par, and you stand a better chance of getting better service.

The real story today is not the P4, but the prices. Intel is slashing prices big time, ahead of their .13 micro manufacturing process which wont be operational until the end of this year. Basically, they are starting a price war with AMD, and it looks like it will be vicious. Why? PC Manufactures can read, and the verdict on the P4's real performance frankly no good. The P4 has a long way to go before it can be considered an improvement. Of course, consumers are idiots and they buy CPU's based on clock speed alone. However, the PC market is hosed right now. By the time the PC market recovers, AMD will be there with its next gen chips. This price war is something that Intel can afford. I wonder if AMD can afford it? AMD's manufacturing costs have always been more competative than Intels. However, a 50% price reduction has to sting, and AMD wont have .13 micron technology by the end of this year.

One of the added benefits is that the noise level of an office/cube is reduced substantially. I know I have started to find that the several machines in my office and the related noise from fans are starting to get fairly bothersome. Oddly, it is my laptop fan that is the noisiest.

I know that IBM is working on an ultra-quiet drive for laptops, so I am not the only person who is starting to find that noise is an issue. Do any of you have noise issues?

Dope Wars: The ultimate drug game. Buy and sell, make a profit. Nobody has to die (you can run from the police rather than shooting), and you can even play it on a Palm Pilot.

Jethro

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-202-5522429.html

"ArsDigita, an e-commerce company in the midst of layoffs and a major product overhaul, is bucking the trend of comrades selling open-source software.... The company laid off 29 employees in the last week, and the company's founder and former chairman, Philip Greenspun, has left to pursue other interests ..."

Note that the story quotes a current executive as saying Greenspun's departure was voluntary; Greenspun says, "last fall ... my services as a full-time employee of ArsDigita Corporation became unwanted."

This page at the ArsDigita site still lists Greenspun as chairman. I guess it's too much for a Web content company to correctly list its chairman in its own Web content?-)