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Parent refers to: this. :)

Also, a press release stating this same thing I just told you.
http://news.cnet.com/Dell-offers-new-Red-Hat-Linux/2110-1016_3-276048.html

More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result. ... Globally, about 2 billion passengers fly each year, so screening all passengers with backscatter X-ray scans could reasonably be expected to result in about 32 excess cancer deaths per year.

This is assuming of course that the backscatter x-ray works the same way. I'm not a physicist, but at least one professor at UCSF has raised the concern ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20022541-281.html#ixzz155dhfUQO ) that calculating the dosage by averaging over the whole body will give you a false low dose because the radiation is reflected off the skin and so is more concentrated there. Of course there are very intelligent people on both sides of the discussion, but I think it's a moot point regarding risk/benefit because the risks as stated above by experts (even though they may actually be higher) are already greater than the number of people who currently die to terrorism. So, our protective measure results in more deaths per year than does airline terrorism. Again, take all this with a grain of salt because of confounding variables like age and other idiosyncratic factors (will they live long enough to develop cancer? are they more susceptible to cancer due to youth/genetics?), but I'm going to opt for the pat-down to err on the side of caution, as it were.

The Wikipedia page has a good overview of the conflicting sources regarding the safety of the scanners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray

Small potatoes

"Lopez was head of purchasing for GM and defected abruptly to VW in 1993. GM accused Lopez of masterminding the theft of more than 20 boxes of documents on research, manufacturing and sales. The world's largest international corporate espionage case officially ended in 1997, when VW admitted no wrongdoing but settled the civil suit by agreeing to pay GM $100 million in cash and spend $1 billion on GM parts over seven years.

I don't follow this closely at all, but I would think if there was anything really interesting it would have been picked up by enough mainstream media outlets that it would have been difficult to avoid.

You mean like this and this?

Here is an article about how the TSA does *NOT* have the right to ask you for ID. Even their own in house legislative guy says this. There is a copy of the letter he sent out on TSA letter head stating that.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9769089-46.html
http://files.dubfire.net/warner-tsa.pdf

Should make for some interesting fun at the airport if everyone starts doing this. LOL

But Microsoft isn't taking kindly to the bounty offer. "Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNET. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20021836-52.html#ixzz15sFk9V00 http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/11/05/176251/2000-Bounty-For-Open-Source-Xbox-Kinect-Drivers

Link to longer article at CNET

Sadly, these lawsuits aren't new - some companies filed patents on multi-player network games in the 1980's, and proceeded to sue other game companies for using those techniques, despite the fact that similar games had been written and designed at universities and other research labs in the 60's and 70's. Even bedroom game programmers had worked on multi-player games using RS-232 ports.

Tales of Silicon Valley: Bruce Damer on Maze War

Typically 2x2G sticks are cheaper than 1x4G stick, particularly when it has to be ECC memory and DDR3. If you are talking about non-ECC memory then you aren't talking seriously. non-ECC memory is just fine for a consumer desktop (though even that is arguable when one is talking about storage in excess of 4GB), but in a server environment ECC is pretty much required. As of about a year ago I've started buying only ECC memory for desktops too.

Google did a study on memory in 2009, it raised a lot of eyebrows. Let me try googling up some references for people. cnet article. There. That references the pdf too if you want to read the actual paper.

-Matt

Here's HP's tablet/laptop:
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-touchsmart-tx2z-tablet/4505-3121_7-33490313.html

From the CNET article:

They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: "One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.

This is why I am extremely skeptical of claims that we will be able to effectively model the brain, or recreate it artificially, any time soon.

Exactly my thoughts.

Yet here, a phone with just as few features is readily available on the market for 20 bucks.

And it looks more intuitive than the phone pictured in TFA.

Fraud Alert: This Slashdot story was written to make a new commercial version control system, Plastic, seem as though it is the best, in my opinion.

Was a Slashdot editor paid to run this story? Is it Slashdot company policy to allow sneaky advertising???

You can judge a company's products by its morals: Oracle, Microsoft (huge hassles with products being unfinished), AOL (misleading accounting), and Enron (misleading accounting) are examples that come to mind.

Care to link us to the court case where a judge ruled Apple a monopoly?

All I can seem to find is this: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-232565.html

Kaleidiscape tried to make a hard-drive based dvd jukebox awhile back, and got sued out of existence. It's a durn shame; I'd have loved to buy one.

Apple pushed for DRM-free music purchases after it had abused the hell out of their position in the online music store business.

Not exactly. They pushed for DRM-free music purchases before they ever started the iTunes store, as outlined in the 2003 Rolling Stone interview with Steve Jobs. (Bottom of Page 2, Page 3) The music industry simply refused to let them open a store without DRM attached.

It also sounds like what AOL is doing with Project Phoenix

There's a "quick bar" at the top for sending short e-mails, instant messages (which pop up in very Google Chat-like windows), and text messages.

From ZDNet coverage of the trial

Antitrust prosecutors showed the CEO being asked about a May 1997 email in which Microsoft manager Ben Slivka said he soon would publicly disparage a Java product provided by Sun Microsystems.

"JDK 1.2 has JFC, which we're going to be pissing on at every opportunity," Slivka told Gates in the email

MS did want to hurt Java, to make it a Windows-only thing (or at least, keep Java-on-Windows developers entirely on Windows and not port their apps to other platforms). At no point did MS want to get rid of AWT or Swing, which are the main parts of Java that are shit on any platform and replace them with their own Java GUI technology.

The iPhone sold 500k units in 3 days. That breaks down to 166k per day.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9738446-7.html#ixzz14zYv3Wik

Is that better for you?

Moron.

This is the first time Google has ever actually attempted to wield power.

Huh?

Net Neutrality, Spectrum Auction, Defining the mobile platform, and battling Microsoft all immediately come to mind as times that Google has attempted to wield power.

I'm sure we could come up with others if we thought about it.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1014_3-5255715.html

Microsoft did pay the EU fines.

And MS Office sales were halted. The judge upheld the injunction, not stopped it.

http://techie-buzz.com/microsoft/injunction-on-sale-of-microsoft-office-2007-word-2007-in-the-us-post-jan-11-2010-upheld.html

Then Microsoft swiftly resolved their patent case to resume sales because they are terrified of losing one of their two biggest cash cows. They can not afford to have an injunction against sales.

Please stop lying and spreading FUD.

There is a lot of pressure, but you just need to know how to handle it, or push it back if necessary

You are welcome to defend your employer, and at Oracle I don't blame you for using AC to do it, but this is not exactly an observation I came up with out of the blue sky...

I'll just leave this here for you bud.

http://news.cnet.com/The-pitch-Inside-the-pressure-cooker/2009-1017_3-897414.html

Please understand, I think Oracle is a great product at its core. It almost literally runs the world at this point, I just question from both public articles (such as linked) and personal experience (15 years as a DBA, architect, developer, and now Development Officer) Oracle's tactics. Even if they were the greatest employer EVER, it still wouldn't excuse they way they treat their customers. They routinely overcharge for services and pad consulting gigs.

I've been deposed by Oracle in court before (as part of a PS lawsuit), and watching them treat their customers like dogs speaks volumes. I refuse to believe anyone with the kind of sleazy ethics I watched performed (on more than one occasion I might add) can somehow magically be paradigms of humanity internally. On one particularly memorable occasion, I watched Peoplesoft almost destroy a company by trying to implement a beta version of a SQL Server based product(before Oracle bought them), and then got to watch Oracle (via the courts, after the PS buyout) trying to defend Microsoft as a perfectly viable platform. These weren't lawyers,by the way. When it's 25M$ or so of trainwreck, you get real life VP's to show up and lie.

has this caused Google to stop hosting ads (all by itself) in the past?

Go for a hybrid like the Seagate Momentus XT (review on CNet).

Which seem to be having problems with MBPs.

so with this tiny form factor, is there any way to install this inside a unibody macbook pro? I'd love to go SSD but want to keep a spinning drive for decent storage capacity, and don't want to lose my dvd drive.

come on OWC, make it happen! :)

dave

Go for a hybrid like the Seagate Momentus XT (review on CNet).

Microsoft issued a pretty nasty response the last time this was posted in the public. That could have... helped.

Looks easy to me.

• Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux and other patent claims
• Aiming at Android, Microsoft sues Motorola
• Microsoft sues Salesforce.com for alleged patent infringement

That's before we get to the actions of the major Microsoft shareholders e.g: Microsoft Co-Founder Launches Patent War "

And finally of course ; Microsoft's apparent involvement in many proxy actions.

• Microsoft Proxy Fights Against Google in the United States
• Microsoft Proxy Attack on GNU/Linux Continues With TurboHercules
• Google Accuses Microsoft of Proxy Legal War
• Also suggestions of MS involvement in the SCO lawsuit

Under previous management MS may not have been lawsuit happy. Nowadays they pretty clearly are.

The vast amounts of light pollution in cities means that those of us who live in them are more susceptible to cancer and other diseases.

And to think, all those astronomers were doing more than just whining.

Like a two year minimum warranty? The EC is looking into that.

Google doesn't destroy the books, they've got a patent on "unbending" the pages. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10232931-76.html

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_activates_android_kill_switch_zaps_useless_apps.php

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10010070-37.html

Both Android and the iPhone have kill switches as well.

Google has actually used theirs.

Here's an article you won't see written about the iPhone: How Can I Tell If An Android App Is Malware?

Sure you will! Researcher warns of risks from rogue iPhone apps

Then again I thought the iPad could benefit greatly from a stylus, just because of it's sheer size and annotating pages with a pen is easier than typing, but, that's just my POV.

Want to take notes on an iPad? Here's your stylus

Apple said in February 2007 that they would offer DRM free music if allowed. EMI allowed them in May 2007.

Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg said in February 2006 (at the Music 2.0 conference) that the music companies should sell DRM-free music: "Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players."

Bill Gates also expressed his problems with the state of music DRM in December 2006 in an informal Q&A discussing the Mix Conference: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."

Actions speak louder than words I guess. Amazon didn't offer it until January 2008. So technically Apple was the first to offer DRM-free music.

"Technically," eMusic and Amie Street offered DRM-free music way before Apple, but I understand why we aren't counting them in this thread.

However, Yahoo Music acted ("experimented," actually) by offering Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" as a DRM-free MP3 file in July 2006, offred an entire Jesse McCartney album in September 2006, and a Norah Jones single in December 2006.

All this before Steve Jobs made his "bold" statement in Febraury 2007.

That dispels your theory that Amazon was the leader.

Interestigly, Amazon was rumored to be considering an MP3-only music download store in January 2007 (at the latest), before Steve Jobs made his statement.

Apple said in February 2007 that they would offer DRM free music if allowed. EMI allowed them in May 2007.

Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg said in February 2006 (at the Music 2.0 conference) that the music companies should sell DRM-free music: "Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players."

Bill Gates also expressed his problems with the state of music DRM in December 2006 in an informal Q&A discussing the Mix Conference: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."

Actions speak louder than words I guess. Amazon didn't offer it until January 2008. So technically Apple was the first to offer DRM-free music.

"Technically," eMusic and Amie Street offered DRM-free music way before Apple, but I understand why we aren't counting them in this thread.

However, Yahoo Music acted ("experimented," actually) by offering Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" as a DRM-free MP3 file in July 2006, offred an entire Jesse McCartney album in September 2006, and a Norah Jones single in December 2006.

All this before Steve Jobs made his "bold" statement in Febraury 2007.

That dispels your theory that Amazon was the leader.

Interestigly, Amazon was rumored to be considering an MP3-only music download store in January 2007 (at the latest), before Steve Jobs made his statement.

Compaq - 1997

IBM - February 11, 1998

Dell - January 30, 1998

HP - February 14, 1998

Gateway - March 1, 1998

And those aren't introduction dates, they're just handy examples.

By the way, those listed companies were the top 5 PC makers in Q3 1998, globally and in the US, and they accounted for the strait-up majority of the US PC market at the time.

And Apple sold only a tiny fraction of the USB PCs bought in the era of the early iMac. "USB PC shipments were estimated at 20 million units in 1997 and 100 million units in 1999." So I'll split the difference and say 1998 saw 50 million USB PCs sold. How many were iMacs? Try 0.8 million. So that's 0.8 million versus 50 million. Let's be charitable and call that a 50:1 ratio or 2% of market share. Ouch.

Well, that wasn't a full year. How about 1999? We've seen the overall number of 100 million USB PCs, but in 1999 Apple sold only 1.8 million iMacs. So in 1999 USB iMacs again accounted for roughly 2% of the USB PC market. Still ouch.

So, the iMac was not the first PC with USB, the iMac was not the major but rather a fractionally tiny vector for USB into the marketplace, and the iMac did not "exclude all other port types."

My feeling is that they (Google) are partially responsible for the decline of Sun.

Here's a picture of Google and Sun sitting on a stage together like friends.

And what does Google do it's "friend"? Stabs it in the back by coming up with a way to avoid pay royalties for mobile Java, which subsidized free desktop Java. That was exactly the time Sun needed the revenue, and Google inspired the whole industry to ditch Sun. Loss of revenue led to being sold.

The funny thing is how Google is portraying itself as the savior of open source. Yet listen to Andy Rubin (Android head) about the GPL:

"The thing that worries me about GPL is this: suppose Samsung wants to build a phone that's different in features and functionality than (one from) LG. If everything on the phone was GPL, any applications or user interface enhancements that Samsung did, they would have to contribute back," said Andy Rubin, Google's Android engineering director, in a 2008 interview. "At the application layer, GPL doesn't work."

Was thinking of 'Windows Phone 7 limits camera access for apps"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20020522-56.html?tag=mncol;1n
They seem to be 'working on it' or its not for any app to use :)

So, the Psyop Worked.

  Propaganda 101.

I'd argue they are now an ISP:

Stanford Fiber Network, provided by Google.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20020364-265.html

This is only the pilot. Then begins the rollout in the city that wins their earlier fiber competition.

Also, some pure ISPs still exist. Megapath (previously Covad, Speakeasy, etc.) for example. Clearwire is a wholesale "4G" provider for Sprint first, and an ISP second.

These are not imaginary threats. They are very real.

There is the solar storm of 1859 which caused fires that burned down multiple telegraph offices.

Remember the blackout of 2003? The link is to a report straight from NERC, the power grid regulatory commission responsible for the area involved in the blackout.

Then let's not forget about stuxnet worm.

It is painfully obvious that these are not just crazy fears. As someone who has intimate knowledge of IT systems within a major U.S. power company conglomerate, and is very close to someone who designs/tests/commissions power plant generator hardware, I can assure you that these threats are very real.

The rather new Dell plant near Winston-Salem was just shut down (moved to Mexico), and there has been rumors of Apple buying it for manufacturing as well.

As great as this would be, I'll believe it when I see it. I just can't imagine that an organization as big as Apple would be so forward thinking as recognizing that the cost of doing business overseas is often not realized immediately.

Apple did pull back on an Indian call center several years ago when they realized it might not make the best business sense. http://news.cnet.com/Apple-hangs-up-on-India-call-center/2100-1047_3-6079967.html

Apple also does maintain a US manufacturing plant, but it's mainly for customers that require US built computers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwSM55bsCrM

I could watch it over & over... It puts a smile on my face... :)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10036286-62.html

Cheers... Clark

500k sqft is a decent size datacenter for a single building, though there are a number of larger datacenter buildings, and many larger datacenter complexes (like Stone Mountain at 6 million sqft) or (DataPort at 3.5 million sqft).

Obviously, if you're going to use pirated or [i]any[/i] other illegal kind of software ...

In the US it is not illegal.

... without this link: Finally after 20 years of court battles, the electronics giant agrees to pay the inventor of the device that made its success.

Actually the are far more educated than Windows user, far more web savvy, more likely to build their own web sites, and have been online longer.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-943519.html

Just because someone prefers an OS with less hassle doesn't mean they are less capable. It just means they are smart for not wanting to fuck with their PC all day to keep it running.

You are also rating the ability to build a PC higher than is needed in the real world. Although it's a useful skill, it's hardly going to be profitable for the average user considering how cheap PC's are these days.

Although it may be popular to bash the 'elite' in political circles, I expect better from /. where elite (as in educated) is the last thing we should be bashing.

The paranoia here is all based on the iPad and the fact that Steve has declared that "the PC is over".

Did he ever say "the PC is over", in exactly those words, or did he, instead, say "We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it's uncomfortable," and "PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around." but that only "one out of x people will need them." The two are inequivalent.