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Pretty much, yep.

LOL. A little tidbit of history that may not be widely known or at least not widely remembered - Microsoft has actually developed web-based versions of its Office product on at least 2 previous occasions, perhaps more. These products never saw the light of day, and for various reasons, strategic and political chief among them, the projects were axed, developers reassigned, and code tossed away then restarted some time later when somebody decided that NOW the time was ripe for a web-based office.

Amusingly enough, I believe one of these efforts was part of what was originally termed the ".NET initiative" and was called "Office.NET" at least as a working title - back when .NET meant anything and everything, before they decided that .NET actually was the class library and VM for their C# language. See, for example, this article from back in 2002.

Remember what a confused mess the .NET initiative was? It's truly amazing how much Microsoft has had its head up its ass over the last decade. Windows 7 is the first decent product they've put out in *years*.

A friend of mine from college, a very bright guy, was one of the project managers on the Office.NET project before it got axed. Anyway, he was so frustrated by his experience with this project that I believe it was in part his reason for leaving Microsoft.

So... it seems like they finally followed through on this, but it's not like the idea just occurred to them recently. No, it's more likely they only decided to bring it to market now because of the cloud computing hype and the fact that the traction of OpenOffice.Org and other Office alternatives has them scared shitless (of course, OpenOffice has just fragmented itself and will probably manage to squander the traction they've finally obtained after all these years of effort).

To be honest, after reading Steve Jobs' rant, 'spin computer' could equally be an Apple product.

Once a year, you count how many employees you have, you write MS a big check, and you're done with it.

Does this include employees who don't use a desktop or laptop PC in the course of their job, and employees who use a desktop or laptop PC running something other than Windows, such as all the Macs in marketing? If so, it smacks of the "per processor licensing" that got Microsoft in trouble with the US Department of Justice in 1994.

This made me chuckle: "the oil at a solar thermal plant".

The proliferation of solar thermal power plants is one of the worst-publicized success stories of the modern age. Not that there isn't tons of stuff googlable about it:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20012060-54.html
http://terrainforma.ca/2010/09/20/the-promise-of-thermal-solar-power-activist-and-educator-sheila-watt-cloutier/
http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/30/the-solar-power-you-dont-hear-about/
http://carbon-pros.com/blog1/2009/06/solar_thermal_at_utility_scale.html
http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/22/energy-dept-gives-brightsource-solar-thermal-a-1-4b-boost/
http://www.abengoasolar.es/corp/web/en/index.html
http://www.acciona-na.com/About-Us/Our-Projects/U-S-/Nevada-Solar-One.aspx
http://www.leonardo-energy.org/worlds-largest-solar-thermal-power-plant

No, GM called it a range-extended electric vehicle. Now that it has recently been revealed that the Volt cannot achieve full top speed without the gasoline engine running

That's incorrect. Slashdot printed that, but it is incorrect.

It connects the ICE to the wheels when the battery is flat AND you go over 70mph, not when the battery is flat OR you go over 70mph as slashdot reported.

When you want to go over 70mph on the battery (before it goes flat), a 2nd electric motor kicks on, not the ICE.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20019260-48.html

You are misinformed. It would be fantastic if you would not spread your misinformation to others.

I'm in Canada, and if I'm roaming, I fully expect to be brutally RAPED by my telco.

When down in the U.S. recently, I turned my radio off, and I really, really hope that my phone didn't apply some kind of undocumented feature to try to access some wireless data while I was out. If so, I'm screwed.

It's not just Canada either. A friend in Germany had a GPS on his new smartphone. He used the GPS to get his current location, figuring it would cost a few bucks, but it was cool. He didn't know that the app went into the background.... At the end of the month, his bill was 6000 Euro... at the time, that's about $10k USD. They're forcing him to pay the bill. He's on social assistance.

These stories are not uncommon. A coworker had a bill for $4500 on an "Unlimited voice/Unlimited data" plan. Turns out that he didn't have the "Unlimited voice/Unlimited Data/Unlimited Tethering" plan. Another story was in the newspaper recently for a fellow who thought he'd look a couple things up on the net while he was overseas. What could it cost? $100 at the most? Who cares? oh no... the bill was in the thousands.

Just search Google:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/21927813/detail.html $21k

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20003930-71.html $18k

http://boingboing.net/2007/07/31/att-iphone-intl-roam.html $3k

From that last one, it looks like I need to get the "unlimited/unlimited/unlimited/unlimited" plan if I wanted to check a web page while overseas. And here I thought the "unlimited/unlimited/unlimited" plan would be okay. Can't they just have a "please don't rape me?" plan?

They're thieves. I only have the plan because of work, and my bill and the contracts really make me very uncomfortable. What would have happened if my phone accidentally tunred on its radio and synced the email when I was in the U.S.? $10k mistake?

Yes see here And they are the largest manufacturer in their segment in the world. They got rid of ALL Microsoft products from their organization. And they mention huge savings also. Check it out.

There's been one going on for the past year.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10390568-264.html?tag=mncol;txt

The company was in terrible shape in 1997. Even MIchael Dell, when asked what he thought would be Apple's best strategy, said "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"
At the time Apple was worth less than $5 billion.

Mac OS 9 probably should have been called Mac OS 8.7, but for the fact that Jobs needed a quick way out of the contracts Apple had with the cloners, which were killing Apple.

The loophole that was found was that the cloners' licenses to distribute Mac OS were only valid for version 8.x. Thus they renamed Mac OS 8.7 to Mac OS 9 and refused to license the new major version to the cloners, putting them out of business.

~Philly

Even ignoring that it was MacOS 8: http://news.cnet.com/Umax-gains-Mac-OS-8-license/2100-1001_3-203029.html

The PS3? The last straw for me was in 2000 (2001?) when I bought a wildly overpriced network walkman NW-MS9 "MP3" player that wouldn't play MP3s - http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/sony-nw-ms9-network/1707-6490_7-6148779.html

Awesome hardware completely crippled for the sake of ensuring no possible way to share a song with it.

Sony: just say no.

ch

Hey, it worked on the Genovese family. Of course, that was a few years ago.

Actually, you're probably wearing an even better FBI tracker on your belt right now. You even paid for it yourself, with two-year contract to a carrier who will gladly allow the FBI to follow you anytime they like. Hell, you've even given them a mic and video camera to use too. Think that sounds all tin-foil hat? Read all about it.

The quick and painless answer would be to download a Flash Cleaner from a reputable host site. There are quite a few that have popped-up in the last year.

I cannot really comment on the efficacy b/c the one I use never finds anything thanks to SandboxIE & NoScript. I run it to double-check occasionally, it's portable...no install required.

Many companies are transitioning to general purpose software as the features expand. High debt software is often replaced with an off the shelf solution with a much lower cost.

As examples, at home, I no longer use Photoshop. Gimp is the replacement. Open Office replaced MS Office. Natulus replaced Nero or EZ CD Creator. Ubuntu replaced Windows on most machines. I don't pay for expensive upgrades when possible. Many small companies are making the same move.

Only one machine has the MS Debt software for the few things that just have to have it. I no longer upgrade high debt software on the various desktops and laptops we use.

Ernie Ball figured this out years ago and published his story online.
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html/

It's all about ads ... What else !?!?!

Google's new robot car: Crazy good or crazy crazy?

And I am attempting to ignore the fact that Google could, indeed, with all its fine GPS sensorship, track you along every inch of your route. It could also send you nice ads on your laptop or GPS screen, as you'll have all your attentive abilities at the company's full disposal.

And while you are trying to get to your lunch appointment in Chinatown, your google car will make a little detour to make sure you actually drive by the shop that paid google a lot of money for the ads. And your google car will make sure that you actually look at the ads.

I wonder now if AdBlock Plus would work in a google car ... ?

Especially if you have a family you are taking care of. You have that extra drive to make sure your daughter will grow up in a free country, but that's tempered by the knowledge that certain acts of civil disobedience (or extrapolating to an illegally oppressive government - those may be acts of constitutional obedience) may place you in custody/court for a sufficient amount of time to lose your job. That could result in failure to pay mortgage, inability to obtain another job within your career, etc...

I like to think that my daughter will still think of me as her hero and role model when she grows up, and I know my wife would support me (we'd probably be in trouble together actually) if it were one of the Big freedom issues. So what do you do when it's things like back scatter screening on a field-trip to the courthouse or driving through a DUI checkpoint in the coldest form of sobriety?

This is the insidious danger inherent in the erosion of freedom: not enough to die for, not even enough to make you homeless or hungry or inconvenienced over, but enough, over time, to leave you with a shallow shadow of what our ancestors died for.

Very funny. Although my laptop has DVI out that I can convert to HDMI, there's no sound.

My Samsung Blu-ray player can stream video, but their implementation of SMB won't easily connect to non-Windows shares (Linux or Mac).

When you finally understand this simple truth then you'll realize that there's also no way you can audit or manage software licenses. Not just because of those phantom machines that show up from time to time, but also because of all the employees who bring in a useful program CD from home or download something handy from the internet. You can tell them this isn't permitted - we actually put big red labels on the front of every machine that reminded them that this was prohibited. That didn't slow them down a bit. Keep this in mind next time BSA wants to come audit you...

That's why Ernie Ball won't allow Microsoft products in their offices or factories.

Apple Prepping CDMA iPhone

I wouldn't so much say it's a British thing as much as a government thing. The NSA is pretty far ahead of academics with encryption technology too.

"It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA "tweaks" actually improved the security of DES. This means that back in the '70s, the National Security Agency was two decades ahead of the state of the art."
(from http://news.cnet.com/Saluting-the-data-encryption-legacy/2010-1029_3-5381232.html)

Create a batch file with a shady sort of name

You can use a simple command like >> start iexplore -k "error.htm"

Use http://download.cnet.com/Bat-To-Exe-Converter/3000-2069_4-10555897.html to convert the file to an executable. Have your students run the file so that it opens the error page in IE kiosk mode.(Annoying enough to not have a "Close" button) Demonstrate how open windows can be tracked to their parent process(error.htm is opened by sh4dY.exe) from within task manager. Hunt down and terminate the offending process, delete the exe and maybe the offending web page.

Patent filed Feb 28th, 2007 by Facebook Announced November 8th, 2006 by Helio GFY Facebook

Wrong. Tech support for communications systems (including the telegraph) was invented in 1860: http://news.cnet.com/2300-1035_3-10004616.html?tag=mncol

Yes, it requires more hardware than XP. For example, most netbooks more than 2 years old would have problems (no seriously, it runs fine on my dad's 1GB, 1.6GHz Atom netbook).

Netbooks more than 2 years old would be small SSD models. Such as the original EeePC 4G: 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD. It's impossible to install a stock version of Vista or 7 on that drive. Which is why they coaxed cheap XP licences out of Microsoft by flirting with Linux. The moment they hit 1GB RAM / 160GB hard drive they had enough hardware to run Vista or Seven, but people were addicted to the cheap XP licences.

My EeePC 4G is upgraded to 2GB RAM, and it actually runs Windows 7 surprisingly well off a USB harddrive (particularly considering it's a USB hard drive). One downside is it has an Intel GMA 910 GPU, which is infamous for only having XPDM drivers, and not WDDM drivers which are required for Aero, and contributing greatly to "Vista Capable" lawsuites. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10097511-56.html

I've been satisfied with Windows 7 on a number of systems I have it on. A 3 year old HP laptop that shipped with Vista, that I downgraded to XP, and have since upgraded to 7. An AMD Neo based Netbook, even a PIV 2.6Ghz with a Geforce FX 5200.

They will have to spend big to get out of the zone of irrelevancy. It sounds like a miscalculation born of arrogance to me.

A few posts have made the point that Amazon is better at presenting relevant content than Google when it comes to showing a catalog of things you are likely to buy.

Another reason that I think Amazon will succeed in this venture is that they have a large customer base that trusts them. A study was done that found that Amazon.com is the most trusted brand in U.S.A.

Here is a link to a blog discussing it: "Study: Amazon.com is most trusted brand in U.S." http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10457727-62.html

Note: Some brands that did well in other countries were Nokia, Toyota, Colgate, Pampers. Microsoft was #1 most trusted in the Czeck Republic.

Actually, there are ALREADY more Android users than iPhone users. And the number is just going to grow. However, you are absolutely correct about the fact that iPhone users are more affluent.

I don't believe that's true. According to CNET, the iPhone still has over three times more market share than Android. Also, we are interested in how the two systems have performed over time (as the sales counts have been accumulating over several years), and the iPhone has had upwards of 50% share at the times when Android was still languishing around 0%.

This is a bullshit answer that people fighting against piracy always come up against. You can't EVER prove this statement one way or another.

It goes both ways. Piracy advocates (or sympathisers like me) can't prove that piracy is NOT harmful, either. I often don't use that argument as a real argument, but as a way to highlight meaningless stats and generally the faith- or entitlement-based stance most anti-pirates take ("I sold 10000 copies, but there were 30000 illegal copies, OMG I must be losing millions! -- even though I made millions, too." "If I don't control it, it must be bad!" etc)..

I strongly believe, although I can't call this a "fact", that the iPhone marketplace is evidence otherwise.

This is one of those things where we have to agree to disagree. For the reasons I've given in this and my previous post, I think the iPhone market has little in common with the Android market.

In a way, it's like comparing the commercial application markets for Windows and Linux, where it's quite clear that if someone wants to invest in software development, Windows is where the money is -- regardless of whether the piracy rate for Windows software is many times more than for Linux software!

And although it isn't relevant to the conversation, I think it would be fair to admit that I myself have pirated software on a PC for various reasons, although I would no longer do so now (I'm 29). (well, I guess just one reason: money. Maybe one could argue that the times that I download pirated software to circumvent DRM on games that I have validly purchased... hello E.A. ... is legally piracy, but that doesn't kill the economy of the games market)

I've been there before in my time. While I don't really care to make time for anything other than books these days (the paper kind, mind you), I too have pirated a few things before. Mainly movies and some Windows games from the olden days.

My reasons were often very different from yours, however. I would pirate before buying, to make sure I was buying something that was worth it. I would start watching/playing the pirated version, and would buy based on the quality on the product, rather than the quality of the marketing.

I have to admit, I'm not so much pro-piracy, as much as I am anti-anti-piracy. I think walled gardens/braindead devices, stupid DRM, draconian copyright laws, internet censorship, the loss of internet privacy and so on are all the result of creators that are panicking without any evidence that it's a time to panic (and are being taken advantage of by some of their middlemen). All those things are WAY more dangerous to a much larger number of people than piracy. I just don't want my kids to grow up in a world where everything has been torn apart for such a lame reason, so I'm happier to tolerate some piracy (and any unwanted side-effects it might or might not have) than to accept the "solutions" we are being presented with.

Incidentally, the "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign from the 80s comes to mind. Music is still alive, even though home taping is still with us. It's "music" that almost killed home taping, not the other way around!

Would Siemens using Linux instead of Windows even make a difference?

[thumb drive worm] -> [Windows Box] -> [hardware device with default password]

[some other attack vector] -> [Linux Box] -> [hardware device with default password]

Definitely would have changed the attack vector. It possibly could have increased the difficulty.

After all Siemens has advised customers not to change the default passwords in their product: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20011095-83.html

The default password issue probably wouldn't have mattered much. The Windows box would probably have just stored the credentials locally anyway. Just a matter of knowing how and where the Siemens software stored it. The attackers obviously had some time to play with the software. It would just take a little longer to develop the attack. ROT13 on a value in some.ini file... back in business.

Would Siemens using Linux instead of Windows even make a difference?

After all Siemens has advised customers not to change the default passwords in their product: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20011095-83.html

SELinux, while flawed, is a massive step in the right direction, though. I'd liken it to at least putting up security cameras and reinforced plexi-glass at the local bank. It won't stop real hardened thieves, but it will deter the random criminal most of the time. As it is, on my Windows box, I have to have the following running:

Why not? How do you think they'll get around it?

5 programs just to get online. And it's only going to get worse until the OS makers get rightfully paranoid and distrustful.

And that reminds me why I don't use Windows anymore. Not good out of the box, lots of third party software required that slows the system down to a crawl and constantly wants attention, and which eventually is almost guaranteed to do something fishy or outright against your interests.

Examples:
Zone Alarm, which makes it sound like it's saying you've got a virus (unless you read very carefully) and suggests to pay money.
Antivirus companies, for instance Symantec, which worked closely with the maker to avoid reporting the Sony rootkit.

No, this is most definitely the entirely wrong way to do security. Not only it misses things, sometimes it actually sides with the very thing it's supposed to protect from.

"There's a tiny minority of loudmouths who like Apple..."

Of course it has nothing to do with Apple having the highest customer satisfaction rating of any PC maker AGAIN:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20017064-260.html

You should probably cite the source for your claim about failure rates. Even if true it doesn't really change the fact that Apple's customers are the most satisfied. I'd say there is more than a "tiny minority" (whatever that means) who like Apple.

USERS paid developers over $1 billion, and Apple snatched over $300,000. Saying Apple has paid $1 billion to developers is like saying VISA has paid companies $1 zillion dollars. Nice try, Steve Jobs!

Reading is fundamental. Apple clearly stated they paid $1 Billion to developers not that users paid them $1 Billion. It's in big letters and everything!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20007010-260.html

"Paid to Developers!!!!!!"

You do realize that Apple has paid out over a billion dollars to developers? I always enjoy these off the cuff statemetns about how poorly Apple Developers are treated when the simple fact is, that it is a lucrative market, which is why 3 of 4 still plan to develop for it in the immediate future. (ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20007010-260.html)

Assuming they create a good product, they are treated very well, getting an instant distribution model that functions at break even. Not a bad deal at all.

Given the way that Apple treats 3rd party devs and the locked down phone, it would be very surprising if Apple keeps their loyalty without making a major course correction. Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.

The simple fact is that a huge majority of apps are approved within 2 weeks. Of those that are rejected, almost unilaterally they violated the developer agreement, and then complain about it after the fact. Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.

I know it's popular to love to hate Apple lately, but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement. I will grant that some of these rejections seem a bit stupid.

Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.

Extremely well said. Sorry to have to watch your comment get modded down by the anti-apple crowd :(

You do realize that Apple has paid out over a billion dollars to developers? I always enjoy these off the cuff statemetns about how poorly Apple Developers are treated when the simple fact is, that it is a lucrative market, which is why 3 of 4 still plan to develop for it in the immediate future. (ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20007010-260.html)

Assuming they create a good product, they are treated very well, getting an instant distribution model that functions at break even. Not a bad deal at all.

Given the way that Apple treats 3rd party devs and the locked down phone, it would be very surprising if Apple keeps their loyalty without making a major course correction. Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.

The simple fact is that a huge majority of apps are approved within 2 weeks. Of those that are rejected, almost unilaterally they violated the developer agreement, and then complain about it after the fact. Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.

I know it's popular to love to hate Apple lately, but the simple fact is that the majority of apps are rejected because the developer took a chance and ignored the agreement. I will grant that some of these rejections seem a bit stupid.

Given that 95% percent are accepted without any issue at all, leaving only 5% of questionable apps, the argument that Apple is rejecting apps willy nilly is not exactly a good reflection of reality.

Straight downloading without resorting to P2P is the way to go, absolutely no-one has ever been sued for just downloading.

No one has been sued for "straight" downloading because nobody is doing that, it is a stilly way of doing it. Who would host that "straight" downloading? That person would be in the worng as much as the one seeding, plus get get a extra isp fee for been silly and not using p2p.

On p2p, you are not infrigning because you do not distribute, it is the remote peer that use your computer to make a private copy. The court ruled that the internet is equivalant to the library copier 2.0. And as such, you can use other's copier to make a copy that you keep to yourself and this wont constitute distribution.

My bad for not providing citation in my original comment. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5182641.htm

"The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution," Finckenstein wrote. "Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying."

Where is your citation? Oh that right "you think that". Well congrat on your insightful mod.

I've noticed if I buy something light it wont register when I put it on the scale. Dropping it on the scale with a little force seems to work.
 
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At my local checkout you can shut the sound off (prevents machine from saying "Please weigh your bananas"), enter the item as bananas (the cheapest item by weight), and pay .69 cents a pound for whatever you want. I've only know people to do this with other fruits and vegetables but I suppose it would work with anything. The one person watching 5-6 checkouts rarely pays attention to anything.
 
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The OS has always supported right click, since at least OS 8.6 - just plug in a 2 button mouse, or use control+click. The single button was all about lack of confusion, but it was not "enforced" if you wanted to be able to right click.

Correction: the OS has supported contextual menus since Mac OS 8.0 (1997), but right-clicking was not supported natively until Mac OS X (2001, but nobody used 10.0 because it was terrible). Prior to that, right-clicking was only supported through the use of third-party drivers (example) that simulated a control-click.

As of Mac OS X, multiple button mice (with scroll wheels) are natively supported by the operating system.

First, a lot of us use tools like click2flash that report themselves AS Flash, but are NOT Flash
Second, people have Flash largely because it came preinstalled. I don't know of anyone who has actually gone out of their way to install Flash

I don't know what you mean by a "lot of us."

But I do have some idea of how many people seek out and install Flash itself.

Download.com. Stats For Adobe Flash Player v. 10.1

Windows 20,850,459 [From June 10]
117,697 Last Week.
Mac 934,313 [From August 10]
2,744 Last Week

21 million requests for Flash 10.1 rooted through a single source.

Adobe Flash Player (Windows)
  Adobe Flash Player (Mac)

First, a lot of us use tools like click2flash that report themselves AS Flash, but are NOT Flash
Second, people have Flash largely because it came preinstalled. I don't know of anyone who has actually gone out of their way to install Flash

I don't know what you mean by a "lot of us."

But I do have some idea of how many people seek out and install Flash itself.

Download.com. Stats For Adobe Flash Player v. 10.1

Windows 20,850,459 [From June 10]
117,697 Last Week.
Mac 934,313 [From August 10]
2,744 Last Week

21 million requests for Flash 10.1 rooted through a single source.

Adobe Flash Player (Windows)
  Adobe Flash Player (Mac)

The map also includes information like Iran blocking Youtube.
 
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Oops, sorry if I struck a nerve :P

I've been through a fair share of cheap inkjets and multifunctions... Epson, Brother, Lexmark, Dell, etc. They'd get gummed up and burn through ink and have all kinds of problems... Not the least of which includes driver support. It can be a real pain to get older hardware (5 year old Dell laptops with Intel 855 GPU?!) to work in newer versions of Windows when the drivers were only signed for XP/2K

So yeah, I do my research, checking out reviews at http://cnet.com/ as well as scoping out the Linux support situation. To me it's a sign of quality and maturity... some hobbyist saw the product was 133+ enough to spend the time getting it working. And sometimes the manufacturer invests their time into better interoperability as well, and I appreciate that (but tend to trust the hobbyist packages more).

I run a mixed shop, so Linux is just another *NIX (as opposed to a Windows "replacement"). I do have a Windows box or two to play games. Most of the transition pain is felt on the Windows side... like having to tweak a bunch of registry settings to connect to the samba file server with Vista/Win7 ... or getting legacy programs to work on 64-bit Windows since they had the *brilliant* idea to move legacy apps to "C:\Program Files (x86)" and put the new 64-bit stuff in the old "C:\Program Files" location.

Obviously we've had different life experiences, but interoperability weighs in pretty heavily with mine, and I laugh if you really think the Windows world is all the compatibility and stability you say it is... you really haven't been in the field that long :P But at least it seems like we both enjoy tinkering with the tech... by all indications there will be plenty more where that came from ;-)

You cannot kill your way out of them, since as you kill people, you make more insurgents.

Unless you kill all the people...
 
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Hello,

Below is a list of free application software firewalls I put together a while ago. Not sure if they are all current, and I am probably missing quite a few, but it is a starting point.

Firewalls
Active Network - Active Wall Free Edition
Agnitum - Outpost Firewall Free
AS3 Soft4U - AS3 Personal Firewall
Ashampoo - Ashampoo Firewall Free
Comodo Group - Comodo Firewall (now a part of Comodo Internet Security)
FilSecLab - Filseclab Personal Firewall Professional Edition
Group 4 Business Intelligence - IDNWebShield (main web site down when last checked)
NetVeda - NetVeda SafetyNet
PC Tools - PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition
PrivacyWare - Privatefirewall
SecurePoint - Securepoint Personal Firewall & VPN Client - (discontinued?)
SoftPerfect - SoftPerfect Personal Firewall
Tall Emu - Online Armor Free - (acquired by EmsiSoft?)
WIPFW Project - WIPFW - (port of BSD IPFW)

Firewall Managers
GT Delphi Components - Windows Firewall Ports & Applications Manager (WFWPAM)
Sheesley, Eric - XPFiremon

Hopefully, this is of help.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

But isn't smaller cheaper to produce?
 
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When that 2Tb SSD can fall 4 stories (while in use) and carry on without even noticing, then I start getting tingles...

SSDs can already do that...
 
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the law also says you can jailbreak stuff what does the BSA and others think about that?

Sorry, but thats not right. The law is very exact in how its phrased, being "bypassing a manufacturer's protection mechanisms to allow "handsets to execute software applications" is permissible". This is what makes sure things like modchips and modding consoles is still illegal. Only effect handsets aka cellphones/smartphones.

Maybe not? http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20016505-71.html

So you use Novell which would never do anything underhanded for business?