Slashdot Mirror

Asus EEE PC 1005HA. It has a 10" screen, good keyboard and and has ~7h battery-life while watching video and 10+ while browsing. Costs $268.00

It's not actually doing Flash video, it signals Skyfire's servers to fetch the video and transcode it from its original format to HTML 5 video. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003714-1.html

This entire letter is crap and just to make Apple try to look good for its actions.

From the open letter:

Jobs says thats Adobe isn't open, then states MANY times in the letter that every video should be done in h.264 that they support. They fail to mention the fact the h.264 isn't open, it's a standard, not an open standard. Not to mention, the whole system for iPhone and iPad isn't open since to use after market software for the devices you need to either buy it from their App Store or pay another $100 for that option. This isn't open, in fact it's more closed then Flash is.

The second 'fact' he tries is claiming that 75% of video is in Flash and should be using something more modern like h.264. He refuses to mention at the point that hey, Flash does do this modern codec of h.264 which invalidates his claim here. Flash is a container, not a codec.

Third thing he tries to claim is Flash is bad for reliability, security and performance. Jobs as always forgets that OSX isn't noted for its high level of security 1 2 and averages around 6 months to pass on a patch, not even to patch it but just to bother to pass it on even though someone else did the work for them. Jobs then goes on claiming that "We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems' yet again 'forgets' that they hurt Adobe before when they switched from the PowerPC chip to x86 chips causing Adobe to lose money and waste time fixing up Adobe products and not having been kept in the loop (which would have prevented the issues). Same thing happened with 10.6 causing more issues for Adobe products that could have been prevented if Apple had just warned Adobe before hand instead of catching Adobe with their pants down. As a company of Adobe's size it would be harder and harder to want to support Apple, which have screwed them over before (not just once), and all to please 6% of the computer market? Thats not much.

Forth is battery life. And here he pulls a switch around, claims that Flash is bad for the battery life by claiming that most Flash videos aren't encoded in the modern codec of h.264. Here he forgets that other videos online are also not encoded in h.264 but formats like Windows Media Video, XviD, DivX and even Apple's own Quicktime format. He also forgets that Flash videos can be encoded in h.264 because at the time of the iPhone being released, Google just decided, with Apples help, to support h.264. Just in time for the iPhone, but was the only one to support it, the other sites came later. This change took time and help from the inside (remember Apple and Google worked together a lot back then before they started to drift apart).

Fifth 'point' is he claims that sites with Flash will have to be re-written to support touch interfaces. And yes they will, and most places will do that if they feel that the public at large wants that. Same happened with web pages. Web sites had to be re-written to 'support' smartphones since they were horrible on the smaller screen sizes and so those sites that deemed it a good move did just that, they re-wrote their pages to support the newer style of accessing the site. Not every site bothered though and same would happen with Flash sites. Jobs seems to feel that sites should have already been made to support touch devices before there was a need as his 'proof'.

Last 'point' is a mishmash of garbage, first re-claiming about how Flash isn't supported with touch in mind (yet it's on touch screen tablet pc's) then goes on to claiming that 'developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third part

I believe this is pure speculation on your part, because MS made no indication that it intends to sue hardware manufacturers because of software patents (Android related or not!).

It's not pure speculation. The company's comments on the matter did indicate that they may do so. However that doesn't mean that they will, which is why I used the word "may" in my original post. Their strategy isn't to actually sue, but to establish that they may do so in order to cash in on their patents. I think this quote establishes this pretty well:

In a statement to CNET, Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that, although Microsoft prefers to resolve intellectual property licensing issues without resorting to lawsuits, it has a responsibility to make sure that "competitors do not free ride on our innovations."

link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20003602-56.html?tag=mncol

Most of what you are saying, whether it's true or not, isn't really contrary to any of this. The bottom line is still the same.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20003742-264.html?tag=mncol;txt

Don't they? Palm bought Be in 2001. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-271718.html&tag=tp_pr

I guess it's the usual FUD. As usually MS claims their IP got violated, however without telling which ones. Barking dogs...

Microsoft to invest $150 million in Apple (

Scary stuff. Microsoft spends lots of money and time on multfront attacks on Linux.

It's pretty sad that Apple helps them out.

But the place I work at gave me a computer with Ubuntu installed to use. I requested this after the McAfee incident last week. Apparently I'm the only one...

CNet has a nice summary of the main issues: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003539-37.html

It seems like this "theft" is being blown way out of proportion, for several reasons:
1. The device in question is a cell phone.
2. The finder seems to have made several attempts to contact the apparent owner to return the device, and was told it wasn't theirs.
3. When the owner of the device did surface, the phone was immediately returned.

Regardless of what happened between #2 and #3 above, would the police normally waste any time on an incident like this?

Let me try to pre-emptively respond to some objections. Regarding #1, the only reason this particular cell phone was "valuable" was because of who it belonged to (Apple). If it had turned out to have been a fake, it would have been virtually worthless. So is this really a huge felony? Here's another example: Suppose the device in question had been a t-shirt (value $10), lost by some celebrity (say Brittney Spears). Of course, the t-shirt can be sold for outrageous sums of money on eBay or wherever, if it can be determined that the shirt is genuine. Is it a felony to sell the shirt? Is it really that big a deal? If the shirt was promptly returned to Brittney as soon as she came forward to claim it, would the police be giving this any attention at all?

I say no.

Your right :) I saw the story early somewhere else and did not even bother to read the summary after the headline that implied there is a backdoor into ipads.

It does have a back door, its build in the OS from Steve Jobs since its running a spin off of the iPhone's OS. 1 2

Until Jobsy releases version 4, no virus is gonna run (in the background anyway).

Of course the iPod/iPad/iPhone is more secure ... you can't do fuck-all with it without permission from Apple headquarters ... and even then any virus must be written in Objective-C to conform to Steve's code "laws".

And so the myth continues. Because the iPhone/iPad is locked down then it must be secure. Thing is, it wasn't secure and it was because of that lock that people couldn't secure it. It was also the only smartphone that didn't get patched for it even though Apple had been warned for weeks before to patch it and it took 48 hours after it went public to patch. People complained, most didn't know why they had to restore their iPhones though because they didn't even need to touch anything. In the end, iPhone users were hacked and it was because of it being locked down. (If you had jail broken it, you could have prevented it from happening)

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you got your results from Google and they skewed them, but if you are seriously arguing poor iPhone sales, the stock buying world disagrees with you:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20002964-37.html

A story just posted by CNET speculates that they're trying to enforce property laws that go back to the 1800s that say if you find something worth more than $400 and use it for your own purposes you can be charged with Grand Theft, and anybody you give that can be charged with Receipt of Stolen Property.

Doesn't seem to be a journalist's exemption to this one.

Yep, Android has Apple quaking in its boots.

The Nexus one alone might not, but there are multiple other Android phones each with over a million sales. And, since you can get an Android phone for nearly every carrier, Google is capitalizing on a market that Apple is leaving behind.

Apple has (for all intents and purposes) one phone on one carrier. Google has many phones at various price points on many carriers. There's a big Android phone release more frequently than an iPhone release, meaning users are more likely to find one they want. Also, Android (overall) sales may eclipse iPhone in the next 2 years.

Yes, they probably should worry.

It's the same thing microsoft did to apple in the PC market.

Yep, Android has Apple quaking in its boots.

The Nexus one alone might not, but there are multiple other Android phones each with over a million sales. And, since you can get an Android phone for nearly every carrier, Google is capitalizing on a market that Apple is leaving behind.

Apple has (for all intents and purposes) one phone on one carrier. Google has many phones at various price points on many carriers. There's a big Android phone release more frequently than an iPhone release, meaning users are more likely to find one they want. Also, Android (overall) sales may eclipse iPhone in the next 2 years.

Yes, they probably should worry.

From the Cnet interview at http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002986-245.html:

The first part of the operation involves getting a target's cell phone number from a public database that links names to numbers for caller ID purposes. DePetrillo used open-source PBX software to spoof the outgoing caller ID and then automated phone calls to himself, triggering the system to force a name lookup.

"We log that information and associate it with a phone number in a (caller ID) database," DePetrillo said. "We created software that iterates through these numbers and can crawl the entire phone database in the U.S. within a couple of weeks... We have done whole cities and pulled thousands of records."

"It's not illegal, nor is it a breach of terms of service," Bailey said.

Next up is matching the phone number with a geographic location. The SS7 (Signaling System) public switched network routes calls around the world and uses what's called the Home Location Register to log the whereabouts of numbers so networks can hand calls off to one another, DePetrillo said. Individual phones are registered to mobile switching centers within specific geographic regions and they are logged in to that main register, he said.

Only telecom providers are supposed to have access to the location register, but small telcos in the EU are offering online access to it for a fee, mostly to companies using it for marketing data and cost projections, according to DePetrillo.

Because the article basically says that they will, and now presumably have, presented the details at SOURCE Boston, and the papers/slides from there haven't been released yet.
Found an interview with some more details here, though: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002986-245.html

There is one thing: The iPhone is essentially 100% secure. You don't have to worry about your phone being hacked and some blackhat using it to place thousands of dollars worth of long distance calls to Nigeria, what might happen with Android devices should some app be malicious.

This is unless you commit what Apple calls a terroristic act and jailbreak the iPhone. Then all bets are off, as you just made your device a danger to AT&T's network and broken the law.

The thing is, the iPhone isn't 'essentially 100% secure'. It has security issues, with a major one happening about a year ago with the OS version 3.0 And the worst part about it was that Apple had known for months about it and didn't care to fix it, and only patched it 48 hours after it went wild. The only way to prevent this hack from working was to jailbreak the iPhone since the 'secure' iPhone wasn't secure at all.

Hmm, maybe 1 out of every 300 Facebook users' computers is infected with Koobface......
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20002112-83.html

I wonder how long today's better batteries and lower-power circuits would run on a "basic" phone ... maybe get a month of stand-by and a full day of talk-til-you-drop? There might be a market for that.

Might I recommend you get a jitterbug? It even comes in 3 colors: black, red, white.

It's nowhere near that - only 3 hours of talk time. 8 days standby. Lots of phones beat that while still offering all sorts of other features.

There is no text anywhere quiting Google spokespeople saying Google would bring this to the iPhone ???

RTFS again.

There are three FAs in it. The first FA is even quoted in TFS:

'However, Google is working with Apple on bringing it to the iPhone, and it's not ruling out licensing the software to makers of portable navigation devices used in cars throughout the world, said Gundotra, vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers.'

So, Google's vice-president for engineering said Google is working on bringing it to the iPhone. Now Google says "We did not say we would bring it to iPhone".

Google has no obligation to bring any product to market, but at least they should say "we finally decided not no bring it to the iPhone". Saying "we did not say we would" is just sleazy.

To be honest, they are "things", not people. Should we really consider loving "things"?

Some Otaku would disagree with you!

Sen. Joe Biden (D) hinted at the "unique serial numbers" from the person's computer that p2p Fair play tracking software records.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html
If this all connects together, someone has a worldwide passive database of useful links to computers or network cards.
You have files and public MAC addresses with timestamps.
Forget the ID of a suspect, just the propagation data could track a file down to a usable sneak and peek level.
Someone has put a lot of effort into finding the almost unique ID that stays with a product over its life, the Media Access Control number and down every street.
This closes the 'wireless hole' - the neighbour who got wireless and used weak or known or old security and allowed others to use their networks.
The strange MAC was noted, but never traced. A laptop is cleaned, sold on ebay and resurfaces.
Now an old MAC is linked to a new owner and the past seller used a CC?.
How are they detecting new MACs now would be my question?
Google and Fair play tracking gave the feds a historical snapshot, where are the new device numbers leaking out?
If you have vital data the lesson seems to be - stay away from networked computers
and return to family, friends, tribe, gang or enterprise -
the NSA had your parents fax, phone, google/the CIA has your MACs.

He is hypocritical...

Check out the following article:

http://news.cnet.com/Google-balances-privacy,-reach/2100-1032_3-5787483.html?tag=nl

Reaction from Google? CNET is barred one year from google.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-Angry-at-CNET-66164

I ain't looking to get rich off of a class action lawsuit, but the recent settlements have not only not been any sort of punishment, they have actually been very beneficial to the ones breaking the laws.

Case in point, the Sony Rootkit debacle.
http://news.cnet.com/Sony-settles-rootkit-class-action-lawsuit/2100-1002_3-6012173.html

Oh Boy! $7.50 coupon and the ability to download one album once.

How in the hell is that a punishment for them?

Then how about the big class action lawsuit regarding price fixing CD's.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115443,00.html

Yes, they gave out checks for $13.86 , but they never admitted guilt, and the price of CD's never went down. The price fixing is still going strong.

Class action lawsuits no longer provide a reasonable threat against anti-consumer practices. You pinhead.

No.. it's not in bad shape at all - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20002647-52.html They are just looking to make some easy bucks under the guise of environment.

I have an easy solution: buy a mac.

Because having the OS delete your home folder is much better then a third party program deleting files that can be retrieved is a much better solution.

Apple's cash reserves ($41.7B) covers Adobe's market cap (18.38B). If Apple had to, they would buy Adobe with a checkbook. Besides, last I heard, 60% of Adobe's revenue is from Mac OS software. That would be a big plug to pull out of spite.

He may not have been right about suspecting being spied on because of battery discharge, but the government can in fact remotely activate some cell phones and eavesdrop on nearby conversations with them:

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

as i remember mb was going to do a episode about rfid and credit cards and found that it was really easy to brake the technology, then the credit card companys found out and prevented the episode to show. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10030509-52.html

This guy was already screwed but Gizmodo decided to utterly destroy his career and reputation -- all for a few more clicks. Total dick move

It's Gizmodo. I'm not surprised.

It's likely that he's going to be terminated (from his employment, not physically), if he hasn't been already.

He'll just have to hope that the rules are different here than they are for the chinese manufacturing partners...

If the story is accurate, then what's the point of exposing the poor sod's name?

You mean Gray Powell?

I'm sure he'll do just fine. After this kerfuffle, any hiring manager can be reasonably certain that this was a mistake that is unlikely to be repeated.

I just read this: "Now when you look at Microsoft today they do more to secure their software than anyone. They're the model for how to do it. They're not perfect; there's room for improvement. But they are definitely doing more than anybody else in the industry, I would say." [ http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002317-245.html?tag=rtcol;inTheNewsNow ] I think most people in the know would agree with him.

Who knew they only meant that we shouldn't overreact?

Unfortunately this is MORE LIKELY to happen than not. The Vice President is fully influencing the President on this matter and it's not in a way we like. Joe Biden's pro RIAA history will almost guarantee it.

As Senator, Senator Biden had sponsored five pro-copyright bills and co-sponsored three. Among these bills includes the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2004, of which the similar yet brutal 2005 edition became law. Another was the Perform Act of 2006, which intended to restrict the recording and playing back songs off satellite and internet radio (this died in committee).

you meant this link:

http://news.cnet.com/2009-1082-269157.html/

But yes, IBM most certainly did collaborate with the Nazi's.

Uhmm . . . IBM DID collaborate with the Nazi's

http://news.cnet.com/2009-10820269157.html/

Uhmm . . . they did

http://news.cnet.com/2009-1082-269157.html

Uhmm . . . they did http://news.cnet.com/2009-1082-269157.html/

If you are using Firefox, you could create a separate profile just for accessing the Canada Revnue Agency and have Java enabled only in that profile. I do something similar for banking. Or you could manually enable the Java plugin only while accessing the Canada Revnue Agency; you can do this in Firefox without even a restart.

Using separate OS accounts with different sets of plugins enabled would work as well.

The fact that your browser could install a rootkit means that you're running with administrator privileges. Not smart. If you can't browse porn from a limited account, you can at least turn off administrative privileges for Firefox using the DropMyRights program from Microsoft.

iPad sold 500,000 units after one week. That's a little more than 70,000 units a day. And if you consider that in the five days after the weekend, Apple sold 200,000 units. That's 40,000 a day. Not quite so impressive. I'd bet that all the Netbooks combined sell at least 40,000 units per day.

Doing some quick googling, I get guesstimates of yearly total netbook sales between 22M and 30M. And since 40k units a day is around 15M a year, iPad is selling within a 2x factor of ALL netbooks sales. Still think it's a flop? ref

Of if that measure doesn't work, how about total monetary sales values? 40k per day at $600 per unit is around $9B, which is around 9% of all portable PC sales in 2009, and around half of all mini-note and ultraportable pc sales ($18B). Still think the iPad's a flop? ref

BTW, the Motorola Droid (considered a pretty good success for Motorola during the first few months of sales sold around 1M units the first 74 days it was out (which went for $200, less than half the price of an iPad). That's around 14k a day since you seem to be a bit math deficient.

Name one cell phone, computer, or similar device that sold 300,000 times over on the first day that was considered a failure.

The interesting thing is that Apple sold 300,000 units in it's first weekend--this is after the device had been available for pre-order for one month. So it took Apple one month to sell 300,000 units--about 1,000 units a day.

So name one cell phone, computer, or similar device that sold 300,000 units in one month that was considered a success.

Strawman alert! So which is it- 40k a day or 1k a day? Up above, you deride the drop from 70k/day to 40k/day. Now it's suddenly 1k/day (before people could even try it out, mind you). I fail to see how you convert pre-sales volume into foward sales volume. Especially when the full 3G version isn't out for sale AND sales are US only.

But that's okay. Just sit in your corner, hug your iPad, and keep repeating: "The iPad is successful! The iPad is successful!" It'll make you feel better.

I'm sure you're feeling better too. It's all good.

HA! And now Skyfire has promised to deliver exactly this:

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20002426-12.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

I followed the event online, it was very strange (check out that ugly ass bus!) The presentation right down to the clothes was odd. The phones are pretty ugly (imho) and the packaging looks like cheap body spray would be inside.

The interview was also interesting. My favorite quote:

Bach: From a marketplace standpoint, there's certainly a video and music marketplace. There isn't an app marketplace...

In other words, they don't have the money or effort to create a competitive app store, but it's a hell of a lot easier to sell the existing catalog of video and music.

Keep in mind this was only 2 year project (can't find the reference to that again, though...) and might have had some financial backing from the big social sites which are featured on the phones (Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace). They are basically simple, cheap phones for teenagers (they mention giving them to a 13 and 17 year girls to use).

I followed the event online, it was very strange (check out that ugly ass bus!) The presentation right down to the clothes was odd. The phones are pretty ugly (imho) and the packaging looks like cheap body spray would be inside.

The interview was also interesting. My favorite quote:

Bach: From a marketplace standpoint, there's certainly a video and music marketplace. There isn't an app marketplace...

In other words, they don't have the money or effort to create a competitive app store, but it's a hell of a lot easier to sell the existing catalog of video and music.

Keep in mind this was only 2 year project (can't find the reference to that again, though...) and might have had some financial backing from the big social sites which are featured on the phones (Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace). They are basically simple, cheap phones for teenagers (they mention giving them to a 13 and 17 year girls to use).

...mater because accessing the web on mobile devices has become increasingly common.

But trends are showing that more cellphone providers are putting limits on cellphone data plans and the more limits pop up, the less likely people are going to be wanting to stream videos. This runs risks that mobiles will be less of a deciding factor for things like streaming video. Time will tell though.

Obsolescence?. XHTML2 is no longer being developed.

Sadly, the whole thing was let down terrible by the outdated Palm OS. All the advanced hardware was only (poorly) supported by Sony extensions IIRC. I tried to get into developing for it but couldn't get the tools. Finally, my workplace banned PalmOS devices alltogether because they didn't have sufficient built-in security features. And we had been buying a lot of Palms just 5 or so years previous.

Targeted poaching is not such an easy option as one might rationalize:

Borland sues Microsoft over brain drain