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(More pictures, including the obligatory model to hang off the computer like it was a sugar daddy.)

(More pictures, including the obligatory model to hang off the computer like it was a sugar daddy.)

Which is exactly why Apple won't allow a good Google Voice app on the iPhone.

Or so they say.

*cough*AT&T*cough*

Spiffy, though visual voicemail on the iPhone is a tad better interface, at least until there is another google voice app for the iPhone...

Which is exactly why Apple won't allow a good Google Voice app on the iPhone.

• Android OS.
• Color Touch Display.
• Native support for more eBook formats -- including PDF.
• LendMe feature.
• Wi-Fi support.
• Memory expansion to 16GB with MicroSD card.

Caveats: The LendMe feature will only allow a book to be lent one time only -- for at most two weeks; and, according to some souces (http://reviews.cnet.com/e-book-readers/barnes-noble-nook/4505-3508_7-33786175.html), the Wi-Fi connection will only be enabled at the Barnes & Nobles stores.

Cons

• No Text-to-Speech feature.
• No web browser.
• Substantially reduced battery life.

ARM talked about the Cortex A9 (the one I'd actually like to have in a netbook) over two years ago. There is still nothing you can get that actually has one in it. Yay something to replace the ARM11. Hope it actually gets used.

So, it was marketing departments that forced this upon us, but it wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault...

That's the shallowest legitimate attempt to make sense of Microsoft marketing I've come across in years.

I'm reminded of the episode where Schlomo Teittleman accuses Tony Soprano of being a living golem. Teittleman creates the golem through a deal with Tony to deprive his ex son-in-law of his divorce settlement. Tell me, who created this "magic sticker" program in the first place?

From Microsoft e-mails reveal Intel pressure over Vista

At the time, Intel was worried that it wouldn't be able to ship the more advanced 945 chispet, which was capable of running Aero, in step with Microsoft's proposed schedule for the introduction of the marketing upgrade plan.
...
"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," Microsoft's John Kalkman wrote in a February 2007 e-mail to Scott Di Valerio ...

Apparently, not all of the back-pressure came from the down trodden, and there was a clear second option: delay Vista-capable until Intel could ship the 945 in volume. Pretty risky, counting on Intel to meet volume targets.

Their second golem-making move was to set Vista up as a mandatory upgrade, so you got Vista whether you were happy enough with XP or not and then quoting Vista adoption figures as if it was a blockbuster out of the gate, fooling no one of any importance.

Finally--since I don't wish to continue all day--how could any sane company manage to screw up its QA relationship with nVidia while releasing an OS where the promoted benefit to end user is a more advanced graphical user interface?

Microsoft decided to push Vista into the marketplace where the customers didn't want it, and their partners weren't yet ready to fully support it. Major partners like Intel and nVidia.

It should have been handled more like the Windows 2000 roll-out. Let the losers continue to run Windows 98 if they're happy enough with it, force the issue with Windows XP when there's not much left to complain about. Imagine how the Windows 2000 roll-out would have gone if they'd discontinued selling Windows 98 pre-installed, without providing a stable nVidia driver, while Intel was still pushing volume on chipsets with no AGP support.

Even Microsoft's internal communication sounded a lot like a NASA engineer's memo from the launch pad declaring "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Windows 7 is not what Vista should have been, but rather when Vista should have been. A less arrogant refresh in between would have served the day. Was the entire MS marketing department too clueless to type Itanium, RDRAM, Caminogate, or Prescott into the Google search bar? A fine education in Golem 101 was there for the taking.

Thats ignoring the lies. I'm sick of seeing myths about Linux articles http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10014283o-2000498448b,00.htm from yesterday. I'm sick that nobody is ALLOWED to tell the truth 60% of Microsoft machines are infected with malware and growing http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10363373-83.html secure. Its the drivers; its the 3rd party application. Please its the damn OS.

Windows 7 launched to the starved of an upgrade...Does it include IE*/WMP/Filemanager and an AD supported word/office crapware, with a restore partition instead of a disc. Then I wont be buying it. Will it work on the machines in my house! No! Does it still require Activation; Contain DRM(See BBC announcments); Overreaching EULA thats anti consumer as opposed to GPL; Activation; WGA/OGA; Lock me out of sharing with other OS's that I use and getting worse. Do I have to take a morning out of my life every 6 months to update; remove crap, and fine tune to keep it working. If the answer is yes then I'm not buying it.

I chose a Linux OS to install a hard 160GB hard drive that Windows98 could not handle, and as a computer professional I didn't care which. I just used copy of Linux from a magazine and I see Lies; propaganda; ignorance; insults in return for Liking the Killer feature...and that is the this article; the UPGRADE BUTTON. I don't wait 3-7 years for an upgrade to OS+DESKTOP+APPS its every day with a large update every 6 months that genuinely brings features+stability+improvement+wow for NIL cost not updates to Applications I wouldn't dream of using on any platform+company pushing its own agenda+or increased restrictions.

How about you stick to talking about technology instead of spouting false love and unity!

Right, because those Democrats are so hard on the corporations! LOL.

Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else

Republicans and Democrats are largely the same thing.

Right, because those Democrats are so hard on the corporations! LOL.

Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else

Republicans and Democrats are largely the same thing.

You'd be surprised how many people don't want, don't need, or can't afford an iPhone. It's a nice device, but it doesn't cater to the entire market - not even close.

Apple knows this. Their original stated goal was 10% market penetration. According to some reports, they achieved that in first two quarters of this year (worldwide, not just U.S.). (They apparently hit their 2008 target two months early.)

They are still a success, businesswise, as long as they are hitting their targets. Apple is probably looking to do in cell phones what they do in computers: maintain a profitable edge in the mid-to-high-end markets -- even if staying a lot smaller than the other players -- and leave the low-end, lower-margin market to competitors.

Again it comes down to: is broadband internet an essential service? I don't think so... at least not yet. Rural businesses don't need to serve pages from the office - that's what co-location is for.

It's true, this is what it comes down too. You say broadband internet is not an essential service, I disagree (as does the nation of Finland). I think in the current time broadband internet is as essential as running water or electricity. There is not a single business that doesn't benefit from a fast, stable and cheap internet connection. Having a computer without having an internet connection has become completely useless.

I agree that colocation offers a lot of benefits for hosting your services. But a decent enough bandwith for smalltime use isn't one of 'em.

If you bought into any of these, you're a sucker. They don't work any more.

• Divx (1998-2001). "Disposable" DVDs tied to a remote authorization system. Promoted by Circuit City and Thompson. Content now unplayable.
• WalMart Music (2007-2008) Downloadable music tied to an authorization server. Content now unplayable.
• PlaysForSure (2004-2008) Microsoft system. Downloadable music tied to an authorization server. Content from AOL MusicNow (closed), Musicmatch Jukebox (closed), Yahoo! Music Unlimited (closed), Spiralfrog (closed), MTV URGE (closed), MSN Music (closed), Musicmatch Jukebox (closed), Ruckus Network (closed) now generally unplayable, although exit strategies exist. Authorization servers were to be shut down August 31, 2008, but were kept up after that date.

Next, Disney.

Windows 7 also requires Activation. Though Microsoft has made 7 more stable, I also switched because I don't like being treated like a criminal or being spied on. Neither my Linux PC nor my MacBook Pro require it. Nor do they require it again when hardware has been added or swapped. And both my Linux PC and my MacBook Pro are easy to use and polished, though the Mac is better. Actually my Linux PC was easier to setup and use than the Windows PC it replaced, for most things.

Its getting there, but I do not recommend a linux box to my family.

A few months ago my brother-in-law asked me what I thought of the netbooks Target was carrying, Asus I think, with Linux. I told him as long as all he wanted to do was surf the web, check email, or work on plain documents they were fine. But if he wanted to do some intensive computations, he used to work as a day trader, they would not be good.

Falcon

This is not off-topic.

I happened to notice today that Apple surpassed IBM in market capitalization (the total value of their stock) about a month ago. Apple has been on a tear for the last five years, growing about 24x. Even though IBM has a valued brand, a deep patent portfolio, committed customers and a broad portfolio they haven't kept up with that pace. I think that the last technology company Apple has to surpass in company value is Microsoft - and they're closing in. Apple's executing well not just in PC Hardware (where they've cornered the market on premium PCs at over 80%), but in media where they've pretty much taken all of the market for online distribution of music (and they're working on video), and in cellular phones where they're a serious threat to Blackberry. So Apple is not just in a wider base of markets than IBM and Microsoft - they're winning in all the markets they're in. They're executing well.

Microsoft wants to be Apple but Zune, Plays For Now and the Microsoft Danger FaceKick isn't going to gain them new customers in the new markets they need to win. The have a considerable negative partnering history to overcome. If Steve Jobs got a good stock incentive to come back and rescue Apple in 1996 he should die the world's richest man. Since I'm talking about how smart he is, here's a quote:

"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."

IBM could do these things and the fine article is an indication that they're slowly interested in doing so. I wish them well - I prefer committed open source to Apple's exploitation of BSD's liberal terms, though I have to admit it's more of a personal bias than a difference in utility. I don't think IBM can pull this off without outside help. The Boys From Boca thing was, as far as I can tell from subsequent history, a one-off incident of accidental genius.

This is not off-topic.

I happened to notice today that Apple surpassed IBM in market capitalization (the total value of their stock) about a month ago. Apple has been on a tear for the last five years, growing about 24x. Even though IBM has a valued brand, a deep patent portfolio, committed customers and a broad portfolio they haven't kept up with that pace. I think that the last technology company Apple has to surpass in company value is Microsoft - and they're closing in. Apple's executing well not just in PC Hardware (where they've cornered the market on premium PCs at over 80%), but in media where they've pretty much taken all of the market for online distribution of music (and they're working on video), and in cellular phones where they're a serious threat to Blackberry. So Apple is not just in a wider base of markets than IBM and Microsoft - they're winning in all the markets they're in. They're executing well.

Microsoft wants to be Apple but Zune, Plays For Now and the Microsoft Danger FaceKick isn't going to gain them new customers in the new markets they need to win. The have a considerable negative partnering history to overcome. If Steve Jobs got a good stock incentive to come back and rescue Apple in 1996 he should die the world's richest man. Since I'm talking about how smart he is, here's a quote:

"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."

IBM could do these things and the fine article is an indication that they're slowly interested in doing so. I wish them well - I prefer committed open source to Apple's exploitation of BSD's liberal terms, though I have to admit it's more of a personal bias than a difference in utility. I don't think IBM can pull this off without outside help. The Boys From Boca thing was, as far as I can tell from subsequent history, a one-off incident of accidental genius.

If you reduce the cost of software to zero and compete only on the hardware, you shut out some people from the market and trample others with your behemoth size.

Having sold it to Levono IBM no longer makes PC hardware. The article IBM and Canonical team up against Windows 7 goes over some reasons IBM may be doing this.

Falcon

No, it's not. How in the hell is something that is blatantly wrong modded up? The Pre started using the iPod USB identifier to work around the fact that the software started looking for it. It's not that damn hard to look up.

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
2. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10367052-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

USB device? The DoD hasn't been allowed to use those things in almost a year!

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1036_3-6075472.html

But he isn't a trusted expert on anything, right?

Max Baucus is going to hold a private hearing to hear all the options available. The list of 3 trusted industry professionals is limited to representatives from: Comcast, SBC, and AT&T. They *are*, as we know, the most successful in the industry, of course only they should be trusted!

Sorry... I'm still P.O'd that 60-70% of Americans consistently poll to want Single Payer, yet it will not even be discussed or considered, thanks to political corruption.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1036_3-6075472.html

But he isn't a trusted expert on anything, right?

I wonder whatever happened to this, circa 2002:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-978499.html

No glasses required. I think some other big company did the same thing.

My G1 has some real problems - the camera sucks, the battery is wimpy, it has no built-in flash, it's bigger than an iPhone but has a smaller screen...

Thicker, but not bigger. The iPhone 3G is wider, taller, and has a greater volume.

Make a beautiful Android phone, and I will switch carriers, fork over $400, and sign a two year contract!

But you just called the Cliq "crap". Is it not beautiful enough for you?

The key is the carriers.
Verizon has the largest network and subscriber base, but doesn't have any good smart phones.
T-mobile has the g1, but T-mobile is a horrible company.
AT&T has the iphone but it costs a fortune for service.

The key will be what smart phone takes hold on Verizon; currently it looks like it is going to be an android phone.

Verizon Wireless: 87.7 Million subscribers
AT&T Mobility: 79.6 Million Subscribers
Sprint: 49.3 Million subscribers
T-Mobile: 38.2 million subscribers

Personally I'm waiting for a phone similar to the G1 to be available on the Verizon network.

I agree with your assertion that FOSS development is fundamentally a meritocracy. Those who produce good code are respected, and even so, from time to time they all have to put up with a lot of crap/hazing regardless of their gender.

However, if I understand correctly, you are saying there are few, if any, women in software development. In my experience, this is simply not true. I regularly work with female software developers in the US, China, India, and Germany.

Where I am, I haven't seen discrimination against women that prevents them from being hired, though I suppose it is very likely to happen in some places.

This article about research on the subject of women in computing fields is interesting.

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test

Everyone here is looking askance at AT&T. And their policies may be problematic. But AT&T has incentive to build more towers and that incentive is called "Verizon." Of course in the iPhone-only world, there is no incentive but AT&T actually sells more than just the iPhone.

Their contract with Apple ends next year, unless the two companies want to renew. Problem is that since Verizon uses different signaling than does AT&T, if you want to switch to Verizon, you would have to purchase a different, Verizon-capable iPhone. Winner here is Apple, because they pocket the money for the phone.

I grew up in an era when all telephone calls, local or long-distance cost money and AT&T was the only telephone company. You had to rent your phone from the phone company and you had to pay for every call. That system tended to cause people to use the telephone for messages, not to chat. AT&T dropped local calling rates in the 1960s and stay-at-home moms everywhere started to carry on long conversations on the telephone with their neighbors. Long-distance remained a medium of message.

What changed? I believe that AT&T realized that there was pressure from their subscribers (nearly everyone in the US) to change. You still had to pay per call, but you didn't have to pay per minute. And the cost per call was pretty cheap. So long conversations over local calls became the norm. I don't recall hearing that the infrastructure was, somehow, overloaded.

I'll bet the real reason for this change was an overall computerization of the system. Since AT&T had introduced some pretty killer automation on their system, it was cost-effective to do this. When telephone companies started doing VOIP, the cost of long-distance came down and the era of unlimited long distance calling was ushered in. They're still using the same lines, folks, they're just packing the data in better.

The deal with radio signaling is that the costs are decreasing all of the time. Back when the government proposed digital television, there was no way that stations could broadcast a full high-definition signal in the bandwidth allocation offered by the FCC. Television companies immediately came up with encoding schemes that would compress the signal so that it would fit within the available bandwidth. In fact, it was discovered that the spectrum offered by the FCC was a real boon: Television stations could actually broadcast three separate stations within the digital bandwidth allocation and Congress had to come down on the Networks to require that they broadcast a 16x9 HD signal when the Networks announced that they had no specific plans to transition to HD and that they might use the extra two channels to make their O&Os more money.

Sure, the radio spectrum is limited. But digital compression keeps getting better and that opens up those limits. A great example is how cable systems are able to send many more channels (and many of them HD channels) over the same coax cable as they used to use when it was limited to some 90 channels (all standard definition). Additionally, they're also able to do high-speed internet at the same time over the same cable. Frankly, I think the bandwidth is more limited on that coax cable than is in the spectrum for cellular telephony. So I think arguments about lack of bandwidth are missing the point. Also arguments about building more cellular receivers and towers are, likewise missing the point. AT&T wants to compete with the other cell phone companies

The iPhone is a real money maker for AT&T (as well as Apple). AT&T keeps adding subscribers and pulling them away from other carriers because of the iPhone. If your iPhone suddenly cannot connect, or data slows a little, you will eventually get it, so AT&T can "throttle" data and keep happy customers. Additionally, Apple might have a s

I'm not really convinced. The iTunes DRM scheme was suspiciously convenient for Apple in establishing its initial market position by locking the content to the hardware - I suspect they didn't argue terribly hard with the music industry at that point. The iPhone exclusivity deals also work very well for them, as they get monthly payments from the service providers which may well exceed the profits from the phone itself:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9803657-37.html

Here in the UK you can in fact buy an officially unlocked phone from retailers like play.com. The 32Gb 3GS goes for an eye-watering 900 GBP, over $1400 USD (for comparison, a 32Gb iPod Touch goes for 235 GBP at the same shop). I suspect we won't see cheap officially unlocked iPhones any time soon...

Wrong on that point, hardware supports it and so does the OS now.

I never said the hardware didn't support multitouch. We are talking about Android, not specific phones. As far as the OS supporting it, my understanding is they've got it implemented but disabled for fear of legal action from Apple (at least that was the case in February. If that's no longer the case, I still don't see it in the 1.6 version that T-Mobile pushed out to users in the last week (it looks like that push included an update to Gallery but still no multi-touch zoom).

The rest of your post is just preaching to the choir (yawn).

Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

Not to mention the fact that he actually "won" it back in February, when he had been in office for barely a month. Yeah, lots of time for "achievements" there, I doubt his staff had finished unpacking boxes by then.

If the committee is using the prize as a tool to make other world leaders take notice that America has really strong intentions to remove ourselves from all the international conflicts we're engaged in

Your kidding me, right?

Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

If the committee is using the prize as a tool to make other world leaders take notice that America has really strong intentions to remove ourselves from all the international conflicts we're engaged in

Your kidding me, right?

Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

Well we know who didn't vote for Obama and who won't be voting for him next term.

I think what's sad is when we have people who cannot drop their prejudices long enough to recognize the contributions of others. On top of that they resort to distorting facts (your link has nothing to do with a "transparent white house" as you would have people believe).

So while you are sitting in your home bitter and alone (or effectively alone) we'll focus on the realities.

Have a good day!

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

How about voting for the Patriot Act? And the FEMA immunity bill? You apparently forgot about that.

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

We would have Health Care Reform except for a few lying neo-cons causing issues.

http://factcheck.org/2009/08/seven-falsehoods-about-health-care/

If the committee is using the prize as a tool to make other world leaders take notice that America has really strong intentions to remove ourselves from all the international conflicts we're engaged in

Your kidding me, right?

Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.

Which accomplishments would those be? Closing Gitmo? Nope, haven't done that yet. Health Care Reform? Nope, haven't done that yet, and it's not really "reform" anyway. Creating a transparent White House? Nope, we gave up on that one pretty early on.

Sony and Nintendo aren't the only ones who have botched their firmware update processes.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10368709-56.html

While Microsoft/Danger has not made any statements regarding the root cause that took out all sidekick users in North America last week, it is curious that it happened right as word was circulating that the LX 2009 model was do for an OTA update.... hmmm thats interesting.

http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/10/02/firmware-update-for-buggy-sidekick-lx-2009-on-its-way/

It's now been almost a week since the outage started and there are still thousands of LX 2009 owners that have missing email, phonebooks, and notes. T-Mobile sent out an urgent message to users last weekend warning sidekick owners NOT to hardware reset their phones. What many Sidekick owners I know experienced was their phones were reset remotely by either Microsoft/Danger or T-Mobile Friday morning when the outage began. Adding insult to injury, one friend noted that her Sidekick has been hardware reset remotely now no less than 10 times since the outage began. Additionally, while her network service has been restored, the phone is behaving worse than it ever had before the outage.

While I am no expert on how the Sidekick works I can make some observations based on comments my friend and other have made about their experiences last weekend:

1. The LX 2009 appears to silently store phonebook and other user generated information, and preferences in volatile RAM, rather than the Sim card or Flash. This appears to be a default configuration.
2. While both T-Mobile reps and glossy into claims the SideKick stores personal info either on Microsoft/Danger's servers and/or on the user's SIM card, my friend was unable to find any preference settings on the phone relating to this feature.

3. Maybe this is a sign that cloud services are a bad idea for storing mission critical information. For many people their address/phonebook ARE mission critical.
4. Microsoft/Danger and T-Mobile may be due for a massive class action here. The sad thing is that my friend has been very happy with T-Mobile's service for years. From what she tells me the failure of the sidekick LX 2009s in North America rests squarely on Microsoft/Danger's shoulders.

5. Back in May there were strong indications that Microsoft gutted the Sidekick development team shortly after the LX 2009 was shipped... http://www.zimbio.com/Sidekick+3+Ringtones/articles/171/Microsoft+Lays+Off+Danger+Employees
Could it be that Microsoft has backstabbed Sidekick owners to finish killing off the platform? By cutting internal support for critical Danger services it could easily be written off as a terrible mistake. Microsoft would clearly have good reason to take a plausibly deniable swipe at T-Mobile for forcing them to make the last Sidekick.... Other possible causes might include disgruntled ex-employee sabotage of the Danger back-end...

How does a mission critical server, owned by the largest software company in the world get taken out so completely that it takes 5 full days to bring it back up? I could see this being an accident for a small startup with weak IT processes, but at Microsoft? Something doesn't add up.

Back to Sony for a moment:

It seems unlikely that Sony intended to brick PS3's with this update, but on the other hand all of the console makers tend to treat their customers like indentured licensees... so outcomes like this are sure to occur more often until some serious lawyering and lawmaking gets invoked.

My hunch is that these issues are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10004508-38.html

You state that MS was "convicted" (your expertise is slipping) of leveraging their desktop OS to gain an advantage in the server OS space but you don't provide any evidence that indeed they did.

What you slept through the dozens of Slashdot articles and major news outlet coverage of the previous EU antitrust trial. Yes they were CONVICTED as antitrust law is criminal law in the US and EU. â497 million, the largest fine they'd ever handed out when MS stalled on complying with the order for years.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1016_3-5060463.html

How much market share did competing products lose?

How could anyone say? What portion of the growth MS experienced was due to their criminal activities and what was due to honest competition? Would they have been losing market share if they were not breaking the law? No one will ever know for certain.

How much market share did competing products lose?

Linux lost about 7% and other UNIX versions about 13% the same over that time period. It's hard to get reliable numbers.

Is MS now the market leader in Sever[sic] OS's? Have they ever been?

By revenue, yes they do have the largest chunk of the market at about 38%.

This is about preserving the status quo in the server space, to reduce competition by holding back MS.

How is giving all servers a level playing field and letting all of them access Windows desktops the same way, holding MS back? Are you implying they can only win market share by artificially breaking other server OS's instead of by making the best server?

It's not about increasing competition it's about decreasing it.

Yeah in Bizaaro World letting monopolies leverage their monopolies into new markets increases competition. You're one of the worst MS apologizers I've ever heard. Even if you don't agree with the laws on the books, everyone has to follow them. MS wouldn't even exist if the same laws had not been enforced against IBM in the first place. Now MS should be allowed to break them at will? Frankly, I think you're an idiot or an astroturfer.

I believe that Apple's stated reason for rejecting the app was because it replaced some of the core dialer functionality of the iPhone and messed with the GUI. Not that necessarily holds water, as I believe Skype and Vonage may do the same thing, and Apple is saying they're working to get those apps updated and on the store.

This strikes me as desperation. Solid Oak Software obviously can't sue the violator, who is China proper, so they're suing any 3rd party they can find.

As far I can tell, the ZDNet China site is basically the same thing as Download.com, CBS American freeware/shareware/trialware download site. If this is the case, then CBS isn't directly making any money off of offering the software since they aren't selling it (they do however get ad money). It's freeware, and CBS would have no way of knowing that it contained copyright-infringing code. To add insult to injury, Solid Oak wants the full price ($40) of their own filtering software awarded to them as damages, for each copy downloaded from ZDNet China.

If this goes to trial and Solid Oak were to win, it would end up being a precedent-setting event. What Solid Oak is basically arguing is that 3rd parties are fully liable for any copyright violations in the software they distribute. That would immediately make download sites such as Download.com, FilePlanet, and MajorGeeks an impossible thing to offer. And who knows, maybe even Linux mirrors would be liable if some Linux component/package was found to be violating copyright?

If Solid Oak has their way, the idea of rehosting free (as in beer) software is dead.

I thought AT&T denied having any involvement in pulling VoIP apps from the app store in the first place.

The Zune HD supports HD video AND radio. The Touch does not. In fact, you can output the Zune HD over HDMI. Check out the full spec comparison on cnet.

No, I don't believe so. They use server boards, custom made to their specs. And, I'm pretty sure that those specs include ECC memory - that is the standard for servers, after all. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html If you're really interested, that story gives you a starting point to google from.

A computer is almost synonymous with "laptop" or "netbook" these days.

Hm. That's news to me. Oh well.

I do think that laptop and netbook sales surpassed desktops in the US. Not yet in the rest of the world, but we'll get there I guess.

Here, I found claims for that as far back as 2005, but I read about that in 2007 and 2008 too, so I guess it depends on who you ask :P.

http://news.cnet.com/PC-milestone--notebooks-outsell-desktops/2100-1047_3-5731417.html

The only way I have seen to identify the good from the bad is through websites related to solving problems that inevitably arise. I purchased a Viewsonic VX2433 display only after a month of deliberation and review. CNET http://www.cnet.com/ , Anandtech http://www.anandtech.com/ and Consumer Reports http://www.consumerreports.org/ The only way to really budget yourself is through sufficient research. In the end you usually get what you pay for. If you are looking for free stuff then check craigslist.

iptables -F
iptables -t nat -F
iptables -t mangle -F
iptables -X

iptables -N SSH_WHITELIST

# My work network.
iptables -A SSH_WHITELIST -s 1.2.3.0/24 -m recent --remove --name SSH -j ACCEPT
# My home network
iptables -A SSH_WHITELIST -s 4.5.6.0/24 -m recent --remove --name SSH -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name SSH
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -j SSH_WHITELIST
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH -j LOG
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH -j DROP

Tune appropriately. I find that 4 per minute doesn't generate false positives but quite effectively blocks brute forcers. You could lower hitcount or increase the seconds to your liking.

And this is just for machines where I do need multiple people to be able to login from multiple locations. On other machines I definitely use ssh key only auth via the sshd_config.

PLUS: This proves that there ARE people out there interested in breaking into Linux boxes. It's just that this is the best way they can find to do it and I think that says a lot. So let's not hear any more of this "Linux would have viruses too if it were as popular as Windows" bull. Between this and the MySQL on Windows worm:

http://news.cnet.com/MySQL-worm-hits-Windows-systems/2100-7349_3-5553570.html

and the recent Linux botnet perpetrated via password brute forcing:

http://www.builderau.com.au/program/linux/soa/Linux-botnet-discovery-points-to-lazy-administrators/0,339028299,339298642,00.htm

you would think we could put that old chestnut to bed by now.

It's about this.

I guess this might help: http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2009/10/02/microsoft-approved-peripherals-get-windows-7-compatible-stamps/
.

But seriously -- the headline is so eye-popping that you'd think the editor would pause for a second, and then verify it, before starting a whole freaking conversation about nothing.

I work for a IT department here in California, and we get about three fake-antivirus-infected computers every week. Lately, the malware's been getting more difficult to remove- it's been hooking into system processes so that it can continually replace itself if part of the program gets deleted.
Thankfully, we've found a fairly nice remedy that doesn't force us to wipe the hard drive. Don't bother with Ad-Aware or Spybot S&D anymore- they've become very ineffective as of late.

First we hit it with a scan from Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, a free scanner you can download here: http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?tag=mncol

Then, on the infected computer, we download and run (in safe mode) a somewhat obscure free program called Combofix, which is available here: http://www.combofix.org/

After that, we run one more follow-up scan with Malwarebytes to ensure that the computer is clean.

So far, this combination of steps has eliminated the infections that we've come across.