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It does 1200x1200dpi and automatic duplexing, which is better than any of the even remotely affordable color lasers I'm glad I didn't get a bigger laser printer... even with this one the lights dim and the UPS clicks on momentarily whenever I turn it on or when it warms up to start a print job.

I originally wanted to go the multifunction route, and spent a long time jumping between the Linux printer compatibility list and the http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html">SANE compatibility list. Hardly any multifunction device was supported at all by both :/

If you're looking to go multifunction as well with a color inkjet (which supposedly does a better job with color prints than color laser printers) and a scanner, it looks like some of the Canon PIXMA line seems to have anything going for it as far as Linux support. No personal experience with it, though we might eventually get one to complement the B&W laser.

All evidence to the contrary, eh? Look, I can well understand wanting to send a message while driving, but texting really does limit the ability of a driver to actually drive. Accidents where texting is the reason for the failure of the driver to obey proper traffic laws are quite common. But if you've seen studies that show something different, please link them - or articles linking to them - here. I'd dearly love to read them.

I'm confused about the purported correlation of texting to accidents. We know that traffic fatalities are at an all-time low. And we know that the rate of texting is increasing dramatically.

So shouldn't we assume that texting makes driving safer?

You DO know that they're scared, though, if they have to trash it like this. You _should_ be scared if Microsoft enters your segment with a free product. It may not be the best, but that's never stopped Microsoft from crushing competitors in the past.

You probably don't remember when Microsoft came out with their own antivirus package as part of DOS 6, do you? I do. It was nice, for a while. Support fell off when MS decided to change their focus.

And answer me this: how is MSE conceptually any different than Windows Defender? Why TWO products that do pretty much the same thing?

So your average, reasonably protected Windows install has:

1) Microsoft Security Essentials
2) Windows Defender
3) Spybot Search and Destroy
4) AVG antivirus
5) Windows Firewall

Sucks that you have more programs running to stop malware than you actually intend to use, doesn't it? By latest statistics, 59% of Windows computers worldwide are now infected. Pathetic that it's more than HALF... If that's not a reason to ditch, what is?

PS: I'm a Mac/Linux user, Windows is a sometimes necessary evil...

Once you find an app that interests you, it just takes one click to acquire it and have it installed on your iPhone.

One click. Oh, and then enter your password. Which better be secure, since it's linked to your credit card number. And a good secure password includes upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols randomly interspersed, making it a pain in the ass to enter into the iPhone. The app is free? Apple doesn't care, they damn well want your password.

As far as the customers are concerned, the iTunes App Store is a smashing success.

My first generation iPhone is perfectly capable of recording low frame-rate video. Apps have been developed to do exactly that. Where exactly do I download them? Oops. I don't get to, Apple refused to let them ship.

iTunes for Windows is festering crap, and the ITMS on the iPhone itself sucks for following a podcast. I need a dedicated podcast tracking and downloading system. Hey, there's an app for that! Oops, denied. But Apple kindly changed their mind, and simply required the developer to remove all of the useful functionality and turning it into a crippled streaming solution..

I'm a big fan of text adventure games, and I loved that iPhone Frotz could download games from the IFArchive. Oops, Apple disagreed and the functionality had to be removed..

I'd dig an e-book reader that gave be easy access to everything in Project Gutenberg. Apple's okay with that, so long as "everything" means minus historically important books about sex.

I sure would love an app to give me a better interface to Google Voice! Rejected. Remote control of a bittorrent client (not bittorrent on the phone itself, mind you). Rejected. I'm an adult, maybe I'd like some immature but "adult" apps. Rejected.

I'm a customer, and as far as I'm concerned the iTunes App Store a bland mush, not a smashing success. I'm coming up on the end of my contract with AT&T, and I'll be getting something different, something that serves me, not Apple and AT&T. I'm looking at the Android options and the Pre. I was hearing good things about the Pre, but this makes me very wary.

Not only that, but GeoEye photos of the site allegedly show a surface-to-air missile site. Granted, I'm not an expert in weaponry, and perhaps they can't launch ICBMs from a site like that, but even if it is for the defense of the site, why are they expecting it to come under attack by aircraft?

Please allow me to enlighten you on the origins of cancer.

Background: Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of cells in the body. There is, and I am oversimplifying here for the sake of explanation, one reason that this occurs: mutation. When cells divide, a lot of very complicated things need to happen. If any of those things go wrong, a mutated cell can appear. Cells are supposed to destroy themselves if they detect that something is wrong, but sometimes the mutation affects this controlled cell death, so they don't. Combine that mutation with one that causes the cell to divide very rapidly, and you have a cancerous cell. You can read more about the specifics of these kinds of mutations in this wikipedia article.

Statistics: Cells have a lot of safeguards in place to protect them against mutation, so the odds are extremely small that any one particular cell will become cancerous. However, there are a lot of cells in your body. Estimates differ, but most seem to be on the order of 10^13 (a multiple of 10 trillion). So while the odds of one particular cell becoming cancerous are not very good, the odds of one of those trillions of cells becoming cancerous are much better. One "hit" (cancer-related mutation) against a cell might not make that cell cancerous; recall from the previous section that the two mutations needed are (1) the inability to self-destruct and (2) a propensity for rapid division. However, once a cell has a "hit" against it, it becomes more likely that such a cell (or its progeny, since they inherit the "hit") will become cancerous later on. This is why some people are predisposed to develop certain kinds of cancer: some of their cells already have one "hit" against them.

Cancer and Longevity: Over time, those odds become more significant for more people. When people lived shorter lives, cancer was not as great a concern, because few people lived long enough to develop a life-threatening form of cancer. With life expectancies increased into the 70s and 80s for many people, the possibility of developing a life-threatening form of cancer has increased commensurately.

Cancer in Men: This brings us to the most common form of cancer in men, prostate cancer. If they live long enough, most men will develop prostate cancer. This is because prostate cancer rates are primarily linked to age. However, and there are more details in the link, most men never even know they have it; you are more likely to die from other causes (including just plain old age) than from prostate cancer. That is why the fact that "in excess of 50 percent of just the male population will develop some form of cancer" exists: most men will develop prostate cancer.

Personal Electronics and Mutation: The concern that radiation emitted by personal electronic devices causes cancer is still a point of much dispute and ongoing investigation. It is known that radiation damages a cell's DNA, potentially causing cancerous mutations. However, there are a variety of sources of such radiation, as documented on this Idaho State University webpage. This webpage from the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management further documents our greater exposure to natural forms of radiation (cosmic rays, etc) than consumer devices.

So if the implication in your statement is that "from somewhere" must include the radiation from personal electronics, that can't be ruled out. But your statement is constructed in such a way as to suggest that the rates of cancer you mention are tied to the forms of radiation under discussion. Tha

They claim it's pretty durable, of course the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. "The cables themselves are durable, Ziller said: "You can tie a knot in it and it'll still work.""

They will have a hybrid copper/optical wire to power devices : "In addition, Intel said it's working on bundling the optical fiber with copper wire so Light Peak can be used to power devices plugged into the PC, he said."

Oh, yes, cloud computing. Maybe this is a good time to mention that GMail went down again today, the second time in a month?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10360729-264.html

Your point may be valid, but the Wii hasn't proved anything of the sort. It won out in terms of sales by being more noob-friendly, more affordable (until the required add-ons are purchased) and marketing the trendy 'fitness' angle.

I think you understate the price bit.

The Wii launched within weeks of the PS3... for half the price of the cheaper PS3 model. (Wii $249 vs PS3 20GB $499). When the Wii launched, the Xbox 360 was still selling only $400 and $500 models. Then the 360's bastardized $280 Arcade model came out, but you couldn't really use it with Xbox Live Arcade (ironic considering the console name) without adding a (Microsoft-blessed*) HDD... but since the Xbox 360 Core was only $350 by then (albeit with no Wireless controllers), there was little reason to buy an Xbox 360 Arcade.

It's only now that the PS3 Slim and the Xbox 360 Elite were within $50 of the Wii that Nintendo has any competition in this price space, and it appropriately countered by dropping the Wii's price by $50.

* Off the shelf hard drives don't work in the 360. This is one of the things Sony was quick to point out when the PS3 launched, as the PS3 works with any SATA HDD.

Most, yes, but there were a couple leaks (I believe with docs?) that didn't revolve around this.

Anyway, since I've actually been encouraged to do the research, my point can stand without relying on comparison to their security in more long-running products...

flaw flaw flaw. flaw.

Actually, looking over the articles, I believe there are only three distinct flaws reported in this set, but my google search seemed to indicate there are more.

Just considering the companies track record since it seems to apply well with cross-product security. But if you want chrome security flaws. Ok.

Citation please.

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

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10226578-83.html

The "Late 1930's" date was up on the page from the 8th of March to the 17th of July last year. That's a long time for the page to be wrong. Consider what the first result for "World War 2" was for that period. How many people read that article to find out things like the start date.

My point here is that while the correct start date is well known, an incorrect date was the easiest one to find. Sure, this is an easy case and you can complain about lazy researchers. But when things get more complicated than this simple example, and when the true information is far more difficult to come across, what are going to become the accepted interpretation of the facts, or even the facts themselves? Remember, even this simple error went unmolested for five months.

The article is the summary of a Wikitrip, that much is clear. But there is more to the history of cyrography than it's interpretation in the pages of Wikipedia. Who controls those pages. As another poster mentioned, the article states that modern cryptography begins with Shannon? Why does it do this, while ignoring the Bletchley Park cryptographers and their breaking of the ENIGMA system. It does so because that is where the Wikipedia pages says modern cryptography began. What about other sources, expert opinions? Doesn't matter. Wikipedia is the lowest hanging fruit.

This is really very serious. Not only has our society made reliable sources harder to access, but we've given more prominence to unreliable sources. Well, at least Google has, which is rich considering that they think the internet is a cesspool of misinformation. Yet they value the cesspool over better sources, because they have to. The better sources simply aren't online.

Essentially, Encyclopedia Britannica has the correct idea on how to get correct information; You ask an expert. That might sound elitist, but that's the way it is. Unfortunately, Encyclopedia Britannica won't put that information online, for free. This means, in an increasingly real way, that that information may as well not exist. This doesn't apply to general encyclopedia information. It applies to cold hard facts too.

How we archive our information is at least as important as how be discover it. If all we do is hoard the facts and promote half truths, then what does the truth become?

It "scored better"? You are vastly overestimating how much thought Intel Marketing put into the choice of the name. *grin* Actually, Intel Marketing is just copying Maybelline Turbo Boost mascara. Or maybe Vidal Sassoon Turbo Boost hair dryers?

Actually, in comparison, "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" isn't so bad. "Turbo Booster" gets 1,850,000 hits in Google. "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" gets exactly none. You're a creative genius!! Sorry, that means you'll never be hired by Intel Marketing.

My partly joking theory is that the staff of Intel Marketing long ago realized that Intel doesn't need marketing, since there is no one else besides AMD from whom to buy fast processors. So, it doesn't matter what they do. Mostly, they seem to do nothing. Sometimes, apparently due to boredom, they experiment with marketing. For example, buyers were offered Intel Bunny People dolls. How many buyers said, "Wow!!! A doll! I think I'll buy from Intel, rather than AMD"? The Intel web site is better now, but a few years ago, it was difficult or impossible to discover the Intel SKU of an Intel processor from the Intel web site, even after you spent 2 hours joining Intel's hardware buyer's organization. You could research processors on Intel's web site, but the Intel SKU wasn't listed. Wholesalers listed the processors by Intel SKU.

Intel's consumer division was so bad it ceased business. It would take many, many paragraphs to tell you how bad it was.

About 2 years ago, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett got bad press by announcing that Intel would go into competition with OLPC, One Laptop per Child: OLPC on 60 Minutes: Intel is evil. Typical story: Negroponte: "Intel should be ashamed of itself" for dumping its low cost PC. Look at the photo of Barrett! The photo looks like the personification of evil. *grin*

Now, Intel is trying to correct problems it has created by encouraging the sales of mobile computers with the Intel Atom processor, without communicating openly and honestly to customers that the Atom processor is very slow. For example, Intel: Some Netbook resellers saw 30% return rate.

Am I saying that, if I ran Intel Marketing, I could do better? Yes, I'm saying that. Maybe you could, also.

I call BS on the 60-100W figure. A quick Google search:

Modern televisions use only a small fraction of the power in standby mode (typically less than 10W). A modern HD LCD television may use only 1W or less when in standby mode (compared to 80W-125W during standard operation).

Various charts showing a range from 0W-16W

Energy Star requires power consumption of less than 1 watt in standby to qualify.

"...a poorly crafted governance structure that concentrates authority at the top and leaves little power to others who might join the foundation."

Doesn't look like it captures the OSS development spirit, to me...

The article is well-thought and well written. Though Andy uses longer, politer phrases to beat around the bush, M$ Code Pox, is a scam and misrepresentation. Even though we're not surprised by that behavior from M$ and its minions, we shouldn't put up with it. After all, ten years ago tech people laughed at M$, M$ products, M$ users and M$ boosters. however, they did nothing to stop the spread and now look at the big cleanup job before us.

There are just too many barriers to it ever becoming credible. Look at any of the required changes Andy mentions. This one in particular stands out:

"Provide that no company and its affiliates (including Microsoft) can have more than one representative on the Board of Directors or Board of Advisors."

No way that one can be overcome. M$ has long been using it's tactic of panel stacking to carry out its jihad.

M$ representatives include those by proxy, such as those from sock-puppets and political action groups like Black Dork Software, Novell and others.

Then you have all the activists M$ has placed inside other companies. Juniper Networks, NComputing, Yahoo (especially via the board), Xensource are now saddled with M$ moles.
That is just a sample, and each of those companies turned and started to toe the M$ party line after taking on one or more moles.

Now, you may ask, how is all this getting financed and who is underwriting it? The answer: each and every bastard who in any way is helping build or maintain M$ marketshare, that's who.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you or anything, but the sock-puppet argument could be easily made for Google and 'sort of' Apple.

"Then you have all the activists Open Source has placed inside other companies. Google, Apple, yadda yadda are now saddled with Open Source moles. That is just a sample, and each of the those companes turned and started to toe the Open Source party line after taking on one or more moles."

Your next argument could just has easily have been:
"Now, you may ask, how is all this getting finaced and who is underwriting it? The answer: each and every bastard who buys a Microsoft product, or a product that runs on a Microsoft platform, that's who."

The reason people buy MS products has nothing to do with a conspiracy theory. MS makes good products. You have to admit that Office is a pretty amazing application, and I know first hand that SharePoint has been a godsend to many organizations.

"...a poorly crafted governance structure that concentrates authority at the top and leaves little power to others who might join the foundation." Doesn't look like it captures the OSS development spirit, to me...

The article is well-thought and well written. Though Andy uses longer, politer phrases to beat around the bush, M$ Code Pox, is a scam and misrepresentation. Even though we're not surprised by that behavior from M$ and its minions, we shouldn't put up with it. After all, ten years ago tech people laughed at M$, M$ products, M$ users and M$ boosters. however, they did nothing to stop the spread and now look at the big cleanup job before us.

There are just too many barriers to it ever becoming credible. Look at any of the required changes Andy mentions. This one in particular stands out:

"Provide that no company and its affiliates (including Microsoft) can have more than one representative on the Board of Directors or Board of Advisors."

No way that one can be overcome. M$ has long been using it's tactic of panel stacking to carry out its jihad. M$ representatives include those by proxy, such as those from sock-puppets and political action groups like Black Dork Software, Novell and others.

Then you have all the activists M$ has placed inside other companies. Juniper Networks, NComputing, Yahoo (especially via the board), Xensource are now saddled with M$ moles. That is just a sample, and each of those companies turned and started to toe the M$ party line after taking on one or more moles.

Now, you may ask, how is all this getting financed and who is underwriting it? The answer: each and every bastard who in any way is helping build or maintain M$ marketshare, that's who.

Thanks for lousy the AP article. Let's see...for a story about a great technology used to print books, I'll submit a link to a website read by those most hostile to science/technology, those who are not to keen about books that cover anything outside their narrow ideological realm. AND it's a friggin AP release. thank you so much for the effort!

Do they realize it could be used to print books about queers and such?!?!? Oh dear god nooooo... /sarcasm

yeah, mod me -1024 flamebait. Or, try this link http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/ or this one http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10355318-265.html

well, yes latency is high, but with the right packet size, overall throughput could be quite high! http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-257064.html

"every new Linux kernel release drops support for a few legacy bits of hardware to keep the kernel from becoming over-sized."

very little seems to get dropped out of the main line kernel. I think you are mixing up "pre-compiled kernel that Ubuntu shipped me" with "Kernel source from www.kernel.org". in fact i saw support for the TV tuner of my voodoo3500TV card added about 6 months back, and how new is that card?
I will give you that on a Dell/HP/lenovo/etc machine the hard ware compatibility is there. Try installing Win7 on my Transmeta TM5800 with 256MB ram and a messed up mach64 pci video card. Guess what, gentoo and Arch would both be quite happy to be there, were it not for the broken harddrive. I'm betting almost none of the important hardware works under Win7(wifi/video/cpu frequency scaling/maybe even the IDE driver.) Add to that the fact that i need to set the network card into 10MB mode instead of 100MB mode, and you'll see why it's not always the case that windows has better hardware support.
best quickest link i found for it. http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/fujitsu-lifebook-p2110-crusoe/1707-3121_7-20034121.html
I bet i can get arch up and running with full hardware support(even the buttons on the bezzel faster than you can install win7 on it with the same hardware compatibility.
Also Ubuntu != Linux (yes i'm a ubuntu hater, because of problems like these.
I'm betting the issue with the install is that the installer is expecting the cdrom to be the first "scsi"(read anything using the new ata/scsi stacks) device, I would sugest making sure that your cdrom dive is plugged into the first sata port and trying again. If that doens't fix it there may be a cdrom=/dev/sdX option you can pass. I have never been able to get ubuntu installed, but managed(4 years ago) to install gentoo on the above laptop, my old desktop and my (was tp of the line) AM2 rig. I also have installed Arch in a KVM virtual machine. So it's not the the unbuntu installer is too hard.

They got rid "squirting" feature which Balmar was so proud of.

First, Microsoft has removed the "squirting" feature, which let you send songs directly from one Zune to another. This feature was supposed to be a big selling point of the first Zune but was crippled by unreasonable rights restrictions that let you play songs only three times or within three days (whichever came first). Microsoft and content owners gradually loosened those restrictions, but the feature never made much difference--mainly because there were so few Zune users out there to exchange songs with. (The "first man with a telephone" problem.) Now it's gone

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10352637-27.html

Your complaints about driver stabilization over time are valid IMHO. I think it would be smart if they agreed to not change the ABI for say 2 years at a time. Or rather, keep the legacy interface around for that long.

Linux has "something like 10% market share" if you include servers. Yet even support there is seemingly marginal from the vendors.

As far as market share is concerned. I'ld like to see a source. Everywhere I read puts linux ~2%.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9910263-16.html
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25361/1141/

MySQL is not mentioned in this ad, perhaps because (as Matt Asay speculates) the EU is looking closely into that aspect of the proposed acquisition.

Would promising to maintain or increase the investment into MySQL actually smooth things over with the EU?... If I were an Oracle exec, I would strongly encourage support for MySQL as a way to keep people away from PostgreSQL. Articles like this show that PostgreSQL has a lot more potential to win over Oracle customers than MySQL does.

What is worse, some people can have temper tantrums, promote insance conspiracy theories, call others who disagree with them corrupt, brainwashed cowards, and get modded up. Uncivilized discussion should never be tolerated in a civilized world. When I go crazy, I expect to be modded down. I hope I never write anything as hypocritical as the parent. I also have mode points, almost always, and my karma is high. However, as the faq says, karma is not dick or teat size. Abusing the karma, or treating it as something real, is pretty pathetic. Saying the no one can hurt you because your karma is so high is not dissimilar to a person who goes on a murder spree because they feel they cannot be caught.

To the matter at hand, no one knows why MS is all of the sudden being so nice, but there is evidence it is not completely benign. They probably have violated GPL and similar licenses in the past, and some of the donations may have been settlements for those illegal activities. The courts are pretty convinced that MS destroyed the i4i bussiness, and it is only the massive number of MS lawyers that keep MS Word on the market. MS is not apologetic about this piracy, and claim that since the business is already destroyed, why should there be any damages? Then there is the matter of the patents that MS tried to sell on the idea that the price could be recouped by suing OSS providers. In all, there is no evidence that the MS tactics of sneak attacks and massive budgets for lawyers has changed.

It is easy for the young people to just use the OSS without realizing that it is a right that many had to work for. MS helped in this fight, by giving software away, but then kind of lost the faith by writing whiny letter, not unlike the parent, and randomly asserting copyrights as it needed extra cash. But know the kids have OSS, and are willing to take it for granted. Just like women who can now work, vote, and wear pants. Or non-whites who have equal rights and justice. Or kids who get a minimum wage and have some assurance of actually receiving the money.

Citation needed

All this effort is put into chrome polishing the kernel for faster SMP with 64 CPU systems and the dang box can't even play music without having some sort of brain failure.

Check list of Linux kernel contributors to understand why.

Do not know how it is now, but in past one could see lots of ignored/rejected patches on lkml with desktop relevant changes.

Windows 7 will ship without USB 3.0 support.

I love it when Apple fanboys ask for examples!

"It's funny because you did not provide even one example of how the PC provides more options than your Mac... something rather critical to your premise, no?"

Take a look at this:

Download.com > Educational Software > Science Software for windows
http://download.cnet.com/windows/educational-software/?tag=ltcol;nav

Download.com > Educational Software > Science Software for mac
http://download.cnet.com/mac/science-software/3150-2054_4-0.html

Look at the number of titles on the left. Compare the number of PC titles to Mac titles.

Then have a look here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

How many options for Mac can you find?

I love it when Apple fanboys ask for examples!

"It's funny because you did not provide even one example of how the PC provides more options than your Mac... something rather critical to your premise, no?"

Take a look at this:

Download.com > Educational Software > Science Software for windows
http://download.cnet.com/windows/educational-software/?tag=ltcol;nav

Download.com > Educational Software > Science Software for mac
http://download.cnet.com/mac/science-software/3150-2054_4-0.html

Look at the number of titles on the left. Compare the number of PC titles to Mac titles.

Then have a look here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

How many options for Mac can you find?

In 1997 Microsoft invested $150M in Apple.

A quote from that article:

Davis also said that given the size of Microsoft, a $150 million commitment amounts to little more than good public relations. "Remember, they spent $450 million on WebTV. The investment still doesn't give Apple a coherent strategy for turning things around."

Sometimes partnerships work out and some times they don't. For example:

The companies also agreed to collaborate on the Java programming language and other programming languages to ensure they run consistently on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. In addition, Apple agreed to make Microsoft's Internet Explorer the default browser for the Macintosh platform.

We all know how MS Java and IE on Mac turned out, don't we?

Davis said the investment means that Apple will now toe Microsoft's line on Java. "If Java is a threat to Windows, and all operating systems, then it's a threat to Apple and the Mac OS."

We all know that Microsoft Java turned out to be a violation of some law or other and was deprecated. And we're only 11 years hence.

And one more quote on whether the investment and its concomitant concessions was a good deal for Apple: it was only 11% of Apple's available cash at the time:

Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said. He added that the company expects to gain a higher percentage of its revenues from software and services in these core markets in the future.

$150M in Apple that week evolves into $4.2B today. If Microsoft kept this one and did as well with their other investments, by now they would own the world.

Not when you are playing with LEGO Mindstorms NXT. I got my set ( the older version ) when Ed Nisley, writing for Dr Dobbs at the time, recommended them as a way to learn about embedded programming. Here is a great example of how awesome the robots can be.

The Acer 3000LMi is the Ferrari of notebooks. Apple laptops don't go "VROOM VROOM" when you start them up. The Acer does.

It was coming to bite them in the a**... with a student suing them and everything.

They finally realized they were getting widespread negative publicity, poorer reviews, more people recommending to stay away frmo kindle and get something else, and maybe, just maybe, it put a small dent in their sales.

Enough for them to stand up and take notice...

If it were just a few customers effected by the deletion and hasn't been widely publicized in the news, I have my doubts that Amazon would have ever done something to right the situation.

The main thing this would do that battery backed up DRAM wouldn't do is allow for quick boot and hibernate, which is something the enterprise people generally don't care about. The flash looks like it will be replaceable via a dimm-like slot. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10258748-64.html and http://www.hardware.info/en-UK/news/ymiclpqWwpyaaJY/Computex09_Intel_P55_motherboard_gallery/

The other thing this does is bypass the "slow" SATA interface. We have laptop SSD drives that saturate SATA 3.0 and newer drives should be able to saturate the upcoming SATA 6.0. I don't know what kind of bandwidth is going to be available on this new flash slot, but I hope it's a LOT.

This popped up a couple years ago when they started turning anyone's cell phones into a wireless microphone (even when off). Ever since then I have had zero expectations of privacy with a cell phone around. I don't assume they are doing it (or anyone is) but the possibility is there. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

Not talking about ISP's here. If AT&T is going through some growing pains, then they may need to temporarily limit network speeds per user, but when they implement the upgrades, which they do in fact have plans to do, then the caps can either be raised or removed completely. Otherwise, Apple's decision to cancel the exclusivity deal may become more a of a reality.

How many people will buy several of these and never play games on them?

Probably more than you think, go to AV forums and you'll see a lot of people using the PS3 mainly to watch Blu-ray discs, especially now you can get the BBC iPlayer on it.

Comcast wants the FCC to match OCED in defining broadband at 256kbps download. The FCC has previously defined broadband at 200kbps in either direction; in March 2009 they voted to change the lower limit to 768kbps and call the lowest tier "basic broadband". 200kbps to 768kbps is supposed to be called "first generation data". http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9898118-7.html

The rollout of the new definition does not seem to be going well, as recent FCC documents are continuing to use old definitions. From september 2009: http://www.fcc.gov/Forms/Form477/477inst.pdf

I'm not sure about an announcement but here's a CNET article from last night...

Opera 10 browser is here

Which is where I got the news first. On Tuesday morning Google tech news had 30+ articles about thelaunch of Opera 10. /. scoop fail

I don't believe any PC vendor would change the default unless they were being paid, or just angling for a better deal from Microsoft. I suppose the latter is possible too, but given their choice of browser I think its more likely it was a monetary deal.

Sony did have 25% of the laptop market 8 years ago and I used to see Vaios everywhere so it's a bit surprising that Sony have fallen so far. The 2008 sales figures:

Rank Vendor Market share
1 HP 20.8%
2 Dell 15.1%
3 Acer 14.6%
4 Toshiba 9.3%
5 Lenovo 7.5%
6 Fujitsu 5.2%
7 Apple 4.6%
8 Asus 4.3%
9 Sony 4.2%

Almost every one of those other manufacturers will be shipping IE. So technically you're right, Apple at 4.6% is a slightly bigger dent than Sony's 4.2%, but it's not a huge difference.

Windows still sucks for customization:

* Can you just drag your favorite folders to the common open/save dialog box like OSX ?

* Can you add the option to Right-Click on a folder and "Command Prompt Here" without hacking the registry. Gee, thx for removing File Types "Folder / Directory" customization in Vista, MS.

* Can you over-ride or add your own custom Windows- shortcuts without using AutoHotKey ? i.e. Win-C Run Calculator, Win-Z Run Cmd. http://www.autohotkey.com/

* Can you re-order the taskbar tabs without using Taskbar Shuffle, XNeat Window Manager, or Taskbar Manager ? http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-9937700-12.html

It only took MS _how_ long to standardize on the C:\Users\ folder, when before it kept changing almost every Windows version?

* Why the hell does an Admin need to use something like Unlocker to copy/delete tmp files used by another process or even to kill _any_ process?? http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

* I still have to make a batch file called x.bat that contains "@start explorer /e,." in every version of windows just because MS doesn't care to teach people how to seemlessly go back and forth between explorer and the command line.

But yeah, Windows is slowly getting usable.

--
Awesome Steam games!: Braid, Darwinia, Light of Altair, Osmos, Trine World of Goo

I'm not sure about an announcement but here's a CNET article from last night...

Opera 10 browser is here

not how it's implemented

No, patents protect specific implementations not ideas. In a case brought by i4i against Microsoft a Texas jury ruled in favor of i4i saying MS infringed on a patent. The judge issued an injunction against MS that gives MS "two months to pursue an appeal, craft a settlement, or implement a technical workaround that removes the technology found to be infringing." Notice the clause "implement a technical workaround".

Since slashdot like car analogues I'll use my own. Open the hood and examine all the part of the engine. They all have brakes, most have alternators and starters as well. Now look at those parts closely, many have plates with patent numbers. A starter in a GM car will have patents that are different than a starter from a Ford. Yet they do the same thing, the only thing different is the implementation. The general principles are the same only the implementation is different. I rebuilt the 4 barrel 350 ci V8 in my old Monte Carlo, and after that I could have done the same with someone's Ford Mustang.

As Dana Blankenhorn writes in the article "A modest proposal on patents":

"My point is that, while my bird feeder is patented, there is no patent on the idea of a bird feeder. Just on the way this one works. Birds are not starving due to this guy's patent."

"If this were software, they would be. Software doesn't just protect code, but the idea of what the code is trying to do. So software patent holders try to hold up whole swathes of technology progress, and as we saw in the RIM case, they sometimes get away with it."

If you simply sit by and wait, then copy (steal) something innovative created by your competitor

That is not stealing, the owner still has his or her patent. All that is is infringement.

Falcon

It is...there was an article recently that proclaimed that the Apache license is applied to more newer projects in the commercial realm.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10319560-16.html

Snow Leopard could level security playing field

OS X vulnerabilities vs Vista (IBM Research via /.)

Some big complaints I gleaned from other news sources seem to include the fact that if you're deemed a "critical" enough place, then

a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

-- CNET

The EFF further complains "The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

So, random government intrusion in random places which are "critical". Blargh. "Be more specific please" is the complaint.

Yeah, the article even points out that Apple dropped support for syncing with PowerPC Macs, so it's not like Apple is only dropping support for competitors; they're just weeding out anything non-recent. The argument seems to be that somehow dropping PPC support is acceptable, because they've been discontinued, but PalmOS is still an OS on phones currently sold, so couldn't be explained by the same "it's just being dropped because it's old and dead" logic. But Palm itself basically declared Palm OS dead before Apple dropped support.

You could argue it's a bit premature, but it doesn't take an anticompetitive explanation for that: Apple has a long history of dropping support for stuff that was becoming obsolete in a way that many commentators considered a bit premature, starting with their decision to drop floppy support.