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You really think that if the NSA went to Microsoft and asked for source code, that Microsoft would say no?

Hell, MS even said yes when China asked.

Open-source just levels the playing field for the rest of us.

The DMCA does not cover jailbreaking.

Apple begs to differ.

Cadets trade trenches for firewalls
http://news.cnet.com/2100-7350_3-6249633.html

(if you don't have nor want a subscription to the NYT....)

This part probably is getting lots of attention here in /.:

Cadet Brian McCord, part of the team that installed the operating system, said he was chosen because his senior project was deeply reliant on Linux. The West Point team used this open-source operating system, freely available on the Internet, instead of relying on proprietary products from big-name companies like Microsoft or Sun Microsystems.

But this part probably says it all:

""It seems weird for the Army with its large contracts to be using Linux, but it's very cheap and very customizable," McCord said. It is also much easier to secure because "you can tweak it for everything you need" and there are not as many known ways to attack it, he said."

The Playstation 3 runs on the Cell CPU, which an extremely powerful multiprocessing chip. It's also extremely high yield in manufacturing, because defective chips usually just lose one or more of the parallel DSPs, but otherwise work just great.

O RLY? The real story is that the PS3's Cell processor has 7/8 of its theoretical performance, because the only way they could get yields up into the acceptable range was by disabling one PPE. This was not part of the original plan.

Mobile Cell chips could be simply the lower-grade chips with just one or a few DSPs working, but otherwise superfast (3.2GHz PPC, wicked fast bus, etc).

O RLY? Why this link? Because Cell TDP is 60-80 watts. Put that in a handheld and burn your fingers.

And Linux already runs great on the Cell (as in Linux on Playstation), with the main OS on the PPC and multimedia offloaded to the DSPs.

O RLY? No, Linux runs on the PPC and one of the SPEs, reducing the total number of usable SPEs to six. In your mythical cell-based handheld with less SPEs, there would be even less available.

Finally, the SPEs are not DSPs, they are vector processors.

In other words, sorry man, but your comment is 100% incorrect.

Oh really? If that's so, someone should ask "Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst" why they're gutting support for Windows on the Thinkpad line. For years, one of the biggest competitive advantages for the Thinkpad line has been the Thinkvantage software that checks the hardware and downloads+installs the latest drivers and updates. This is a tremendous boon for mid-size enterprises and soho market.

About a month ago, and with less than 24 hrs notice, Lenovo announced the discontinuation the whole Windows update system and archive, instead recommending that Windows users should look up their systems using the PN/FRU, check the date and release of each update and driver against the product matricies (about 30-40 distinct drivers and updates per machine) and download what they need and manually install it. (I feel bad for those with custom-built Thinkpads which have different configs using the same PN/FRU.) Sounds like Lenovo is hell-bent on trying to make the Windows experience like Linux 10 years ago.

This is a far cry from "[Windows] just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go. No. Really, not. Not even close.

But this may be academic in the near term, with Windows 7 spitting on customers with things like an auto-shutdown feature on one side, and reviews on the other saying that the Linux experience is trumping even OS X at this point. (CNet says Ubuntu 9.04 as slick as Windows 7, Mac OS X .) Lenovo's right hand not knowing that its left is chopping down support for Windows to the bare minimums is... curious.

Android phones are being released in Canada next month. Unfortunately they are only available through Rogers, puke!

I suppose it's all relative -- but compared to some of the crazy stuff coming out, it seems pretty small.

Its nothing new, the idea of cars talking to each other to transmit road conditions, keep a certain distance, allow faster fluid road usage, impose road-travel pricing, etc have been around for a while.

http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/070508_network-on-wheels.aspx
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10895_7-6733591-1.html

There are probably other reasons to have it, from the 2nd link:

Google is also taking a strong interest in this technology. Why would an Internet search company be interested in car technology? Because it wants to extend its reach into your car. And where Google goes, Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to follow. Right now, navigation systems have static databases of restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses. A vehicle communication infrastructure could make that dynamic by sending requests for local restaurants, for example, over the network, with results coming back from Google, Yahoo, or any other online database.

so - safety, taxation, and advertising. I suppose it would also make stealing your car nigh on impossible, and it might help with congestion too.

Haven't we been saying this for, like, ten years. The fact that an increasing number of consumers are becoming aware of said tactics doesn't seem to have:

a) impacted on those tactics

b) changed legislative backing for the MPAA

c) reduced political complicity in the whole sorry affair

Sure it will change eventually, but soon?

Why are critical systems not protected by a one inch air gap between the NIC and cable from remote exploit?

Seems like from TFA they're not:

The attacks so far have primarily disrupted mission-support functions, but attacks could spread over network connections from those areas to the operational networks where real-time surveillance, communications and flight information is processed, the report warned.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10235906-37.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/happiness-in-slavery-nin-iphone-app-approved-with-no-changes/

The app was unchanged from when it was submitted. That Reznor quote is misleading--regardless of the tactics they tried prior to approval, in the end the version approved was unchanged from the original.

get rid of adobe reader, F-secure says its not secure.

"they took IBM's commitment to OS/2 too seriously .. IBM just walked away, whistling"

I thought OS/2 was a joint project between IBM and Microsoft? Perhaps that explains Borlands decision to commitment to OS/2 too seriously. MS also leaned on IBM to drop OS/2 else it would be forced to pay higher prices for software. See also IBM chief: Microsoft killed OS/2

EMC is not a Biotech company, and moreover it has a history of successfully enforcing non-compete clauses: Don Kempel for instance:
http://news.cnet.com/Storage-giant-sues-former-executive/2100-1015_3-274247.html

They appear to work for EMC !

It may surprise you to learn that Norton Internet Security 2009 is considered a very good security suite. Norton realized that they were writing shitty code and rewrote the entire thing from scratch with an emphasis on stability and speed. From the article: "That said, Norton Internet Security 2009 presents a remarkable transformation of a product and is worth a second look." I also picked up NIS 2009 and Ghost 14 for free after rebate. You can't beat that.

acer 6292, see.

Hate to tell you this, but images are less a part of the HTML format than script - whilst script blocks can be embedded amongst the HTML code, images can only be referenced from HTML.

Images are, in fact, a security risk - there are known JPEG image exploits, for example. All major browsers I've ever used also have the ability to disable loading images. If I turn off images am I protecting myself or creating an unauthorized derivative work through contributory copyright infringement? What if I'm using a text-only browser, like Lynx? What if I'm blind and am using a text-to-speech browser?

People have a choice in how they browse the internet. It's their right to choose. If they want to turn-off script and ads that's their choice, not yours and not the web pages author's. Putting site-specific rules on top of that is no different.

If you want to push he contributory copyright infringement argument I'd suggest that you start talking to the governments of a number of countries that are actively blocking content "on behalf of their citizens," such as China, United Kingdom and Australia.

IIRC, the only reason AIM is open is because of antitrust concerns born of the merger. So something good may have come of it. But I wonder what will happen to AIM if AOL fails.
http://news.cnet.com/Commentary-Taking-AIM-at-AOL/2009-1023_3-268050.html
http://www.articlearchives.com/law-legal-system/antitrust-trade-law/555912-1.html
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/26010/aol-reneges-on-aim-interoperability-promise.html

IIRC, the only reason AIM is open is because of antitrust concerns born of the merger. So something good may have come of it. But I wonder what will happen to AIM if AOL fails.
http://news.cnet.com/Commentary-Taking-AIM-at-AOL/2009-1023_3-268050.html
http://www.articlearchives.com/law-legal-system/antitrust-trade-law/555912-1.html
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/26010/aol-reneges-on-aim-interoperability-promise.html

http://news.cnet.com/Supreme-Court-nixes-copyright-challenge/2100-1023_3-980792.html

Lessig argued that repeated extensions were unconstitutional because they ran afoul of the Constitution's "limited times" requirement and also conflicted with the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech.

But just moments into Lessig's opening remarks, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor interrupted and noted Congress had repeatedly extended the duration on copyrights, with no intervention before by the Supreme Court. What, O'Connor asked, is different about this case?

Lessig then continued to ramble on and the supremes continued to roll their eyes and wonder what the hell he was on about. He later said that, in retrospect, he should have shut up at that point and addressed the point made.

And guess who is responsible for the code quality of quicktime? Apple.

OSX is swiss cheese too. It has dozens of setuid programs. It has no "DEP" - something that Windows XP had 5 years ago with service pack 2.

It's not just me claiming that. I know others who would say the same thing.

Both Charlie Miller and "Nils" say OSX is easier to exploit.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/03/mac_os_x_top_target_in_browser.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941

Quotes:

"It's getting pretty hard to do a lot of this stuff on Windows Vista and Windows 7," Nils said. "Especially when a lot of people who stayed with [Windows XP] switch to Windows 7 because they didn't want Vista, the bad guys may start to figure out they can more easily exploit these bugs more reliably on a Mac."

"Mac OS X has some ASLR but not much, and there is no DEP in OS X," Miller said. "My exploit relied on exploit code being in certain spot, and that it would [execute], and in Vista neither of those things would have happened."

This is what you need!

I'm compelled to ask what your phb actually does for a living. because it's not networking
In the data centre, all of our runs are custom. Even in the lab and development rooms, the runs are custom built cables. If a "belkin" cable gets into the datacentre, it's lost.
Now, I'm not promising that YOU can make the cables, there's a definite knack to it ( I personally don't have it, I hate making cables but our datacentre guys are wicked awesome at it). I've ever heard of these magical special jacks dies and cable he's referring to.

Maybe he wants you to get some of these?: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9967991-1.html ?

Hehe, I could answer a few of these questions, but they are the subject of the novel I'm currently writing :)
The 2025 estimate isn't mine, it's Ray Kurzweil's, look him up, he's done a lot more research on it than either of us, including two books on the topic. The estimate is based on the number of neurons in the human brain and a projection of Moore's Law to discover how many transistors & ghz would be needed to approximate the processing power equivalent of the human brain. 2025 is actually the later date, he says 2020 - 2025.

Lastly, brain imaging tools have come a very, very, long way. Did you see a recent article which announced the discovery of a way to increase the sensitivity of micro-MRI machines by over 1,000,000 times?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10141097-76.html

It's hip to be skeptical, and certainly the last 60 years of AI research seem to have gone relatively nowhere, but that was the point of my post: that perception is no longer correct. That ignores the fact, as Kurzweil points out, that progress is not linear but in fact exponential.

As far as modeling the brain, there are researchers which are able to actually trace the circuits in the brain tied to various systems. One example, researchers tied a glowing gene into mice to create glowing brain cells visible in real-time under a microscope. Then they began implanting several different color genes into different parts of the system creating 'rainbow mice' where different parts of the brain glow different colors making it even easier to see all parts of the system:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300/5616/78

With such mice they've been picking apart the actual circuitry of the brain and getting it working, including building theoretical models of the observed brain-system. When running the model the result is auditory processing as good as the animal produces.

So, perhaps even you are not quite as up to date on the science as you'd thought.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10222486-94.html

'(Verizon CEO) Seidenberg added that Apple never "seriously considered making a CDMA version of the iPhone because it didn't have as wide a distribution opportunity," the article said.'

How difficult is it for the truth to be repeated as often as rumor?

Post it on YouTube AND their site.

I can't wait to see what they do with videos like this classic of an NYPD officer bodychecking some cyclist into the sidewalk.

"As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac"

"I am starting to prefer using my Ubuntu "Jaunty Jackalope" desktop over the similarly slick Windows 7 beta (which I am currently running full-time on one desktop) and Mac OS X Leopard operating systems, which I also use regularly"

"And the effects are mostly great (on their own), but it still lacks coherency in its design. The UI elements still look ratty, old-fashioned, and ugly .. highly-functional chicken coop"

Your experience is so totally different than the reviewer it's almost as you you were occupying a parallel Bizarro kind of universe.

'You won't be able to notice the vast improvement in Ubuntu's desktop experience over the past six months by browsing screenshot galleries of 9.04 or looking at new feature lists. What I'm talking about is that elusive slick-and-speedy feel you get from applications launching fast, windows moving around without jerkiness, and everything simply being where it should be in the user interface'

Indeed they will:

1997:

http://asia.cnet.com/photogallery/0,3800005208,62032380-005p,00.htm

1947:

http://asia.cnet.com/photogallery/0,3800005208,62032380-005p,00.htm

Almost exactly 50 years apart.

But the thread is about commercial airliners. Posting about an experimental aircraft (and ignoring the examples above from that same page) is hardly germane.

Indeed they will:

1997:

http://asia.cnet.com/photogallery/0,3800005208,62032380-005p,00.htm

1947:

http://asia.cnet.com/photogallery/0,3800005208,62032380-005p,00.htm

Almost exactly 50 years apart.

But the thread is about commercial airliners. Posting about an experimental aircraft (and ignoring the examples above from that same page) is hardly germane.

Yep, the planes of tomorrow will look just like the ones from forty years ago.

Goodbye http://geocities.com/dbz_final_flash/

You taught me how to roleplay.

Goodbye http://geocities.com/dbchronicles/

You taught me how to make my own roleplaying games.

Goodbye http://news.cnet.com/GeoCities-porn-ads-spark-controversy/2100-1023_3-225226.html

You taught me that too much roleplaying means I should be spending my time on better things, like clicking porn ads.

The gap between MySQL and Oracle is huge and not likely to be closed anytime soon.

Technology leaders in big companies aren't as into all the open source gossip as the slashdot crowd are and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't even know there were MySQL forks or what that meant.

They would rather go with a MySQL that is named MySQL and has a big company like Sun or Oracle, the leading db vendor that also owns the only sane database engine for MySQL, than some noname fork. Even if it was started by the MySQL founders and all the developers went to it. If all the MySQL developers go to a fork, well then Oracle developers will take over.

What's more concerning is IBMs partnership with EnterpriseDB, which is based on PostgreSQL.

If you want an open source database that closes the gap with Oracle, use PostgreSQL.

Sun should have never bought MySQL. Instead they should have put more effort into PostgreSQL. Sun has had some big wins with Solaris and Postgresql in the past and offer support for it on Solaris.

Must be tough since Oracle is an important part of Sun's business but Oracle has done things that could be considered as stabbing Sun in the back too.

Yikes... wasn't aware of that. Not that I'm surprised. :(

A lot more detail here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0

Processor production is a mature commoditized business as well, yet we're still improving there. The fact is cells have been improving since production first began, and research continues to show how we might futher improve batteries: http://news.cnet.com/A-tenfold-improvement-in-battery-life/2100-1041_3-6226196.html

But if you buy enough of these babies, problem solved!

I didn't really buy it when I first saw that story. It appears there's been enough time for someone to look it over and see that it wasn't completely on the level.

From:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9750840-1.html

Direct Link:

http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

"all reports I've read in the press indicate that Oracle has been handling the mergers very well."

*cough*peoplesoft fiasco*cough*

I'm talking post merger. Merger might not be the right word in that case. It was pretty much a hostile takeover with Peoplesoft kicking and screaming as well as legal battles to get it done.

But a year after the Oracle Peoplesoft merger things seemed to be going smoothly.

Even now, years later, while they've been working on consolidating the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products, they haven't abandoned support for the legacy systems people are using.

> Do you really honestly think an embedded version of flash would actually
> require the same features that make the desktop version insecure?

Errr, uhhhm, there is a significant difference between what features are required in any commercial software, and what it ends up with. Does PDF (also by Adobe) *REALLY* need javascript to display pages of data??? Does it really need a gazillion plugins that take forever to load, whereas Foxit and Xpdf load instantly??? Does Flash *REALLY* need the ability to view through your PC USB camera, and listen through your PC microphone, and put stuff into your your clipboard ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10021715-83.html )???

To quote a very wise person... "Answer - no of course not". ***BUT THAT GARBAGE STILL GETS PUT IN, JUST THE SAME***. What makes you think that Flash-for-TV will break the pattern, and not have a whole bunch of extraneous garbage/bloat/features?

Are you sure?

Well, you could trust random parts of the media or you could just trust the evil source themselves :-)

If this is true then it rather drives a coach and horses through the security-through-obscurity closed source security model.

The model was always marketing garbage anyway. However what you should understand is that the question is not "security" as such rather "who's security". Microsoft cares somewhat about the security of it's large and or strategic paying customers of which you are not one. In this context, messing over the Tibetan community would be the right thing to do since they are a threat to the Chinese government which is clearly a bigger customer than the Tibetan government and controls a much larger customer base (the Chinese people) than the Tibetan government (the Tibetan exile community). In security as in life; follow the money.

Forgot to mention that there are quadcore laptops on the market.
A CNET NEWS article: "Xtreme Notebooks has released the first quad-core laptop in the U.S. With no mobile quad-core parts in existence, the Xtreme 917V Accelerator turns to desktop CPUs, giving you a choice between the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and the Q6700. Pricing starts at $3,359."

---
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of Arabica that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning.

Forgot to mention that there are quadcore laptops on the market.
A CNET NEWS article: "Xtreme Notebooks has released the first quad-core laptop in the U.S. With no mobile quad-core parts in existence, the Xtreme 917V Accelerator turns to desktop CPUs, giving you a choice between the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and the Q6700. Pricing starts at $3,359."

---
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of Arabica that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning.

CNET story from February of this year:

After nearly five years of planning and fighting with local cable and phone companies, the Lafayette Utilities System opened its fiber-optic broadband network for business.

The city of Lafayette had to fight HARD to pull this off -- BellSouth (phone) and Cox Communications (cable TV) did NOT want this to happen.

But as you read down, some interesting details.
"The software's primary utility appears to be in tracking down suspects that use proxy servers or anonymizing websites to cover their tracks."
The feds note your interests as you type, not your proxy for the day 1/2 around the world.
What was once a hardware logger install is now your clicking on a link.
"alarmed when the hacker he was chasing didn't get infected with the spyware after visiting the CIPAV-loaded website."
Seems like someone was using a Mac or Linux/other OS?
What do people think? A deep dark federal/MS approved/AV hidden effort?
Or in house/turned/tame spyware author ?
Would Tripwire save you :) ???
The MAC address part reminds me of hints about the anti p2p software called "Operation Fairplay"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9920665-7.html

If you bought his kindle from him would you be able to buy ebooks from the kindle store to put on the kindle that was initially bought by him?

Are you saying that if some generous soul on slashdot wanted to buy him an ebook from the kindle store he would be able to load it?

Because if either of these things are no longer possible then the value of his kindle has gone down, and if neither are possible in any kindle then its a pretty poor system and not worth buying into.

see there is a subtle difference from him being barred from borders and say his granny not being able to buy a book at borders as a gift for his birthday.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hacks/kindle-drm-hacked-that-was-easy-333415.php

seems to suggest the serial number is locked to the users device so if amazon choose to end his account the kindles pretty much barred too.

I'm not sure if there is much of a saving on books either, where i could compare, Amazon seemed to sell the paperback and the electronic version for the same price.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10196424-38.html is interesting amazon using the DMCA to stop nonkindle books being used on the kindle unsuccessfully http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1158727&cid=27172053

perhaps a more worrying trend is that amazon will not support encrypted mobipocket books on the kindle, perhaps rightly but don't amazon own mobipocket books too?

i'm not so sure if having a wireless device that updates itself at amazons command is that great if they don't respect their customers, i guess Jeff Bezos http://www.martinmanley.typepad.com/jam_side_down/2009/03/billionaire-amazon-ceo-works-a-week-in-his-own-warehouse.html doesn't look much like Darth Vader but could he say the line I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it still further...

Who's toy is it his or Jeff Bezos?

Any content that is distributed under any of the Creative Commons NC licenses (e.g. cc-sa-nc cannot legally used for advertising purposes. The very similar license under which the Grateful Dead allow redistribution of their old concert recordings explicitly lists advertising and "exploiting databases compiled from their traffic" as forbidden.

Well gee, of course an all-Apple household would cost more... because after all, previous studies have already show that MacHeads are more honest than their Windows brethren... so likewise, MacHeads are obviously more likely to pay for all of their software (as well as their media files) instead of pirating it, right? ;-)

Well... that, or both studies are contrived and worth less then the ad-click-throughs that they generated for the sites reporting on them. Like Mark Twain was so fond of saying... "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies... and statistics."

Microsoft releasing less than honest information about a competitor? And it backfires as people call them out for dishonesty? Wow that's never happened before. Microsoft doesn't seem to learn from their mistakes do they?

Well, they are installing rooftops with solar panels, too. From the CNet article that the article linked to: "Along with solar panels on the roofs of buildings citywide, it will be a revolutionary leap forward in clean energy for an urban area."

Besides that fact, if you have a solar generator that supplies electricity to houses, you can then charge those houses for the supply of electricity. Having solar panels for each house effectively means no revenue stream.

Call my a cynic, but I doubt Florida Power & Light and Kitson & Partners would have been keen to take part in the project without some sort of return. Florida Power & Light are investing $350 million to build the plant, so they'll want something back!

• RIAA throws a lot of money at Obama, obama installs their lawyers in DOJ
• Microsoft throws a lot of money at the Obama campaign, Obama campaign streams inaguration using Silverlight.

Of course, that's common sense. Now let's hope this example is a sign of things to come:

• Microsoft throws a lot of money at MLB, MLB uses silverlight to stream their games...only this time, it dosen't work out after they realize what a stupid move it was.