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It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

It certainly does not appear in any licence associated with Chrome. It is not only completely fictional (note that the article does not actually link or provide any reference to an actual EULA), it is active shilling. For reference, here is a list of some articles written by Ina Fried for CNET:

• Be sure to read Chrome's fine print (2/9/08)
• What Chrome means for Microsoft (2/9/08)
• Microsoft yanks Money off retail shelves (8/8/08)
• Windows Home Server update released (21/7/08)
• Site created to share [Microsoft's] Live Mesh invites (29/4/08)
• What's in Ray Ozzie's Mesh? (18/4/08)
• Microsoft buys airfare predictor Farecast (17/4/08)
• Does Microsoft need a value menu? (26/3/08)
• Microsoft looking for a Silverlight bullet (5/3/08)
• NBC looks to win Silverlight medal (5/3/08)
• At Redmond, Wikipedia becomes Micropedia (5/3/08)

There are a few other non-Microsoft-shilling articles, but precious few.

Which EULA would that be? The one linked in the article? Oh wait, the article doesn't actually link to any EULA.

Chrome's "EULA" may be found here. It consists principally of this sentence:

The Chromium software and sample code developed by Google is licensed under the BSD license.

I therefore conclude that TFA is a figment of the imagination of its author.

I would like to assume that the author of TFA is deluded rather than a shill; unfortunately, the list of Ina Fried's articles for CNET tends to suggest otherwise.

CNet has a read the EULA warning regarding Chrome.

1. Google reserves the right to automatically update and install Chrome.

This is becoming standard fare with much software these days, but worth noting.

"The software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the services."

It gets worse from there.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10030035-2.html http://google.client.shareholder.com/Visitors/event/build2/MediaPresentation.cfm?MediaID=33101&Player=1#

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10028067-16.html

They've renewed their funding less than a week ago for another 3 years. Either they're planning something malicious, or they really don't care what browser people use, so long as the applications get developed. (which is google's primary mission - providing content, not competing in the browser area, hence open source and standards compliant.)

Why a new Javascript engine if TraceMonkey is coming soon, anyway?

I meant to hit preview...

Anyway, here's the citation

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10029974-2.html

Pardon me, but I'm a bit stunned that anyone might think this is the real reason Google might make a browser.

Cuz, I mean, we all remember how well it worked for Netscape. Don't we?

First, this happened to the world's most popular browser, as it grew to include a kitchen sink. Then, a little over a year later, AOL happened to Netscape. Mere days later, it was revealed what AOL's real intentions were. They later disbanded what was left of Netscape. And today, nobody gives a shit about AOL's $4,200,000,000.00 start page. (I've intentionally omitted the parts about "source code" and "JWZ," as they don't seem relevant to the point.)

Really: If this history shows us anything, it is that the web portal game is a joke. Tying it into software (and thus making it even less universal) just makes it even more laughable.

I know a couple of people who are trying to create wifi-to-wifi chains to mazimize internet access for their neighbors in the USA, and that is the fastest-growing method for new internet access in Africa. Comcast has reached the end of their rope (or cable, heh-heh) now that wifi is commonplace. Today their biggest competitor is not DSL, but bandwidth cannabalization (new potential clients lost to wifi broadcasts from current clients). I think that's the reason for the 'cap'.

I watched testimony about caps and bittorrents on C-span, and there is a review of that testimony at CNET Politics and Law The main issue was whether Comcast can legitimately set caps in order to protect stockholders, or whether Congress needs to get involved in monitoring the cap Comcast sets. I'd predict that eventually they will be able to reduce bandwidth, rather than cut it off entirely, because a "month" is a pretty clumsy unit of measure, like serving toast with a Catepillar bucketloader. They will have to let people make an emergency VOIP call, like cell phone service provider, and that will mean reducing bandwidth rather than cutting it off.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-7344-5198117.html

Germany is pretty forward on these issues actually...

The difference is enough that the problem here isn't MS, it's the patent system. But we knew that. We're vilifying the wrong people. Our efforts should be focused on demonstrating the inferiority of this system, and exposing any corruption involved in maintaining it.

I have to agree, and if anything MS is demonstrating the insanity of the US Patent system by proxy.

MS has been sued over 100s of insane patents, and so they were forced to patent anything even plausibly theirs to protect companies from getting rich off of stupid patent lawsuits.

(If people look at MS patent history, prior to the mid 90s when they started getting hammered with bogus patent lawsuits, MS had a very limited amount of patents.)

In case anyone doubts MS's filings as being anything but defensive, Google their position on Patents going back to Win 3.x days.

Here is a quick link to illustrate:
http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft,%20Oracle%20call%20for%20patent%20reform/2100-1030_3-5683240.html

Wow, that article on the French is an evidence-free zone. The only actual French OSS project they mention is some middleware doodah that I've never even heard of. Trying to think of some myself... um:

1. Mandrake
2. ...er ...
3. ... that's it.

I'm sure there are others but none springs to mind.

Actually it's Mandriva. Using Mandrake is no more allowed, because of Mandrake the magician ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandriva_Linux#Name_changes )

Well Mandriva is just an example of software tagged "French" (not by Mandriva itself, but it's often referred as "French distro" or something).
As you guessed, we can find some other examples of software started by french people (videolan, Xfce, azureus, libcaca, sympa, frozen-bubble[2] etc.).

But is it important ? Is Mandriva really a French distro ? Mandriva now owns Conectiva (from Brazil) and Lycoris (from USA). So it's more 50% French, 25% US and 25% Brazilian. But wait it's using a kernel started by a Finnish guy, and a Desktop Environment born in (and still hugdely attached to) Germany...
You know were i'm heading. I don't think counting the number or "French OSS projects" is a good measure of how much France is involved or not in FLOSS. Perhaps we can find more valuables way to measure it. For instance by finding some projects where French people are really involved :

• Gnome :
  • http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/random/GnomeWorldWideHuge.jpg (I agree, we don't see much here. Just a bunch of points somewhere in West Europa)
• KDE :
  • http://worldwide.kde.org/pics/fullmap.jpeg
  • http://commit-digest.org/mappy/?view=2008-08-17&scheme=map_default&region=world&mode=embedded&standalone=no
• Debian
  • http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc (Same remark as Gnome)

We can also looks at studies and statistics :

• http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/Final-2b.htm#_Toc14094379
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9992379-16.html

This part was only about FLOSS development, we could also study FLOSS use or lots of different things. Well, i think my post is long enough already (sorry when i start, i just can't stop) so i won't cover all this. One last thing : I have no clue about other countries, but there is a lot of movement around FLOSS : Events :

• RMLL/LSM (Libre Software Meeting) : http://2008.rmll.info/?lang=en
• Paris Capitale du Libre (Paris http://en.paris-libre.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&task=&id=0&Itemid=1
• Solutions Linux : http://www.solutionslinux.fr/
• FOSSDEM http://fosdem.org/ (That's true i lied again, it's not in France, but in Belgium. In Brussels, the French speaking part of Belgium)

There are also powerful Associations and usersgroups like April ( http://april.org/index.html.en )
Well April is Involved in so many things (promotion of FLOSS, lobyying, meetings with politics, action groups against tying, against treacherous computing, against software patents, against OOXML normalizat

You mean the guy who voted for telco immunity? The guy whose vice-presidential nominee is a MAFIAA crony?

Remind me why I should support either him *OR* the equally scummy McCain?

One good reason for SSD would be the negative effects on
using hard drives at high altitudes.

They are not well documented either.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6035_102-0.html?forumID=59&threadID=243684&messageID=2625001&tag=forums06;posts#2625001

The assholes at Abit had to be sued to fix the motherboards where they used capacitors made with a stolen formula.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7591_102-0.html?forumID=26&threadID=59483&messageID=706271

"Or, should they encourage normal font files on the web and help break Microsoft's forgotten monopoly?" Gee, I wonder what /. will think...

It's interesting to note that the linked page has absolutely nothing to do with EOT; rather, it refers to Microsoft's Core Fonts for the Web.

Besides, this is quite old news - I certainly knew about it several months ago, and the submission website says it was submitted in March, over five months ago.

ActiveX components will be installed per user, which eliminates the need for everyone to have administrator privileges

Hopefully they add a way to disable this, like Firefox has the "xpinstall.enabled" preference

If a resident of Kentucky, for example, purchases such a tent over the Internet, Maine-based L.L.Bean does not collect any sales tax, either for Maine or for Kentucky. Instead, the customer is required to report all out-of-state purchases on his state income tax form and submit the requisite 6 percent use tax.

Here's another link that shows a map of states that attempt to collect taxes on online purchases, including non-physical items, such as digital media.

You cannot install an upgrade copy of windows without an older copy to 'upgrade' from. It is a requirement.

That's not entirely true. You can do a full install of Vista using only an upgrade disk. It just requires a partial install, a reboot, then the full install.

It's not exactly apples and oranges...Just sayin'.

http://news.cnet.com/Vista-upgrade-workaround-revealed/2100-1016_3-6159318.html

that Biden is a shill for the media cartels who also hates encryption and Net Neutrality? To wit: Joe Biden Loves RIAA Biden loves RIAA, FBI tech Biden: Pro-Copyright Friend of RIAA, MPAA

Since the summary neglected to include it, here's the actual quote from the CNet article:

Zimmermann, who's now busy developing Zfone, says it was Biden's legislation "that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups."

Oh, yes, that REALLY makes it sound like Zimmermann is a McCain man, and not just someone who Biden tried to screw over in the past.

In short, this article is yet another poor excuse for Slashkos to continue pushing Obama. Guarantee you'll never see an article on Slashdot from a McCain supporter.

Th OS that the site runs is not the point here. It is the content encoding technology that is. They have a company that is delivering MS technology specific content through a FOSS server -goodness only knows where they're actually pulling the delivered content from- that prohibits a certain group of people from viewing the content. This -as far as the /. crowd is concerned- is a very serious issue for those who consider Obama/Biden as the candidates for change.

Really? No Model?

Their profits ony rose 13% in the first quarter! And they're not the number one company in the world for laying out cash for child care anymore! And my foi gras was .03 cm under standard size! waaaaaaa!

Although I appreciate the attention from NVIDIA and Slashdot, I can't support that alleged quote from my blog (http://speedsnfeeds.com).

First, what's being described as a quote is actually just John Montrym's summary from my original post, which is here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10006184-23.html

What I actually described as equating to "the performance of a 2006-vintage... graphics chip" was a performance standard defined by Intel itself-- running the game F.E.A.R. at 60 fps in 1,600 x 1,200-pixel resolution with four-sample antialiasing.

Intel used this figure for some comparisons of rendering performance. If Larrabee ran at 1 GHz, for example, Intel's figures show that it would take somewhere from 7 to 25 Larrabee cores to reach that 60 Hz frame rate.

Larrabee will probably run much faster than that, at least on desktop variants.

Well... rather than writing the whole response here, I think I'd rather write it up for my blog and publish it there. Please surf on over and check it out:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10024280-23.html

Comments are welcome here or there.

. png

Although I appreciate the attention from NVIDIA and Slashdot, I can't support that alleged quote from my blog (http://speedsnfeeds.com).

First, what's being described as a quote is actually just John Montrym's summary from my original post, which is here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10006184-23.html

What I actually described as equating to "the performance of a 2006-vintage... graphics chip" was a performance standard defined by Intel itself-- running the game F.E.A.R. at 60 fps in 1,600 x 1,200-pixel resolution with four-sample antialiasing.

Intel used this figure for some comparisons of rendering performance. If Larrabee ran at 1 GHz, for example, Intel's figures show that it would take somewhere from 7 to 25 Larrabee cores to reach that 60 Hz frame rate.

Larrabee will probably run much faster than that, at least on desktop variants.

Well... rather than writing the whole response here, I think I'd rather write it up for my blog and publish it there. Please surf on over and check it out:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10024280-23.html

Comments are welcome here or there.

. png

If you check this response to his blog article, you can see someone has already debunked most of his claims about expected Larrabee performance. He sounds like he has no idea how graphics work.

If this is nVidia's expert witness, maybe they ARE scared about Larrabee.

MacBook Air is definitely not the first computer without an optical drive...for instance the Toshiba M200 (though even this was not the first): http://reviews.cnet.com/tablet-pcs/toshiba-portege-m200-tablet/4507-3126_7-30596988.html

Intel is now entering the 3D chip market

Published: February 16, 1998 11:35 AM PST

Good luck to Intel with their entering the 3D chip markets.

Yeah I realized a bit late that the article picked was from 1998 and is about the i740. Somehow when I first read it I saw 2008. A better article is this one about Larabee. Intel has never been any kind of competition for NVidia. However with Larabee they are stepping squarely into NVidia's territory. Reiterating my original comment, NVidia can leverage their patents in this area against Larabee to get access to x86 patents.

A third player in the chip market would be fantastic for consumers. I hope that's the way it goes.

I have more karma to burn than you can keep answering me, so here goes:

don't know a single large organization that doesn't have a few Linux boxes doing real work

FEW. Is it mainstream? Has the Ubuntu logo replaced the millions of XP logos that greet every office goer every day for 360 days a year? (bank's way of defining a year). Until that happens, Linux is as rare as the dodo in the wild.
 

open wireless networks are all but guaranteed

Nope. All carriers have made "voluntary" promises to keep it open fearing FCC crackdown. Here is the clarification.
You don't seem to get corporate philosophy, do you?
They want a single party to shakedown for answers. For instance if the S/390 fails in my company, my board will demand answers from IBM. If my fedora linux server crashes and takes down entire network, the board has no one to nail to the wall, except the poor admin who would have been fired anyway.
The reason Apple has a kill switch is exactly that: One single call to Apple from AT&T about an App that consumes their bandwidth and Jobs can commit app genocide. Period.
Again, i repeat, Android will not succeed in enterprises and would be relegated to the slashdot crowd and technically savvy BECAUSE there is no central control. If Google puts its financial muscle behind it, then its OK, otherwise it will fail.

Nvidia certainly has lots of patents on the tech to make 3D chips. Intel is now entering the 3D chip market. NVidia can leverage their 3D patent portfolio to get the relevant licenses from Intel on x86. They can probably do the same thing with AMD/ATI. I'm not sure what cross-licensing agreements existed between ATI and NVidia, nor what became of them after the merger...

Yeah, he wasn't protesting. He was accused of a crime, arrested, charged, released, and allowed to leave the country to return back to Russian.

And, you kind of left off that he was tried and found not guilt.

Now, please, STFU.

"After complaining to a manager, Goodman was able to get a replacement unit, but the reception issues persisted. On Thursday, he was told by an AT&T customer service representative that its cell towers are having trouble recognizing the iPhone 3G on the network, and that a fix was forthcoming."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10017657-37.html?tag=nefd.lede

This is the first comment by an AT&T employee where they appear to admit that these issues are partially their fault. Did I call it or what? I bet they decided to call Fido as I suggested on various boards and ended up finding something.

Ah, skipped over the-partition-itself-is-PGP-encrypted part. I stand corrected. I still expect this is more about taking another notch out of the 5th amendment than catching this specific potential criminal. Especially after reading this update to the cited article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9854034-38.html?hhTest=1 The Fed appeal and the plaintiff's response in this case are all under seal. Sounds like Patriot Act crap.

Although the keyboard issue worries me as even the one in the 02 store was lagging (ive just ordered one of ebay :S),I think the signal problem is down to those countries who have younger 3G networks.

3G has been around in the UK for quite some time, and my mates who work in 02 have not had a complaint about 3G reception. Although I'm inclined to believe that the carriers in the states' are exacerbating a problem with the iphone

Now Ive just gotta hope that my unlocking procedure works, as 02 sucks balls.

It is mostly an AT&T (US) problem. In Canada, we have a fairly young 3G network as well and Fido did have some problems with the iPhone for a few days but it seemed to have been fixed on their end somehow.

Check out this quote from this page:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10017657-37.html

After complaining to a manager, Goodman was able to get a replacement unit, but the reception issues persisted. On Thursday, he was told by an AT&T customer service representative that its cell towers are having trouble recognizing the iPhone 3G on the network, and that a fix was forthcoming.

This is the first comment by an AT&T employee where they appear to admit that these issues are partially their fault. Did I call it or what? I bet they decided to call Fido as I suggested on various boards and ended up finding something that they could fix on their end.

No, they use FUD to scare people. Linux and Open Office infringe on 238 Microsoft patents? They keep saying that but they have not named one patent that was infringed.

A lot of crap comes out of Ballmer's mouth. But look at what they do, not what they say.

Sometimes all that's needed is loud enough a noise level, look at SCO and how they scared some companies into paying for licenses.

history proved Microsoft was right -- a browser is an entirely proper and expected tool of a complete operating system.

Browsers have nothing to do with operating systems. That is, operating systems do not need a web browser built in. However that's not all of it. The original agreement between MS and the Justice Department was that MS would not include a web browser with Windows but MS did anyway. They then tried to say Windows needed Internet Explorer but that was shown false when someone else removed IE from Windows. According to Wiki IE 4 was integrated with Windows Explorer. CNet describes how IE can be removed from XP. And there are more of those.

On the other hand, Apple has been more monopolistic and anti-consumer than Microsoft ever dreamed of being.

In what way? Not selling the Mac OS to cloners? Apple makes money not just on their OS, heck the last tyme I looked at the price of a Windows upgrade it was something like $200 but I can buy Apple's new OS Leopard for $130. Apple also makes money on their hardware. Apple sales a compleat computer system that just works. Apple only prevents, er tries to prevent, people from installing Mac OS on non Apple computers. I can however install Ubuntu on a Mac, well maybe not me personally but Apple doesn't stop people from doing it. Apple even released a tool that allows people to install other OSes on Macs.

Maybe you mean the iPod and iTunes. However virtually any digital music can be installed on an iPod. And iTunes music can be installed on virtually any digital music player. iTunes makes it easy to burn music to CD even, and it can import any CD music. Or maybe you mean the iPhone. There I agree having to use ATT instead of another cellphone operator sucks, and I disagree with it but everyone who buys one knows this. Or maybe you mean Zune and Plays for sure, but those are from Microsoft not Apple.

If you read a little more in-depth, you'll see they are striving for NT compatibility, which is about 15 years old. XP/2003/Vista are just different versions of NT.

I search the front page and saw nothing about NT 4. Looking at the FAQ all they say about NT is that it is more stable. Okay, I see it on the about page. However why would anyone want to "re-implement NT?" My version, running on a DEC Alpha which was late to the game, is more than 10 years old. MS stopped supporting it in 2000. I know, I tried to run Windows Update but MS's update site said it was no longer supported. I ended up taking the Alpha to the Geek Squad, before Best Buy bought them, to have it upgraded. And paid almost $200 for it.

And how many lawsuits has Microsoft filed against the WINE guys? How about CodeWeavers, which allows Microsoft Office to run under Linux? How about the SAMBA guys?

Microsoft would be stupid to try to stop people from buying Office. However Microsoft did step on SAMBA's toes.

And I assure you, a significant number of people will be using XP for the next 3-5 years. Considering the vast majority of applications and hardware still run on Win2K, I don't think it'll be a huge problem.

And how long will they get support from MS? MS keeps extending support but for how much longer?

Falcon

And from another source there have been information that the Infineon chipset never had been tested in a production environment.

I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it does seem hard to believe they'd ship without testing in production. Given that the same source wasn't complete certain that Infineon is even the supplier, I'd have to take that claim with a pretty good grain of salt.

...and CNET who still chooses to be MS-CNET even after CBS deal says:

"Microsoft is not disclosing specifics on the number of Silverlight downloads--except to say that it registers up to 1.5 million downloads a day."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-10017507-60.html

1.5 million of downloads a day is a joke for Windows scene especially when you are Microsoft and put Silverlight to Windows update site with a "Q" number like a required system update, auto selecting it for some. People will download whatever they see on "windows update", they are afraid. That is the same company who dared to put Flash 6 to Win XP SP3 ISO.

Custom protocols and standards wreck the web, which originally got large in part because of its inherent interoperability.

It's why we bothered to put things in HTML in the first place, instead of linking Gopher trees to LaTex and .doc files.

I have never liked Flash for this reason. It's a hog on Opera, and unstable as well on Firefox. It encourages the worst kind of contentless web site creation. Finally, it's a giant sieve of security holes and vulnerabilities.

And from another source there have been information that the Infineon chipset never had been tested in a production environment.

And if it is the chipset it may be possible that a software upgrade is insufficient.

So I suspect that we haven't heard the last of this story yet.

At least - this is the danger of being the first on new technology, and I'm happy that I didn't buy the iPhone. Even if it is a good design it seems to be more design and less function.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/crm/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172900624

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9985201-7.html

If MS really gets on the band wagon, they will be in the same boat as the other providers. In fact it will be worse due to their lack of institutional competence and the fact that they will be charging $$$$$$ for the service. If one copy of Word crashes, no problem. If an entire large companies version of Word crashes then it won't be long before people start screaming bloody murder.

Low cost hosted apps make some sense for travelers or people who can't afford full office suites. In other cases, esp. when you factor in the lack of backups, it doesn't.

1st point: Wanted: Writers for D.C. tech lobby group, secrecy mandatory
2nd point: Comcast acknowledges that it hired people to take up room at an F.C.C. hearing into its practices.

"and took the opportunity to mock individual expression"

Oh good Lord, he did no such thing.

Read your own quote. He was mocking his own arrogance when he was young, and by extension, was cautioning the crowd against the same thing. He was admitting that like many young people, he thought he knew everything when he was a young man. That's mocking free expression?

"His contempt for citizens expressing their views is, presumably, why he introduced legislation that would basically have shut down comments on blogs and on sites like Slashdot."

How about a link from a site that doesn't have your own personal political axe to grind? ThinkProgress? Why not throw in Truthout.org while you're at it?

Here's a link on the actual bill (and not just TP's embellishments) from a reputable news source:

Senator: Illegal images must be reported.

What you failed to mention in your post that this law specifically targeted kiddie porn pictures, and posts by registered sex offenders. The law was meant to punish websites that didn't report them to the proper authorities. Whether or not this is workable, it wasn't the fascist attempt to stifle speech you describe. Reporting a pedophile posting pics of children engaged in sex is "contempt for individual expression"? Are you serious?

You make it sound like he was trying to pass a law regulating speech on blogs. He was doing no such thing, and I think you know that. Unless you and the other editors start allowing links to kiddie porn, this wouldn't have affected Slashdot at all. "Shut down comments on blogs"? Bullshit, sir. Regardless of the merits, or lack of, of the bill in question, you went into hysterical drama queen mode on this one.

I'm not sure if this is the competition you're referring to:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/03/28/os-x-first-os-to-be-hacked-in-pwn-2-own-contest/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-X-Hacked-Vista-SP1-Hacked-Ubuntu-Linux-Survives-Unscathed-82079.shtml
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39375171,00.htm
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9906001-37.html

On day two things turned around when contests were allowed to instruct contest organizers to visit a web page or open an email. Within two minutes Miller had prepared his exploit code and instructed organizers to visit a web site. Game over. Miller had seized control of the MacBook Air and landed himself a nice prize, seemingly using a hole in Safari as contestants were only permitted to take advantage of preinstalled software.

The attackers didn't have direct physical access so much as taking advantage of the weakest element of security, the user.

'Officials at the space agency said Monday that they will still hold to their word that the Constellation program--a mission of the newly developed Ares 1 rocket and Orion crew capsule to the ISS--will happen by March 2015, five years after the space shuttle program shuts down. But a previous goal of an early launch in 2013 has now been moved to 2014 because of budget constraints. NASA officials are also leaving wiggle room there.'

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10015009-76.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Hard to believe those culturally insensitive crackers managed to go from zero to the Moon in eight years using 1960s technology...