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Actually, the article that /. originally posted on this specifically referred to remote software installation that did NOT require hands-on phone snatching shenanigans.

There was just a story of a young german couple putting their baby up for sale on ebay as a joke. While they initially had their baby taken away by child services, prosecutors realized it had been a joke and the baby is back in the hands of its parents. Our stupid American justice system can't take a joke.

The freakin' article indicates that the $2 increase is only for dial-up customers. It says nothing about broadband AOL users receiving a monthly fee increase. I can't find any clear numbers stating how many of its 8.7 million subscribers are dial-up users vs. broadband customers.

Also, for what it's worth, CNET shares a different take on this issue in its article AOL rate increase maybe not as dumb as it looks.

Linspire had a marketing department.

Which is why the OEM Linspire PC could be purchased off the shelf at Walmart - and why the Lindows-Windows dust-up was worth a few thousand posts to Slashdot.

AOL reached about thirty million U.S. households at its peak.

In nine million homes it is still there. AOL rate increase maybe not as dumb as it look [June 30]

AOL's legacy includes the MMORPG. Neverwinter Nights. Instant Messaging. The complexities of the BBS, IRC and USENET client disappear.

In time, an entire geek-oriented culture of the "Net" begins to disappear:

Internet Evolution: Things Change

In the realm of the OS, Linspire dared to say that this was not a bad thing.

In mid-2008 Linux has 0.68% of the desktop market - and growth is barely perceptible. The Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com starts at $500. The Duo Core AMD with 3 GB RAM at $600.

OLPC couldn't hold the line against Windows on the XO.

Windows on the Netbook is a reality.

This has to sting the geek when the story comes out as a Microsoft press release:

"The Asus Eee PC has been and continues to be a very successful product for Cellnet," said Julian Phua, general manager of Cellnet Group Ltd. "The feedback from our customers in retail and the reseller channel is that they overwhelmingly prefer to sell the Eee PC running with Windows. To move our existing Linux inventory, we are now offering our channel the option of purchasing Windows XP with their Eee units so they can provide a compelling offering for customers."

Following Success of Windows on Netbooks, Microsoft Extends Windows Offering to Nettop Devices [June 3]

Looks like the AT&T rep was right iPhone 3G will need 'unbricking' when purchased?

My current keyboard, and by far my favorite of all that I've used or owned, is the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000.

I know, I know. It has a hideously long name and it's from Microsoft. Ignore these things as best you can, it's really quite a nice keyboard. Obviously it is a split design, which doesn't work for a lot of people, but it's more friendly than any other split design I've tried. It's got an interesting set of ergonomics which I won't explain here because Microsoft's product page (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043) does a good job of explaining.

For reviews, in case you don't want to bother doing a quick search, there are the following:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123241-page,1/article.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000400.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/microsoft-natural-ergonomic-keyboard/4505-3134_7-31485240.html
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Natural-Ergo-Keyboard-4000/dp/B000A6PPOK

Anyway, just my little bit of input on the topic. It also should be noted that I have no experience in using this keyboard on OS X, so I suppose that this keyboard's usefulness in that context is something that those who use that OS will need to look at a bit more closely, since I can offer no input in that regard; although, it should be compatible in general as it connects via USB.

They may be communicated to the public in a different way, but from a development perspective they're defects. The article's author describes a software vendor treating vulnerabilities as feature requests. This reminds me of Apple's response to the recent Safari "carpet bomb" controversy. Any possible vulnerability is a defect, usually a high priority one IMO.

Slashdot material will also cover accusations of LimitNone being a M$ proxy and the perills of non free software in general. The senseless accusations you are talking about will be half covered by the Wintel trade press as they did with the SCO case.

The statement:

People need to realize that Google is just another large publicly traded corporation that will do whatever it takes to increase its revenue, even if that means risking its reputation among developers." is right out of the M$ FUD book.

The alleged theft is laughable:

The lawsuit alleges that Google's product, called "Google Email Uploader" steals gMove's look, feel and functionality.

There were also Vague accusations of "trade secret theft" but there are several excellent free software tools that have been getting this kind of information for years. No further details were given by business wire. Let's look for more, shall we?

• Wired, same stuff Google has not had time to look over the suit and comment.
• CNet, same kind of thing with market size and potential price thrown in for fun.
• TechTree bare facts, no Google comment.
• The Inquirer does better with a brief statement of facts, without Google comment.
• The Wall Street Journal adds insight by noticing that there is a conflict of interest between small companies and large ones in any business relationship but only applies this wisdom to Google. No comment from Google.
• There are many echos in other papers and blog space which contain even less information than the Slashdot summary.
• Something to spook clueless investors about "another" billion dollar suit for Google without background information about the frequency of such things.

So, we see a one sided media blitz, complete with stock market "advice", but completely lacking in input from Google, technical insight and other information. These are M$ hallmarks.

Emphasis mine. How much money would Google make from their free product? Of course, reading more finds that the claim is that Google is integrating this into their paid product (Google Apps Premier) rather than giving it away for free. Perhaps you knew that, but it wasn't evident in what you said.

Incidentally, there is a better written article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

In particular, that article points out that LimitNone is claiming that it divulged technical secrets to Google that Google then used in making its own product. Also, Google apparently changed its Google Apps interface in May of 2008, which caused the gMove product to break. That's apparently the violation of Illinois consumer laws.

Is that related to the differences between Standard and Premier? Apparently Standard does not allow for third party integrations but Premier does. Did Google tell LimitNone that the free version would always support gMove? If so, that will be interesting, as it will help to set expectations around how long Google, eBay, Amazon, etc. have to maintain API compatibility when they want to break it. All of them offer programs like this that allow third party developers to create apps that integrate with their platform. How long are those integrations warranted to work?

The real problem here is not in the relationship between Google and LimitNone but between Google and users of Apps standard edition. Google had been encouraging its users to pay $19 for this product but the functionality no longer works. Further, it apparently stopped working as a result of changes that Google made. If it turns out that it stopped working because Google started charging for something that it previously offered for free, should Google pay back the $19 to users?

CNET is also covering this at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html

It provides additional details, including: "And in May 2008, Google changed its user interface, breaking gMove compatibility and forcing the company to provide customer refunds."

captcha: nonzero (that's almost like LimitNone)

The radio frequency identification, or RFID, is an inherently flawed idea. It is a technological solution to a social problem that it created. It is a threat to our security, our privacy, our freedom, and now also our health! And this is not a just conspiracy theory. Some of the most respectable members of our society are protesting against RFID technology, including Bruce Schneier and even Richard Stallman. My only question is, how much more insult to our intelligence can we take as a society before we start actively protesting? Our freedom, our privacy, our health and our dignity is being taken from us and all we can do is complain on the Internet? Where are the protesting groups? Where are the outraged people desperate to change the situation? Where are the angry mobs? What else are we going to let them take away from us before we stop talking and start acting?

You know what I thought was interesting? This story (which was linked to from this /. story titled A Look At the Workings of Google's Data Centers contained the following snippets.

On the one hand, Google uses more-or-less ordinary servers. Processors, hard drives, memory--you know the drill.

and

While Google uses ordinary hardware components for its servers...

But this was immediately followed by:

it doesn't use conventional packaging. Google required Intel to create custom circuit boards.

For some reason I'd always believed they used pretty much standard components in everything.

Don't sweat it - just get a Samsung laser printer. I've recently got myself a ML-2010 b/n (arround $100-$120 in the US) which, besides being dirt cheap, is well built, very fast, provides a one-touch toner save mode, and has native Linux open source drivers; install the driver, add your printer in the CUPS web configuration page, and you're good to go.

It's been six months now of continuous use without a hiccup - in fact, it's still using the bundled (half-load) toner cartridge.

have the DOJ gone after IBM (the IT powerhouse of the 80s)? Because last time i checked you had to do something illegal before they could sue your ass.

Not true at all

Anyone, or any legal entity such as a corporation can be sued at any time for any reason. I am not accusing Google of doing anything more than gaining predominant market share, like Intel, for example, and getting sued for it.

As for the utility of antitrust suits, here's an interesting view.

After I saw an NT beta at COMDEX in the 90s, I speculated that Microsoft would be sued for antitrust by the end of the decade. I thought NT would be successful enough to get the competitors bent out of shape, and sure enough, that is what happened. Don't forget how much Unix cost back then. A low cost 32 bit OS was a disaster for Unix vendors. The huge mistake Microsoft made was to not settle with the DoJ.

Google is not likely to make the same mistake, but ultimately it will come down to which competitors or other interests have better lobbyists than Google, and how politically popular it will be to sue them. On that score, Google is more vulnerable, since they are doing so much tracking of what might be considered personal information. <tinfoilhat>Now imagine there is a future Nixonian US president, one who decides that forcing Google to give up some personal information might be very useful. That would be a good to time for that president to tell his or her AG to threaten Google. The "plumbers" will think: "it got us inside Microsoft, right?</tinfoilhat>

Oh, you're looking at it from a salesman's point of view, rather than a customer's. That can't be good for your customer. Since Xen is an open source project RedHat's new approach using KVM could prove more interesting.

1 dual processor/8 core server running Oracle with in-memory cache option and support: roughly $200,000.

50 dual processor/8 core servers each running several VM's of postgresql with pgpool-II and memcached: roughly $200,000. The freedom to PXEBoot a blank box into a replicant node faster than you can rack a box: priceless.

Depending on your customer's workload, one of these choices might be better than the other and vice versa. Now, which one are you going to recommend in every case?

New Mexico beat you to it.

Any time you mention the truth about the enviro-nutjob movement, some slashdot troll with a mod point will be there to bury you.

I'm all about SENSIBLE environmental policy. That means we have to balance OUR needs for resources with RESPONSIBLE environmentalism, not turn the entire fucking planet into an off-limits nature preserve.

And yes, it means that there just may need to be a power plant, or a chemical refinery, or any other of a large number of the usual items that trigger "OMGWTFNIMBYAAUGH" reactions from the enviro-nutjobs, NEAR to population centers so that we RESPONSIBLY reduce the transportation and delivery costs (not just monetary but WASTED FUEL ENERGY).

Think about it. It costs us at LEAST 25% more fossil fuel energy to turn OUR FOOD SUPPLY into ethanol fuel and deliver it where it needs to go, than we get back. Ethanol has been one of the biggest energy disasters we've ever gotten into. And at the same time we WASTE petroleum trying to do this, the price of food for starving countries is going through the roof because the US, an exporter of corn, is BURNING THE FOOD SUPPLY - LITERALLY.

Think of it this way: would you dump a gallon jug of Jack Daniels in your gas tank? Guess what - YOU JUST DID. Oh, and the reason you constantly have to get your injectors cleaned and serviced and buy injector cleaner to put in your tank? That's right - ethanol is incredibly corrosive to your rubber fuel line!

And yet the enviro-nutjobs keep screaming for ethanol production and refuse to consider how wasteful it is. They refuse to consider the fact that the "renewable" energy sources all have problems too: in order to make an order of solar panels from polysilicon, you create an immense amount of TOXIC WASTE that has to be dealt with. If you run a mirror-based solar farm, you've got to keep the mirrors polished (congratulations, keep a lot of toxic chemicals handy and be prepared to toxify the hell out of the soil) just as a start. And all it takes to lower or cut entirely your generating capacity is a nice cloud or two. Earth seems to be fairly old hat at generating those, somehow. Walk outside and take a quick peek at the sky, chances are there's one around.

Wind farms are INCREDIBLY noisy and disruptive, the power is intermittent at best with very minimal generating capacity for the land area used, and a major killer of endangered birds already.

Geothermal has limited areas in which it can be placed, areas which are invariably tectonically unstable (or worse yet: the "best" places are usually right in the expected lava flow/blast zone of a volcano).

Tidal power has the same problem, you can only do it on a shoreline, and a rise/fall in the shoreline (not due to "global warming" but simply tectonic activity or seasonal changes in large lakes) can kill it quite easily, since the turbines have to be set at the right place to match the incoming/outgoing tides... and even then, they ONLY generate power during the tidal shift.

Biomass is a nice thought, but you get back to the food supply and other effects. Wood chips? Watch the price of particulate board matter of all sorts (the sort likely most of your furniture is made of, especially if it came from Ikea) jack through the roof. Much of the rest is fed to animals or composted to create fertilizer in order to grow more food, which means you'll decrease crop yields and jack food prices up again.

Do I say we shouldn't use these? No. But if we had a SENSIBLE and RESPONSIBLE nuclear policy, including recycling "spent" fuel and refining it back for reuse rather than trying to stash it under a mountain, we could eliminate a LOT more of the oil/natural gas/coal portion of our energy than these sources are ever likely to manage.

Thanks for pointing out the Bluetooth error. I linked the wrong product, he has the Logitech Cordless Mediaboard Pro which is bluetooth. I think the RF vs Bluetooth is also the only difference between the normal and pro versions.

http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/logitech-cordless-mediaboard-pro/4505-3134_7-32656425.html?tag=also

http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/logitech-cordless-mediaboard-for/4505-3134_7-32319140.html

My friend is using one for just this purpose. And he's about 30' or so away, and he's going through from the first room of his house to his basement and it's working great.

As for the wireless video? Are you using so type of VGA wireless solution? With an LCD TV you should be able to receive 720p or even 1080p connect. This would require either a component or HDMI/DVI connect. There are actually DVI over ethernet adapters which will send your single over the long distance without losing quality which the wireless solution I used to use has issues with. You could also just hit up http://www.monoprice.com/ and pick up a 40" HDMI cable for about $40 or so shipped. If you didn't know you can get adapters that convert DVI->HDMI and some even support sound as well.

In which case, setup a sting operation and pay for one. Me, I have no intention of lending my CPU to crack keys for someone who didn't make backups.

The screenshot at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9965381-7.html?tag=nefd.top says that the victim pays to download a 'decryptor'. Either the decryptor contacts, in real time, the extortionist (at a server location that can be linked to them), or the private key is included in the decryptor program, and should be able to be sussed out...

No.

They.

Are Not.

Some corps can have it both ways (e.g. Verizon, which has full CC protection/responsibility for its voice networks, but nothing like that for it's data networks). this ought to explain the diffs, and why, in layman's terms

/P

"We're going to stop offering our subscribers newsgroups," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Some of the early press on this indicated we were going to block certain Web sites. We're not going to do that."

That was a reference to a New York Times article with the headline: "Net Providers to Block Sites With Child Sex." It said "the providers will also cut off access to Web sites that traffic in child pornography."

The iPhone alternative (for freedom lovers)

"This article explains how to get an even better mobile Internet experience, without having to do business with either AT&T or Apple--with no contracts and no $60 per month bill just to surf the Net."

(Surveillance State blog)

The iPhone alternative (for freedom lovers)

"This article explains how to get an even better mobile Internet experience, without having to do business with either AT&T or Apple--with no contracts and no $60 per month bill just to surf the Net."

(Surveillance State blog)

The iPhone alternative (for freedom lovers)

"This article explains how to get an even better mobile Internet experience, without having to do business with either AT&T or Apple--with no contracts and no $60 per month bill just to surf the Net."

(Surveillance State blog)

The A305-S6845 comes with a fairly crowded Windows desktop, filled with icons for pre-loaded software and web links to numerous free offers.

This thing has substantial crap preloaded onto it. It even has Vongo pre-installed, which is very hard to uninstall. It has PowerCinema installed, which not only is hard to uninstall but uses resources when idle. And those are just the ones known to be malware. Buy from another vendor.

You're setting the bar pretty low for "reasoned and mature." But, as some people don't seem to realize, controlling for confounding variables makes statistical work more accurate, not less.

But, that things seem to track more or less is pretty nifty. The next step would be to actually automate the predictions, and with curiousity piqued, I Googled (naturally) for a Google Trends API. They've been promising one since 2007, but evidently it hasn't shown up yet or was cancelled, which is disappointing.

It would be really neat to use an API to feed the data into SPSS; you could do nifty things like have it compute how significant some difference in search volume really is, which could improve the (already high) accuracy of the model. Or perhaps have it compute if first, last, or full names correlate with each other.

But, they don't even give you numbers on the Y axis, let alone a programmable API! SPSS is like XML; using it more makes anything better. And while I'm rambling, I'd be kinda bothered by comments about it being "very nice for a simple high school project." Obviously, it would be even more intriguing were you a mature college freshman like myself ^.^

CNET has updated the post to include a statement from Amazon.com that the outage is over. The total downtime was something like 5 hours. From the CNET follow-up article:

"But as to the explanation, the company only hinted that its complicated computing infrastructure was, unsurprisingly, a culprit.

'Amazon's systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems. We work to minimize any disruption and to get the site back as quickly as possible," the company said, declining to comment further.'"

Google hired developers to work on OpenOffice.org, but found it difficult to fill all the vacancies. They seemed unwilling to work on the project understaffed and the people they hired now work on other things.

You can see a C|Net article about their hiring from a while back:
http://news.cnet.com/Google-throws-bodies-at-OpenOffice/2100-7344_3-5920762.html

The second quote refers to http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9845595-7.html.

Nice to see you again, Matt Asay!

Recently on /. : Google spotlights data center inner workings ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9955184-7.html ) and now this from MS: "the company is planning data centers on 'a scale that we haven't thought of before'".

Surprising? I think not.

It was - and is - a marketing tool by a privately held company.

Here's the history for those who don't want to follow the link. ExtJS has developed a JavaScript framework. They originally licensed as "LGPL", but with the added proviso that it was only for non-commercial use. Since the whole point of the LGPL is to allow commercial apps to link with it, this made little sense. Now they've gone to GPL3.0, only for non-commercial use, which is a little more honest about their intent.

Apparently some have tried to fork the original "LGPL" code, but since it never has been released without the "no non-commercial apps" restriction, using any forked code in a commercial product is copyright infringement.

This has nothing to do with the GPL3.0 or the LGPL. It has to do with one company, and the restrictions they've put on their licenses.

And so what? They wrote the code. They get to license it.

While I know Google makes for good news, this story is in fact more about the exchanges loosening their grip on quote restrictions than it is a feel-good Google story.

Historically the exchanges have required anyone offering free quotes to delay them 15-20 minutes since a big part of their revenue stream derived from charging brokerages for real-time quotes. (Brokerages in turn only offered this service to their customers.) NASDAQ announced a deal to allow Google, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC to show real-time quotes for free. Yahoo Finance announced a similar deal with a different group (BATS Trading) to phase free real-time quotes throughout its site also.

Looks like the internet continues to bring down barriers to information.

Can someone point me to news of this redirect 'hack'? These holes seem to be something completely outside of the server-security arena and more in the realm of 'the English language'.

"Another reader notes that the Obama campaign is also searching for a security expert to plug the holes that allowed a hacker to redirect Obama's site (Linux/Apache hosted by GoDaddy) to Hillary Clinton's (Windows/IIS hosted by Rackspace)."

I am convinced that this is actually referring to the redirection of Hope.net (run by the 2600 folks in support of the upcoming HOPE conference) and the various shenanigans they pulled off on April 1st. You can listen to the "Off The Hook" radio show for April 2nd. http://www.2600.com/offthehook/2008/0408.html

References:
http://www.theamericanmind.com/2008/04/02/hopenet-goes-to-hacker-convention-site/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9910026-33.html

http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq_opensource.html

http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft,-Novell-spar-over-Linux-agreement/2100-7344_3-6137444.html

Microsoft got Novell to agree to very very little :). This is a collaboration effort and customer indemnification.

The quote from the another article is: "Ozzie said that since many open-source programmers aren't beholden to shareholders they potentially represent a more formidable force in the market." So some one at Microsoft's finally said it, and it's believable from my stand point. What kills big successful companies is generally not poor engineering on the part of the engineers, but the fact that the engineers are beholden to marketing and upper management. Seems to correlate with what we know about the innovator's dilemma doesn't it? You may raise the argument that it's marketing and upper management's job to decide what will sell and what won't, but how many engineers do you know that aren't objective enough to judge their own ideas. An engineers job is to judge with his skills the best course of action in order to make the best product possible. I'm not saying that there doesn't need to be leadership, but I think most companies are to salary heavy where there is no value-add to the product.

That's not quite accurate. The company that bought/took the formula was a company that manufactured electrolyte, not a capacitor company. That flawed electrolyte was sold to about a dozen capacitor manufacturers in Taiwan and Japan, who in turn sold the capacitors to probably thousands of companies. It affected products by almost every major computer vendor, including every manufacturer you mentioned in your post.

IBM
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/06/22/ibms-capacitors-are-dodgy-too-but-its-hushed-up

HP
http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html

Apple
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-offers-repairs-for-problem-iMacs/2100-1041_3-5841331.html
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2071244

While we're at it, Dell, Asus, MSI, Shuttle, ECS, Giga-Byte, Abit, and Compaq.

I doubt you can find any computer or motherboard vendor that didn't get bitten by those capacitors on at least one of their products.

That said, I do agree that buying from a major manufacturer is probably a good idea. The advantage of the more reputable, bigger name vendors is that when bad things happen that are outside their control (as this clearly was), they are more likely to stand behind their products even for people who didn't buy the extended warranty....

That's not quite accurate. The company that bought/took the formula was a company that manufactured electrolyte, not a capacitor company. That flawed electrolyte was sold to about a dozen capacitor manufacturers in Taiwan and Japan, who in turn sold the capacitors to probably thousands of companies. It affected products by almost every major computer vendor, including every manufacturer you mentioned in your post.

IBM
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/06/22/ibms-capacitors-are-dodgy-too-but-its-hushed-up

HP
http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html

Apple
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-offers-repairs-for-problem-iMacs/2100-1041_3-5841331.html
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2071244

While we're at it, Dell, Asus, MSI, Shuttle, ECS, Giga-Byte, Abit, and Compaq.

I doubt you can find any computer or motherboard vendor that didn't get bitten by those capacitors on at least one of their products.

That said, I do agree that buying from a major manufacturer is probably a good idea. The advantage of the more reputable, bigger name vendors is that when bad things happen that are outside their control (as this clearly was), they are more likely to stand behind their products even for people who didn't buy the extended warranty....

That's not quite accurate. The company that bought/took the formula was a company that manufactured electrolyte, not a capacitor company. That flawed electrolyte was sold to about a dozen capacitor manufacturers in Taiwan and Japan, who in turn sold the capacitors to probably thousands of companies. It affected products by almost every major computer vendor, including every manufacturer you mentioned in your post.

IBM
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/06/22/ibms-capacitors-are-dodgy-too-but-its-hushed-up

HP
http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html

Apple
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-offers-repairs-for-problem-iMacs/2100-1041_3-5841331.html
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2071244

While we're at it, Dell, Asus, MSI, Shuttle, ECS, Giga-Byte, Abit, and Compaq.

I doubt you can find any computer or motherboard vendor that didn't get bitten by those capacitors on at least one of their products.

That said, I do agree that buying from a major manufacturer is probably a good idea. The advantage of the more reputable, bigger name vendors is that when bad things happen that are outside their control (as this clearly was), they are more likely to stand behind their products even for people who didn't buy the extended warranty....

According to CNET article http://news.cnet.com/coops-corner/?tag=cnetfd.blogs "At this point, Revision3 says it's not planning to file a lawsuit. Not because it doesn't have a case but pursuing a court remedy would likely cost a lot of money."

The story is all over the place now. You can read about it at CNET at http://news.cnet.com/coops-corner/?tag=cnetfd.blogs
as well as Valleywag http://valleywag.com/393955/revision3-ceo-antipiracy-group-attacked-our-network

Intel's chip has a power draw of less than 2.5 watts for the highest-clocked chip. I don't see how a power draw that's twice that amount would bring Intel's atom to its knees.

"One of the main differences between Isaiah and Atom is that Intel's chip uses a more simple "in-order execution" design, compared with Isaiah's Superscalar, out-of-order design."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9951669-64.html?part=rss&subj=Nanotech:TheCircuitsBlog

Judging by (very) early benchmarks, Nano appears to beat Atom handily. If true, Nano outperforms Atom, due to superior design, despite Intel's manufacturing advantage. This would be a real coupe for tiny Via.

It's clear (to me, at least) that Steve Sinofsky was made boss of Windows development more for his mastery of spin than his technical skills. Exhibit A: the C|NET interview with Ina Fried. Any politician reading this masterpiece of doublespeak will turn emerald green with envy, and I defy anyone here to distill any meaning out of his long, rambling answers to Fried's questions. Fried begins to get exasperated about two-thirds of the way through ["It sounds like you're saying"..."If I'm understanding correctly"..."seemed like you were saying"...], and attempts to pin him down to solid answers, alas to no avail. Typical example plucked at random:

Fried: ...when Bill Gates...said that Windows 7 was coming in the next year, was he referring to when the beta version would show up?

Sinofsky: What I think I want to say is what I just said, which is we said we'd be out there with a release of Windows 7 three years after the general availability of Windows Vista.

Granted, Sinofsky is being very cagey about not revealing specifics, but I've gotta say that the man displays real skill at saying nothing in a very long-winded fashion. He could have been the White House press secretary. I think Steve Jobs and many, many posters on Slashdot were correct in saying that the marketing people have gained ascendancy over the engineers at Microsoft.

It seems to me (reading the responses at +2) that sshuber and other posters are experiencing the effects of an economic downturn, while others are not. Having recently returned from a road trip to Washington State (from British Columbia) I only saw a few overt indications economic problems, which is not to say that they don't exist.

However we have all seen troubling reports of layoffs in the tech industries. The tech sector does seem to be suffering less in the current situation than say, the real estate or banking industries.

Coming back to the original topic, I am most interested in these questions: Does a slowdown in the tech industry benefit or hurt FOSS projects? Does it free up more talent to work on these projects, or do these people end up purely focused on getting the next job? Do FOSS projects rely too much on corporations that can be kicked out from under them by the economy?

Personally, when I've been unemployed, it has been a blow to my self esteem, and I associate that with being perhaps selfish in that I did not even consider working on FOSS. Not saying that was the best move on my part. Anybody else?

Apparently the performance of this CPU is equivalent of a 900 MHz Pentium-M... ( http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-2133-mini-note/4505-3121_7-32924066.html ) or an 800 MHz Intel A110. However, with HW acceleration of a lot of video formats, this won't matter much while watching video, probably. You wouldn't want to run Gentoo on this thing though. ;-)