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This is one of the long-standing "truths" about the Internet that is pure FUD, mostly repeated by IPv6 pundits to pressure people into adopting their not-yet-fully-baked technology.

A link might set you straight.

While this doesn't address your question, I strongly suggest you avoid iPods as their battery life is short [6 hours - which neuters the purpose of having a 30 gB HDD], they're fairly pricey, the preamp sound quality could be better and you will end up paying to get more features [if you want to record with your iPod, you have to buy an add-on that will let you record to 32kbps mono MP3 - not good for much other than voice.]

Your best alternative would be the iRiver iHP-120. It boasts a 16 hour battery charge life [it achieves this regularly], superb sound quality, high quality MP3 recording, Ogg Vorbis support, digital + optical line in/line out, frequent firmware updates with new features/enhancements/bugfixes for free [the newest update added lyrics support, for instance], text file viewer [read e-books], USB 2.0 High Speed, fabulous build quality... it goes on :-) You don't even need special drivers or software to transfer files from/to computers, so it works as a portable 20 gB device, including under Linux.

Also check out reviews from ign.com and CNET. Don't miss the customer feedback, but watch out for trolls & astroturfers.

iRiver are a company that respects their customers and earns their money. You will see it in the tone of their announcements; hell, they even offer to replace the iHP-100's [and most likely the iHP-120's] lithium battery for free if you use it a lot. They have gained success by selling products that are worth buying and do not go obsolete as easily.

I know I sound like an iRiver pimp, but this company has truly lived up to its hype and therefore deserves my pimping services :-) [personally, i own an iMP-550 and find it outstandingly good in every way. I do not work for them, though I would love to.]

While this doesn't address your question, I strongly suggest you avoid iPods as their battery life is short [6 hours - which neuters the purpose of having a 30 gB HDD], they're fairly pricey, the preamp sound quality could be better and you will end up paying to get more features [if you want to record with your iPod, you have to buy an add-on that will let you record to 32kbps mono MP3 - not good for much other than voice.]

Your best alternative would be the iRiver iHP-120. It boasts a 16 hour battery charge life [it achieves this regularly], superb sound quality, high quality MP3 recording, Ogg Vorbis support, digital + optical line in/line out, frequent firmware updates with new features/enhancements/bugfixes for free [the newest update added lyrics support, for instance], text file viewer [read e-books], USB 2.0 High Speed, fabulous build quality... it goes on :-) You don't even need special drivers or software to transfer files from/to computers, so it works as a portable 20 gB device, including under Linux.

Also check out reviews from ign.com and CNET. Don't miss the customer feedback, but watch out for trolls & astroturfers.

iRiver are a company that respects their customers and earns their money. You will see it in the tone of their announcements; hell, they even offer to replace the iHP-100's [and most likely the iHP-120's] lithium battery for free if you use it a lot. They have gained success by selling products that are worth buying and do not go obsolete as easily.

I know I sound like an iRiver pimp, but this company has truly lived up to its hype and therefore deserves my pimping services :-) [personally, i own an iMP-550 and find it outstandingly good in every way. I do not work for them, though I would love to.]

Both players are almost identical in features and capabilities and have received rave reviews from Cnet (Granted, Cnet doesn't carry a lot of weight in these forums, but it was the only review I could find on short notice)

I have the iHP100 with the latest firmware and couldn't be more pleased. The battery lasts the advertised 16 hours, The sound quality is outstanding, the included in-line remote control is the best I have ever seen. iRiver also makes flash based players that either do, or will in the near future, support ogg. If you are looking for quality Ogg vorbis players I suggest you really look at the iRiver product line.

Everything. AT&T has gone to hell in the past few days. I've been trying to upgrade my calling plan and order a couple of new GSM phones including the slick Siemens SL56. None of the local stores have the phone nor can they order it, and even if they could the price is $200+, even though it's only $99 on their web site.

So I ordered it yesterday but had a question on the order process, as it appears they've signed me up for a whole new line of service instead of changing my current plan. I waited on hold for TWO HOURS yesterday before giving up. Waited another 45 minutes this morning before the call (over a land lane) was inexplicably dropped. The local stores "can't help me" and keep directing me to customer service.

And all day Wednesday their phone system informed me they couldn't take any phone calls and I should "call back later". If I had any self respect I'd cancel my account at the first opportunity. But AT&T is the best we've got in my rural area, so if I want a cellular phone, I'm stuck.

As of now I'm patiently awaiting delivery of two new phones along with two more service plans that I don't want.

You could call 'looking it up' a violation of DMCA too!
Just a comparison: if they call this 'circumventing' then you surely can call looking at the system settings circumventing.

Apple wasn't the first to make hard drive MP3 players. The first one I recall seeing on the market was the Creative Lab's Nomad Jukebox (haven't got an exact date on the very first one), in 2000. It had to be out at least a year before iPod. Apple and everyone else pretty much took that idea and ran with it. iPod is a good device especially when paired with iTunes but, it's not without its limitations, as pointed out in this CNet article , five reasons not to buy an iPod , already posted on /. Me, I've got a Rio Nitrus, which uses the Cornice Storage Element and it's a nice fit between the bulkier hard drive players (like the iPod) and the solid state players that have less storage. If Apple really wants to take the lead they should help Cornice to up their drive capacity (like to 20 Gb) and sell it in a smaller iPod that has a replaceable battery.

Apple wasn't the first to make hard drive MP3 players. The first one I recall seeing on the market was the Creative Lab's Nomad Jukebox (haven't got an exact date on the very first one), in 2000. It had to be out at least a year before iPod. Apple and everyone else pretty much took that idea and ran with it. iPod is a good device especially when paired with iTunes but, it's not without its limitations, as pointed out in this CNet article , five reasons not to buy an iPod , already posted on /. Me, I've got a Rio Nitrus, which uses the Cornice Storage Element and it's a nice fit between the bulkier hard drive players (like the iPod) and the solid state players that have less storage. If Apple really wants to take the lead they should help Cornice to up their drive capacity (like to 20 Gb) and sell it in a smaller iPod that has a replaceable battery.

Right, although that wasn't the intention. If that's the kind of problem I should expect when a simple electrical component goes wrong I think getting locked in my new luxury car is going to be the least of my worries!

Perhaps this is a better reference for the iDrive BMW problems (check out the vids at the bottom) -- although in fairness the car was recalled.

When you combine the story in the post with the article above you start to get a pretty scary picture.

"Perhaps the recent trapping of Thai dignitaries inside a BMW should be a warning to us all."

Did you actually read the article????

It starts with this paragraph

BMW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.

and ends with

But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure.

Heck, just a quick search on shopper.cnet.com shows it as low as $269 (after $20 rebate/free shipping).

Right now it's Fifty Cent.

God, I'm sorry. Perhaps one of these could help. If not you could always try one of these . But then you would need on of these . Well, good day.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5102324-1.html

That's the FUD he's talking about--the bullshit "review" from two weeks ago. You remember: "C|net presents the 5 most obvious things that could be wrong with any handheld electronic device."

Catcher says 'Interesting stuff', unfortunately he must not be very bright :(

Kannyn MacRae,
Business Unit Manager, Networking
Belkin Corporation

The letter makes it clear that Belkin still doesn't get it. The letter isn't an apology, it's an explanation, an excuse for Belkin's reprehensible conduct, and it's full of spin - that's the polite way of saying misinformation, which is the polite way of saying lies.

The letter begins by claiming that "a group of privacy advocates have targeted Belkin Routers". That's not the case at all - a single user posted an explanation of Belkin's router's hijacking, and asked if anyone knew any more about it, in the usenet group news.admin.net-abuse.email. No group was involved, and there was no targeting.

The letter continues with a claim that "[t]he Parental Control registration page is not spam, adware or spyware. It is part of the setup process of the router. It does not "hi-jack" the browser." It is, apparently, part of the set-up process, but that's spam in and of itself: the user hasn't purchased Belkin's "Parental Control", but in the process of installing what he has purchased, the user is forced to sit through an advertisement for another Belkin product, whether or not the user has requested this advertisement. That's the essence of spam.

(And yes, I know that businesses like to claim that unsolicited advertisements are not spam if there is a "pre-existing" relationship with the customer, but that's bunk. Buying a product does not involve an implicit agreement to surrender my time to the manufacturer.)

Even if you're willing to by the argument that installing a product should be made more complicated and time-consuming by subjecting you to advertising, the reason that Belkin's received so much unfavorable publicity is not a one-time ad at install. The problem is the ads repeat indefinitely, every eight hours, until you, the user - Belkin's valued customer - takes some action to make them stop. And this is the same as he sneering spammer who sends you unsolicited email with a "click here to opt out" link. Not only does it steal your time, it steals more of your time before you can make it go away.

The letter goes on to state that "nor does Belkin have the ability to advertise to our customers using our routers as a conduit."

Wait a second, lady. This whole brouhaha started because Belkin continues to use its routers as a conduit to deliver customers to its ad for "Parental Control" every eight hours. If your routers didn't have that ability, we wouldn't all be telling you why we're not going to buy Belkin products anymore. This is a blatant lie, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it. The page the router delivers users to is an ad. It's a solicitation to do additional business with Belkin.

The letter also claims that "[i]f a customer clicks "No Thanks" on the first prompt, the for Parental Control signup will no longer appear." Not entirely true. Belkin Manager Eric Deming admitted in a usenet post (since cowardly cancelled, but mirrored here) that clicking "No Thanks" won't work for users behind firewalls. It also appears that the "No Thanks" gets reset if the router is reset, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the (low) quality of Belkin's routers makes resetting rather more usual than it should be - possibly as often as every 20 minutes.

The letter ends on a surreal note, "[the Belkin advertisement web page] is not a browser pop-up, this means that the Parental Control web page will only be displayed if the user opens the browser". Huh? It's not a br

If the article was about 5 with Windows operating system and suggest you get Mac/Linux/BSD/Other instead?

Seriously, these are just recommendations of alternatives based on 5 problems they have with the Ipod. I really think a lot of people here are interpreting things as what they want to hear and getting worked up over nothing. Looking at their review for the old 20 gb Ipod and the much newer one, I really don't see any flamebate unless you count pointing out the cons of the Ipod He dose have some problems with the Ipod and brings them up in his articles covering other players, but he doesn't come off as biased unless you think talking about a product's flaws is. Plus with all the focus on the Ipod as if it is the only MP3 player, people might like to be informed that the Ipod might not be for them, and there are other products arising that address these issues.

Oh, and I noticed some people commenting on why he would recommend MP3 CD players when he complains about skipping. These are suggestions based on these complaints, and they are not meant to solve all of these problems. This was made just to help potential buyers consider other alternatives if they don't like the listed problems.

If the article was about 5 with Windows operating system and suggest you get Mac/Linux/BSD/Other instead?

Seriously, these are just recommendations of alternatives based on 5 problems they have with the Ipod. I really think a lot of people here are interpreting things as what they want to hear and getting worked up over nothing. Looking at their review for the old 20 gb Ipod and the much newer one, I really don't see any flamebate unless you count pointing out the cons of the Ipod He dose have some problems with the Ipod and brings them up in his articles covering other players, but he doesn't come off as biased unless you think talking about a product's flaws is. Plus with all the focus on the Ipod as if it is the only MP3 player, people might like to be informed that the Ipod might not be for them, and there are other products arising that address these issues.

Oh, and I noticed some people commenting on why he would recommend MP3 CD players when he complains about skipping. These are suggestions based on these complaints, and they are not meant to solve all of these problems. This was made just to help potential buyers consider other alternatives if they don't like the listed problems.

First, lets look at the "why". Why run the article? Well, obviously it lured me in and exposed me to a few ads (none of which got clicked on). Oddly enough, right below the headline was a link to a separate article featuring showcased iPod accessories offered by sponsors. That's confusing and speaks volumes all at the same time. I don't need to expand on that. Now lets look at Eliot Van Buskirk's "points". 1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough. That's true, and it's also true that I average 10-11 hours of usage from my iPod, so his six hour figure doesn't really seem to matter. Either way, if I'm traveling somewhere for six hours I'll have my iBook handy, and I can connect a firewire cable and charge my iPod while I listen to it. Try that on the Dell Jukebox he compares the iPod battery to. Barring that, I'll plug into the 12v or 120v power plug they supply on long duration flights. Eliot, have you travelled over 10 hours with a portable music player? I have, on a bus no less. With an iPod. 2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool. Any serious runner will tell you that jogging with a pronounced bounce is not cool either. The sort of level stride you need to maintain won't even jar a typical CD player. Regardless, I've mountain biked rigid-fork over rocky trails with my iPod. It's called 25 minute skip protection buffer. Eliot, do you run with a portable music player? I do. With an iPod. 3. The iPod is expensive. No. The iPod is my car's 100 CD changer, my home stereo, my portable music player, my PDA, my portable hard drive, and my notebooks' backup volume. All for well under $500. Most other jukeboxes are just that, your Jukebox. You'll need a pocketful of $150 keychain drives, and a $300 portable firewire hard drive, and a $199 Palm Zire 21 to match just some of the iPod's secondary functionality. Eliot, do you get disproportionately high utility out of your investment in a music player? I do. With an iPod. 4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings. The iPod offers a record feature that's three weeks old. There will be a line in tool, that's almost a dead certainty. Regardless, anyone who wants to do high end recording had better question why they're using their computer accessory instead of their actual computer. Considering you'll need to unplug the recording deck, hook it up to speakers, find the most recent track through the pocket interface, and hit play for every single take, the real functionality of a pocket drive in a recording session seems pretty low. Eliot, do you record yourself playing music? I do. With a real computer and multitrack software. Then I let others hear it. With an iPod. 5. You want a choice in online music stores. Do I? Apple is drawing in a documented 80% market share among this supposed wide selection of alternatives. Either way, Apple offers a device (that plays open-standard content) to Windows and Mac users. Choice. The author's other pet players shut out the segment of the market that's been buying the most music per capita. Mac users. Eliot, do you enjoy your entire music collection on the road, at any workstation, or in any tech environment? I do. With an iPod. My Point, And I Do Have One: C|Net, please hire some journalists. Armchair hobbyists with opinions are a dime a dozen. I don't appreciate being drawn to a site under the false premise that there's a real article there, only to be exposed to yet another rant by some self proclaimed expert. I'm all for thought out arguments exposing flaws in the iPod (there are flaws) but this kind of stuff is laughable, and won't keep companies like Apple on their toes, or push their competitors to innovate into the vacuum either. Question: How much of the news content you were exposed to today was mere editorializing? Of that, how much was credible and watertight against simple counterpoints? Question: C|Net advertisers. How hone

CNet is biased. They're being paid off by Microsoft.

Just look at the unjustifiably bad review they gave to the 12" PowerBook.

And they've been brutal on the iPod. "Battery life compromised somewhat by small size?" What the hell?

But to save the best for last, look at all the lies they printed when they "reviewed" the Power Mac G5. Frankly, I think they hired Microsoft to write that review for them.

I don't believe anything CNet ever writes. I only trust unbiased sources like MacNN or Macworld magazine.

CNet is biased. They're being paid off by Microsoft.

Just look at the unjustifiably bad review they gave to the 12" PowerBook.

And they've been brutal on the iPod. "Battery life compromised somewhat by small size?" What the hell?

But to save the best for last, look at all the lies they printed when they "reviewed" the Power Mac G5. Frankly, I think they hired Microsoft to write that review for them.

I don't believe anything CNet ever writes. I only trust unbiased sources like MacNN or Macworld magazine.

CNet is biased. They're being paid off by Microsoft.

Just look at the unjustifiably bad review they gave to the 12" PowerBook.

And they've been brutal on the iPod. "Battery life compromised somewhat by small size?" What the hell?

But to save the best for last, look at all the lies they printed when they "reviewed" the Power Mac G5. Frankly, I think they hired Microsoft to write that review for them.

I don't believe anything CNet ever writes. I only trust unbiased sources like MacNN or Macworld magazine.

do we have any reason to believe that all of the Windows code in the Diebold machines was written on American soil?

Nope, here's a quote from the link and note the choice of the word "continue":

"To meet the needs of our customers worldwide, we expect to continue to invest in a technical work force in India to assist us with our expanding product development, information technology and customer support functions," a Microsoft India executive was quoting as saying.

As for my review... I can't imagine life without it... using Preview this past weekend must have saved me and my fiancee a few hours searching through loads of PDF annual reports. -Rob

Of course, it could be that these are a totally new 10,000 ...... (nah)

CNET Asia ; August 2003 IBM to up India headcount to 10,000?

• Does not break down and trap you in your car
• Nor, does it turn your engine off on the highway
• Nor does it need to be replaced

It's perfect quality software. I want it in my DVD, my camera and my nuclear core monitoring hardware. Make it run submarines and life support systems. Can you f**k me harder? Please?

Wow, you're clearly thinking of a different product than this.

But, at least you were trying to be offensive and clever.

CNet has a review for this proudct.

"The good: Extremely intuitive operation; robust design; long battery life; clean sound; on-the-fly playlist creation; voice recording; in-line remote.
The bad: Battery not replaceable; no display on the remote; no FM tuner or line-in recording; albums don't play in order."

Need more storage on a notebook computer? I typically order them for my team with 60gb drives, and if that's not enough, you can get a little Firewire/USB2 drive to add on for a couple hundred bucks.

If what you want is more serious storage, more than you would want to jam into your PC, get a few of these, and you don't need to reconfigure your systems when you upgrade.

As far as gaming and fragility goes, I've got a Dell 8500 with a GF4 4200 2Go, which seems to handle a couple new games I've bought just fine, and my son knocked it to the floor from it's normal perch on the arm of the couch, with no noticable ill result other than mommy and daddy's irritation.

I believe that the essential truth in your post is that *you could build a better tower cheaper*. Most people don't want to/know how to do that. My parents and sister certainly wouldn't...

Yeah, the industry is so full of bullshit. HDTV is one of those things America should have picked up and ran with from the start. It's a quality of living thing, if nothing else.

The most hilarious aspect is Microsoft is the only company making a move with HD content on DVD. To my understanding, it's an 8gig compressed wm9 file that takes a P4 3.0gig to dispose of at 24fps. Technical and marketing information is available here.

The FCC, MPAA, etc can all pretty much kiss my ass at this point. Millions of americans have bought HD systems and enforcing HCP copy protection by using the DMCA to make criminals out of anyone who wants to view protected content on their two year old HDTV. It's utter bullshit.

What even more bothersome, Americans are so media influenced, they never make a big stink out of these things. Just a few enthusiasts and geeks will continue to scream "OMG Help! They are fucking us again!!!" and the average joe won't think about any 'issues' outside of what Fox News and USA Today have to say. Then if it ever did come to the mainstream media, the words "Hacker" and "illegal P2P file sharing" will come up enough to make Joe think the world will end if the media conglomerates don't get their way.

The thing these greedy companies are banking on is the perfection of DRM. They dream of the day when DRM works and is hard enough to by-pass that they will feel safe releasing all new movies in a 1920x1080p format. I'm all for that, sure, as long as I get to record shows and play them back at will, rent DVD's with spectacular detail, etc. I do think they are shooting themselves in the ass repeatedly by holding out. The HDTV market could have exploded 7-8 years ago. Too bad most of our HD signal space alocated by the FCC for OTA and satellite got used for Home Shopping Network and other 24/7 infomercial networks.

What Lumpy says seems to be true. If you don't mind a CRT tv set, it may just be wiser to get a 16:9 Enhanced unit. They are insanely cheaper and support 480p, which is what all DVD content will display. The 'upconverter' units like the Samsung HD931 will take a DVD at 480p and upconvert it to 720p or 1080i. What's it look like? Exactly like a 480p image.

If you have the big bucks, DLP and LCoS are nice. If not for watching the lack of HD content, but to use as giant computer monitors. :)

I recommend the Ergotron Paraview stand system over the 9X Media setup. With Ergotron, you can buy your own inexpensive LCD's to make your multi-monitor setup the way you like it. I have been using the 33-095-200 with three Samsung 191T, and really like it. This option is a few thousand less than the 9X setup and works just as well.

the Sony Clie PEG-NX73V can be found here

Sure, he may be associated with them, but does it really have anything to do with this article?

The same topic was covered a few days ago in the original context. See Can you raed this?.

By far my favorite so far is the Samsung SPH-i500 (see it here), and it's upcoming successor, the SGH-i500, which will be the GSM version, with Palm OS 5 and other goodies.

This is what I've been waiting for, for some time - a cell phone, with a Palm OS PDA built in, and complete integration between the two. You can manage one address book, click on your Palm address book and dial from there, search Zagat.com with a Palm web browser to find restaurants while walking the streets of New York, and pretty much do all the stuff I've always wanted to do with a PDA, but couldn't because it didn't have an internet connection, and getting one added on was too bulky/expensive, and browsing on your cell phone was waaaay too awkward for anything other than the simplest polling of your email to see any new subject lines, maybe reading a short email from a friend.

The CNET reviews are definitely mixed, but I spent an hour or two playing with my friend's SPH-i500 and I'm totally hooked. Now I just need to convince myself to spend 600 bucks on it, after my last large PDA expenditure on a Clie that I use once every month or two.

Here are two controlled studies of which activities attract spam, and how much:

"Why Am I Getting All This Spam? Unsolicited Email Six-month Report"
"The Great CNET Spam-off"

• Did you notice that, by mis-typing some URL, you implicitly agreed with their Terms of Service agreement?
  
• How long would you trust a fine, upstanding monopoly company like Verisign to continue to provide this useful service pro bono? Did you read that TOS after all? Notice where they explicitly state "The information ... may be supplied by VeriSign's commericial licensors, advertisers or others" Hmm... what *could* they possibly be planning here?
  
• Would you mind if every domain-spoofing spam email that you bounced from your email went directly to Verisign, who would be free to do with it what they wish? Legally, you would have just sent them an email, and they'd be more than happy to harvest as much info from it as possible. And, by the way, Verisign has plenty of experience selling people's personal data for profit.
  
• How is the end result any different from the recent cases of "typo-squatting" that have been found illegal in various courts?
  

Is this too much to ask for? A decent entry-level PDA can be had for around $100. If a phone's $100, then where are all the $200 PDA phone combos?

I want the Samsung SPH-i500 - but it's $600! This is crazy - who spends $600 on a phone?

It's the same way that I'd like a new $300 notebook. At that price it would be close to disposable and I wouldn't worry too much about breaking it. I don't even want a color screen - but nobody makes low spec notebooks because $800 is the lowest anyone is willing to sell them for these days (and they're full color with 2 GHz processors).

Now where are my Minority Report Gloves?

Linux marches on, despite of SCO. Data center makeover, part 1: Linux topples college's IT Tower of Babel.

Also, Dell today said they aren't and will not pay any licenses to SCO.

Sun on the other hand seems to be playing into the SCO "indemnification" FUD with a new java license?

The law says that no lawsuit may be brought alleging copyright infringement based on the "noncommercial use by a consumer of such a (digital audio recording device) device or medium for making digital musical recordings."

Internet archiving giant Ibiblio reports that downloads of Redhat 1.0 are still outpacing downloads of both FreeBSD 4 and 5 combined.

I think their creative math comes into play in how they measure "major offenders". I mean, they're suing anonymous young kids who probably aren't fully aware of the ethics involved, but I highly doubt that they're suing those who freely admit to and encourage illegal file swapping, like the article in Time that was posted on the front page of CNN today and included links to P2P software reviews by CNET. Or what about NARAS president Michael Greene hiring three teenagers to download music - who gave him a free ride? I don't think the RIAA has the authority to even authorize its own executive to "violate" its members copyrights en masse.

Could the threatened students and teenagers point to these as examples of discrimination or selective prosecution? Or does it mean that journalists and industry types are immune and everyone else should safely restrict their P2P activities to "special projects" - like researching how many songs can be enjoyably swapped and listened to over a series of annual periods (for later publication, of course)?

There would be fewer problems if the broadband companies would use either this or this., combined with this and a lot of problems will disappear, and control is put were it belongs.

That's exactly why I wish Microsoft would start enforcing tough copy protection or product registration checking. When people are actually forced to pay $179 for a word processor or $287 for an office suite, maybe the alternatives will actually have a chance. I think Microsoft lets the home users skate on Office so that it maintains its stranglehold on the lucrative business market.

That's exactly why I wish Microsoft would start enforcing tough copy protection or product registration checking. When people are actually forced to pay $179 for a word processor or $287 for an office suite, maybe the alternatives will actually have a chance. I think Microsoft lets the home users skate on Office so that it maintains its stranglehold on the lucrative business market.

Sure, you may be wondering how most people manage to possibly even get by on a $50 paycheck a month, but realize that that is the national average, where all sorts of people are factored in. In a land of such contrast, there are still tons of terribly rich people, and those who earn upwards of $1200(USD) a month are not that uncommon.

80% of China's population is into agriculture, and only 20% of them are priveledged enough to be urbanites, but if you do the math, that would mean that there are more people living in cities in China than there are in the United States. In a place where image is everything, it is inevitable that cellular phones have become extremely popular, if not ubiquitous. On the street, almost everybody (and I mean somewhere like 9 out of 10 people) has a cell phone. It is no wonder why Motorola is considering this vast market, because this is only the tip of the iceberg. This many cellular service subscribers only indicate a market penetration of 13%. Imagine the profits of market penetration somewhere upwards to 50%.

Run properly, WinXP is just as secure as any of the OS's you mentioned.

HahhahahaHAHAHAHahhaahAHHAHAHAHAHA. Oh sorry.. let me catch my breath... AHhaahhhaahahahahaAHAHAHA.

Oh wait.. by "Run properly" you mean disconnected from the Internet with no interaction at all with others via e-mail, web pages, etc. right?

I've NEVER had a virus or worm on any system I've controlled, going back to 1979.

I guess you were lucky enough to never use the wrong site or e-mail exploiting an ActiveX hole in IE or in Outlook before it was patched patched. If you are using MS-Office, you must have either never received documents with one of their macro viri or just got lucky.

Don't get me wrong.. I applaud that you've obviously practiced safe computing diligently to keep your windows system clear for 23 years... which version of Windows were you running back then??? lol I'm just saying that with MS software and OS luck plays a big part in staying uninfected. Or did you run Windows but use non MS software for browser, e-mail, office suite, etc. all these years?

Run properly, WinXP is just as secure as any of the OS's you mentioned.

HahhahahaHAHAHAHahhaahAHHAHAHAHAHA. Oh sorry.. let me catch my breath... AHhaahhhaahahahahaAHAHAHA.

Oh wait.. by "Run properly" you mean disconnected from the Internet with no interaction at all with others via e-mail, web pages, etc. right?

I've NEVER had a virus or worm on any system I've controlled, going back to 1979.

I guess you were lucky enough to never use the wrong site or e-mail exploiting an ActiveX hole in IE or in Outlook before it was patched patched. If you are using MS-Office, you must have either never received documents with one of their macro viri or just got lucky.

Don't get me wrong.. I applaud that you've obviously practiced safe computing diligently to keep your windows system clear for 23 years... which version of Windows were you running back then??? lol I'm just saying that with MS software and OS luck plays a big part in staying uninfected. Or did you run Windows but use non MS software for browser, e-mail, office suite, etc. all these years?

This article with an interview with Mr. Heise makes him sound a little like that Mr. Subliminal.

Why show off the code?
MH: [aka Mr. Subliminal]: Why show the code? [snakeoil] Why show the contracts? [nda] Why show anything? [cracksmoke] Because SCO is committed [asylum] to educating [extorting] people about their rights to ownership [sublicense] and allowing people, with their own eyes [greeks], to see what code [bsd] is out there [mulder] because I think [scully] you've seen throughout a lot of the open-source media [msnbc]: "There's nothing to this litigation [jailtime]. There are no lines of code out there [pump]. They keep claiming there (are), but we don't believe that [dump]." We are addressing [ignoring] that. We're educating
[praying] the public in general [stockholders] that, well, there is [believe] in fact infringing code, both direct line for line and obfuscated [us] code, derivative works, nonliteral--it's there[cracksmoke].(We) just don't want the rest of the world to believe that it's not (there)[doublenegative] , that this is some sort of [crack] smoke and mirrors. It's not [snakeoil] .

This is the first time that I've really been bothered by a Windows worm or virus. All servers here are FreeBSD and OS X, and everyone's primary workstation (41 employees) is running OS X 10.2.6 or OS 9.2.2.

I used to laugh when all the M$ weenies had problems... but now it's a real problem when I get users here going bonkers about 50 e-mails from 20 people... and me having to go around blocking mail servers...

Here are some other articles around about it:

C-Net
BBC

Okay, I'm done ranting. Thanks /.

The subject of this reply sounds like a troll, but considering this fact it might actually be sooner. All chinese civilians will probably be 'encouraged' to run chinese s/w as well. With 10^9 inhabitants and a growing market for personal computers, China may make a bigger dent in the statistics than Microsoft would like.