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Actually, Corel isn't making any money from bundling their productivity suite with PCs. They're planning on using the OEM bundling to show off WordPerfect, without any support, in the hopes that customers will like it and follow the upgrades. In this sense, they're competing head-on with the no-cost model of OSS's OpenOffice.

However, financial analysts point out that when customers of low-cost PCs upgrade their productivity software, they probably still won't want to pay. They're likely to try other low-cost alternatives instead. This could boost usage of OpenOffice and other OSS word-processing applications.

News suggests that iBook might be cheaper by almost 200$.

IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW FANCY YOUR PROTOCOL IS OR HOW GOOD YOUR CRYPTOGRAPHY IS, IF THEY CAN GET YOUR IP YOUR SCREWED.

*ears ringing*

I have NEVER seen a p2p system address this issue.

No, it would probably require changing the IP layer to something more exotic. And don't say CPIP-based solutions doesn't work! :-)

FYI, the FreeBSD port was done by some folks at Corel.

Oh, you mean divine's patent that they acquired with the purchase of Open Market? It must be tough for them, having been featured so many times on Fucked Company...

to demonstrate a company talking from both sides of its mouth.

In April 2001, AOL filed a motion to quash Nam Tai's subpoena, arguing it should not be required to reveal subscriber information because it would "infringe on the well-established First Amendment right to speak anonymously."

Some recent surveys on browsers indicate that IE is used by about 96% of users. That's not 99, but I think it's sufficiently large that any web site developer will insure first that their pages look good in IE, then maybe Netscape, if they have time. The W3 standards are all fine and good, but the de facto standard is defined by how IE behaves. MS owns that behavior and can change it at will.

I think distribution of a PDF competitor as part of a default distribution of Windows or Office would kill off Adobe's version of PDF in much the same manner that bundling of IE with Windows killed off Netscape, despite the latter being reduced to zero price. It was more hassle for people to download some large binary from Netscape over their modems and to try to disentangle IE's tentacles, that most people just caved in and accepted IE as their browser. It's been demonstrated that zero price is not enough to compete with Microsoft.

MS will embrace Adobe's PDF idea, extend it using XDocs, and then let Adobe's PDF wither as Office defaults to output XDoc instead of PDF. And wither it will, because Office, too, is used by about 90% of the office productivity suite marketplace.

When a desperate Adobe offers an Office plug-in for free download that enables one to write PDF, they'll get the same rousing response as Netscape did for free downloads of its application.

I don't want to belabor these points because how MS operates is well-known by now.

That said, however, the basic technical ideas of both PDF and of XDoc are good.

Publishing their respective specifications and letting an international standards body ratify those standards is a great idea. I would move to XDoc from PDF if it were technically-sound, completely and openly published, and ratified by an international standards organization.

Companies, either Adobe or Microsoft, trying to own a standard and use it to wring the most dollars out of it, simply by tripping up the competition with a deft change of the standard is not a good idea.

Heh, found this article, written in '97, about the state of mobile processors. Wow, much has changed in only 5 years. Just reflect. 8 watts, and they were panicking. Wow.

Here's an article that says the mobile P4 actually is the same desktop part, just test at lower powers after production and hence get approved for mobile use (half-way through the article).

Sorry, correct link.

A: We have a constant problem with people who are trying to break our system for no other purpose than they have nothing better to do--like their bosses haven't assigned them enough to do at work today, or that their mom hasn't made them mow the lawn, in most cases!

> Hint: you will be able to turn it off,

Really ? You seem to trust MS/Intel a lot more than I do.

> since it would break backward compatibility if you couldn't.

Just like MS worries so much about MS Office 11 being backwards-compatible to Windows before 2K?

And don't forget to ask a few bitter Visual Basic programmers about having to re-write the vast portion of their code to move it to dot-NET.

Is there something I'm not aware of about this trailer or movie that makes it so special as to justify a Slashdot front page post? Maybe it's just a slow weekend...

Look at the evidence. Steve Jobs is CEO of Pixar (and Apple). Slashdot, if not VA Linu^H^H^H^HSoftware wants to be bought out by Apple. Think about it: How many Apple articles do you see on a daily basis? Why does Apple have its own section, customized to look like Apple's website? Why does Apple have eleven (count them yourself) different topic categories? (Compared to one for Sun, one for Microsoft, one for IBM, one for Compaq, and *none* for Dell, whose market share is nearly six times that of Apple)

I'd say this is way to pessimistic, a lot of government money is washing into technology, which may not be good for the long-term considering the healthiness of most state supported industries.

An article on News.com mentions that "the new working group could have some competition from IBM and Microsoft, which have promoted a separate standard known as SIMPLE". This also has a IETF working group - here's the charter

Meanwhile a group of users in finance industry are pushing for exactly this sort of integrated solution. Called FIMA they "say it is non-partisan, and is open to any company that wishes to promote Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) IM standards and protocols within the financial services community. By endorsing IETF instant-messaging standards, FIMA wants to promote "interoperability and beneficial competition among instant-messaging vendors."

There is an air of enevitability about the integration of protocols - but it may not be based on Jabber.... but SIMPLE doesn't sound all that hot...

An article on News.com mentions that "the new working group could have some competition from IBM and Microsoft, which have promoted a separate standard known as SIMPLE". This also has a IETF working group - here's the charter

Meanwhile a group of users in finance industry are pushing for exactly this sort of integrated solution. Called FIMA they "say it is non-partisan, and is open to any company that wishes to promote Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) IM standards and protocols within the financial services community. By endorsing IETF instant-messaging standards, FIMA wants to promote "interoperability and beneficial competition among instant-messaging vendors."

There is an air of enevitability about the integration of protocols - but it may not be based on Jabber.... but SIMPLE doesn't sound all that hot...

I'm not sure which settlement you're refering to, but Microsoft's business practices are currently still under investigation by the European Commission. And let's not forget Japan, who are conducting their own investigations in these matters.

Similarly to the US, the EU has brought an antitrust case against Microsoft, with a preliminary ruling expected later this year. It is not unthinkable that the failure of the United States to take decisive measures against Microsoft may prompt harsher action from the EU.

The EC is particularly concerned that Microsoft may extend its monopoly to include server software and media services. Aside from that, the EU has a separate investigation into Microsoft's Passport service

If I'm not mistaken, you're Steve McGeady of Intel, who did Set Top Boxes with Gosling at SIGGRAPH '95.[1] Why didn't Intel put up the $40k to cover your expenses as a witness in the government's case, especially in light of what Microsoft did to them?

__

[1] FWIW, mad props for keen vision etcetera; and isn't it interesting how that prospect was also killed off by Microsoft?

There is no mention of the issue surrounding a hardware vendor's IP protection.

HP, for example, was not happy that MS was attempting to force immunity from all of HP's hardware patents in exchange for HP's ability to license MS software:

HP sent a letter to Microsoft specifically expressing concerns over the protection of its patents. The letter asserts that the new licensing terms create a one-way street, allowing Microsoft access to HP patents without paying for them.

This seems to be monopolistic anti-competitive behavior that was not dealt with by the court.

check your facts

ummmm.... where have you been lately??? Micro$oft already owns one of the companies. It's kinda obvious when you look at it, that this isn't an accidental merger and M$ isn't just another innocent bystander. It's a mess. People call America clumsy in its internal dealings with threat of this sort, but I have a great hope.

Similiar story at c|net news

They got a level 4. The agency that did it can't give them a higher rating because they're not gov't. But, there's no way to know if they won't get a higher one after more reviews.

A: We have a constant problem with people who are trying to break our system for no other purpose than they have nothing better to do--like their bosses haven't assigned them enough to do at work today, or that their mom hasn't made them mow the lawn, in most cases!

The main problem is not that the prices were different, but the tools Nintendo used to preserve this difference: "Nintendo, maker of the popular handheld video game console Game Boy, plus the Donkey Kong and Pokemon video games, was accused in 2000 of collaborating with distributors to limit cross-border flow of its products in an effort to hike wholesale prices." zdnet

Nintendo boycotted those distributors which wanted to sell the box in countries where the price was higher than in the distributor's country, that's why it was fined.

Good. I hope this will convince CEOs in large companies that Linux clusters and scales better than Windows (well, that's obvious) or proprietary Unices. But the penguins can't be too confident, as Sun is up to no good here, hawking distributed clustering as a brand new technology when it certainly isn't, and catering to Fortune 500s and other large companies.

If we want to make our inroads we must do so now.

Yeah, or you can steal ideas from other people at the University, and then leave to start your own company. That's how Cisco did it, and it seems to be working out for them.

> though the new ICQ 2001 is better

oops, i meant, the new minimalistic ICQ Lite is better - by a hair.

What about Jabber, trying to oust the current monopolizing standards..

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Who let a nigger in to the server room? It's touching the hardware! Security!

The reason that Apple won't use the Power4:

It is HUGE.

The picture at the top right shows the Power4 multichip module as used in the p690. Yes, it is the 5" square thing in the guys hand.

There are better pictures of the MCM itself, but I couldn't find the close-up showing just the MCM in someone's hand.

The large size (along with everything it entails: it uses 125W power, and supposedly costs about $3500 to manufacture) is one indication that IBM designed the Power4 for its big-iron. Nevermind that IBM does offer the Power4 (sans MCM) in some of their smaller servers.

The PowerPC970 is the equivalent processor tweaked for the desktop/low-end servers.

and what crack are you smoking? People had hacked the iPod to work with Windows shortly after it's release. To boot, Apple now sells a Windows version.

PS - Even if Apple moved OS X to the x86 family, you'd still have to buy an Apple PC.

What makes me think Gateway is dying? Simply put, the fact that the only reason to buy Gateway vs. buying another brand of PC is their direct model and their marketing. And Dell has been beating them on both counts. Gateway has been bleeding money, while Dell has twice as much revenue and is profitable. Dell is opening new direct sale mini-stores while Gateway has been closing many Gateway stores. As for whose marketing is more successful, well, CNN covered it as one of its top stories when it leaked that Dell was thinking of retiring Steven. The only things I've ever heard about Gateway's advertising is people making fun of the talking cow for being stupid.

As for whether marketing is important in computers, I think you underestimate its importance. If marketing were unimportant in computers in general, then we'd all be using Amigas today, or perhaps Macintoshes, or BeOS. And if marketing were unimportant in the PC world, then more users would buy white box PCs, since as you put it, "People compare the (meaningless) numbers, and come up with some not entirely usefull $/MHz comparison, and then buy whatever seems best to them." On $/MHz, white box retailers don't have marketing costs and thus normally win that comparison.

But users are swayed to a great degree by marketing. And for many people, when they think of buying a PC today, they think of Dell first. And if Dell's more efficient business model can push a couple more competitors out of business, it could come to the point where when people think of buying a PC, when the average user thinks of buying a PC, he'll think of Dell, IBM, or HP (when the rich user thinks of buying a computer, he'll think of Apple or Sony, the upscale computer brands). And in that circumstance, you can easily see how it makes sense for Dell to sell peripherals too.

What makes me think Gateway is dying? Simply put, the fact that the only reason to buy Gateway vs. buying another brand of PC is their direct model and their marketing. And Dell has been beating them on both counts. Gateway has been bleeding money, while Dell has twice as much revenue and is profitable. Dell is opening new direct sale mini-stores while Gateway has been closing many Gateway stores. As for whose marketing is more successful, well, CNN covered it as one of its top stories when it leaked that Dell was thinking of retiring Steven. The only things I've ever heard about Gateway's advertising is people making fun of the talking cow for being stupid.

As for whether marketing is important in computers, I think you underestimate its importance. If marketing were unimportant in computers in general, then we'd all be using Amigas today, or perhaps Macintoshes, or BeOS. And if marketing were unimportant in the PC world, then more users would buy white box PCs, since as you put it, "People compare the (meaningless) numbers, and come up with some not entirely usefull $/MHz comparison, and then buy whatever seems best to them." On $/MHz, white box retailers don't have marketing costs and thus normally win that comparison.

But users are swayed to a great degree by marketing. And for many people, when they think of buying a PC today, they think of Dell first. And if Dell's more efficient business model can push a couple more competitors out of business, it could come to the point where when people think of buying a PC, when the average user thinks of buying a PC, he'll think of Dell, IBM, or HP (when the rich user thinks of buying a computer, he'll think of Apple or Sony, the upscale computer brands). And in that circumstance, you can easily see how it makes sense for Dell to sell peripherals too.

What makes me think Gateway is dying? Simply put, the fact that the only reason to buy Gateway vs. buying another brand of PC is their direct model and their marketing. And Dell has been beating them on both counts. Gateway has been bleeding money, while Dell has twice as much revenue and is profitable. Dell is opening new direct sale mini-stores while Gateway has been closing many Gateway stores. As for whose marketing is more successful, well, CNN covered it as one of its top stories when it leaked that Dell was thinking of retiring Steven. The only things I've ever heard about Gateway's advertising is people making fun of the talking cow for being stupid.

As for whether marketing is important in computers, I think you underestimate its importance. If marketing were unimportant in computers in general, then we'd all be using Amigas today, or perhaps Macintoshes, or BeOS. And if marketing were unimportant in the PC world, then more users would buy white box PCs, since as you put it, "People compare the (meaningless) numbers, and come up with some not entirely usefull $/MHz comparison, and then buy whatever seems best to them." On $/MHz, white box retailers don't have marketing costs and thus normally win that comparison.

But users are swayed to a great degree by marketing. And for many people, when they think of buying a PC today, they think of Dell first. And if Dell's more efficient business model can push a couple more competitors out of business, it could come to the point where when people think of buying a PC, when the average user thinks of buying a PC, he'll think of Dell, IBM, or HP (when the rich user thinks of buying a computer, he'll think of Apple or Sony, the upscale computer brands). And in that circumstance, you can easily see how it makes sense for Dell to sell peripherals too.

Here's the Heliopod blurb *cough*shameless plug*cough* from Oct 4:

"Having had its productization deferred back in January, Solaris 9 x86 will now be receiving full support from Sun. It is believed that this decision was based, in part, on highly vocal fans of the x86 edition. However, unlike its Sparc edition counterpart, Sun will be charging for Solaris 9 x86. Initial prices are $99 for single-processor desktop systems and some as-yet undetermined price for multiprocessor systems. Optional service is also available starting at $75 per month for desktop systems and $1,275 a year for lower-end servers."

Here's the Heliopod blurb *cough*shameless plug*cough* from Oct 4:

"Having had its productization deferred back in January, Solaris 9 x86 will now be receiving full support from Sun. It is believed that this decision was based, in part, on highly vocal fans of the x86 edition. However, unlike its Sparc edition counterpart, Sun will be charging for Solaris 9 x86. Initial prices are $99 for single-processor desktop systems and some as-yet undetermined price for multiprocessor systems. Optional service is also available starting at $75 per month for desktop systems and $1,275 a year for lower-end servers."

Here's the Heliopod blurb *cough*shameless plug*cough* from Oct 4:

"Having had its productization deferred back in January, Solaris 9 x86 will now be receiving full support from Sun. It is believed that this decision was based, in part, on highly vocal fans of the x86 edition. However, unlike its Sparc edition counterpart, Sun will be charging for Solaris 9 x86. Initial prices are $99 for single-processor desktop systems and some as-yet undetermined price for multiprocessor systems. Optional service is also available starting at $75 per month for desktop systems and $1,275 a year for lower-end servers."

... and a purchaser of serveral large PO's for business in my area, i have always found Dell to be top quality, pretty Linux (at least SuSE) friendly, and offering great support options. i see no reason why their PDA offering would be any different, and i'm honestly curious to see just how Dell's track record with servers, desktops, and appliances translates to a rather specific market full of *very* picky users.

that said, i'm a skeptic, and with Palm and Clie and Zaurus out there, Dell is going to have to be damn near perfect in their first offering, otherwise it's just a foray into a fashion trend like the Web PC.

DIVX SOLD OUT TO MPAA.

DRM will be embedded within DiVX. It's pointless now.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/04/224621 9&mode=nested&tid=126

and

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-875988.html

k.

Read more Hereand also Here you have news from JVC and finally Something from Thompson and Zenith

So this Jun character bought the camera with stolen money. What I don't get is this. As soon as that transaction went through, abiword should have contacted all parties involved in the transaction and told them to stop. In other words, don't ship the camera, by explaining to the seller that it is being paid for fraudulently. This shifts the burden.

Then, was this money left in the Paypal account, or was paypal just used as a conduit to rip off the bank?

I have to agree with a lot of others, who say to not leave much money in the account. There's just no upside, unless they were saving up to pay a seller who wouldn't take credit card payments.

Finally, to further protect yourself if you need to se Paypal: 1) sweep your account daily, 2) contact your bank and tell them to not allow transfers to Paypal, or 3) attach a bank account to Paypal that has a low balance.

Paypal is not a bank, they don't claim to be. And you can sue Paypal, as a judge ruled their arbitration process was unreasonable , more or less.

Good luck recovering those funds. Go after the transaction endusers, as they have some liability here for receiving stolen goods/ property.

After all, they bought them: Cnet

?sp

...under US federal banking laws and this article from CNET explains why better than I could.

I saw on The Screen Savers that Intertainer.com WAS doing online films. They had sample content, old TV shows and such, that ran pretty well over broadband.

They just closed shop and filed suit against the major US movie studios claiming that they couldn't get content at a reasonable price. It turns out that the movie studio "synergies" are set up to get any other source from being able to provide content.

So as we suspect, the MPAA isn't against movies being available on the net, they're just against the content coming from anywhere else than the big studios.

Package your application in a self-extracting/self-decrypting archive which uses two keys (k1,k2). k1 is either zero-length or known to the group of indented users. k2 is kept secret until published online at some central site at a time specified by the publisher. If k1 is zero-length, then it'll be an open release of software/data.

software = Decrypt(software, key), where key = Hash(k1 concatenate-with k2).

This is called time-lock crypto as written by Rivest Shamir Wagner in [3].

CertainKey offers this service with all the software/crypto you need at a modest price see [1].

note: I'm a founder of CertainKey...so use discretion.

References:
[1]
[2]
[3]

which one? flying window or cloud or butterfly or enormous-white-capital-lettters or mickey mouse ears?

which one? flying window or cloud or butterfly or enormous-white-capital-lettters or mickey mouse ears?

Charles Cooper's opinion on Kapor's plan goes straight into non-related issues, no supporting facts for his arguement, and a personal attack on Kapor.