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Apparently, this guy already saw the TV in action and was pretty impressed:

The laser TV made the plasma look like an old console colour TV. It was so good, the only way i could describe it was that it looked like a wet photo in a developer tray - if you haven't done photography, that may not mean alot. But the colour depth and contrast, especially the space shuttle shots where space was REALLY black, and you could see the gold foil crinkles in the cargo bay, was amazing.

His post is a comment on another news story about the technology. Of course, take it with a grain of salt since nothing stops a company's marketing guy from posting as Joe Internet.

That was gotten rid of thanks to the recent cybercrime treaty that the US and a bunch of other nations signed.

Plus, when you add in the recently ratified Cybercrime treaty, the signors of the treaty may be bound to enforce the laws of other countries in their own jurisdictions.

Actually, I can think of three services Google bought rather than built: Blogger, Google Earth, and Sketchup.

--Pat

From here: (and elsewhere with a trivial search). http://news.com.com/5208-7350-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=21191&messageID=184631&start=-91

And yes, Spamhaus is a a non-profit corporation, yes, but it pulls in millions and millions of dollars a year from internet providers in PROFIT which is paid out to the executives every year.

That is libelous nonsense. The post, which sounds like it was written by a spammer, probably refers to Spamhaus' Data Feed service for ISP's and large organizations. You can easily see with the price check on that page that the costs per year, even for large sites, are nowhere near such amounts and are simply designed to cover the costs of the operation (including their free public DNS query servers). Don't believe something just because some kook posted it in a discussion forum.

Hmm..
On the other hand...

From here: (and elsewhere with a trivial search).
http://news.com.com/5208-7350-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=21191&messageID=184631&start=-91

And yes, Spamhaus is a a non-profit corporation, yes, but it pulls in millions and millions of dollars a year from internet providers in PROFIT which is paid out to the executives every year.

It sounds like united states ISP's may pay them money- which could be confiscated to cover fines.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2126479/maliciou s-trojan-infects-windows-media-player

http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5211168.html

http://secunia.com/advisories/20626/

The truly scary thing is that prior to May 2005 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892313 WMP left you vulnerable to the DRM-based viruses even if you'd explicitly told it not to auto-download DRM code!!

Microsoft issued an relatively unusual press release in mid-September 2003, announcing that Emerson was leaving to "spend more time with his family". The announcement got published in the New York Times, and Emerson's supposed end date was August 31, 2003. He would consult on "complicated transactions".

Emerson's position as "SVP Corporate Development" reporting directly to Steve Ballmer was abolished on his resignation, and the Corp Development division demoted to supervision by the CFO. After a period, Brian Roberts, Emerson's long time deputy was promoted to run the division. Robert's left Microsoft in 2005 to work with Emerson at his new position at Evercore Partners. Roberts and Emerson have been associated since running telecomunications portfolio in the dot-com days at the investment bank Lazard-Freres.

Emerson made political contributions to the Bush re-election campaign in mid-September 2003, and listed his occupation as Microsoft Executive, so his August 2003 resignation is a bit atmospheric or conveniently backdated.

Emerson had been given a 12 Million dollar loan as a signing bonus to MSFT in 2000. A mid-September 2003 proxy noted that he was paying the loan back with vested stock options. The options were underwater, but had a positive Black-Scholes valuation based on their future potential to be profitable. Emerson used this positive valuation to retire the loan on a cash free basis.

Emerson had little public trace through most of 2004, and then acquired a position at Evercore Partners, a mergers and acquisitions investment advisor. Evercore has since IPO'd, and is traded as EVR.

Emerson and a Baystar principal Andrew Farkas were both listed as advisors/investors in a NYC Venture, I-Hatch Partners. A Farkas relative (Younger brother, I believe) is the fund executive. This is good evidence that the Baystar and Emerson relationship had alternative means of communication, and unreturned phone calls from MSFT headquarters should be considered a convenient fiction.

Emerson and deputy Roberts also show up in July 2003 SEC documents as the signatory for the Microsoft investment in IMMR (Immersion) that had patent suits against Sony and MSFT. The MSFT stock investment in IMMR ended the Microsoft portion of the suit (for game controllers) while ensuring the suit against arch-rival Sony would continue. This "investment in a strategic lawsuit" has echoes in the Baystar Pipe deal occuring just months later. We can conclude that the IMMR and SCOX investments are implementations of a similar strategic idea. Sources:
http://news.com.com/2100-1022_3-5079594.html
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/0001 19312503051346/ddef14a.htm
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950 3E6DB103AF933A1575AC0A9659C8B63
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?cit y=SEATTLE&st=WA&;last=EMerson&first=RICHARD

http://news.com.com/Korean+Apple+online+store+hack ed/2100-7349_3-6067955.html yeah, whatever. Mac fans: gotta protect the Apple magic. the korean store hacked news dated back May, 2006!!!!!! Dell have been running ASP on Windows since NT4 and it is now on ASP.net. Did anyone ever heard Dell's site got hacked? None!

Another possibility might be to install a KVM switch on each computer so that the government employee could switch back and forth between a computer that is connected to the Internet and one that isn't. At one time I had a KVM switch between my new computer and my old computer. The KVM switch allowed me to switch back and forth between the two computers in about two seconds. A KVM (keyboad-video-mouse) switch allows the use of one keyboard, video and mouse to control more than one computer. One of the computers would only be connected to the Internet and the other would be on the internal network (not to the Internet).

If space for the second computer is a problem, there are now computers as small as a book that could be used to connect to the Internet. For browsing the web they could use something small possibly similar to the WinBook Jiv Mini, The Panda PC, MicroServer HP, AOpen MiniPC Duo MPO945-V, or the Apple Mac Mini Core Duo. To keep costs down, perhaps they would not need to upgrade the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet as often as their other computer. Conceivably they could use Ubuntu Linux or Mac OSX on the mini-PC that is connected to the Internet which would be an advantage because virus, worms and spyware are almost unheard of on Linux or Mac computers. They could still use Windows on their main internal network where their computers would live a more sheltered existance. The extra PC wouldn't need to use much extra electricity because some of the mini-PCs only use about 21 Watts.

I am not a computer professional (or expert), but it seems to me that isolating the internal nework from the outside world with a KVM swith might possibly be an alternative to consider. That would be especially true if they are using malware infected Windows computers, are understaffed with properly trained and motivated IT people, and have failed to secure their network by other methods. I have actually thought about doing something like that at home with one or both computers running Linux.

Don't let your boss's dad bullshit you. There's no need to "rip and replace" like his hero Ballmer talks about. Any smart business phases in new technology. The way to do that with OOo is to get it installed along side all the illegal MS Office licenses. At the beginning make sure it is set to save in the same format as everyon esle is using. That way, those that wish to can try it out. It's also a useful tool to recover corrupted MS Office files.

After key people have tried OOo, and you have some feedback, then make a migration plan. The boss's dad can keep using his copy of MS Office for the forseeable future. But keep in mind that he can lose the business lots of money that way. Going to OOo can reduce the company's liability there. Given all the phone home features in MS Windows, does he feel like continuing to take the risk?

Not what the courts have said about some retailers' websites and the ADA http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060907/cgth051.html

There was an earlier ruling by another federal judge that the ADA does not apply to web sites. Until a case goes to the Supreme Court, the applicability of the ADA to web sites depends on which federal district you're in.

"If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time, said Thomas Lindeman, Microsoft senior product manager."

By that chart, I would suggest Google move its data centers to Idaho.

Good modern encryption algorithms are designed to survive for thousands of years, even in the face of increasing computer speeds. Advances in cryptoanalysis may or may not pay off; the entire goal is to design a system where no analysis ever provides a better-than-brute-force solution. Codes from WWII managed to remain unbroken for 60 years, even given that the Enigma system was deeply flawed, and the advanced in crytoanalysis and computers since then.

On the up side, historically people implementing DRM have really sucked at cryptography.

Even assuming you're correct, I shouldn't need to break encryption to get access to data I own a copy of. And if something like the DMCA is still in effect and there are works still under copyright, it will be illegal for me to make or purchase software that will do the decoding for me.

In court documents, Microsoft has argued that "Internet Explorer" was a descriptive or generic term, similar to words such as "personal computer" or "database."

is anybody really surprised this is a fake? i mean look at how stoned they are!

There've been games about exchanging nukes before, but none of them were as popular as Defcon, and most of them didn't concentrate solely on nuclear exchange. I can't say if they were worse or better, since, not being a huge fan of Introversion's games, I never played Defcon.

Take Superpower for example. Besides conventional warfare, you could also enter nuclear mode in the game, and exchange some nukes with the nastier of your neighbors. If I recall correctly, the game also had a MAD-meter, which would be used to determine when you destroyed the world enough to end the game. Here's a screenshot. (link might not work if you send referers)

So all 4 Nobel winners this year so far have been Americans. Brain drain?! Bah! Of course, the true test will be to see if we can keep it up in a few years.

Uh, actually, you need to adjust for relativity. In the frame of reference of the observers giving out this award, we're a couple of decades back. That is, they don't give out nobel prizes for something that happened this year, they give them out for things that have stood for a while and had impact etc.

Consequently, I think you meant to say: Of course, the true test will be to see if we kept it up for a few years subsequent to 1989. We should already know the answer to that. I'm sure we're still doing good work. But are we keeping pace with the tremendous degree of investment in math and science abroad? I bet the Nobels that are given a decade or two from now will be clear on that. It's a matter of national pride for many countries. But here, we have "No Child Left Behind", which sounds good on paper but often plays out as "No Child Gets Ahead" -- lest it be "unfair" to someone. It's politically unsafe here to suggest that it's worth investing in our high end at the expense of our low end, and that's going to trend badly toward the middle. Other countries are not thus hampered.

MIT recently opened a research center in Singapore. I suspect the next thing we'll hear is that it's headquarters has moved--for convenience. And then finally, that the largely unused Cambridge center is being mothballed as a quaint relic, perhaps turned into a science museum. And perhaps after that protests may ensue, more over lost jobs or unfair treatment than the question of how our nation's leaders sold us out. No one worries about that.

The problem is that US politics sees everything as one-place predicates. Politicians like education. They like the environment. They like kids. It's easy to like things when you don't have to make hard choices, and all our public dialog is framed about people voting for X or not voting for X. Politicians don't talk about choices, about comparisons, about 2-place predicates that put one thing up against another. No one says "When it came to X vs Y, I chose Y." That alienates voters. Voters want the fictionalized choice that you can have it all, that all choices/votes are independent of one another, and that no choice or policy robs another. They don't want honesty, so politicians don't sell it. And then the policies the voters have elected don't work. We'll spend a billion dollars to keep a few from getting attacked when the same billion would save many more lives if spent on food, health care, jobs, or education.

I'm not against less intelligent kids. I don't want to hold them back. BUT the more intelligent kids will be making the money that will pay for the welfare, the head start, etc. that the less intelligent ones need. And if push comes to shove, I know where I'd put money to make sure we still have money in the future. Any business person knows it. You invest in the "low-hanging fruit", the "easy mark", the people who are poised to succeed. And no, that doesn't mean the rich kids--this isn't about class. There are smart kids and dumb kids in the same family. There are smart poor kids and dumb rich kids. We need to figure out which ones are going to succeed and invest in them. And if we don't start investing in science, instead of kidding ourselves that investing in Creationism is the same thing, we'll be rightly pushed aside by other countries, who know that our kind of nonsense/nonscience is not what business is hiring. If it hasn't happened already.

I'm not trying to troll this forum. I think this is on topic since the headline says "Americans win...", so it's clear that some of this story is about who won, about American national pride and implicitly about American national investment in doing it again. And I have strong opinions on this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the dot.com bubble burst start around March/April 2000? I distinctly remember being in college at the time, which narrows down the timeframe considerably since I dropped out at the end of the Spring 2000 semester. Jan 2001 sounds like the right timeframe that the dot.com burst started bleeding over into telecom stocks. YHOO (Yahoo!), for instance, lost about 85% of its value over the course of 2000, and Lucent was down about 75% from its peak by Oct 2000.

So, given that, is Jan 2001 really such a bad time to use as a comparison point?

Since the Reuters article doesn't talk about the relation of this software to the Counter-Strike, and was confused myself by an article by the german magazine Der Spiegel, which states that there is no connection. However, having searched Google News and some other search engines, it seems that this Iranian software is in fact a map or mod to Counter-Strike (the Half-Life mod). The best evidence for this I could find was an article supposedly quoting Ahmadreza Nouri, who is apparently one of the designers. I also found some other pages supporting this view.

It has for a fool cause...

We want pink slashdot back!

Window Snyder... who formerly worked in Microsoft (http://news.com.com/Mozilla+looks+to+Microsoft+fo r+security/2008-7355_3-6117896.html?tag=nl) security team. By reading those short bio I couldn't help but laugh at the coincidences. And strenghtened my resolution of not have kids with another programmer.

PS.: I feel a disturbance in the force... like a million fanboys crying

Anyone suing U-Tube would be taking the risk of losing the lawsuit and setting a precident.

Elsewhere on /. I pontificated that YouTube was going to get taken down. While YouTube may still get slammed, I'm starting to rethink my position, especially with regard to how things turned out for Napster.

That is, the RIAA took a fairly big risk going after Napster because the music industry truly believed Napster to threaten their bottom line. Without getting into nitty gritties, many people today believe that the RIAA overestimated the damage that illegal music downloads have on sales. In fact, some experts believe music downloads do not significantly effect music sales while contributing to societal good and others assert that filesharing actually spurs music sales.

Given that lesson, it could be that the video industry (and even an overextended and hyper-litigious music industry) is thinking to itself that stopping YouTube is not in their best interests. Not only would the lawsuit be expensive, but it would dampen the enthusiasm people are clearly expressing regarding downloadable video (and I don't mean BitTorrrent).

Now, I'm the last person to believe that the suits have actually learned from their mistakes (*cough* Jack Valenti *cough*)* but it is entirely possible that the industry might have other plans for YouTube including taking a "wait and see" attitude. Then again, they could simply be spellchecking the suit before submitting it.

* Yes, I know Valenti is no longer the head of the MPAA

But Unisys credited its exertion of the LZW patent with the creation of the PNG format, and whatever improvements the newer technology brought to bear.

"We haven't evaluated the new recommendation for PNG, and it remains to be seen whether the new version will have an effect on the use of GIF images," said Unisys representative Kristine Grow. "If so, the patent situation will have achieved its purpose, which is to advance technological innovation. So we applaud that."

Yes, and smoking helps your lungs learn to work under difficult conditions, beating your children helps toughen their hides, and driving a Hummer helps innovation in new fuel sources by using up available gasoline faster. It's all good.

I also like how PNG is "the new recommendation" to Unisys, in 2003.

1. Didn't play golf already.
2. Already played video games.

ATI definitely has the best integrated graphics solution in the laptop market

Story with a small picture of the 'designed' personal computers.
http://news.com.com/Barbie,+Hot+Wheels+PC+delivery +lags+in+holiday+crunch/2100-1017_3-234533.html

Epinion of the PC
http://www.epinions.com/kifm-Toys-All-Barbie_PC/di splay_~reviews

There is a real world out here, and in it there are thousands of small companies that have to use computers to communicate with their customers and suppliers and to keep up with their competitors but that are too small to afford even a part-time IT guru. Companies like that have to buy their accounting software, their production software, their shop management software, their design software--and what's for sale out here in the real world only runs on Windows.

There used to be a saying that no one gets fired for picking IBM ...the same is true for MS. Sure it has problems, but they're problems that everyone accepts now, and introducing linux will remove some problems and introduce some new ones...and one of those might get you fired.

Ernie Ball moved his entire organisation over to open-source. So it can be done. And he says the move is saving him money.
"I know I saved $80,000 right away by going to open source, and each time something like (Windows) XP comes along, I save even more money because I don't have to buy new equipment to run the software."
-- Ernie Ball

Let's starting counting the days until they offer a firmware 'update' that turns off the free PDF/txt/MP3 reader bits :-p. I'm sure they'll wait six months or so, until they think they've got everyone hooked..

Well it's a combination of flash media and hard drive. The biggest advantage is in power usage for laptop environments. Check out this article about Samsung's hybrid.
I'm not sure if this would help much in terms of max transfer speed (I doubt it, same bus anyway), but the seek times should be much better for anything that's cached. Most drop in ATA flash drives I've looked at have seek times in the microseconds not milliseconds.

I use Postgres almost exclusively. I started using it years ago when it was a vastly superior database comared to MySQL. I've watched over the years as MySQL has closed the gap, to my surprise.

Look at this article from a couple years ago:
http://builder.com.com/5100-6388-1050671.html

If you updated this chart, it would be pretty boring, since the MySQL column would be all "Yes" now too.

Why is it that people worked with a very inferior GPLed product when a BSD one existed that already had all the features? Why even bother making MySQL support all that stuff?

I don't wish bad things on PostgreSQL. I hope it stays around and continues to be maintained. But the advance of MySQL and the lack of wide interest in PostgreSQL says something about their respective licenses.

Reminds me of that South Korean site, Cyworld. Here's an article a little more interesting than the Wikipedia one. You can also try CNET.

On a sidenote, I find this trend of funny short names (Zune, Google, Wallop) as amuzing as the Koreans putting the word "cyber" in as many brands as they can.

If Microsoft funded SCO for any or all of the SCO v. IBM case, they got their money's worth.

If? The Microsoft-SCO connection is well documented. It wasn't a secret then, and it isn't now.

Didn't Apple basically ignore "podcasting" when it first started?

Pretty much, yeah. Though this almost makes Microsoft look smart for discouraging use of the term "podcast" on campus last year. (Almost.) According to that article, they were using the term "blogcast" internally.

Go ahead and quote him: Cnet article. A $26M settlement = license and 10% stake in Immersion for MS. Sony declined to pay up and got pounded with a $90M judgment.

Honestly, 5 years and only 2 service packs?

SP2 came out 2 years ago.. SP3 isn't due untill late 2007??

I reloaded my wife's laptop over the weekend.. after SP2 I only had to install 80 patches.

If they can't find the time to get SP3 out the door how about a Security roll up pack?

Found this a while back:
From a Network Wiring Mess to Wiring Nirvana
http://techrepublic.com.com/2300-10879_11-5896894- 1.html

"Even if there was a consumer who decided to buy the PlayStation 3 perhaps as a Blu-ray player, I think that they will quickly realize the potential and the entertainment value of the fantastic content in true (high definition). Any consumer would be hard-pressed really not to try that functionality out."

-- Kazuo Hirai Let the PS3 games Begin


Witness the awesome entertainment value enabled by Blue-Ray games disks! No cars or courses!

"We wanted to take advantage of the storage capacity that Blu-ray offers in terms of motion pictures and other content, but most importantly, for games as well. Our decision to include the Blu-ray player from day one in all of our PlayStation 3s was the right decision and, quite honestly, the only decision we can make.

Look at the massive amounts of data that's required to provide a truly immersive gaming experience in true HD. If you only have a DVD ROM drive, which can only go up to about 9GB or so, you're going to end up with a game that's going to have two or possibly even three discs. And then you're going to have to ask consumers to swap discs out or cache all the game onto the hard drive which I think is an inconvenience--not to mention the fact that you're going to fill up a 20GB hard drive very quickly with some of these games. So trying to go without a Blu-ray drive in the PlayStation 3 really is a nonstarter."

Which is very odd because Amazon and Target are partners. This press release is from 2001 - http://news.com.com/2110-1017-275199.html

http://news.com.com/Telco+agrees+to+stop+blocking+ VoIP+calls/2100-7352_3-5598633.html

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."

Oracle Corporation opposes the patentability of software. The Company believes that existing copyright law and available trade secret protections, as opposed to patent law, are better suited to protecting computer software developments.

Apart from spying on their own employees, HP also had several journalists targeted and a journalist's father's phone records obtained, by 'prextexting' (read: illegally lying to obtain information).

Apart from spying on their own employees, HP also had several journalists targeted and a journalist's father's phone records obtained, by 'prextexting' (read: illegally lying to obtain information).

It seems that all the complaints finally paid off.

I'd love to believe that. But given the fact that Yahoo just tendered $900 million for Facebook while leaving much of the company's structure unruffled, one billion or more isn't out of the question for a notorious web service. At least it's getting closer to the $2 billion they really desire.

I'm no big fan of Bush, but if you think Bill Clinton was any different when it came to crushing your civil liberties in the name of 'protecting the children,' think again.

Abu Gonzales has been pushing ISP data retention since at least early this year, and he's invoked all the usual boogeymen to get it passed: terrorism and kiddie porn.

He's tried:
-meeting privately with the major ISPs to ask them for voluntary compliance
-getting Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner to introduce a bill that went nowhere.
-somehow persuading Qwest to endorse legislation

I don't mean to pimp Cnet. Search any tech news site for "ISP data retention" and you'll see the history of this.

Abu Gonzales has been pushing ISP data retention since at least early this year, and he's invoked all the usual boogeymen to get it passed: terrorism and kiddie porn.

He's tried:
-meeting privately with the major ISPs to ask them for voluntary compliance
-getting Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner to introduce a bill that went nowhere.
-somehow persuading Qwest to endorse legislation

I don't mean to pimp Cnet. Search any tech news site for "ISP data retention" and you'll see the history of this.

Abu Gonzales has been pushing ISP data retention since at least early this year, and he's invoked all the usual boogeymen to get it passed: terrorism and kiddie porn.

He's tried:
-meeting privately with the major ISPs to ask them for voluntary compliance
-getting Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner to introduce a bill that went nowhere.
-somehow persuading Qwest to endorse legislation

I don't mean to pimp Cnet. Search any tech news site for "ISP data retention" and you'll see the history of this.