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Stop playing ignorant! You've been on Slashdot long enough to have heard about this kind of stuff; you're just willfully being an asshole!

Just to shut you up, however, I'll direct you to this list of CDs that have a particular kind of DRM. Note that there are many other CDs that have other varieties of DRM.

The concept of leasing seems to work alright for expensive material goods such as cars, but people generally don't like spending money to temporarily "rent" crippled, DRM-infected media they're used to owning... or can otherwise download for free (regardless of legality). Witness the downfall of the original DivX DVD format (not the codec): http://news.com.com/2100-1040-227194.html. Though the creators believed the blame for its downfall was not lack of consumer interest, the truth is most folks don't like the concept of renting semi-permanent access to media on a monthly basis from a company that may or may not be in business in a couple years -- even if the average person would actually save money in the long run using this method versus traditional purchases.

That and Napster didn't really provide much value above and beyond competitive alternatives such as: illegal P2P downloads, Amazon, iTunes, etc...

First point, I am glad to see that someone seems to support my point that, for the average consumer, when they want a laptop, they don't first think "I want a Toshiba"

With regard to what you are actually saying, I should clarify. Since I know you read my statements in their context, I'm sure you noted that my point was that I had a hunch that having the highest selling laptops, and those laptops being relatively inexpensive, it implied some sales coming from outside of the 'West'. And wouldn't you know it, I was right! Toshiba does sell some laptops in Asia!

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2005/ 03/30/2003248395

Also, Look everyone! My hunch is no longer! I found Data! http://news.com.com/PC+market+surged+in+2005,+will +settle+in+2006/2100-1003_3-6028454.html
9 Months Ago:

Toshiba, meanwhile, snuck ahead of Apple Computer to take the fifth place for U.S. shipments with a 3.5 percent market share. Notebook sales helped the Japanese company, said IDC analyst David Daoud. Toshiba periodically makes an appearance in the top five.

For the year, however, Apple topped Toshiba with a 3.3 percent market share to Toshiba's 3.2 percent. For the year, Apple grew shipments by 32 percent, just slightly slower than Gateway.


So Toshiba in the U.S.... top five? Yes. Market share? ~3%

(By the way, this means most of Toshiba's sales are Non-U.S., so relating to my original point, Public exposure in the U.S. for Toshiba is Good)

I can tell I'm getting crabby. No more slashdot for me today.

Point 1, point 2.

First link is 1.5 years old, second is 5 years old. Yeah, they're old, but they both show that Toshiba has an extremely large market share in the US. 5 years ago they had the third largest at 21%. 1.5 years ago, out of the they had 4 (including #1 & #2) of the top 10 selling laptops.

This in no way is to gain recognition because people don't know who toshiba is. They either got called on it privately, they're doing it in good faith, or they want to screw over Sony. Since they're targeting a rival laptop producer, I would say it's to make them look good, with the added benefit of making Sony look bad.

AOL "splooge"d all over TW. Take a look at the stock price, sometime. Poor Ted Turner. It's not as though the warning signs haven't been all over the place

They'd do much better apart than together. Seriously, T/W cable is all over the freaking place - why isn't AOL involved?

What you're arguing is like saying GAP owns any picture with people wearing their logo.

That is what they should do, but, in the world of corporate governance, that is not what happens. Remember, after HP fired Carly Fiorina, they gave her a $21 Million severance package (LINK). And, Carly pretty much ran HP in to the ground. While Dunn's actions are arguably worse (both in terms of HP's reputation and legality) than Carly's mis-management, the fact is that Dunn will probably get a nice big check.

I imagine that even if Dunn ends up in front of a judge and jury because of this, her lawyers will ensure she still gets paid.

http://news.com.com/Googles+unusual+approach+to+ph ilanthropy/2100-1014_3-6115533.html

Don't give yourself a hernia setting up those strawmen, screechy.

Dean sucked even worse than Kerry or Bush. Remember his plan to make all plug in an electronic ID card before accessing the Internet? Of course you don't. Or you'll pretend that you don't, anyway.

The fact is the Dems didn't field a single credible candidate. Not one.

The only reason the election was as close as it was they were up against Bush.

Good thing they weren't up against someone with the charisma of Reagan or it would've been a slaughter.

On the other hand, maybe that level of defeat would've convinced the remaining sane Democrats to eject the consipiro-nuts from their party once and for all. Instead, they now have Deaniac running the show. Expect further humiliation at the polls.

[...] faith we ever had in our system.

Don't know about you, but I prefer not to put "faith" in any system of government. Faith is for psychology (religions).

Government either works and it's verifiable, or it can be abused.

Currently, it can be abused.

[...] we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power. To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.

I am one of those who believe that something is going to happen to cause the elections to be "temporarily suspended" (just like the Spanish-American War tax was supposed to be "temporary," but instead lasted over a century, and was only recently repealed ). I am not a threat to our system of government; those of our leaders who are planning the next attack against the American people, are.

It doesn't really. Only about 15% to 35% of the global market (from my interpretation of provided links) seems to be affected. See:

• news.com: Notebooks continue shipment gains
• news.com: PC market surged in 2005

Hey. I know it's a really, really broad number. But it seemes to be accurate given these sources.

Is is it just me, or is this alot of people?

It doesn't really. Only about 15% to 35% of the global market (from my interpretation of provided links) seems to be affected. See:

• news.com: Notebooks continue shipment gains
• news.com: PC market surged in 2005

Hey. I know it's a really, really broad number. But it seemes to be accurate given these sources.

Is is it just me, or is this alot of people?

Those things are ugly! Green?! C'mon!

It shoud send out the following email to everyone.

Dear Email Recepient,

My name is Sir Arthur Cunnigham, Bar-at-Law, Queen's Bench, City of London, the United Kingdom. The Illinois Supreme court, Chicago Illinois, USA has awarded a judgement against me for the sum of 11 million dollars. If you have received any unsolicited email from me, I will have to pay you, 535$ as your share of the settlement. Even if you have not received any mail from me before, this email itself will entitle you a share towards the settlement.

So please send me your name, your address, your social security number, your bank account number, the routing number of your bank so that I can remit the said sum without undue delay. In addition to verify your identity, please let me have a valid credit card number, its expiration date and the card verification number. Please allow six weeks for me to raid^H^H^H^H credit your account with the money I owe you.

Have a nice day. Thank you

I agree, regarding the poor analogy in TFA. People's mistrust of Internet reliability is more akin to the mistrust of optical character recognition rather than photocopying. Does/would anyone not proofread important documents scanned and interpreted by their OCR software?

Although it's been awhile, some of us do remember outages at MAE-West (1998, 2000, for example) which slowed the Internet to a crawl for many people. So, that mistrust is not without basis.

Most importantly, though, it's not just availability (or the lack thereof) that breeds distrust in third-party web application services. There are also issues of privacy, accountability, quality of service, and control, just to name a few.

They could then leave it up to game devs to support HD, Non-HD, or both.

This is the worst idea I've ever heard. The whole idea behind a console is control over your platform, and a single target. Any differences SHOULD NOT AFFECT GAMES, otherwise, you're just a Console-Wannabe Windows PC. :\

You're going to alienate your original fanbase, because eventually, guess what's going to happen? Devs are gonna get lazy and won't want to support both.

No, it'll purely for the use of Movies. Period. I don't think Microsoft is THAT dumb as to make a new version of the same console, that'll play different games. If/when they do, it'll be exactly what it is .. a new console. The XBOX 720 or what have you.

They'd do this purely to fight against Sony's bluray [movies]. For those of you who don't think MS has a vested interest in the HD-DVD vs bluray battle, think again. And yes, bluray will have java support.

I'll say it again: meanwhile, Nintendo sits on the sides of this battle merrily making, wait for it ... games. :)

There should be a considerable performance improvement if the core's are on the same chip die, since communication doesn't have to
go through the motherboard.

According to the technical articles on the Clovertown CPU's, each CPU is built from two separate cores, each with 4 MBytes of cache
memory (8 MBytes total).

Some details at LinuxElectrons

Another discussion here:


Multiplying the number of cores brings distinct advantages. First, it cuts down overall energy consumption for equivalent levels of performance. If the recent Core Duo chips released for notebooks from Intel had only one core, the chips would consume far more power, he said.

Integrating processor cores into the same piece of silicon or same processor package also increases performance by reducing the data pathways

"To go from core to core can be a matter of nanoseconds," Rattner said. "As soon as you move cores together you get an automatic improvement in available bandwidth."

Many in here seem to be dedicated to mocking Patricia Dunn using variously insulting names of her. It might be justified or not, but many replies display the posters seeing only one side of the story, and only with a single interpretation: Private investigation company impersonated HP board members et al to gain their private information from AT&T, the investigation was requested by Dunn, so she is evil.

Having spent a few hours reading all about the case from CNET News.com, I try to explain to you the whole story in a bit more detail but leaving out everything non-critical. I start with quoting the article HP chairman: Use of pretexting 'embarrassing', bold emphasis mine:

"This is a board who has suffered for a long period of time from egregious breaches of standards of business conduct. The board asked me to do something about it," she said. "Many directors thought the top priority was to figure out how to plug the leaks. We couldn't function as a board with these leaks continuing. This was not my spying on the board."

The leaking also has hurt HP's image, she said.

I don't doubt any of the claims above. Companies depend on their ability to do great business before everyone else is doing the same, so everyone involved in upper-level management understands that keeping certain things secret is critical to the company. So does every major shareholder, ie. the people who actually own the company.

Now if leaking one single time certain small details about the company could have negative impact, that's small compared to what HP has faced. Like the above citation shows, there had been repetitive leaks for a while already, and they weren't small ones either: HP outlines long-term strategy.

When a company cannot decide when to publish this kind of information, it is in serious trouble. HP wasn't ready to publish any of this yet, but someone sitting in HP board of directors made it all public ahead of time. Maybe some parts were never intended for anyone outside the board to know. Read the article to get a view on what the press got to publish.

The leaks were a serious problem for HP, so I bet Patricia Dunn as the chairman of the board was put under a lot of pressure to solve the case. She succeeded in that, but to her misfortune, wasn't able to get it done in a manner that would be legal and wouldn't cause major heat from the media (CNN has been keeping the flame up a big time, probably wanting a payback for Reporter's records accessed in HP probe).

In the process board member Tom Perkins resigned, and stated afterwards that "I did not resign from the board for frivolous reasons, but because HP was standing into dangerous waters--waters hazardous with both illegal and unconscionable governance practices--and because my advice was being ignored". CNET's articles try to draw a picture of him having resigned simply because he suspected immoral and/or illegal methods to have been used in the probe, but somebody replying in a previous Slashdot story on the subject claimed that he got only mad because it was among his duties to solve the whole leaking case and Dunn had thus stepped on his toes. Haven't seen a link to any data backing that up though so I wouldn't encourage making any judgments yet.

HP's stock, meanwhile, remained immune to the spying scandal. It continued a steady climb that began not long after the company revealed the questionable tactics of its leak investigation in a regulatory filing last week.

Whether or not us non-experts in corporate management decide to take an opinion or anot

Many in here seem to be dedicated to mocking Patricia Dunn using variously insulting names of her. It might be justified or not, but many replies display the posters seeing only one side of the story, and only with a single interpretation: Private investigation company impersonated HP board members et al to gain their private information from AT&T, the investigation was requested by Dunn, so she is evil.

Having spent a few hours reading all about the case from CNET News.com, I try to explain to you the whole story in a bit more detail but leaving out everything non-critical. I start with quoting the article HP chairman: Use of pretexting 'embarrassing', bold emphasis mine:

"This is a board who has suffered for a long period of time from egregious breaches of standards of business conduct. The board asked me to do something about it," she said. "Many directors thought the top priority was to figure out how to plug the leaks. We couldn't function as a board with these leaks continuing. This was not my spying on the board."

The leaking also has hurt HP's image, she said.

I don't doubt any of the claims above. Companies depend on their ability to do great business before everyone else is doing the same, so everyone involved in upper-level management understands that keeping certain things secret is critical to the company. So does every major shareholder, ie. the people who actually own the company.

Now if leaking one single time certain small details about the company could have negative impact, that's small compared to what HP has faced. Like the above citation shows, there had been repetitive leaks for a while already, and they weren't small ones either: HP outlines long-term strategy.

When a company cannot decide when to publish this kind of information, it is in serious trouble. HP wasn't ready to publish any of this yet, but someone sitting in HP board of directors made it all public ahead of time. Maybe some parts were never intended for anyone outside the board to know. Read the article to get a view on what the press got to publish.

The leaks were a serious problem for HP, so I bet Patricia Dunn as the chairman of the board was put under a lot of pressure to solve the case. She succeeded in that, but to her misfortune, wasn't able to get it done in a manner that would be legal and wouldn't cause major heat from the media (CNN has been keeping the flame up a big time, probably wanting a payback for Reporter's records accessed in HP probe).

In the process board member Tom Perkins resigned, and stated afterwards that "I did not resign from the board for frivolous reasons, but because HP was standing into dangerous waters--waters hazardous with both illegal and unconscionable governance practices--and because my advice was being ignored". CNET's articles try to draw a picture of him having resigned simply because he suspected immoral and/or illegal methods to have been used in the probe, but somebody replying in a previous Slashdot story on the subject claimed that he got only mad because it was among his duties to solve the whole leaking case and Dunn had thus stepped on his toes. Haven't seen a link to any data backing that up though so I wouldn't encourage making any judgments yet.

HP's stock, meanwhile, remained immune to the spying scandal. It continued a steady climb that began not long after the company revealed the questionable tactics of its leak investigation in a regulatory filing last week.

Whether or not us non-experts in corporate management decide to take an opinion or anot

Many in here seem to be dedicated to mocking Patricia Dunn using variously insulting names of her. It might be justified or not, but many replies display the posters seeing only one side of the story, and only with a single interpretation: Private investigation company impersonated HP board members et al to gain their private information from AT&T, the investigation was requested by Dunn, so she is evil.

Having spent a few hours reading all about the case from CNET News.com, I try to explain to you the whole story in a bit more detail but leaving out everything non-critical. I start with quoting the article HP chairman: Use of pretexting 'embarrassing', bold emphasis mine:

"This is a board who has suffered for a long period of time from egregious breaches of standards of business conduct. The board asked me to do something about it," she said. "Many directors thought the top priority was to figure out how to plug the leaks. We couldn't function as a board with these leaks continuing. This was not my spying on the board."

The leaking also has hurt HP's image, she said.

I don't doubt any of the claims above. Companies depend on their ability to do great business before everyone else is doing the same, so everyone involved in upper-level management understands that keeping certain things secret is critical to the company. So does every major shareholder, ie. the people who actually own the company.

Now if leaking one single time certain small details about the company could have negative impact, that's small compared to what HP has faced. Like the above citation shows, there had been repetitive leaks for a while already, and they weren't small ones either: HP outlines long-term strategy.

When a company cannot decide when to publish this kind of information, it is in serious trouble. HP wasn't ready to publish any of this yet, but someone sitting in HP board of directors made it all public ahead of time. Maybe some parts were never intended for anyone outside the board to know. Read the article to get a view on what the press got to publish.

The leaks were a serious problem for HP, so I bet Patricia Dunn as the chairman of the board was put under a lot of pressure to solve the case. She succeeded in that, but to her misfortune, wasn't able to get it done in a manner that would be legal and wouldn't cause major heat from the media (CNN has been keeping the flame up a big time, probably wanting a payback for Reporter's records accessed in HP probe).

In the process board member Tom Perkins resigned, and stated afterwards that "I did not resign from the board for frivolous reasons, but because HP was standing into dangerous waters--waters hazardous with both illegal and unconscionable governance practices--and because my advice was being ignored". CNET's articles try to draw a picture of him having resigned simply because he suspected immoral and/or illegal methods to have been used in the probe, but somebody replying in a previous Slashdot story on the subject claimed that he got only mad because it was among his duties to solve the whole leaking case and Dunn had thus stepped on his toes. Haven't seen a link to any data backing that up though so I wouldn't encourage making any judgments yet.

HP's stock, meanwhile, remained immune to the spying scandal. It continued a steady climb that began not long after the company revealed the questionable tactics of its leak investigation in a regulatory filing last week.

Whether or not us non-experts in corporate management decide to take an opinion or anot

Many in here seem to be dedicated to mocking Patricia Dunn using variously insulting names of her. It might be justified or not, but many replies display the posters seeing only one side of the story, and only with a single interpretation: Private investigation company impersonated HP board members et al to gain their private information from AT&T, the investigation was requested by Dunn, so she is evil.

Having spent a few hours reading all about the case from CNET News.com, I try to explain to you the whole story in a bit more detail but leaving out everything non-critical. I start with quoting the article HP chairman: Use of pretexting 'embarrassing', bold emphasis mine:

"This is a board who has suffered for a long period of time from egregious breaches of standards of business conduct. The board asked me to do something about it," she said. "Many directors thought the top priority was to figure out how to plug the leaks. We couldn't function as a board with these leaks continuing. This was not my spying on the board."

The leaking also has hurt HP's image, she said.

I don't doubt any of the claims above. Companies depend on their ability to do great business before everyone else is doing the same, so everyone involved in upper-level management understands that keeping certain things secret is critical to the company. So does every major shareholder, ie. the people who actually own the company.

Now if leaking one single time certain small details about the company could have negative impact, that's small compared to what HP has faced. Like the above citation shows, there had been repetitive leaks for a while already, and they weren't small ones either: HP outlines long-term strategy.

When a company cannot decide when to publish this kind of information, it is in serious trouble. HP wasn't ready to publish any of this yet, but someone sitting in HP board of directors made it all public ahead of time. Maybe some parts were never intended for anyone outside the board to know. Read the article to get a view on what the press got to publish.

The leaks were a serious problem for HP, so I bet Patricia Dunn as the chairman of the board was put under a lot of pressure to solve the case. She succeeded in that, but to her misfortune, wasn't able to get it done in a manner that would be legal and wouldn't cause major heat from the media (CNN has been keeping the flame up a big time, probably wanting a payback for Reporter's records accessed in HP probe).

In the process board member Tom Perkins resigned, and stated afterwards that "I did not resign from the board for frivolous reasons, but because HP was standing into dangerous waters--waters hazardous with both illegal and unconscionable governance practices--and because my advice was being ignored". CNET's articles try to draw a picture of him having resigned simply because he suspected immoral and/or illegal methods to have been used in the probe, but somebody replying in a previous Slashdot story on the subject claimed that he got only mad because it was among his duties to solve the whole leaking case and Dunn had thus stepped on his toes. Haven't seen a link to any data backing that up though so I wouldn't encourage making any judgments yet.

HP's stock, meanwhile, remained immune to the spying scandal. It continued a steady climb that began not long after the company revealed the questionable tactics of its leak investigation in a regulatory filing last week.

Whether or not us non-experts in corporate management decide to take an opinion or anot

I think a lot of companies (like the companies mentioned in this article) obtain patents but don't hire patent trolls to go about flexing their lawsuit muscles.

What's the point of the patent? Well, especially on standards, you get to maintain complete creative control over the direction of the standard and it's kind of a safety to always make sure everyone depends on you.

I also think that companies might consider patents as an asset when they calculate their balance sheets. I have nothing to back that up but since patents are continually bought and sold (see Intellectual Ventures) so they must be assets to some degree. This looks very good to investors & stockholders.

Afterall, Microsoft might not use these patents but what happens if they sell them for a huge chunk of change after everyone is using the technology? Massive lawsuits?

How about leaking HP's strategy for managing relationships with chip manufacturers (AMD, Intel)?

You going to lionize him for this, too?

Just some of George's work...

Also, the SEC prohibits companies from leaking material information to securities analysts, institutional investors or other market participants before releasing the information to the general public (source).

Phishing crews have been targeting web site vulnerabilities to deploy spoof sites for several years. In its year-end 2005 Phishing by the Numbers report, Netcraft noted that more than 600 phishing spoof sites were hosted on compromised forums and content management systems in 2005. In January hackers increased their targeting of PHP-based CMS and blogging apps, and were able to distribute the Windows WMF malware through a customer support forum on AMD's web site. There's nothing cutting edge at all about this.

Currently JRuby is licensed under the GPL.
Given Sun's past criticism, I think it's fair to ask whether they have committed to using the GPL for future JRuby releases.

The companies who are really serious about servers are particularly interested in CPU power compared to heat dissipation -- thermal density. This new Intel CPU is high performance with high heat--more of a gamer chip. At least so far it is; it's a very early sample and Intel hasn't had time to tune the power management features.

Intel's latest chips are fabbed at 65nm, while AMD is still only shipping chips fabbed at 90nm. This should give Intel a serious edge in the performance/heat ratio, but AMD's chips are so much more energy efficient that they are still competitive. (The current best performance/heat is the AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ ADD chip.) When AMD finally ships 65nm Opterons, those ought to be really great for dense server installations.

It's telling that even Dell is planning to ship servers with AMD chips. They announced a 4-core server; two dual-core Opterons. It wouldn't surprise me if they will be 65nm Opterons when they finally are released.

The article says that Intel is going to transition from 65nm to 45nm sometime in 2007, and to 34nm sometime in 2009. They beat AMD to 65nm big-time. They may well be at 34nm before AMD can make it to 45nm! Just imagine some sort of server chip with 16 cores... or more likely, 8 cores and a whole bunch of cache.

But we shouldn't count those chickens before they hatch. Right now Intel is at 65nm and AMD will be there soon.

steveha

The House Committee's Letter to HP (PDF).

A lot of people settle out of court when they are sued and it turns out to be between $12,000 & $17,000. Now, this looks like chump change compared to the $150,000 per violation and 1,000 songs shared means $150,000,000 lawsuit. Is this smart or stupid? I mean, don't you, the lawyers that these people consult, tell them to fold and pay the little amount of money?

Follow up to that, do you believe the RIAA would actually win a $150,000,000 lawsuit if the out of court routes weren't taken? They seem to imply they wouldn't win if they offer these tiny settlements en masse.

Dell and Wal*Mart are actually not too far off. Neither one is a 'true' monopoly in all the markets they are in... but in certain select markets (Wal*Mart in rural areas, Dell in the U.S.), they are near monopolies, controlling a significant percentage of the market. Dell had 30% of the market in April, compared to HP's 18% and Apple's 3.5% according to this article.

When you command nearly a third of the market for PCs, you can make your suppliers do almost anything -- including making them sell components to you below-cost, just so they won't lose your business.

Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).

While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.

While WMV3 is an arguably good codec, Microsoft worked hard to get it into things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so that it could be in a position to get people to use it as the codec for HD content. Since VC-1 is nothing more than Windows Media Video 9, I guess I don't blame them for wanting it to be everywhere. Then all of a sudden, the same content can easily be repurposed for other things, and work extremely well with other Microsoft- and Windows Media-based products. Genius, on their part.

For what it's worth, H.264 is generally seen as similar in quality and functionality (and better in some ways) than VC-1; it's the official next-generation successor to the MPEG family of video codecs.

And no, to reiterate what's been said elsewhere, H.264 is NOT "Apple's codec". Apple uses and promotes it, but it's hardly "Apple's codec". It's an open international standard that is already heavily used in DTV/HDTV and satellite TV, and is being deployed in more industrial and commercial video equipment every day. Why? Because it's open, and didn't stem from one company. (If anything, Apple's involvement was to pressure MPEG LA to actually have reasonable licensing, so that it would also be able to actually be useful to individual users instead of just commercial users and equipment OEMs, which was positive for everyone involved.)

If people are switching to VC-1 instead of H.264, given that it's not open and came 100% out of Microsoft (and indeed is nothing more than WMV3 plus Windows Media Audio (WMA), you can believe Microsoft has likely had involvement. Every VC-1 user is a huge win for Microsoft and a blow to already-open MPEG standards.

Not only that, but H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10, MPEG AVC) is already an open international standard (and, for those who don't know, one of the three mandatory supported codecs for all Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD disc players - MPEG-2 and VC-1 are the other two).

While VC-1 (formerly known as VC-9, the Windows Media 9 (WMV3) codec) has been submitted to SMPTE, VC-1 is still not open, and must still go through the patent pool process, which itself is being administered by MPEG LA.

While WMV3 is an arguably good codec, Microsoft worked hard to get it into things like Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so that it could be in a position to get people to use it as the codec for HD content. Since VC-1 is nothing more than Windows Media Video 9, I guess I don't blame them for wanting it to be everywhere. Then all of a sudden, the same content can easily be repurposed for other things, and work extremely well with other Microsoft- and Windows Media-based products. Genius, on their part.

For what it's worth, H.264 is generally seen as similar in quality and functionality (and better in some ways) than VC-1; it's the official next-generation successor to the MPEG family of video codecs.

And no, to reiterate what's been said elsewhere, H.264 is NOT "Apple's codec". Apple uses and promotes it, but it's hardly "Apple's codec". It's an open international standard that is already heavily used in DTV/HDTV and satellite TV, and is being deployed in more industrial and commercial video equipment every day. Why? Because it's open, and didn't stem from one company. (If anything, Apple's involvement was to pressure MPEG LA to actually have reasonable licensing, so that it would also be able to actually be useful to individual users instead of just commercial users and equipment OEMs, which was positive for everyone involved.)

If people are switching to VC-1 instead of H.264, given that it's not open and came 100% out of Microsoft (and indeed is nothing more than WMV3 plus Windows Media Audio (WMA), you can believe Microsoft has likely had involvement. Every VC-1 user is a huge win for Microsoft and a blow to already-open MPEG standards.

"Other complaints are that iTunes [Apple's online music store] is overpriced"

Overpriced compared to what? Free pirated music? All of the music stores that sell non-Indie music is seling for 99c accept for Walmart and Walmart is behind ITunes, Rhapsody, and Napster.

"In our ethnography interviews, some long-time iPod-users told us that they have stopped updating their iPods because it's too much work"

Using both Macs and Windows XP you just plug it in. Why couldn't they give a specific percentage of people?

" while other consumers who had bought iPods more recently had not even taken theirs out of the package to set it up.'"

Again no real numbers

"Analysts warn that the iPod has passed its peak. From its launch five years ago its sales graph showed a consistent upward curve, culminating in a period around last Christmas that saw a record 14 million sold."

During the fourth calendar quarter sells of consumer items peak --- news at 11. That's why economist compare on a "seasonally adjusted basis".

"He cited new mobile phones with improved MP3 players as the cause of the iPod's dwindling appeal"

http://news.com.com/Mobile+content+not+clicking+wi th+consumers/2100-1026_3-6113998.html?tag=nefd.top

10% -- users who buy ringtones for mobile phones
0.4% -- users who paid for video
28% -- 15 million subscribers downloaded some type of content

So who are all of these people buying music from their cellphone?

I have a Samsung a900 that plays MP3 and AAC formatted music as well as Sprint's music store music. I can transfer music from my Mac using either Bluetooth or the included usb cable. The interface is decent but music drains the battery life. On top of that I have only 80MB to store music on. Even on Sprint's other phones that do accept a MicroSD card you can only get up to 2GB. I'll keep my Nano.

This has more information. "Sexton, who attends the University of California, Berkeley, says that while he can search the site for specific products, he's unable to associate prices with those goods." "If he did get to the checkout point, he would face an additional barrier: the Web site requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, noted plaintiffs' attorney Mazen Basrawi, who works for Berkeley, Calif.-based Disability Rights Advocates and is also blind."

The reasonable tactic would have been to approach Target and offer to work with them to find a solution. Not only would it be cheaper for all sides in the short and long terms

They did. Target refused to make any reasonable effort to make their site accessible.

"The NFB wrote to Target in May, asking it to make the site more accessible, according to the plaintiffs. Negotiations broke down in January, which led to the filing of the lawsuit, the organization said."

I know that bashing lawyers is instinctual for some people, but at least think first, OK?

the suit charges that visual information is missing "alt-text," or invisible code that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of an image. In addition, the site lacks accessible image maps, an impediment to jumping to different site destinations

I think that it is in the best interest of a business to make themselves accessible to the widest audience possible, but it seems that the litigants want to hold the nation's businesses to standards created by the TTS industry (I'm assuming they use some variant of TTS software - I know very little about software for the blind). An international standard would be ideal, but in an age where technology changes so rapidly, it will be difficult to regulate compliance with ADA laws. If we compare this to wheelchair access ramps, we have a design that has fundamentally remained unchanged - wheels going up a ramp. It would be like requiring companies to rebuild their ramps every few years to accommodate new wheelchair designs while expecting them to maintain backwards compatibility with older models.

Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active , exploratory , avant-garde and early adopters . The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [and Linux] users.
                                          — MetaFacts, Inc.

With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [ intellectually as well as physically .]
                                          — Nielsen/NetRatings (as quoted by C|NET)

Ahh... you mean like:
CardSystems in Tucson, who lost 40 million Visa and Mastercard account records. CardSystems is one of several companies that process transactions for banks and merchants.

http://news.com.com/Credit+card+breach+exposes+40+ million+accounts/2100-1029_3-5751886.html

I was just reading something interesting as well. Intel plans on releasing the next platform chip Santa Rosa before the final standard. Santa Rosa will supposedly have the new 802.11n centrino technology. Check out the news story here http://news.com.com/2061-10791_3-6110311.html

Still quite expensive. Anaheim's similar network is 20-30% cheaper, and it covers about the same area at this point.

I find it funny that people are talking about stable OS's released just 8 years ago. It was only about 7 years ago that it was found most Microsoft Windows based computers could only run for 49.7 days before crashing( http://news.com.com/Windows+may+crash+after+49.7+d ays/2100-1040_3-222391.html ). Even OS/2 had stablility licked years earlier. Let alone this thing called Linux which was stable enough for corporate use about the same time it was found that MS Windows can't run for much more than a month without automatic or manual reboots. And Linux was/is put together by a rag-tag group of developers from around the world. Many who've never seen or spoken to other developers they are working with.

Anyways, it sure looks like all signs point to this 'product' from Microsoft being yet another money maker for the Microsoft Windows Keep-Windows-running business sector. Imagine if all that effort could be put into something offbeat like solving business process problems instead of rebuilding or repairing the Microsoft Windows Registry/etc.

LoB

First of all, the Vareity article (which doesn't necessarily know anything for certain) says:

"The only studio that will definitely [emphasis added] be part of Apple's movie store at launch is Disney.

So that still doesn't preclude other studios being on board at the time of launch. Even so, it still goes on to say:

"Other studios will likely join iTunes in the next year."

Further:

"The reason Amazon will have content from most major studios, while Apple may have only one, comes down to price, insiders said. Because it also sells DVDs, Amazon has agreed to studio demands that digital wholesale prices not undercut those of DVDs. [emphasis added] As a result, Amazon.com's digital download prices are expected to range from $9.99 to $19.99 -- about the same as those for other online retailers such as CinemaNow, Movielink and AOL.

Initially, Apple was pushing to sell all films for $9.99, just as it sells songs for a flat price of 99 and all TV shows for $1.99. But due to studio pressure, it will launch with two price points: $9.99 for library titles, $14.99 for new pics in the DVD window."

Not only is this the same type of behavior we saw to a certain extent with iTunes in the context of music, and moreso with television programming, I'm quite glad that Apple is pressuring the industry on the price issue, similar to the way they took a significant part in pressuring MPEG LA for reasonable licensing terms, which made the MPEG-4 family of protocols, including H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10, actually usable by normal people for content creation, broadcasting, and playback without the encumbrances of royalties and per-use/per-time fees that would have all but killed MPEG-4 and H.264 on anything but OEM devices and commercial broadcast services.

Then there's the question of usability: the same thing that has made the iTunes universe so attractive to users is still there as it has transitioned to video. It's not just a simple "download a media file and do with it what you will" service (though it can be treated as such; note I'm not talking about this in the context of DRM, I'm speaking in terms of the process via which you download something and play it) - it's a completely integrated system that normal people can actually use that has a pleasant user experience. With things like Front Row now shipping on all of Apple's systems, they've created an end-to-end solution that actually makes viewing, using, or listening to the content a tightly integrated experience that "just works". The turnkey nature of iTunes/iPod/Front Row has been one of the key reasons for its continuing success.

First of all, the Vareity article (which doesn't necessarily know anything for certain) says:

"The only studio that will definitely [emphasis added] be part of Apple's movie store at launch is Disney.

So that still doesn't preclude other studios being on board at the time of launch. Even so, it still goes on to say:

"Other studios will likely join iTunes in the next year."

Further:

"The reason Amazon will have content from most major studios, while Apple may have only one, comes down to price, insiders said. Because it also sells DVDs, Amazon has agreed to studio demands that digital wholesale prices not undercut those of DVDs. [emphasis added] As a result, Amazon.com's digital download prices are expected to range from $9.99 to $19.99 -- about the same as those for other online retailers such as CinemaNow, Movielink and AOL.

Initially, Apple was pushing to sell all films for $9.99, just as it sells songs for a flat price of 99 and all TV shows for $1.99. But due to studio pressure, it will launch with two price points: $9.99 for library titles, $14.99 for new pics in the DVD window."

Not only is this the same type of behavior we saw to a certain extent with iTunes in the context of music, and moreso with television programming, I'm quite glad that Apple is pressuring the industry on the price issue, similar to the way they took a significant part in pressuring MPEG LA for reasonable licensing terms, which made the MPEG-4 family of protocols, including H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10, actually usable by normal people for content creation, broadcasting, and playback without the encumbrances of royalties and per-use/per-time fees that would have all but killed MPEG-4 and H.264 on anything but OEM devices and commercial broadcast services.

Then there's the question of usability: the same thing that has made the iTunes universe so attractive to users is still there as it has transitioned to video. It's not just a simple "download a media file and do with it what you will" service (though it can be treated as such; note I'm not talking about this in the context of DRM, I'm speaking in terms of the process via which you download something and play it) - it's a completely integrated system that normal people can actually use that has a pleasant user experience. With things like Front Row now shipping on all of Apple's systems, they've created an end-to-end solution that actually makes viewing, using, or listening to the content a tightly integrated experience that "just works". The turnkey nature of iTunes/iPod/Front Row has been one of the key reasons for its continuing success.

I don't think it's fair to call a $120 OSX upgrade "full price" when the cheapest version of Vista will be $233 (almost twice the price of Leopard), and useful versions will cost even more.

All available studies show that not only are Mac users (excluding recent switchers) smarter than PC users, they're more creative, discerning, and artistic, too.

Not that I think you'll believe those statistics, anyway. Denial of science (e.g. Bible-thumping anti-evolutionism) is characteristic of PC users.

Any abuse of this system could get pretty sinister, but it wouldn't be the first such abuse:
http://software.silicon.com/malware/0,3800003100,3 9123379,00.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/webcam_tro jan_case/
http://news.com.com/Webcam+virus+writer+arrested+i n+Spain/2100-7348_3-5541974.html

http://news.com.com/Intel+axes+1,000+managers/2100 -1014_3-6093843.html

10% seems fairly drastic to me for a company that is still VERY profitable in 'bad' quarters, but large organizations also tend to over-staff during the best years.

I've read that a possible fix to the motion sickness problem you are experiencing is to change the FOV (Field of View) from the default 75 to 90 (which supposedly is the norm for other FPSs).

In the console, enter the following:
sv_cheats 1
fov 90

If you want to change it back to the default, fov 0 does the trick.

At least, that's what I've read.

Sorry, nobody gives a shit about Sun's hardware or BSD fork. Their java business was effectively sold out to Microsoft, you can read about it here and here.

Sorry, nobody gives a shit about Sun's hardware or BSD fork. Their java business was effectively sold out to Microsoft, you can read about it here and here.

Yes.