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This article is useful in that it gets people thinking about the problem. Now some clever person can come up with a proposed solution and post an article about it. That's how it works.

It's not like nobody's ever discussed these issues before. Or have they?

This article is useful in that it gets people thinking about the problem. Now some clever person can come up with a proposed solution and post an article about it. That's how it works.

It's not like nobody's ever discussed these issues before. Or have they?

Already being done.

Whereas Microsoft is choosing to take PDF head-on, Apple Computer took a different approach when it created Mac OS X's print format. Apple uses PDF as its native printing format and also as an option for saving any Mac OS X file. Though it uses PDF, Apple did its own implementation of the format, using the PDF details Adobe has published.

I might even buy one to broad cast my own TV channels and music out there ;), me or even copyleft groups like CreativeCommons can some and then take the media companies by storm.

They have already been approved for use on airplanes.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-960823.html

The first DVD player was available in the U.S. in early 1997. It came with virtually no competing technologies (a la HD-DVD).

Do you forget so easily? DVD defeated Divx in only 2 years, well before the release of the Playstation 2...that is how STRONG the DVD format was by the year 2000.

You are quite correct though, DVD sold the PS2. People justified the high pricetag because it was also a DVD player, and I really don't expect that to happen this time around.

http://news.com.com/MS+to+invest+150+million+in+Ap ple/2100-1001_3-202143.html

Can anybody say "Sleeping with the enemy" ???

technoextreme (885694) writes: PS. Is this the first Slashdot article that actually mentions S&M .

I thought every article was, at least indirectly, S&M!

It's not just limited to the articles, and some days are just worse (or if you prefer: "better") than others.

Am I the only one that noticed this? :)

You were probably too busy boosting your ego via anti-Linux trolls to notice

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)

I live in Pakistan and celular access is really cheap here. All carriers offer free incoming calls and free incoming SMS. A couple also offer small kickbacks on recieved calls.

What really rocks though is that you can buy a cheap Nokia phone for less than US$100 up-front, stick a pre-paid card into it (about US$ 2) which has about 60 minutes of airtime in it and when that runs out, your incoming calls/sms keep coming in for another FIVE years (Telenor Pakistan). The most ripoff carrier (Mobilink) here still gives you about six months of free incoming before you need to recharge your phone.

On my pre-paid connection, for about US $4.00 I get about 40 mins outgoing calls to other networks, twice that for my own network. The call rates are also flat across the country so it doesnt matter where I am, the same rates apply. I know the US is a heck of a lot larger, geographically, but in this day and age with the level of connectivity the US has, it should not be such a big issue - the internet does it already! Oh and this US$4.00 lasts about 25 mins if I call the US from my cell phone in Pakistan.

My parents recently went to India for a family visit and told me that its even cheaper there.

BTW, the world's largest WiMax deployment has been signed off on between Motorola and Wateen telecom in Pakistan - we should be getting WiMax across the country soon too!

All thanks to competition, deregulation and some solid support from the Musharraf government.

Update:

You can find the list of phone and their radiation level here.

FTA:

"In an ironic twist, the NSA published a 13-page paper in January describing how redactions could be done securely."

Damn, I'm snickering so hard that I can't find my tinfoil....

FWI, you can't be found guilty of any of these things unless the other party proves they were somehow harmed by the slander or liable speech. If they can't prove it, you can still say it, even though its not true.

Everything you wanted from a laptop: faster boot times, quicker storage access, less noise, longer battery life...

• 1 GB memory That's a fairly large amount for the system. If you want to run stuff that should be a memory hog(image editing, sound editing, etc), then your requirements will increase sharply.
• 40 GB hard drive space Likewise.
• 15 GB free HD space I don't know about you, but I tend to accumulate things. I start to run things down to only a few free GB, whereupon I free up a couple of GB.

Maybe I'm confused but I thought 2 SEPARATE announcements were recently made by Sun.

1 - It will now be easier to distribute Java with a Linux distro

(see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/05/05/java_linu x_licensing/)

2 - Sun is planning to open source Java but has not decided on all the details (I presume they're trying to pick the right OSI-approved license)

(see http://news.com.com/Sun+promises+to+open-source+Ja va/2100-7344_3-6072760.html)

Look at the dates in the articles. The "we will open source Java" announcement (#2) was made at JavaOne. The "we'll make it easier to distribute Java" (#1) was made before JavaOne AFAIK.

As initially envisioned, the laptops sported a hand crank on the side to generate power, but Negroponte has scrapped that idea because the twisting forces that would be bad for the machine. Instead, some form of power generation device, likely a pedal, will be attached to the AC power adapter, he said.

"I was the longest holdout for the crank being on the laptop. I was wrong," he said

remember this? didn't quite have the sophistication of your invention though...

Word
Outlook
Excel
Powerpoint

Word
Outlook
Excel
Powerpoint

Word
Outlook
Excel
Powerpoint

Word
Outlook
Excel
Powerpoint

Apparently, DIAL is supposed to help, but it looks to fall short in places... link from Cnet news
http://news.com.com/Making+the+Web+fit+for+mobile/ 2100-1039_3-6074944.html?tag=cd.top

>I can't imagine this would be very useful or interesting, unless you are Saddam Hussein and are looking for a cheap compute box to run your WMD simulations on. (My favorite piece of Playstation 2 PR.)

Are you really that stupid?

Ok Einstein, tell us what other computing hardware circa 1999-2000 had:

1) 6Gflops per node

2) $300 per node

3) The same low heat and power consumption per node

that the PS2 hardware has. Let me guess you are also one of the those sad fucks who likes to try to claim Sony claimed their system would have 'Toy Story' level graphics...

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+got+game+Xbox+unveil ed/2100-1040_3-250632.html

""One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.'"

They might get away with it, if the pricing were rigth. Like cell phones where you pay $1 for the hardware. With this computer you pay one third of the total (HW+SW) price up front. They don't say what that price would be. I live in Brazil and have never heard of this program.

The card shown in one of the links says "R$95 for 55 hours", without specifying which services are being provided. Internet acces, perhaps? I pay R$50/month (about US$22) for unlimited 512 kbps broadband, so this couldn't be a good business from that point of view. Which software is included? They can hardly expect to fight illegal copying at this price, Brazilian street vendors charge R$10 per CD, installing XP and MS-Office would cost slightly less than US$10 for unlimited use.

In the end, this seems to be an effort against the Brazilian government program to create a Linux-based popular computer. The fact is that this effort has been facing a lot of problems due mostly to strong lobbyist action. I think this "pay-as-you-go" program is just a straw man to give some corrupt politicians arguments to say that Microsoft can also create a cheap computer for the people.

A "fraction" is very variable. For the sort of hardware people are buying in the target countries of this idea, the fraction is in the region of ½, and in Brazil at least, poor people are already starting to buy things on credit without needing vendors to step forward and offer lock-in contracts.

Alzira de Oliveira Rangel, who earns $400 a month as a nanny, recently bought her teenage son a computer on credit and opened savings accounts for each of her children.

But after angry objections from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan panel of experts appointed by Congress, the department opted this week to pull the computers from the network. [emph mine]

Why would presence of spyware indicate a defect in the code?

The WELL known ActiveX exploits in IE have been there for a LONG time .

MS refuses to fix them .

Thus how it might be indicative of a defect ...

And pusposely so ...

For many people, using a non-Microsoft browser such as Firefox is now a must for secure Web surfing--but most still keep a copy of Internet Explorer around just in case.

http://news.com.com/Planning+to+dump+IE+Think+agai n/2100-1032_3-5388755.html

Ex-MislTech

shhh.. apple invented it.

Strange thing is, it did, and had actually applied for a patent before IBM began shipping it.

Stranger thing is, Apple so far hasn't tried to enforce the patent against IBM or anyone else. Probably because they realize that IBM isn't likely to roll over, when it had similar technology at about the same time.

A couple of weeks ago Intel announced they were moving up their launch dates. Here's the quote from the article: "Three new chips, one for each of the Core market segments, will be part of the rollout: Woodcrest for servers in June, Conroe for desktops in July, and Merom for notebooks in August." Hopefully by November prices will have already started dropping.

Yeah, okay I'll look ... WOW! Star Trek stuff on sale.
What is ADD again?

"Black Eye" Links:

McAfee update exterminates Excel
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6048709.html

McAfee 4715 DAT False Positive Deletion Reports Follow-up
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1184)

According to CNET, this is all just empty hype. Dell is only using AMD for "four-way servers", of which they sell only a few per quarter, and for recently-purchased Alienware. For everything else, they are sticking with straight Intel.

And my favorite story. Before SBC bought them out Pacific Bell was actually laying fiberoptic cable in my neighborhood (downtown San Jose, CA) so we could have *real* broadband. After SBC bought them the first thing they did was cancel the project and dig the fiber out so no one could use it.

..instead read this one at CNET

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6073584.html?part= rss

The new important thing for this sensor (to consumers anyway) is that it can capture 2mp at 30fps.

It has been designed with capturing full motion 720p video in mind.

This is great- I have long wondered why, as camera mega pixels sizes go up, we are still stuck with VGA video. I would love a digital camera still that can double as a HD video camera.

You're the one initiating the data transfer when you tell your browser to go to http://www.google.com/; you pay, just as the person sending a snail mail letter initiates the transfer, and hence pays the postage. Would you think it reasonable for the USPS to bill you as well as the sender for mail sent to you?

Check out this case of a telco blocking its DSL customers from vonage.com. Another example: in Canada, Shaw Communications is claiming its customers must pay a $10/month fee to get decent VoIP service... unless they use Shaw's VoIP service. That's the kind of thing we have to look forward to in the absence of net neutrality.

It was called DART. The NASA page has headlines like "DARTing Into Space" and "DART Seeks its Target: NASA launches a DART to target an orbiting bull's-eye". The DART has hit its target now, what's the problem? ;-)
Also, DART stands for "Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology"; I'd say it hasn't been a particularly good demonstration now, has it? (Reminds me of the Windows 98 launch (or oh, the recent CES as well).)
And notice from the article that this incident actually happened last year!

Oracle have already announced that Solaris is their primary platform for both Sparc & x86 64 bit platforms.

In light of Oracle's recent flirt with Linux as their primary platform, it must be relatively obvious that Linux couldn't deliver the scalability Oracle needs.

Yesterday Apple Security Guards treated a customer like Rodney King today they close the source to OSX.

Whatever, this is a brilliant move on the RIAA's part (just the kind of legal thugery they always do).

It's just a ploy; they sue the most conservative organization out there (XM is not exactly a Fair Use advocate), and even if they lose, it gives consumers (and even the courts) the impression that the line is being fought somewhere much closer to the RIAA's ideal legal system.

Metaphorically, if you sue tons of people for simply saying your name in public, then perhaps it will be easier to make people think that saying *bad* things about you in public is *definitely* slander.

Sony killed everyone with PS1 sales the year the PS2 came out.

I'm seeing more of that... like the recent WSJ rejection of all Linux because the distro tried would not work iTunes (and a few "complex" M$Office docs). It's too bad people don't see the magic combination of:

• Amarok, the awesome free music player.
• The Internet Archive's 34,000 concert Music Archive
• A music publisher that does not suck
• Cheap USB music players from walmart, orcheap good ones or software that makes expensive ones rock like they are worth the money.

The whole DRM fiasco is so avoidable and life without it is so much better. If work forces you to use Windoze, it sucks to be you but you don't have to let that take over your entertainment and home life.

By the way, the GUI that Xine makes does all the cool stuff from keyboard shortcuts you want from a video player. If you want a real video editor, go for kino or cinerella. M$ will never give you any of that any more than M$ Word can be used for publishing.

WMP 11 has, so far, received favorable reviews (click here for comments from CNET.com). And even though it doesn't work with the iPod, WMP 11 includes several features to help it compete with iTunes.

If you'd have read the screenshot descriptions (here & here) you'd notice that you can search instantly by keyword/title. I'm very excited about this new WMP. MS says (we'll see if they can deliver) that they've improved it so it can handle large collections. The current WMP can't handle my 10,000+ music archives well, so instantaneous search across 30,000+ songs is pretty exciting stuff.

If you'd have read the screenshot descriptions (here & here) you'd notice that you can search instantly by keyword/title. I'm very excited about this new WMP. MS says (we'll see if they can deliver) that they've improved it so it can handle large collections. The current WMP can't handle my 10,000+ music archives well, so instantaneous search across 30,000+ songs is pretty exciting stuff.

You can find the screenshots here.

No, seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that the screenshots are rather unimpressive? I clicked through every single shot and read the description of the features. I can't find anything special.

News.com has a good series of images of the New Windows Media Player available:

http://news.com.com/2300-1025_3-6072445-1.html?par t=rss&tag=6072445&subj=news