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Depends on how you interpret it. Google started as an academic publication, which is public. The system has certainly grown and changed since then, and improved, and much of that is secret. However, some generalizations of what they do, and particular pieces are patented. I believe this statement is saying that the general system is patented, but many of the scoring details, which is what's relevant in the case, are secret. So... yes, it can be both - you don't have to patent full systems and every detail. And you can also improve upon a patented system and keep those parts secret.

There are a few articles that point out that the software that Fujitsu Transaction Solutions developed for these devices is not, in fact, responsible. I heard a quote in a radio soundbite yesterday afternoon from a Fugitsu spokeperson suggesting that there is no security vulnerability in their ware. In either event, it seems like there is more to the story than we know today. Is this simply a ploy by Visa (or others?) to spin public (read, media) opinion?

It will all be a moot point if the police come get your HD. BTW, your hosting provider would have to give up the same information, the judge wasn't 'asking'

This isn't a privacy issue. This isn't John Q Citizen doing nothing and getting harassed. For more information please read this.

Alot can be avoided if you give the IRS their money.

The subpoena is for one account belonging to a defendent [sic], not a subpoena for a bunch of random accounts.

No...the subpoena for a bunch of random accounts is an entirely different case, and it's not going so well either.

You've proven my point for me more adroitly than I ever could have. Thanks for the help.

I think you're being a bit paranoid.

Clearly, you're not being paranoid enough.

It should be noted here that Apple have allready pulled the ipod from france due to decibel limits.

However, Apple almost immediately surrendered, limiting the decibels with a firmware update so they could get the French market back again.

"DiDio signed an SCO non-disclosure agreement and reported that she had seen 80 lines of code in the kernel that were copy-pasted from SCO's owned code. She could not, of course, reveal what they were"

"The entire Linux community is saying to customers, 'You're on your own,'" DiDio said. "That's not a place I want to be."

"This has the potential to turn into a twentieth century witch hunt,"

"A company has to .. be willing to risk not having an indemnification policy."

On the Open Source community ..

`Within the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' .. these people are like virtual suicide car bombers.'

Laura DiDio

Actually there's an extremely interesting quote from the Apple/Intel FAQ [http://www.appleintelfaq.com/ After Jobs' presentation, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller addressed the issue of running Windows on Macs, saying there are no plans to sell or support Windows on an Intel-based Mac. "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will," he said. "We won't do anything to preclude that." - 06/06/2005 [http://news.com.com/2100-7341_3-5733756-2.html%5D

No thanks; I don't want any government anywhere near my connection.

Why? It's worked in South Korea. High-speed internet is a crucial piece of infrastructure, sorely needed for the future if the US is going to have to be competitive in the global economy. Making sure 100% of American homes have broadband gives a HUGE possibility for the market to invent products and services that take advantage of it.

No thanks; I don't want any government anywhere near my connection.

Why? It's worked in South Korea. High-speed internet is a crucial piece of infrastructure, sorely needed for the future if the US is going to have to be competitive in the global economy. Making sure 100% of American homes have broadband gives a HUGE possibility for the market to invent products and services that take advantage of it.

Windows using less resources? Sorry, the next version is set to require at least 512Mb of memory, and 1Gb is recommended

• The US always says "trust us", and then acts in a manner to prove why you shouldn't... just like some folks from Redmond.
• The US is all about coercive power... kind of like a coercive monopoly we all know.
• The US built it's fortune from land stolen from the Native Americans... just like Microsoft built their fortune on someone else's code.
• The US spends a vast fortune spinning each bad thing that comes their way, and never admitting they did any wrong... because to do so would look weak. Sounds very familiar indeed.

Ultimately, this proves one point... you should never trust any group to do the right thing... not the US, not Google, or Microsoft, and it was foolish in this case that the UK trusted a US company (part of the US military industrial complex)... there should have been a demand for this openness in the contract and at the first sign of secrecy the UK should have threatened to stop payment.

The bank must be made responsible, regardless of what the user does.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-250632.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.'"

I can't believe there are still people trying to attribute Microsoft's stupid Toy Story graphics claim about the Xbox to Sony in 2006...

A functioning link to the NYTimes article.

Also interesting is the component pricing total that reveals why Sony will most likely have to take a loss of hundreds of dollars per console to remain competitive.

From the article: "Speculation about a possible buyout has been rife since Rahul Sood, CEO of original equipment manufacturer Voodoo PC, posted his thoughts on such a move on his blog two weeks ago.

damn these blogs.

If you're doing something on Solaris 10 that doesn't need you to pay out the ass for Oracle, you can get PostgreSQL supported by Sun.

http://news.com.com/Sun+backs+open-source+database +PostgreSQL/2100-1014_3-5958850.html

In the beginning there was PReP - PowerPC Reference Platform

A year or two later this was revised to CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform

Parent is correct. CHRP was a successor of PReP. PReP was quite flawed from Apple's perspective, and while CHRP was better, probably only few boxes actually complied with it. Some of those that did were Motorola's StarMax Pro 6000s, running 233 or 266 MHz G3s.

Those systems were announced at mid-1997, but they never shipped, as Apple decided to kill the clones. Some are still using those few that were made, though.

If you are so sure they said it would be impossible, then tell us where did they said it.

The parent message is referring to well-reported statements by Apple's Jobs and Schiller, who both said Apple would do nothing to prevent people from running Windows on Intel-based Macs. See this link: http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5733756-2.html

As the article states, Schiller's words were, "That doesn't preclude someone from running it on a Mac. They probably will. We won't do anything to preclude that."

Xbox360 isn't doing so hot in japan because their barely moving any units there at all. Sony is like a national brand to them so no matter what the hell they charge people will buy it. For example, for big games companies charge almost 2x as much as average games over there. FFXII will be out for about $90 USD in japan.

Here's a sample of XBox360 sale data in japan
http://www.craxtion.com/content/view/133/2/

Even the launch was horrid:
http://news.com.com/Study+Xbox+360+sales+start+slo w+in+Japan/2100-1043_3-5992548.html

The xbox360 presence in japan is almost negligible and it's not performing particularily well in the states either. While sales are much better here it's not anywhere near dominating.

This same story was posted 14 days ago on News.com and I even posted it on my own blog, and then it takes 14 days to get Slashdotted! No wonder people are using Digg more and more.

http://news.com.com/Stanford+wins+2+million+in+rob otic+car+race/2100-11394_3-5892115.html

No argument about the mediocre security architecture. ;)

The hard part is: there is no comparably popular, attackable, commercially viable computing product anywhere. So it's hard to know what the "root cause" really is.

Why did I pick those attributes? Because I sense those are important for hacker-publicity:

Popular: gives widespread visibility

Attackable: embedded firmware in an iPod isn't particularly susceptible to interruption ;)

Commercially viable: economic viability brings extended investment in publicity, and get-me-where-it-hurts pain.

The latter attribute may not be necessary for my perspective...Linux is popular to some extent, but there's no comparison for this discussion: Linux PLUS Apple together have yet to hit five percent of installed desktops (http://news.com.com/Desktop+Linux+a+vehicle+for+p irating+Windows/2100-1016_3-5388863.html). Just as legitimate developers tend to aim at the 95% solution, so too with crackers.

Thus, I suggest hackers can gain notoriety going after any ubiquitous software product. And they do.

Although they have chosen to deploy Linux using the traditional thick desktop/workstation model, they use a spare server that operates as an X11 application server. This is used on a regular basis by the helpdesk, IT support and a few Windows users that access both windows and remote X Linux. The rescue partition, that can be also network booted via PXE, is based on the Linux Terminal Server Project ( http://www.ltsp.org/ ). During an install or if a security violation is detected, the user of the desktop is booted into Linux thin client, and can access all their files though the Application server. Forensic examination, repairs and installs can take place in the background while the person uses the thin client.

4) Install a DHCP demon on the local server to allocate local IP addresses, DNS and gateway settings. If the desktops are network boot capable then install TFTP to remotely boot and use Knoppix via PXE and the network. If the desktop OS is constantly crashing, or is infected by malware, the user can select PXE/network boot via the BIOS, and boot into Knoppix. The user can then be instructed over the phone to enable the ssh server to allow remote scan,repair and reimaging of the desktop partitions. The user can use the Knoppix desktop to continue working with full access to files while the the remote administrator fixes/reimages the drive in the background.( Consider hiring someone who knows how to customise Knoppix or another live Linux system for your setup )

LOL, Great Point, I can see it now "Symantec Client Security Has Detected A Serious Vulnerability On Your Computer Click OK to Uninstall ..... Microsoft Office" :D

You were modded funny, only because "prophetic" isn't a legitimate mod. Actually, McAfee beat them to it. Their virus update sigs on Friday, March 10th classified MS Excel as a virus.

  -Charles

Since the company has demonstrated by its actions that it understands no language but that of the dollar, saying "Bad Starforce! Bad!" is clearly ineffective. Let's put it in terms they can get.

Can I ask everyone who's disgusted by this latest event and therefore swears to join the boycott and purchase no product with Starforce protection to say so?

*Raises hand*

http://news.com.com/2300-1044_3-5884639-1.html

http://laptop.org/

If they'd just remove the cap on foreign worker visas like Gates tells them to do they wouldn't have these problems with uppity geeks trying to destroy civilization by demanding enough money to attract a decent mate, reliably pay a mortgate and have a couple of kids they can afford to send to college.

Create all the confusion you want guys, the world does not want DRM.

innovation => faster/smaller/better chips

which leads to small robots.

The first EFI computer, a Gateway PC, went on sale in November. Others are expected to appear in 2004, with ever greater numbers coming in the following years. But not everyone is jumping on the EFI bandwagon. PC makers have been historically reluctant to change as their customers, especially businesses, often prefer stability. Hence the resilience of the floppy drive, despite many efforts to kill it off.

Red Hat already supports EFI for Itanium systems, and has pledged to work on supporting the new x86 Macs' EFI.

Not really that surprising, as their free version runs on the older G3, G4 and G5 Macs...

I have a stuffed penguin with the name 'Novell' written on it's belly which I purchased from your staff at an IT conference. Now, due to the name change, my dear Novell Tux is considered worthless and damaged goods. As the damage is caused by your part, I expect to receive full compensation in form of one (1) stuffed penguin sized 100" by 40" which is 10 times the size of my Novell Tex(tm). The increase in size is requested to remind you that what seems like a simple change of name is in fact psychologically damaging to a nerd. Upon receiving the new Suse Tux, I will destroy my Novell Tux to eliminate the chance of any other geek suffering from the same trauma I have. I expect you to comply with my wishes within 30 days from today. Failing which you will hear from my whose amazing achievements can be seen here.

Sincerely,

Me

It's been reported numerous places, including CNet News.com. I'll take an industry analyst's estimates over your anecdotes.

agreed. I work for a bluechip tech company. In my last review cycle I received the highest grade in my group and a sparkling eval. Less than 2 months later I was also promoted. At my company, new salaries trail reviews by almost 3 mos. When I got my new salary I found I'd been awarded a 3% raise - no stock, no cash bonus. I was even told this was better than most and I'd really need to be in some extraordinary situation to get more (e.g. grossly underpaid with the best performance). The rationale was that this was what every other company is doing.

I read an article a couple of weeks ago that claimed US tech companies on average are doing less innovation every year. The article went into detail about why an advanced degree or additional education won't pay for itself (at least not as quickly) because in companies where innovation isn't occurring, workers become a commodity and controlling costs is more important for maintaining profitability.

Still - it doesn't add up when I keep reading criticism that US universities are failing to graduate enough qualified computer scientists and EEs - http://news.com.com/2008-7345-5167499.html?part=ch t&tag=chl

ZUCK: Sure. ACT is an IT industry trade association based in Washington, D.C. It represents mostly small- and medium-sized information technology companies and their interests in Washington. So, we lobby on their behalf to prevent over-regulation of the industry; we fight both here and abroad for intellectual property protection;

selectively chosen one format (Adobe's PDF) that has some IP associated with (it) and said, 'That's OK, but this one (Microsoft Office) isn't.'

All your comment shows is that you don't know how insider selling works or that you're purposefully trying to stir up a conspiracy.

I suggest you read this article.
http://news.com.com/2102-1030_3-6030223.html

Summary: Their stock sales were planned over a year advance. They actually setup the schedule before Google went public, so that n00btards like you wouldn't be able to say "ZOMG, teh c0nsp1racy!"

AFAIK, just about every corporate officer signs up for a 10b5-1 plan so that they don't have to deal with accusations of insider trading. The funny part, is that the linked article I gave you has some idiot analyst saying the same thing you are.

Allow me to say this again: The stock sale was planned over a year ago. It is an unfortunate coincidence that their stock sale happened at the same time as any bad/good news.

The fact that Google's stock dropped 60 dollars per share in less than 10 seconds is interesting, but the rest of your post is over rated.

Actually, I'd heard they were going to do just that - sell them to anyone for $200, using the proceeds presumably to help fund the program.

Link to article about the announcement.

Essentially, TiVo made a deal with Comcast to put their software on Comcast DVR boxes. The deal was announced a year ago, and still no TiVo Comcast boxes (at least not in my area), so we'll see. Although perhaps the pricing model changes are at least partially to make way for this.

Ignoring the various "all surveillance == big brother" comments for a moment, here's an article on CNET News.com which goes into more detail about the reasoning behind Cisco's acquisition. From the article:

"If you can digitize all video, you can record it, timestamp it and instantaneously get access to video across the IP network much more efficiently than having to send an actual tape," said Marthin De Beer, a vice president in Cisco's Emerging Market Technologies Group. "It also lets people coordinating a disaster halfway across the country to get live video feeds from cameras connected to an IP network, so they can see what's happening." ...

In addition, it makes sense for businesses that have already embarked on consolidating their networks to decide to carry all of their corporate data and voice traffic over an IP network. Cisco also provides storage area networking gear, which is essential for customers who must store all the video.

Personally, I'd like to see more development of sousveillance. IMHO, the solution to the problem of "Who watches the watchers?" isn't to ban watching, but to make everybody a watcher. It'd be great to have a publically-uploadable website designed to facilitate the coordination of images and video for events and places of concern.

Basically, I don't think too many game creators will program the cell vectors directly. They'll just use the correct API's to make use of all that power. Let the 3D, audio and physics engine worry about the cells...

http://news.com.com/PlayStation+3+chip+goes+easy+o n+developers/2100-1043_3-5476933.html

Don't know if the above link says this, but I googled it up, and lets hope it is right.

Yea, I'm clueless.

It took a bunch of lamer '1337 Crew' guys (just kidding - it was the EFF) less than one day to crack 56 bit DES encryption, seven years ago.
Given that, knowing the horsepower of their machine (100,000 distributed machines in a fashion similar to SETI, circa 1999 hardware meaning 300MHz Pentium II machines with 64M of PC-100 memory over 50/50 dialup/cablemodems, on the average) and how encryption works you can actually calculate roughly how fast a given network cluster will work, using some pretty straightforward math.

3.0GHz Dual CPU machines with haul-ass memory interconnects and 2M of onboard cache can crunch raw numbers about ... 20x faster than the average machine of that era. Figure Google could field 200,000 servers easy without breaking a sweat (some estimates are as high as 400,000 worldwide) - lets say on the high side they have a server farm 4x as large as the EFF had lined up back in the day, each one crunching number 20x as fast - that is 80x the horsepower of the original EFF run that took 23 hours. By my math, that is breaking 56 bit in 17 minutes.

Lets say, just for fun, that the GoogleBar had a quiet troj that let them distribute a number crunch that uses an unused computers CPU in short spurts. Figure one hundred million 3GHz P4's on the planet, all of them downloading it (real conservative estimate, not!) gives another 10,000x the horsepower used by the EFF in 1999. Now we are up to somewhere in the 10,080x range of horsepower used by the EFF in 1999, cracking 56 bit DES in what, 8 seconds?

Double that for each additional bit, on the average, gives 8*2^(n-56) seconds for that n-bit long DES. Pretty simple math.
256-bit DES cracked in 8 seconds * 2^(200) = 1.285550435e+61 seconds = 4.076453689e+53 years. Fuck me.
I was doing pretty good right up until I said 'Pretty simple math.'

Like I was saying - use 1024-bit DES encryption and Google could NEVER EVER crack your encrypted files. EVER!
(Unless / until they come up with a better algorithm than brute force.)

Woo, mod parent up! Open-source routers have been around since the late eighties transition of the BSD codebase away from its license-encumbered AT&T history.

Any posix-compliant geek can and will shove a few NICs into a box with BSD or Linux on it, and turn it into a router. "Sure", you say, "but what about the user interface?", a valid point! XORP has been working on this for http://www.xorp.org/">years, and as far back as 2004, XORP was seen to be making some trouble for Cisco.

Imagestream has been touting their Rebel routers for a few years too, and they, like Digium, have an impressive array of interface hardware to support your box's position within the network. It's a fine market position to be in, and it's certainly not news. That being said, perhaps poking it back into people's brains is a good idea, and anything that helps dilute Cisco's software monoculture in the enterprise routing market can only be a good thing.

2004 Cisco backdoor
2006 Cisco backdoor

I think it depends on what your friends use and where you are located.

One other thing worth mentioning is that AIM and ICQ should be on the same network ( see http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963699.html ), so anything done for AIM should also help ICQ.

I would be interested in using this opportunity to provide Jabber support in the solution.

Really? Took me all of 2 minutes to find a lot of examples, WITHOUT even using Google.

How about the U.S. Army building a supercomputer cluster from 'em?

http://news.com.com/Apple+sells+supercomputer+sequ el/2100-1010_3-5242487.html?tag=macintouch

And several university's such as this one doing so too:

http://news.com.com/Apple+shooting+for+supercomput er+heights/2100-1008_3-5070403.html?tag=nl

Many, many Hollywood studios and special effects houses are using them as well, such as these and many more:

The makers of Jarhead:
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch2/

The maker of Underworld Evolution
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lumapictures/

And how about the Minneapolis Star/Tribune

http://www.apple.com/itpro/profiles/startribune/

and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

http://www.apple.com/pro/design/atlantajournal/

and Harvard Med School:

http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/harvardmed/

and MANY other examples at :

http://www.apple.com/pro/archive/ (this pageis especially good)

http://www.apple.com/pro/

http://www.apple.com/itpro/

http://www.apple.com/server/

Really? Took me all of 2 minutes to find a lot of examples, WITHOUT even using Google.

How about the U.S. Army building a supercomputer cluster from 'em?

http://news.com.com/Apple+sells+supercomputer+sequ el/2100-1010_3-5242487.html?tag=macintouch

And several university's such as this one doing so too:

http://news.com.com/Apple+shooting+for+supercomput er+heights/2100-1008_3-5070403.html?tag=nl

Many, many Hollywood studios and special effects houses are using them as well, such as these and many more:

The makers of Jarhead:
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch2/

The maker of Underworld Evolution
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lumapictures/

And how about the Minneapolis Star/Tribune

http://www.apple.com/itpro/profiles/startribune/

and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

http://www.apple.com/pro/design/atlantajournal/

and Harvard Med School:

http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/harvardmed/

and MANY other examples at :

http://www.apple.com/pro/archive/ (this pageis especially good)

http://www.apple.com/pro/

http://www.apple.com/itpro/

http://www.apple.com/server/

If this is what you're referring to, they were very small worms, not bacteria. I'm sure there was some bacteria in there, though.

Even more reason to don't be too much on the RIM side, it itself was sueing handspring just because they used a 'small format' keyboard on their machines. Really, how obvious is it that a small device that needs text input will have small keyboard? Personally, I think that everyone lost in the end in this case, a load of money was transferred from one company to another, no technological advancement took place. I do think that patents in itself are not a bad thing , but they should be immensly more strictly regulated and formulated. I guess even a software patent could be feasible, as long as care is taken that is completely new and it only applies to the exact method used. An alternative method leading to the same outcome should still be possible. This is daydreaming of course, there's just not enough manpower or will to do patents this carefully, and in the end crap will come out of it.

Isn't RIM a Canadian company?

oops :) Main point still holds, though.

It was said before this "discovery" that AMD would include this information in its ongoing lawsuit against Intel.
http://news.com.com/AMDs+lawyers+call+on+Skype/210 0-1006_3-6044365.html

But there are no specific instructions in Intel's current Pentium D or Core Duo chips that enhance the performance of VoIP applications, an Intel representative said. Skype is using an operation called "Get CPU ID" to identify the type of processor running on the PC. The Skype software has been preset to only accept Intel's chips as having the performance necessary to host conference calls of more than five people, the representative said.