Domain: com.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to com.com.
Comments · 7,252
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MS to EU: Heel!MS to EU: Heel!
Looks like the EU officials are so flustered by submitting source code in lieu of documentation that they are forgetting some basics of protocol and negotiation.
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Re:The Unforgiven.
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Re:Troll warning...
Nor would Microsoft.
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Already been done...
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Who supplies the Chinese w/ filtering equipment?Googles actions are logical. They are a business, one that is owned by shareholders, for which they must make a profit. It is simply a matter of getting a foothold into that market or lose out on the profits that can be made off of a billion people. You do the math. Corporations don't care about good and evil, it's all money.
/. readers know this, so why is it shocking to so many of you. Don't tell me you really believed in Google's "Do No Evil" motto. What do you really think is going to end up happening with all that data they have on you?The real question is who is selling China the infrastructure equipment to make all of the filtering they do possible. Now that is some company that is making a killing. They have got to be spending literally 100's of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, to do what they do. It's no wonder the US govt. wants to talk to Cisco. They will need one of their undocumented backdoors so they can go in and spy on the Chinese.
Look it's their country, right. If they were so worked up about it over there, why don't they do something about it. A billion people can't be wrong can they. And if a billion people want freedom why don't they have it already. You can't tell me that if they really wanted to be a democracy or whatever they couldn't make it happen.
So in the end, Google is doing what most of us Americans do, look the other way, buy our cheap ass Chinese made plastic shit and poor quality Wal-Mart goods and go home to our cable TV or MMORPG and forget about what's really going on out there. It's just what the corporations want you to do - go to work everyday, spend your money on crap you really don't need, never have enough so you have to borrow more because you have to have the latest stuff and in the end that's what we call freedom. Yeah right.
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Yet Google is the worst.
While it may be true that MSN & Yahoo also censor in China; as CNet reports here Google censors a lot more than MSN or Yahoo over there.
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Re:This is funny!
That's not acceptable. People there know they are being kept in the dark.
According to this article they don't, as far as some searches are concerned.
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Turning from Google to... who?
Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust....
Who are they turning to? Haven't ALL the major search engines "caved in" (e.g. MSN, Yahoo) to the Chinese Government's pressures? The open source answer should be something like: "You don't like it? Build your own search engine, then!"
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Turning from Google to... who?
Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust....
Who are they turning to? Haven't ALL the major search engines "caved in" (e.g. MSN, Yahoo) to the Chinese Government's pressures? The open source answer should be something like: "You don't like it? Build your own search engine, then!"
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Not Spying
Ok, usually I don't step in to these crazy Slashdot arguments, but I have to voice the truth here.
The government is NOT ATTEMPTING TO SPY ON ITS CITIZENS.
It is asking for general information, i.e. nothing connected with names or individual identities in any way. As far as the information is concerned, it would be the same as the government asking Gallup to do a survey about how easy it is to find porn on the internet when you aren't specifically looking for it.
If asking for statistics is spying, then hundreds of survey companies have been doing it for years. And *GASP* they've been SHOWING THE RESULTS TO THE PUBLIC!!!!!11
While I don't know about the legality of the subpoena, the information itself is completely legal and is in no way spying on citizens.
Here is a good article about the privacy issue:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/01 /21/google_subpoena_roils_the_web/
Here is an FAQ from CNet:
http://news.com.com/FAQ+What+does+the+Google+subpo ena+mean/2100-1029_3-6029042.html?tag=st.num
From the second article:
"Google even displays a list of live search terms on a screen that visitors can view in its Silicon Valley headquarters. That's probably one reason why the company's lawyers have been careful not to raise privacy arguments."
I don't see how what the government is doing is any worse than that. -
Re:In other words..
"Toy Story-rendering anyone?"
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.'"
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40970, 00.html?tw=wn_story_related
"Gates said the 3-D chips in the Xbox would be three times faster than anything on the market and offer nearly unlimited graphical visuals. "We're approaching the level of detail seen in Toy Story 2," he said, referring to the computer-generated kids film from Disney/Pixar."
Sony has never in any public statement claimed anything having to do with "Toy Story" level graphics.
Microsoft has. Multiple times.
Time to shutup idiot. -
Itanium isn't dead yet
In spite of all the negative publicity, Itanium is quite far from dead. The recent corrections in path make a lot of sense. What really put Itanium out of orbit was Intel's decision to use Itanium in even the small and medium systems. This meant lost marketing focus, and some lame architectural decisions for x86 compatibility. Itanium has nothing in common with x86 except its made by Intel.
It seems the finally found the market:
Last week Intel went back on x86 compatibility, only software emulation. Makes sense, the market for Itanium is big iron. It is way to expensive for anything less. And the users better run 64-bit Itanium optimized code to get their money's worth.
Microsoft trashed all Itanium plans for the small and mid segment. They will support Itanium only where it makes sense in their product line, just Windows Server, .Net Framework 64-bit and Sql Server 2005. (Not in Exchange Server, Biztalk Server etc. Earlier we even had Windows XP running on Itanium. Sigh!).
Intel's Motherboards supporting both Xeon and Itanium have now been postponed to 2009. This makes sense too, Itanium customers won't be interested in saving a few thousand bucks on commodity motherboards.
And finally 10 billion $ pumped in; good news. I'd think Itanium will be back, by 2008. Architecturally, it is nothing to laugh at atleast. It is just that it lacked everything else, platform-compiler-apps support. -
Re:We lost 64-bit2007 we use the technologically superior to Intel EM64T Intel Itanium-2 family.
Interesting... not really my area, so I hadn't thought about it, but I just read about a bunch of server manufacturers chipping in ( ha! chipping in, get i... never mind... ) $10 billion to help Intel with Itanium somehow... and matching that with something I read the other day about future models ditching the extra silicon used for x86 backwards-compatability ( which, uh, Apple might not need that, or would they ? ) and uh... Ok, could Apple be looking at that second-generation dual-core Montecito they're talking about for XServes ?
Really, I'm just guessing, I'm totally unfamiliar with what 'removing x86 support' from Itanium means, are they talking about 32-bit backwards compatability there, or something more that would require yet another type of binary in the "Universal Binary" package?
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GartnerAs well as the groundswell of anger and resentment building up against Oracle (who were already notorious for charging the earth for crappy products, of which only the flagship database offers anything you can't get elsewhere - and even then, the RDBMS hardkore out there will tell you that very very few places use those features) - it's interesting to note that even Gartner, friend of the PHB everywhere, have turned on their erstwhile prize vendor.
http://news.com.com/Gartner+Oracle+no+longer+a+ba
s tion+of+security/2100-7355_3-6030733.html -
There's something wrong here
I really have difficulty in beleiving this. Even here in god-fearing catholic Ireland, everyone I know thinks that creationism is bunk. The only thing I can think of is that they stood in the middle of the street and shouted, "Anyone like to give their views on Creationism and Intelligent Design?" That way they would only have got the religious nuts who espouse this pre-enlightenment throwback. Even the Vatican says that Intelligent Design is not science.
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CNET News article has important additional detailsHere's a link to CNET News's article on this same news:
Intel shows test chips made on future processes
One interesting (to me) bit of info from the CNET News article:The 45-nanometer process could become particularly interesting because many chip designers believe it will be one of the more difficult transitions in years. The power consumption and performance requirements of these chips will be extremely high and chipmakers are being forced to add exotic materials and new structures to their transistors to ensure the chips function properly...
Although Intel might have a "considerable lead over our competitors in the 45-nanometer generation," it doesn't appear that this transition is expected to go as smoothly as their transtion to 65nm (which seems very smooth). Remember Intel's and IBM's difficult transitions to 90nm."It does get a little more challenging every time, but we come up with new technology and tricks to keep things going," said Bohr.
If a company botches the process, it could lead to product delays or recalls. Some chipmakers faced these problems during the transition to 130-nanometer chips when they swapped aluminum for copper for making interconnects--the tiny wires inside chips.
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Evil Google?
This is not a new thing for Google, see there activities with concerns to French and German users, I have also heard that in America Google assists by policing copyright infringements.
My personal opinion to all this, Google is a capitalist company, they are sneaking off after the money that can be made in China nothing more, for all there talk it seems that Google is a company standing at odds with itself. -
So according to Moore's Law...
...only 9 years until I have 68GB of solid-state storage! Finally, now I know when I can build my no-moving-parts, silent jukebox for my soundsystem! I wonder how much storage I'll need by then if I need 40GB now, especially if DVD-A becomes popular, let alone once we move to holographic storage takes off in September of this year, although that date seems to make me wonder why the hell we're arguing about HD-DVD and BluRay....
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"Preserving the Pixar culture" is most important..It's very telling that Steve said
"Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn't been about economics," Jobs said. "It's been about preserving the Pixar culture--because we all know that's the thing that's going to determine the success here in the long run."
Get that? The big sticking point in negotiations wasn't how much money would change hands, but how much control Pixar would have over it's future operations within Disney. It's going to be NeXT and Apple all over again, with any luck. Jobs, Iger, and probably at least Roy Disney all see eye-to-eye here, so they'll run the board while Lasseter and the other Pixar folks whip creative operations into shape.
I'm going to guess it's a scary time for Pixar and an exciting time for Disney. Or is it the other way around ?
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Re:Don't kid yourselves
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Re:Conventions should move to private property
From my understanding, according to this article: http://news.com.com/Sexy+booth+babes+banned+at+ga
m e+show/2100-1043_3-6030517.html?tag=nefd.top it's not the convention center or the government that's doing the banning & fining, but the E3Expo organization. They have a right to do that, it's their show. They are trying to create an atmosphere that doesn't have that type of distraction. The organization already has plenty of rules that exhibitors have to abide by, it's their right as the organizers of the show to make the rules. -
Re:Don't kid yourselves
Disney is a supertanker of a company and it'll take more than a seat on the board or even being nominally in charge of animation to turn it around from the pile of crap it has become.
Kinda reminds of Michael Dell saying (about Apple) "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"
I think if anyone can turn around disney, then Lasseter with Steve Jobs backing will be the ones to do it.
What I think we should be more worried about is the creation of the most vertically integrated entertainment duopoly since paramount case of 1948 broke up the old vertical monopolists.
I mean we're going to have one guy (Jobs) essentially controlling two companies that will between them produce the content, the distribution network, the playback codec and the playback device.
The potential for abuse is frightening -
Peter Lowe said it was ok... back in 2003
Anyone else remember Apple's response to reselling iTune Songs?
"Apple's position is that it is impractical, though perhaps within someone's rights, to sell music purchased online," said Peter Lowe, Apple's director of marketing for applications and services.
Apple customer resells iTunes song
Slashback -
SATA II is not your father's SATA
the SATA II spec is quite a bit different from the original SATA. SATA II adds port multiplication, hot plugging, native command queuing, external enclosures, and port selection. Also, with a theoretical peak of 3Gbps, it's twice as fast as the old SATA. here is a decent article with more explanation.
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Linux on Macintelintosh
Probably this bounty for Windows XP on the Intel Mac is prompted in a reaction to Linux on the Intel Mac. Can't have the press paying attention to that, now can we?
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Re:Beta
Yea, but what I mean is - Google calls a Beta product a Beta product. You're MS product that is in Beta is more like an early Alpha release. For example, Google News was in Beta for three years before they released it. http://news.com.com/2061-10812_3-6030207.html?par
t =rss&tag=6030207&subj=news -
Re:Who are they working for?
Probably all working for the Chinese
I think I can take a guess where each of these companies stand with respect to OSS:Alcatel: The parent company is based out of France, with close ties to the government. Probably pro-open source.
Ericsson: Sony owns them. This won't last. Sure, they've got a good track record, but...
Motorola: they're in it to make money, acquiring open source companies and selling linux-based phones.
NEC: They jumped on Itanium for their cluster platform, so they joined OSDL two years ago, probably to make sure their investment paid off.
Siemens: Just barely joined the OSDL. Siemens Communications is primarily a hardware company; from my POV they're just trying to push their profit margin.
Nokia: they seem pretty secure as a cell phone company; I think they're into OSS genuinely to benefit the community. Take a look at what they're Open Sourcing.
Their contributions to open source notwithstanding, it looks like they want to:
1. Form alliance, apply magic words "Open Source"
2. Post article on slashdot, improve public image
3. Wait for OSS community to write their software
4. Sell COTS hardware to upgrade cell networks
5. Profit!Of course, maybe they're working on Carrier Grade Linux just so they don't have to buy Micro$oft products any more.
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Re:OR
I find it amazing (in a good way) that google is saying "hey if we have to pay, we can afford to, but it is the little upstart guy who won't be able to pay and that sucks"...
Consider, also, that Google may be positioning itself to work around the telcos if they pull a stunt like that. No fools, they.DDB
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Ebay's Failure
My time in China showed me that Ebay is failing, not because of competetive pricing, or a poor cost model but because their major competetor is home grown and plays to the Chinese cultural prefrences. Ebay has been hesitant to branch their code base to make Ebay-China more Chinese friendly -- and therefore no cost cutting measure is going to save Ebay in China. Just look at how wonderful Ebay did in Japan. http://news.com.com/2100-1017-845099.html It's the cuture stupids , it's the culture!
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Re:Yes people, look at thisdid you notice this Apple copyright statement in the preamble???
00006 * Copyright (C) 2003 Apple Computer, Inc.
it's probably obfuscated stuff that they released to fulfil their GPL obligations when they used and improved KHTML for use in safari
that's most likely where this has come from... Can you imagine trying to reverse engineer the stuff to work out sensible names for it? Note the patch does NOT fix the crappy variable names, just fixes the buffer allocation
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Automitive LinksHere are some Links
Link to Windows Automotive news item
Slashdot: Dealing with Outdated Automotive Software?
Both are interesting for different reasons
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Double nonsense.Three complied one did not.
If you want to spin things, you might say that MSN, AOL and Yahoo all lost value because they lost customer trust by selling them out. Well, look at this, I'm not the only person who thinks that way. If Google fails to keep their customer data confidential, all tech firms will suffer.
As for the crosshairs of the DOJ, has the reporter forgoten about the big M$ anti-trust case and continued monitoring? Microsoft is not in the crosshairs, they are in the jaws of the DOJ vice and can be squeezed at will. Any change in Washington's mood can have M$ paying fines or split into companies the size of a fruit stand.
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Let's see here...
Sounds good to me: dense,fast L1 and L2 cache on die (for each core on die!)...SWEET!
If it can be implemented well, I can dream of a dual cpu mobo with a pair dual core FX?? and can support 16GB's or more of insane speed RAM and holographic RAID, and quad SLI graphics, I maybe could run M$ Vienna to play Duke Nukem Forever! w00t!
M$ Vienna:(http://msn.com.com/2100-3513_22-6029241.ht ml?part=msn&subj=ns_2543&tag=mymsn) -
Let's be careful not to bring back a plague
With the all the recent news of organisms being able to survive in space, survive shuttle crashes, and all sorts of other crazy environments, we really ought to be careful what we bring back to Earth. I'm all for the advancement of science, and I think this particular experement is incredibly cool (both from a "what we can learn scientifically" standpoint, as well as a "holy crap, you guys were able to do WHAT??" standpoint), it'd really suck if we don't take the proper precautions, and wind up bringing back some organism that can wipe out all life on Earth. That being said, way to go NASA!
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Re:Rules for hateful posting
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So, we all really believe Windows lacks a backdoor
So, just so that we're all on the same page...
Do we all really beleive that there's no backdoor in Windows XP?
Or just that the WMF "problem" isn't it?
Frankly, I'd be shocked if Microsoft didn't insert a backdoor into Windows somehwere. Apparently, the Chinese were woried enough about this very problem that they set up a program to look things over, and they're still looking into Windows alternatives.
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Re:A few points to the EU powermongers...
Some plus points from me for Google! They at least stand up for our search queries a little more than I had thought.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/pdf/ne/2006/google-doj/ motion.to.compel.pdf
But in short or long the NSA/CIA/FBI may got their hands on the data. -
Re:Just a little side note on the legality...
As far as I am aware, the only people who've ever got in trouble for the mp3s they had were sharing those mp3s over public peer-to-peer networks. They were illegally distributing them. The users of allofmp3.com are not doing this; they are purchasing them from an organisation that has the legal right to distribute them, and importing them into their home countries. It's just the same as if they ordered the CDs by mail order from Russia because they're cheaper there. Well, just because no one's gotten in trouble for it doesn't mean it's legal. For you see, the RIAA and even the Russian government doesn't like what's going on with sites like allofmp3. I bet someone is being paid off over there to let this slide.
There's an interesting article at tech law advisor. -
AOL/Yahoo Misinformation...
Quotes from the article here: http://news.com.com/Feds+take+porn+fight+to+Googl
e /2100-1030_3-6028701.html?tag=nefd.lede
AOL response...
AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein confirmed that the company received a subpoena from the DOJ but said the information from the ACLU was not accurate.
"We did not and would not comply with such a subpoena. We gave (the DOJ) a generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms, and not results, from a roughly one day period. There were absolutely no privacy implications," Weinstein said. "There was no way to tie those search terms to individuals or to search results." He declined to elaborate.
Yahoo response...
Yahoo acknowledged on Thursday that it complied with the Justice Department's request but said no personally identifiable information was handed over. "We are vigorous defenders of our users' privacy," said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. "We did not provide any personal information in response to the Justice Department's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue."
MSN response.... ?????
Please don't let the details hit you in the ass in reguards to AOL/Yahoo.
Enjoy, -
Re:Intel is continuing development?
STFU about them being market failures. They're not marketed at you.
That's Itanium's biggest failing of all. It was once intended to replace X86, now it has been pushed back into a tiny supercomputer niche where it will never pay off. -
Re:It's official
Here's another link - gives a little more info... and looks even worse http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?ty
p e=internetNews&storyID=2006-01-19T200124Z_01_N1930 3715_RTRUKOC_0_US-GOOGLE-PORNOGRAPHY.xml "SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department to turn over a database of search terms as part of a government probe of online pornography but Google rejected the demand as overreaching by the government. In a Wednesday filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Justice Department demanded that Google provide all queries entered on the company's Web search system between June 1 and July 31 of last year." and to quote John from Americablog.org "And again, this has nothing to do with child pornography. It has everything to do with the federal government going on a massive fishing expedition to weed out all the "sinners" in America, and all under the veil of the war on terror." and here's the court filing http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/pdf/ne/2006/google-doj/ mcelvain.declaration.pdf Chelle -
Re:Imagine you were Bell South...
Rethink my advertising partnership for one thing.
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Re:Uhmmmm
The G5 was a decent chip, IBM just didn't have a mobile chip to sell Apple and was too distracted by Xbox 2 and PS3 to care.
Can someone please finally tell me how this power equation works exactly? A dual core G5 consumes 18 watts at 1.6 GHz. Extrapolating based on quadratic increase with the frequency, that gives about 23 watts for 2.0 GHz (typical usage).For Yonah, it's 25 to 49 watts (maximum usage).
So, there's definitely the difference between typical for the G5 and maximum for Yonah. I do not know what the relation between the two is (i.e., whether it's possible to guestimate one based on the other). Then, there's possibly also the issues of support chipset.
But all in all, at first sight it does not seem to me that there's that big a power consumption gap between Yonah and the dual core G5.
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point-and-shoot market is very different
The non-SLR digital camera landscape is very different:
(year-old statistics, US-only)
20% Sony
20% Kodak
16% Canon
12% Olympus
32% ... others
There is lots of money to be made there. Camera phones will intrude, but a percentage of people (like me) will insist on lenses that are too big to fit on a phone. -
Re:What about the PSP?
I don't know of any official anti-homebrew Sony statements
The best that Google gives me is this article.com.com.com.com.com.
Considering the loss Sony makes on each PSP
Then why isn't there a PSP Linux distro sold for the amount of this loss plus the cost of pressing the disc?
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More correction
Damn, I missed that the Anandtech page was talking about total system power consumption. CNet mentions the cpu's power consumption: maximum between 25 and 49 watts. So it seems it's about the same as the G5's.
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Re:Freedom and Free Software
IBM also maintains, in a February statement to which it refers most questions on the matter, that the Nazis took control of its German unit before and throughout the war, and that the company "does not have much information about this period or the operations of Dehomag."
From here
IBM denies, but you could probably be right. But this is not my point. The thing is, any company doing business in another country must respect it's laws. Be it in China or Nazi Germany. Either they don't go in there at all, or they get their act together and obey. There are no ethics in business, we just have to get over it. -
Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice
But people were waiting for a PowerBook G5 for well over a year before Apple announced the switch to Intel. It seems much more likely that Apple pushed IBM hard about getting a low-power G5 and it just did not materialize. IBM had weak incentives to develop the low-power G5 because Apple is too small a customer to justify the R&D spending necessary. The game console market, in contrast, appeared much more lucrative.
See the comments from Freescale's CEO. He was at IBM and sold the G5 to Apple. As he says " . . . then IBM decided not to take the G5 into the laptop and decided to really focus its chip business on the game consoles."
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Re:End result
OK, you're wrong. Have a nice day.
:-) -
Re:Settled too soon.
I would be most curious if a spyware/virus/worm starts using the Sony rootkit as a foundation.
I'm afraid that already happened.