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Instead they're more like special-purpose hardware for special-purpose software, something like the PDA you mention only marketed as a laptop.

1 GB isn't a lot to us, but ten years ago I was running linux on a 90 mhz computer with 1 GB hard drive and 16 megs of RAM, and thought it was the greatest thing ever. It had X and gcc, which opens the door to practically everything else.

I just think some of these skeptics have no vision. From the article:

"Most schools in the developing world don't even have textbooks," says Allen Hammond of the World Resources Institute. "How the heck are they going to pay for Internet access?"

Besides, computers were already cool before the Internet came along.

Argh, link for the second and third words.

Meh.

The U.S. military's existing branches should stick to what they are good at. Meatspace combat. Why should their missions be diversified like that? Setup a new division, or retool an existing organization (NSA). The NSA, god knows, has quite a bit of sophistication when it comes to network security. I've read their cybersecurity articles, the stuff they release for 'civilians techies', and its good stuff.

The Airforce's track record is not good.

Hmm.. Can't figure out why the links for the words 'http://www.hackinthebox.org/modules.php?op=modloa d&name=News&file=article&sid=13255&mode=thread&ord er=0&thold=0 is' and 'http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/25532/Fi ring_and_Hiring_Hackers.html good' don't show up.

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+offers+a+new+angle+o n+maps/2100-1032_3-5986057.html?tag=nefd.top

http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_i d=2047

Directions Mag is/will probably provide a deeper analysis since it target specifically the geospatial domain, not general technology.

Just tell all your buddies on AIM: lol no its not its an exploit

Fixed that for ya

News.com.com story

...where "???" in this context is apparently "file a patent on hierarchical menus (!!!), almost literally identical in every way to the menu system iPod has used for several years prior". (And, if Creative's patent covers iPod's interface elements, then why were they also not denied their patent because of a preexisting Microsoft patent, as Apple was?)

Seriously, look at this thing:

Zen Vision:M demo

Click "Be entertained". and mouse over some of the items in the room. EVERY feature, except the FM tuner, is ripped off directly from iPod, and even looks almost identical to iPod. Every bit of the interface has iPod written all over it. Menu names, screen layout, and so on.

Product page

Specifications

(Not to mention that the Zen weighs 20% more: 5.8 vs 4.8 oz)

But what's missing?

Elegant integration with software (mostly iTunes, but also things like iPhoto, iMovie, and so on).

That, and about 92% market share.

I guess Microsoft employees can now stop calling them blogcasts

you're plugging coax directly into your TV (which means that you probably only have analogue cable which will look ok, but not great)

the input would be coax directly to cable card in the TV

another article

If you want to get this at the ol' .com.com (never understood why they did that) instead of MSNBC, here's C|Net's article on this:
http://news.com.com/NASA+seeks+private+replacement s+for+shuttle+trips/2100-11397_3-5986093.html

What you mean like those rookies at yahoo and friendster arent' serious web developers?

So where's the XBox 360?

On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.

So where's the congratulatory hype?

Here's some, though we're probably not seeing a huge amount of post-release PR because they can't meet extra demand such PR would generate anyway. And they probably gave their PR department a holiday after all their pre-release work.

Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.

Where are our promo boxes?

The other comments have covered this pretty well. Really, if M$ sent a big heavy box in the mail to the editors of /., would any of them actually risk opening it?

Or maybe yours just got smashed uh... "in the mail."

*Another estimate of XBox cost/unit, from BusinessWeek.

**I don't actually think M$ planned to sell direct on Ebay to capitalize on created shortages, but it's still an interesting idea.

In the court?!?!
http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?a rticle_id=69610&cat_id=585
http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-5984639.html

Ah yes, I remember reading about XUL and how it compares to XAML.

There have also be news stories about it.

Well, stupid for Microsoft, I suppose, since it would expose them to greater competition against Excel and Word.

Consumers would benefit immensely if Microsoft made the interface specifications to the their products completely open, free and unencumbered so that consumers could buy bundles in competitive marketplace with lower prices, higher quality products and a faster pace of innovation. As it stands, you can buy your convenient, powerful bundled Word/spreadsheet or Excel/document prepartion software from exactly one source. Sole source means the pricing power is skewed towards the supplier.

There's a favorable argument for bundling based on the convenience it provides. But bundling also provides hidden chains that limit purchasing decisions because you can't move to a better spreadsheet without giving up Excel's interoperability with Word or vice versa.

Bundling the OS with the computer is "convenient", too.

Bundling their way up the application software stack from the OS has worked well for Microsoft over the years and I don't expect them to give up this lucrative strategy easily. If they have to pay South Korea US$32 million or the EU some fine an order of magnitude larger, that's just testimony to how valuable the API is to them. Risking the occasional fine, settling with aggrieved litigants is just a cost to be weighed in the overall accounting.

Too little, too late legal sanctions requiring MS to distribute stripped, unbundled versions long after their competitors have bitten the dust are only a minor blip on the radar. The underwhelming uptake of Windows sans media player in Europe indicates that closing the barn door is being done after the horse has left.

Meanwhile, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is satisfied with dog and pony shows that will have negligible impact on the competitive landscape. Indeed, time is on the side of MS as they roll-out Innovative© bundled new products and multi-year licensing schemes to their corporate captive audience that build up barriers to migration on multiple fronts. It used to be that competitive products had to work just like Word or Excel. As new entries like OpenOffice and Mozilla/Firefox provide good functionality and reasonable MS interoperability to address to those old barriers to migration, new barriers get put up. Most corporations are too wedded to Exchange, Active Directory or have already bought a multi-year license agreement that make migration away from Microsoft uncomfortable.

Thomas Penfield Jackson was right; he still says what he thinks. If he had kept his mouth shut when he was supposed to then this agonizing drawn-out process of killing the beast to release its stranglehold on the market would not be necessary.

Reuters news story on CNet

http://news.com.com/2102-1014_3-5985482.html?tag=s t.util.print/

According to this report at CNET,
"Sony said it will notify customers though a banner advertisement directly in the SunnComm software"

So now you get banner ads with your audio cd+DRM.
Nice.

* San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth research and "nonvolcanic" tremors.
* Earth is potentially out of new farm land.
* New insights into the rate of ozone recovery.
* Southeast Asia faces another danger of a large tsunami in the next few decades
* Cassino spots icy plumes on Saturn

Oh yeah? How about "system and method for providing reservations for restroom use"?
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-961803.html

According to Wikipedia, it does.

Did Adam Curry write it?

According to Wikipedia...

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/ZDNet_Security_Buying _Guide/4520-3667-5080138.html?tag=fs

Quite a difference I imagine. But a lot can happen in a year and an half.

How about this link instead. It has been a while since that affair. Some of the younger viewers might not remember. (And older ones forgotten about it.)

At a tangent to this story but related to Recording Industry Ass. of America issues.

CNET is reporting that plans for an iPod tax have fallen through in Japan.

http://news.com.com/Plan+for+iPod+tax+in+Japan+unr avels/2100-1041_3-5980004.html?part=rss&tag=598000 4&subj=news

This seems to be pushed through by "industry insiders who work for corporate interests at the expense of consumers" I think we may all guess which corporate interests are being alluded at.

Strangely, I don't recall this tax being suggested when the $Sony$ Walkman first came out...

Seriously, if the TLD structure is subject to influence from 6,000 "letters of concern" from the U.S. Christian Right, what is the message to the rest of the world? That's right - "you have every reason to be concerned about sole U.S. control of ICANN".

My point is that given what you've just said, and given that Linux certainly hasn't been hindered by a lack of media attention, it's surprising how little headway has been made in adoption by anyone but enthusiasts.

A very real hinderance is that any time a big customer gets some visibility in moving to F/OSS on the desktop, resellers highly dependent on MS' continued good will must step in or lose that. If it's a big enough account, then MS will step in directly and try to cut certain people out of the decision making process. In some cases the vendor will hinder hardware orders for the evaluation or pilot. Or MS will set a handful of their own staff full time to work on site to "help" with the evaluation.

So there are good reasons why open source projects are not publicised. In general, it pays to keep quiet if for no other reason than to avoid the persistent whining and shouting from the MS vendors. Some however, either have nothing to lose or have been pushed too far by MS (or its designated reps the BSA) or both.

Anyway, some of the rest can be explained in that most non-power users won't remember or even know which specific hardware, OS, or apps they are using. So of course you won't hear about it. Put them on WordPerfect, Appleworks, AbiWord or OpenOffice.org and to them it's still "Word". For a lot of end users "Windows" means any graphical user interface including, but not limited to, Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, and so on. Correspondingly "Word" means any word processor, "Excel" means a spreadsheet, and "Powerpoint" means those time-wasting presentation graphics. Even some die-hard F/OSS programmers do that. It's like the trademark dilution you had with "Kleenex" and "Xerox" or ordering a "Coke" down south.

see here. I'm tired of open source zealots who don't even understand that the software they used is not secure.

Obviously the submitter didn't RTFA, so here are some real links: Here Here and here

That sounds like a word-for-word quote from when it was first announced way back when. More recent article: http://news.com.com/Windows+AntiSpyware+becomes+De fender/2100-7355_3-5937989.html

I hadn't heard this before (apparently been living under a rock).

Googled and found Microsoft will wipe Sony's 'rootkit'

but it says (my emphasis)

Microsoft will update its security tools to detect and remove part of the copy protection tools installed on PCs when some music CDs are played.

as of the story on 11/13 -- have they made this update yet? What "part" of the rootkit does it remove?

I can understand you wanting to avoid criminals. I guess that would make Microsoft the prefered choice. After all they never screw over partners or customers

Except for the fact that Ball had spent all sorts of money to be in compliance and found out that they were still able to miss a few packages. Yeah, Ball is a good example of what companies should not be.

I had to dig a little, but I remember it was RIM who really started the whole patent issue...

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958550.html

Take a look at the Ernie Ball guitar string company. They made the switch several years ago. It is only 300 +/- people but they did it cause they got hit with being out of compliance with M$

Read Rockin' on without Microsoft

Oh right. OSX is perfectly safe and invunerable... so long as you patched a few unpatched critical security holes yesterday, and weren't previously infected...

http://news.com.com/Apple+releases+OS+X+security+p atches/2100-1002_3-5976718.html

Not in a big way until Conroe in the second half of 2006. I'm pretty sure "desktop" use of Yonah will be limited to a few small form factor desktops like Dothan is used today.

Yonah will still be 32-bit while Intel's entire "desktop" line of CPUs (including Celeron) have adopted EM64T. I don't think this is that important, but Conroe will add EM64T and other enhancements to the "Pentium M core."

65nm Pentium 4/D processors (Cedar Mill/Presler) are launching around the same time as Yonah (January) and are already shipping in volume to manufacturers. Another Anandtech article showed significant power savings from 65nm, which will make Pentium 4/D power consumption reasonable (but not quite as low as AMD 90nm). In addition, Pentium 4/D will also add virtualization technology (Vanderpool) which Yonah will lack.

Intell is should switch its R&D and support the Pentium M as a desktop chip

I don't think the Pentium M architecture is lacking in R&D (see Conroe). Yonah is making some steps toward being a desktop chip by adding SSE3 and floating point enhancements, but Conroe will complete the transition by adding EM64T, virtualization technology, desktop chipsets, and more lenient power requirements.

Copying other businesses and leveraging its monopoly is their business model.

Yes, and leveraging its monopoly via anti-competitive practices, such as proprietary file formats, APIs, protocols, and other such encumberances.

This behavior is no longer acceptable, and is being addressed

Microsoft's lock-in/lock-out business model isn't quite as reliable as it used to be.

I'd give their system a try, but "How much does it cost" is not in their FAQ

Google. DVD Jukebox Maker gets sued

As of a year ago, the basic system cost $27,000 USD, Granted, the linked article is a year old, but my guess is that the average /. reader is not going to go out and buy a couple of these.

Another good article points out that it's basically a repurposed enterprise storage device.

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)

Thank you for explaining why Google News doesn't display advertisements. Now explain why Google can't remove the "beta" tag and admit that Google News is a miserable failure.

Also, how can Google display the entire text of web pages which it didn't write nor was it explicitly authorized to mirror without "opening themselves up for copyright infringement"?

Does anyone really think the major banks and CC companies are eating over 100 BILLION dollars a year to scammers?

I am generally against censorship, but in the case of porn, I agree that there are times and places where it is not appropriate... e.g., schools and libraries. Ensuring that such places have a reliable means of blocking it would actually serve to protect the right of everyone else to view it, by providing an officially sanctioned venue for its publication.

Unfortunately, Shrub opposes the creation of the .XXX TLD. It's not enough for the NeoCons that kids should be prevented from seeing porn; they don't want anyone to have access to it. Creating a .XXX TLD could be seen as legitimizing the Constitutionally-protected exercise of Free Speech that is the porn industry.

And the whole "never worry about blue screens" really put the icing on the Lamecake. The whole blue screen argument is so 2002, and if that's what the anti-M$ bots are still spouting, they need to update their playbook.

http://news.com.com/Writing+the+fastest+code%2C+by +hand%2C+for+fun/2100-1022_3-5972844.html?tag=nefd .top

...just for the sake of getting it out of the door quickly

I think a better statement would be "getting it out of the door a little less slowly".

Personally I think the new graphics layer of Vista will be a dud for purely technical reasons. As you mentioned, most of the other features of Vista have been either watered down, or separated out (and backported), so the impetus to upgrade has declined. I'm sure in Microsoft they've probably already started focusing on what comes after Vista, letting a select number of employees clean up that death march.

Wow - the OS after Vista is codenamed Blackcomb. I find that remarkable as that code name was coined years ago.

You mean like http://news.com.com/ ?

Whenever I get an email/IM link to one of their sites, I always have that moment of suspicion where i think its a malicious executable.

Anyone remember them?

This seems like RealNames, all over again.

Maybe you should look at

http://news.com.com/Subscription+boom+boosts+Red+H at+profit,+revenue/2100-7344_3-5178057.html
http://www.signal42.com/soaring_linux_sales_double _red_hat_profit_for_bcg.aspx
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,623 69,00.html

then. Apparently some people are making money from it.

I'm sure it'll be slashdotted in mere seconds. Of course, there's also CNet's com.com thing they had.

And communists always do things in secret.

There was a CNET interview with Bill Gates earlier this year in which he suggests:

There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Google's potential bid for AOL. If AOL goes to Microsoft, Google stands to lose a lot of advertising revenue. So it wouldn't surprise me to hear they're cosying up to Time Warner.

Personally I think that what the open-source community needs in general terms is more marketing. The closed-source guys get it -- they get it because they didn't win market share by writing a better product (not even better than the other closed-source guy). The closed-source companys won market share by MARKETING.
Plain and simple.
And now that they face a new competitor (open source) they respond in a time-tested manner: marketing.
It should be plain and obvious by now that the steady stream of "articles" (c|net, zdnet etc) are just part of a marketing campaign; hidden under the umbrella of 'news'.