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Not as current as I hoped to find, but as of April, 2003, AOL had 26.2 million subscribers. Reference

Note that this is down from 32 million in 2001, but I'm still guessing they have a fair chunk of warm bodies. Reference

Ahh, here we go. 22.7 million Sept. 2004. Wish I had that many clients :) Reference

"Remember the DB driven file system, for the searches and everything?"

You're referring to WinFS, which was removed from the Longhorn non-server edition to bring it closer to being only extremely delayed.

XAML has also been somewhat stripped down, though it's still in the roadmap so far as I know; at least, it is for the time being.

No, Red Hat made a whole lot more than $4.1 million. Check the article which the parent linked to a little more closely. They made $4.1 million profit in the 3rd quarter of fiscal 2004 ($33.1 million in revenue), as compared to $214K profit in the 3rd quarter of fiscal 2003.

However, note that the date on the article is December 18, 2003, which is pretty out of date. More recent numbers are considerably higher.

In major countries like Germany, IIS is already down to around 3% of the server market. Even world wide, most people have the sense to run Apache. You can look at the percentages, but every time an IIS farm is rolled out, shortly thereafter, they wise up and drop it for Apache or any other product actually suited for being connected to the network.

Frankly, I'm not sure why this article even made it to Slashdot. Is slashdot or OSDN participating in this year's marketing tsunami by doing product placement ads? Please let's go a week without MS articles, there's enough shilling going on in the discussion without them.

That and more sinister explanantions regarding the desires of the parent corp, The Canopy Group. Check out this report. While much is BS, it is interesting in what it says about Canopy. There is something to be said for your explanation as Yarro was fired. Though some deals were made between SCO and Microsoft.

What does the project need $40K for? I understand there are bandwidth and server costs, but it is a volunteer project.

After all, Red Hat only made $210K last quarter of '03...and they sell a product! Is there any list of Debian's financials available? I assume since it's mostly open-ended it should be on the site somewhere. Although I will confess, I havenn't done my research yet.

I do not see any problems with this technology, I think that if a parent wants to shelter their child from whatever evil we create, they should be allowed to do so - if this product helps them, that's great.

what gets me is the limitation option. limiting the child to how much time on the game/computer they get, that a parent should be able to handle without such a device.

but I do not know why we are all worked up about this, EA or one of the other big names will grease some palms in Congress and we'll be commenting on how, yet again, our freedoms are being dictated by the corporations we work for and support (financially).

Heck, even MICROSOFT pays people to create open source software!

When someone stands up and declares, "I will never be evil!" you shouldn't be surprised when people start looking for the irony of them being evil.

People love irony.

I believe that Google is generally good but even I have a hard time believing that Google is not evil when I read this one.

Looks like Nikon's goofy encryption has been broken.

Oh, here's a link to dcraw which will blast through Nikon's bullshit.

The interesting thing here is that Forgent is willing to sell the patent.

Note that Forgent has already racked up $100 million in extortion, err licensing, fees relating to this patent, and they believe that they're just getting started. I doubt they plan on selling the patent for less than a billion dollars.

Forgent is a classic patent enforcer - they have another patent related to PVRs, and they plan on using their JPEG warchest to finance that tax on consumer products.

http://news.com.com/Patent+litigants+target+DVRs/2 100-1047-5659298.html

That was timely.

Nikons photo encryption reported broken

:)

> They ship more computers than Dell

Nonsense. Dell ships more than 8 million PCs per quarter, Apple doesn't get much higher than 1 million. In terms of unit sales in the US, Apple is 5th, behind Dell, HP, IBM, and Gateway.

I think you're mistaken. There is already adware/spyware for Mozilla/Firefox. See here.

Lots of spyware gets installed via social engineering rather than automatic installation. It's included in "helpful" programs like Weatherbug or cuteftp. On top of that, it's looking like bugs in Flash will be a place for spyware to enter the system as well. Yes, you can block flash, but honestly.. how many average end users are going to do that?

Remember, Mozilla has plug-ins, that means spyware can be installed by any third party program. Remember, Mozilla has extensions, and spyware can be hidden in otherwise legitimate extensions.

This "Moz/FF is so secure it's impervious" attitude is going to get you in trouble.

When SJ returned to Apple in '97, there was a big pile of outstanding issues with Apple. One of them was a series of law-suits against Microsoft. Another was securing a viable third-party software future for the Mac (read...like it or not, we need Office). Yet another was that Apple was racking up consistent losses quarter after quarter.

After a series of negotiations, a settlement was reached between Apple and Microsoft....Apple dropped the patent law-suit they had outstanding against Microsoft, and agreed to make Internet Explorer the default browser for the OS. In return, Microsoft bought $150 million of non-voting stock (that was to be held for x number of years), and agreed to continue development of Office Mac for a further 5 years.

At the time, while Apple was definitely losing money consistently, they were in no real danger of going under....in fact they had roughly $1.2 billion in the bank. While that WAS an all-time low of cash on hand for Apple, the quarterly losses were (with one quarter's exception) relatively small (as were the few quarterly profits). On average, the profits and losses were in the $50-100 million range. The problem was, there were more losses than profits, and Q2 '97 was especially bad....loss of $700 million (that's why the cash on hand was less than $2 billion for the first time ever). Those factors (stock purchase, losses, one really bad quarter) led a bunch of Dvorak-style "journalists" to run around screaming that Microsoft was "propping" Apple up, etc, etc. Unfortunately too many in the Windows world take the word of these "journalists" as gospel. As a result, everybody "knows" that Microsoft owns a part of Apple.

Something that also never seems to get mentioned is that, before Jobs returned, Apple had done relatively little to cut costs back. That is what brought Apple back into consistent profits again...simplifying the line-up, ditching the clones, ditching unprofitable product (Newton, etc). In short, it really was pretty simple for Jobs to staunch the slow leak that Apple was experiencing.

As a final note, as far as I can tell (at least all the reports I've found have said so) Microsoft sold off all that stock the minute they could, and at a healthy profit. I believe the term for those was 3 years, which would make it back in 2001.

Here are some links if ya want..... Cnet story from the time, Wired article from the time. Or......Google is your friend, if ya wanna dig for yourself. ^^

Others have alluded to the fact that this is legal in Canada (so far), but since maybe you have trouble understanding that there are differences between the US and Canada, check out http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5182641.html. I think it explains the issue quite well.

Both of these ideas raise interesting issues about what "modular" means, and if this is an important idea. The name and the product are catchy and interesting, so I think it is worth figuring why this concept has arrived now, and what it may lead to. This even has some implications for studies of mind that trying to do some serious empirical science into the nature of the brain/mind by understanding the architecture. This is a pretty hot field of research, so it's nice to see some terms that fit into scholarly papers and fancy academic books being applied and marketed. I just hope this hits it. Judging by the recent attention given to the Mac Mini and recent advances in wearable and implantable computing devices this is at least going to becoming even more interesting discussion in the coming months and years.

The biggest advantage is it's the only way to get a faster processor. You won't see a 4GHz processor in production soon. It's a matter of physics. So instead, you'll wait for applications to better support parallel processing, and then get a dual-core CPU at that point.

I didn't read that in the article or press release about Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server are two different products. Virtual Server can run on XP, but (a) not as a production machine and (b)it's a pain in the ass on slower systems, and creates more security problems if it's your personal workstation, considering Virtual Server requires IIS be installed on XP. VMWare Workstation is more stable and secure on XP.

This Tech Republic Article:
Understanding the difference between Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 2004 lists an overview of the differences. I'd love to see Virtual PC 2005 support Linux and perhaps even Solaris 10, but I doubt it will be added until the end of next year.

"I don't see the value proposition in Linux" is the kind of mindset likely to change within five years.

Asserting that the GPL is cancerous and free software advocates are communists is not.

The simple truth is, Microsoft (or, at least, Bill Gates) likely never truly believed either of those things. They said them because they thought that if people believed it, it would confer a business advantage for them. For another example of this kind of behavior, I refer you towards Bill's obvious flip-floppery on the issue of software patents.

Use this link instead. Click on "Text of Legislation", then on S.167.RH.

Here's a 2002 article from Mobile Review that discusses that studies regarding cell phones and avionics. And they are seriously considering permitting cell phone and wifi usage in flight, as indicated by this article from December.

The Lexmark case was similar. Lexmark put encryption into their printers and ink cartridges to keep other companies from selling the high-markup cartridges to their customers. Initially they got an injunction against a company, but it was wisely overturned by the federal appeals court.

Static Control has seized on the last exemption, which permits reverse-engineering "for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs" and says its creation of the Smartek chip is also protected by traditional fair use rights enshrined in U.S. copyright law.

Don't get your hopes up too quickly. According to this article on CNET, you must be a current Verizon customer and switch your phone service to a wireless carrier or VoIP provider.

So, for people like me who dropped Verizon last year and switched to VoIP, this announcement doesn't mean anything. I would switch away from my Cable internet in a second if they would just smarten up and offer this to everyone.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-205683.html?legacy=c net
http://www.aolwatch.org/checksub.htm
http://www.aolwatch.org/list/0079.html

Back in 1997, a 28 year old staff attorney for AOL named Andrew Lewis Singer plead guilty to fondling an 11 year old boy in a DC area park after showing up to meet a teenage boy he found on AOL:
- begin article -
E-Mail Leads Authorities to AOL Lawyer
Va. Man Is Charged In Assault on Boy, 11

By Peter Pae and Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 6, 1997; Page D01
The Washington Post

A lawyer for America Online Inc. -- charged with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old Loudoun County boy at a pond last week -- went there after
exchanging AOL e-mail with another boy who said he would be there that afternoon, the sheriff's department said yesterday.

Investigators said they identified Andrew Lewis Singer, 28, after learning of the online exchange and tracing it to him. Authorities said Singer used the screen name "DCBOY83" to trade AOL "instant mail" with a teenager one afternoon last week, then drove from AOL headquarters in Dulles to the pond in Ashburn Farm.

After meeting the teenager there, officials say, Singer asked him about the 11-year-old fishing across the small lake, and then went over to him. After starting a conversation, Singer allegedly put his hand in the boy's pants and fondled him before walking away.
[...]
Primrose would not say whether Singer's status as an AOL employee gave him access to information about subscribers, such as lists of children who use AOL "chat rooms" meant only for young people.

She said, however, that "procedures are in place which govern the level of access to subscribers' information based on the employee's job."
[...]
Sheriff's officials said the teenage boy reported the online conversation after he heard about the alleged assault. He said Singer had asked him what he was doing that afternoon, and the boy responded that he was going to get ice cream and play basketball with a friend near the pond, investigators said. The teenager said he was surprised when Singer showed up.
[snip]

Well, I pretty much exclusively use bittorrent to get my music. And according to the Canadian Federal Court, that isn't much different than what a library does. And in Canada, music downloading from other people is perfectly legal as well for personal use.

So basically, the way I understand it, you are telling me that I'm a copyright infringer, and the Canadian Federal Court is telling me that I'm not.

In addition, even if you ARE right, the CRIA has virtually no power over me, as my ISP is quite militant about protecting their customers (they were one of the ISPs who refused to give customer names when the CRIA came knocking... and promptly got told to leave us alone by the federal court). So yeah, I think I'm pretty safe.

"At first I was excited because I thought I was going to get to finally read an enlightening, in-depth article that critically examined the browser. I should have known better. Aside from the usual criticism of open source software, it contains a reference to a Symantec Internet Security Report which claims that more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE."

Traslation: his opinion didn't coincide with my preconceived notion that firefox is more secure than ie, so both he and Symantec must be wrong. Of course, this article came out today about firefox

They didn't just bury the hatchet, they cremated it and scattered the ashes. As someone who does both web and print media, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Those links are ancient, not the chipset and/or dealing with specific setups.

Intel chipsets have had their share of problems as well. here for example. Hell, early pentium CPUs had a division bug.

The bottom line is no matter your CPU when you spend $2 on your motherboard it will have problems. If you want to compare chipsets then you need to do so in the same price range for both processors.

Coverage from CNET news.com.com, from Reuters.

Actually, the article is more about the AirScooter than the Moller Skycar. Here's some pics of the AirScooter...

http://news.com.com/Get+ready+for+the+AirScooter/2 100-1041_3-5672783.html

You can say the same thing about Microsoft's "Business Software Alliance."

Here's a story just nine Slashdot posts later titled "Comcast sued for disclosing customer info". Dunno what planet you're from but it seems to me that it's the private companies such as ChoicePoint that have been playing fast and loose with sensitive data.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Also blurred is Kahnawake, IIRC. Dunno if this is intentional due to treaty negotiations or the result of the most-recently captured file date on what Google acquired when they bought Keyhole. Does Google own access to the bird or just the archives?

I'm not sure where I could find a history but that's a pretty good list.

This article from March, 2001 on the history of paid online newspaper content mentions only the San Jose Mercury News and Slate as charging a fee. I would have expected them to point to a failed effort of a major paper if one had existed.

Similarly, this article on paid online subscriptions from Nov., 2002 only mention the SJMN as having charged.

This story on the L.A. Times' plans for online subscriptions only mentions it ever charged for online content through Prodigy, which pre-dated the Web.

not sure what you mean by "company information"...

From the WSJ site: "Get stock quotes, charts, news, detailed financials and more for 8,500 publicly traded U.S. corporations and international companies listed as American depositary receipts. Plus, find quotes, news and overview information on nearly 20,000 companies that trade on non-U.S. markets." Users can generate graphs of the stats over time periods of their choosing.

The articles you mentioned are relative safe journalism.

Safe or risky wasn't the issue you raised. The question was whether the Times had "anything all that important to say". The Pulitzers clearly show it does.

Was there even a /. article about AMD spinning off their money-hole flash memory unit?

...in this story that suggests that Apple's music dominance is not viewed as favourable by record labels. In fact, it mentions the labels' efforts to start working with wireless phone carriers to charge more for music via ring tones, which is "more in line with their economics".

...another News.com article on this topic:

Music moguls trumped by Steve Jobs?

When Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs walked into the suites of top record label executives in 2002, iTunes software in hand, he was welcomed as a trailblazer to a digital music future.

Now, nearly two years after Apple's iTunes launch, record executives have become worried that they have inadvertently ceded too much power over their industry to this charismatic computer executive.

Frustrated at what they see as Jobs' intransigence on song pricing and other issues, some record executives are now turning their hopes toward other partners, particularly mobile phone carriers eager to get into the business of selling music. They see this new focus as a way to broaden the digital music business, and lessen Apple's dominance over their market in the process.

[...]

For example, Apple wants to sell all its songs for 99 cents each, a single price point that's easy for consumers to understand. But the record labels have pressed for the ability to vary prices to maximize their own sales. They want to sell older titles at a discount--like the $9.99 CDs available in most record stores--and charge more for popular songs to take advantage of market demand.

Full story

...another News.com article on this topic:

Music moguls trumped by Steve Jobs?

When Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs walked into the suites of top record label executives in 2002, iTunes software in hand, he was welcomed as a trailblazer to a digital music future.

Now, nearly two years after Apple's iTunes launch, record executives have become worried that they have inadvertently ceded too much power over their industry to this charismatic computer executive.

Frustrated at what they see as Jobs' intransigence on song pricing and other issues, some record executives are now turning their hopes toward other partners, particularly mobile phone carriers eager to get into the business of selling music. They see this new focus as a way to broaden the digital music business, and lessen Apple's dominance over their market in the process.

[...]

For example, Apple wants to sell all its songs for 99 cents each, a single price point that's easy for consumers to understand. But the record labels have pressed for the ability to vary prices to maximize their own sales. They want to sell older titles at a discount--like the $9.99 CDs available in most record stores--and charge more for popular songs to take advantage of market demand.

Full story

Tentative ruling favors Apple in blog case

San Francisco May Regulate Blogging

I apologize for saying that MSN Messenger was being phased out for Mac. Actually it was the MSN portal for the Mac that was being phased out.

Microsoft to kill MSN for the Mac

If you like drag n drop and want a flash player I would strongly recommend Lexar's LDP-800 for serious audiophiles, and LDP-200 for those who want a shuffle-quality player with better features and a lower price.

Both of these players are top notch with mass storage device music loading (ie: drag n drop) and expandable memory. The LDP-200 comes with a 1GB SD memory card for less than the 1GB shuffle, and it has a LCD screen with EQ and other niceness. The fact that you can swap out cards is ridiculously awesome as this is the most saught after feature for the consumers of flash players.

The LDP-800 supports OGG music and has a built in radio transmitter. It even features an OLED display. I know several people with the LDP-600 (the precursor to the 800) and it is a top notch player in both quality and durability. Everything I have been reading about the LDP-800 will make it the king of the hill for at least a little while. They are supposed to hit store shelves friday april 15.

As the CNET News.com FUDmeister who wrote the story in question, I recommend you also look at the story headline, Linux programmer wins legal victory, which I don't think raises too much FUD around open-source programmers. Nor does the text of the story itself, in my opinion. You had a legitimate gripe with the initial "shadow" wording you quote (which is a sort of uberheadline, not the story headline proper). I didn't write it and didn't agree with it; as soon as I noticed it we changed it. Any time you have a problem with or suggested changes for a story I write, I welcome direct feedback by e-mailing me directly; my byline on the story is a mailto hyperlink. --Stephen Shankland

But, but, I thought Lawyers were BAD.

Here they did something GOOD.

And Welte said he wasn't happy with the response to the letters he delivered to company representatives at CeBit.

"Most of them failed to create any form of reaction on behalf of the companies. It's very sad to see that in most cases nobody would even start to listen to you unless you sent it via a lawyer," Welte said.

Funny how the FUDmeisters at C|Net translate the exact same story:

Shadow over open source
German court ruling halts shipments of one company's Linux wares; license spat could soon hit U.S
http://news.com.com/Linux+programmer+wins+legal+vi ctory/2100-7344_3-5671209.html?tag=nefd.lede

This might explain their recent fiber-optic buying spree.

• Devising chips for these purposes, of course, will rely on speeding up the pace of hardware advancement beyond what's described by Moore's Law, the observation that chips will increase in power and performance at a steady clip because designers will be able to continue to add a greater number of transistors to a single chip. The original version of the law turns 40 on April 19.
  
  Although manufacturers will have to develop new technologies to maintain the pace of development, Moore's Law won't die anytime soon. Intel has already produced prototype transistors based on the next five generations of manufacturing processes, which means that the chip industry can count on at least another decade of shrinking and adding transistors.
  
  "That kind of guarantees you another five generations," [Barrett] said. "There is no fundamental limit there."

Just as a side note in relation to this story, there have been controller pics floating around for a few days now (seen here). It would appear that Microsoft has learned nothing from the debacle of the original Xbox controller; this thing looks horribly uncomfortable to hold.

Oh, well, it's been pronounced dead more often than BSD on Slashdot, so it actually means very little. Even coming from Gordon Moore.

about manufacturers charging per-core licenses for their software. For more info, read this.