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I call double BS, since they later retracted the statement and will NOT be allowing priated copies of the OS to install SP2. According to ZDNet, Microsoft has reversed its earlier statement somewhat. People who complain about MS bashing should understand one thing, regardless of what MS does today, they built their empire and maintained their empire on the foundation that getting caught breaking the law is just a cost of doing business. After a history like that, it's hard to beleive that we could be expected to trust them at all.

Microsoft lawyers have joined the company's campaign against open-source software, restricting how developers may use what it terms "viral software" in connection with Microsoft programming tools.

MP3.com lead's to CNet's MP3.com.

MP3.com.com leads to CNet|Music.

Download.com Music (mistaken by some for the new MP3.com)

Not to be mistaken for CNet's mp3.com.com.

Which does, of course, exist, but is not redirected to Download.com Music.

As the poster mentioned, there wasn't much detail in that speech.

Computerworld and CNet have (slightly) more information, suggesting that the minister was floating the idea of an international treaty to combat spam.

Despite the breezy tone, however, the effort is apparently not as offhand as one might think. In a move that seems out of character with the informality of blogging, Google edited itself in a Monday note about the Mountain View, Calif., company's recent expansion to Bangalore, India. In an earlier, more lighthearted version of the posting, Google said too much has been made out of U.S. companies outsourcing jobs in India. A later version of the note, posted Tuesday without identifying the changes, takes a less opinionated tone over what is a topic of heated political debate.

It's been my experience that the idiots are the ones making the purchasing decisions, hence the nature of the advertising.

• Product A -- Claims to be 73% good.
• Product B -- Claims to be 96% good.
• Product C -- Claims to be 99.999% good.
• Product D -- Claims to be 100% good.

But if you see a big brand name (Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, etc.) on product C, you might say "Well, it isn't 100%, and they are a good company. Maybe it's the truth. Of course, claiming to be Product C happens, and that's where the trap is.

It might be that you are looking at Microsoft statement claiming "5 nines" of 99.999% uptime (that's down for 5 minutes each year). Or Sun claiming the same 99.999%. Or Cingular Wireless claiming 99.999% reliable networks, excluding several days of downtime that they must not factor into their percentage. Maybe it's that 99.999% pure copper speaker cable you were looking for. (For the chemists, here's a site where you can buy over a dozen other '99.999% pure metal' wires.) Lots of people get caught into that.

In some cases it really is justified. If I were a chemist, maybe having iridium wire that is only 99.9% pure might cause problems, and those extra 9's might be significant. But that usually isn't the case for most marketing.

But I don't think it's just a PHB issue, it's a problem of 'I really want the best, and I only want to spend 5 minutes to find out which one that is'.

frob

It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax on the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of unknown liability lawsuits and vexatious accounting for profits made in good faith. -- U.S. Supreme Court, Atlantic Works vs. Brady, 1882

Historically, the IETF has been neutral about using patents in the Standards process, and its position is summed up best in the charter of the IPR Working Group (http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ipr-charter.htm l):

The IETF and the Internet have greatly benefited from the free exchange of ideas and technology. For many years the IETF normal behavior was to standardize only unencumbered technology.

While the 'Tao' of the IETF is still strongly oriented toward unencumbered technology, we can and do make use of technology that has various encumbrances. One of the goals of RFC2026 'The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3' was to make it easier for the IETF to make use of encumbered technology when it made sense to do so.

Last year, there was an attempt to make the IETF change their policy, but it failed miserably (http://news.com.com/2100-1013-996351.html?tag=fd_ top).

So you can have more secure communications, but only if you pay Cisco.

Bastards.

Having spent a great deal of time doing ground search and rescue about 15 years ago, I'm not sure your idea will be worth the effort to employ. Searches may be different in other parts of the country, but around the Appalachian mountains when I operated, most of the searches I went on were for folks that that either didn't want to be found, or didn't know that they were getting lost, for example young children, entusiastic teens who went bounding off into the woods, distraught and/or suicidal folks, and people with some form of dementia. Furthermore, they were folks that were not likely to stick to trails. Shelters on the Appalachian Trail usually have paper logs that many hikers fill in, no advanced technology needed there. I went on many hikes multi-day hikes by myself, before ubiquitous cell phone use, and always told people where I would be and when I would return, and at what point to call Search and Rescue, and always called when I left the trail and got to the nearest phone. I can see where electronic check in stations, particularly in the Rockies or Alaska could be helpful but many people go to the woods to specifically get away from technology. I also think they would also think they would just get vandalized.

I think its good to investigate these things, but as some areas that imployed face detection cameras have found out, the ineffectiveness of the design proved to be much more problematic than the civil rights issue.

Half assed? Accorinding to News.com.com IBM raked in $159.9 million in Linux-related sales, up from $75.6 million a year ago. The next closest compitition was HP with about $80M and then Dell with around $72M. Source Article I would say their interest is fairly well vested and considering that the sales numbers are only the tip of the iceberg of the Linux related revenue, IBM is in this for more then just preserving AIX.

Check again:

HP to sharpen blade with Pentium M

And don't forget: high end servers don't use bleeding edge processors since they need some extra time to certify the hardware.

Maybe they (Google) don't get arrested all the time, but they certainly remove links to all kinds of things from time to time:

Google pulls anti-Scientology links

If given enough time and going step by step about this, the powers that be are able to take away much more freedom than you will probably imagine right now. This Japanese guy arrested is a big one, people are outraged and suddenly see what's going on, but don't forget that most of the time this kind of thing goes without a /. article.

(ironic how this kind of thing can still be found using Google itself, BTW, but my fear is that some day that won't be the case anymore)

Everyone has their disaster stories. You want to troll, I can too.

Let me say in my experience of Apple laptops vs other laptops, the Apples last a lot longer than the others. I'm writing this on a 3.5 year old PBG3. And that's nothing. The only thing to fail in this baby - the RAM.

Fraud is the true exception, not successful auctions. If you look at the reported fraud rate(which admittedly, may be a bit smaller than the actual number), it comes in at way under 1%. Most auctions on eBay go off without a hitch, especially if you check the seller's feedback and don't have unrealistic expectations about an auctioned item. Just keep in mind a very simple principle - if it seems too good to be true, it very well might be.

I've been on eBay for 3 years, have made hundreds of transactions, and have only been burned once. Since the seller never sent me the item promised, I got a full refund from PayPal.

It's a criminal charge in the US, as well.

Most of the copyright-related cases we've seen lately on Slashdot (namely RIAA stuff) have been handled via civil suits. However, if you recall the incident where the guy was busted for leaking the workprint of The Hulk, he was actually charged with (and plead guilty to) felony copyright infringement: http://news.com.com/2100-1026-1021005.html?tag=nl

Double layer support (8.5 GB) is the hot thing to come for DVD's and without this, there is no way this thing will be a success.

Of course, if you don't trust that website, how about ZDNet or even compare the numbers yourself. There's Veritest's Apple numbers, versus the offical published numbers from SPEC. There's also this site which goes into detail about the benchmark. They used -ffast-math on PPC, but not on x86, for instance. They explicitly turned off hyperthreading, which obviously hurt the Dell machine during the MP tests.

Then again, as the old saying goes, there's three types of lies. Lies, damn lies and benchmarks.

I heard from a cnet article that SP2 is going to give IE pop-up blocking.

I do think you're being unfair to Microsoft though. And by the way, spyware doesn't install itself you know. Either it comes bundled with something stupid you installed without researching or you clicked the "yes i'd like this website to install some software" button when it asked.

Looks like the informants who lead to his arrest will still get a reward...

Okay, I realize that cooperation with Microsoft may be useful, but this is a little nervousness-inducing:

Spokesman Frank Federau for the Lower Saxony police said the man was arrested Friday. Federau said the suspect admitted to programming the worm, but authorities did not know if he had created all the versions of it.

"He made a confession, and the experts at Microsoft have now confirmed that he was the cause of this worm," Federau said. He said he did not have any details of how the suspect was found.

So...while I realize that this is a black eye for Microsoft, and that it's to their benefit to assist in tracking the guy down, and I realize that police budgets may not allow for competent cybercrime investigators, it always makes me nervous to see police saying "investigators from <large global corporation> have confirmed that this guy is the culprit". Yes, he'll have his day in court, but still...damn.

Why do you think Microsoft would have anything to do with it?

What hold you think Microsoft might have over Kodak?

Do you think Kodak owes Microsoft any favors?

"Microsoft signs security pact with Germany" http://news.com.com/2100-7343-5204643.html

That was on may 4th... Today THEY GOT HIM. Thats quite a remarkable effort from the Private Secret Police of Microsoft.

Robert

The Irish Presidency explains on its website that it is sponsored by Microsoft

It's my understanding that Microsoft used to not take an interest (relatively speaking) in governmental affairs. They had a fairly low number of lobbyists in Washington etc.

... oh here we go, an actual link.

They sure learned fast, didn't they.

Stare my sources?

Unemployment and non-farm payrolls: BLS

SCO employment figures: this is tertiary regarding those layed off; perhaps you'd like to read the latest 10K.

Consumer debt is a record high... well duh! Debt is a level, and any level should increase over time while the ecnomy grows and inflation is positive. You really get 100% there! The balance of payments is an accounting identity - US concumers are benefitting from cheap imports so money flows out of the country... cheaper goods and services means more can be consumed (good for the consumer) while money flowing out of the country means the US dollar becomes more competitive (falls in the value of the dollar over the past 9 months). GDP numbers for the last few quarters have been very encouraging with excellent production in goods (non-durables and durables alike) and services.

Please explain, to my naive ears, what makes a good economy. No bullshit please, list facts, not supposition.

All the blind "OMFG THEY'RE KILLING TECHTV!!!111" nonsense has been the inspiration of my new sig.

According to Zdnet those being laid off are mostly in the engineering, marketing, and sales depatments. This is very telling for a so-called "tech" company to lay-off those responsible for creating and selling your core product. Of course we all know that SCO is a litigation company and has no need for engineers to improve a product, no marketers to hype the non-existant product, and no salesmen to.... well you get the idea.

http://www.spybot.info. That's all it takes.

This is total tin-foil-hat speculation, but hear me out:

Considering the enormous amount of resources Microsoft is going to have to keep pouring into Windows development, I can't imagine they are going to want to keep spending the $$$ on maintaining multiple versions for various CPU types, now down to basically two: x86 and Itanium. They saw that NT on Mips, PowerPC and that NEC chip (forget what it's called) were lousy sellers, and you've got to imagine that though NT on the Alpha was probably going to be a big seller, the implosion of DEC pretty much put the lid on its future and Microsoft decided quickly it wasn't going to be spending the time and resources to keep up an Alpha port, no matter how good it probably was.

Even though Intel says otherwise, you have to think that they see the Itanium as not the future for Windows; people don't really trust Windows to operate well on the x86, why should they think it'll run better on the Itanium? I predict that the server version of Longhorn will be an x86-only product (of course, probably *requiring* 2 or more of those as-yet produced multi-core cpus).

So let's presume that Windows won't run on the Itanium in the future. What's left? Solaris, AIX, or Irix on the Itanum? Nope (3rd paragraph) That leaves only one OS that already runs on the chip, our friend the penguin.

So what will Intel do with it? Seems like the future points to a processor that runs Linux (probably NetBSD too) and little else. If Intel doesn't can the thing altogether (which is unlikely given the huge resources spent, and the serious black eye it would give them), then presumably we would have a cpu to call our own: a machine built with nothing but Linux in mind. Combine this hardware with all the software that's a little more than a recompile away, and you'd have a pretty sweet setup to counter the Windows juggernaut.

CNET story is here: TechTV lays off San Francisco staff

News.com Article

If RAMBUS is right, and manufacturers artificially raised prices because the margins were too slim, you've just proven their point. It's one thing for one individual company to not market a new technology. When they all choose not to, that smells fishy. And since RAMBUS allegedly has emails proving the other companies all agreed (that is, conspired) to not use RAMBUS' new chip designs, that pretty much seals the deal. Even the FTC judge from the previous court case said he thinks the chip makers being sued crossed the line.

No, the cost was still a fair bit more when only one company was making rambus memory, back when the i820 chipset was released. I had a choice when it was recalled, either get a board with free rambus memory, or get some cash to buy a diffrent motherboard. Because the cost from intel, the people who had a vested intrest in people adopting this standard, made a choice to sell their product for an arm and a leg, I wasn't going to buy into a standard that would cost me more in the long run, not when the cost of SD-ram was so low.

Here in 1999 this news says, "production of the new memory chips is delayed because some manufacturers are balking at the high cost of manufacturing and one analyst confirms this and adds that at least one manufacturer is balking at the licensing fees." As well as ..."It makes sense from an economic standpoint since die [chip] cost is 30 percent more...and the higher licensing fee associated with it, on top of the higher manufacturing cost, is going to make the audience for the chip minimal"

I don't see yet any evidence of artifical inflation, I see evidence of rambus wanting others to produce their chips that simply cost more to produce and get royalties. I see evidence of actual inflation, and it doesn't shock me that no one wanted to produce their damn chips. It's long been known in the IT world that standards are often not established by what is better, but by what is cheeper.

Just like the RIAA, Rambus is blaming others for their own failures. The reason why Rambus (RDRAM) wasn't widely adopted was because it was an inferior product. Sure, in hypothetical and synthetic cases, RDRAM did outperform SDRAM, but in the real world, it got it's ass handed to them. (remember back in the day when Via had to fight Intel to be able to release a P3-compatible chipset using SDRAM? And how Via's low-end chipset was able to pounce Intel's expensive Rambus one and Intel eventually came to the realization that in order to compete, they would have to ditch Rambus). That combined with the expensive cost of RDRAM (even the ones maded by licensed RDRAM manufacturers like Samsung, etc.) and the disadvantage that you had to buy in pairs (talk about antitrust; "Sorry sir, you have to buy TWO copies of Windows for one to work.") or use a dummy stick which adds more cost and lackluster performance across real world appz (including games) lead to its demise. Not to mention, the abandonment by Intel which caused Rambus's stock to be cheaper than the Russian rubble (already used as toilet paper).

If anyone, they should sue themselves for bad business practices. Oh wait, the stockholders did try to sue but later dropped it.

> "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and technically superior."

RDRAM was "technically superior" in theory, but as far as I remember the supposed performance benefits didn't have a significant enough impact on total system performance with the then-current chipsets to justify the huge price difference.

RDRAM looked promising at first, with Intel as the primary backer, but Rambus and Intel thourougly screwed up its introduction. This is how I remember it:

1. RDRAM was hideously expensive
2. Rambus used a "submarine patent" and got the whole DRAM industry up in arms about that
3. Price/performance ratio was bad
4. Chipsets with RDRAM support were expensive and only Intel jumped on the bandwagon initially (and with rather buggy chipsets to boot)
5. As a result, DDR-SDRAM was quickly announced, and RDRAM was history

I suppose the next steps would be:

6. Realize that your product is deader than a doornail
7. Sue the hell out of every major player in the industry
8. PROFIT???

To me, this looks more like the rest of the industry protecting themselves against Rambus' predatory practices and general ineptitude to bring a promising product to market. Perhaps suing Infineon and others wasn't the most brilliant move if they wanted to make RDRAM a success?

This is *way* old-hat for this company. Heck, they Sued Hitachi in 2000 for "patent infringement."

This company has only ever tried to make money from IP. And when that didn't work, well... they did it the old-fashioned American way: sue someone for it.

Microsoft (I *think* they're still involved)

Actually, I read an article about a new manufacturing process to make hi-res monitors/tvs where they essentially poor a liquid component over a backing material and it then 'grows' itself into crystalized tubes that will route light similar to fiber optic cabling, only much, much smaller.

They could make the tubes before, but the trouble was getting them all perfectly aligned to emit the light out in the same direction. With this process they would all grow 90 degrees from the mounting surface.

It will allow for the creation of monitors that are something like 3-4 times the pixel density of plasma HDTVs, and cost int he hundreds of dollars for a 42" rather than the thousands.

If I recall, the hold up was making the electronics to control it. I'm gonna see if I can find that article now...

Rob

Press release from a manufacturer

ZDNet article about the underlying NanoTube technology

Still can't find the original article I was referencing, tho. Oh well...

SCO cuts jobs to reach product profit

Investors seem to always assume job cuts will lead to profitability.

Personally, I'd worry more about "submarine" software patents that someone will suddenly complain are being infringed ala PanIP, RAMBUS, et al. You will note how easily IBM was able to find four patents for their counter-suit against SCO.

Yeah, but anyone who tries that will face The Nazgul of Armonk, as well as the entire FLOSS community. After what's happening to SCO, I think any company would think thrice about that idea. Even an "IP" company.

Besides, the downward trend has been going for some time - they were hovering around $7 last week, now they've dropped a dollar since. So one day's stock variations is not going to make or break somebody in the general sense.

In related news the SCO group lays off 275 to "re-allign" their organization.

Heck, IMO, this is a sure sign of the problems with software patents.

Haven't the swiss already beating this?? CNET

Hey, remember the Canadian startup icravetv.com (archive link) and the fuss it stirred up. It was a good little service for its time, before getting squashed by legalities. Maybe it would be a good time for them to consider starting it up again.

www.wmvhd.com - Downloadable HDTV.

1920x1080p full resolution WMV clips. But be warned, recommended system is 3 Ghz (though it works) and the files are mammoth at about 150 megabytes for a 3 minute clip. (To play these HDTV clips, you do need the Windows Media 9 player now preinstalled on XP systems)

Hopefully, we can play this under Linux too, now that this technology is licensed:
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5201352.html

You mean like this?

= 9J =

This is the same logic or financial motivation that moved IBM in or before World War II to "assist" the Nazis as Probing IBM's Nazi Connection shows us.

Cisco is rewriting IOS, in June, they are going to demo the new IOS with its new backbone router HFR (Huge fast router). From the Zdnet article it has 16, 40 Gig slots (or 640 gig total throughput). The new version of IOS will be modular.

Try Spybot (Decent speed download here).

Spybot is a bit over-sensitive (it whines about some tracking cookies and such minor issues), but it's effective.

No one wants to deploy it ??

brandybuck is bellyaching

An interesting paragraph- "According to the filing, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt made $ 250,000 in salarly and got a $301,556 bonus last year, plus other compensation of $2,894. Co-founders Mr. Brin, now president of technology and Mr. Page, now president of products, both got salaries of $150,000 and bonuses of 206,556.".

And you can compare the pay with other US companies [aflcio.org]. Other companies can learn from google here.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt drew a $250,000 salary, while Brin and Page collected $150,000. As part of Schmidt's employment package, he was granted an option to buy more than 14 million class B common shares at an exercise price of 30 cents and was permitted to buy more than 426,000 of the series C preferred stock at $2.3425 per share.