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Actually, a lot of the localisation is done in Ireland (at Apple's last internal manufacturing site, now that Sacramento has been shut down). How do I know? I work there! :-)

Thing is, if the person who sent it to you *does* know about computers, they will know you are a tool.

Try and convince me that there have _never_ been exploits via html & pdf.

Here's the latest PDF one.

Did you know that Melissa and Goga were originally delivered via RTF ?

IMO iPod users shouldnt have to feel vendor locked by not getting access to the service Steve Jobs dislike. If Apple got issues with people renting music, why not let a second music provider give consumers a choice?

Apple and Sony seems to be making the Betamax and mac error all over again by providing DRM format with NO industry support. It would be wise for Apple to team up with Sony and then with a subsription based music provider. Even better: License fairplay to any company willing to cough up the money needed

The SCO - Baystar Exchange Agreement [PDF warning].

The move means at a minimum that SCO has more legal wrangling in its future, but it also raises the possibility that the Royal Bank of Canada, which chipped in $30 million alongside BayStar's investment in October, could follow suit.

RBC is keeping its options open. "We haven't requested a redemption. We're reviewing the situation and will arrive at a decision shortly," said spokesman Paul Wilson.

Beefed up PCs? Interesting, they obviously can't tell the difference in construction, design, quality, graphics fidelity, OS of a "PC" versus an SGI box. I'd love to see a PC link 1024 CPUs as a single image system without ccNUMA. CNET needs to hire better reporters.

.. accessorize my Paper PC (ZDNet announcment)

1. Not allowing a person to upgrade a DVD/CD drive to a Superdrive. I bought my PowerMac two months before the superdrive was released. I get to use stupid DVD-RAM disks, but I can't burn DVD's unless I buy a whole new computer.

Actually, anyone is free to add any internal or external hardware device they wish, including DVD+/-R/RW drives. However, if you wanted to use *specific* software, like iDVD, with your drive, then you needed to mirror one of Apple's OEM offerings with your purchase. The reason Apple tried to tie iDVD to their "SuperDrive" systems was more one of ensuring a very cohesive user experience, as opposed to the nightmare of support issues and bad reputation for iDVD as people with 400 MHz G4s tried to use iDVD with any old random DVD recorder.

2. Apple keeps its iSync API locked up. There are millions of really cool things I could do to make Apple able to synchronize with things like LDAP servers, competing browsers, PC's, etc. But then Apple could use it as a leverage-point to keep people subscribing to the overpriced .Mac program.

It's only a matter of time before there's an iSync SDK. And the second statement is kind of unrelated; if you think .Mac is overpriced, don't use it.

3. USB video cameras, like the ubiquitous Logitech QuickCam, just don't work (well) and Apple seems to have put blocks into place to refuse iChat AV from working with anything but their iSight hardware product. (I exaggerate a little bit here, but not much.)

ANY FireWire video source will work with iChat AV. Any video source at all will work with iChatUSBCam. Again, this decision was made to ensure a good user experience across the board with iChat AV, rather than letting people use any old crappy USB camera, which, right or wrong, reflects poorly on iChat AV.

There is a reason why Apple products work and look great: because Apple tries hard to keep it that way.

The iPod Quicktime-AAC is just another example. Where Microsoft fights to protect it's OS dominence, Apple refuses to make its customers' lives better if it suggests that they might loose the odd dollar in missed hardware sales opportunities.

Well, first, you have to have a monopoly to start talking about monopolistic practices. Even with iPod, Apple doesn't have nearly a "monopoly". And QuickTime, while proprietary, is one of the best media architectures out there, with free live encoding, free streaming servers for multiple platforms, ability to use open standards for playback anywhere, etc. Not to mention that it was primarily Apple and Apple alone that made MPEG-4's licensing - one of the only hopes against Microsoft's VC9 - licensing leaps and bounds more palatable than it originally was. And Apple has to keep its hardware sales up, lest the analysts start a death knell for the 1000th time.

1. Not allowing a person to upgrade a DVD/CD drive to a Superdrive. I bought my PowerMac two months before the superdrive was released. I get to use stupid DVD-RAM disks, but I can't burn DVD's unless I buy a whole new computer.

Actually, anyone is free to add any internal or external hardware device they wish, including DVD+/-R/RW drives. However, if you wanted to use *specific* software, like iDVD, with your drive, then you needed to mirror one of Apple's OEM offerings with your purchase. The reason Apple tried to tie iDVD to their "SuperDrive" systems was more one of ensuring a very cohesive user experience, as opposed to the nightmare of support issues and bad reputation for iDVD as people with 400 MHz G4s tried to use iDVD with any old random DVD recorder.

2. Apple keeps its iSync API locked up. There are millions of really cool things I could do to make Apple able to synchronize with things like LDAP servers, competing browsers, PC's, etc. But then Apple could use it as a leverage-point to keep people subscribing to the overpriced .Mac program.

It's only a matter of time before there's an iSync SDK. And the second statement is kind of unrelated; if you think .Mac is overpriced, don't use it.

3. USB video cameras, like the ubiquitous Logitech QuickCam, just don't work (well) and Apple seems to have put blocks into place to refuse iChat AV from working with anything but their iSight hardware product. (I exaggerate a little bit here, but not much.)

ANY FireWire video source will work with iChat AV. Any video source at all will work with iChatUSBCam. Again, this decision was made to ensure a good user experience across the board with iChat AV, rather than letting people use any old crappy USB camera, which, right or wrong, reflects poorly on iChat AV.

There is a reason why Apple products work and look great: because Apple tries hard to keep it that way.

The iPod Quicktime-AAC is just another example. Where Microsoft fights to protect it's OS dominence, Apple refuses to make its customers' lives better if it suggests that they might loose the odd dollar in missed hardware sales opportunities.

Well, first, you have to have a monopoly to start talking about monopolistic practices. Even with iPod, Apple doesn't have nearly a "monopoly". And QuickTime, while proprietary, is one of the best media architectures out there, with free live encoding, free streaming servers for multiple platforms, ability to use open standards for playback anywhere, etc. Not to mention that it was primarily Apple and Apple alone that made MPEG-4's licensing - one of the only hopes against Microsoft's VC9 - licensing leaps and bounds more palatable than it originally was. And Apple has to keep its hardware sales up, lest the analysts start a death knell for the 1000th time.

Air America and RealNetworks are allied on political lines. Maria Cantwell, one of Real's founders, is a prominent Democrat. I have it on good authority that Air America pays absolutely zero dollars for its so-called "webcasting" software.

Saying that he "just wants Microsoft to leave us alone," Borland International (BORL) CEO Delbert Yocam today filed a lawsuit against Microsoft (MSFT), claiming that the software giant is hiring away Borland's key employees to put it out of business.

Here

Quoting from it:
-----
How many people received the "Green Card Lottery" spam? Did you generate any business from it?
It was in the tens of thousands. Yes, we generated a lot of business. The best I can recall we probably made somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 related to that--which wasn't remarkable in itself, except that the cost of doing it was negligible.
-----

Good luck!

Companies like

Amazon,

CollabNet(a company that would not exist if they didn't have access to engineers from India),

Dell (wich didn't get a good level of support for their users), and many others.

So, yes, there are companies doing this.

SOMEBODY is looking to get attention from it.

Thankfully it's comming out to the public that such attacks are happening. It's when nobody finds out that it's a problem.
So either it's a few kids looking to make names for themselves . . .or someone who has to gain from seeing linux get cracked. And if you think I'm crazy or some conspiracy freak just take a look at the things that microsoft, SCO and other such companies are doing . . .
DESPITE having the IE antitrust suit done and over with because they force-fed it to us they're doing it with ITUNES.

The more I learn about computing, the more I like my toaster.

As always Wikipedia comes to the rescue (and since it's released under the GNU Free Documentation License I can legally present the whole article to you nice people of Slashdot) :).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

Click of death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[edit]

The click of death is a failure mode typical of Iomega Zip drives. The term is also used more broadly to refer to failures of several other kinds of disk storage systems. In all cases, the click of death is characterized by a noticeable clicking or buzzing sound and is usually caused by a head crash.

The term became common in the late 1990s, describing a problem particular to Iomega's Zip drives. Zip disks, although popular, were not particularly sturdy (being exposed to the dust and grime of an unfiltered environment), and the drives were prone to developing misaligned heads. These damaged and dirty heads would try to read a disk, only get a marginal signal, then the controller would quickly snap the head arm back into the drive and out again, producing the click and (in many cases) tearing up the edge of the disk and even the heads themselves. Compounding the problem, the damaged disks would often go on to damage the heads of any other drive they were used in.

Iomega received thousands of complaints about the click of death, but denied all responsibility: often, to the fury of Zip drive owners, claiming that the problems were caused by the use of (functionally identical) third-party media. A class action suit was filed against them in September 1998. The case was settled in March 2001 and Zip drive owners were given a rebate, but Iomega's reputation has yet to fully recover.

On non-Zip systems (usually a hard disk), the click of death refers to a similar phenomenon; when a hard disk has a hard error or servo failure, the head actuator will buzz and click as the drive tries to recover from the error. Since the media is not removable on these drives, the defect is almost always due to physical abuse or a manufacturing error. IBM's storage division had their own click of death problems in 2001 with the mass failure of their popular Deskstar 75GXP hard disks.

External links

• Comprehensive account of the click of death at grc.com
• News article on the Zip click of death, from 1998
• Information on the Iomega class action and settlement
• 75GXP FAQ at anandtech.com

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for

Perhaps taking PIXAR's high profile into account, Terry concedes that "The commercial environment is still best served by Linux clusters" at the end of the article.

As one of Cray's most prominent customers, Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) implicitly makes a better argument. They've long advocated clusters for massive computing purposes, as evidenced by the Avalon, Loki, et al.

It's also worth mentioning that Loki won the Gordon Bell Price/Performance Prize in 1997.

And let's not forget the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Beowulf cluster(s).

Fun side note: I've never gotten to see these clusters in RL, but I did get to see Sandia National Labs' Paragon and some other boxen when I was there in 1995 as part of the AiS Challenge.

Everyone knows THIS is the world's fastest computer.

Further info.

I await the flames from the Jobsians

People that accept these will likely believe it will turn them into Jake 2.0. Sadly, it's more likely to turn them into human RFID tags.

Because one of

• employers/school insist on Windows but are willing to permit employee/student to choose applications
• need software not readily available on OSS platforms, such as accounting software or graphics package (apparently GIMP isn't good enough for everyone)
• already know how to use Windows, can't afford to spend the time it would take to get to grips with a "real OS"

There is a pretty solid article over at C|net's builder.com that was written last August.

Marc Andreessen isn't too happy.

I think that Sun has a few other 'real' assests still alive and kicking. Among these assets are UltraSparc Servers, Solaris, and Java System Application Server Enterprise. Granted Sun's Application Server doesn't have the presence of a Weblogic or a WebSphere, but with the right investment behind it who knows. As to Sun's UltraSprarc's and the Solaris OS, the numbers I found weren't huge but certainly assest worthy: "Sun had about $50 million in orders for the V210 and V240 servers, Chief Financial Officer Steve McGowan said. The revised systems are in testing and are expected to ship by the end of July or in August, he said." - C|Net

I think you might say that they are more than the "one trick pony" that many people believe they are.

The two companies signed a 10-year patent-licensing deal, the fourth pact between the companies since 1976. The deal is retroactive to Jan. 1, when the previous agreement expired.

You still have to try the exercise of imagining the value of software innovation would be without patents.

You don't need to do exercises for that. You just have to look at existing studies on the motivations of software companies to innovate, for example this presentation of a study performed by the Fraunhofer Institute (owners of the MP3 patents) and the Max Planck Institute. Have a look at slide 15. Patents are the least used way to protect software development, especially in the "primary sector" (= software development sector in their study, the secondary sector was for them companies whose primary purpose is not to develop software, but who also do it to e.g. steer their washing machines etc.)

You don't need software patents to protect investments in software development and RD, and at the same time software patents held by others can completely undermine any investments you made.

I don't say the patent system is perfect. I just say it is the best we have.

No, it is not, especially not as far as software innovation is concerned.

Do you honestly think the big guys are really interested in a few tens (hundreds) thousands lines of code or a bunch of engineers? No, they are after their innovative ideas, i.e. their patents. No patent, no cash.

It's true that big companies try to amass as many patents as possible, but that has nothing to do with wanting to get access to innovative ideas they wouldn't come up with themselves. It's called strategic patenting, for both offensive (keep others out of the market) and defensive (make sure others can't keep you out of the market) purposes.

If there weren't any patents, smaller companies would be picked based on their ability to turn great ideas into great products, instead of based on their ability to turn basic ideas into broad patents.

Having a few big companies fighting each other over patents is actually not that bad. The little guy will have some bargaining power by threatening to sell his patent to some other company.

And what if the little guy isn't interested in acquiring patents for EUR 40,000 a piece, but simply wants to develop great software? And what's so great about companies spending millions on litigation instead of on R&D?

Having big companies interested in funding research department is not that a bad idea either. Where else do you expect innovation to come from?

Spending much on patents is completely different from innovating a lot. Have a look at e.g. this study (ppt slides) which shows that it's not the innovators that get most patents. Also look at this arcticle by the senior VP of IBM, where he bluntly states that

It would be naive for any company (or for that matter, any country) to assume that amassing patents for patents' sake is a meaningful measure of success. Invention only matters when it positively transforms an institution, a business, a society or our lives. Rather than numbers, it's the application of invention--coupled with deep insight, experience and even intuition--that results in genuine innovation.

You don't need patents to encourage insightful applications, experience and intuition. If anything, they hamper that. Companies will not stop pouring money into software research and innovation if they can't get patents for that. After all, they already did that before they could get them, and they also have to continue doing that to remain competitive. If they stop innovating, they will fall behind in the race for the customer.

Note that I'm not claiming that the most innovative company always has the highest market share, there are obviously other fac

If you advertise on Overture your supporting these bastards! Sure Overture made the association before Yahoo bought them, but Yahoo is still guilty for their dealings with them.

Would Google ever put adwords up in a gator popup? Hell no!

More information here.

Another twist to this story is the fact that Verzon has offered news.com article5 Billion in an effort to halt the spectrum swap to its competitor Nextel. This is in comparison to the only $ 850 Million that Nextel offered to help reband its network, and pay for retuning/equipment of public safety systems and others whom its towers interfere with. Why does Nextel want the spectrum at 1.9 GHz? It's because this is where it plans to roll out its future high speed technoloy (Flash OFDM) that it is currently piloting in the Raleigh-Durham metro area using hardware from Flarion. This spectrum will allow Nextel a huge advantage when it launches this service nationwide, essentially allowing it to jump right into and dominate the markets that Verizon (EVDO) and AT&T-Cingular(EDGE) are currently trying to capture. Company propaganda "With burst rate for the downlink is 3 Megabits per second (Mbps), and 900 Kilobits per second (Kbps) for the uplink. Typical user experience is 1 Mbps in the downlink, and 300 to 500 Kbps in the uplink, with average latency below 50 milliseconds." I beta tested EVDO for Verizon and when let me tell you its impressive. Nextel's foray into this space is serious and Verizon and other carriers want to prevent this from happening.

Careful with that. Back when they first changed their name to Claria (from Gator), they started issuing C&Ds and cart00ney threats to people referring to them as "adware", "spyware", etc... See here for info about the cart00ney brandished at PC Pitstop.

These bastards and their "Clariaware" are scumbags of the first order.

Did you ever wonder why no one sells x86 servers with more than 8 CPUs

You mean servers like this or IBM's plans detailed here? x86 servers with more than 8 processors definitely do exist, even if they are somewhat rare.

Well, one reason is the x86 architecture doesn't scale with a crap in a multiple-CPU box

That has very little to do with the processor itself and MUCH more to do with the supporting components. One problem that x86 chips have traditionally had is the lack of a high-bandwidth and low-latency bus for I/O, but with the Opteron that potential weakness is gone. Given decent supporting hardware AND software the Opteron can (and does) scale VERY well.

Partial list of advertisers, courtesy of Harvard
News story on Harvard wrestling with the then Gator corp

Microsoft have already filed patents for an algorithm that's required to use the next .doc format.

Also the techniques for decoding/encoding a JPEG file, and for encoding an MP3 file or GIF file, and for rendering a .ttf font as the font author intended, those things are well known for being patented already. People have been threatened, sued, and lost or settled over all those things.

File format patents are not new, and they're a serious problem already.

-- Jamie

MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs

Out of curosity, how old are you, and how long have you been using small / personal computers?

Oh, I'd say he's about 49 years old and has been using personal computers since 1981.

The only people who deny that Microsoft is a monopoly are Microsoft itself or its apologists. You can make the argument that the web browser SHOULD be part of the OS - after all, that's what Netscape was thinking at one point, to build a platform on the browser, and Mozilla has a good start in that direction - and you can make arguments against a number of the other cases that lead to the monopoly judgment; but you can't dismiss them all. Microsoft is a monopoly which has illegally leveraged that monopoly to drive competition out of most of the markets they've targeted. Those are the findings of fact produced by Penfield Jackson, a judge who was cherry-picked by MS after they claimed the previous judge, Daniel Sporkin, was biased against them; and then, of course, when Jackson judge ordered a break-up, Microsoft successfully got him dismissed for defending his ruling before the pro-Microsoft business press, helping Microsoft to stall the case long enough for a pro-MS administration to come in and pull the prosecution's fangs - as Jackson actually predicted (see the com.com link above)!

If the monopoly ruling had been used to enforce the imposition of standard formats for a handful of document types, to force MS to release their flagship applications for competing platforms, or best of all to divorce the applications product line from the platform product line via a break-up, we might see for all aspects of computing a degree of integration similar to what the web provides (common protocols that promote and ensure interoperability). Instead, we have hydraulic despotism - the entire world economy is beholden to Bill Gates' whims, because the only way a company can interoperate effectively with its corporate partners is through Microsoft on the desktop, and Microsoft on the desktop doesn't interoperate well with anything other than Microsoft on the network, except where Microsoft's competitors have made heroic efforts toward interoperability.

Looks like Sun's doing Intel favors too, killing their UltraSparc V processor today. Even after it taped out!

The Canon A60 has a huge amount of flash memory, so it records 3 minutes of continuous video before it has to stop and save the video to the CF card. Copying to CF is incredibly fast too, less than a second, so it must be caching it to the card or something, but that allows you to just start taking video again with that small ~1 second pause.

CNET really hated the SiPix DV100. They said the audio sucks, which explains why most the sample videos on firebox have music over the sound. I really feel sorry for the guy that took the Car ballet video, looks like he was on vacation when he took that, bet he was pretty upset when he got home and saw that horrible video quality and sound.

And don't tell me the videos had to be compressed for easy download, they're sample videos, they should be the best possibly quality to sell the product.

> I guess he based that on the fact that the transition from Half-Life to Unreal Tournament was a transition from OpenGL to D3D.

Yes, but did that transition occur because D3D was better, in terms of technology and economics?

Or was there, perhaps, an outside influence tipping the economic scale...

Microsoft eyeing Vivendi unit?

Has Microsoft bought Vivendi Games?

Microsoft / Vivendi rumours gather steam

I don't know if the purchase actually took place, but they were talking, and Vivendi was deeply in debt, and Microsoft had lots of monopoly-generated cash. I think it's safe to assume that some sort of payoff occurred.

It is also widely believed that when Microsoft joined the OpenGL committee, it was for the purpose of sabotaging, and slowing down the technology.

That last bit is easy to believe, because it's the normal way that Microsoft operates. For example, consider these tidbits from the DOJ case Findings of Fact:

Microsoft's Jim Allchin, in a note to Gates:

> "I am positive that we must do a direct attack on Sun (and probably Oracle).... Between ourselves and our partners, we can certainly hurt their (certainly Sun's) revenue base.... We need to get Intel to help us."

Microsoft's Eric Engstrom describes Microsoft's goal as:

> "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows."

And Engstrom's proposed agreement with Intel:

> Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to NOT help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries. [emphasis/caps added]

So there you have a clear example of Microsoft using threats to sabotage open multimedia support.

If we want the PC to remain open (let alone the Internet), then we have to support technologies that don't come from Microsoft. In this case, it means supporting OpenGL, which is not hard to do, because it's a great technology.

Yeah, that was Morpheus, back in 2000.

sry, bad url...

here's the updated one on news.com

It's also on news.com
(thx to [H]ardOCP)

but yea, it'll help reduce resistance as lead isn't that good of a conductor of electricity (nor heat) compared to other metals (silver, copper, aluminum).
Considering that the Prescotts can draw enough power to kill some motherboards, reducing power consumption is a good thing, as Prescotts have been reported as having really good "potential".
Added benefit of reducing resistance is the reduction in the propagantional delay of the gates, which translates to better clocks or the capability for better clocks as the gates aren't as slow.

The disadvantage is the added cost and time, and whether or not using leadfree solder changes failure ratios. Typically, leadfree solder melts at a slightly higher temperature. Higher temps may adversely affect the silicon or affect the equipment (assuming they aren't retrofitted to handle the new solder).

But if it can get the green monkeys off Intel's backs, it might help reduce costs overall.

As always, time will tell.

Linux to power most Motorola phones

Their logic seems to be windows IP will bolster Solaris!?! Wow.

Betcha microsoft or some exec who gets a bonus paid for that report.

I would love to hear from you what problems you have had with the Macintosh RealPlayer that you downloaded. We are working hard towards the next version of the OSX player and would love your feedback to improve our user experience.

I must say, this is possibly the very first time as the Program Manager of the Mac OSX RealPlayer product that I heard that it was obnoxious! I would be very curious to know why you think that, and if the other Mac users here feel the same way.

For those who are interested in reviews of the Mac version of the RealPlayer here are some:
Version Tracker
Download.com

You will notice that the OSX RealPlayer has excellent user feedback and reviews. The few negative ratings were for older and legacy players.

I try hard to help make software that I (and we) enjoy using. I would really appreciate if you made sure you had all the facts before being nasty to products that developers and designers have worked really hard for.

-V

There have been. For instance, there was a version of Eudora that came with PGP. There is the theory that the US govt (but also most others) have done everything they can to discourage cryptography in mainstream aplications, to make their spying on the public easier. There was the whole "cryptography as munitions" idiocy, for instance, so you have to click buttons stating "I am not a terrorist", "I don't live in North Korea" before downloading or installing crypto.

See PGP deep-freezed - NAI shrugs: "John Ashcroft has been drumming the beat recently, reminding the tech industry that a 'lucrative surveillance state' (in our Tom's words) can be built from the ashes of the September 11 attacks. This obviously doesn't extend to personal privacy software. Are we the only people who find the neglect of PGP somewhat fishy?"

...try this, from good o'l News.com: Moving to Linux May Not Save Money -- Yet .

I was just mulling over the thought of installing the new Real Player to see if they got over the insane tentacleware complex they seem to have given RP9. According to the reviews on download.com, apparently not. Looks like it'll continue to be Real Alternative for me!

Anyone remember the Imatec patent lawsuit (dismissed) against Apple, seeking $1.1billion for ColorSync?

Actually, an early test version of the OS was released on the Internet, so I'm assuming that these people have the test copy version and are playing around with it to create their own skins.

Sun's statements have been a bit more subtle than SCO's (that's not too tough), but they have certainly made no bones about throwing FUD towards Linux.

Check out this article from immediately after SCO announced the lawsuit. McNealy was immediately commenting on their licensing position, FUD about an audit committee, and another wonderful FUD inspiring comment: "We think open source is wonderful and good, but we also believe in copyright and the rule of law,".

Contrast that to the comments from HP: "HP is unaware of any intellectual property infringement within Linux." And, Larry Ellison was already connecting Microsoft to the effort..

Sun is now getting close to the world's largest vendor of a Linux distribution

I have seen this claim before, but I have not seen any statistics that support this. This article from a year ago has Sun at a tiny fraction of the Linux sales of IBM, Dell, or HP. This article reporting on Q4'03 sales has similat stats, with HP, IBM, and Dell way out in front of everyone else. The only articles I found that gave Sun a decent percentage were those reporting UNIX sales, where Sun's SPARC/Solaris systems were counted. I'm not sure what the China agreement will amount to, but Linux systems have been available from Walmart for a long time, and they have not sold well at all.

And, I agree with your assessment of Sun's sales over the internet bubble, and how it changed. But, I see that as the reason for their spewing FUD about Linux, not the reason they are embracing it.

Basically, Sun sees the trends, which have been building for years, and they see that they can try to embrace it or be steamrolled by it. But, like Sun's previous Linux efforts over the years, it's half assed. They say "buy our Linux desktop" in one breath, then spread anti-Linux FUD in the next.. I don't see that as a recipe for success.

Sun's statements have been a bit more subtle than SCO's (that's not too tough), but they have certainly made no bones about throwing FUD towards Linux.

Check out this article from immediately after SCO announced the lawsuit. McNealy was immediately commenting on their licensing position, FUD about an audit committee, and another wonderful FUD inspiring comment: "We think open source is wonderful and good, but we also believe in copyright and the rule of law,".

Contrast that to the comments from HP: "HP is unaware of any intellectual property infringement within Linux." And, Larry Ellison was already connecting Microsoft to the effort..

Sun is now getting close to the world's largest vendor of a Linux distribution

I have seen this claim before, but I have not seen any statistics that support this. This article from a year ago has Sun at a tiny fraction of the Linux sales of IBM, Dell, or HP. This article reporting on Q4'03 sales has similat stats, with HP, IBM, and Dell way out in front of everyone else. The only articles I found that gave Sun a decent percentage were those reporting UNIX sales, where Sun's SPARC/Solaris systems were counted. I'm not sure what the China agreement will amount to, but Linux systems have been available from Walmart for a long time, and they have not sold well at all.

And, I agree with your assessment of Sun's sales over the internet bubble, and how it changed. But, I see that as the reason for their spewing FUD about Linux, not the reason they are embracing it.

Basically, Sun sees the trends, which have been building for years, and they see that they can try to embrace it or be steamrolled by it. But, like Sun's previous Linux efforts over the years, it's half assed. They say "buy our Linux desktop" in one breath, then spread anti-Linux FUD in the next.. I don't see that as a recipe for success.

It's been done. As far as I am concerned anyway. You can remove the DRM in purchaced WMA's in napster by using Jetaudio. Heres the tut from a post (by HMyers012683) in the napster forum:

How to unDRM the WMA file using Jetaudio.

***How Jetaudio works*** Jetaudio loads the key. If the key is not a temp key, It intergrates the key with the file. Leaving the file decrypted.

1. find a copy of jetaudio v5.1.10.3124 not 6.0 (or contact me it is freeware/ completely legal to share :D) try here I won't tell from who I will not give out software to people I think are going to break the law.
*new* 1.a Do not update to 6.0
2. create New folder in "My Music" named unDRM'd
3. Start Jetaudio
4. Hit Conversion tab at top of player
5. ON convert screen hit add files... tab
6. Search "my music" folder for the music that was purchased
7. After selected hit open button
8. Set output format to WMA- Windows Media Audio
9. Hit config... button next tooutput type
10. set profiles to 128Kbps Stereo
11. make sure protected content is unchecked
12. hit OK
13. hit start on convert screen
14. when complete hit close on convert screen *******This only works with purchased music*********

Anyway, I've done it, it seems to work, I'm happy.