Slashdot Mirror

Adobe turns its back on Mac again

Adobe Systems announced on Tuesday that it plans to drop the Mac version of FrameMaker, the latest sign of eroding support for the Apple Computer operating system.

passport compromised
beta place compromised
ms internal network compromised

Even if you get the 100-year renewel, Verisign could still give it away. They've got a history of not properly authenticating transfer requests, so you're not really buying any piece of mind.

Still, it's not as bad as this slashdotting. Five days now and counting.

Ok guys, time to confess. Who is sieging the RIAA website? It's been down for 5 days.

VeriSign is selling the functional equivalent of a lifetime registration.

You know, like US copyright law.

Sure, it's not for every domain, but $1000 for 100 years of not having to rely on the kindness of others (who may even hate you) because the boneheads in your internet services division let your company's registration lapse is dirt cheap. It probably won't sell like hotcakes, but jalapeno poppers isn't out of the question. Speaking corporately, it's a lot cheaper than lawyers and bribes you'd need to fund to win your lost domain back. ;)

VeriSign is selling the functional equivalent of a lifetime registration.

You know, like US copyright law.

Sure, it's not for every domain, but $1000 for 100 years of not having to rely on the kindness of others (who may even hate you) because the boneheads in your internet services division let your company's registration lapse is dirt cheap. It probably won't sell like hotcakes, but jalapeno poppers isn't out of the question. Speaking corporately, it's a lot cheaper than lawyers and bribes you'd need to fund to win your lost domain back. ;)

Here's a short list: For lying and stealing DOS For stealing code from Stac Electronics For stealing the NT kernel destroying Netscape via monopoly tactics even if AOL caved in. For pulling the same crap with Real Networks For ripping off customers and makeing "90%+ margins" on what is Insecure by Design. Seriously. I know we live in an Enron world and any given company is about as honest as the politicians they buy off, but just look at the track record. These guys are serious slimeballs. Period. And the list above doesn't even cover how they screwed over Apple, used university resources in the early days to pursue a commercial venture.

Here's a short list: For lying and stealing DOS For stealing code from Stac Electronics For stealing the NT kernel destroying Netscape via monopoly tactics even if AOL caved in. For pulling the same crap with Real Networks For ripping off customers and makeing "90%+ margins" on what is Insecure by Design. Seriously. I know we live in an Enron world and any given company is about as honest as the politicians they buy off, but just look at the track record. These guys are serious slimeballs. Period. And the list above doesn't even cover how they screwed over Apple, used university resources in the early days to pursue a commercial venture.

The current ruling could set a useful precedent... with someone finally having the guts to intervene against illegal abuse of monopolies, Microsoft may finally have to pay for the damage it has done to the software industry and users

This borders on the apocryphal.

Why would Bill Gates even have a credit card in his own name?

And why in hell would he use it online, instead of a one-time electronic transaction instrument?

And just what was he buying?

...But unfotunately the RIAA record companies are not working in a free market, but are a cartel successfully sued for conspiring to fix prices. All the music stores are pricing around $1/song, and it's common knowledge that the stores, such as iTunes, aren't making any money at that price. So I wouldn't hold out for further discounts.

A friend of mine thought he was gonna get rich when he was the manufacturer's rep for a product called The Mind Drive. You could use your thoughts to "think right or left" and these thoughts would register in your finget and be transmitted to the screen as you slalom down a ski slope. It was actually pretty cool Here is a CNET article from 1995. The Mind Drive

There has not been ONE single Linux virus that has propagted in the wild

You mean apart from the Ramen Worm?

In fact wasn't that the first effective worm on the net? One that affected only Red Hat Linux systems?

Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?

This is nothing new. Leigh Stivers of DP Technology, researching in the wake of ILOVEYOU from May 2000, demonstrated in the fall of that same year that anything goes with poor products like Microsoft Outlook.

This revelation, like ILOVEYOU and all that followed, did nothing to move the masses away from their bad habits. AnnaK followed, and after that things only got worse, and still we find people trying to batten down the hatches and still use Outlook and Swiss cheese Microsoft technology.

So how do you avoid threats like these new Bagles? Easy. You stop using Windows because you're supposed to be smarter than that at this point in time - after getting the shit kicked out of you for four years straight.

Second, if you're simply too lame to abandon your beloved Windows, then you at least abandon Outlook and all IE-related email technologies such as Eudora. Any email client relying on Internet Explorer is a sitting duck, and you know it.

I am not telling anyone anything they do not already know; even posing such a question - 'how in heavens will we protect ourselves now?' - is so lame it's beyond description.

The Bagles are hardly the worst threat right now anyway. Phatbot is out there, harvesting machines like they're going out of style, and coming ever closer to the first million mark. This is outright organised crime. The machines are left as backdoored P2P bots and can harvest bank account details, credit card details, passwords all over the place, and the corrupted machines can be used in further spam attacks - where the unwitting, claiming ignorance and helplessness, go ahead and click on things and use Windows and Outlook and then ask 'how can we protect ourselves?'

It's not interesting anymore. There's no point in trying to help those who categorically refuse to help themselves and take the necessary steps to be safe. The only concern, voiced for years now, is that these ignoramuses are ruining the Internet for the rest of us - and that is a very real and very justified concern.

A chip technology that will be available within five years, code-named Vanderpool, will allow users to partition the processor inside their computers. In a demonstration, Otellini used a PC to beam an episode of "The Simpsons" to a plasma TV, while another Intel executive booted and rebooted a game with the same machine.

From here

Will the Toshiba actually reach the wrist of Slashdot user? It doesn't matter anymore, because of the invention of a little piece of plastic: the cell-phone belt clip. While wearing a PalmPilot makes one a first-class geek, even women now wear cell phones on their belts. The cell phone is the new standard for socially acceptable portable computing, not the Dick Tracy wristwatch.

All thanks to a little piece of plastic.

blackice or norton internet security...

Flaw stymies Norton Internet Security

"Knife the baby" is actually Apple's term, not Microsoft.

Kinfe The Baby

Tevanian claimed Microsoft's Christopher Phillips had told Apple executive Peter Hoddie that the company should back away from QuickTime.

Tevanian told the court: "Mr. Hoddie said, 'Do you want us to knife the baby?,'" referring to QuickTime. "And Mr. Phillips said, 'Yes we're talking about knifing the baby.'"

But Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said AOL's intentions are good, but blocking Web sites is "paternalistic." She said she worries that system could be abused by someone seeking to block a rival's Web site by spamming AOL members with that link.

Nah... just nuke SCO first as they have sent letters to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, per a News.com.com article. :)

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens Micr

(There is a knock at my door. A SCO process server has handed me a cease and desist order to the effect that, in fact, SCO does have a monopoly on innovation. I stand corrected.)

Kudos to Opera for not bailing on the Mac in the face of competition from Apple. Must be nice knowing you have bigger cojones than Adobe.

It's not gonna happen.

Actually, while this is probably unknown around Slashdot, a group can damn well fix prices if they want, it's completely legal.

Oh I'm you are right.

Actually, while this is probably unknown around Slashdot, a group can damn well fix prices if they want, it's completely legal.

Oh I'm you are right.

Actually, while this is probably unknown around Slashdot, a group can damn well fix prices if they want, it's completely legal.

Oh I'm you are right.

News.com

I remember when Steve Jobs came back and Apple revoked all the licenses of the "Mac Clones" (see: UMAX 1998 Article that were in the market and then "woosh" magically Apple's profits increased it shipped more computers and was "regaining marketshare". January 19th Article on "Big Jump" in Apple profits.

What did Apple Claim:
"The strong sales combined with internal market research "makes it clear our products are reaching many new customers beyond Apple's installed base," said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO." Bullshit. Apple was simply picking up all the business it "lost" to the clone manufacturers it had previously licensed.

Apple sits in an precarious position.
It is dependent upon an outside source for CPUs - and that's fine its competitors are as well - but its dependent upon different uncompatible cpus.

It competes with Microsoft & Linux for market/mind-share in the Software Arena.

It competes with Creative/Sony in the consumer device arena.

The list goes on... Apple is quick becoming the jack of all trades and master of none. Apple needs to refocus on A strength instead of trying to tackle everyone/everything under the sun.

I remember when Steve Jobs came back and Apple revoked all the licenses of the "Mac Clones" (see: UMAX 1998 Article that were in the market and then "woosh" magically Apple's profits increased it shipped more computers and was "regaining marketshare". January 19th Article on "Big Jump" in Apple profits.

What did Apple Claim:
"The strong sales combined with internal market research "makes it clear our products are reaching many new customers beyond Apple's installed base," said Fred Anderson, Apple's CFO." Bullshit. Apple was simply picking up all the business it "lost" to the clone manufacturers it had previously licensed.

Apple sits in an precarious position.
It is dependent upon an outside source for CPUs - and that's fine its competitors are as well - but its dependent upon different uncompatible cpus.

It competes with Microsoft & Linux for market/mind-share in the Software Arena.

It competes with Creative/Sony in the consumer device arena.

The list goes on... Apple is quick becoming the jack of all trades and master of none. Apple needs to refocus on A strength instead of trying to tackle everyone/everything under the sun.

However, OS X discourages users from running applciations as root or administrator, so what a virus can actually do when running on a BSD-based OS X system is far less harmful that what a virus is free to accomplish on XP.

I don't think that's true. After all, an app doesn't need admin privs to go into someone's address book and email copies of itself (or even random shit in the user's Documents folder) to everyone.

On the bright side, I think you could argue Mac users are smarter than Windows people and are therefore less likely to blindly open executables in their inbox. Oh, and Mail.app gives you a stern warning before you can open an executable attachment. So maybe it's not all brains.

yours

Look. TiVo won't die. So the reviewer says he likes ReplayTV better and that TiVo won't dominate the market in years to come.

But that's ok.

Consider the home PVR market. By all accounts, it's a growing market. In years to come, let's say that it's a $10B market. Even with just 10% market share, that's $1B. Not chump change.

Honestly it's like saying AOL will die. Fading into obscurity, being obsolete, etc are not equivalent to dying. Last time I checked, AOL still had 24.3 million subscribers. All joking aside, let's assume 20m actually pay. That is still $400m/MONTH which is a CASH stream that I dare not to cough at.

In January, Bryan Peebler, market development manager in the emerging platforms lab at Intel, stated in a News.com story entitled, "Intel, Microsoft push portable video":

Some manufacturers are tinkering with machines (PVP) that will include small screens and could cost $199, while others are considering $399 boxes that tout larger screens and hard drives and more memory."

At CES, I conducted video interviews with reps from both Microsoft and Intel. When they were pressed on PVP retail price points the amounts were between $399-$599.
New Digital Reporter
NDR LiveJournal (Jan. 04)

I also recorded several audio interviews with Pacific Rim PVP manufacturers. Reps said that OEM FOB Hong Kong pricing was between $260-$399.

Portable Media Centers are scheduled to be lanuched in the US around May (E3).

We don't have to long a wait before all this "talk becomes a walk".

A while ago Microsoft was considering purchasing Google. On the other hand AOL has right to buy nearly 2 million Google shares. If MS buys AOL then, by implication, MS has the same right ...

ZDnet has a similar blurb.

Nobody ever seems to put this together but everytime Apple makes a threat to port their OS to x86 hardware, Microsoft makes some sort of "investment" and they quietly drop the plan. Microsoft is actually Apple's savior and will be as long as x86 is there for the taking.

Remember Yellow Box? Remember the Microsoft investment?

Apple on Intel would have several hundred of my dollars, if they'd ever release it.

Bill Gates and Microsoft will save them.
like he did the last time.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said today that the software giant will invest $150 million in Apple and will develop and ship future versions of its Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and development tools for the Macintosh.

Gotta keep that second platform for Microsoft office open for business!

Microsoft "iPod Killer" to launch this year.

Excuse me whilst I laugh. I'm laughing now.

Remember when Microsoft positioned Windows 2000 Datacenter Server as a "mainframe killer"? I remember a lot of sysadmins laughing back then. Microsoft sold fewer than 1,000 copies of Datacenter Server before withdrawing it from the market.

Apple has solved the problem of how to play digital media on the go. They can build their empire on that, and that alone.

The thing is, web browsing is usually pull based, and email attatchments are push, so I think problems would still spread less.

oh boy... are you clueless or what... the latest worms are pull based with no attachments and just a carefully crafted link to the payload on the compromised machine that sent out the email...

"The latest Bagle incarnation has done away with the attachment altogether and spreads when a vulnerable user opens the e-mail using an unpatched version of Microsoft Outlook. If their Outlook preview pane is open, the victim's machine will be compromised automatically. Because of this change in tactics, experts fear the worm could spread very quickly.

Sophos's senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley, said: "This is a really sneaky, cunning trick. It's exploiting a five- or six-month-old Outlook security vulnerability so that just previewing an e-mail--not the attachment--in an unpatched copy of Outlook will result in the virus being dragged from an infected machine to your machine. This has the potential to spread very quickly because so many people, particularly home users, have not applied the patches.""

Bill Gurley made a case 4 years ago that still reads well today. regarding. He predicts the effects of not only broadbandization but other Moore's Law consequences on music sharing.

http://news.com.com/2102-1071_3-281302.html?tag=st .util.print

The second article (mentioned here) contains this statistic.

dell are already giving the option of having a usb keychain instead of a floppy. there was also a case study in dell site where they tell about General motors or general electric (not sure which) requesting usb keychains instead of floppy drives. so floppy is on the way out. but its not there yet. floppy can still be usefull when u have a dead system and need to copy a 15 kb document from it.

Here's what I've heard on the street, and I could be highly inaccurate, but here it is anyway:

Some weeks ago, CNet came out with an article on localization, using Rwanda as an example.

Within a day or two, Microsoft had reps in that country, and offered the government all the MS software it wanted at $2 (US equiv) a CD. Also, resellers would get a sweet deal, to either increase profits there, or lower the cost of computers.

So, news of providing hooks to make locally localized versions seems natural. Microsoft isn't stupid, and it isn't sleeping either. These are decidedly tactical moves.

You can look at it this way, also: Competition between Linux and MSoft is resulting in a boon to poor countries: much cheaper software.

I think the problem is not so much with the wiretapping itself, which they can already do by installing a packet sniffer onto any of the systems between client and host, but with the requirement that ISPs bend over backwards to provide the FBI with easy access to people's communications. According to this story, the law could go so far as to require software makers to build back doors into server software. Can you imagine what would happen to P2P apps like Freenet if developers were required to introduce back doors into the code?

Personally, I think one of the worst ideas is to tie your software and hardware directly together, as Sun has. Their hardware is way behind the times (too slow, and too expensive). It's better to use Linux as a way to lower overall system cost and say, "hey, now you can get a computer for $199!"

Some people think that Sun does have a future as a hardware manufacturer, but I think I will have to agree with the article, they can't win the fight against being squeezed out of the market by cheap Intel/AMD servers running Linux (or Windows..).

They really have to decide where they are going, and find a new way to earn money. I think Java is their best bet. I HOPE they will do something like IBM, and jump on the Linux bandwagon as the main platform for Java. Still, finding a steady and large revenue stream from that could be difficult. I suspect they get some from Websphere and the other one (forget what its called), and maybe some from selling courses in Java, but that can't be enough. If they started charging money for using Java I think they would discover that their customer loyalty would evaporate pretty quickly.

I suspect some people here on Slashdot will crow about the problems Sun is going through, but consider that Sun has actually been good for the Open Source world. If it wasn't for the fact that it is a cheap Java platform, Linux would not be as widespread as it is in the business world. Also, they gave us Open Office, and participates and even sponsors a number of Open Source projects. Ant, GNOME, Tomcat, GNUlpr, Open Office... Sure, most projects are Java related, but that is understandable and it is still more than most of the big companies have given us.

Well, if they die, it will be interesting to see what happens with Java. Perhaps they will Open Source it completely, if not out of the goodness of their hearts, then at least as a poison pill against Microsoft...

This is a good idea, and both Windows and to a lesser extent OS X have it already.

Please explain how Microsoft Windows has it to even the slightest extent.

As far as I can tell, each Windows application comes with its own custom installer/uninstaller (except when they don't). You can't say "Windows has it" when the feature isn't supplied by the OS but by each individual app.

The only minor amount of support Windows gives is a list where "installed uninstallers" can register themselves to show up in Add/Remove programs.

standardised method of package management that at MINIMUM can support the same features that Windows XP/2000 has today.

Again, I'm completely at a loss to find any package management features in Windows. Is this something new for XP? To me it looks like installers just copy whatever files they need to C:\Progra~1 and C:\Windows\System32 and be done with it. (It's really a little more sophisticated, as there's a level of indirection to allow for i18n and drives other than C:, but thats barely notable).

The reason Microsoft Windows often doesn't exhibit the symptoms of poor/nonexistent package management is there's only one provider for the OS, so the layout differences between two Windows installs are trivial compared to how a SUSE and Gentoo box might differ (while both being viable Linux desktop systems)

Instead of trying to make the spammers do something to help us--which they clearly have no incentive to do--why not get spam-lovers to help? We can set up some standard place for people like this guy--say, a specific domain (gimmespam.com? ibuyeverything.com?). Anyone could get an email account there; maybe it would even be a Yahoo! Mail-like webmail service.

Only one problem: who will pay for this?

Die-hard spammers have already tried to divert spam to willing recipients, paying people to receive advertisements, and it failed. So long as cost-shifting their advertisements makes them money, spammers will continue to spew unsolicited junk to unwilling recipients.

She's already shipped our jobs overseas. Why not ship Linux computers?

Fiorina also said the company would increase its outsourcing efforts, but more for processes such as accounting. Most of HP's manufacturing is already outsourced.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-270614.html?legacy=c net

read about it here

Well, let's see. There's the RIAA possibly having a big hand in writing California's policy on P2P. Then there's antitrust exemption. There's also the DMCA, which among other things give the RIAA the power to issue supoenas. So I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest the government is "hand-holding".

On the other hand, there are also many examples of Senators and Congressmen who oppose the RIAA approach and these laws. So it's not a black-and-white issue of where the government stands.