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According to this cnetreport, any Linux user will receive a similar suit, reguardless of libraries.

People bitch about a left wing media conspiracy, but it's not left vs right, it's something else entirely. But what, I'm not sure.

File-swap 'killer' grabs attention
Last modified: March 3, 2004, 4:00 AM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

A new political battle is brewing over Net music swapping, focusing on a company that claims to be able to automatically identify copyrighted songs on networks like Kazaa and block illegal downloads.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic has been making the rounds of Washington, D.C., legislative and regulatory offices for the last month, showing off technology it says can sit inside peer-to-peer software and automatically stop swaps of copyrighted music from artists such as Britney Spears or Outkast.

The company's technology is still being tested and could yet prove unworkable. But limited demonstrations have already turned some heads in legislative offices.

"It is definitely something that is interesting to people on (Capitol) Hill," said one senior congressional staffer who had seen the demonstration and requested anonymity. "We are open to all kinds of different solutions at this point. Having the technological ability to do this certainly opens up some opportunities."

Audible Magic has predictably become a protege of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has helped the company gain entree to official Washington circles. The group says Audible Magic's technology, or something like it, should be adopted by file-swapping companies if they are serious about not supporting widespread copyright infringement.

The RIAA's backing, and the month-long press tour, has given the technology new credibility in legislative, regulatory and university circles. After watching a demonstration at RIAA headquarters in late January, University of Rochester Provost Chuck Phelps said he instructed his technology staff to evaluate the technology for use on his campus.

The RIAA isn't pressing for legislation or enforced usage of Audible Magic's software, at least not yet. Indeed, in an election year, any serious congressional attention to the issue is unlikely. But peer-to-peer companies are keenly aware of the potential for political strong arming--and of the threat it poses to the world of file swapping.

Privacy advocates and file-swapping backers have been deeply critical of any technology that would enforce monitoring or blocking of file swapping or any other Internet service. They argue that filters could infringe on free speech and block technological innovation, all to serve the entertainment industry's relatively narrow interests.

Nevertheless, the vast popularity of file-swapping networks like Kazaa remains largely based on trades of copyrighted songs, videos and software, according to many Net analysts. Being forced to install song-stopping filters inside software such as Kazaa--much as a court required of Napster in its heyday--could severely disrupt the ability of file swappers to freely trade songs.

In past months, peer-to-peer executives including Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming have repeatedly told legislators that it was technically impossible or infeasible to install adequate filtering systems on their networks. Now some are switching focus, saying that even if filtering is technically possible, mandating it would be a disastrous mistake.

Requiring filters "would amount to the anointment of a specific technology as the winner in what the (recording) industry has made a file-sharing war," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a file-swapping company trade association. "It is time that (the entertainment industry) be politely told that theirs is not the only social and economic interest at stake."

P2P United members have not seen Audible Magic's technology, Eisgrau noted. His group sent letters to RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol and Audible Magic earlier in the week asking for a demonstration.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Bainwol said he would b

The article:

SCO files suit against AutoZone
Last modified: March 3, 2004, 4:42 AM PST
By Mike Ricciuti
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

SCO alleges that AutoZone "violated SCO's Unix copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary Unix System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights," according to a statement from the company.

Memphis, Tenn.-based AutoZone has about 3,000 stores nationwide. Company representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, requests injunctive relief against AutoZone's further use or copying of any part of SCO's copyrighted materials and also requests damages as a result of AutoZone's infringement in an amount to be proven at trial.

Separately, the company announced Wednesday a wider loss for its fiscal first quarter. The company said its net loss, after paying preferred dividends, was $2.25 million, or 16 cents per share, compared with a loss of $724,000, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue for the quarter, which ended Jan. 31, fell to $11.4 million from $13.5 million in the same period a year ago.

SCO said it will further discuss the lawsuit later Wednesday as part of its earnings call.

SCO may file other suits. On Tuesday, a company representative said there was a "high possibility" that the company would announce two suits on Wednesday.

Lawsuits have long been expected. SCO Chief Executive Darl McBride announced on Monday plans to file a suit, but he didn't identify the company. SCO threatened in November to sue Linux users, although it missed a self-imposed mid-February deadline to do so.

SCO, which owns a disputed amount of Unix intellectual property, inherited the agreements by which inventor AT&T and its successors licensed the operating system to IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Graphics, numerous universities and others. SCO has sued IBM for more than $5 billion in damages, alleging Big Blue violated its Unix contract by moving Unix technology to Linux that it should have kept secret.

IBM denies wrongdoing and has countersued SCO for patent infringement. Meanwhile, Novell, a previous Unix owner, claims it owns Unix copyrights, forcing SCO to sue to establish ownership. And Linux seller Red Hat has sued SCO to try to establish that Linux doesn't violate SCO copyrights or trade secrets.

SCO argues that companies must pay for a SCO intellectual property license to use Linux and thus avoid legal action--a license that costs $699 for a single-processor server. On Monday, EV1Servers.net became the first company to acknowledge signing up for the program.

Story at:

http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5168670.html

" AskJeeves will stop accepting advertiser payments for inclusion in its searchable Web database, a move to draw competitive lines between it and Yahoo's new search engine."

Apparently paid a million or more of but had access to a ten million
legal defense fund, so I think this is a more likely explanation.

Give this company no peace, something has passed under the table.

The simple fact stands that they have been the only people who have chosen to support what appears to be a SCO, an apparently criminal organisation. They have been the people who have sent people to be in a press conference with SCO.

On Zdnet we can find that their CEO, "Marsh was in San Francisco on Monday with SCO Group CEO Darl McBride".

Do not just boycott EV1. Boycott anybody who remains their customer after next month. Contact anyone you know who works with EV1 and tell them you do not believe in supporting SCO extortion.

Knowingly supporting such activities is in its self bad. Buying from thieves causes theft.

Unlikely - according to this article. The easiest thing for SCO to do is to sue a small company who can't afford to fight back (i.e. a protracted court case would kill their cashflows). Get a nominal out of court settlement and seal the details under the terms of the settlement. Gives them a 'win' that they feel will add legitimacy / publicity to their main case.

What I find interesting is that they are (apparently) planning to sue one of their own customers! How stupid would anyone have to be to sign a contract with them?

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5167829.html?tag=s t_lh

The first target will be a company that has a Unix license from SCO already, giving SCO some contractual leverage in the case. McBride said. In addition, the suit will involve copyright infringement claims.

A CEO buys an SCO/Linux license.

> And SCO is suing for three billion.

$5 billion

I find it interesting that according to the "conservative think tank The Progress & Freedom Foundation" government is supposed to "avoid entering markets where there are already private firms actively competing" yet in areas such as public education are expected to run more like businesses by controlling costs through program and staff cuts and so on.

C'mon now guys; you can't have it both ways. If you want them to act like businesses, you have to expect that they will explore "innovative options" like building their own fibre network and selling the excess bandwidth. That's just what a business would do in a similar situation, right?

If what you said is true then HP and IBM must be piling on some staggering loses given that they reported $2.5B and $1B of Linux revenue respectively in 2003 and 2002. Also, RedHat *never* stated they dropped their non-enterprise product line because it was losing money (revenue - expenses), they did it to focus on the enterprise market with subscription based support. Besides, RedHat still pushes it's Linux Enterprise Workstation as "ideal for all desktop deployments" right here.

If the Linux desktop is unviable, why did Novell just purchase SuSE and why did Sun roll out the Linux based JDS? To spite MS? It seems ironic that in these days of cost cutting and doing anything possible to boost stock prices that struggling companies like Novell and Sun would squander resources trying to "put some hurt" on MS. So, I'll take your wager on them "hemmoraging" cash, post detailed evidence in support please.

Well, IIRC, Ballmer has done as much....

And Ballmer is his right hand man....
And here is a short article about Craig Mundie, a MS VP for sales, acting in an official manner, where he says that OpenSource is un-American, ruins your company, and destroys intellectual property.
MS Blather
This is an official viewpoint, and I'm sure Gates sees things the same way-----

They actually are fairly good mirror images....One of them just has a better PR department

In fact, here is a link where Gates says that 'Open Source' and the GPL "destroy the ecosystem" that is the world of software.

And all that Jazz

Nope nope nope. The press release doesn't have a dollar figure. The CNET story says they got "high-volume discount". They didn't pay anything close to $699... don't be so stupid to assume the worst in every SCO release.

Title: Why Linux will conquer the world - Expanded AntiFUD

EXPANDED DRAFT.

PREFACE

This is an extended version of a reply to John Carroll's article... (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-958923.html) My original reply matched John Carroll's article style and language in a attempt to create a side by side comparative document as a measure of the credibility of each sides argument. This extended edition incorporates my responses to the criticism John made concerning the original reply. It is still a draft, but please feel free to adapt and adopt the content and republish at will.

Why Linux will conquer the world

By David Mohring
Special to anyone willing to publish it.

September 28, 2002,

COMMENTARY--. GNU/Linux clearly bears a strong resemblance to Unix. It offers many of the same features, while adding interesting additions of its own ( free licensing, open sourced development, etc).

With the Linux platform the open source/free software community has already created a cross-market software unification infrastructure better than Microsoft has ever had ( or is ). This has result in rapid expansion in Linux's popularity which has eaten into Microsoft server market share as Linux also grows toward taking over the governmental,enterprise, desktop and development world.

There are a number of reasons for this:

1. The breadth of Linux's market presence.

Due to the liberal nature in which Linux is licensed, any real measurements of Linux's current level of deployment is as difficult to determine as the real number computers running pirated versions of Microsoft windows.

Trying to measure the current level of Linux deployment based around the number of computers/servers sold with operating systems installed is flawed. Linux based solutions are often efficient enough to be deployed on pre-existing hardware, whereas Microsoft is dropping support for NT4 and a Windows2000/XP based solutions almost always have a higher level of minimum requirements to do the same job. Also unlike Microsoft OEM license releases, there is no price advantage to purchasing the Linux with the computer, and Evans Data survey discloses that a full 38.9% of new Linux hardware deployments is assembled from parts. (http://www.evansdata.com/computer.htm)

The one exception to measuring the level of Linux based deployments is publicly accessible and query-able Internet servers. In the netcraft September 2001 web server survey. Linux based servers occupy 30% of the market compared to Microsoft's IIS webserver's 27.46% share. As of August 2002, the open source Apache webserver has 63.51% share compared to Microsoft's IIS 25.39%.

Even so, You would be hard pressed to find a software or hardware market where Linux does not have a rapidly increasing presence. Linux works on obsolete hardware (so you needn't throw the hardware away), common modern PC hardware, prototype wrist watchs,PDAs, the Playstation, PlaystationII, Dreamcast and even the XBox consoles, IBM mainframes, massive clusters, and a number of supercomputers . Linux runs on a vast number of different CPU chips, including the x86, Intel Itanium, AMD Hammer, ARM, Alpha, IBM AS/400, SPARC, MIPS, 68k, and Power PC. Linux securely hosts many databases, webservers, file and print servers, from many vendors, scaling both in price and ease, according to need. Linux now has two fully interoperating desktop systems and Libraries, KDE and GNOME, the latters Accessabilty Toolkit with the OpenOffice.org office suite has been singled out in this year's "Helen Keller Achievement Award in Technology". (http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/09 /13/1955240) Many vendors are now coming out with Linux based

http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5167121.html

the specs say it does have the external hard drive function already, though. this was the main thing holding me back from getting a karma, and now it says they have it. do you know the specifics on this situation?

(This was also posted on my weblog, so my apologies for babbling about things most /.'ers would already know...)

I did wonder a bit about the G5/Xbox2 link back in November, when news first broke that the Xbox2 would likely be running on the G5 chip. At the time, I was idly wondering about the possibility of an Xbox emulator for the Mac (similar to Connectix' old Virtual Gamestation software that allowed Mac users to run Playstation games on their home computer).

Now, though, the news that the seeded G5's are running a custom NT kernel has me wondering along different lines.

In February of '03, Microsoft bought Virtual PC, the PC-emulation software for Macs that allows them to run Windows software inside an emulated PC. They've continued to support and update Virtual PC for the Mac, along with releasing Virtual PC for the PC, allowing Windows machines to run multiple virtual machines on one physical box handy for software testing purposes. Unfortunately, Virtual PC depends on a feature of earlier PowerPC processors that is not present in the G5, so there hasn't been a version of Virtual PC released yet that will run on Apple's flagship G5 desktop machines.

Last month, Microsoft announced that a new G5-compatible version of Virtual PC would be released along with Office 2004. Considering that the Xbox2 SDK is apparently running a customized NT kernel that runs on G5 systems, could some of those same customizations be worked into Virtual PC 7, making for a major speed increase, as more of the low-level code would be running natively on the Mac rather than having to pass through an emulator? I don't really know enough about the innards of how software like this works, so I could be entirely off-base here the differences between the emulation required for Virtual PC and the customizations needed to get the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor may have absolutely nothing in common but it was enough to get me wondering.

Even more interesting, though, would be if someone could leak some form of benchmarks, even rough ones, showing what kind of performance this customized NT kernel was getting on the SDK machines. I'm assuming it must be at least somewhat respectable, as the machines are being used for creating software for the Xbox2 but how respectable?

And going even more wildly out of the bounds of realityfor years now, there have been rumors of Apple porting the Mac OS to be able to run on Intel-based PCs (realistically, that's not likely to ever be released publicly, but the technology is there). However, what about going the other direction? What if Microsoft were to take these customizations to their kernel and and eventually supplant Virtual PC with an actual build of Longhorn for the G5, either as a "red box" that would allow you to run Windows applications concurrently with Mac OS X applications (we can already run Mac OS X apps, "Classic" Mac OS apps, Unix command-line apps, and Unix X-11 apps all at the same time as it is), or as a dual-boot option (Which OS would you like to run today)?

Likely? I seriously doubt it. But fun to play with.

And I'd still love to find out just how zippy those G5s are running NT. Wouldn't it be a fun little tweak if they were running as fast as (or faster, even) than high-end PCs?

I don't think Sony would like paying Microsoft royalties one bit on thier bread and butter.

Sony has invested heavily on the DVD format and is looking towards the future.

Remember Sony has a high aminosity towards Mircosoft due to circumstances in the set top box market and Sony's open support for linux.

Like in the Eric Frank Russell story "U-turn", "[m]ay you live in interesting times."

WASHINGTON--A federal judge has determined that Microsoft holds a monopoly in computer operating systems, strongly criticizing the company in a decisive statement that could signal the outcome of the landmark antitrust case.

Supoena!?!? Heck, why bother with all that paperwork?

A Judge told the FEDS to stop listening in to OnStar

...then slap yourself in the face for me and say, "Macs are not expensive."

Why is it then, that Apple's least expensive offering, the base eMac uses the G4 1 Ghz processor that debuted in Apples just over 2 years ago (January 28, 2002) and costs $799, while $599 on a Dell Dimension 2400 ($100 mail-in rebate brings final price to $499) gets you a processor (Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz) that debuted 1-1/2 years ago (August 26, 2002)?

That seems about the same, right... read on... for a comparison of the specs:

Sources: Apple Specs - Dell Specs - Dell E-Value Code: 6V212-D24TVP

Apple: 1 Ghz G4 (133mhz FSB) - Dell: 2.66 Ghz Pentium 4 (533mhz FSB)
Apple: 128 MB SDRAM (PC-133?) - Dell: 128 MB 333 Mhz DDR RAM
Apple: 40 GB HDD - Dell: 80 GB HDD (free upgrade)
Apple: 17 inch Flat CRT display (16 inch viewable) - Dell 17 inch CRT display (16 inch viewable)
Apple: ATI Radeon 7500 Integrated - Dell: Integrated Intel(R) 3D Extreme Graphics
Apple: Single Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) - Dell: Dual Drives: 48x CD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive
Apple: No charge ground shipping (two to five business days after shipment) - Dell: Free ground shipping (3-5 day)
Apple: N/A - Dell: $100 Mail in Rebate

With the exception of the Intel 3D "extreme" video card (maybe the same, but probably less desireable than the eMac's Radeon 7500) and the lack of standard DVD-ROM drive on the Dell (but it's only $30 extra by selecting this option: Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive [add $30 or $1/month1]) the Dell, for is definitely a comparable (probably a better) value for the hardware, dollar for dollar. Now, if we're talking $499 after a rebate for the Dell vs. $799 for the Apple, that's a $300 Apple premium on a low-end Apple vs. a low-end PC (by today's standards).

Putting $799 total into a PC would definitely get you far closer to today's cutting edge than $799 would in an Apple. CLEARLY, Apples ARE comparatively expensive (even the lowest end Apple IS expensive compared to a low end PC). Of course, Apple folks don't tend to buy them for the cheap prices so my post clearly just addresses purely monetary values you brought up (and comparison is how one generally determines what "expensive" means).

What strikes me is that, for the most part, Apples use more or less the same commodity hardware PC parts that drove PC prices into the gutter (except motherboards, processors, and special Apple versions of graphics cards (probably VERY similar to PC brehteren)) but they just cost more. Unless Apple is using uber-cool american master craftsmen to hand assemble these beauties (they are perty), which I somehow doubt... their origin is most likely very geographically similar to their PC brehteren, how can anyone call them any

...then slap yourself in the face for me and say, "Macs are not expensive."

Why is it then, that Apple's least expensive offering, the base eMac uses the G4 1 Ghz processor that debuted in Apples just over 2 years ago (January 28, 2002) and costs $799, while $599 on a Dell Dimension 2400 ($100 mail-in rebate brings final price to $499) gets you a processor (Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz) that debuted 1-1/2 years ago (August 26, 2002)?

That seems about the same, right... read on... for a comparison of the specs:

Sources: Apple Specs - Dell Specs - Dell E-Value Code: 6V212-D24TVP

Apple: 1 Ghz G4 (133mhz FSB) - Dell: 2.66 Ghz Pentium 4 (533mhz FSB)
Apple: 128 MB SDRAM (PC-133?) - Dell: 128 MB 333 Mhz DDR RAM
Apple: 40 GB HDD - Dell: 80 GB HDD (free upgrade)
Apple: 17 inch Flat CRT display (16 inch viewable) - Dell 17 inch CRT display (16 inch viewable)
Apple: ATI Radeon 7500 Integrated - Dell: Integrated Intel(R) 3D Extreme Graphics
Apple: Single Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) - Dell: Dual Drives: 48x CD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive
Apple: No charge ground shipping (two to five business days after shipment) - Dell: Free ground shipping (3-5 day)
Apple: N/A - Dell: $100 Mail in Rebate

With the exception of the Intel 3D "extreme" video card (maybe the same, but probably less desireable than the eMac's Radeon 7500) and the lack of standard DVD-ROM drive on the Dell (but it's only $30 extra by selecting this option: Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive [add $30 or $1/month1]) the Dell, for is definitely a comparable (probably a better) value for the hardware, dollar for dollar. Now, if we're talking $499 after a rebate for the Dell vs. $799 for the Apple, that's a $300 Apple premium on a low-end Apple vs. a low-end PC (by today's standards).

Putting $799 total into a PC would definitely get you far closer to today's cutting edge than $799 would in an Apple. CLEARLY, Apples ARE comparatively expensive (even the lowest end Apple IS expensive compared to a low end PC). Of course, Apple folks don't tend to buy them for the cheap prices so my post clearly just addresses purely monetary values you brought up (and comparison is how one generally determines what "expensive" means).

What strikes me is that, for the most part, Apples use more or less the same commodity hardware PC parts that drove PC prices into the gutter (except motherboards, processors, and special Apple versions of graphics cards (probably VERY similar to PC brehteren)) but they just cost more. Unless Apple is using uber-cool american master craftsmen to hand assemble these beauties (they are perty), which I somehow doubt... their origin is most likely very geographically similar to their PC brehteren, how can anyone call them any

While not exactly Windows, here's a flaw in MSN Explorer 8.5 that has been used since "sometime last year" by some clever folks in China to get free access to Premium services. This was just in the news today.

Ironic that the very day MS' security chief says there are essentially no zero day vulnerabilities being exploited until after a patch comes out, one is reported by news.com.com. :)

Here is one that CNET just announced today. Microsoft admits it has been vulnerable this whole year and they are working on a patch yet to be released.

I also saw the article at CNET

This, I believe, fits your description.

Consumer Reports consistently ranks Apple #1 in lowest incidence of repair and best support among all computer manufacturers.

Most recent Consumer Reports report available on their web site (June 2003)
Most recent report, available to CR subscribers, referenced in News.com article (March 2004)

So if Apple's support is "horrible", then I guess everyone else is a lot worse (especially since Dell, the next closest to Apple, got the middle rating on 3 out of 4 support categories, while Apple got the top rating in all categories).

It shouldn't have taken so long, but they claim that it's coming.

Here is a c|net article that talks about their position last year: clicky clicky.

Richard.

This was just published an hour ago:

IBM on Wednesday sent an open letter to Sun Microsystems urging Sun to make Java technology open source, CNET News.com has learned.

In a letter sent by Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging technology, IBM offered to work with Sun to create a project that would shepherd development of Java through an open-source development model. If implemented, portions of Sun's most valuable software asset--Java--would be freely available, and contributors ranging from volunteer programmers to large corporations would submit changes to the Java software.

http://news.com.com/2100-1007_3-5165427.html

Incompatibility would run rampant. My java apps barely work for my phone as it is.

Sun is working on a J2ME standard for cell phones, so hopefully in a few years you wont have that problem.

Sun isn't going to Open source Java, it wont happen for the reason you mention. Incompatibility would ruin the cross-platform appeal of Java.

They have no way until the intelligent toilets come online.

You can either patch a new random key in to replace the FCKGW- one, or just reinstall it with a new key.

here.

why? because of monopolism or market dominance? not likely. as of november 2003 the ipod was the leader in portable digital music player with... 31%.

less than a third.

oh yeah, i have a source for that number.

http://www.printdreams.com/ Was featured on com.com in June.

Intel and AMD have, and have had for many years, full cross licensing agreements.

No this is not true. The relationship is asymmetric, as Intel can implement anything AMD comes up but not vice versa. In fact, of late, the latest Intel technologies are not licensed to AMD (probably due to change in regulatory conditions). This is a great change from the 486 days where AMD could produce almost identical chips. AMD was in big trouble before Athlon and AMD64 as Intel finally ingtended to shut them out of the compatibles market. Fortunately, AMD was able to stave that off.

Nope, couldn't get there. I came out with a $70 plan that came close but you had to trade your unlimited SMS for free LD and limit the Direct Connect to 500 min. Getting to the same features took at least $90 by my estimation... a bit less if you work for the government or one of our enterprise accounts, but still not close enough.

Thanks for the challenge though, I did forward it to our market analysis group. Amazing that our industry makes any money sometimes... Of course, Sprint PCS is still losing money ($322 million in Q4 2003) so I guess it isn't entirely sustainable.

... when it was reported last year by ZDNET / news.com / Network Fusion / pcmag... that Microsoft were to buy a Romanian antivirus company !

Intel has brought us a lot of real inventions. I'm thinking of HyperThreading, and even Itanium ...

Not to nitpick, but Hyperthreading is not an Intel "innovation." It is actually based off of DEC Alpha technology that they bought when Compaq sold their CPU business off. If Alpha had survived another iteration, we'd have seen Symmetric Multi-Threading (SMT) labeled with much less marketing spin than we currently have.

Even IA-64, Intel's incarnation of Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) technology, was not new when Intel decided to base Itanium on it.

As a side note, I always wished AMD had named the Opteron/Athlon64 series Atinum (as in pl-Atinum) or Alladium (as in p-Alladium). Either metal is more precious than t-Itanium, which is only considered a minor metal in the markets. Besides being a great play on words, they start with 'A', fitting in with the whole AuthenticAMD theme... although they probably would have gotten sued like Lindows was.. *sigh*

I'm still waiting to see AMD cross-license and make use of SMT technology in the Hammer line. *drool*

Here are the immportant parts of the article from CNET:

Because of the details of a lengthy 1995 legal settlement between Intel and AMD, Intel can in all probability create and sell chips that are completely compatible with AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 chips, which can run both 32- and 64-bit software, according to the companies and legal experts. Intel won't even have to pay AMD royalties if it incorporates ideas from any AMD patents into its chips.

"My understanding, based on the licensing agreement, is that Intel has access to AMD's patents so patent protection should not be a problem," said Richard Belgard, a noted patent consultant.

Intel may have to rename some of the instructions, or commands, embedded in any chip that is similar to Opteron, but "the code can be 100 percent compatible," Belgard added.

For the full article:

Article at CNet

RSA is, of course, trying to sell a product, but I prefer this solution, which pretty much eliminates the RFID specific privacy concerns. If the tag is disabled when it leaves the store, the privacy concerns aren't any different than with bar codes. Other stories on this feature here and here.

Note that companies can combine UPC data gathered from the check out with credit and customer-loyalty-card information to create detailed profiles of their customers, so this issue isn't specific to RFID tags, and need to be addressed seperately.

Perhaps you can think of ways that cell phones are restrictive, but here's a headline from the front page of Today's EETimes.

The article talks about having a single OS ala MS. To see what the cell phone companies are actually doing, see this article. As you can see, they want to impose even more DRM on the consumers. And once the DRM has been implemented in the single chip phones, there is virtually nothing you can do about it. One factor is that due to the closed nature of these systems, the cell companies can get into the action (selling ring tones etc.). As it stands, they have even more of an incentive to lock down the systems.

I don't see it. What's to keep them from implementing a broken form of this (or sabotaging it in some way) even though they're a part of it?

It's not like they haven't done it before:
MS stalls IPv6 progress
Microsoft missing browser standards (and they are a member of the W3C)

We all know how they are with standards.

If I may make a suggestion...I'm on Verizon and just picked up the LG VX3100. It's about as vanilla as they come, dirt cheap (I picked up mine off ebay for $70), stores addresses, has a scheduler and an alarm that you can use or ignore, has a great battery life, is tiny/sleek and looks great.

--trb

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.