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Proof that not all people who post as Anonymous Coward talk bollocks can be found here courtsey of CNet.

The winning bid was $7,100 by John Corrigan, founder of SwiftView.

I know there's been a lot of research done into vibration injuries among people who use powertools on a regular basis. There's even some new evidence that Playstation vibrating controllers can cause these kinds of injuries.

Ok, so the vibrations put out by this device may be tiny, but surely there's going to be a risk of deadening nerves etc. etc. if you use the phone for long periods of time?

Cnet gave Panther something like a 6 out of 10, ZDnet gave it 5/5 stars. The only thing surprising to me about either of these reviews is that I though ZDnet and Cnet had pretty much merged. It seems like half the time they have the same stories, word for word. Example: ZDnet and Cnet.

I've seen this with reviews and news stories, and pretty much anything. I didn't think they were allowed to disagree anymore. Anyone know what the story is?

Cnet gave Panther something like a 6 out of 10, ZDnet gave it 5/5 stars. The only thing surprising to me about either of these reviews is that I though ZDnet and Cnet had pretty much merged. It seems like half the time they have the same stories, word for word. Example: ZDnet and Cnet.

I've seen this with reviews and news stories, and pretty much anything. I didn't think they were allowed to disagree anymore. Anyone know what the story is?

...but only about their bottom line.

The worm/virus debacles this summer cost them over $700 million in unearned income in the form of future contracts. Since their usual PR spinning didn't stem the flow this time, stronger measures needed to be taken. Of course, since actually spending sufficient money to tighten up Windows is out of the question, they're just taking the easy route and putting prices on the heads of a couple virus writers.

People are finally getting really fed up with Microsoft security issues, and I don't think they'll fall for this cheesy ploy. At least, I hope they don't.

~Philly

My guess is that Microsoft will never pay anything to anyone. Once Microsoft finds the name of a person who wrote the virus, that person's name will be given to the police. Microsoft can claim they got the information somewhere else. "Oh yes, you were the 110th person who reported the virus writer." To use your example, Microsoft won't pay, and the family in Laos will be powerless to compel payment.

It seems likely that whoever admits he or she had knowledge of the creation of a virus will be arrested and jailed. That person certainly won't get any money.

Another guess is that the bounty is an idea from a P.R. person associated with Microsoft, someone who knows nothing about technical things. He probably said, "We can shift the blame from Microsoft to the virus writers by offering money. We'll get a lot of free publicity." Instead, the bounty will encourage people to write more viruses. Virus writers will say, "Wow, fame! I wonder if I can write a $1,000,000 virus."

The bounty will cause a lot of news stories to be written. Those stories will correctly identify the viruses mentioned as Microsoft vulnerability viruses. That will cause much more than $250,000 worth of damage to Microsoft to Microsoft's reputation. (If that is possible.)

What the story doesn't mention is that it shouldn't be necessary to offer a bounty. The real story is why doesn't the United States' FBI federal police investigate the crime? The bounty provides publicity for the fact that virus writers aren't caught unless it is very, very easy to catch them. Look at this story: FBI arrests MSBlast worm suspect | CNET. Here is a quote about a teenager they caught:

"Parson also admitted that he renamed the original 'MSBlast.exe' executable 'teekids.exe' after his online name 'teekid.'"

In the story, law enforcement is quoted as saying, "We believe he is a key and significant player..." Here's another quote about catching the teenager who simply renamed the files after his own name: "I wouldn't characterize the work as being easy, ... "

If anyone from Microsoft reads this, I suggest that whoever promoted the idea of a bounty be fired.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5102282.html

Microsoft don't write software, they assimilate :)

Microsoft made their name through DOS - but did they write DOS? No, they bought Seattle Computer Products' 86-DOS operating system. Microsoft wrote Internet Explorer, right? Well, no, it was born out of code licensed from the Spyglass browser. Did they write SQL server? Nope - that was again developed with code licensed from Timeline.

Infact, whatever the latest bandwagon is, Microsoft buys out the competition? Instant messaging becomes in vogue? Microsoft buys an instant messaging developer. Holes in file security? Microsoft buys a XDegrees, a security specialist. Worried that Mac's can emulate Windows? Microsoft buys Connetix, the makers of Virtual PC. Microsoft worried about viruses negative effects on OS sales? Don't worry, Microsoft have just bought GeCAD, an AV vendor...

Cool idea, but I'm sure that someone already has a patent from 1980 on "Delivering music content at a live event to a small device"

Oh, for God's sake. The Army's switch to WebStar on Mac was reported all over the place when it happened four years ago. It's common knowledge. Here, here, and here are some links.

What you will get is 5 million shitty apps.

You couldn't have put it better.

After spending the last two years going over like a Lead Balloon, Pressplay just rebranded itself with the Napster name.

The corporate overlords may want to buy into the customer goodwill that surrounds the Napster brand name instead of the apathy that surrounds the Pressplay brand name, but they're just polishing a turd. People didn't want to rent their music then, and they won't want to rent it now.

The emperor has a little kittyface mask on, but he's still naked.

I'd look for parallels with the attacks against Quicken. The borg has encountered this kind of resistance before. Going IPO would allow hostile take over and reduce the ability to resist. Not such a clever idea unless they really are interested in throwing in the towel.

...IT spending improvement is unlikely before the second half of 2004, if not 2005...

Then can you explain why Microsoft opted to buy Hotmail instead of developing their own webmail system?

At the time of purchase Microsoft was looking for a search engine and free e-mail. Hotmail was way ahead in the free e-mail rivalry, and since MSFT was going into ISP business to fight AOL, a free e-mail system would boost both Web properties, name recognition and ISP portion of MSN. I think they figured marketing costs into acquiring that many users and figured it was worth it.

If Google was up for sale for 300-500 mil, my suspicion is that MSFT would be there in a jiffy to get a deal. When we're talking billions, you've got to take things into account, like what exactly are you paying for? Google has the largest index, 3.3B pages and good search technologies for Web, images, groups and whatnot. Can you replicate the huge index? Yeah, with some investment in the million-dollar range. Can you replicate the search technologies? More or less yes, with people you already have.

Or why Yahoo! and AOL are still kicking MSN's ass all over the place

Define "kicking ass". MSN was profitable as of last quarter. Yes, took a while to get there with gazillions of dollars spent, but it's in the black now. MSFT has to report to its shareholders on profitability, not market share. I personally use Yahoo! services and prefer them to MSN, but since I don't pay for Yahoo! Mail or Briefcase or Launch videos, I fail to see that MSN is losing money, except some ad revenue.

Other than that I agree with most of the things you've mentioned.

I could have used one of these

This product was already out in a device called SoundBug. back in 2002.

I seem to recall that SoundBug had poor sound quality because most surfaces and structures have strange acoustic response patterns. But I'm sure that with a bit of clever processing (a microphone and a bit of FFT magic), one could estimate the transfer function of the speaker surface, create a inverse filter that corrects for its properties, and then apply the filter to the any sound for better output.

This seems simliar to ideas that were proposed by Citizen 3 years ago. See This article from Cnet 3 years ago. It details citizen's development of a credit card sized device that could plug into the Handspring Visor. (I remembered this article from my work at visorcentral 3 years ago)

"Handspring and watch maker Citizen are tinkering with a prototype add-on for the Visor handheld that would allow people to copy information from their device onto a second, credit card-sized organizer."

Citizen also helped co-develop the Rex.

This problem recently came up on a college and university web development list I belong to. Many of our schools sites are being blocked. Places in China will then mirror them, a problem in itself, but one that causes even more damage when their latest mirror is about 3 years old with completely out of date information.

Anyway, here were some links provided by the list about the issue (some are a little old I know):

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Harvard Law School, November 2002
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/
"The authors are collecting data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks. Tests from May 2002 through November 2002 indicate at least four distinct and independently operable methods of Internet filtering, with a documentable leap in filtering sophistication beginning in September 2002."

China's Cyberwall Nearly Concrete
Michael Grebb, Wired, November 5, 2002
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56195,00 .html
"While the Great Wall no longer deters would-be invaders from entering China, experts... said the Chinese government continues to maintain a nearly rock-solid cyberwall. "

Software rams great firewall of China
Paul Festa, CNET News.com, April 16, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-997101.html
"The news and propaganda wing behind the U.S. government's Voice of America broadcasts has commissioned software that lets Chinese Web surfers sneak around the boundaries set by their government."

According to David Goldsmith of @Stake, "In my initial conversations with them [Apple], they said they weren't going to fix 10.2, but I wouldn't be surprised if they change that."

In other words, this isn't just some sort of overblown speculation run amok. Apple did initially tell security experts they didn't plan to patch Jaguar. That was a stupid plan, and even the security experts didn't expect that to last, but that doesn't change the fact that someone from Apple did claim Jaguar wouldn't be patched.

What I find amusing is the fact that Apple zealots are using this story and its development as further evidence in the conspiracy against Apple, when even the much-hated (and deservedly so) Microsoft has been known to back-port security and even many stability patches to the current and previous versions of their OSes as they're working on their next generation products. Does anybody remember that MS backported lots of fixes to NT 4.0 in SP5 and SP6 based on work they'd done developing Win2k?

Unlike Apple, however, MS didn't make NT 4.0 users wait until after Win2k shipped before bothering to release the fixes for NT 4.0. Jaguar users shouldn't have had to wait until after Panther shipped to get those security fixes. They're still waiting, aren't they?

But whenever bugs are found, it is good practise to patch software. We do this under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. And having a good firewall configuration helps keep out the dirty world.

On Tuesday, Apple released an advisory that indicate that the Mac OS X 10.3 upgrade--which adds an improved Finder menu, better synchronization of files and a tool to help users find a specific window on a crowded desktop--also includes more than a dozen "security enhancements."

However, Apple apparently doesn't intend to fix the flaws in previous versions of the software: Apple's Security Updates Web page doesn't list fixes for the flaws in Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier.

"It is not a friendly thing to tell your customers to shell out a lot of money to stay secure," said Thor Larholm, senior researcher for software security firm PivX Solutions. "It would be a dangerous precedent, if they did."

Apple declined comment.


David Goldsmith, director of research for @stake, a security company that found four of the vulnerabilities, confirmed that Apple said it wasn't going to patch the flaws in earlier versions of the software.

"In my initial conversations with them, they said they weren't going to fix 10.2, but I wouldn't be surprised if they change that," he said.

Typically, companies that charge for software provide security updates for the software for a certain period of time. Microsoft provides support for its products for about five years and releases service packs every year that include all the enhancements to the software. Microsoft doesn't charge for the service packs. ...

They have stated that they want to release a new version of OS X every year, but this is the first time they have hinted that they will not be supporting any particular OS X version for more than that year and that they expect all their customers to upgrade their operating system on a yearly basis," he said.

MSN has been the subject of some troubling news lately. After eliminating almost 40 positions in the MSN Messenger, MSN Groups, and MSN Photos group, one has to wonder what is going on over there at MOSWEST (article). The termination of the Looksmart deal (article) effectively means that Looksmart is going out of business and that Microsoft's engineers have until the end of June, 2003, to create a new search engine.

MSN has been the subject of some troubling news lately. After eliminating almost 40 positions in the MSN Messenger, MSN Groups, and MSN Photos group, one has to wonder what is going on over there at MOSWEST (article). The termination of the Looksmart deal (article) effectively means that Looksmart is going out of business and that Microsoft's engineers have until the end of June, 2003, to create a new search engine.

MS gave them nothing, shithead - that was just a reckless, unsupported rumor posted on /. because we all KNOW M$ is behind everything evil in the world.

http://marketwatch-cnet.com.com/2110-7344_3-509399 7.html

Microsoft has always excelled at pampering its developer community, but this year's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles took its charm offensive to new levels.

linux doesn`t erase external disks (without any announcement whatsoever), does it?

Actually, from this bit of info I dug up, it looks like IBM will be using PPC processors for the project that have been essentially tailor made for the task at hand. Taking a sheet out of the embedded processor playbook, they're putting a lot of glue logic directly on the chip, thus using the G5 approach of a traditional computer would probably mean a more expensive cost, and higher power consumption.

On Tuesday, Apple released an advisory that indicate that the Mac OS X 10.3 upgrade--which adds an improved Finder menu, better synchronization of files and a tool to help users find a specific window on a crowded desktop--also includes more than a dozen "security enhancements."

However, Apple apparently doesn't intend to fix the flaws in previous versions of the software: Apple's Security Updates Web page doesn't list fixes for the flaws in Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier.

An article on CNet news.com suggests that "Open Source" is catching on in China.

Now, how many people live in China? Computerworld has an article on how Red Flag GNU/Linux which I think is widely used in China, is now going international.

A majority of people might be stupid for a short period of time, but I don't think the majority of people will be stupid in the majority of time, at least not when it comes to wasting money for nothing. Now I know that some will argue that you get some value from Windows, I wont deny that, if they think they get value, they *get* value, either imagined value, real value or both. My point being that whatever you can do with any commercial program, you can do with (potential) free software, and you can do it freely!

--
/Spam .

An article on CNet news.com suggests that "Open Source" is catching on in China.

Now, how many people live in China? Computerworld has an article on how Red Flag GNU/Linux which I think is widely used in China, is now going international.

A majority of people might be stupid for a short period of time, but I don't think the majority of people will be stupid in the majority of time, at least not when it comes to wasting money for nothing. Now I know that some will argue that you get some value from Windows, I wont deny that, if they think they get value, they *get* value, either imagined value, real value or both. My point being that whatever you can do with any commercial program, you can do with (potential) free software, and you can do it freely!

--
/Spam .

Maybe they bought them to try and figure out how to copy Apple's practice of EOLing and not patching an OS that's a little over a year old.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5098688.html?tag= zdfd.newsfeed

Plain and simple: 10.3 is a $129 annual subscription fee. Oh no, Apple wouldn't do THAT. That's only what super evil companies like MS do! Why, they are going to drop support for NT4.0 from 1996 soon! Bastards!

The FBI simply renamed it to DCS1000. "We had a concern that it wasn't a good name for the system".

Better not wait too long, 10.2's already EOL.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5098688.html?tag= zdfd.newsfeed

No more updates. Sorry bub, $129 annual fee, please.

Has anyone heard of other stories of manufacturers being deceptive so that they could get better reviews?

Is that anything like having your employees send out fake grass-roots letters, pose as random users on message boards, or secretly fund an "independent" study?

Remember this?

I don't see what's the big deal. Doesn't Microsoft develop/support software for the Mac? It's not like they were running Unix.

Since Disney.
CNET or Google

Not IE anymore C-net article.

Over on C|Net, there's an article about Longhorn. Bill Gates has called this their biggest effort since Win95. Now if we assume that he's telling the truth (hey, why not?), it brings up some interesting parallels.

Windows95 originally was just going to be Windows 4.0--an updated version of Win3.1 Turning it into more than a GUI for DOS, adding multitasking, recreating the GUI, and so forth, was a HUGE undertaking which lead to endless delays. (Win4.0 was supposed to be out in '93; Win95 barely made it into it's named year.) But what threat caused the massive effort? OS/2. OS/2 2.1, the PPC chip, and the Pentium FP math bug got MS good and scared, and they came up with a (relative) miracle.

Now they're saying that they're putting that effort in again. What, pray tell, is the threat to MS this time, hmmmm?

I'm starting to get fed up with review sites that have so many adverts they don't bother to actually include a picture of the product they're talking about. CNET is a big offender, as is Anandtech, but the site on the end of this link is just as bad. I mean, it's a cliche but a picture really does tell a thousand words.

Don't forget that Miguel de Icaza of GNOME fame has a cameo...

Royal Bank of Canada Invests in SCO 30 out of a 50 million investment.

Antelope Modular Computing Core Debuts Next Week

CNet's Michael Kanellos reports on start-up Antelope Technologies' plans to launch its Modular Computing Core (MCC) next week. The PDA-sized Windows PC's MCC technology is based on the IBM Meta Pad (announcement) which Antelope Technologies licensed from IBM. Priced at $3,970, it's expected that the MCC will be primarily for corporate fleets where mobility is a requirement. Antelope's MCC was previously on Slashdot and it seems that the company has beat vaporware OQO (Slashdot) to real product status. Will the Nimble V5 (Slashdot) be next?

I am not one of those people who go around professing the evilness of Microsoft. I did, however, come across this logo on news.com.com that does look pretty evil. I doubt that it is official or anything

Evil Logo

I have not refused to provide anything. Of course I can give citation for what I am talking about. Can you? Seriously everything you have said ths far about this subject seems to display a profound ignorance. You also do not give any evidence to support your claims that record companies give fair contracts. The artists seem to disagree with you.

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued by his previous label for subsequent songs that sounded like his previous work according to that label. His countersuit is here.

In this case, the copyrights to the songs belonged to the label and playing the originals did indeed require permission from the prior label (and payment of royalties). In addition, as was shown, they expected that if he made any future songs it must be with permission and paying the former label. Granted this is only one example of a very bad contract that led to decades of legal battles, but there are many others.

As for artists no longer owning rights to theri own name, Prince and George Michael come to mind, but there were a lot of others who could not use their name for anything because thier name belonged to the record label. How did other artists switch labels? They did not sign away rights to their name.

As for the RIAA bots, they are there. The RIAA has spiders that search for MP3s on the net. hey then sue people for distributing them and order their ISPs to shut down that person's internet conection. They do not check to see if they actually own the rights to the MP3s before doing this and have indeed cut off people for distributing their own MP3s. They have pushed for royalties to be paid to them by webcasters even if they only play music from labels which are independant of the RIAA. IN short they are claiming work that is not their own, which should not be surprising since it is their business (although it is a bit annoying that they claim all the music in the world regardless of whether the artist signs a contract with them).

Speaking of crazy patents...

Acacia claims numerous patents covering the use of streaming media, such as video files and audio/MP3s, including original content, and is currently targeting the adult industry with thousands of patent infringement legal notices and lawsuits.

Note this issue has nothing to do with copyrights whatsoever...this affects all use of any streaming media by anyone.

Acacia has chosen to target the adult industry first, since they are an easy legal target, but make no mistake, Acacia is targeting everyone who uses, or even merely links, to any streaming media content, including individuals.

Acacia Reaching To Affiliate Sites 10-24-2003
Patent holder unplugs porn network
Hustler, Vivid, Wicked Sign Acacia Patent Licenses

See more details regarding Acacia's crazy and legally abusive "business method" patents: http://www.acaciatechnologies.com/technology_main. htm

Acacia isn't the only company on the prowl...if Acacia is sucessful, there's a whole swarm of other entities that have zillions of other questionable "business method" patents ready to pounce on both industry and individuals alike with their patent infringement claims and manditory licensing for widely used "open" computer formats that they didn't even develop!

Yeah, I think your right. I remember something about that.

I remember these babies from a few years back. Here is another.

Royal Bank of Canada invests in SCO.

It's been revealled that it was not MS but rather a Canadian bank.

There is still a case existing: EU commissioner (competition) Mario Monti against Microsoft. Perhaps it would be better to focus on this case.

There is an article on EU Business: Microsoft faces 'final chance' in EU anti-trust probe from August. And Newsfactor thinks Don ' t bet on it.

The response of Microsoft is already very strong. They want to take the case to the US, where the justice system is probably more corrupt (home advantage). See Hindustan Times's Reuters article for more information on this issue. They present the same accusation in an more polite manner: "Microsoft Corp has been trying to drum up support among US lawmakers as part of its effort to fend off antitrust sanctions being considered by European regulators, congressional sources say.

With the European Commission weighing a fine and behavioral changes that could go beyond its US antitrust settlement, Microsoft lobbyists have taken their case to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sources said.

While Microsft is under investigation because of its abuse of power, Microsoft propaganda requests stronger IPR law, criminal prosecution . They claim the proposed EURO DMCA++ (IP Enforcement directive) was not strong enough. Examine the horribleEU directive proposal paper by AEL Wiki (page of Association Electronic Libre, Belgium).

I've been using a pair of Nikon SLR cameras since I took a photography class in college and got to use my parent's circa 1970 Nikkormat cameras. The "new" one was built at a point when auto-shutter speed was a novelty, but you still had to set the aperture yourself; the other one is fully manual. Learning photography on equipment like this really made me come to enjoy the balance among shutter speed, focal length, etc, and even if I'm just poking around I'd rather work with something like than any modern point & shoot.

On the other hand, I've got a little digital camera now, and the convenience of it does have a lot of appeal. I took this camera to take pictures of a Man or Astroman concert a few years ago, and it was very educational to be able to "shoot from the hip", get instant feedback on what was & wasn't working (hint: at a rock concert, there's plenty of light, so don't bother with the flash, and have fun with any camera shake you end up with). The picture quality might not be as great as film, but the flexibility is a gift in itself.

That has led me to start looking around for a new pair of SLRs, one film, one digital. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have the same set of lenses that could be mounted on both a film & a digital camera body, and since I've been happy with Nikon, I'd like to get their gear. But damn it's expensive -- the "low end" D100 lists from $1400 to 1700, and the high end ones -- which in some areas seem to have lower specs than the D100 -- can be more than double that price. Yow!

I've been told that Nikon compatible kit is sold under a variety of labels, including Fuji, but I don't know enough about the compatibles to have made any decisions yet -- and from what I've seen, they're just as expensive as Nikon anyway. Does it make sense to go with someone like Fuji, or is the quality any better with "genuine" Nikon? (I'm a few decades behind on this stuff....)

I think the thing that scares me off so far is the durability, not just in terms of how rugged or useful the equipment will be in the future, but in the value. For example, the Nikon D1, from 1999, could do roughly 2.6 megapixels, as does the current D1H -- but that's barely a third of what the D100 can do, and the price is double the D100. Why that is isn't entirely clear to me, but it is clear that 2.6 mpix isn't a particularly big number anymore, where 5 mpix or 6 mpix point & shoot cameras are available for just a few hundred bucks.

++++

So there's the thing, in a nutshell: should it be assumed that the long term valuation of digital cameras, including digital SLRs, will have a trend like computers, in that you can always get a lot more capability for a lot less money than was available a year before? Or will these digital SLRs retain their value & utility better, the way the 30 year old traditional SLRs I'm using are still useful instruments today? I'm ready to get some of this new equipment, but the depreciation seems like it's going to be so steep that it still seems worth it to wait for at least a couple more years.

++++

At this point my hunch is that whenever Nikon upgrades the D100, I'll end up getting either the replacement model, or I'll try to find a closeout or second hand D100 hoping for a decent discount on it.

</rambling>