Slashdot Mirror

In terms of the server business, Oracle, in addition to increasing its investment in the Solaris operating system, will also accelerate its investment in its SPARC processor-based server line, and will continue to focus on forward binary compatibility, Fowler said.

Wasting resources trying to attack a ghost like Linux, where there is no one corp they can go after...

But they keep attacking, don't they? TomTom, Novell, Lindows, other attacks from 1998 to 2007.

And, since 2003 MS has considered Linux their number two threat.

Microsoft disagrees with you.

Google Ignoring Criticism Of Nexus One Distribution.

Then read the first comment:

You have really bashed Google pretty well the last few days.Some of it is deserved although harsh. One thing I would like you to keep in mind is that your articles have consistantly been featured highly on the Google News web page. That is why I like Google and trust Google.

Priceless! (No, it wasn't me.)

I'd be interested to hear just what a Mac calls home for

Since 10.4.7 the mac phones home a bit I'm sure a deeper google search might come up with a bit more.

But, using ipfw (the iptables of bsd/mac) rules you can restrict outbound traffic. So for example, you can prevent microsoft office from checking whether other copies are running on the same subnet. Or you could prevent any other service or application from sending information out. Noobproof and waterroof are frontends for ipfw.

Also the mac does have "FileVault" for disk encryption.

there is a reason you are not allowed to withdraw your 401k dollars and that the government gives you a tax advantage to invest via 401k instead of your own trading account. It increases the amount of money in mutual funds and thus gives a greater liquidity to the market.

Seriously, you don't know much about 401ks or mutual funds. In a 401k investors are not restricted to just investing in mutual funds. Perhaps you don't recall it but many Enron workers lost money because they had their 401ks invested in Enron stocks. But even if people have money in mutual funds, the funds are not of a single mind. There are aggressive growth, growth, income, and value funds. Aggressive growth funds invest in businesses that growing fast whereas income funds invest in corporations that pay dividends for income. Funds may invest in stocks, bonds, or both. Then there are also SRI, Socially Responsible Investing, funds. These funds use various screens to decide what to invest in. Some screen for companies that they feel treat their employees and or the locations they are located in well. Some focus on the environment, and others will not invest is so called sin industries. Such as military contractors or weapons makers, alcohol businesses, or tobacco companies.

All that 401k money (and the proxy votes) are controlled by an elite class of money managers who then wield enormous leverage over corporate boards.

Every one who owns stocks can decide for themselves who will vote as their their proxy, or can vote for themselves. There is such a thing as activist shareholders. Apartheid in South Africa very well may of ended in part because of shareholder activism, shareholders in the US as well as around the world pressured their companies to not invest in or pull out from South Africa in efforts to end apartheid. Now activist shareholders are pressuring their corporations to oppose Israel's construction of the Apartheid, er Separation, Wall. Chief among them are funds and groups that invest on a religious basis.

The owners of companies are changing so rapidly that it is nearly impossible to tell who actually owns what.

After more than 10 years Steve Jobsis still a member of Walt Disney's board. Ted Turner spent years on Time Warner's board. And as of 2001 and 2002 the Packard and Hewlett families still had seats on the HP board.

Falcon

is it's a much much better Address Book than anything else out there

It's not better for me than my address book, and I don't need a Facebook account to use it.

and they've built forums, messaging, invites, picture sharing, etc. on top of it.

I have those now, I'm using Slashdot right now. I used to use Yahoo! Messenger, I've shared photos, and done other things too. I don't need Facebook to do all those.

The lack of spam is a nice side effect too.

Lack of spam?

Falcon

Businesses and spammers don't use Facebook? That's funny, Facebook has business accounts and people complain about spam on Facebook. Now I don't use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or many of the other services but reading what others posted above it took less than a minute to Google and find the two links above.

Falcon

Really? The last thing I heard from MS about WinFS was in november 2006 (see for example this or this), when they promised WinFS was still coming, despite missing Vista's release.

I'm still waiting.

Net Applications measures OS usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a data pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month

It really doesn't matter how many are downgrades for the purposes of this article. This is actual use, not purchases.

I too would be interested in the number of downgrades, but Microsoft is the only person who could tell us (different OEMs have different target markets, so just one OEM wouldn't be a trustable number), and it would not serve their purposes to reveal this yet. They have refused to divulge any such potentially harmful information repeatedly.

An estimate in Dec. '08 from one OEM was 75%
http://www.crn.com/software/212501005

You say that with such conviction, someone might be tricked into thinking it's true.

But I'm absolutely certain Microsoft not working harder with third parties (Nvidia, Creative, to name a couple) resulted in millions, maybe even a few billion dollars in lost sales for Vista. After all, Vista was death by a thousand cuts for the enterprise, and that cost them dearly. Some, not all, of the problems were not even Microsoft's fault. Lazy or unmotivated third party vendors released poor drivers despite having over a year of release candidates and betas, and continued to release these drivers in monthly or quarterly installments that resulted in marginal improvements. I think Nvidia alone accounted for nearly 1/3 of all blue screens. Microsoft released numbers documented here:

http://www.crn.com/hardware/206905475;jsessionid=MNAOZ34HU4KWHQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN

So no, I think Microsoft painfully learned that they could not rely on the OEMs to do the hardware compatibility testing "for them." And even if those crashes were encountered on primarily enthusiast PCs with high end graphics cards and sound cards, those statistics and the anecdotes about them reached businesses at the speed of rumor, and before you knew it, Vista was sunk as a business sell. It did alright, after all it still had Microsoft's force, long term support contracts meant businesses could deploy as little or as many Vista desktops as they wanted, but it didn't do great.

I4I said they would have sued sooner but were having financial problems.

I checked out the i4i web site. My impression is that i4i had financial problems because they were a dinky little company with almost no significant products. I suspect they had no more than one software developer, and were probably lucky to stay in business all this time. I doubt MS even bothered to ever meet with them. Their business, so far as I can tell, doesn't even significantly benefit from the patented idea, and in no way competes with Microsoft. I don't see how Microsoft's patent infringement hurt them in the least.

In other words, i4i is simply patent-trolling. A lot of tiny companies do this when they have hard times.

Would it be MS who said "well, we had a business meeting with them, lets implement their plan without them and run them out of business"?

Yes, this is the traditional Microsoft business strategy. There are lots of cases where they did this:

- These guys were the disk-compression company MS drove under. They won $120M in a lawsuit considered one of the best examples ever of how software patents can protect innovation.
- Casualties include WordPerfect, and QuattroPro

There are also a lot of patent trolls sucking the life out of Microsoft:

- They were ordered to pay $521M to the "inventor" of browser plug-ins
- They were ordered to pay $367M to Alcatel/Lucent in some sort of user interface patent nonsense.
- They were ordered to pay $388M to Uniloc, for a patent about registering software during installation.
- Korea is one of the few other countries to jump on the patent-troll suck-life-out-of-MS bandwagon.

All I can say is Microsoft made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it. No other company did more to force software patents through congress. D'oh!

Apple has a monopoly on selling supported software for the iPhone. Not all monopolies are anticompetitive; it has yet to be decided if this is one which is. There has certainly been some grumbling, but going after Apple for it would almost certainly mean they'd have to reopen antitrust proceedings against Microsoft. If you haven't noticed, Microsoft got totally let off on the whole antitrust thing by Ashcroft himself; there is certainly some sort of collusion there. It is unimaginable that Bill Gates would have been permitted to simply be in control of those big stacks of money over at the Gates Foundation, though, which are invested for profit in the industries of those same players. Ashcroft claimed the settlement "[...]fully and completely addressed the anti-competitive conduct outlined by the Court of Appeals against Microsoft". That's his job, though; the guy running the process on behalf of the USDOJ was appointed by Bush just months earlier, and "it's certain that Bush and his aides questioned [him] in detail about his future intentions in the Microsoft litigation." The DOJ/Microsoft deal "...breaks a longstanding cooperative relationship that began during the Ford Administration in the mid-1970s" — clearly, the decision to essentially abort antitrust proceedings against Microsoft, which had been caught dead to rights and found guilty of anticompetitive behavior in nearly every market in which they were involved, was not made lightly. It was made deliberately.

Even if Apple has nine illegal monopolies, the DOJ cannot call them on their behavior unless they go back after Microsoft, and that is clearly not on their agenda.

In all honesty, I didn't understand how IBM was being anti-comp ... this story helped me understand the situation a little better http://www.crn.com/hardware/196601593;jsessionid=XPBGBSFXHFVD0QSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN For those that don't want to read it, it basically states the IBM will not license it's z/OS operating system (used on mainframes) for any hardware but their own. I can see where this could be considered as bad as with the whole Windows/IE thing ... Ironically, the main distinction between IBM and MS in this case is that people actually want to use (or have to due to legacy) the z/OS operating system without IBM hardware where-as people want to use PCs without having to use Windows :) It's kind of funny how quality difference between MS and IBM enterprise products can affect peoples perception anti-trust.

It probably is the power supply. In the UK, the cost of electricity went up dramatically a year or so ago. Now, space is practically free, bandwidth too, but 20A costs more than your firstborn.

We put some new servers in our machine room at work, nice 4U 6x4core CPUs, with 32Gb RAM, and 8 SAS drives in each chassis. Come to think of it, I can't think why everyone suddenly has a problem with insufficient supply of power to datacentres.... :)

I worked for a company that had received huge state and local tax incentives to build a new HQ in Kansas. The incentives had provisions that required the company to maintain a certain number of employees and very high (for the area) average salary. It took 2 years to build the building, and it was a model of "green" construction that had all the state & local politicians creaming their pants. 30 days before move-in, the company was bought out. The buying company had no choice but to let them move in - if they didn't, they would immediately owe a big chunk of money to the state. But, the new company also began downsizing the Kansas staff, and in January they announced that we no longer met the provisions of the incentives. So, they are now going to move out of that brand new building and try to lease it out at a loss until they can figure out how to get out of this mess.

The final result will be MORE downsizing of the Kansas staff than would have ever happened without all this nonsense - and the state of Kansas will lose both the tax money and an employer.

There was stupidity a plenty in this deal - the company for thinking they needed to build a Taj Mahal while sales were tanking, the state for believing they needed to cut them an incentive deal, the buying company for acquiring this pig for $2B or me for taking a job in this industry!

Did anyone else read TFA and immediately flash back to 2001-2002 and hundreds of thousands of square feet of data center space sitting empty?
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18838014;jsessionid=QYMHD1PL3SZSYQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/898681

IIRC back when the Athlon 64 was blowing away Intel, AMD had chip shortages.

http://www.crn.com/white-box/193500828

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1014180/unprecedented-demand-for--athlon-64-x2s-prompts-shortage-fear

Hard to make more money when you are out of stock.

In theory AMD could have charged higher, but they had already committed to certain prices, and even if they could at a certain point people would buy Intel. If you have orders for 10000 PCs, and AMD only provides you 5000 CPUs, you have a problem. Worse if they are orders specifically for AMD PCs.

You can't gain market share if you can't produce enough chips.

http://forums.vr-zone.com/news-around-the-web/85897-resellers-claim-shortage-athlon-64-x2s.html

http://www.crn.com/white-box/193500828

Intel has also had it's share of shortage problems.

I would expect Moore's law to hold for the next five years or so, but not much longer after that.

Intel begs to differ. Looks like they see things as good for the next 10 years and that 10 year horizon sounds likes it been pretty constant for a few decades now, so no reason to think that it won't continue to progress forward as time passes.

Mac OS is a niche market.

That's not only untrue; it's also a non-sequitur.

Since it was a significant amount of time after OS X 10.0.0 debuted in January 2000, before certain widely-used productivity suites, such as MSOffice (not OS X-native until Nov. 2001), Photoshop and InDesign (both not OS X-native until 2002), Quark XPress (not OS X-native until 2003), in a very big way, the renewed vitality of the Macintosh platform, and by association, the ultimate success of OS X, depended on the ability of "New World" Macs to be able to seamlessly integrate "Classic" MacOS applications and MacOS X applications. Apple pulled this not-so-trivial feat off with pretty stellar results, overall. And to ease the transition even more, although not virtualization, per se, Apple created the Carbon API, which allowed applications to be developed or recompiled to run NATIVELY either in MacOS 8.5 and above, or in MacOS X.

Let's just see if MS can do the same relatively painless transition, which still jettisoning most or all of its compatibility cruft, like Apple (for the most part) neatly has. The Connectix VirtualPC engine was pretty good, but not that stable. Let's see how well it works for XP on Vist, er Windows 7...

Oh, and speaking of seamless transitions, Apple's 68k to PPC, and PPC to Intel transitions were both incredible feats of engineering.

Do you honestly believe that MS can carry off something as seamless as either of those? Of course not. And so they aren't even going to try, apparently.

And before you say "Well, of COURSE; Apple doesn't have to support a GAZILLION motherboards, peripherals, etc."; please keep in mind that nearly every Apple system (except some of the very recent designs) used fairly unique (to the particular model) hardware. In fact, in most Apple designs, the only major IC in common was the CPU. (family). Yes, the overall "universe" is somewhat smaller; but not nearly so small as to preclude many, many problems.

Mac OS is a niche market.

That's not only untrue; it's also a non-sequitur.

Since it was a significant amount of time after OS X 10.0.0 debuted in January 2000, before certain widely-used productivity suites, such as MSOffice (not OS X-native until Nov. 2001), Photoshop and InDesign (both not OS X-native until 2002), Quark XPress (not OS X-native until 2003), in a very big way, the renewed vitality of the Macintosh platform, and by association, the ultimate success of OS X, depended on the ability of "New World" Macs to be able to seamlessly integrate "Classic" MacOS applications and MacOS X applications. Apple pulled this not-so-trivial feat off with pretty stellar results, overall. And to ease the transition even more, although not virtualization, per se, Apple created the Carbon API, which allowed applications to be developed or recompiled to run NATIVELY either in MacOS 8.5 and above, or in MacOS X.

Let's just see if MS can do the same relatively painless transition, which still jettisoning most or all of its compatibility cruft, like Apple (for the most part) neatly has. The Connectix VirtualPC engine was pretty good, but not that stable. Let's see how well it works for XP on Vist, er Windows 7...

Oh, and speaking of seamless transitions, Apple's 68k to PPC, and PPC to Intel transitions were both incredible feats of engineering.

Do you honestly believe that MS can carry off something as seamless as either of those? Of course not. And so they aren't even going to try, apparently.

And before you say "Well, of COURSE; Apple doesn't have to support a GAZILLION motherboards, peripherals, etc."; please keep in mind that nearly every Apple system (except some of the very recent designs) used fairly unique (to the particular model) hardware. In fact, in most Apple designs, the only major IC in common was the CPU. (family). Yes, the overall "universe" is somewhat smaller; but not nearly so small as to preclude many, many problems.

Sorry first two links should be:
http://www.crn.com/software/207402009
and
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-Vista-XP-downgrade,6187.html

and the last link should be

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

Lesson: Use the preview button.

It would have, if 7 supported upgrading from directly XP. Unfortunately, so far, it does not, though we'll have to see if that is still the case for the release.

So maybe it's not a problem?

Microsoft Internet Explorer Users Slow To Adopt New Release

http://www.crn.com/software/215901500

It's a similar idea (up to six blades sharing up to 14 SAS drives and up to 2 switches with a web interface to control the whole thing) and it's been available for over a year.

No according to MS. Today's patch closes a whole were downloading or going to a website that had a specially created WMF image would allow hackers to launch malicious code simply if the user viewed it on webpage or loaded it.

http://www.crn.com/software/214502662

How many IT departments are insane enough to actually attempt to brute force a Windows XP->Windows 7 upgrade with Vista as an intermediary? Any Windows user who knows what they're doing knows that the best way to "upgrade" your Windows install is do a format with clean install. The fact that the article then goes on to suggest that in the "real world" you would then image the final result and push that out to clients.

You have got to be kidding me.

Seriously, I'm as rabidly anti-windows as they come, but isn't this a little unfair? Windows 7 is still beta, it doesn't surprise me that there are still some driver issues.

The idea that we will have to either buy Vista AND Windows 7, or do a clean install, just plain sucks.

While I agree with you to a to a certain point in that Win 7 is still beta, it's LATE beta, and a beta that has already been released for public testing. What we have here is essentially a release candidate version. If not RC 1, maybe RC 0.9 or 0.8 At this point there aren't likely to be many major changes in the OS. Of course, doing an upgrade from one version of Windows to another has always been a dicey affair, so some failure is unsurprising.

However, even taken with those two rather large grains of salt, the fact that Win 7 can't recognize a T43 synaptics trackpad (same one as in all the T4x series) is rather unnerving. And the lack of an upgrade path from XP to Win 7, when Microsoft KNOWS that people have been picking XP over Vista since Vista's launch, just smacks of petty sour grapes.

I swear, it's as though Microsoft is just DARING people and businesses to find reasons to use other OSes.

But Apple's share of the desktop market has skyrocketed recently to 15%

Inaccurate, close to 10%.

Microsoft's apologists have been saying for years that this was only because Windows' market share made it the more attractive target. But Apple's share of the desktop market has skyrocketed recently to 15% without any outbreaks of viruses targeting the Macintosh.

Really?!!

20000 infections that fast is not a small number. The bad guys are just beginning to discover this new "market" and adapting to it. The biggest threat to security have always been users, a cross-platform element. I just upgraded a friend's Macbook to Leopard, he has never installed Apple updates, security patches or otherwise. Same for Office for Mac updates. Was he in trouble? Not yet. Could he be if the bad guys wanted? Of course.
And there are millions out there like this friend of mine.

Great point. People who bought their machines when the processors were at 65-nm won't need to replace them until about 2011. By then, according to Intel's own prediction, we would be in the sub 10-nm range.

This is from an article from mid 2008: full article

Intel debuted its 45nm process late last year and has been ramping its Penryn line of 45nm processors steadily throughout this year. The next die shrink milestone will be the 32nm process, set to kick off next year, followed by 14nm a few years after that and then sub-10nm, if all goes according to plan.

Software encryption is slow, but using drives with encryption on the hardware will be quicker. I'm not making a product recommendation with Seagate, I understand Fujistsu also has a FDE solution. In an enterprise environment, you can set up centralized password recovery utilities (for when the user goes under the bus, or over the wall to your competitor)...

Microsoft Exec: UAC Designed to Annoy Users

The HW manufactures may have physically put the stickers on, but M$ decided which computers got it. Vista was an MS trademark. They gave out the specs on what could be labeled vista compatible. Obviously they didn't just send the OEM's boxes of stickers and say "merry christmas".
In fact, if you go here you can see the internal memos and email wherein M$ decides what hardware can get the "compatible" sticker.

"Has he caused any harm to any one? Has he stolen property? No and no. He just took a peek at something he was not authorized to look at. Big fucking deal"

No, but it's easier for some prosecutor to go after McKinnon than have to hunt down some real cyber criminals. They don't give a fuck if he is innocent or not, it's the guilty verdict that count.

One among many, what he actually did, was access some password-less WinNT machines and installed a remote desktop application. All in the pursuit of info on the US govs involvement in a UFO coverup. He once saw a pic of a flying saucer with US military markings but can't remember where exactly as a) he was on dialup and b) smoking a lot of dope at the time, not good for the intellect.

They 'caught' him (depending on who you believe) after c) system intrusions were detected or d) he would message them using WordPad and he used his own email to register the remote control app. Calling Gary a 'hacker' is equivalent to referring to a McDonald's burger flipper as a Chef de Cuisine ..

Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever

TJX Confirms Largest Credit-Card Breach Ever

First, Microsoft does not have a monopoly.

They have been tried and convicted in a US court: the are indeed a monopoly

From a ruling in 2001, they are certainly a monopoly, and have abused that status.
Link.

Not to mention as we have seen JavaScript ads can compromise systems and by trying to block the blockers you will probably need even more complex JavaScript.

I know this will probably get me flamed here, but I just have to say it: JavaScript in its current form is a BAD idea. It is a BAD idea for the same reason as ActiveX is a bad idea, in that running active code which often comes from a third party through the browser is simply bad security wise. Perhaps the answer is sandboxing, or perhaps the answer is a new more secure web language, I don't know. But I do know that in its current implementation JavaScript has become a hacker haven just like when ActiveX was at its peak. If something doesn't change then IMHO JavaScript will become such a risk for malware that it will die out just as ActiveX has.

I do know that there are page after page pointing out the same thing, that JavaScript on websites can do some serious damage. I seriously think there needs to be a discussion on how to fix the security problems inherent with running code on websites. And IMHO having JavaScript from third parties load on websites is just making it that much more dangerous.

Oh, yes, I remember Micron. Back when memory was $40/megabyte, Micron would sell a PC pre-configured with enough memory to stun an elephant. Well, they weren't making so much money on the PC itself ...

A quick dip of the fish net, brings up the following:

http://law.taragana.net/archive/micron-faces-two-class-action-lawsuits/

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/2006/02/28/37828/more-dram-price-fixing-charges-for-micron.htm

According to the complaint, Micron shares traded at inflated prices allowing the company to issue more than $632m worth of debt during 2003, sell more than $480m worth of warrants and complete numerous stock-for-stock acquisitions using inflated shares as acquisition currency.

Insiders also sold approximately $4.5m worth of their own personally held Micron stock at inflated prices during the class period, the complaint continued.

http://www.crn.com/it-channel/187202238

Turns out that extended plateau in the downward-trending DRAM price curve benefited from some white-collar terraforming.

Reminds me of the cleanest, best managed pig operation I ever saw. That working oil well on the back forty might have had something to do with it. I don't envy anyone aiming to make a respectable living in a commodity market.

I don't really understand why Sun bothers. They had there chance with Java and blow it. .NET will be the platform that you can write once and run anywhere. JavaFX is just said compared to Flash and Silverlight.

On what platform does silverlight run on again?
http://www.crn.com/software/212100582

Let us all know when .net runs anywhere from embedded to mainframes.

I dub thee super-troll.

I'm sure that really stings after Microsoft's $50M cash injection. Really, 3.5M? That's it? They're laughing all the way to the bank.

I am sure it does sting, considering they have spent quite a bit of that money on lawyers, corporate executive benefits, etc.

I'm sure that really stings after Microsoft's $50M cash injection. Really, 3.5M? That's it? They're laughing all the way to the bank.

Actually, no. The "experts" in this case weren't even aware of McColo was actually doing because the few people who did know never shared the information.

I just love getting contradicted by people who have no idea of the facts. Hint to mods: do some research before up-moddng!

Some evidence to support my position: McColo, a Californian-based company played house to some of the world's worst online criminal gangs and was booted off the internet following an investigation by Washington Post security researcher Brian Krebs. The company's online presence was extinguished after Krebs alerted McColo's access providers Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric earlier this week to the criminal material it was pumping out over their networks .

Or how about this: McColo's termination followed closely on the heels of an incendiary report released by researchers from numerous security organizations and companies, including McAfee, Trend Micro and Arbor Networks, detailing shady criminal practices of ISPs like McColo and their connection with spam and cybercrime.

So it wasn't due to unanswered complaints sent to upstream providers, it was because upstream providers were notified of the issues by security researchers (to whom I referred as "experts").

How wonderful that the article even links to a definition of Java that includes a section delineating Java from JavaScript, but still manages to get it wrong.

Why do you need a Windows Vista Guru to convince people to buy Vista when you have already sold a 140 million licenses?
http://www.crn.com/software/207402009

Is Microsoft lying again to the SEC and investors?

Enjoy,

Don't believe everything you read on /., remember yesterday when they green-lighted an article stating Duke Nukem Forever was coming out on XBLA soon.

http://www.crn.com/hardware/209901649

Yes, I was hoping for a "everything on the chip" solution, but I'm guessing that's a few years off still.

Maybe not? http://www.crn.com/retail/209900617 [crn.com]

It's not bittorrent comcast needs to worry about. It's Tiger Woods

According to a study [...] published by the Ponemon Institute and Dell Computer, about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week. Only 30 percent of travelers ever recover the lost devices. Nearly half of the travelers say their laptops contain customer data or confidential business information.

In what I'm sure is completely unrelated news, the release of this report coincides with Dell releasing a new service - Dell Mobility Services Aim To Protect Notebook Data, and New Dell Services Help Users Hunt Down Missing Laptops.

My guess is 4 cores in 2008, 4 cores in 2009, moving to 8 cores through 2010

AMD says 12 cores by 2010. (and 6 in 2009)

My Feeds: Select: All 95 subscriptions, None, Unassigned A to Z Kids Stuff children http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/atoz.xml ABC News: Top Stories news http://my.abcnews.go.com/rsspublic/fp_rss20.xml About Computing Center technology http://z.about.com/6/g/pcworld/b/rss2.xml About.com Archaeology Archaeology http://z.about.com/6/g/archaeology/b/rss2.xml All Things Digital technology http://feeds.allthingsd.com/atd-feed/ Archaeology News Archaeology news http://www.topix.net/rss/science/archaeology.xml Ars Technica tech news http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/BAaf ArsTechnica: Security Content Security technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/arstechnica/security BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition U.K. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition Science/Nature http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/science/nature/rss.xml Boing Boing odd http://feeds.boingboing.net/boingboing/iBag Breaking News: CBSNews.com news http://www.cbsnews.com/feeds/rss/main.rss Breitbart.tv varied news topics http://www.breitbart.com/xml/recentvideo.xml ChannelWeb Complete Feed Computer news http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cweball/index.xml;jsessionid=L0I1HBDQISHBCQSNDLQSKH0CJUNN2JVN Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories news http://www.csmonitor.com/rss/top.rss CNN.com - Offbeat odd http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_offbeat.rss CNN.com - Politics politics http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_allpolitics.rss CNN.com - U.S. U.S. news http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_us.rss Computerworld Breaking News technology http://feeds.computerworld.com/Computerworld/News Cool Tools technology http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools Courant.com - Connecticut News Ct. news http://feeds.courant.com/Courant/ConnecticutNews Defense Tech U.S. defense news http://www.defensetech.org/index.rdf Discovery News - Technology technology http://dsc.discovery.com/news/subjects/technology/xdb/topstories.xml Drudge Report news http://feeds.feedburner.com/FeedPalooza/lwDu Dvorak Uncensored news http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?feed=rss2 Engadget robots & gadgets http://www.engadget.com/rss.xml Extremetech technology http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/extreme.xml Fark.com news http://www.pluck.com/rss/fark.rss FileForum software http://fileforum.b

This is including a dozen or so extensions. I'm a little bit confused by what you mean when you say IE8 outperforms FF3. Is it memory usage? (IE under-reports because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it loading speed? (IE is faster because it rides the coattails of explorer.exe.) Is it rendering speed? I haven't seen anything to suggest that IE8 is any faster than other IEs, and it still has some nicely broken CSS issues

Interesting you ask, as I just read an article that came away with an initial impression not unlike our own testing.

http://www.crn.com/software/208403208?cid=microsoftFeed

As for IE8 performance... I mean (Load Time, Page Load Times. high content performance on the page, RAM usage, responsiviness, etc.) The difference between IE7 and IE8 is significant, and IE7 wasn't so bad... (IE8 has rewritten everything from script handling, to page composition, etc.) If it wasn't from MS, it would be a browser people would be proud of in terms of performance gains.

You once again falsely state that IE rides on the coat tails of explorer.exe, this myth needs to die, as this has not been the case since IE6, especially on Vista, where explorer.exe and iexplorer.exe share NOTHING, so it doesn't get a footprint break as many assume because of IE4 Win98's shared process model where Explorer.exe and IE literally shared processes.

In fact even IE6 only marginally shared DLLs with Explorer.exe on XP, and still kept them in their own memory space, consuming just as much RAM as if explorer.exe was involved. (Test yourself, kill explorer.exe, iexplorer.exe doesn't die, and RAM for IE don't change and hasn't since Win98.) (NT doesn't even technically allow for what Win98/IE4/IE5 was doing.)

IE7/IE8 run are not tied to anything, and get no 'shared' benefits. Even in Vista, HTML rendering in folders is not an option, nor Active Desktop (the original desktop WIdgets from Win98). The HTML rendering frameworkis a 'callable' part of Windows, but if these threads/process call it, they get the RAM load, etc, and this not shared, just as if another application used the Mozilla engine, it would still have to load it in its own application space.

So people still claiming that 'IE has advantages' because of 'shared' resources/RAM with Explorer.exe/OS are just spreading a very old myth that needs to finally die, starting here.

Check out the link above, even though it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive test, it hits were are initial reactions are too.