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CRN posted an update on the Lenovo/Linux story. This makes more sense... http://crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews. jhtml;jsessionid=A5QHB1BJ1B3IOQSNDBCSKHSCJUMEKJVN? articleId=188701694

I'm not asking you to agree with me in the details, but you must, in good conscience, accept that it's reasonable for someone to view Microsoft's Embrace and Extend policy as subversive and ultimately countrary to the common good.

First of all, I applaud you. This statement makes me honestly feel as though I did not waste my time with my previous post; it is uncommon for someone to argue on the internet with your degree of professionalism. Thank you.

I can understand your view. It is most definitely reasonable to view the Embrace and Extend policy as subversive and ultimate contrary to the common good, however I feel that view is incorrect.

You have made a compelling argument for the adherence to standards. I agree that Microsoft's failure to adequately support web standards has done some harm to the common good. Microsoft's support for web standards is poor, however Microsoft is working towards fixing it. I am using currently IE7, it is way better, but by no means perfect. The IE team has decided to fix THE BIG ISSUES that plague developers rather than strive for perfect standards compatibility. Sadly, "broken code" (that doesn't meet web standards, but works on IE) is the de facto standard and Microsoft is working hard to ensure that this de facto standard is not violated (i.e. working "broken code" will continue to work under IE7).

I feel that formal standards in general can hurt the common good in many cases. Take for example, OpenGL. OpenGL 2.0 is looong overdue. OpenGL is a horribly old standard and it has only survived in modern games through extensions that replace a large portion of the core functionality of OpenGL. ATI and nVidia are constantly adding extensions (and publishing documentation) which the competitor is copying. As a result, OpenGL has remained a standard and you can trust most extensions to work cross-card. If ATI and nVidia did not embrace and extend OpenGL, Microsoft's Direct3D would have destroyed it.

Standards have their uses, but they can very easily impede innovation. OpenGL was lucky to have implemented a clear extension mechanism. Maybe the W3C should have done the same for HTML.

Someone on the IE team dropped the ball way back in time (hell, Bill Gates has public apologized for it!), but Microsoft continues to pick and choose which standards it will support with the goal of providing the best possible products. Sure they have made mistakes, but it isn't right to misconstrue those mistakes as deliberate attempts to cause harm while ignoring the benefits sought and often achieved.

Around 72 million according to this article:

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarch ives.jhtml?articleId=181501810

Apple co-founded Adobe and owned part of Adobe.

Someone mod parent down. Its pure fantasy and a troll.

Please note: the above sentance was not a quote from the parent of this post, I just happen to have used the same wording because I have the same feelings.

"Microsoft 'has become known for' providing timely patches for their software like no-one else. "

Microsoft's patches are coming quicker than they used to, which is probably why more of them seem to be causing problems.

Timely patches like no-one else? I don't think so. I know Microsoft has left critical flaws unpatched for longer than others...

"I can't say I ever noticed a patch screwing up a machine."

You and me are a pretty small percentage of the world's Windows users, so I don't think it really matters. Here are a few articles pointing to problems with Microsoft's patches:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2154155/users-fe el-pain-latest
http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingn ews.jhtml?articleId=185302749
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=180202426
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/17/ms_patch_g litch/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/12/ms_pulls_s ecurity_patch/
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=168600620
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_79 92.php/Faulty_Microsoft_patches_highlight_quality_ concerns
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5648595.html
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNCID=43 &CIaNID=18362

• Darrow, Barbara. "Microsoft, The New IBM." CRN 7 Jun 2004
• Goldberg, Aaron. "Microsoft Hits Downslope." eWeek 19 May 2003
• Kanellos, Michael. "The Rise and Fall of the Wintel Empire." ZDNet 5 Aug 2004
• Reifman, Jeff. "Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow." Seattle Weekly 2 Jun 2004

• Darrow, Barbara. "Microsoft, The New IBM." CRN 7 Jun 2004
• Goldberg, Aaron. "Microsoft Hits Downslope." eWeek 19 May 2003
• Kanellos, Michael. "The Rise and Fall of the Wintel Empire." ZDNet 5 Aug 2004
• Reifman, Jeff. "Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow." Seattle Weekly 2 Jun 2004

"A Mac-user with common sense!"

It's not common sense. It's wrong.

Microsoft is in a unique position. Because it has a virtual monopoly, Microsoft makes more money when its software has a lot of security vulnerabilities. For those who are ruled by money, morality has no force; "Maximizing Shareholder Value" is the way they live their lives.

Microsoft makes more money if it pressures its programmers to work too fast, so that they are sloppy, and then releases buggy software. Many people are fascinated by computers, and easily accept the world that Microsoft has created for them.

Here's a story about a Microsoft VP saying, "Oh, the next Windows operating system will be secure": "Safety and security is the overriding feature that most people will want to have Windows Vista for" .

So, Microsoft is once again telling us "The next version of Windows will be the good one." Before, Microsoft said Windows XP was "Built to be Dependable".

However, Vista will NOT include virus protection. Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's platform products and services division told CRN, an industry magazine this:

CRN: In terms of security, how do you compare security in Vista vs. security in Windows XP SP2?

Allchin: SP2 was a very good system but compared to Vista, it's night and day.

CRN: Is there going to be antivirus in Vista?

Allchin: No, there is not.

CRN: Why?

Allchin: It's a complicated answer as to why not.

CRN: Was the decision based on technical concerns?

Allchin: It wasn't technical.

CRN: Will Vista resolve security problems once and for all?

Allchin: I'm not going to claim perfection or near perfection, but I think we're unrivaled in the work we've done. I believe security will be a huge problem for the industry for years and years and years but this will change the landscape in a fairly dramatic way.

Once again, Microsoft is taking advantage of the fact that most of its customers have little technical knowledge. Mr. Allchin said that "security will be a huge problem for the industry for years and years and years".

Microsoft charges for OneCare Live. That's another way to make money. Make sloppy software, and then sell protection against the sloppiness.

Note the emphasis on "beta testing" in Mr. Allchin's statements in the CRN interview. Someone said that Microsoft's motto is "The whole world is our beta tester."

--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits and paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans get Iraq oil profits, and American citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

That's called misinformation. It's a tactic used in the "free market" to create force that appears desirable. Even IBM has succumbed to this to sell off their PCD to Lenovo. What was the highest in quality is now in the hands of one of the CEOs from the Cursed Brand of Abysmal Quality. It's something to think about when let quality fall by the wayside, knowing that it affects your job as well by supporting an unsustainable practice such as offshoring.

You're wrong on two points as well, so lets call it a tie:

1. In economics, monopoly requires complete control of a market... that is, no competition exists at all. I don't know where you got this 50% from (thin air would be my guess), but it's not remotely true.

2. According to this article it's non-obvious that Intel even has 50% of the PC CPU market anymore. Research firms are putting AMD in the lead in current sales... at least as of October.

I'd like to see the court that declares a company a predatory monopoly when research firms say they're not even the market leader.

His picture is great. I will politely refrain from making remarks about another person's appearance, but you should look at it. (And there is a link to it from the Wikipedia article).

Here are a few. Searched on "Windows Vista and Monitor and DRM" http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12201 http://crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews. jhtml?articleId=167101066 http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hd cp-vista.ars

You might want to check your facts before posting this kind of FUD.

$#%@!!!! You post a WEB SURVEY and the have the gall to accuse me of spreading FUD?! Good God, you are either truly naive about all things statistical, or you're trying to spread quite a bit of FUD yourself.

IDC: IBM takes lead from BEA
Gartner: IBM trumps BEA

You don't by any chance work for JBoss's Astroturfing department, do you? Hmmm... very suspicious... :-P

Odds are the overlap is probably on purpose. Here's a sample:

• C++ vs (MS) C++
• C++ vs (MS) C#
• RMS vs (MS) RMS
• Vista vs (MS) Vista
• ... and so on ...

Someone familiar with the special terms MS uses could probably dig up plenty more.

Want to mess with the search results? Simply put links on some of your pages to the non-MS definition.

Dell has become a poster child for crappy customer service. Do AMD fans want Dell dragging AMD's good name down with them? I'd prefer that Dell self-destruct on their own without pulling AMD into their vortex of suckage.

- Greg

..... because they make stuff for the following companies:

- Dell (Latitude)
- IBM/Levono (any and all of them)
- Sony (Vaio)
- Apple (iBook)
- Gateway

They also made HP laptops in the past. Plus they're moving into cell phones and other eletronics.

Their CEO Barry Lim was named one of Computer Reseller News's Top 25 Execs in November (http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17 3600682 for more).

They have the track record to make this happen properly. I just wonder why they'd do it. Maybe for the P.R. points? It's not for the cash.

according to SANS.

My company is offering VoIP bundles for 4 to 24 users, and include the handsets, POE switches, router, gateway, and with certain systems, even Wireless Access Points. System PDF Here is a writeup from crn.com crn.com Info on the individual products in the systems can be found here Handsets Gateway 8 Port POE Switch 24 Port POE Switch 24 Port Layer 3 Switch Router WAP

I dug up the article about what mentioned Xen and patents. You are correct, that it requires a modified version of XP to run, but apparently patents are still an issue. So my guesswork still could be correct (Or completely wrong) in that VMWare may be involved so that the community doesn't tread on toes.

More and more people buy PC's direct, rather than retail. Temporary solution: when you're tallying sales numbers, just pretend Dell doesn't exist!

In any case, notebook sales have topped desktops. AMD really dropped the ball on that one -- they have absolutely nothing which remotely compares to the Pentium M, and even Steve Jobs was forced to admit it.

Oh well, if AMD suffers due to its poor business decisions, they can always cry to the government about Intel the Big Bad Monopoly. Lord knows they shouldn't have to lose any money just because of lousy management.

Kriss made the same point in a previous interview:

"Microsoft could put capabilities within their XML Office suite right now to open, save and manipulate OpenDocument formats. It is certainly something they could do."

Microsoft's excuse (claiming the format doesn't support this-and-that, breaks backward compatibility yadda yadda) is, quite frankly, lame. Don't they see they are shooting themselves in the foot?

The H1B Visa situation has been misrepresented.

There was a cap of 195,000 H1B Visas; in October of 2003 (after the "dot bomb"), this was dropped to 65,000.

As of about June of this year, an additional 20,000 have been allocated, but so far very few people are actually filing for these additional Visas: the US is no longer seen as such a desirable place to work, after all.

Note that the H1B criteria for these Visas is an MS from a U.S. school, or a BS and 5 years work experience prior to the filing.

Here's a CRN article that also quotes Bill gates:

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarch ives.jhtml?articleId=163101217

This one's a little out of date regarding what actually happened: the article headline claims "U.S. Expects 20,000 H1B Visas To Go Quickly", but in fact hardly any of them have gone anywhere.

I think the real issue here is that during the "dot com gold rush", a lot of U.S. students left college before graduating, or graduated with a BS and left for the money, to be a warm body in a V.C.-funded cubicle far, and didn't pursue a post-graduate degree.

From that perspective, Mr. Gates is right: there's a serious lack of available talent; if an MS is the same as a BS + 5 years experience, then many of the people who at least got their BS still have ~2 years on average to "ripen".

Another problem, more or less one he brought on himself, is that it's a common Microsoft practice to get students fresh out of graduating college, and make them over in their own image. From that perspective, Mr. Gates is also right, that there's a serious lack of available talent - that he's willling to hire. The issue here is more complicated, but it boils down to to the staza from the song about social unrest in Algerian Muslims, post WWI: "How are you going to keep them down on the farm, once they've seen Paree?". Working 5 years in the real world would probably sour someone on working for Microsoft at an entry level position.

It's an untenable position to be sure, but it's mostly of his own making.

-- Terry

Actual informed users can run administrator accounts on Windows with no problems whatsoever

Even with the loss of jobs to overseas, India is currently asking for H1B Visas to be increased back to the Dot.Com boom levels of 195,000 a year. And there still is no cap on L1 visas. Another thing many americans are not aware of is that renewals of visas do not count toward the cap and one estimate I have seen is that only 40% visa applications are new ones. Allowing some foreign workers each year may be necessary if they have special skills that no Americans have, but importing these kinds of numbers is a fraud. Americans will gear up for those high-tech skills if they are attracted by good pay, good benefits, and job satisfaction. Instead, Supply-demand is being short circuited by importing foreign workers to keep the prevailing wages and job security low thus creating a self-sustaining reaction.

CRN, GeekCoffee, Business Wire, and eWeek

Even in a civil case, you must have probable cause to go into someone's bank records, medical records, phone records, search someone's house.

The school said, we are going to require you to have some basis to invade these student's privacy -- nothing is wrong with that. If this is a criminal case, the police would have to get a warrant from a judge. Here in a civil case, the school is saying get a judge to order us to.

This test has already come up in many courts. The plaintiff (RIAA) has to show that there is a likelyhood that they would be successful, before unmasking these people.

This comes from many cases where employees or investors have commented about companies and the company files suit only to unmask the people, then drop the suit. One of the early decisions was released in 2000.

Members of the open-source community are expressing concern over rapid feature changes in the Linux 2.6 kernel, which they say are too focused on the desktop and could make the kernel too large.
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel."

If you don't want it, don't compile it in. Thats the best part about having the kernel opened and so easy to manipulate. With the GUI available for modifying the kernel as well as a detailed set of instructions built right in, anyone can sit there and remove support for the latest gaming joystick if they so choose to. No one is making you keep it. If the kernel didn't have the option of supporting it, or if they discontinue the building of, then Linux will never be ready for the desktop. Just because Morton or Linus decides to add/accept support for the desktop community doesn't mean that the kernel won't be any more stable. Who is to say that adding gaming support took time away from stabilizing the kernel? If I'm strictly a game hardware designer and send my contribution to support the latest device does not mean that I could have spent my time improving the kernel. I may not be comfortable doing that. In other words, maybe I can't stabilize the kernel but I can write new drivers for it. And if I spend my time doing that it doesn't mean that I take time away from those improving and stabilizing the kernel.

The part that really caught me off guard is the inclusion of the Xen virtualization technology. Big changes are coming to the kernel that are really going to improve Linux and its functionality in the buisness and home world.

It's got a lot of strikes against it:

• It was late
• Lots of apps don't work with XP SP2, including some of Microsoft's own
• It's been known to be
• unstable
• Difficult to install
• Additions like the firewall have serious shortcomings
• It messes with settings and permissions
• Is still vulnerable anyway in many ways, and it can take weeks or months to force a repair or even admission.
• Doesn't fix or remove MSIE
• Has DRM features that let spammers 0wn the machine

It's got a lot of strikes against it:

• It was late
• Lots of apps don't work with XP SP2, including some of Microsoft's own
• It's been known to be
• unstable
• Difficult to install
• Additions like the firewall have serious shortcomings
• It messes with settings and permissions
• Is still vulnerable anyway in many ways, and it can take weeks or months to force a repair or even admission.
• Doesn't fix or remove MSIE
• Has DRM features that let spammers 0wn the machine

Susan Bradley and other SBS-MVPs have closely analyzed the new Windows Server 2003 Server Pack 1 release (see http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/dailyarch ives.jhtml?articleId=160400108 for details) and CONCLUDED that this SHOULD NOT BE APPLIED to SBS 2003!

Susan writes about this matter at her blog site:

http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/04/01/40479 .aspx
http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/03/31/40399 .aspx
http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/03/31/40423 .aspx

(above cut-n-paste from Harry Brelsford email)
Kevin

Good article from all the way back in 2004 regarding where this is actually pointed. http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=510 00391&flatPage=true

Would Sun rather see Linux go away? Sure, but they also believe in it enough to sell it. http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp

These are quotes directly from they guy heading up EDS's strategic alliances. Not from members of the strategic alliance - has anyone asked Ellison if he thinks Linux is insecure, prone to unfriendly forking? Guess not. http://www.oracle.com/events/unbreakablelinux/inde x.html. Guess not.

Cisco? Well lets see they have linux running on some of their hardware, and apparently its good enough for their engineers to run http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0216cislinux.htm l

So lets round out the list...

EMC - http://www.emc.com/products/systems/linux/index.js p
Dell - http://linux.dell.com/
Microsoft - http://www.mslinux.org/ Err, umm - ok maybe not.

FWIW Rick Inatome was a/the Computer City founder Henochowicz and Keith were the names of CompUS(l)A(ve)

So what are are suggesting is that Sun should have acted illegally and not ensured that their licensing was correct? Come on, I am sure you can come up with something better than that old argument (which has been refuted so many times as conspiacy theory that I'm not going to mention it here again).

What I was asking for was references of Sun Folks saying that they are specifically aiming to kill Linux. The closest comment that I have come across was the reverse, and that was Linus saying that he'd like to see Sun die. The actual quote was

"A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die,"

Ref: http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingn ews.jhtml?articleId=59300278

I am assuming that this is the same Anonymous Coward who wrote the initial post that I responded to. I would look forward to seeing those words (about Sun not open sourcing Solaris) get taken back, but I won't be terribly surprised if you don't.

Tp.

In this CRN news article, Steven Welch, an "IBM distinguished Engineer", is quoted as saying, "One-touch IBM Rescue & Recovery On Linux all wrapped up in a portable media device under $300. Priceless. That is music to my ears."

I wonder how his ears would respond to a free Knoppix CD?

Microsoft Contributes To Open Source Site

The benefit is clear: Solaris would have slowed its death spiral from its great height. Why else do you think they Open Sourced it in the first place? They just miscalculated, manouvered badly, and picked the wrong license. Jeers instead of cheers. Not a good marketing move, and certainly not something to garner the same community fervor as only the GPL-oriented can expend. They would have had a majority of defenders instead of detractors. Not something to take lightly in this slippery market. Public noise can make the difference between being independent, and being a subsidiary.

It may even have split the Linux community into adopters of Solaris in addition to Linux. It would have given Sun breathing space in the market, as even IBM would find it hard to argue the point of using Linux to their customers when another robust and battle-tested GPL OS was out there. But, even more importantly, it could have given Linux a real competitive fight, giving both a chance to evolve and surpass each other. The community could've benefited greatly.

Linus understands Sun very well when he says that:

"...from Sun's perspective, the CDDL had to be incompatible with the GPL. Sun "wants to keep a moat against the barbarians at the gate," he wrote in an e-mail interview. Torvalds said he does not expect developers clamoring to start playing with that source code.

"Nobody wants to play with a crippled version [of Solaris]. I, obviously, do believe that they'll have a hard time getting much of a community built up," Torvalds wrote. "I think there are parallels with the Java 'we'll control the process' model. I personally think that their problem is that they want to control the end result too much, and because of that they won't get any of the real advantages of open source." "

And...

"He contrasted Sun's CDDL with the wide-open nature of the GPL. "One of the beauties of the GPL," he said, is that "you have to totally give up control over the project (because everybody literally has the same rights to the whole project), but exactly because nobody can control it, it makes everybody feel like true owners.""

He's right, and Sun will have to learn it the hard way.

So what you end up as you almost always do is a religious argument based on hypothetical scenarios that have no substance in reality. Fine but don't image that it makes anyone with any sense or perspective think that Sun is out to damage GPL. It isn't and in fact all the evidence is that Sun is out to support GPL where it is sensible.

Any GPL developer would be in danger of contaminating his projects if he were to work on Open Solaris AND Linux due to Sun's questionable patent stance. Yes, witholding patents makes sense if you intend to hurt the users of what you consider a competing community. Why else withold from some and give to others? They've performed an action that doesn't require explanation.

Sun was doing Open Source or something rather like it when the perceived wisdom was that this was a very stupid move commercially.

Let's see, Unix source code was floating around and being shared by various universities and companies. Everyone was sharing their improvements. Now that was enlightenment. Sun relicenses what other people had worked on, decides to close their source and suddenly they were enlightened? Please, it's because of companies like Sun that GNU was started in the first place.

For the state to use a format under their "open formats," there can be no restrictions on its use. MS Office XML formats are patented. The article seems to allude to Microsoft licensing the formats for anyone's free use. If that happens, then OOo can implement them directly, and interoperate perfectly with MS Office.

But as with all things business, it's too early to tell, and read the fine print.

No, Kevin McBride is Darl's brother:

CRN's top 25 execs of 2003:

His brother, Kevin McBride, says the boys were also taught how to shoot. "We were taught to protect ourselves and what was ours at a very early age and started carrying guns for hunting when we were very young," Kevin says.

It's tough to compete against a social movement. Especially one in which you're a believer. That's what Sun's been facing for the past few years when it comes to Linux. Linux represents all the ideals we've espoused for decades: openness, freedom, innovation,
even open source (remember, Sun was started with open source).

Actually if you didn't notice, Sun and Microsoft are now friends. Hence the $900 million the story yesterday was about. Also Sun, Microsoft To Reveal New Interoperability Plans Next Month

Does Johnathan not get it, or is he playing the FUD game?

He is playing the FUD game, and it's nothing new. For example, he has referred to Gnome as "open source crap" that supposedly requires the genius and brillians of Sun's GUI designers to put right (CRN article). He has also tried to portray Linux as a kind of low-quality entry-level UNIX that isn't enterprise ready, with Solaris being the high-performance choice.

The most annoying and dangerous thing about Schwartz is that he keeps trying to redefine the meaning of "open" and "open source" in order to get Sun's highly proprietary platforms and products (e.g., Java) to be more widely accepted.

Why is Schwartz doing this? Because he must know that Sun is basically finished as a company: their hardware is uninteresting and Solaris is uninteresting. The only piece of software they own that anybody cares about is Java, but as soon as Sun tried to use their legal control of Java to extract any significant amount of revenue from it (and, make no mistake: Sun has tighter legal ownership of Java than Microsoft has of any of their platforms), they would have a rebellion on their hands.

I installed the official release of SP2 and installed it on my mom's laptop last night, only to be greeted with a nice informative blue screen upon reboot.

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingn ews.jhtml?articleId=23905071

I had to boot into recovery mode and run a batch script to uninstall SP2, just like the article outlines. Then I had to go into the registry and change some keys, then do an uninstall via the add/remove programs wizard. Man, thanks Microsoft for a full night.

I'm not sure if I'm going to try again, we'll see how I feel after stewing about it all day...

The whole "three out of five machines failed to come back up" after installing SP2 RC2 should not frighten you from trying it.

The original article said quit clearly that the problem they had was that they'd get a bluescreen and "A message stated that 'winserv' was missing."

What the article didn't say was what "winserv" actually is. It's not part of Windows. In fact, it is spyware. Plain and simple.

So the problem, then, with Windows XP SP2 RC2 is that it doesn't work when the operating system has been corrupted beyond repair by spyware that hooks into various DLLs and services in an attempt to prevent itself from being uninstalled.

The issue was raised by Green Party Alderman Jens Muehlhaus, who warned that patent issues could grind some of the city's departments to a halt in the future. The issue involves a proposed directive on software patents that is being considered by various European governments, including Germany, France, and the U.K.

Linux is making a case for itself as being "NOT Unix".

I saw an ad a while back in Ccmputer Reseller News that went something like: "Do we HAVE to use UNIX for our database?"...

The implication is that "everybody knows"... UNIX==EXPENSIVE. Linus is much, much cheaper, and you can save $X,000 using Linux.

Given its history of high price, vendor lockin, and balkinization, why would anything Linux even care about "being Unix"? Linux has buzz, Unix has a buzz. Which would you prefer?

Unix is a good ancestor to Linux. Remember, GNU is NOT UNIX!

See this story at Computer Reseller News, which claims McAfee is for sale and Microsoft may be the only buyer in sight.

See this story at Computer Reseller News, which claims McAfee is for sale and Microsoft may be the only buyer in sight.

What about that this is as diversion from the accounting scandal?

What about the bigger impact of KGEM helping with making Level B1 easier?

KGEM, etc

Can you say "Paladium"?

It looks like Microsoft can't.

Like most people are pointing out there is a good chance the the drive is erased before even being booted. So wouldn't a custom bios be needed with all the reporting tools, dhcp clients, etc? Besides LinuxBIOS anyone have any data about adding custom programs to a BIOS?

A quick search turned up this which seems like a good idea. Also this site discusses varies ideas to make theft and reselling more difficult.