Slashdot Mirror

Dell has been losing market share to HP and Apple quite a while now (at least 6 quarters consecutively according to AC above).

HP and Apple's turnaround in the marketplace has been somewhat attributed to R&D and strong design teams which Dell lacks, according to "Why Dell isn't the next Apple."

In response, Dell has been designing some great systems due to launch this year:
XPS m1330 ultraportable: http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/05/more-pics-of-the-dell-xps-m1330/
Latitude XT tablet: http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/11/dell-latitude-xt-tablet-is-official-sexy/
E5000 / E6000: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/22/dells-leaked-latitude-e6000-and-e5000-series-of-laptops-pack-gp/
E4200 / E4300: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/up-close-with-dells-latitude-e4300-and-e4200-ultra-portables-wi/

You would also need to argue how much net profits extra customization adds to Dell's offerings. In the past, I've always thought the memory and hdd upgrades through Dell were ridiculous, I would rather just buy the parts separately and add them in myself.

I attended an AMD talk the other day where the presenter noted that a 10% difference in CPU clock was equivalent to having a black laptop instead of white (based on same spec Macbooks).

The consumer market has reached a point where customization and marginal performance options are taking a back seat to design and price point.

It's be even easier if Abramovich digs his version of the Channel Tunnel under there.

Actually, they will. Over the air broadcasting will stil be there, just not analog. The rabbit ears will pick up the digital signals just fine. I already have my converter box coupon.

Rabbit ears also make an excellent FM radio antenna.

Link and link and a more detailed link

Boston is supposedly the 13th "most wired" city in the country behind plenty of those on the East Coast including NYC, Raleigh and Charlotte, and Baltimore. If you were such a "Silicon Valley-alike" you'd have a better ranking.

Stop fucking whining. Minneapolis is the 11th most wired city in the country, according to that list, and from what I have read Verizon has absolutely no plans on bringing FiOS here.

sir, how expensive do you think bandwidth is? if bittorrent user A pays $50 a month for 'high speed cable internet' (after promotional fees end) and is downloading 30 GB a month, and uploading about the same GB/month... is the cable company taking a loss? no i don't thinks so.

why? well I'll cite an article, yes a bit old, but here is my point, a site where 13 million people download the same 15 MB video... (this is just the most popular my friend!) and Forbes estimates their bandwidth cost at $1 million dollars a month? they probably were serving 10x that many clips, or 1,950 million megabytes to put it simply, 1.81607902 petabytes of bandwidth costs $1 million dollars.

so now i did the math that means the combined upload/download costs of 32,000 'bittorrent' users doing 30 GB/30 GB a month, Vs $50 a month costs, guess what? the costs were $1,000,000 but the income taken is was $1,600,000 a month. true that's only the bandwidth costs, and cable companies have many other costs, maintaining the network hardware admins etc.. but my point is this, if $50 a month isn't enough they'll just go to $75 a month, if that's not enough they'll go to $100 a month... and keep in mind the bt users right now are few and far between, the typical user uses like 100 MB a month 'surfing websites' and maybe 1-5 gb a month for 'heavy you tube' users...

http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/27/video-youtube-myspace_cx_df_0428video.html

... But one of the criticisms of the eBay feedback system--probably the largest public forum for judging the reputation of a business in the world--is that its ratings are far too positive to be believed.

Go ahead, browse the site. You'll see that the vast majority of sellers have 99+% positive ratings. If you were grading on a curve, a 98% would probably be equivalent to a "C" on a report card--and it's relatively hard to find buyers with this rating. Below 97%? Forget it. No one's going to buy from you.

There are some who point to the consistently high ratings as a sign the system is working. After all, so this line of argument goes, all the bad sellers are simply weeded out. They get bad ratings, they can't sell, they withdraw their sorry little wares from eBay. End of story.

But there's another, less positive explanation: People are afraid of what is referred to in the eBay community as "retaliatory feedback." That's when a seller (or a buyer--it can happen on both sides) becomes annoyed or enraged at a negative comment posted by someone else about them, and in retaliation posts a negative comment in return.

No story about ultracapacitors would be complete without a reference to EEstor. As usual, they've shifted their delivery goal to late 2008.

Apparently they have a U.S. mutual fund unit. Other than that, all I can find in regards to U.S. activity is an New York Address.

http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2005/06/24/afx2110388.html

Actually, they let some worms out yesterday:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/14/microsoft-management-mobile-tech-enter-cx_bc_0214microsoft.html?partner=yahootix

I am sure you read the legendary Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1030/104_print.html

To my generation (early 20s) RMS comes across as an egotistical control freak. I grew up with free software (largely thanks to him, I'm sure), but I don't know of any actual contributions he has made to free software in recent history. Instead, he ridicules people who don't associate his name with their own open source software (GNU/Linux is a joke), and acts like a fool because he thinks he can ride on the success of something neat that he did in the 70s (long before I was born). It makes all advocates of free software look bad, which is something I have personally had to deal with on many occasions.

On the other hand, Linus has some personality issues, and has made many decisions that I do not necessarily agree with, but he has earned a great deal of my respect. This is because he is in the trenches every day, and is actually working to make the world a better place, not just traveling the world and acting goofy.

I do not publish code under the GPL. The main reason for this is because I feel it is a scam designed to ensure the grand legacy of RMS. Viral free licenses may have been useful in the late 80s, but they are just a hindrance these days. I publish under licenses which grant more freedoms than the GPL, and because of this, I cannot integrate GPL code into my own.

He also shows no understanding of modern technologies. TPM and trusted computing in general have the potential to be our greatest defense against these malware spewing record companies. Anyone with sense can see that DRM is a lost cause, and the fact that these companies are investing so much money in TC technologies is epic humor.

In the end, information will be free. It will not, however, happen by force, and the creation of more copyrights. It will happen when corporations see the benefits of having large communities around their code, instead of attempting to bottle feed code to their customers. I fear that soon, all the legacy GPL code will need to be re-written as open source license incompatibilities become more and more of a problem.

I also have a HUGE problem with the way RMS and ESR try to tell me what is and is not a "hacker" when they themselves could probably not code themselves out of a paper bag on a modern system. That is a whole different rant though :-)

Honestly, I was not even aware that there were still wifi coffee shops that you had to pay for internet access. Is that a Bay Area thing? In the Fort Collins CO area, most coffee shops I have been around have free wifi with no time limits.

Seriously.. small shops have been doing this for years. DSL is down in the $20/month range and a wireless router is cheap. I suspect that the administrative overhead of managing a system like this one for Starbucks is not really worth the effort. Starbucks may have made their money on the T-Mobile deal, but I doubt it. IIRC, it was a $500 mill contract. And, a quick websearch shows a series of price cuts.

Here's one from 2003:

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/1855971

"In the original story regarding the price drop, Starbucks New Ventures Director Lovina McMurchy is quoted as saying that even the busiest Starbucks shops get about 20 Wi-Fi devices on the network per day. While T-Mobile doesn't release cost information for providing the hotspot, the revenue generated from so few customers is probably not enough to cover costs of a high speed line -- the T-Mobile Hotspots are served by costly T1 lines -- and the revenue sharing between T-Mobile, Starbucks, and HP, which provides some software for the services."

http://www.lockergnome.com/mobile/2006/03/09/t-mobile-answers-the-cries-of-starbucks-owners/

"All the mom-and-pop coffee shops offer free Wi-Fi. In fact, most everyone does except Starbucks. The Seattle-based coffee house gets its hotspot piped in by T-Mobile. It's been reported for years that store managers at Starbucks has been complaining to upper management for a while about losing business because customers don't want to pay for their Internet after forking out $4 on a foo-foo drink."

Here's my favorite:

http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/23/fonbucks-wifi-starbucks-ent_cx_mc_0226fonbucks.html

"FON, a community WiFi provider headquartered in Madrid, Spain, is offering wireless Internet access to Starbucks' latte-sipping surfers for just $2 a day--versus the $10 users pay to sign onto the 5,100 T-Mobile hotspots at U.S. Starbucks (nasdaq: SBUX - news - people ).

Just how does FON plan to steal away Starbucks Internet users? By offering FON wireless routers, also known as "La Foneras," free to anyone who lives above or next to a Starbucks. The routers, which usually cost $40, split an Internet broadband connection into two wireless signals--one for personal Internet use and the second for public use, which can be accessed by anyone within range for $2 per day. The routers' owners get to pocket half of the sign-on fee, and FON takes home the rest."

The funny thing is that Tor has occasionally done this before. Baen also does this on an ongoing basis.

Turns out that people don't read books much and it's hard to get someone interested in a new writer, or in some cases, a new series by an existing writer. Once you get your foot in the door with free copies, though, you actually end up selling more than you would have if you didn't give stuff away. Weird, huh? :-)

Road or bridge, I'm still working hard trying to understand the cost difference between you paying for required infrastructure, or having taxes extracted from you to pay for them by the fed. Certainly the edge cases of crossing the Mississippi are bigger than one state, but that still need not mean that Washington, DC has to foot the bill.
Have you trundled up to Mass. to enjoy the Big Dig? You certainly paid for enough of it.
While you can likely slice the data any number of ways, keep in mind that the government, and its vast staff, ain't poor.
Keeping the conversation balanced, there are certainly economies of scale.
Running all the loot through DC certainly does support a lot of resource leveling across the country.
However, the barriers to entry for the political process seem high and thick.
The whole situation, I'm suggesting, may take more than it gives.

I'd be much more impressed with EU anti-trust efforts if they weren't pretty much aimed at non-EU companies. They're mostly a trade barrier rather than a legitimate regulatory body.

When the Federal Income Tax was first introduced in 1864, it was only 3%. We are now boiled up 35% (having touched 88% in 1942) and you don't seem to scream.

In 1864, the United States was an agrarian natiton with little industrialization. Urban industrialized nations require more governance than a land sparsely populated with farmers who work mostly by manual labor.

By the standards of the contemporary industrialized world, the U.S. is lightly taxed, and citizens of other nations laugh at our tax whining.

Actually.. ACME has tried this well before IBM. Might IBM is violating ACME patents.

From "Loony Land Or Bust!"

ACMETROPOLIS - At Acme Laboratories, here on the outskirts of the desert, a team of genetically modified, hyper-intelligent rodents are working around the clock on their next big product: Acme Internet in a Box.

"The difficult thing isn't getting it to work properly," says The Brain, the project's lead lab mouse. "Nearly anyone can create a stable Internet connection these days. The tough thing is getting it to fail properly--and spectacularly--at the worst possible time. Our dream product would literally catch on fire just as you are uploading a project you'd spent weeks working on. It would be a bonus if it took down a couple of major Web sites in the process."

read the rest at http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/11/acme-corporation-looney-oped-books-cx_mn_fict1507_1211acme.html

All you have to do is look at what has actually happened with WalMart.

Ok let's look at what's happening with Walmart. Walmart is the world's biggest retailer, and is one of China's biggest. The Chinese seem able to afford to shop there. Or take Brazil and Mexico. Walmart has been a success in both countries. In Brazil Walmart is closing in on Brazil's largest retailer, the French company Carrefour.

they're raking in billions of $ while Medicaide or other programs pay their workers health care costs

As in other areas I'd prefer a free market in health care. I don't believe in employer provided health insurance. In the US this is a vestige from World War II. Then the US had wage control laws that prevented employers from paying employees more, instead to allow businesses to attract employees employers were allowed to offer health insurance to employees. This alone distorted the market for health care and insurance. Even today laws and regulations favor employers who provide health insurance instead of paying them more so they can buy the type of insurance they want. However as you point out with Walmart some employers don't offer insurance for employees. Because health costs are skyrocketing employers are either requiring employees to pay more or are dropping coverage. That has been a sticking point with US auto manufacturers and United Auto Workers. The companies want workers to pay more but the union won't go along. What needs to be done is to let employers pay employees more without either having to pay more taxes then allow employees to buy insurance.

In any case you sound like you've swallowed the whole 'there is an evil liberal agenda to have all powerful government'.

On whether or not there's any agenda or not doesn't matter to me, but if there is one it's not liberal. Liberals, real ones not fakes, want liberty and small government.

It is crap. It is Corporatist propaganda.

Looks like you've missed where I've railed against corporation. A number of tymes I've stated corporations should have their Corporate Charter revoked if t hey no longer served to public good. The very first corporation, the Dutch East India Company, was granted a corporate charter for this very reason in 1602. Two years later the Honourable East India Company was granted a charter for the same reason, to serve the public good. If corporations today were treated the same it wouldn't be a problem. Thomas Jefferson said "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."

while the Republicans have given loads of lip service to shrinking government, they've failed utterly to live up to their word.

Republicans have never done anything to shrink government. Two of past 3 Republican presidents increased the size of government. What's ironic is that the republican president that warned of the military industrial complex, Dwight D. Eisenhower, actually made it stronger. Many Americans believe it was Kennedy who first sent US troops to Viet Nam, but it was actually Ike who sent Colonel Edward Lansdale to undermine a vote on whether North and South Viet Nam would re

The RIAA has come a long way since they were setup to regulate and maintain the technical standards on how vinyl records should be manufactured. Hopefully they will go the way of the vinyl record real soon...

What, you want to RIAA to make revival? While CD sales are declining vinyl record sells are increasing. More and more stores are starting to carry vinyl turntables. Yes, I've noticed this as I'd like to get one myself.

Microsoft has effectively paid its employees with your tax dollars for years.

True, also because of its significant presence in the US state of Washington, most of those Microsoft employees are able to avoid paying income tax (state income tax at least) on those salaries. Washington is one of those states that has income-tax exemptions. Isn't it so very interesting that Microsoft is not a state-centric business, but that their products are earning revenues from all US states, overseas, etc.?

Couple avoidance of a state income tax with the fact that many Washingtonians head south to Oregon for some of those lovely sales tax breaks since, well, the state of OR has no state sales tax.

I've thought before that tax accounting is a game that only the supremely wealthy can afford to play (unethically do they play the game, imho, since most of their ethics are hinged upon avoidance of litigation) and all the while do their games erode the safety and well-being of middle-class people. It could even be argued that Microsoft's "ability" to do a hostile takeover of Yahoo! is most likely resultant from the tax dollars paid by many middle-class people, written off on paper tax forms, and essentially wasted.

begin: Small digression: Of course, Semel's insane executive compensation package or whatever it was certainly didn't seem to add much value of the majority of Yahoo! stakeholders and/or shareholders during his time. Maybe if he'd agreed to less compensation, and to giving others more, Yahoo! wouldn't be having this problem. The Microsoft-centric model has the same problem with the added result that it would most likely just kill small business.

Indeed, I really hope this doesn't indicate that the way of the small business is dying if not dead, and that it's just a matter time in watching giant corporate entities eat each other alive. No matter how it's viewed from a small business perspective, this can't be good since what Microsoft is essentially offering is to pay Yahoo! to take on some of its inefficiency burden, is it not?

Oh, except that congress just cut all funding for ITER , the international thermonuclear experimental (fusion) reactor.

So no fusion, no coal, no basic research. It's all oil all the time.

I think this guy could supply plenty of the funds India isn't all poor, they just have a larger wealth divide then most western countries.

Around January 18th, news reports are that several city's power grids have been recently attacked via the internet.

In completely unrelated news, a couple of weeks later large portions of mideast anti-western terrorist sponsoring areas had internet access disrupted or cut off in a series of coincidental unobserved "accidents".

Hmm.....

Security on the iPhone is SO bad, you may as well just give up all your privacy anyway.

It can be turned into a microphone which records everything said about it, someone can look at all your contacts and information, and good luck if you store any financial info on it, or have visited a banking website. You'd just be screwed.

But hey, when you have to whip something in in four weeks for a pointy-haired boss, that kind of stuff happens.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/AQXZ.html
$21.30 mil (#56)

I'm sure his demands will cause Congress to immediately begin to do exactly as he says in every way. Or perhaps not. He can "demand" anything. What he gets is what they want to give him.

That's even true today. The Democrat controlled congress won't send the Republican president bills he wants. Look at the economic stimulus package Bush proposed. Democrats don't accept it as it is now, with "'significant' ideological differences" between what each on wants.

Noone ever explained Customs and Immigration to you? Ships can't enter the USA without first getting approval from the Customs people, and then the IRS gets to talk to them about tariffs. No Federal Government means no Customs, which means merchant shipping stops just like the airlines.

I already addressed this even if you want to ignore it. The president can ask congress for a bill that addresses ports, with provisions that shippers pay the costs.

On the one single important issue, there is no difference - neither Party has any interest in surrendering any Federal power at all. Which means they'll be united against a President who wants to reduce Federal power to the Constitutionally mandated limits.

Look at the economic stimulus plans each wants. They both agree something needs to be done but they disagree with what course of action to take.

Note the Reagan, who was an immensely popular President didn't manage to shrink the Federal government one iota, even though that was one of his nominal goals

"Nominally" may be right but he actually wanted to, and did, increase the size of government. In late 2005 or early 2006 "Reason magazine" had an article detailing just how Reagan increased the size of government, especially the so called "War on Drugs". And he once said "I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."

Note, by the way, that I in no way approve of the Federal power grab over the last three-quarter century. But I know enough to know that we can't turn the clock back on it. And believing that we can is a sign of self-delusion.

Saying it can't be done is self defeating. If all those who want it to happen don't work towards that end it won't happen, but if they try it may happen. Not right away but it can. As one of my favorite singers, Billie Holiday, sung "The difficult I'll do right now, the impossible will take a little while."

I'd rather be optimistic than a defeatist. And I know something about that. If I had been a defeatist instead of an optimist I'd be dead now. Over ten years ago I was hit while riding my bike, after classes in college, and while I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. I spent more than a year in therapy and saw around a dozen therapists, some of whom said after looking at my medical records that I must of been stubborn to have survived.

Presuming that InformationWeek had their typical lame coverage here, a quick search found a much better article about this at Forbes (they even know to ask Bruce Schneier about it!) where they link to a nice background article about these SCADA systems.

Presuming that InformationWeek had their typical lame coverage here, a quick search found a much better article about this at Forbes (they even know to ask Bruce Schneier about it!) where they link to a nice background article about these SCADA systems.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/12/technology/oracle_analysis/
http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/14/oracle-consolidation-openworld-tech-cx_wt_1115techoracle.html

There was some better source, unfortunately I can't find it at the moment.
Basically, it sounded like Oracles efforts to find commonality in all of their platforms were turning into a mess. Not working there myself I can't confirm or deny.

Here, have a link http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/22/scada-hackers-infrastructure-tech-security-cx_ag_0822hack.html Now, what were you saying about being secure?

I think more correctly you could say, "The FSF does care about freedom to see and use the source, but they also care about these other things."

The problem is the "other things" were not codified in GPLv2. In the FSF's eyes, that means they're improving upon GPLv2 with GPLv3 by codifying those other things.

That's the rub, though. Lots of other people who agreed totally with the GPLv2 don't see it the same way. They think the GPLv2 restricts enough freedoms and allows much. They think GPLv3 restricts freedoms that don't need to be restricted and that it takes away ones they actually want.

This article at Forbes is an interview with Linus, in which he says he does think what Tivo does is stupid, and that he cares. He just doesn't care enough to worry about it. Linus also says that the place to fight locked-down hardware is in hardware licenses and that the place to fight DRM is in the license for the content you produce. He also says he's worried about the freedom of the software because that's what he wrote. He thinks the freedom of hardware is up to the hardware makers and the freedom of content is up to content makers. Software licenses trying to control what you can do with hardware and content step over their bounds, so to speak.

So no, Linus is not against the goals of the FSF. He just thinks that software, hardware, and content should each take care of their own licenses.

The writer of a software program gets to license that software, but should they be able to dictate the license of content that's used with it, or that it can only be used with content of a particular license? That's what the disagreement really boils down to. The FSF is trying to promote the freedom of GNU software authors at the expense of the freedom of hardware and content developers instead of spreading out and promoting freedom from within the hardware and content realms. Their intentions are good, but many of us think the GPLv3 is bad execution of those intentions.

another positive is that now we can hope for new, standardized high density optical disks for computers. With makers such as TDK offering 100 gigabyte write-once disks and many others starting at 25 gigs, we finally have a backup medium that is up to the task of modern needs. I, like many other power users, have two internal 500G hard disks and an external 500G USB drive, and a 4G DVD-R just doesn't cut it anymore. My family pictures and video clips alone come to about 40G. More to the point, businesses will benefit from faster and cheaper backups of their database/web servers.

As Forbes points out, Sony still has its work cut out for it, but it sounds like Toshiba's format has lost the battle. I'm very relieved (even though I don't plan to buy a whole lot of high def movies in the near future). The big news here is that we can now standardize on a new level of storage density, and watching sharper movies is just a nice extra.

You can start with this:

http://www.forbes.com/2000/10/03/1003corel.html

Oh, here's a quote:
"For starters, what becomes of Corel's Linux plans? Corel has poured considerable resources into its Corel Linux operating system and porting its business and graphics applications to Linux. The company has positioned its Linux efforts as the linchpin of its comeback strategy, but there was no mention of Linux on the conference call Monday."

Perhaps a type of non-disparagement agreement, that if MS betrays, Corel Linux is able to be sprung forth?

Wouldn't Quattro and WordPerfect on X/Linux really hurt MS Office?

Back in 2005, there was discussion about getting Apple to change its ITunes pricing:

EMI Says Apple's Jobs Will Change ITunes Pricing
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/16/apple-emi-itunes-cx_pak_1116autofacescan08.html

So clearly, if Sony BMG move to using Amazon rather than ITunes, maybe they are going to get the differentiated pricing model that suits the "lots of money for recent hits" model that some people seem to be asking for.

6 months ago, EMI came out to sell DRM-less songs via ITunes:
http://lawvibe.com/emi-will-sell-drm-free-songs-on-apples-itunes-music-store/ ...not being an ITunes customer I can't comment about whether the model has varied from the $0.99 per song but it doesn't look like it has.

Are there any other RIAA cartel members who aren't yet selling DRM-less material?

The crunch here will be if Song BMG can show that Amazon is more profitable for the labels and still keeps consumers happy than iTunes, it might pull EMI away from iTunes or in the very least give EMI move leverage with Apple.

• 33 HP 660 cc gas engine. Also a 700 cc diesel option. (4)
• 80 mph top speed (4)
• single windshield wiper blade as a "cost-saving measure"(2)
• Four doors (4)
• 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) per liter. Call it 60 mpg using company supplied numbers(3)
• Picture here maybe with an scanned in article about it listing engine options

Fake Steve Jobs? That's not the only thing he's faked being...
How about fake journalist? Fake analyst? Fake intellectual?

The guy is firmly attached to the corporate teat, and things like
Linux scare him to death, because he can't figure out how to make
money on it. When Fake SCO came along, he started spouting anti-Linux
vitriol at every turn; here's just a sample;

"In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies
in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own
righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will
agree."

http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux_print.html

Of course, when it turned out we Linux supporters had it right all
along, Dan jumped off of the SCO bandwagon while it was hurtling
downhill at warp speed, and he nearly broke both of his ankles in the
process. His "apology" basically blamed Darl McBride, saying all Dan
did was repeat what Darl and company told him. Excuse me? You're
trying to pawn yourself off as a journalist, yet you take the word of
a litigious, all hat, no cattle wannabe cowboy, and then fail to
research the whole story?
If anything, Dan Lyons is an even worse shill than Rob Enderle - at
least Rob has the decency to reply to people directly, as he has done
with me on several occasions; Dan is too chickenshit to admit he was
wrong, on his own accord.
(I'd bring up the poor quality of his "blook" here, but that would
mean I'd have to detail all of the material he blatantly stole from
the regulars of the Yahoo SCOX message board, which I don't have the
time for right now; I will say that when you read the material there,
you've gotten exactly what you paid for; I don't see how Dan can live
with himself for trying to *charge* for it in print!) -saltydogmn on
Yahoo SCOX

P.S. Dan, if you're reading this, make sure to have Darl send me my $699/cpu invoice for running Linux on my computers; I have 3 of them, including this IBM laptop; 2 running Kubuntu, and 1 Xubuntu. Where should I send the check, and, more importantly, WHY? kthxbye

Dude, it's a joke. We'd never say that. We'd probably not take the case, either, because there's really nothing there that would affect online rights or set precedents in general. But we'd at least try and point him in the right direction for finding out his rights, and maybe seek out an affordable lawyer for him. We might even gently ping the lawyers at Apple to explain what a costly publicity nightmare this would be for them.

Speaking personally, I do prefer Daniel Lyons when he's writing fiction like this, to when he's acting as a journalist and penning articles talking about the dangers of anonymous blogs, and how you should shut them up by using the DMCA or by suing them. That wasn't funny advice to give to businesses, and could have got them in non-fictional legal trouble real fast.

Dude, it's a joke. We'd never say that. We'd probably not take the case, either, because there's really nothing there that would affect online rights or set precedents in general. But we'd at least try and point him in the right direction for finding out his rights, and maybe seek out an affordable lawyer for him. We might even gently ping the lawyers at Apple to explain what a costly publicity nightmare this would be for them.

Speaking personally, I do prefer Daniel Lyons when he's writing fiction like this, to when he's acting as a journalist and penning articles talking about the dangers of anonymous blogs, and how you should shut them up by using the DMCA or by suing them. That wasn't funny advice to give to businesses, and could have got them in non-fictional legal trouble real fast.

To add to what the other reply said, here is a picture of glowing mice:
http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html

Even the relatively short hair of the mice blocks out almost all of the glow.

We have a something to fight the the glow in the dark mice

What? Airbus is doing well? Really? What school of business did you go to? The only reason they will still be making some planes is that Boeing can't fulfill all the orders.

Hardly. Reports of Airbus's decline have been greatly exaggerated (as were the reports about Boeing's decline a few years before that). Airbus shot itself in the foot with the electrical problems on the A380 en is suffering from the low dollar but both problem are being addressed. Considering that some 35 years after being founded it sells a little more that half the worlds large jet aircraft, I'd say calling it a success is valid.

(Though I'm not sure it ever qualified as a state-controlled enterprise)

Europe doesn't scare me. It's the government that will replace the failing governments that scares me. How long will Europe survive, crushed under its own caretaker-state? 15% Unemployment, a 35 hour work week, 6 weeks vacation and a sense of sniveling self righteousness that nothing is wrong spells an inevitable repeat of the circumstances of the Locarno Pact.

*sigh* the neo-liberal propaganda again. Europe is doing fine. Unemployment in the EU down to a reasonable seven percent (including around 3% for states like Denmark and the Netherlands with very large welfare systems). Growth is healthy and comparable with the US.

I quite fail to see how a 35 hour workweek or 6 weeks of paid leave (not to mention universal healthcare and good consumer protection) are bad things.

Concerning the "sense of snivelling self righteousness" I'd offer a) a request for some examples b) the possibility that it might me justified and c) a mirror/look at the US government.

Ugh. Now that I've read the Wikipedia article on "naked short selling", I'm probably going to have to edit it. It doesn't mention some of the real problems. "Naked short selling" creates fake stock, which is then purchased and owned by someone. And they can vote that stock. This can lead to more votes than there are shares outstanding.

The fake stock created by naked short selling is supposed to be replaced by buying real stock within 13 days. But that's not always happening. "Overstock.com" has had such fake stock outstanding for years, more fake stock than they actually have outstanding.

Here's a New York Times article that discusses the issue. Forbes has also written about this.

The top stocks with fake stock outstanding for long periods are:

• Overstock.com
• Martha Stewart
• Netflix
• Blockbuster
• Delta Airlines

This is the same Fobres that employs Daniel Lyons ...

This is a different Forbes, actually, called Fortune. Though admittedly I thought the same thing for about two seconds. :)

Always remember that Google is your friend. That would have sent you to something a little bit more informative.

when will people realize, "Pamela Jones" is a pen name for some unknown person(s) who have an axe to grind with SCO. whether it's a team of IBM lawyers, as some have suggested, I don't know. but NOBODY has ever actually met her, and no picture exists of her. every single contact with her has been through email.

every time an occasion comes up when she might HAVE to make an appearance she suddenly "gets sick" and disappears (like when SCO threatened to subpoeana her, and even when she won the Knowledge Masters Award for Innovation and had to accept it in absentia because she "got royally ill").

even the authors of her wikipedia page are debating whether she should be treated as a real person.

Well, considering Vista's "Content Protection" is talked about very specifically by Microsoft itself, including Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers), it would appear that nobody including Microsoft is denying its existence in Vista, or that it goes far beyond what any previous operating system would do with regard to "Content Protection."

Here's a quote specifically from the the link above, which is provided by Microsoft itself:

"Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs. In many cases this content has policies associated with its use that must be enforced by playback devices. The policies associated with such content are applicable to all types of devices including Windows Vista PCs, computers running non-Windows operating systems, and standalone consumer electronics devices such as DVD players. If the policies required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs."

Just because you have yet to run into Vista's DRM or that you don't deal much with A/V content that would cause you to notice limitations when using Vista doesn't mean that it isn't a significant issue for many people. Oh, and if you read the questions Microsoft responded to in the Vista blog you will also notice that Microsoft does admit the DRM will increase CPU resource consumption.

Wired also has an article covering Vista's DRM that specifically addresses criticism of Vista's DRM and Microsoft's response to that criticism. And if you'd like to see what your boss is reading, Forbes also has an article on Vista DRM entitled "Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You."

Perhaps you should do some research before you post.

It's been decried as a failure because it has the highest failure rates of any console ever.

Doesn't seem to be much of a "must-have" either, since Microsoft revised their sales estimates down last quarter.

Basically everyone I've known who has died, has died of cancer. It drives me crazy that we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to avenge the deaths of 3,000 people, while under four billion is spent on fighting cancer, which kills half a million people each year. It reminds me again how terrible people are at estimating risk.

References:
NCI budget
Cost of Iraq war
cancer deaths

SUN is one of the only IT companies that not only "cares" about Eco Responsibility, but actually talks the talk AND walks the walk. This is not just me saying this, this is from the likes of Forbes http://www.forbes.com/home/2007/09/25/sun-green-software-tech-sciences-cx_ag_0925techsun.html and so on.
This is not ironic that SUN is putting a datacetner underground. This is perfect. SUN *IS* the SUN with their new energy saving servers. And as oil races to and past 100USD$/barrel - this kind of thinking only becomes more relevant.