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Looks like Forbes is capitalizing on the fact that it's one of their own. They are going to officially sponsor the blog on Forbes.com now.

Fake Steve Jobs comes clean
Forbes' phone interview with Daniel Lyons (has annoying commercials)

Looks like Forbes is capitalizing on the fact that it's one of their own. They are going to officially sponsor the blog on Forbes.com now.

Fake Steve Jobs comes clean
Forbes' phone interview with Daniel Lyons (has annoying commercials)

in this this interview he mentioned that he was going to wait until after the book was released to reveal himself. but whether that's true or not, we'll never know

Please, this whining about bottled water is childish. Fine, you don't think paying for purified water is a good idea. Good for you. Mind your shoulder, you don't want to sprain it while patting yourself on the back. Some of us have good reason to worry about the water we drink though, so keep it to yourself.

NEW YORK - The sister of a man who was suspected of being a sexual predator and killed himself as the cameras of "Dateline NBC" closed in on him sued NBC Universal Inc. on Monday for $105 million, accusing it of taking over police duties and then failing to protect her brother...She said in the lawsuit NBC "steam-rolled" police to arrest her brother, also known as Bill, after telling police he failed to show up at a sting operation 35 miles away. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/23/ap394307 9.html

http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personi nfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPerson Id=940581

No comment necessary.

I have the feeling that good artists are too many and can rise a unwanted competition to the million dollar cows that the industry feeds on.

Make a reality check here http://downhillbattle.org/ and read about some of these golden cows here:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/01/17/richest-women-ent ertainment-tech-media-cz_lg_richwomen07_0118womens tars_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=29000

Obligatory IBM v. Sun.

I wonder what Theo will say about all this? 9 times out of 10 he tends to scorn things, so I wonder if he'll embrace this with open arms, or just shun it like he does most things.

Either way i'm happy. At least there's even more support for open source software and anything non-windows related.

I just love how Alex Wolfe and InformationWeek in general keep baiting Linux community into reading and commenting to this self-important tripe.
Couple of days ago there was "Ubuntu is hard to install on laptops" article (utter bs, btw), now this.
The reason for all this?
Diminishing readership, which leads to less ad revenue.
Solution? Write semi-inflammatory articles that will sure bring clicks to the site.

Forbes' Brian Caulfield said it the best in his recent article "Tech Boom, Media Bust" - traditional IT rags (and their accompanying web sites) are things of the past, bloggers are killing them.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/07/16/redher ring-print-blogs-tech-media-cx_bc_0716techmedia.ht ml

It's this simple, people are afraid of change, many people will not do change because it puts the testing of their reputation on the line. (many CEO's, CIO's, IT Directors, IT Managers, and the likes) Even though it is very evident the cost savings and the possibilities of re-allocating money to other projects that have never been touched because of current issues with M$ products or incompatibilities with others. These people are not comfortable with change and they do not want to put any effort or time in to making a significant change (they would rather deal with what they have been dealing with because of the possibilities of not having a job tomorrow, if they were wrong). Even if of it is evident that the benefits out weigh the eventual cost, productivity, time and effort of another product that they don't have now.

No one is willing to take risks anymore. They would rather agree with one another that it will not work out in the end. Even though I don't agree with these peoples though process, I do agree that it can be a task to get everyone to buy in to the change that would take place with the sagnificant change switching to OSS or Linux, but it is not impossible if you spend time to outline, plan and prepare for this type of rollout.

There are many success stories of people switching to OSS and Linux for their small, meduim and large size companies, who have taken the plunge to save money and troubles.

Ask the following companies - (I will kill two FUD's with one stone here - the use of OSS and Linux)

NASA - http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Projects/Columbia/co lumbia.html
- http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

DELL - http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/pow er/en/ps1q03_insights?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Walmart - http://www.wirespring.com/ (firecast runs on Linux andfirecast is and OSS)

Sony - http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int &id=2804
- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/media_companies/sony3 .html

Google - Summer of Coders (need I say more?)
- http://code.google.com/

IBM - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource

Boeing - http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO-boeing.html
- http://www.zdnetasia.com/toolkits/0,39047352,39379 125-39094247p,00.htm

Wall Street, Merrill Lynch, ETrade, TowerGroup, Shahrawat (even as far back as 2002 - they must be Linux and OSS giants now!)
- http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/27/0327linux.html
- http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,75271,00.html
-

other to name Remax, People Soft, Byte, Cisco, Credit Suisse

For a much longer lists.. and why enjoy the following!

- http://mtechit.com/linux-biz/

-

Don Mattrick the former President of EA studios has been named to replace Peter Moore. Don starts next week, Moore starts in his new position at EA as head of EA Sports in September. Head of the an entire console to head of one division of a game company? Sounds like a step down to me.

For those that dont remember Don Mattrick was the President when EA was still in the black, though he was also the president through the overworked programmers scandal. Mattrick has worked as an advisor to Robbie Bach the head of MS's entertainment divison for the past year.

More Info http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/17/ap392358 2.html

With Bach taking over so quickly, it certainly sounds to me like this has been brewing for a while.

Without Trademarks, there would be nothing stopping me from opening up the Disney Pornography store.

That's nice. I haven't heard anyone argue against Trademarks in a while. In fact, it seems that trademarks are a good idea simply because impersonating someone else is fraudulent.

Now, the completely unrelated issue of patents is less obvious.

Patents (...) allow creators to make a living. If I invest time and money into an invention, I want to profit from it. I don't want someone else taking my ideas and ruining any chance I have of making money and getting a decent return on my investment.

That's nice. I want a pony. As far as I can tell, what I want is more reasonable than what you want - giving me a pony wouldn't drastically warp the economy in favor of large corporate monopolists.

The argument for patents is based on a social tradeoff, the story being something like this: "If we grant an inventor a short-term monopoly on their invention, that will encourage other inventors to invent useful things". The problem is that this policy has a number of unintended side effects, some of which have drastically larger economic impacts than the incentive to invent - negative economic impacts.

Read these for the argument in some detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_antico mmons
http://members.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

So it's a rotary-dial phone, then?

Tell the parent of an infant that has been raped on the Internet that child porn is a harmless, victimless, crime. Police Smash Global Pedophile Ring

has Slim put into philanthropy? To anyone who found this question relevant (I was almost expecting "none" - and thus making the Gates foundation a very easy explanation on the #1 move), Forbes says the following (plus a lot of other interesting stuff) of the man's new project:

"Lately Carlos Slim has taken up a particular interest in philanthropy, a pursuit he had neglected for most of the years he was building his businesses. He formed a foundation 23 years ago and funded it with a few million, and it has done little since then. A year ago Slim infused it with $1.8 billion; in the fall he pledged to donate up to $10 billion to the foundation in the next four years to fund health and education programs."

It is somehow good to see the world's richest doing this kind of stuff. Of course, it's not like they couldn't afford it, but still.

Dan Lyons - notorious anti-Free Software disinformation specialist

Gaming has been pushing cultural boundaries for more than 30 years, testing--and often crossing--the limits of good taste and social tolerance.

Sure can:

Sugar Ethanol
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironm ent/wm1074.cfm
http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247http://fo rums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/sugar-ethan ol.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/27 /061127ta_talk_surowiecki
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/03/tax_gasoline_im. html
http://www.iags.org/es82905.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/15/energy-ethanol-br azil_cx_1116energy_adams.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8769619/site/newsweek
(there are tons more links all over)

USA Gas Mileage Standards:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview. htm
http://zfacts.com/p/414.html
http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/FEG2007_GasolineVeh icles.pdf [Warning: PDF]

There are tons and tons and tons of links, data, charts, .pdf files and things you can pour over if you research the topic via Google, local library, watch CSpan, etc.

And to the AC earlier: Yes, corn farmers helped influence the decision, as did domestic sugar producers, but, oil companies are also to blame for this, as they don't want competition from ethanol PERIOD.

I've seen claims of 500%, and that it is worse than driving with the legal limit of alcohol in the blood. Here is a Forbes article on the topic:

http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hsco ut/2006/06/29/hscout533489.html

It is illegal in the state of New Jersey, where I live. Unfortunately from what I have seen it is not enforced enough.

Numerous studies have shown that driving while talking on the phone isn't just worse than speeding, it's worse than drunk driving. We've already accepted that a person does not have the freedom to put others in danger by drunk driving, so..

IBM, are you kidding me? IBM is one of the biggest patent trolls there is. See this article for a good description of IBM's shakedown process:

http://members.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

OK, so that wasn't really fair. :-)

Here's the executive summary: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm

Some more references:
http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

"Within the past five or six years, economists in particular have started to question the USPTO's practices, finding little correlation, if any, between patent proliferation and invention. Economists have identified many situations in which patents actually retard the introduction of new products. "
http://members.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html

Cause of death: Blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.

I'd like to say you're welcome, but it brings me no pleasure to inform you of these unpleasant facts.

The fact that more people don't know about this, that more people think the worst thing that happened at abu Ghraib was some dude had panties put over his head, is just saddening. Even the initial Taguba report listed much worse, including beatings with table legs and rape with broomsticks. I mean seriously, haven't you seen this picture? Do you think that man ended up on his back packed in ice because of having panties put on his head?!

Thanks for the link, it clears up a lot. The site itself is a pain, so it would probably be easier to Google site:developer.nvidia.com for "IP Status".

As for the example you give, Holy Shit!

SGI owns US Patent #6,650,327, issued November 18, 2003. SGI believes this patent contains necessary IP for graphics systems implementing floating point (FP) rasterization and FP framebuffer capabilities.

A patent on floating point raterization and framebuffers? Is that what I think it is? Yes it is. I can not think of anything more obvious in high quality imaging than representing the image as a floating point matrix. It may be true that there are still "fat line" patents out there.

Kudos to Nvidia for shining a small light on this insanity. Knowing the problem is always the first step. It would be nicer if they would put patent and other encumbering as symbos on the reference page and a link to the actual patent in the description page.

trying to bring emotion based branding to the technology market isnt the recipe for long term technology-industry success.

Hey, you can most effectively communicate hard truths through humor.

But really, it's just assuming we're all stupid to do this at the same time that they're planning to meet at Bush's parents' house in Connecticut. And before people start believing sloppy reporters, that this is a meeting in reaction to the tensions, careful observers will remember that this meeting was announced before Putin started cranking up the Cold War rhetoric.

It is a tax paid by phone companies and passed on to their customers (like taxes paid by companies always are).

Where do you think that tax money goes next? It gets paid out to telecom companies who build lines in rural areas and who lower prices for low-income customers. See this Forbes article on the multibillion dollar program, for example. This was alluded to in the previous link, even in the part you quoted (but didn't boldface), so not only was your "Did you even read the thing you linked to?" question rude, it was also hypocritical. Your previous "You are a liar" statement wasn't hypocritical, but it was similarly ill-mannered. You might want to apologize to Deagol; antisocial behavior can be habit-forming if you aren't careful.

FTW?

Looks like Jeff Hawkins is so confident in the Fooleo that he decided to dump 15000 shares of PALM.

Instead of spending R&D $ to fix the issues with their aging OS, they "invent" another piece of hardware that neither me nor any of my coworkers want to have to carry around. We already have notebooks.

Palm has officially jumped the shark, IMHO. Looks like I'm getting a Blackberry soon. :(

You can screw it up just as badly in the opposite direction. When the successful can expect to be expropriated, expect a lot less innovation. There are lots of examples of stagnant societies where anyone who produces more than others can expect to either "share" most of it (an effective ~80% marginal tax rate) or be expelled.

Five Security Flaws In IPv6

Oh I don't know, just a few thousand here or there I guess. I mean, class-action suits don't court right ? We're not looking for the thousands of people united under one cause, we want the individual war stories of those who were wronged and didn't take the settlement.

Yeah, you really got me there.

You know, when you're the richest person on earth, it's not that difficult to make what you say become fact. I mean, if Gates had really wanted spam eliminated, he could spend some of the $56 billion he has to put out hit contracts on the world's most wanted spammers. Or, more realistically, fund something like the X-prize, but for spam elimination instead.

No, Apple has enjoyed a very successful year thanks to the Intel switch alone. In fact they are expecting further growth thanks to A. Adobe products for the intel OS X and B. Paralllels' virtualization products.

"Printer friendly" version.

It's also much more eyeball-friendly.

Testosterone poisoning?

Here's some real poisoning. Estrogen has been correlated with increased risk of breast cancer in pre-menopausal and menopausal women, and can highly accelerate tumor's growth if it is present.

http://www.amazon.com/Estrogen-Breast-Cancer-Warni ng-Women/dp/089793198X

There are those who say this isn't true,

http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hsco ut/2006/04/11/hscout532075.html

but a dear friend passed away from a massive tumor that developed in a mere 6 months while on estrogen therapy for menopause. She was clear of cancer earlier on, and six months later had a golf ball sized tumor that stunned her specialists. When she was put into chemotherapy, the doctor specifically put her on a drug that counters estrogen tumor enlargement, and the tumor responded dramatically to that "anti-estrogen," but the cancer had already reached her spinal fluid...

This is *real* poisoning. Be very cautious of any hormone treatment. Spread the word.

--
Toro

Yeah... Vista is SO not doing as well as they expected... as explained in this article http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/27/ap366376 5.html MS actually sold MORE Vista copies than they expected to. I'd have to say that M$ is doing better than you seem to want to admit.
 
Am I an MS Fan Boy OH, HELL NO! I run Gentoo on about everything I can shake a stick at, but I also have 1 copy of Vista, and once everyone gets over themselves they'll realize it's just XP SP3 and move on.

Now, on to the patents, I think a 3rd party should take a look at these, along with the ones M$ has and see how many of both have prior art. MS didn't invent tabs, they didn't invent the scroll bar, they didn't invent most of the things they claim. Did they improve them, or bring them to the main stream? Maybe, but that's not what patents are all about. They're just trying to kick up as much dirt on FOSS as possible to make themselves look better. They might have made out fine with Vista so far, but there's never been a lack of greed at M$.

Actually theres a study out that equates driving while on the cell phone being 400% more likely to get into an accident.

Forbes Article
400% more likely claim supported by Berkely Lab Of course there is the psudeo-science of the Mythbusters as well where they placed a sober driver on the cell phone and a 'drunk' but under the legal limit of 0.8% blood alcohol level and put them both on a closed course and had them navigate it. They did it both sober with no distractions as a control as well I believe. Turns out they both did equally bad. I am not saying it is a perfect experiment (such would require more than 2 test cases) but it does illustrate that distraction or inebriation = bad for driving ability regardless of the exact percentages involved. and another article from The Straight Dope

Great non-Skywalker family films like this one. Or maybe this masterpiece.

OMG Lucas, you just like to jab that knife in and keep on twisting, don't you? What do we have to look forward to now, a story about the Gungans? I might actually see that... if they use the Death Star to blow Naboo up in the first five minutes of the film. Or better yet, how about a story about Wookies? We could expand upon the great festive celebration that is Life Day! Oh how I would love to see Itchy, Mala, and Lumpy (yes, Lumpy!) again.

Seriously George, just save us the trouble and sell us a rusty spoon for $10. It'll be much more fun jabbing that in our eyes then watching whatever monstrosity these films turn out to be. Isn't $3.1 billion enough?

I was reading somewhere on the internet (bankrate.com maybe) advice about what to do if you don't like your job. Some of this really made sense to me:
--Don't expect to get fulfillment from your job. You can be happy outside of work, your happiness is a state of mind, not something your job should provide. Find things outside of work that you really like and do them ("...have fun with your hobbies...").
--You are NOT what you do. There's no real reason to equate who you are with your profession. Sure, you're a programmer (or whatever), but you're also a person. A person who likes X, Y, and Z. Maybe your a gamer, or a father (mother?), or a bowler, etc. It would be a fun exercise to go to a party and when someone asks what you do answer "I'm a budding pro-tour bowler."
This wasn't what I was reading, but is close:
http://www.forbes.com/careers/2005/11/30/career-wo rk-employment-cx_sr_1201bizbasics.html

Also, I'd get some job counseling before attempting to switch professions completely. At least take a test that would give you ideas of things you like to do (like the "Vocational Counseling and Human Resource tests on this page: http://www.psychtest.com/).

Best of luck!

this just reinforces what you just said. sad the salaries of some of these people

China can't stop an orbital nuclear attack, or even ICBMs or sub-launched nukes.

China has no Navy - not one that can survive a handful of US subs. Our cruisers can take them out from beyond visual range.

** That's why they haven't even invaded little baby Taiwan. **

We know where all their major production factories are and can be done with them with a handful of strike bombers that they can't even see, much less shoot down. Failing that we can hit them from orbit.

What is more likely is that China, if sufficiently provoked, will fsck us up economically. But they'll play that card ONCE. That will bring the offshoring universe crashing down as Americans learn how vulnerable it makes us. We'll not make that mistake twice and China will lose its biggest customer. We'll produce our own stuff from then on and China will choke and asphyxiate and get sick and die in its own industrial filth.

We could move in and take over, although the pollution clean-up and dead body disposal might make that unfeasible for decades. :)

Oh and for those stupid enough to argue with me:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/200 6/06/06/pollution_problems_cost_china_over_200b_a_ year/
http://www.forbes.com/logistics/2006/03/21/america s-most-polluted-cities-cx_rm_0321pollute.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/1 1/content_511271.htm
http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~sustain/suscoasts/krismin. html

Okay, Deternal, I see you are from Denmark - and we can discuss the level of "socialism" in Scandinavia and Europe. But the term "Socialism" in the US and the way Americans use it - just does not apply to Europe today. They don't understand that social-democracy is not the Soviet "socialism" they used to scare their population with back during the Cold War.

Secondly I'd like to point out that the US has had "socialist" policies like welfare and work programs since the 1930s and the "New Deal". They just don't like talking about where those ideas came from ideologically :)

I think you have totally misunderstood the Norwegian economy - and especially the Norwegian oil money. We actually save all of the surplus income in a pension fund invested abroad (to not create inflation at home). That fund is now the worlds largest fund after the California state workers pension fund. In other words we don't use the oil money now - we are saving them.