Domain: heise.de
Stories and comments across the archive that link to heise.de.
Comments · 1,450
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Not yet dead!German IT news site Heise.de brings good news to all the format war fans:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/103678
Impromptu translation:
Toshiba contradicts reports about hd-dvd hardware production stop
Sorry for the rather clumsy translation, I just got out of bed.
Toshiba in a short release on its japanese website has contradicted the report carried by Reuters and Japanese tv station NHK on the weekend which claims that the company has ceased production of hd-dvd players and recorders. The company currently reconsiders its business strategies, no decision has been made so far, the company says. [...] -
holding you back
What a coincidence that just a few days ago, a study was published showing that religion is the main source of trouble here (as elsewhere), and the main reason the US is slipping behind is the outdated power that religious belief has on the public opinion.
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Directiona antenna
Ever heard about "teh directional antenna" stuff?
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/62328 -
offline updater
Has anyone tried CT' Offline Update? http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/ I have been using this for a while and have had nothing but good results. Very nice for some of my clients who do not have broadband. This is an app designed by some german engineers for creating standalone update discs for the last few flavors of windows and ms office, too.
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The answer: Offline-Update. Saves a lot of reading
Use Heise Security Offline-Update to patch any installation of Windows XP with the latest service packs and security updates.
Why? Heise Offline-Update handles everything. It comes from a reputable company that makes money selling other security services; they have a strong incentive to do it right. To make the CD or DVD, it downloads all the patches from Microsoft's servers, and makes an .ISO file which you burn to a CD or DVD. To use Heise Offline-Update, you insert the CD or DVD, start the program, and let it run.
Shortcomings of Heise Offline-Update? 1) It does only security updates. 2) The web site is mostly in German, although there is an older English explanation.
Why not the others? 1) Autopatcher and others were much more amateurish. Autopatcher is now back with a scheme like Heise Offline-Update, but that is after months of experimentation. The volunteers at Autopatcher don't seem to have the resources necessary. See the Autopatcher downloads page which says "This page will be back very soon :)" (2008-02-12). Before, Autopatcher provided patches directly from their servers; Microsoft stopped that, due to security risks, it said. But Microsoft did not provide its own solution.
Problems with Slashdot: 1) Bad stories create bad discussions. Slashdot editors apparently don't know much about Microsoft Windows. Almost all Slashdot readers have to deal with Windows, even if only to help family and neighbors. Sloppy stories that have not been researched waste reader's time. 2) Lots of readers comment when they don't have much to say.
That said, Slashdot is by far the best web site I know for computer-oriented news.
Problems with Microsoft: What Microsoft offers is not complete, so volunteers try to help. In my opinion, Microsoft is often extremely adversarial toward its customers.
It has been more than 3 years since Microsoft issued a Service Pack for Windows XP; that has wasted the time of hundreds of thousands because Windows XP is so unstable and buggy and malware-prone that it often needs re-loading. Often malware replaces a system file, and the only way to recover is to re-load the operating system. Re-loading Windows XP preserves all the programs and settings; however, the latest Windows XP CD from Microsoft has only Windows XP Service Pack 2; there have been hundreds of megabytes of updates since then, making updating over a dial-up connection extremely slow.
Microsoft does have a system for updating, but the system requires the very expensive Windows Server 2003, which requires a network and at least one other computer. Obviously requiring all that creates problems in helping someone with his or her home computer, or with a cash register computer in a small store, for example.
More problems with Microsoft -- Windows Update often fails. Amazingly, Microsoft is unable to deliver an updating system that works reliably. I just worked on a friend's computer, for example, and running Windows Update gives a long numerical error message with no help for fixing the error.
There have been many, many different kinds of problems with Windows Update. See, for example, Microsoft's Windows Update Discussion Group.
I guess that millions of hours are lost every year because of Microsoft's sloppy programming. Bill Gates deserves his title, Chief of Grief, although soon the chair-throwing, bad-mouthing Steve Ballmer will be the Chief, apparently. (The -
Re:This was called AutoPatcher, and MS killed it.
http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/offlineupdate/download_uk.shtml
That one exists, works, has for years and is in Europe, so MS can't touch them. Works great, too. -
Germans been there, done that, again
http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/offlineupdate/download_uk.shtml
Why must we already be reinventing the wheel, sigh. -
c't Offline Update
Reknowned IT publisher Heise is already offering an even better solution: c't Offline Update. Update W2K, XP, Vista, Office in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and some 20 more languages by using Microsofts update catalog to download all chosen updates, then creates an ISO image per OS (CD-sized) or for everything (DVD needed). The included scripts allow for a fully automated install of all updates from the CD or DVD, even including any necessary intervening reboots.
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almost like silverthorne...
(if you don't know, Silverthorne is intel's next-gen low-power chip for ultra-mobile applications)
The article states it goes down to 0.3V at idle - so it doesn't actually _run_ at that voltage (just preserve register contents). Compare this to Silverthorne which has a C6 Deep Power Down State - coincidentally at 0.3V... The article also states that this cpu uses 8-bit sram cells instead of the usual 6-bit sram cells - Silverthorne also uses 8-bit sram cells for its caches.
Granted maybe this design works at even lower voltages than does silverthorne (which seems to have an operating range of 0.7V-1.0V) but if they need 5 years to get it to market it might be too late...
(I've taken the silverthorne info from http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/103038, in german, but it can now or soon likely be found elsewhere) -
It's NOT the german gov,...
it's the bavarian government, a federal state of germany.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102375/;words=Skype
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102485/;words=Skype -
It's NOT the german gov,...
it's the bavarian government, a federal state of germany.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102375/;words=Skype
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/suche/ergebnis?rm=result;q=skype;url=/newsticker/meldung/102485/;words=Skype -
Re:worry about the German government first
Phones need to be registered -- sure, with your carrier. The one who bills you. Same as the US and other countries
This is quite incorrect. In the US and other nations, you can get a phone for cash or with just a credit card number (and you can get anonymous credit cards if you like). In Germany, you need to give your home address to the carrier, because of government regulations. This is one of the reasons getting a Skype number in Germany is such a problem.
(In addition, in Germany, your home address itself has to be registered with the government.)
As for registering my religion with the government : I can leave that field blank. It is used for taxation; while I abhor this practice, it's nevertheless not something that is problematic
That, too, is incorrect. You might personally still consider yourself a Catholic or Protestant, but if you don't declare yourself officially to be a member of those churches, those churches won't consider you a member. Furthermore, you can't just "leave that field blank"; if you want to leave the church, you need to do so by paying a fee and registering that fact with the government. Once you do, a number of people will find out, including your employer. And, of course, that information is available to the police; who do you think they'll go looking for first when it comes to terrorism? Registered Christians or registered non-Christians?
The German government cannot get all your connection information. I do not know where you get your facts from.
German ISPs and carriers are now required to retain all connection information:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/98747
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/vorratsdatenspeicherung22.html
Germany has one of the toughest privacy laws around. You should be so lucky as to have these laws.
Germany does have tough privacy laws. The problem is that you can't rely on tough privacy laws to protect you from governmental abuse: once the government collects the data, if it's intent on misusing the data, the laws don't matter. If a new fascist government came to power in Germany, it would immediately have all the data it wanted, on religion, on social networks, etc.
You misrepresent the state of data protection in Germany in quite fundamental ways, but then again, misrepresentation seems to be your aim.
I'm not misrepresenting that at all: Germany's privacy laws are useless against governmental abuse because you need to trust your government to respect those laws in order for them to mean anything.
What your response illustrates is that Germans still have a naive trust in their government ("obrigkeitsglaeubigkeit"); that's what allowed the Nazis to come to power last century, and who knows what evils it will bring this century. -
Re:worry about the German government first
Germans learned from nazism and sovietism that privacy was a damn serious issue. That any entity with personal information about several million people can turn into something nasty.
Well, apparently Germans didn't learn:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/98747
http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/vorratsdatenspeicherung22.html
Americans tend to be optimistic about this
Optimistic? Americans are deeply distrustful of their government and protective of their ability to remain anonymous, far more than Germans.
but Germans already have undergone two periods of oppression that relied on an extensive invasion of privacy.
Yes, Germans did. The question is whether they learned anything from it, and looking at current German government policies, that seems questionable. Americans, in contrast, have been vigilant enough to avoid both fascism and communism for two centuries, and public debate about issues of privacy, government intrusion, and anonymity is far more vigorous in the US than in Germany. -
People know, Politicians not
I live in Germany and kept track of the voting machine controversy here. The problem is not that people want voting machines, but that politicians want them (properly because they get money from manufacturer or want to be modern or are impressed by them). When hacker groups (like the CCC) prove that voting machine are hackable, those politicians just insist they are not. They don't even try to argue, they just trust the manufacturer so much.
In this case, they want to use voting machines that the CCC has already proven to be insecure. Luckily this time this is news for mainstream media and not just heise (German slashdot equivalent)
Off Topic: About your German: the word is "schlecht" not "schlect"; and "sagen Sie Nein zum elektronischen Wählen" (say no to electronic voting) not "sagen sie nicht" (say not) :-) -
Re:Restriction on software during flight?
Here is the cartoon that this text has probably been taken from.
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Yet another cartoon to come true...
http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/03/01/gross.jpg
Sorry German only. -
Re:Scientists are buying macs in droves
In summary, I love Linux, but I do believe that the article/summary have a point and that Apple's significant resources in (1) spending money on proprietary drivers and (2) developing software that is in some cases superior is cutting into Linux.
Interesting post, and I guess you are right about the user-friendliness of Apple helping the macs. But I'd like to point out that
1) The article says that the Linux marketshare has risen from 0.29% to 0.63%. That is an increase, so Apple is not killing Linux. It may be true that Apple slows down the adoption of Linux.
2) The numbers above may be too low. The german computer magazine publisher Heise (http://www.heise.de/) lists the marketshares among the users of its website for September 2007 as follows, based on the OS reported by the users' browsers:
Windows XP 61,1 %
Linux 13,6 %
Mac OS 6,6 %
Windows 2000 7,5 %
Windows Vista 4,7 %
Windows 98 0,7 %
other/unknown 5,8 %
These numbers are probably skewed toward Linux, thanks to the geeky readership on Heise.de. I guess the real numbers are somewhere between those from the Slashdot article and those from Heise.
3) The driver situation is promising to improve, mostly thanks to AMD/ATI. I hope they follow through with a fully 3D open source driver (and otherwise survive their currently somewhat weak market position). -
Re:this cloud has a silver lining though
In one sentence: the EU giveth, the memberstates can take away *from their own members*, but not from the members of other states.
So every memberstate has to respect EU law for all EU citizens in so far as rights are granted *except* for their own citizens who they may discriminate against.
I'm not sure what the situation is when it comes rights granted by your own government being trumped by a more strict EU law, but in practice local laws are usually far more strict than local laws, and off the top of my head I would not know of an example.
The original article is a direct consequence of the opening up of the market for the 'local gema/buma/whatever', who are now free (or will be free soon) to license their content with third parties for countries other than the one of their origin. Another driver is the fragmentation of the market here, a single stop for negotiations would facilitate things greatly for the smaller labels.
This is significant for content creators because the percentages paid out to artists/rights holders differ quite a bit from country to country due to the varying 'overhead'.
The DRM was relevant when this plan was first put forward, but with more and more companies switching to DRM free downloads and the speed at which the EU moves I doubt that that part of it (and the subsequent technical implementation and distribution) will happen in time to plug the holes.
I was at a presentation of the dutch BUMA last year where they were doing their best to impress on people that there was no need to switch when the time came but you can be sure they're pretty nervous about this development.
If there is going to be a free market wrt rights negotiations (and it looks like that is inevitable) then I don't doubt in the long term there will be only one such agency left standing.
lots of interesting reading on this subject here:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/copyright/index_en.htm
and for an idea how complicated the swamp really is:
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/69349 -
As a side note
I was gone to German Rathaus today and I saw it on a flier: they also have this RFID enabled online Passport.
Ref.: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/45780
For what its worth to mention, they have it since 2005. (http://rfid-informationen.de/info/news/archives/00000125.html) -
Re:Good Christ, not this again
Yes, this was discussed in an earlier Slashdot story, " RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", and in a bunch of other places:
* Boing Boing p2pnet reddit Heise Online (German) Truemors BlogRunner/Digital Rights Hugh Casey IDG (Polish) Geek News Central CE Pro Gizmodo TechDirt Read/Write Web Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection TDPRI WhatReallyHappened.com Slyck Root.cz (Czech) Craigslist Forums Hard OCP Wired.com Uneasy Silence Overclock.net Wake World SpaceBattles.com Hydrogen Audio BrickFilms.com Hockey Zombie iLounge Zune Scene AllmanBrothersBand.com Golem (German) PC Magazin (German) Tweakers (Dutch) Mackauf (German) Wake Space Kino-eye.com Digital Copyright Canada Northwest Progressive Institute Louisville Music News Frant -
Article sucks
XHTML V2 and related modules are officially supported by the W3C, and the related modules are becoming key ingredients for other XML specifications that the W3C maintains. Unfortunately, official W3C approval is no guarantee of support by major Web browsers.
It wouldn't be the first time browser vendors were ahead of official recommendations.
Official W3C approval is pretty much dependent on support by major Web browsers. The W3C process says there should be two interoperable implementations of each feature before a proposed standard becomes a recommendation.The FAQ doesn't even try to give a serious answer about the expected date of approval
Really?Current browsers support both HTML V4 and XHTML V1.
Internet Explorer doesn't support XHTML V1.Similarly, future browsers might support both HTML V5 and XHTML V2.
Don't count on it. XHTML2 is pretty much dead.- Safari: For a long time, the HTML standards process has been moribund; the W3C's HTML Working Group has focused almost exclusively on XHTML2, a new standard that was highly incompatible with existing practice. The people working on the major browsers have largely abandoned the HTML Working Group.
- Opera: So, I don't think XHTML is a realistic option for the masses. HTML5 is it.
- Mozilla: In the near term, only Mozilla-based browsers come close to having all the integrated infrastructure needed by XHTML 2, and not all bundled by default. There is no sign of XHTML 2 support from Microsoft, Apple, and Opera.
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Re:Tracking what?heise confirmed that they are not sending the IMEI!!!!!
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/99220
Errm, poor AC is still at 0 despite saying the truth. Mod up. Translated quote:The obvious suspicion that the IMEI of the phone is actually transmitted with each inquiry could not be confirmed by the tests heise Security did. Although a number actually was found in the HTTP requests to the Apple server they were not the IMEI of iPhones. Moreover, the weather applet sent a different "IMEI" in its query than the Exchange applet.
IOW evil Apple sends an HTML request with the string "imei" in it, not the IMEI (of the phone). That's all the "proof" TFA needed - see sig for more info. -
Re:Tracking what?
That article is in German (so the text means next to nothing to me), but this screenshot from that article clearly shows that the IMEI number is sent as part of an http POST request: http://www.heise.de/bilder/99220/1/1
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Re:Tracking what?
heise confirmed that they are not sending the IMEI!!!!!
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/99220 -
Re:Well... other media use Tiny URLs
And obviously lack a website? Heise (German computer magazine) for example has its own "service" to make it easier to print URLs. They call them Soft-Links. Additionally they have a link list for each issue together with the title and page numbers of the articles.
I really don't see, why a print publication would opt for a service which is unreliable in principle (or can anybody guarantee the links to still work in 5 years?) like TinyURL.
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Re:Well... other media use Tiny URLs
And obviously lack a website? Heise (German computer magazine) for example has its own "service" to make it easier to print URLs. They call them Soft-Links. Additionally they have a link list for each issue together with the title and page numbers of the articles.
I really don't see, why a print publication would opt for a service which is unreliable in principle (or can anybody guarantee the links to still work in 5 years?) like TinyURL.
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Try the "Thumpmobile Zapper" !
This link: http://www.heise.de/ct/redaktion/cm/Thumpmobile_Zapper.html/ provides a detailed guide on how to build your own EMP-Weapon for exactly this application from an old microwave oven and a satellite dish.
This is a german site (the author, Carsten Meyer, is a journalist at the leading german computer magazine "c't"), but please be advised:
WARNING: This is only for experienced electronics experts, there are lethal (not just "potentially lethal"!) voltages involved, and the concentrated microwave radiation may blind you!
Also, if you have just annoyed some armed Gangsta Rappers in the 'hood, the author suggests a powerful getaway car! -
NSA access?Loophole in Windows RNG.
Is that the NSA secret surveillance access?
--
U.S. Government corruption TimeLines
Example: Complete 911 Timeline, 3895 events -
In Germany, too
The GVU (The German Federation against Copyright Theft) actively used and supported illegal Filesharing by setting up their own servers from which users could download copyrighted stuff. Of course they didn't bother asking the copyright owner if this was ok, they just did it, until Heise.de revealed the story (German Site) and the Office of Public Prosecutor came...
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Re:WTF?Unfortunately, this one apparently affects admins who were doing what they were supposed to and using WSUS. Commenters on the Register article were complaining that they'd set up WSUS to require them to approve patches, but it had taken it upon itself to auto-approve Windows Search to be installed on all systems anyway... Why does anyone still trust Microsoft? I don't even trust WSUS. What I use is Offline Update (handles 2000, xp, 2003, vista, office 2000, office xp, office 2003, office 2007). I run the updater manually every patch Tuesday, test it out dozens of times in VMWare, make any changes neccessary (ie, blacklist certain updates if necessary), then finally copy the contents of the iso to a samba server. All of the clients map that share, run cmd/DoUpdate.cmd, and reboot if necessary every night. Offline Update puts you, the administrator, in complete control. If you use anything Microsoft, it only puts them in control.
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Re:Try reading the article
The French court required Acer to pay the plaintiff at the retail cost of each of the items bundled, not the prices that Acer itself paid. See http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/96581. Acer originally offered a refund of 30 euros.
For instance, the plaintiff was reimbursed 135.20 euros for Windows XP Home. Every study of OEM pricing I've seen indicates that no OEM pays anything close to that amount.
I stopped reading TFA as soon as the author quoted these figures in defense of the notion that the bundled software constituted nearly half the retail price of a computer. If that's the level of sophistication of the remainder of the article, it's not worth my time. -
Re:I'd like to see those Acer numbers
See if you spot the bait and switch:
"10 years ago, the operating system was only 5% of the price of the PC.
When additional software, in fact the bare essentials for running a functional desktop are shipped with Windows, this figure for bundled software reaches to over 50% of the total cost of a new PC, as evidenced by the Acer court case."
The breakdown of the Acer case was "135.20 euros for Windows XP Home, 60 euros for Microsoft Works, 40.99 euros for PowerDVD, 38.66 euros for Norton Antivirus and 37 euros for NTI CD Maker."
On my Windows machine, I use free software for all of the above, except Windows itself. NONE of those outside of Windows itself are "bare essentials for running a functional desktop."
I also suspect that's the full price for a non-OEM Windows XP Home install, as it's considerly more than the System Builders version (£59.99 or about 86.97 EUR), considerly less than the 52% cited. -
Re: Samsung not first to ship
No, that's not correct. Samsung is shipping hybrid hard drives for over half a year now (see, for example, http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/07/samsungs-hybrid-hard-drive-hhd-released-to-oems/).
Recently, they even blamed Microsoft for the poor performance of hybrid hard disks on Windows Vista (in German, http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/meldung/97021&words=Samsung%20Hybrid&T=samsung%20hybrid) -
Made for Vista ReadyDrive - which is USELESS
What is ReadyDrive:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/performance.mspx
I'm summarizing what I learned from the German c't computer magazine, which has tested the various new technologies like ReadyDrive and others in Vista and also tested Flashdrives and Flash memory in general. Read the current issue of this magazine for in-depth analysis.
1) Pure Flash disks have only ONE advantage over harddisks: they are less sensitive to mechanical stress. In real-life scenarios, they don't safe power, and they are most definitely not faster than 2.5 inch drives. They ARE faster than 1.8 inch ones often used in ultra-mobile PCs, so there they indeed provide a benefit. For everyone else: especially write performance sucks compared to modern 2.5 inch disks, and read performance is at most en par. True, they don't need to position any heads so random access should save time - but according to the real-world tests made by c't that benefit isn't noticeable.
2) c't testers were very suspicious about how long Flash memory could survive as HD replacement where writing happens all the time, and yes, Flash cells have a limited lifetime, one cannot write too often. That's the theory. In practice c't testers were unable to make even the cheapest Flash USB stick show any sign of memory loss even after something like 16 million write cycles, when they gave up further testing because that's many many years of real-work usage. (pg. 104 of c't 21/2007)
3) Intel TurboMemory or MS Vista SuperFetch, ReadyBoost or ReadyDrive were shown to provide no measurable benefit AT ALL.
Suspicion of Hitachi and others seems to be that the current implementation in Vista isn't quite finished and SP1 should provide an update, and second the amount of Flash memory is waaaaaay too small.
Original article (German): http://www.heise.de/ct/07/21/100/ -
Gotta Love the German Government.
If you haven't done so yet, reading and laughing about German politics is a great idea to spend some boring office hours. American Slashdot readers may already know what it's like to have a moron rule your country, but in everything privacy-related Germany's totally unbeatable.
April 2007. A new law about data retention has just passed the german government[1]. Called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"[2] it forces communication providers to introduce an identification liability. As an example this means no more anonymous E-Mail in Germany. IP addresses of anyone sending and accessing their E-Mail accounts must be stored and retained for a few months (6 IIRC). IIRC this also affects other types of communication, including forced storing of a web site visitor's IP address.
October 2007. A german court decides to outlaw storing of IP addresses by web pages. Anybody see a pattern here?
This is almost as absurd as a court deciding to outlaw not killing people. It may seem completely moronic, but since those guys will have better salaries than you they ARE right.
[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88449
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorratsdatenspeicherung -
Re:It seems gabe newell...
Where's an article from Gabe Newell on Windows' gaming failures?
Uhm, you mean like the one where he talks about Microsofts "terrible mistake" in PC gaming, which was even discussed here on slashdot? -
Mod parent up!
Exiting news: Through a CGI-script, you can browse on the server of adobe:
here (this has just been disabled a few minutes ago)
According to heise (German), you were able to get adobe's private RSA key (which is not much used though) and there are also rumors that they got the private SSL-key. -
...and adobe as well ;)
German discussion on heise.de:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/go.shtml?read=1&msg_id=13602017&forum_id=124661 -
Re:The problem with this
In France, Acer was just convicted by a judge to reimburse for all preinstalled and not used software:
A whooping 311,85 Euros (~ 435 US$) for:
* 135,20 pour Microsoft Windows XP Home (dont 49,90 euros pour l'installation)
* 60,00 pour Microsoft Works
* 40,99 pour PowerDVD
* 38,66 pour Norton Antivirus
* 37,00 pour NTI CD Maker
Note that Acer needed to pay back the prices for shrink wrap full versions, since they did not mention on the box that the versions were only trialware or OEM software with much less functionality.
Here are links to the story:
In French: http://perso.libre-zone.net/article-125-proc-dure-r-ussie-num-ro-4.html
In German: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/96518 -
Re:what about copying comments?Stop the semantic bullshitting. We are talking about whether you can go to the store, buy a DVD, and then legally make a useful, working copy of it for personal use. You cannot, and you know full well that you cannot.
We've now apparently left the path of politeness, so: bullshit. You can make a backup copy of a normal, encrypted video DVD, unless it is additionaly protected by some proprietary 3rd-party protection mechanism like those used for games. Again: the important point here is that you're not breaking the encryption while dumping the disc image, and that your copy is still encrypted. You can't legally rip the DVD using the standard ripper tools (->circumvention), ending up with a unencrypted/reencoded version of the contents. You can't legally play back either your original or backup with anything but licenced devices/software. This has been the state of things in Germany since about 2003.
The current modification of the law, which was the topic of this SD story, is chiefly about personal use of material obtained from "illegal" sources such as torrents or private DVD rips. Having been legal so far for personal use, it has now been made illegal. This has little to do with making backups of your own DVDs for your own personal use.
The very point was that the story turned the copyright law revision in germany into "copying DVDs now illegal in Germany", which is utter nonsense. Look here or here if you read German.
I'm not wasting any more time here, this is my last post on the topic.
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Wrong
Circumvention of anti-copying technologies is illegal for quite a while now (since 2003, http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/40265 (in German)) and is only illegal if the anti-copy measures are effective (whatever, actually nobody gets this AFAIK this hasn't been taken to court). The Law now passed make copies for private use from obviously illegal sources also illegal but mainly it changes the way how copies for private and educational use are paid for (meaning pay more, copy less); see http://www.heise.de/ct/hintergrund/meldung/92265 (in German). It also seems to includes possible payment for copies wihich are used for new (so far unknown) purposes.
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Wrong
Circumvention of anti-copying technologies is illegal for quite a while now (since 2003, http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/40265 (in German)) and is only illegal if the anti-copy measures are effective (whatever, actually nobody gets this AFAIK this hasn't been taken to court). The Law now passed make copies for private use from obviously illegal sources also illegal but mainly it changes the way how copies for private and educational use are paid for (meaning pay more, copy less); see http://www.heise.de/ct/hintergrund/meldung/92265 (in German). It also seems to includes possible payment for copies wihich are used for new (so far unknown) purposes.
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Re:Apple sent a pretty clear...
I don't think the Linux user base is much smaller than the current OSX user base. From
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/print/95699
Anteile der Betriebssysteme auf heise online im August 2007:
Windows XP......61,8 %,
Linux...........13,4 %,
Windows 2000.....8,1 %,
Mac OS...........6,0 %,
andere/unbekannt.4,3 %,
Windows Vista....4,3 %,
Windows 98.......0,7 % -
Re:Questionable data
It all depends on what sort of websites you look at. Where people are security and technology aware, you can have massive amounts of firefox users.
For example, the German technology website Heise has released their statistics http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/95699 and they show over 50% for Mozilla and other Gecko based browsers.
It is surprising that Slashdot which should have informed users has a relative low percentage of firefox users. -
Re:Benchmarks
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Re:Gabe Newell is poisoning his own well
"Apparently they're so allergic to this strange and terrifying console that they've shoved the port onto some EA team." Wow, or perhaps its because development on the 360 is similar to the PC? And wow, Gabe said he doesn't like the console because its completely different to how they develop games for the PC.
Also, it's not as if Gabe has never made comments rather scathing of Microsoft products in the past... -
There is still a chance...
...that the Trojan won't actually be realized. (BBC):
Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, of the Social Democrats (SPD), has voiced concern about the spyware plans, saying they might infringe privacy laws,...
But that depends on a lot of factors. Germany's biggest hacker organization the Chao Computer Club and others are very effectively campaigning against this plans.
In recent news (only german, sorry) the federal police states that it won't be a trojan but what they call "remote forensic software" which they intend to install on the terrorists' computer manually. More like a software version of a bug (in the covert listening device sense).
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Interesting ...
... in Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Google would have voted "no". However, both were not allowed to vote because they came in late. And another guy left the voting session early, but his "yes" was counted although before it was said that only votes count that were given in presence. (according to Heise (german))
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Gaming the system for fun and profitThis exact same journal entry was penned by twitter, who had it rejected from the Firehose probably because of his negative moderation and the fact that editors are starting to wise up to him.
The original journal entry already had comments that poke holes in twitter's claim about those numbers, which is probably why it became inconvenient and forced him to switch to his sockpuppet account instead.
Ironically, the same story in Heise.de has a link to another one about a gaming convention in Leipzig drawing all-time record attendance. I suppose it's possible that DX10/Vista will hurt the gaming industry, but with the game release cycle being 12-16 months, I'd say that will be apparent later on.
Here is a direct link to the original Valve survey, which amusingly enough shows Vista as having an even larger market share among Valve gamers as it has overall (8% vs 5-6%). That means Vista's market share among gamers has been increasing at a rate of about 1% per month since it was released, which is even higher than XP's uptake vs. Windows 98/ME. I can't even begin to imagine what the relevance of Christmas and back to school as claimed by twitter is for gamers who probably switch OSes only when they switch their $3,000 boxes anyway, but I'd say that 8% share is actually not bad in that segment. That share will probably start growing more exponentially as time goes by.
Welcome to the Trolled By Twitter Club, Zonk.
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Re:In related News: Germany will vote YES
DIN says "yes" to Microsoft's Open XML document format (if you prefer English)