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How is the legitimate business question that he posed unrealistic? Or do you think Intel is cutting a billion dollars in expenses because they have been setting the market on fire?

It should be funny next January when people realize that this is not the first "January" prophesy made by Bill Gates (that has failed): End of Spam: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=17500979

They're also getting more restrictive about who works there.

see wsj.com:

PayPal President Jeff Jordan plans to leave eBay later this year, in the latest high-profile departure to plague the Internet auctioneer. 6:37 p.m.

Also, read items here, here.

It is much easier for them if all the schools are running the same kit
I would agree that it is much easier to support if all schools are running the same, but if they have to neglect other software concerns such as security, they should consider switching.

In some colleges and universities in the US (which are also mostly in bed with Microsoft), IT managaers are switching pre installed web browsers on college ownewd computers to Firefox.

In a few instances like Pennsylvania State Univ. telling Students to chuck IE, the school can even influence which software the students use.

If the IT owners at these schools see a tangible benefit to switching from a Microsoft Product to a non-Microsoft Product they will do so.

I thought of that too, so I looked up his contributors at http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/campaigns/m arc_r_pacheco.asp?cycle=02, but I didn't see Microsoft or its employees as contributors. However, Information Week has an interesting article at http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArt icle.jhtml?articleID=172900251 that states that Microsoft gained support of both State Senator Marc Pacheco and Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin. It doesn't state how it gained their support.
I suspect that these two are pandering to a special interest group (in this case, the disabled) to gain votes in upcoming elections. Of course, pandering to Microsoft may benefit them too.

http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArti cle.jhtml?articleID=189500671

"Immigrant[1] engineers with H-1B visas may be earning up to 23 percent less on average than American engineers with similar jobs, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. Salary data from Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) lends credence to arguments that lower compensation paid to H-1B workers suppresses the wages of other electronics professionals...."

[1] H-1B's are not immigrants. This may be a mis-wording.

The last thing anyone heard out of them was back in September of last year, they had some crazy scheme that involved selling a platform for running web services on handhelds. It was nothing new or particularly creative, the crazy part was that they had a psuedo-pyramid scheme (I guess the proper term is "multi-level marketing") to sell it, where you'd get money for selling signups to the service and more money for recruiting other people to sell it. Honestly, I just had to sit down and wonder what the hell they were smoking/drinking/injecting.

In addition to the above Slashdot article, there's also the comparatively dry InformationWeek announcement.

The NNSA is a semi-autonomous arm of the Energy Department and also guards some of the U.S. military's nuclear secrets and responds to global nuclear and radiological emergencies. So I wonder... How long will it be before someone actually utilitizes some of the information that's being stolen. We already know the military was hit for 26.5 million records, and supposedly the Chinese are ramping up their cyberoffense and defense. I'm wondering how long will it be before the ultimate "so that's what they wanted that information for" scenario comes about. It's sickening to see a country that can supposedly defend itself and the world, can't even secure their own networks. Last thing that needs to happen is this new NSA snooping database to get owned as well.

So here would be the nightmare scenario in my eyes... Hackers get DoD information from those 26.5 million VA database and slowly poison them... While the US is straddled in Iraq militarily, some country starts kidnapping those on the NNSA's list and either killing them or torturing them for information (schematics to facilities, etc.) while all this is going on, someone strikes inside the US on such a big scale, Hiroshima looks like a mild 4th of July show.... Scary isn't it? ... Luckily for us Americans, the NSA is snooping the planet so never fear they will find the culprits... Unless of course they get pwned too.

True, but the general CPU market cool-off doesn't account for Intel's erosion in market share. AMD now has 22% of the overall x86 market. That's still a strong lead for Intel, but on top of everything else, it sure doesn't help. If nothing else, significant AMD market share foiled Intel's plans to keep the party going by making everybody upgrade to Itanium.

They aren't bundling it with the OS they are (or were) including it with Office. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=188701361

The research division at Microsoft is the #1 industrial laboratory in the United States. To understand the magnitude of the largesse, note that Microsoft succeeded in convincing several tenured/tenure-tracked professors at top-notch private universities (e.g. Stanford University) to quit the university and to join Microsoft.

Google understands the formidable threat posed by Microsoft's research division. Google's management rushed to IPO, fearing that Microsoft would crush Google and would prevent the management from cashing in a multi-billion-dollar IPO.

Seriously, why would anyone send their kid to public schools anymore? Every day, they're less and less an educational institution and more of a testing ground for the Nanny State.

It's a pity Gates & Jobs couldn't join in rather then attempting to downplay the fine efforts of this group.

Which Jobs are you talking about? The only one I am familiar with (Steve), offered free Mac OS X licenses to this group for all the laptops. His offer was declined. You can argue all you want about his motives, but you really can't say that he "downplayed" anything.

Gates, on the other hand, mocked the group's effort.

I, on the other hand believe they are on the right track. You have to realize the group of ppl who are responsible for this project even admitted themselves as said in the article the prototype was somewhat "simplistic". This for them is a proof of concept to perhaps do a bit of research see if ppl would adopt such a technology. Once they've got their things going and perhaps some ppl convinced about their idea ready to invest they could buy some of these babies. Erik

Hi - I would just share with you that while searching "blue security" in Google News, I get a list of articles from several sources - that's all fine (/. comes 3rd). The strange thing is that articles from InformationWeek, all seem to have a slant against Blue Securiy, even repeating false allegations. Are they related orenemy companies?

Example: "InformationWeek, NY - May 5, 2006
The denial-of-service attack that crashed TypePad and LiveJournal this week was caused by anti-spam company Blue Security,"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=187200448

Blue Security Denies It's At Fault In Blog Outage
InformationWeek, NY - May 5, 2006
Blue Security's chief executive Friday denied that the server he repointed at a TypePad blog earlier this week brought along a denial of service attack that Blue Security Shoots Itself, And Thousands Of Other People, In The ...

InformationWeek, NY - May 5, 2006
By Mitch Wagner. When an outfit called Blue Security launched a service to go after spammers with vigilante justice, any idiot could've foreseen big problems.

Isn't it strange?

shameless from digg, but an easy redirect for /.ers without having to read digg's stuff: information week's take on it makes it seem less, well, amazing on the part of the spammers. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=187200875

Surly it's the companies setting up these mistypo-web-sites that are making the money. I guess it's trash google time again

"Google apparently doesn't see cheating its customers out of billions of dollars as doing evil,"

says Brian S Kabateck

Question: The new "Genuine Advantage" tester is an Update on Windows Update. What happens if you just don't install it?

Nothing, for now. But it will be manditory soon.

For the moment, users can decline to download and install the pirate alert. But that may not last long. "While the program is presently opt-in, as it expands later in the year, it may become a requirement for the AU [Automatic Updates] service," Microsoft said in a FAQ on its Web site.

From the article here: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=186701032

"Microsoft is limiting IE 7 and Windows Defender updates for non-genuine users," the company said on its Web site. Windows Vista, scheduled for general release in January 2007, will have an even bigger carrot: its Aero Glass interface will run only on valid copies of the operating system.

Enjoy,

...in this InformationWeek article:

Universities Snatch Up Unused Cable For High-Speed Networks

The most ambitious and high-profile of these endeavors is the National LambdaRail, a large fiber infrastructure capable of connecting more than 25 U.S. cities at speeds in multiples of 10 Gbps.

See this article which quotes Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, who claimed that as of Dec-12-05 of the 400,000 units sold at that time 10% had been resold though ebay. Pretty significant numbers, I'd say. If ebay is good for anything, it is to track current market rates for just about anything. The average pre-xmas price for a 360 was $718.00. That's several hundred dollars lost to MS per unit (or gained by the reseller, if you prefer).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

he expressed the opinion that the best way to get a raise was to jump from job to job

Now, mentioning that while interviewing is in bad taste, but it's actually pretty well established that job-hopping increases salaries. (Yes, those reports are essentially anecdotal; I'm unable to find the survey that report similar results right at the moment, but I recall that they're out there.

Microsoft has been experiencing a lot of disorganization recently. With the qualification of some machines as un-Vista capable, it's delay of Vista until January 2007, popular technology experts' Opinions that "America isn't ready for Microsoft's Vista", and all kinds of project delays (Media Center, XBox, etc.) they are in need of some clear visual indication as to the direction they must take. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

I find this statement from an InformationWeek article to clear up what ProClarity exactly does: "ProClarity makes analysis and visualization software." Much of this software is in very popular demand now; a friend of mine just started a job at a company called SSS, which makes visualization software for modeling all kinds of information and displaying it in a manner that is very informative and interactive. Google released something similar, Google Analytics, for websites, and it has been a huge success (heck, Slashdot uses it).

Overall, I think this is a very smart move on Microsoft's part. Software for organizing information can be very useful. It's also nice to see some Microsoft articles on Slashdot for a change (even though I'm not a big fan of Microsoft), rather than the usual Googlomination.

Read the Information Week article. The system already runs on Linux. It's being ported to i5/OS.

Sorry.

Here's some articles with more information:

TMCnet
InformationWeek
TechNews

The Netware article indicates 3.8 million server licenses in use as of Q3 1997. A conservative estimate would place half of those as running NDS(Meaning pre Netware 4.11 versions, as you can't run Netware 4.11 and later without NDS/eDirectory). The other article says, according to Microsoft's own numbers, that Windows 2000 server sales reached 1 million by March, 2001. Even if Netware sales were 0 in this time period (and I worked for a fairly typical VAR at the time... sales were about even, though Windows2000 definitely began to pull ahead during 2001) this would have the number of AD networks at about half the number of NDS networks. But even that estimate is high, because the article also states:

"...survey data from 1,200 information technology customers worldwide. Of these, 30 percent have installed Windows 2000 Server. But only 10 to 15 percent of those have deployed Active Directory..."

You might want to rethink your statement of "If you ran a Windows 2000 domain, you used the Active Directory "

Yeah, AD eventually overtook NDS in sales and installations, much the way that IE eventually killed Netscape. But that doesn't mean that IE was there first, and neither was AD. I would guess that there were very few large businesses at the time that didn't start with NDS before moving to AD.

From the ARTICLE, NOT the blog message; also see Information Week, http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=183701605 . And from the TelCoWeb's own article: http://www.telecomweb.com/news/1142972723.htm

"Reversing his rhetorical field a bit, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre on Tuesday declared that his company won't try to block or degrade customers' access to Internet applications or content, a marked change of tone from his previous statements on the issue of network neutrality. And Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin said that his agency has the authority to police any so-called net neutrality violations, both in the voice and video arenas.

Both messages were sent to the keynote speech audience here at the TelecomNext show to support the idea that new legislation or regulation to specifically encode net neutrality beliefs into law isn't needed. Whitacre, who last year told BusinessWeek in an interview that Google and Vonage were "nuts" for thinking they could "use these [AT&T's] pipes for free" -- comments that sparked much of the fear and loathing in the net neutrality debate -- on Tuesday admitted that any service provider who tried to block or degrade Internet services would be committing economic suicide.

"Any provider who blocks access to the Internet is inviting customers to find another provider," Whitacre said in his keynote speech. "It's bad business." He then emphatically stated that AT&T would not block independent services, "nor will we degrade [Internet access]. Period, end of story."

In a question-and-answer period in front of the keynote audience, Martin said that "I do think the commission has the authority necessary" to enforce network neutrality violations, noting that the FCC had in fact done so in the case last year involving Madison River's blocking of Vonage's VoIP service.

"We've already demonstrated we'll take action if necessary," Martin said.

However, Martin also added that he supports network operators' desires to offer different levels of broadband service at different speeds, and at different pricing -- a so-called "tiered" Internet service structure that opponents say could give a market advantage to deep-pocket companies who can afford to pay service providers for preferential treatment.

While Martin said that consumers who don't pay for higher levels of Internet service shouldn't expect to get higher levels of performance, he did say in a following press conference that "the commission needs to make sure" that there are fair-trade ways to ensure that consumers "get what they are purchasing." When asked how consumers could measure service performance levels, Martin said that public Web sites already exist that let users measure their connection speeds."

You can also check out this recent article in InformationWeek for an example of someone using it successfully.

-Steve

Yeah, but will a windows server continue to work after being sealed in a wall for 4 years?

http://www.tonymcfadden.net/tpmvendors.html
You can see that a lot of intel chipsets do have tcpa/tcg.

And yes tcg is used for drm (and remote identification of your hardware aka "remote attestation"):
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/ 2006/02/yes_trusted_com.html

>how can microsoft say that they will be better than google in 6 months

same way they can say "Spam Will Be 'Solved' In 2 Years"
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=17500979

you redefine what you really meant when you look at what you accomplished in 6 months. better could be database size, it could be speed of execusion, it could be lower % add buffer. whatever 1 (or more) area(s) msn excells at over google, will be defined as proof of better.

Nice. Related: Relerank? How original.

"Vista doesn't do a heck of a lot more than DOS did."

Google Inc. reported revenues of $1.919 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31 and $6.139 billion for the whole year according to Information Week

How much does 10M+ affect that one way or the other, I wonder?

Article on BLS Data

"IT joblessness is falling at a faster pace than overall unemployment."

"The number of Americans employed in IT approached 3.38 million in the first quarter [2005]. IT employment levels haven't been this high in about three years...That's still about 82,000 fewer jobs than at the end of the second quarter of 2002, when the analysis of bureau data pegged IT employment at nearly 3.46 million. The second quarter of 2002 marked the apogee of IT employment."

"The two IT job categories to see the biggest percentage of year-to-year employment growth are database administrators and network and computer systems administrators, increasing at an annualized rate of 28% and 19%, respectively. The biggest drops came from network-systems and data-communications analysts, down 7%, and computer programmers, off 4% for the year."

"The number of unemployed Americans looking for IT jobs last quarter fell to 131,000 from 149,000 from the previous quarter. That's a marked improvement from the first quarter of 2004, when some 192,000 American IT professionals found themselves unemployed."

An article in Information Week mentions that Balthaser was formerly a VP of strategy at Macromedia, so I'm sure they'll be interested in how his employment contract with them affects this patent's ownership and validity. It also mentions that he used Macromedia Flash 3 in the late 1990s, at least two years prior to receiving the patent. If anyone buys this patent from him they'll be up against big players, and it'll be war. And the patent will almost certainly be invalidated. Then again, if anyone is dumb enough to buy it, maybe I should approach them about buying my patent number 4,815,162,342 entitled "A Method for Utilizing and Commercializing a Simultaneously Suspended and Supported Access Route from Manhattan to Brooklyn."

I like what one of our users said:
"To summarize:
RFID for inventory tracking ==> Good idea
RFID for security ==> Stupid idea"

Here below I copy parts a previous comment on another story (which wasn't moderated and thus, probably not read a lot):
Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.

Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before. Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID. MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents.

And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig ;-)

This C|Net article is dated June 16 of 2005

This slashdot blurb shows a link to this on Jan 27, 2006 and links to this InformationWeek article stating a workaround.

This is just RIM wanting to quell some fears about being shut down. Execs wild eyed clutching their blackberries worring if they will be cut off is not what RIM wants.

The real barrier is one of price.

Well, yes and no, last october:
MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents. From the article: The new RFID Tag chip is able to function on the 30 kHz frequency by only using 100% organic compounds and an inkjet printer. By cutting down the price considerably it will allow for thee mass production through the printing process. The chip can also be printed on any paper, plastic and wood standard.

Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before.

Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID.

Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.

And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig ;-)

Update: Just over a yaer ago speeds of 7.21 Gbps were achieved. And that was multi-hop more than half way around the world. Claiming a need for tiered plans for home users is a bit silly.

by "to the masses" Bill Gates (and other technology leaders) means India. I just read the article Inside India by Aaron Ricadela of (Information Week)which talks about using TV and cell phones to bring email and "web serfing" to 1 billion, most of who do not have a computer.

This is the URL to the article, or so I hope. it has some stupid session ID in it so I apologize if thats not working.

by "to the masses" Bill Gates (and other technology leaders) means India. I just read the article Inside India by Aaron Ricadela of (Information Week)which talks about using TV and cell phones to bring email and "web serfing" to 1 billion, most of who do not have a computer.

This is the URL to the article, or so I hope. it has some stupid session ID in it so I apologize if thats not working.

Both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. released dual-core desktop processors in 2005, but consumers are just now beginning to upgrade into the realm of increased hypertasking efficiency. The transition hasn't been entirely smooth--particularly for Intel, whose Pentium D series of dual-core processors was the target of frequent snipes from technocritics disappointed by the limitations inherent in processors' architecture.
From: http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArti cle.jhtml?articleID=177102302

Basically it boils down to this: servers like 64-bit processors, and AMD simply beat Intel when it came to affordable 64-bit computing. At the same time, AMD enjoys more support within the Linux/Unix community. Windows64 took ages to arrive and anyone who wanted a 64-bit server in the meantime simply bought AMD and installed linux. In the dual core deathmatch, once again AMD fragged Intel multiple times over.

And next gen is just a politically correct way of saying, "we are simply making all this faster than ever". The CPU equivalent of next-gen should be more like Nintendo's Revolution than like XBox 360. Alpha64/AMD64 were next-gen, dual cores were next-gen. But now, there seems very little "real" next gen CPUs in line. Intel's house is built of cards.

Arnold Information Technology offers a CD with over 120 patents that can help predict Google's future plans. "Arnold said the CD contains patents clearly assigned to Google, but also with patents that Arnold believes are not assigned to Google, but that were filed by inventors working on behalf of Google. While a straightforward Google search on the U.S. Patents Office site finds just 14 patents, ArnoldIT's compilation lists nearly 10 times that number."

http://www.informationweek.com/article/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=177101766

MANHASSET, N.Y. -- As expected, the IEEE 802.15.3a ultrawideband task group voted this week to disband, ending three years of bitter debate -- and expensive travel.

Formed to define a standard for short-range wireless communications at up to 480 Mbits/s, the group has never been able to achieve a 75-percent consensus on two competing proposals: direct sequence UWB proposed by Freescale or multiband OFDM proposed by the WiMedia Alliance. The latter was led by Intel, Staccato, Wisair, Alereon and a host of consumer companies.

In voting Tuesday (Jan. 17) at the IEEE 802 meeting in Hawaii, the task group managed a 94.7 percent majority in favor of disbanding, with only four no votes and 10 abstentions. The motion was then forwarded to the 802.15.3 Working Group for a vote, where it was unanimously approved.

"Personally, it was nice to finally see agreement on both sides," said Jim Lansford, chair of the task group, but commenting in his role as CTO of Alereon (Austin, Texas). "The time to compromise was two years ago, and we missed that chance and we've just been butting heads since then."

While some participants characterized the process as a waste of time and travel budgets, Lansford disagreed. "The IEEE process really improved both proposals," he said. "We added improvements to the WiMedia specification because of the vetting process."

With the group disbanded, the race is on to see who will get market traction. While Freescale was demonstrating products at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Lansford was dismissive. "The race is over," he said. "We [WiMedia] showed multiple silicon sources at CES, versus a proprietary solution," referring to Freescale's status as the only silicon source for its DS-UWB technology.

There's a middle ground, but the effort to clean up language would be so very, very beneath him. Apparently he wouldn't care how the picture quality was on his cable access station, and it's so very cool and informal of him not to give a rip, because he's really a content man.

I'm not a paying subscriber. Paying for a service entails certain expectations that Slashdot isn't meeting at the moment. The glaringly apparent laziness of the editors is the biggest mark against the site.

Personally, I like the "raw" content of /. If you don't like it, then go to informationweek.com and revel in your grammatically correct, old news.

Your arrogance is in your attempt to change /.

Advertising doesn't mean something's popular. While there will often be a correlation between how much advertising is done for a product versus the market share of that product, the popularity of the product cannot be inferred by the amount of advertising done for that product.

Firefox has around 10% market share, while IE has over 85%. Without debating the inherent (in)security of Firefox or IE, the fact that IE has over eight times the market share that Firefox does, as well as having more than 3/4 of the entire market, means that most spyware that has to attack a specific browser will be written for it, because there is a much greater chance of having the spyware distributed.

Andy Grove could advise them on how not to handle such situations.

please tell me one of the bugs is not a bee, we're still sorting it out.

Andy Grove could advise them on how not to handle such situations.

please tell me one of the bugs is not a bee, we're still sorting it out.