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Microsoft has always had this policy. "If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us". They attempt to identify groups who would never pay anyway and get them to get Windows/Office etc. for free, which starts a lock in so that the other people are forced to get Windows/Office etc. to read the documents sent by the people who aren't paying.

MS reacts mainly to threats to it's bottom line. In this case, it was likely that they would end up being sued in the US or elsewhere for the illegal acts of their agents in Russia; they want to distance themselves as much as possible from that. Remember that in China they have been actively handing over information about dissidents and in the recent case where Google pulled out they basically supported over spying on dissidents, they basically supported the Chinese government. None of this change has anything to do with trying to help small political groups.

If you are wondering why the Russian government (and others involved) aren't protesting, you should remember that MS actively collaberates with such groups, e.g. handing over the Windows source code. The Russian government is probably more than happy that the NGOs use Windows which they know more about spying on instead of Linux or something more obscure where they would have greater difficiulties.

Found the story about it, seems to be kind of a funny issue. Apparently Adobe sued MSFT in Europe because they didn't want the competition with Acrobat, but you're right, PDF is an open format, and Adobe at another time said anyone could work with it. Guess it's just because Office would be making money off it? Here's the story

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=6505527

By John Rendleman
InformationWeek
April 9, 2001 06:58 AM

The University of North Carolina has finally found a network server that, although missing for four years, hasn't missed a packet in all that time.

Try as they might, university administrators couldn't find the server. Working with Novell, IT workers tracked it down by meticulously following cable until they literally ran into a wall. The server had been mistakenly sealed behind drywall by maintenance workers.

Ballmer however isn't making any forecasts about Windows 7 Phone. I guess someone at MS finally told him to keep his mouth quiet after he boldly predicted that the iPhone wasn't going to get any significant marketshare.

TFA reads like Skyhook wrote it. I'm going to have to Google for a less biased FA. Oh look, here's one. Facts minus editorializing.

Oh, and this is a very interesting wrinkle on it:

Motorola reported Thursday that it has acquired Aloqa, a Germany-based firm that supplies location services for mobile phones. Motorola said it plans to team Aloqa with its Motoblur feature, which consolidates cell phone users' social networking apps in a single, easy-to-view interface.
News of the acquisition comes a day after Skyhook, another location firm, sued Google, charging, among other things, that Google had contacted Motorola to block Skyhook's service. While the Aloqa acquisition and the Skyhook-Google litigation are not connected, they illustrate the growing importance of location features on mobile phones.

TFA reads like Skyhook wrote it. I'm going to have to Google for a less biased FA. Oh look, here's one. Facts minus editorializing.

Oh, and this is a very interesting wrinkle on it:

Motorola reported Thursday that it has acquired Aloqa, a Germany-based firm that supplies location services for mobile phones. Motorola said it plans to team Aloqa with its Motoblur feature, which consolidates cell phone users' social networking apps in a single, easy-to-view interface.
News of the acquisition comes a day after Skyhook, another location firm, sued Google, charging, among other things, that Google had contacted Motorola to block Skyhook's service. While the Aloqa acquisition and the Skyhook-Google litigation are not connected, they illustrate the growing importance of location features on mobile phones.

I think you underestimate the improvements Linux is making. Ubuntu is getting consistently positive reviews for the past several distros and its corresponding increased exposure to the masses. Factor in how people are starting to get fed up with MS security issues and apple's arm-and-a-leg prices, I would not rule out the proverbial "year of the linux" to happen quite soon. In fact, on a personal note (not that it means much in the grand scheme of things, i suppose, but to get an idea) I know several people who have been expressing interest in converting to Linux, one of which is my father who has been using MS since DOS (and the other a computer illiterate). Oh, and MS already considers Linux a threat

Joke all you want, i'd give it no more than 5-10 years

This was at a time when Microsoft was a quasi-dominant force in the server market, when their IIS server platform actually had a reasonable install base in production environments, and Windows was totally unchallenged by Linux and pals.

Microsoft is doing quite well in the server market:

x86 server revenues were up 31.7% to $7 billion on shipments up 25.8% to 1.8 million servers, positively impacting Windows server demand. IDC put Windows server revenue at $5 billion, representing 46.5% of overall quarterly factory revenue. Linux server revenues were up 30.1% to $1.8 billion, representing 16.8% of all server revenue, up 2.5 points over last year. Server Sales Were Healthy in Q2: IDC [August 29]

With the second quarter server market figures tabulated and analyzed, it looks like SMBs rule the roost. Basically, there's been dramatic market growth among x86 servers--i.e, the PC-derived kind that SMBs buy. The high end of the market, meanwhile, continues to dry up.
IDC, the market research firm behind the figures, says that there was a 28.2 percent 2Q year-over-year increase in Windows Server shipments, as users not only bought new x86 machines, but found broader uses for x86 machines.
Linux servers (which also often involve x86 machines) showed even better growth, with vendor revenue up 30.1 percent. Linux servers now account for 16.8 percent of the server market, an increase of 2.5 points over the last year. Server Field Becoming An SMB Market

Shouldn't we be taxing H1-B applications to increase funding for local schools? After all, a big reason why workers come over on the program is because we genuinely lack enough skilled labor to meet our needs at reasonable price levels.

Yeap, this is why American graduates are unemployable

Eh? Android does support ActiveSync. It just that prior to 2.2, it didn't enforce all the corporate security policies of ActiveSync. See Feature Enhancement Request 4475 and see this article for a summary of related changes in 2.2.

2.2 seems to address most of the password/security policy issues with ActiveSync. I have 2.2 running on my Nexus One, but don't use Exchange server, so can't comment here.

For Droid owners, the update to 2.2 is supposed to come out officially this week, though I'm pretty sure there are unofficial 2.2 ROMs out there already. So basically, what you are talking about is no longer an issue, or at least not a particularly significant one.

Where are you that you can do these things? And is your geographic location governed by the same Government the parent poster noted?

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/08/why_no_intel_in.html

If Apple won't put an "Intel Inside" sticker on a Mac forgoing millions of co-marketing dollars what makes anyone think they would integrate ads with the OS?

The PC market stinks right now

Which is why we have more PC games than we've ever had before? Not to mention there are more PCs out there than consoles and your broad usage of PC (this includes Macs, Linux, Laptops, Desktops etc.).

As a former game pirater, I completely understand if a studio wants to abandon the PC platform entirely.

Honestly you have yourself to thank for "the PC market stinking" then.

us PC users growing the F up and acquiring games legally.

Way to group the PC users together. Not all of us are immature thieving twats. This is a great description for the type of players on console game networks. Looks like piracy isn't just on the PC and I'm sure you owned a Playstation and I'm sure you know what made that console popular.

It reminds me of Sony (I think it was them) who "fixed" one of their overheating laptop series by having users download a "patch" that would turn off the power management in Windows and make the fans go non-stop. It certainly stopped the overheating, but at the price of shortened fan life and a very noisy machine ...

Not Sony. Guess who?

- They where the first to introduce "3-strikes-and-out" Internet connection. Meaning if you download something from piratebay, 3 times - then you lose your internet connection by law.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8436745.stm

- They where imposing restrictions on content on personal homepages
http://www.cdt.org/pr_statement/french-court-imposes-speech-restrictions-beyond-its-borders-0
(and much more)

- They always stand in way of internet innovation, if something isn't checked with them, it's illegal:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22103516

Needless to say, this NEW restriction doesn't come as a huge surprise when it's from France. It's the same country that wanted the entire world to speak French instead of English, remember EuroDisney in the beginning, where you were nearly chased out of the country if you couldn't speak French (it's not like that anymore...experience dawns on them eventually) ...but come ON FRANCE...

How you managed to read that I was suggesting that there weren't any and I was somehow lamenting that fact is beyond me. How you turned my post questioning the choice of location into "telling others how to conduct their business" is mystifying. You must be great fun in person when someone asks "why?"

To summarize my post and possibly increase your reading comprehension: I questioned why anyone would build a data center in California. I provided an example of an alternative that I was familiar with.

Since you seem to think that I was suggesting that there aren't any big data center projects here, I'll do the name-drops: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, and Mission West all have or are constructing data centers here. There are more, of course, but those are well-known.

True, it is important to know how the communication between the chip and the PC was made. I'm guessing here, but I think my dad's pacemaker isn't that easily accessable... If it is, or in the future will be, the communication port should -logically- be protected. But for now, I think my dad should fear EMFs more.

Pacemakers have already been hacked granted its really unlikely your dad will be a target but that is getting into the terrain of security through obscurity

skype which is also encrypted and has governments apparently scrambling to crack

Except for those privileged users in the Peoples Republic of Bavaria http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/26/1339249 and China http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/voip/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605439.

As far as I'm concerned, Novell stabbed the community in the back. I don't use Novell products and neither should you.

Funnily enough when Hovsepian took over as CEO in 2003 I remember him saying how much Novell would do for the Linux Community. Then a few years ago this Interview.

Lets look at what he did for the Linux Community and for the Developers he thinks are so great:

Novell Plans To Lay Off 20% Of Workforce

Novell offshores for cheap developement

Novell cuts SuSe Develpers

Suse Developer Layoffs

It appeared to me that the book The Road Ahead was heavily edited so that it included NO useful information. The book was, at the time, utterly boring. The "predictions" were unimportant commonplace thinking.

There are two co-authors, Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson. It is possible that Bill Gates did none of the writing, or almost none. Why does the Slashdot story say, "Bill Gates's The Road Ahead"?

It seemed to me that the book was deliberate fraud. They knew that any book by "Bill Gates" would sell. They knew most editors at the time would not have enough technical knowledge to detect the fraud. So people would buy the book believing that they had gotten something useful.

They are still practicing that fraud. Patents are obtained using the name Bill Gates. Publications are still fooled. Do a Google search: Bill Gates patent. This is the truth: Bill Gates' Name Surfaces On Patent Applications. His name is "surfacing". Possibly he had little or no involvement.

If you have ANY way of showing that Bill Gates has technical knowledge, please comment. There is no evidence that I can find. Supposedly Bill Gates wrote the original (very buggy) Microsoft Basic in assembly language. After that there is no evidence that he has an interest in technology.

The real Bill Gates is socially backward and abusive. For example: Bill Gates Unleashes Mosquito Swarm.

Yeah, 2.1 on the Hero is fantastic. Noticeably faster, much nicer Market experience, and all the little bells and whistles that we've been waiting for (plus new shiny goodies in the HTC custom UI).

The prospect of waiting for 2.2 isn't great, although within the next year or so they're going to split things out so the core can be updated by Google OTA without waiting for HTC, Sprint, or anyone else to play catch up. And even though that's a couple releases down the road, it seems HTC is keeping their custom ROM pretty well in sync across their various offerings. The Hero with the 2.1 update is pretty much identical to the Incredible or the EVO in terms of software.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/03/google_has_a_pl.html;jsessionid=GNCKNCVMSNEYJQE1GHRSKH4ATMY32JVN

Do you mean to say that Microsoft is now going to force developers to publish through its app store and nothing else?

This appears correct.

I did not know that. Citation needed please.

From this InformationWeek article: "All apps must be approved by Microsoft, and can only be distributed via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile."

Search for "google news outage september 22". (I don't know what comes up on Google; I use Yahoo as my default engine.)

Here's a good link. Google Outages Damage Cloud Credibility. It came a couple of days later and gave a roundup of recent Google outages. Specifics about that outage: look here.

I think it was particularly newsworthy because (a) it came on the heels of several other outages; (b) /. has had several stories about the debates with newspaper publishers, online aggregators, pay for content, etc.; and (c) this was now leading to questions about "is the cloud ready for prime-time" beyond just Google.

(Update: I just checked the same search on Google, and the first link is their app status dashboard). Looks like GMail has had problems over the last week.)

Apparently, Zuck ended up paying $65M, so I don't think getting laughed out of court is accurate.

Neither handheld Linux nor Windows Mobile seems to be restricting anything anywhere near a game console or the App Store.

By "Windows Mobile" you appear to mean "old versions of Windows Mobile". On Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has veto power over apps. But then Apple's iPhone developer program copied Microsoft's XNA Creators Club anyway.

So you're telling me that you know for sure I won't be able to bring up Google Docs and access my Google docs when I have no internet connection? Because right now I can do that in the Chrome Browser with Google Gears and they are working on HTML5 which is supposed to natively support this "offline" functionality. But what you're telling me is that they plan on dropping this paradigm?

Yep -- at least last I heard Gears/offline editing is temporarily going bye-bye. Questionable choice at best -- why not get HTML5 working first unless they really don't care about being a viable option to traditional MS Office type editors? http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224202374

Google's other big bet is on the all-cloud environment; it's dropping for now the ability to use Docs when not connected to the Internet. Google thinks most employees don't care about offline mode, but the company knows that C-level execs--the ones who need to approve Google apps--do. They're often on airplanes without Internet connectivity, so not having offline access could be a big strike against the rewritten Docs.

Now even close:

Overall, 45.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones at the end of February, up 21% from the previous three months. Smartphones are the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market, which comprised 234 million subscribers in the U.S. at the end of February, ComScore said.

Around 20% now probably. Perhaps many "enthusiasts" not realising this is one of the reasons why they think Apple (with 20-something %...of 20%) is so big in mobile phone market. That's even more true worldwide (where I would be surpised if smartphones are even 10%; and where Apple enjoys much smaller part of that 10%)
Also probably a reason for not realising how big Nokia (37% of all mobile phones, half of global smartphones), Samsung (20% of total) or LG (10%) really are...

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-whitepaper_exec_summary_internet_security_threat_report_xv_04-2010.en-us.pdf
Targeted attacks focus on enterprises
Targeted attacks using advanced persistent threats (APT) that occurred in 2009 made headlines in early
2010.6 Most notable of these was the Hydraq Trojan (a.k.a., Aurora).7 In January 2010, reports emerged
that dozens of large companies had been compromised by attackers using this Trojan.8 While these attacks
were not novel in approach, they highlighted the methods by which large enterprises could be compromised.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/01/significant_wor.html;jsessionid=KDF2YBU4HXNKLQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN

http://manageddatacenter.searchdatacenter.com/taxonomy/taxkey;root_1387_1332_204/DC-category.htm
Current FBI estimates indicate that malicious software and attacks targeting identity theft cost American businesses and consumers more than $50 billion a year. (note BUSINESSES)

The point being, enterprise is vulnerable. It isn't just the home user who is targeted, nor is it just the home user that is compromised. Malware costs corporate America billions every year. How many billions is debateable - one alarmist estimate places it at hundreds of billions, and others pooh-pooh that with overly conservative estimates.

Fact is, enterprises are compromised almost every day.

)*(&^%#! cut and paste. Ignore the previous link about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sorry.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210002185

Opera already has a bunch of online services grouped together as "My Opera" - some browser-tied, such as server-side bookmarks & history with sync, or Opera Turbo; and some generic ones, such as blogs. Given that Opera has a built-in email client, it would make some sense for them to also provide an email service to pair with that (so if you start Opera and click "e-mail", it'd offer you to create an Opera account if you don't already have one).

As for "why" in a sense of how they will make money on that - this might give a clue.

I think you got the whole FUD dilemma wrong. Or maybe I do.

The pattern with the HTC/Android case is the same as with the Novell situation. MS and HTC make a deal on whatever they think is beneficial to their businesses. In the light of the deal a MS-rep claims MS patents are being violated and they won't go after HTC or their customers.

These press releases leave an impression in people like me, that are evaluating the rollout of Linux and/or Android deployments, that if it's not being done with products being covered by an agreement like the above, MS is gonna come after them. Some now might be too scared of using Linux and either buy the MS-sanctioned products or go with something else entirely. I for one think, this is just saber-rattling; MS legal department doing the job of their marketing department. Microsoft is a company like every other. They have to report to their shareholders/owners and noone else (apart from legal entities). Since their agreement with Novell in 2006 they didn't do a thing to enforce their right they'd be entitled to. They could have made a fortune in court by suing commercial linux customers in the US or at least doing business with entities based in the US.

The reality is, that they didn't. It's 3 1/2 years and Microsoft didn't enforce their claims a single time. 2009 was a good year for them, but in 2008 they would defenitely have needed to make their shareholders a little happier than it did. I don't know why they didn't go after commercial linux customers, but a few scenarios come to my mind: a) Microsoft fears that after a first strike a patent war might evolve and they might face a confrontation with IBM. b) They make more money with their OSS partners than they ever thought was possible. c) Their patent claim is, apart from a few minor things like the double-click being implemented in the major window managers, nothing but FUD

Seeing how Canonical and Red Hat didn't buy in their initial claim and how Intel and Nokia are about to roll out their joint Linux stack without having an IP licence agreement with MS makes me opt for c). Also, patents are not secret. Everyone can find them in the US Patent and Trademark Office's database. Given that there's no report of anyone with more insight in the Linux code than I have has found a single case of infringement in ~40 months strengthens my claim.

The reality is, mind me not using caps lock, so far Microsoft's patent claim has been nothing but sabre rattling. The reality is that all of the companies that have made an IP licence agreement with Microsoft are all affiliated with them in one way or another. Alltogether their agreements rather look like a tactical positioning to me than to enforce violated IP.

The reality is, we all pay MS tax one way or another, but not because Torvalds and friends ignored MS' patent portfolio and, to quote you, bury their heads in the sand. We pay that tax, because MS seeks allies for a possible future IP war. We pay the MS tax to fund a strong lobby for stronger IP laws. We pay the MS tax, but only if we buy products and services from MS or their Allies. (on a 2nd thought we might better call them the Axis)

The man was already a felon from the 1980s, so it shows he tended not to follow the law.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209100472

"The Chronicle also reported on Wednesday that Childs has a 25-year-old felony criminal record in Kansas, where he was convicted of aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary stemming from charges filed in 1982. Childs was on probation or parole until 1987, according to records uncovered by the newspaper. Childs had disclosed the felony conviction when he applied for the San Francisco job five years ago."

It's one out of dozens of Android phones, each model with it's own features and price ranges.

Steve Jobs has been quaking like a motherfucker (and not in the fun way) if the reports of his Google tantrums are true...

In the smart phone market, companies like HTC and Motorola may see increased profits due to increased sales of Android phones, but each and every one of them would similarly trade places with Apple in a heartbeat if they could. If Android is bound to knock Apple off its perch, it's going to take many, many years.

So, do explain why you'd think that anyone in Apple's position would be "quaking"?

Personally, if I was going for the smartphone perch, I'd go after RIM...who is actually sitting on the perch with about 42% of the market. Apple? A healthy #2 with 25%. Google is up and coming at 9%, more than doubling their market share from Nov. '09 to Feb. '10. Out of RIM, Apple, Microsoft (looks like they had the lunch that Google ate), Google, and Palm, only RIM and Google gained in that time frame. Hastily searched source: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/comscore-android-market-share-continues-to-gain-on-the-iphone/

Personally, I think the iPhone has peaked. Most of the people who wanted one have one by now. Consumer phones are also remarkably fad-prone, just ask Motorola. Watch out for Apple entering their "New this year, a *PINK* iPhone" phase. Also, if you want to talk about global phone sales, the top 5 are Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony, and Motorola. Looks like #6 is HTC ( http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600489 )

Like this?

Except for they don't. By a long shot. They just have a near monopoly on buzz about smart phones.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600940

"The iPhone accounted for 16.6% of global smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter, compared to 18.1% in the third quarter, ABI Research said. The last time Apple slipped in market share quarter-over-quarter was in 2008, when iPhone shipments fell to 10.7% from 12.9% during the same time frame."

18% is not a monopoly.

and SuSe lists none of their repositories in their installer

Software update ... starts the package manager.

Click on "Repositories" menu (duh!)

Click on "add" button.

Click on the "community repositories" radio button, and/or choose "scan with slp"

Right now my main desktop has more than 360,000 files reported by apt as being installed.

... and I've got between 2 and 3x that. Pick the defaults and it works. I get conflicts because I override the defaults, but I also know how to fix that with a quick click on the second choice instead of the first.

So what cpu and motherboard are you running on? It can't be Intel or ARM or AMD

And which of these companies claim to be devoted to open source? Not a one

Both AMD and Intel are into open source. Do your research. They're both members of the Eclipse Foundation, AMD has contributed hardware to developers, as well as the servers running groklaw, etc., and Intel is active with all sorts of stuff, and ARM sponsored the code to get debian to run on ARM.

So again, since all these companies have put money where their mouth is with respect to open source - Intel, for example, contributed 4.1% of the kernel code

Intel's position as the fourth-biggest corporate source of contributions "happened by virtue of the work done by four of the top-20 developers. ... Intel has a lot of people working on the kernel, many of whom spend little time in the limelight," Corbet wrote in the same posting.

So, since Chipzilla also works with the Beast from Redmond, my question stands - what cpu and motherboard do you use? Because that's no reason not to use OpenSUSE. Novell has done a LOT for the community.

Larry Ellison has already stated that he estimates Oracle was making about as much money from Java technology as Sun was. So whether or not the Java business was profitable for Sun, Oracle already knows how to productize it into profit, particularly after their purchase of BEA Weblogic. They paid 8.5B for BEA just to have a leading Java enterprise stack; do you really think they'd have fired Gosling when they consider Java that strategic?

A "gentlemen's agreement" between companies not to pilfer employees isn't a bad thing ... unless you're not one of those companies. Didn't Apple poach their latest iPod manager from IBM? Doesn't sound like they always play by the rules of their "agreement".

umm, wasn't that Pakistan??

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900017

When the big guys (AT&T and Verizon) killed the Northpoints and the Rhythms of the world, because they froze them out of co-lo arrangements, and made access to CO's as difficult and as painful as possible, and used lobbyists to push for legal changes and litigated like hell.

And in 2005, when MCI and Verizon merged, and the NY PSC said "ok, well at least allow naked DSL to our citizens:, you know all Seidenberg did was extend and pretend, just wait out the 30-day memory of the American press and public, then just set about killing competition again. (Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=165700989)

Verizon and FIOS will give it to you sideways, and you will smile and like it. Because, you didn't do anything to fight the mergers, call your congressperson, get out there and stop market consolidation when it was clearly headed this way in 2005. Maybe you were too busy playing Everquest, but all I know is that the efforts I put to write letters were up against an onslaught of Verizon lobbyists and attorneys. And guess who won?

After health care, the teabaggers would go apeshit if the US-DOJ Antitrust stepped in and forced another set of breakups in telecom. But, in truth, it's what needs to happen to get back options as a consumer. Read it and weep.

You can already see this with Windows Mobile. It used to be (still is) you could install any application in it as a user. For the next version (WM 7), Microsoft having seen that Apple managed to shaft the users with the iTunes store in which they get a fee for every application purchased, Microsoft is not going to allow you to install anything you wish on it without paying a toll fee anymore.

What's next, a rumor of Google's new Android based gPad?

You're two months late with that.

Screenshot(s)

I actually liked the 3rd one there. Maybe because I worked on it back in the day. With Simply Village you could just sit and watch the virtual people come and go and the birds flying around and veg.

You sure about that?

I realize most of those links are for British stories, but still...

Seriously. Google is (believed to be) the largest single user of consumer hard drives. When they start replacing hard drives with SSDs, I will consider HDDs to be done. I wonder what price differential the power savings (don't forget the power for cooling) will cover?

They started planning that, 2 years ago?

http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/systems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207602745

This article claims Google is using Intel SSDs. There's no source though, and Google declines to comment. Oh well.

You may be getting your wish.

Or perhaps it's been available for a while.

Have you ever seen microsoft.com go down?

Yes, I have.

SuperFetch also keeps track of what times of day that applications are used, which allows it to intelligently pre-load information that is expected to be used in the near future.
Source: Wikipedia
Their work, says Horvitz, was able to predict which applications users would open by time of day and also by day of the week.
Source: InfoWeek

Yes, it can. See computer assisted Tomography for an example. Or http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222002840.