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I am genuinely interested in what these include, particularly the business case or problem you are solving with them.

One from my limited experience: Recursive queries.

Example: Create a tree structure where every node has a reference to its parent. Now try to select all the leaf nodes under a given $node.

Several commercial DBMSes will let you do this directly (eg, CONNECT BY in Oracle). Postgres and MySQL cannot, and you have to create a loop where you select all nodes where parent = $node, then take that $list and select all nodes where there parent = $list; then repeat until you don't get anything back. There are performance penalties for this.

There are other ways to create trees in an RDBMS without a recursion feature, but you'll invariably end up having to either take a performance hit, or make updates significantly more complicated: your application has to update the tree metadata every time a node is added, deleted, or moved, which is just begging for referential integrity errors.

Wasting resources trying to attack a ghost like Linux, where there is no one corp they can go after...

But they keep attacking, don't they? TomTom, Novell, Lindows, other attacks from 1998 to 2007.

And, since 2003 MS has considered Linux their number two threat.

Microsoft disagrees with you.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-15BuffaloPR.mspx

http://www.pcworld.com/article/132893/microsoft_linspire_sign_linux_patent_deal.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3373

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202400435

Microsoft handed over search data without being forced to do so.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102061

Google was the only major search engine to fight to protect your privacy.

Google also fought court orders in Brazil to protect privacy for their Orkut users.

I can understand the logic of a statement that only criminals have something to hide, but in practice, Google has done more to protect your privacy than Microsoft. That is just comparing them as search companies. I won't even get into Windows and Microsoft products "phoning home" without telling you, and the latest rumors that Microsoft included a backdoor in Windows 7 for the NSA.

Uh there was a family pack you could pick up for $150 the first few months from Costco. Apparently they did discontinue it, though. Sad day.

Or Walmart's DRM encumbered mp3 files for which they switched off their verification servers.

Unless there has been an update since October of 2008, they changed their minds...

"We are watching the landscape," Cook told financial analysts. "We like competition, as long as they don't rip off our IP, and if they do, we're going to go after anybody that does."

(see here)

Apple has been building up for a patent war and so Nokia has no choice other than to strike before their N900 phones make them vulnerable. Remember Apple's lawsuit happy history was what caused the League for Programming Freedom. I guess the fact that so many seem to believe that Nokia is the agressor here (remember, they've been trying to Negotiate for years before this suit came out) really does show that Apple can distort reality.

informationweek.com...
searchenginewatch.com

Yeah... it happened.

Let me Google that for you: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206101169

Why would I trust their fix if their analysis seems to be wrong?

Update: In a blog post published shortly after this story was filed, Prevx's Jacques Erasmus confirmed that Microsoft's patch was not to blame and apologized to Microsoft "for any inconvenience our blog may have caused."

The black screen problem appears to be linked to improper alteration of the Shell value in the Windows registry, as explained in the blog post.

Chromium ... will bring Linux to the masses. It is designed to be secure. It will make Microsoft shit their pants.

A huge percentage of people who bought linux-based netbooks returned them and bought Windows netbooks instead. They did this because they couldn't take their usual Windows software on the go. If a wonderfully featureful and customizable OS like Ubuntu couldn't wean people off of netbooks what makes you think a one trick pony like Chrome will?

People are willing to pay extra for a product that works the way they want it to.

If someone was selling a $200 Chrome OS device I would snap it up for browsing on the go

They're due to come out around Christmas 2010. Real netbooks (not the Tivo-oized locked-in crap google's partners are putting out) will be $200 by then (You can get a real netbook for $250 today).

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221900360

Chrome OS will update itself, and its components and extensions will be cryptographically signed, so that if malware is detected, the system will automatically re-image itself and restore data from the cloud.

No way to install a different distro, or to install printer drivers locally (so if your printer isn't supported, you have to buy another printer), since that will cause a checksum fail, and the thing will just re-image itself. For $200, I'd buy the "real" netbook instead. This is "open" in the same way that a Tivo is "open" - you can have the source, you can modify the source - but you can't USE the mods, so the source is useless to you.

There's nothing preventing you from buying an Intel Mac and installing something else on it - but with these devices, Google just beat out Apple for computer vendor lock-in. Think about it, and maybe revise your shopping plans.

Granted Chrome isn't going to do all these things but dualbooting so you have quick access to the web within 7 seconds will be popular with a lot of people e who don't want a smartphone or find a smartphone's small screen insufficient, and you'll be able to do this as long as they keep is open source

Dual-booting isn't an option with the ChromeOS netbooks that google's partners are putting out. The bios does a checksum of the installed software - any modifications, and it re-images itself. These are Tivo-ized devices. Considering that you can get a "real" netbook for $250 today, and they'll be down to $200 by Christmas 2010 when the ChromeOS netbooks come out, why would anyone consider such a locked-in device that probably won't even work with your printer (you can't install drivers, since you can't mod the OS, so if your printer or scanner isn't supported - and most aren't - you'll have to spend more money on one that is).

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221900360

Chrome OS will update itself, and its components and extensions will be cryptographically signed, so that if malware is detected, the system will automatically re-image itself and restore data from the cloud.

It's not just for "malware detection" - any mods will cause the machine to fail the checksum test. So don't be naive and think that this is a real netbook - this is a welfarebook designed to extract money from people too poor to be able to afford $250 for a real netbook. "Buy this netbook for only $150 and get this pay-as-you-go ass-rape data plan for "only" $20 a gigabyte*, (*some limitations may apply. minimum of $40 a month. $200 early cancellation fee blah blah blah)". We've seen this model before - with cell phones.

My beef is that these netbooks are NOT open. You can't re-image them with another OS, or even the linux distro that you prefer. This is a trojan. This is the exact opposite of "Do not be evil." Still want to buy one? Even Microsoft permits you to add drivers and run other software on machines that have Windows installed on them - or remove Windows completely and install linux, or dual-boot.

I'm contrasting the potential of the Droid (and other smartphones, including by extension the iPhone and Blackberry) to their target audience, to the proposed ChromeOS netbook and its target audience.

The two have similarities ... for example, you'll have to jailbreak your ChromeOS netbook if you want to run modified source. However, for a general-purpose small-format "web appliance" for quick searches, a tweet here and there, email, and other applications that actually suit its form factor, the Droid wins. Pictures? Smartphones win there. Nobody's going to whip out a netbook to take candid pictures. Email? Smartphones win again, due to their better portability. Netbooks are portable, but smartphones are even more so, and that gives them a strategic advantage. So, word processing and spreadsheets? Do you *really* want to do that on a tiny netbook? Didn't think so. Netbooks are for surfing the net, not running desktop apps, but the proposed netbook is cripple(hard)ware.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221900360

Chrome OS will update itself, and its components and extensions will be cryptographically signed, so that if malware is detected, the system will automatically re-image itself and restore data from the cloud.

It's not just malware that will be disallowed by this system. Unless you have the signing key (not necessary for code under the GPLv2 license), you won't be able to modify the OS, or wipe it and install a different one. That's Tivo-ization. We expect something like that with smartphones, for which the initial purchase price is usually subsidized by the carrier, but not with computers that we pay the full shot up front. "Don't be evil?"

People have completely ignored this, just like they've ignored the printer and scanner problem - unless ChromeOS supports it, you'll have to by a compatible printer and scanner. Of the 3 laser printers I have (two of which claim linux compatibility), only 1 - the oldest - is. And support for the wide-format printer isn't the greatest either, so good luck with that too ...

Ordinary netbooks that I'm free to wipe down, that are compatible with my printers, etc., are $250. By Christmas of 2010, when this is supposed to come out, they'll be under $200. Just how much cheaper will they be able to make a limited-functionality ChromeOS netbook? $30 cheaper isn't going to cut it (and that's what the current "Microsoft tax" is). $50? I don't think so - $150 for a very limited machine, or $200 for one that I don't have to worry about working with my hardware? Even businesses will be taking a pass under those conditions.

And the retailers are going to hate these. Having to explain that their printer might not work, that no, you can't run software except what you can run in the browser ... and not being able to sell the customer extras like a game or software package ... retailers will just point out that it's probably cheaper to just spend the extra and get a "real" netbook, that can still do everything that the ChromeOS-based netbook can do, and more.

So, both products - Android and ChromeOS - are from google, but one I think is good, one I think sucks. There's no "fan-dom" hon my part, just a contrast in the handling of two products from the same company - one has a natural constituency, and one is an already obsolete "thin client solution" that people have already rejected over and over. Google branding isn't going to change that. People want the "Personal" in "Personal Computer."

If you want to see "fans-on-crack" look at the posters who accuse me of being a Microsoft shill, or who can't see the difference between ChromeOS and the proposed hardware/software netbook combo, and just swallow it all because "google good, everyone

Also, test the network stack real good.

...the cynic in me wonders whether or not the researchers might be risking legal problems by doing this (at least in Illinois, Colorado, Delaware, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming and possibly Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Texas as well).

Oh please, stop trolling!
http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219200384

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) said it remains strongly committed to the Symbian operating system for its future smartphones.

The company was responding to a report in the German version of the Financial Times which said the world's largest handset maker was thinking of moving away from Symbian because it was too "cumbersome." The report, which relied on unnamed sources close to Nokia, said the handset maker was more interested in its Maemo platform for future smartphones.

"We remain strongly committed to our current open OS software strategy for cellular devices, which is based on the world-leading Symbian OS," Nokia said in a statement.

I ordered a new system based on an Intel CORE i5 750 2.66GHZ CPU running on the Asus Xtreme Design P7P55D-E Premium w/8 GB DDR3 1333 Mhz ram two days ago, and have been monitoring the net for signs of this mobo to actually hit the shelves. I will be running this with an unremarkable 64 GB Patriot SDD as the boot drive, until the new SATA 6 Gbps SSDs come out - which could take a awhile I imagine. I expect blazing speed from this platform, and can hardly wait for it. The only unknown is when will the mobo arrive. If it drags on and on, at least there is the option of an add on card that will convert one of the other ASUS X58 boards to USB 3 & SATA 6. I just hope I haven't made a mistake with the decision to wait. The P7P55D-E Premium motherboard will retail for $299 while the U3S6 add-on card will be $29.

Here are a host of links I collected on it this morning...

Asus Unveils USB 3.0 Motherboard
Asus Xtreme Design P7P55D-E Premium
The motherboard, unveiled Wednesday [October 28 2009], is 4.8 inches by 3 inches and is scheduled to be available next month for $299.

October 30th, 2009
USB 3.0 and SATA 6G Performance Preview - ASUS brings the goods
the P55-Express based P7P55D-E Premium is very close to hitting the market.

October 29th, 2009
USB 3.0 and SATA 6G Performance Preview

October 29th, 2009
This Is The First USB 3.0 Motherboard

October 28th, 2009
ASUS debuts USB 3.0 motherboard and add-on card
The P7P55D-E Premium motherboard will retail for $299 while the U3S6 add-on card will be $29. Both will be available November.

October 28th, 2009
ASUS brings the first mobo with SATA 3 and USB 3

October 28th, 2009
ASUS P7P55D-E Motherboard Offers USB 3.0 and SATA-III 6G Performance
North American Availability
The P7P55D-E Premium and U3S6 expansion cards will be available at ASUS authorized retailers early November at $299 and $29 respectively.

Uuuhhhhh...You Do know that Windows XP SP3 is actually supported until 2014 right? You can say a lot of nasty things about MSFT but I don't see any Linux distros supporting an OS for 13 years. Hell if you wanted you could probably just stay on WinXP and wait for Windows 8 if that's what you wanted, but from what I've heard and will know for sure when my Win7 HP discs arrive Win7 is actually a pretty good OS.

So say what you want about MSFT but supporting XP for 13 years....I don't see how you can ask for more LTS than that. I mean hell, they kept giving old Win98 updates until...what 2006? Most XP boxes will have died or been replaced before XP reaches EOL. And considering that Canonical cranks out Ubuntu releases every six months (which is just crazy IMHO) I don't see how you can say "MS mentality of everyone must always run the newest version of everything or else you won't be protected " with a straight face. How long does Canonical support the NON LTS versions for again?

"If you're going to be a software counterfeiter, then please copy and illegally use Microsoft products. The above plea isn't from a posting on a hacker forum. Rather, it's how Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes feels about software counterfeiters. "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else," Raikes said.

From here.

Ballmer might also have said something to that effect, though I didn't see it. The logic is pretty obvious. Pirates cost MS little or nothing(directly, that is, "lost sales" claims can give you just about any number you want) and the tendency to keep using whatever you are already using is quite strong with complex IT systems. Far better to simply have to tighten the licensing screws later, rather than try to push wholesale migration from somebody else' platform later.

I do not see any monopoly with the acquisition. Take a look at http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220800002 For more insight on the matter. It seems to me the fight is over "Mysql" trademark. The sources are open and anybody could start fork like Maria DB

They'd probably sue Coke if they could find a networked vending machine.

Like this?

It uses the cell network though, but what the heck.

Really? The last thing I heard from MS about WinFS was in november 2006 (see for example this or this), when they promised WinFS was still coming, despite missing Vista's release.

I'm still waiting.

im not even going to bother googling the stats on that one, but since ive never heard of SharePoint before...

The SharePoint primer for the clueless and lazy:

Microsoft has sold more than 100 million seat licenses since 2001
and is on track to generate $1 billion in SharePoint-related revenue this year.

Ask CIOs about their collaboration strategy, and a good number will start rattling off SharePoint projects. The software's Swiss Army knife approach helps companies create more useful intranets, set up document sharing, offer blogs and wikis, and build a richer online company directory. This boundary-blurring nature is part of its appeal, and can even help in budgeting: IT teams that might not get the nod for document management software have been known to slip SharePoint into the Microsoft Office budget.

General Mills, a longtime SharePoint user, is replacing all its file sharing systems with SharePoint and has begun using it for blogs and wikis, and to automate some workflows. The maker of Cheerios, Häagen-Dazs, and 100 other food brands counts 20,000 active SharePoint users, with more than 1,500 people contributing content on a regular basis.

Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling? [Nov 1, 2008]

Most proprietary software companies spend little money on software development. The big players have margins close to 80% with a significant portion of their expenses in marketing and sales.

The geek throws out numbers without proof and expects them to be taken at face value.

MIcrosoft spends $9.5 billion a year on R&D.

That represents 50% of its pre-tax profit:

$250-300 million in pure research. Investments in applied research - not product related - on the same scale. Call it $1-1.5 billion total.

The rest of the money going to Microsoft's five core business groups.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer On "Moving The Needle" [Sept 28], Microsoft boosts research budget and targets public safety[April 15]

Now, a massive movement to open source software will cause less total employment in the software industry, but the vast majority of those losses will be in non-technical fields.

You could argue - with some justice, I think - that FOSS needs dramatically more investment and staffing in "non-technical" fields.

The FOSS-oriented geek tends to see everything in software development as a narrowly defined problem in engineering.

There are times when he never sees it coming.

When he misses his chance:

Ask CIOs about their collaboration strategy, and a good number will start rattling off SharePoint projects. The software's Swiss Army knife approach helps companies create more useful intranets, set up document sharing, offer blogs and wikis, and build a richer online company directory. This boundary-blurring nature is part of its appeal, and can even help in budgeting: IT teams that might not get the nod for document management software have been known to slip SharePoint into the Microsoft Office budget. Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling?

Most, yes, but there were a couple leaks (I believe with docs?) that didn't revolve around this.

Anyway, since I've actually been encouraged to do the research, my point can stand without relying on comparison to their security in more long-running products...

flaw flaw flaw. flaw.

Actually, looking over the articles, I believe there are only three distinct flaws reported in this set, but my google search seemed to indicate there are more.

Just considering the companies track record since it seems to apply well with cross-product security. But if you want chrome security flaws. Ok.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201804528 Russian botnet operators lease out botnet time for computationally intense stuff all the time (usually breaking encryption).

Here is how Bill Hilf explains Microsoft's Open Source Strategy:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203100965&pgno=3
".. our PREFERRED plan is to LICENSE ... versus LITIGATE."

Gee, where have we heard that before? Oh yes. Darl McBride, CEO of The SCO Group:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/07/59701

"We would PREFER LICENSING to LITIGATION,"

Such a nice bunch of guys.

Where did you get the idea that it was a no-bid contract? Or did you just mean that the bidding process was accelerated.

Smartronix won the Recovery.gov contract over two other bidders, SRI International and Accenture, in an accelerated bidding process that only included companies who are part of the multi-vendor Alliant contracting vehicle.

By law, Recovery.gov must be up and reporting stimulus spending in detail by October 10, but Pound said that the normal, full, and open competition process takes an average of 267 days to award a contract. "That's unacceptable and people would be screaming for our heads," he said. Now, the RATB expects the site will be up as early as late August.

I find it ironic that product is designed to work with Word. I can see why they would want to sue though, seeing as how MS just bundled in software that removes the need for their add on.

The problem isn't that Microsoft bundled technology into Word. The problem is that i4i had a patent on said technology, and that Microsoft knew about the patent before deciding to "make it obsolete."

From what I've read, the patent is on something which strips the raw text from the surrounding tags -- meaning I can call "open" on a file stream in C++, read in the data as a string, all without worrying about the tags (because the tags are logically separated already in a different location.)

I suggest reading the entire patent before trying to summarize. It's significantly more complex than what you described.

Eitherway, I'm not a fan of copyright, no matter who's getting f'd'n'the'a.

We're talking about patents, not copyrights. There's a big difference.

You know the funny thing about this whole discussion is that the OS linked to in the article is not the first. Integrity from Green Hills Software was proven correct a while ago. It is popular for safety critical stuff like flight controls for airplanes and is one of the dominant players in that niche.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/green_hills_sof.html
And what is truly amusing about following this argument, is that Integrity is written in C. :)

Although I can see that you're amused, what you're saying is false: Integrity is not formally proven correct, it only has some amusing but mathematically irrelevant industry certificate.

You know the funny thing about this whole discussion is that the OS linked to in the article is not the first. Integrity from Green Hills Software was proven correct a while ago. It is popular for safety critical stuff like flight controls for airplanes and is one of the dominant players in that niche.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/green_hills_sof.html

And what is truly amusing about following this argument, is that Integrity is written in C. :)

"Microsoft is right. Linux is Unix. It's why I started using it. Can it legally be called Unix? No" - by DesScorp (410532) on Tuesday August 04, @10:22PM (#28950899) Homepage

Technically? Linux HAS already been classified as a *NIX (UNIX) variant by others, & thus, it IS a UNIX...

See here, on that account/note:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/09/08/BU85830.DTL&type=tech_article

----

PERTINENT QUOTE EXCERPT:

"Linux is a form of Unix, the system that runs the basic functions for big corporate computer networks. But unlike most other kinds of Unix, which are designed for computer workstations, Linux works fine on your average Intel-based desktop computer."

----

and, here also:

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/02/letter_writers.html

----

PERTINENT QUOTE EXCERPT:

"Taylor and other writers have pointed out that Unix as an operating system is not disappearing because of Linux. Linux is Unix"

----

Good enough for me... &, apparently others from information week &/or sfgate.com also!

APK

P.S.=> Personally, I've always considered Linux a UNIX for the PC, which is the "why" of why I bought it back in 1993-1994 at a local computer fair in the city I then lived in - to have an actual UNIX for the PC, that was free (to keep 'brushed up' on *NIX scripting really)... apk

This investigation has been brought to you by Google.

And in unrelated news, Bill Gate's assistant and strategist and MS exec for 13 years has been appointed managing director of the FCC.

What's a good free sharepoint alternative, in a single package?

SharePoint is part of the MS Office system.

What you buy - or rent - from Microsoft is a sophisticated - scalable - turnkey solution for a business of any size.

If you want to be competitive, you have to see how well the parts fit together.

New Features in SharePoint 2010:

The Ribbon.

Ribbon icons will now allow users to check in and check out documents as they are viewing document libraries. Companies will be able to customize the ribbon and even remove it in favor of the older user interface found in SharePoint 2007.

Web edit.

Site owners can edit their sites almost as if they were typical Office documents. Other user-focused upgrades include the ability to use Office themes in SharePoint.

Business Connectivity

The Business Data Catalog, introduced in SharePoint 2007, gets a makeover and a new name in SharePoint 2010. Business Connectivity Services now gives users the ability to read and write to business databases. Users can create, read, update, delete, and query that data, even publishing it to Office, so that data published to SharePoint via Business Connectivity Services can do things like show up as a selectable list of data in a form document in Word.

Other user-focused features include the addition of the ability to read Visio documents in SharePoint, and an upgraded version of Microsoft Groove, now renamed SharePoint Workspace and given improved data synchronization capabilities.

IT

Managers get improved administrative capabilities with a dashboard that uses the ribbon interface; a set of tools to monitor server farm health and data performance and fix common problems; and usage reporting and logging. Developers get a new set of tools and capabilities like a developer dashboard for easier debugging and a new programming interface, as well as built-in support for Silverlight.

Platforms

SharePoint 2010 will support Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. However, it will not come in a 32-bit version, and will require Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (64-bit only). It will also no longer support Internet Explorer 6.0.

Microsoft Begins Detailing SharePoint 2010 July 15

I know, I know, the prevailing opinion is that SharePoint sucks, but in my experience, companies that grab hold of SharePoint integration with Exchange and MS Office, would rather give up their children than that combo.
Where is the competition for that ENTIRE feature set, for a comparative amount of money? Exchange-Outlook-SharePoint, baby! {July 12]

How freakin' hard is it to make a url into a link? I mean, really...

I may have been but ZFS is supported by NetApp. I had the same conversation with the guys at NetApp because of the litigation but NetApp directly supports ZFS.

Support Summary here I'm afraid all of my best documentation is behind the NOW site which requires you to buy NetApp gear before they give you access to it. Also, last I heard NetApp lost the lawsuit to Sun.

Last bit if you think NetApp is just a giant NAS you're dead wrong. It has NAS capabilities along with lun support for iSCSI or FCP but it also does much more than that with direct DFS support on the Windows side at least. A_SIS is an amazing product as well when you have lots of duplicate data. They are on top of the storage heap for a reason.

Pretty much every large company is de-facto required to rigorously delete materials that aren't required by law to be kept.

Which, in any public company or company that has a fiduciary role is either every piece of email for at least 5 years or a very specific cross-section of email which must be painstakingly identified (and most companies do not do this). This is the joyous ambiguity of S-Ox. Nowhere in the law does it say this explicitly, but the interpretation (which is very broadly applied by public corporations in order to cover their asses, since being "buried in discovery," as you put it is far better than literally going to jail) is that any email might contain data which is related to auditing requirements, and therefore must be retained.

See http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1039054510969 for more detail. Then see http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/07/google_apps_gra.html;jsessionid=IASOOQCSKFDVGQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN for some info on the retention policy features in Google Apps, though I'm sure you could find more on Google's site at google.com/a

There are two issues here that argue in favor of the government's approach: who says hiring people will be any better or quicker, and whatever happened to the idea of open source? No one gets paid for committing code to an open source project, and no one should suggest that those who do are "losers." You'd need to implement the same kind of safeguards against cronyism with paid people as with volunteers, you'd still have to train them, and they'd still have a nearly impossible task. The issue isn't money (Congress actually allocated money to hire people); it's where and how do you recruit the best people. I'm not so sure asking for volunteers is the worst way of going about this, as I argue further here.

Let me make this as clear as I can make it: Neil McAllister is an idiot. Stop posting his "stories".

He is an idiot. Confusing "HTL Technologies" with "HTC" is a serious mistake (here is the original article he misquoted). It's cowboyish and sloppy. Such a blatant mistake couldn't have survived the watchful eyes of a fact-checker/editor. That being said, it speaks volume about Infoworld, and the kind of process it has for reviewing articles submitted to it.

Apparently the Chinese government has backpedaled on its backpedaling: The Green Dam mandate stands.

It's likely however that the government will change its mind at the last minute. There's precedent for brinkmanship in negotiations over cyber security rules in China.

What this has to do with the PS3 is left as an exercise to the reader.

Getting a virus when receiving an email with a doc file attachment has nothing to do with suckering people into installing software. There are plenty such examples where computer-savvy owners, who aren't suckers, get malware anyway. This would not happen if the OS was not to blame otherwise.

Microsoft is already pushing for patent reform, so I think they're already aware of the suckitude of the current system.

OK, I really, really appreciate this help. Like you, I had exposure to this stuff in undergrad work - some 35 or more years ago, and otherwise, maybe kinda spoon-fed - I only really paid attention to the DOJ actions against IBM and MS. So I'll start re-reading - evidently I didn't retain what I thought that I had.

Yes, I had the right idea for the intention of the anti-trust laws. I guess you were right - I did NOT clearly understand leveraging (and sorry, google wasn't helping me).

And if anything, I was more guilty of thinking as a consumer advocate than CS-y. I think consumers are well-served by music player software assisting them in managing their portable music devices (iTunes/iPod, WMP/Zune, etc). From what I ***thought*** you were saying, if the tech treated a portable music player like a printer (geez - finding decent analogies is f*ing hard), in that the interfaces are known by all, doable by all, then the lock-in is gone - and the leverage is gone. That's what I thought you meant, anyway.

The mosquito repellant/mousetrap example was helpful. However - so far as I know, no one charges for their music playing software - so there's no market to undermine - so long as you don't penalize for the non-use of your software. Is that correct?

But that leaves the iTMS as the leveraged market (I believe that I got the use of terms right here).

Here's the EU antitrust complaint about iTMS - only on the grounds of sales territories - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17920298/

Here's the one about iTMS not supporting WMA - http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205207895

But the complaint goes beyond software licensing politics and charges Apple with deliberately designing its iPod hardware to be incompatible with WMA. One of the third-party components in iPods, the Portal Player System-On-A-Chip, supports WMA, according to the complaint. "Apple, however, deliberately designed the iPod's software so that it would only play a single protected digital format, Apple's FairPlay-modified AAC format," the complaint states. "Deliberately disabling a desirable feature of a computer product is known as 'crippling' a product, and software that does this is known as 'crippleware.' "

Frankly, this sounds exactly like the explanation that you've given - except - the charge is not necessarily true.

Apple, for its part, might reasonably claim it doesn't want to license WMA from Microsoft, a cost the complaint speculates is unlikely to exceed $800,000, or 3 cents per iPod sold in 2005.

Apple didn't disable the feature - they didn't enable this private format. AAC isn't private. FairPlay is, FairPlay with AAC is, but if we see the demise of FairPlay (yeah, I know - and if chickens had lips, they'd tell me how great the future will be) - that just leaves the unsupported codec.

So - if they did a firmware update to support WMA - and they could - PROVIDED THERE'S ENOUGH NVM so to do - then this action would go away, wouldn't it?

But still - the action isn't that iTMS is bad or iPods only support AAC and AAC is private - all misstatements I've seen regularly - it's that iTMS has locked out those preferring to use WMA. If that's true - what about Ogg/Vorbis?

Anyway - thanks for the help - if you don't have time to continue to respond, I understand - but I'm hoping that you will.

The blog entry is quite misleading (or maybe just assimilated). The market share of MSIE has only gone down as much as the market share of MS Windows has gone down. It can be that Windows has disappeared at a rate of 5% - 10% per year recently, but Microsoft is fighting back by tying IE to other products to block competition. That other product is MS Windows.

MSIE must be removed from MS Windows. Or better yet, just ditch MS Windows and save your economy.

There are nearly 70 security flaws OS X is patching. The 14 for MS is prominently displayed...
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/mac/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217400595&subSection=Macintosh+Platform

I don't think that the number of flaws patched is ever a really useful fact. I assume you're trying to imply that Apple is somehow worse for having more flaws, or maybe you're trying to show that they're better for fixing more. Either way, I don't think it's very useful.

Or maybe you're just being informative for the curious among us, in which case that's fine.

Patience, young Padawan. They're coming; Motorola's been all abuzz about it for a few months now, they're hoping it will save their skin. Samsung and Sony are among others that have announced phones arriving in 2009.

Besides, there's only one Android phone in the US market now, and it just came out 6 months ago.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501692

"The iphone has more quality apps than all other platforms have total apps combined."

No. Not even close. In your utterance of that hyperbole you've given away your fanboi status.

The numbers on this are a bit difficult to track down but it's very clear that the IPhone is nowhere near WinMo and you can absolutely forget about it if you combine Palm and Symbian application numbers.

Here's a quick rundown.

In late July of LAST year WinMo _alone_ had 18K applications.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/windows_mobile_7.html

Some estimates put Palm at 80,000 back in ***2005***.

http://www.pocketprof.org/running_palm_os_software.htm

Symbian numbers are very difficult to come up with but a low ballpark would be 10,000 of them.

The IPhone currently has about 15,000 applications listed in the app store ( http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/so-many-iphone-apps-so-little-time/ ).

It's clear that your statement isn't anywhere near true.

Please leave some of Mr. Jobs AHEM for his wife, sir.