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Or maybe netbook sales are cratering because instead of delivering quality models with high performance and low power packed into a lightweight enclosure, companies like Dell have axed all but the most profitable models, and replaced SSDs with magnetic disks and raised prices to the maximum they can squeeze out of customers. Netbook selection is terrible now compared to what it was a year ago. Last year there were many models and there was a price war, now there are a few models and they're just crappy low-end notebooks.

Indeed, at least one study in late 2009 predicted that Netbooks would fall off of their own accord
http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3855261/Netbook-Sales-to-Cool-Off-in-2010.htm

That was a month before the iPad was announced.

You're saying a dual boot system shouldn't count as a user?

Depends on if Canonical is happy with that. If they consider it counts as one for each, neither or only on which gets majority use.

I own a wii. It's been unplugged for over a year and I play the 360 every day, but I am still a wii owner.

Thats a hard one to call, you own, but do not use

Similarly, it seems to me if you have a dual boot system with ubuntu and windows, you're still an ubuntu user. Maybe there are ubuntu purists out there who would look down on you for that and would care to distinguish between the two, I don't know.

Linux purists generally look down on non-purists so, yes... :)

I'd wonder more about the second part you hinted at:

I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops.

Would you count as 3 users for this number? This article mentions that fedora counts unique IP addresses, if it said how the ubuntu number was found, I missed it.

I have three users (me, one agnostic, one mac diehard) behind my one IP. So again, it's hard. The nature of IPv4 is that Fedora's estimate could be understated. But it still doesn't give a clue how many meat popsicles are utilising fedora as their main workspace.

Windows is usually tied to a physical machine, and it's usually clear if that machine is a desktop or a server function. In this way looking into Linux market share is very very murky at best.

I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops.

Would you count as 3 users for this number? This article mentions that fedora counts unique IP addresses, if it said how the ubuntu number was found, I missed it.

And how is it possible to count for many users using the same computer? Me and my girlfriend share the same desktop computer (ubuntu/windows dual boot) in addition to our respective laptops (Mac for her / Arch linux for me).

Anyway, such estimates are just to give an order of magnitude. They say 12 million, who cares if it is 11 or 13?

how many of those are dual boot systems with Windows?

You're saying a dual boot system shouldn't count as a user?

I own a wii. It's been unplugged for over a year and I play the 360 every day, but I am still a wii owner. Similarly, it seems to me if you have a dual boot system with ubuntu and windows, you're still an ubuntu user. Maybe there are ubuntu purists out there who would look down on you for that and would care to distinguish between the two, I don't know.

I'd wonder more about the second part you hinted at:

I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops.

Would you count as 3 users for this number? This article mentions that fedora counts unique IP addresses, if it said how the ubuntu number was found, I missed it.

So in fact it seems Miguel was right all along - right about the need, right about the solution, right that Microsoft would not attempt to "destroy Linux" by leveraging patents. Instead they specifically promised in writing not to do that. Why? Probably because they don't care about Linux anymore. The world has moved on, what once seemed like a threat to their business no longer is.

Right, it's not a threat to their business, and they've been insightful enough to realize that. Which is why they haven't leveraged their patents against Linux in any way. Have you been living in a cave for the last 5 years?

On the other hand, there's no evidence from all of the above saber-rattling that Linux is infringing upon any of their patents. If they really have a credible infringement case, why haven't they sued Canonical, Red Hat, Mandriva, or any other company that hasn't agreed to "build bridges" with them? One also could wonder why they haven't publicly stated which patents are infringed, but the answer is of course that with or without a credible case, publicly stating which patents are infringed upon would allow the FOSS community to fight back with workarounds or invalidations of those patents.

the people that put on this study have some wrong stats. According to VeriSign's own data there are just over 192 million domain names registered now. No idea where that figure of 250 million came from but it's not correct.

http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/07/linux-achieves-1-second-boot.html
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/linux-1-second-boot-demo-15-07-09/
YouTube - One Second Embedded Linux Boot Demonstration (new version)

> If someone gained access to your fingerprint could they, for example, empty your bank account? Take out a loan in your name? Give me an example here.

I shouldn't be replying to someone in a conversation this old, but... Empty your bank account? Conceivably. Take out a loan in your name? why would they need a fingerprint from you?

They'd have one authentication component for any other system that needed your fingerprint... and used a comparable scanner and analysis system. Presumably, some of those could be security related. Potentially governmental security.

That's a big lot of ifs. But it's also an authentication component you can't easily change if it becomes compromised. And if there is no second authentication component, you are well and truly ... well, you get the idea.

I can't comment on any pending litigation, nor am I an attorney.

Would you mind disclosing what is your role in Microsoft?

As far as the EU anti-trust stuff reading this article:
http://www.internetnews.com/breakingnews/article.php/3853706

I have. Allow me to quote from it:
The decision averted another penalty for Microsoft which has been fined 1.68 billion euros ($2.44 billion) by the European Commission for previous infringements of anti-competition rules (emphasis mine).
I was actually referring to the "previous" fine. Thank you for making my point.

1. i4i is a patent case between two corporations hence it isn't germane to the conversation.

It has something to do with Microsoft's behaviour. To wit:
Appeals court rules Microsoft willfully infringed i4i's patent (emphasis mine).

2. The India case involves 4 alleged pirates I believe.

In most jurisdictions alleged == innocent (until proven guilty). For example, I am alleging that you are molesting kittens. You are alleging that Microsoft is a different company than it was in the 90's. Both allegations have no merit without proof.

Don't know much about it.

Just Google it. Here's one link.

3. With regard to German price-fixing, Microsoft has stated that it will comply with the finding and be in full compliance of German law.

... after being convicted and fined for illegal practices.

I am still waiting for examples that substantiate your statement.

I can't comment on any pending litigation, nor am I an attorney.

As far as the EU anti-trust stuff reading this article:
http://www.internetnews.com/breakingnews/article.php/3853706

1. i4i is a patent case between two corporations hence it isn't germane to the conversation.
2. The India case involves 4 alleged pirates I believe. Don't know much about it.
3. With regard to German price-fixing, Microsoft has stated that it will comply with the finding and be in full compliance of German law. When you have as large an ecosystem as Microsoft with so many partners, retailers, distributors, and vendors, business processes must always be stringently reviewed on a periodic basis to ensure compliances with all applicable rules and regulations. Microsoft Germany is doing exactly this in this matter. Are you really going to fault them for it?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-office-price-fixing,7533.html

So shouldn't they go get the Exemption Firefox got, or replace their crypto code with Firefox's code?

Or (since Chrome is Windows-only)... use the CSPs in Windows for crypto operations, instead of shipping crypto code with their browser..

Sorry, the US Law excuse doesn't really hold water here.

about a change that takes a single second to undo

There's around 8 million Ubuntu users. Google has approximately 72.1% (vs 17% for Bing)

This means 5,768,000 users will have to change their setting, meaning nearly TWO MONTHS (66.8 days) of lost time overall.

The old way would mean about 15 days of lost time

Hmmm....

Microsoft has also pledged not to pursue patent claims against individual open source developers or non-commercial efforts, as well.

As was (once again) pointed out on Groklaw recently, this sort of language is a restriction that is incompatible with the GPL. (GPLv2 section 6, much more explicit about patents in GPLv3 section 11.)

Far safer to avoid Microsoft patented technology than to rely on such a promise.

That could maybe double the bandwidth available, no?

http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3597701/EFF+Charges+ATT+Assisted+NSA+in+Surveillance+Plan.htm

http://www.eff.org/nsa/faq

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdawg/93928749/

I was fed up with the general consensus that Linux is oh-so-secure and has no malware.

Just because it's a consensus doesn't mean it's correct. As you have demonstrated, it's very much possible to write malware targeted at Linux.

In fact, there are plenty of viruses and malwares specifically targeted at Linux, and their numbers are rising: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601946
However, because desktop Linux has an extremely small market share, malware for Linux has a correspondingly tiny market share.

Think of it this way, a few weeks ago you woke up and came up with the idea of writing a piece of potential malware directed at Linux. But there are a hundred who woke up with the same idea, except they wanted to target Windows. In the end, 101 new malwares are born, with only one of them intended to harm Linux systems.

According to another article, a lot of them are from plugins.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601946

I don't see any linux viruses named. in the linked article.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601946

Yeah? Can you point to ONE virus in the wild that has ever bitten any Mac or Linux user?

Yes, I know it's from 2006. But it answers your question: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601946

Bzzt! Oracle bought Sun because Oracle wants to be a systems company.

Ellison said, "We're keeping everything: tape, storage, x86, Sparc, he said. "I'm not sure if for (the same price) we could buy IBM, HP or Sun (that) we wouldn't pick Sun. Sun has fantastic technology, great microprocessor technology and leading tape archival storage."

http://blog.internetnews.com/dneedle/2009/09/ellison-sun-losing-100-million.html

"Linux has been at it for 15 years and .. sound is still broken out of the box on Ubuntu .. Not exactly ready for prime time"

I'm watching streaming media right now and the sound plays no problem. I've never had problems getting sound working 'out of the box'. If Ubuntu is 'Not exactly ready for prime time', then why is IBM involving itself in a project with Canonical? IBM not exactly known for neglecting the purpose of making money.

' IBM and Canonical are now announcing the launch of Linux and cloud-based desktop software in the U.S'

Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me. But imagine something like the following picture but with a foreground full of smoke, laser beams, and a drunk crowd on the brink of passing out. http://blog.internetnews.com/apatrizio/nin-bsod.jpg

You know, that "sky is falling" prediction has been coming and going for years now. It's always just a couple years away. Things get reallocated, and then it's "oh a couple years away". Someone always "discovers" IPv6, because they were just taught about it and suddenly it's the most important thing to them since storing rations for Y2K.

Sept 1998
In many ways, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 marks the period of the Internet's adolescence. Within the user community, there's angst over ... IPv4's 4.2 billion addresses will run out in about 10 years-by 2010 at the latest.

July 1999 - Wired
The Internet on Thursday began moving from its old addressing system to a radically new one, though no one is likely to notice.

After four years of testing, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority on Thursday rolled out Version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), the next-generation numeric addressing system for the global network.

March 2002, screen digest

Under present conditions, Internet protocol (IP) addresses will run out by 2005, according to report by European Commission. Old IP version four (IPv4) cannot provide each person around the world with one address, especially since greater proportion of addresses have been assigned to North America.

May 2007, internetnews.com

The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.

Said Leader Technology attorneys, of course, would keep all of the gigabytes of Facebook source code completely safe and secure.

So what?
Linux vendors would do exactly the same thing. Who is to say which OS is safer for example? It entirely depends on what metric you use to measure it. If for example you look at number of "hacker" style compromises then Linux is the worse but if we're looking at automatic spyware infection then obviously Windows is almost the only OS in that category.

Sure - you can cherry pick and fence your metrics to make any point seem reasonable. But that doesn't mean one shouldn't be interested in the rigging it took to make an argument stand up.

I don't blame Microsoft for selling their products. That is what a software company SHOULD do. The only reason these are "stories" is because people [incorrectly] feel Linux is a community effort and that any attack on Linux is an attack on this community. But when you look at the people who donate MOST Linux code you'll quickly discover that Linux is about as community as Windows is...

So really this is just a slam at the Linux Vendors who have the cash to answer it...

By all means - sell the product. Use marketing. But consumers should be aware of what liberties that marketing is taking to make the sale. That's why these stories are interesting. When a big advertising campaign is underway against your interests, it is wise to be aware of it and prepare to deal with the memes it is pushing.

Linux is, in fact, a community effort. When you look at the reports on who contributes, you'll note that there is no single gatekeeper. There is a large group of individuals who are not associated with any corporate interest. And there are some major corporate interests. And all of them contribute to the community that develops Linux code. I'd be interested in seeing information that shows Windows development works the same way.

An attack on Linux is an attack on the community. Our industry lives and dies on market share - or at least perceived market share. When a technology is perceived as having critical mass, it will get more support from the various developers and hardware manufacturers. Mircrosoft has long understood this and much of their marketing is about attacking opposing platforms and boosting the image of theirs. Any success in this means that the Linux community will run in to more difficulties getting support. And that affects everyone using Linux - whether you have a personal or monetary interest.

Not entirely true... First, IBM and several other companies have contributed their patents to a "patent commons", which can be used to defend open-source projects, in much the same way companies cross-sue each other over patents. This gives little FOSS guys a big portfolio for defending himself. Second, IBM and many other FOSS friendly companies have pledged not to sue FOSS developers or projects. Finally, patent violation lawsuits generally are filed against two kinds of entities: companies with money, like Microsoft, or small companies that are taking sales away from a big company (which few FOSS projects do).

You're blatantly wrong here. The reason the IBM - SUN merger didn't go through is because SUN walked away from the deal.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3813841/

Actually, the patent does no such thing. The i4i patent describes an algorithm to separate the tags and plaintext of a markup-language document into two separate files, where the locations of the tags are defined by the character position at which they would have appeared in the original, embedded-tag document.

i4i claims to have patented the concept of storing a document's raw data and formatting data separately, rather than inline. Given that Microsoft Word's Custom XML stores its markup inline, I hardly see how i4i's patent applies here.

Also, on a *totally* unrelated topic, guess who, in 2000, won a multimillion dollar contract to provide XML authoring software to the US Patent office? i4i. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/473021

All you need to do is connect the iPhone to your computer and then choose to Restore from Backup, I believe, to get the new iPhone up and running exactly as your old one was

Just did this yesterday, and it kinda works like that. All the Apps were in alphabetical order afterwards, rather than the order I arranged them, which is a bit of a hassle if you run your iPod Touch / iPhone FULL of Apps.

Why did I erase my iPod? Trying to fix the iPhone OS 3.0 Wi-Fi Bug, that rumour has it fried the wireless chipsets of thousands of devices of course.

to reply to myself, here's some more on the Exodus hijack (there are other sources available if you do a search for exodus domain hijack or something similar), which gives some mention of the flawed transfer process: http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3_401471

you can easily find more if you dig around a bit.

And can you name a couple of examples of this happening in Windows Vista or Windows 7? Vista has been out for 2 years now, it is, like it or not, "the current Windows version."

Yes, I can.: "Hypponen detailed how Conficker's code triggered an autorun on Windows, even when a user might have had autorun disabled for USB media."

Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?"

I keep hearing it's a new Microsoft so maybe.

Ah crap who am I kidding... I'm betting no.

"I haven't seen anything in cloud computing that can handle main frame and midrange apps, Sun apps. . ."

Wait, wasn't Sun one of the earliest proponents of the concepts behind cloud computing, but about 5 years ago, Sun was trying to get what they were calling 'utility computing' going, which was sort of a pre-cursor to the idea of cloud computing, wasn't it? Granted, they later 'canned' the Utility Computing services offering, but even now, they have a "Cloud Computing" page on the Sun Website (although, now that they are being bought by Oracle, it'll be interesting to see if they still go down that road, but it wouldn't surprise me terribly if that was something that the Oracle management might get behind).

Yarrr, I think ye be wanting one with this kernel http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3633221.

I found this assessment to be adequate when looking at Microsoft as a marketing company that makes the operating system. But what about Bing and Natal? These have been two very important developments to different worlds following the departure of Gates. I read an article from ITPro UK that I think did a better job describing change (or lack thereof) and there's certainly others with their own 1-year-on take.

Personally, it's the small things that Microsoft has done differently that I see as real change. The recent ECMA standardization and community promise surrounding CLI and C# for one. While not perfect, it's an important step. Supporting more community standards (albeit questionable) in IE8 has also been a tremendous step in my mind. I'm not embracing IE8 yet out of sheer caution but these are certainly progressive moves however small. Has Ballmer toned down his wild intensity now that he heads Microsoft and is the unquestionable leader? I don't think so in the operating system world but maybe in smaller subsections of software development. The pricing and marketing strategies they've used for their OS have been just as questionable and (in the case of the OLPC) as ridiculous as ever.

I hate to say it as I thought it was the end of the world when Ballmer took over Microsoft and that everything was going to grind to a halt around them but things don't look so bad. Honestly, I'm more concerned with other companies buying up everyone and everything around them in their quest to own a full stack of software or dominate one cash cow field--Google included. Two or three years ago, had I rubbed--to have everything in the world that was made by them blink out of existence. Now, I'd probably have better things to spend that wish on. I hate to sound like an apologist because I still despise a lot of their marketing tactics and things they do. But I'm glad they're starting to show some improvement and at least a little bit of innovation. I think things had really stagnated under Gates and though Ballmer looked like the big bad wolf, he's obviously taking more risks now that he's in charge.

Exactly. In this video Eben Moglen explains why for Microsoft threatening is better than suing. So Microsoft prefers denying that they have anything to do with SCO... although they may do some business with them.

Microsoft Settles Anti-Trust Charges with Be, off course without admitting doing anything wrong. I wonder why MS paid Be that $23.3 million.

I notice that the very last item is about performance.
I can load up the entire inventory of my network in around 3 seconds in Chrome and Opera. It takes 11 seconds in IE8.
Not fast at all.

This is a key point! As web applications become more commonplace, good JavaScript performance becomes very important.

Microsoft must be afraid of the shift to web application development, because it threatens the dominance of Windows on the desktop. If business applications can be run on the web, corporations don't need to run Windows; just something that gives users a web browser. Think of Google Apps and its threat to Microsoft Office (especially Microsoft Exchange).

• Google Apps is a danger to Microsoft Office.
• Firefox/Chrome/Opera (fast javascript) is a danger to Microsoft Windows.

You see, it's in Microsoft's best interest to keep IE's JavaScript slow. As a part of this, they need to scare people away from any browser with faster JavaScript performance. If they slip on this and let their customers stray from Microsoft IE, they could loose a lot more than just browser market share.

I worked for a company that had received huge state and local tax incentives to build a new HQ in Kansas. The incentives had provisions that required the company to maintain a certain number of employees and very high (for the area) average salary. It took 2 years to build the building, and it was a model of "green" construction that had all the state & local politicians creaming their pants. 30 days before move-in, the company was bought out. The buying company had no choice but to let them move in - if they didn't, they would immediately owe a big chunk of money to the state. But, the new company also began downsizing the Kansas staff, and in January they announced that we no longer met the provisions of the incentives. So, they are now going to move out of that brand new building and try to lease it out at a loss until they can figure out how to get out of this mess.

The final result will be MORE downsizing of the Kansas staff than would have ever happened without all this nonsense - and the state of Kansas will lose both the tax money and an employer.

There was stupidity a plenty in this deal - the company for thinking they needed to build a Taj Mahal while sales were tanking, the state for believing they needed to cut them an incentive deal, the buying company for acquiring this pig for $2B or me for taking a job in this industry!

Did anyone else read TFA and immediately flash back to 2001-2002 and hundreds of thousands of square feet of data center space sitting empty?
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18838014;jsessionid=QYMHD1PL3SZSYQSNDLPCKHSCJUNN2JVN
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/898681

> It depends on what they did to "compete unfairly". For example, it is not illegal for a vendor to have a contract with an OEM that the OEM could not buy a competitor's products if the vendor is not in a market monopoly position.

IIRC, they broke contracts, screwed over partners, and out-and-out stole other people's code and products. They lost several lawsuits over this, but the fines were small enough that they came out ahead. Wikipedia doesn't have as many details as I remember, but some of how they bent over Stac Electronics should give you an idea of the kind of games they played. There are also more recent things like this and this.

They've never been a nice company. They screw over their 'partners' more than anyone.

And plenty of universities and corporations have access to the Windows source. It's not universally available, but neither is it absolutely inaccessible outside the MS campus. reference

Craigslist doesn't have a hard and fast business model, but they do charge for some ads. But those people are willing to pay because it's very cheap, directed advertising that works well.

I stand corrected. But I still maintain that the EU doesn't plan to just stop with Intel. The recession just gives them more impetus to go after some big names. I suspect MS and Apple are in their sights as well (particularly given their grumblings over Apple and the iTunes/iPod lock-in in recent years).

That would have been worth, like, a billion dollars in VC play money back before the bubble burst...

You actually aren't too far off. Excite@Home paid $780m for Blue Mountain eCards a decade ago. Turned out to be a pretty good investment for the @Home service and should be right up SCO's alley.

They're the "number 2 software company," but they didn't have anything like the JDK or a real OS to call their own.

Oracle did have an OS, RedHat. There was talk a few years back that Oracle would kill or acquire RedHat after they released their own version of RedHat.

Falcon

Oracle will definately push Oracle DB, it's their main earner. They will support Linux but will likely push Solaris. If they were going to push Linux they would have bought RedHat, because Linux to Oracle means RedHat.

Why would Oracle buy, they already sell systems with Redhat. A few years ago there was speculation Oracle would buy Redhat because they started using it, or kill Redhat. Here's one such article, "Will Oracle Linux Kill Red Hat?"

Falcon

Oracle already has an OS, they have been using Redhat Linux.

Falcon

Ubuntu is the most popular linux distro

Except that it isn't.

Use of Fedora on servers might distort things. For instance, Fedora 7 comes preinstalled on Go Daddy's virtual dedicated servers. But as I see it, font snob complaints are directed more toward desktop distributions, not server distributions that use a web interface if any GUI at all. Do you claim Fedora has more desktop installations than Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is the most popular linux distro

Except that it isn't.

Remember when Microsoft pulled the stunt of changing MSN so it gave Opera users a broken page instead? Opera retaliated by releasing a version that went around Microsoft's block and rendered the MSN pages in the 'language' of the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1584361

If Google still had a pair they could cause their search engine to detect when IE is being used and return all Microsoft related results with 'weasel weasel weasel' inserted in the summary and/or subsequent page views.

As for the earlier response that accused Google of being at fault for not following standards, we've heard that song before. It translates from MS-Marketoid to English and comes out as "not following what Microsoft says standards should be, which usually differs from what the rest of the world says." As for returning results with donkey porn, a Live Search for 'donkey porn' returns a t-short company that uses copulating donkeys as their logo, and shows t-shirts saying "You're F*cking Out" and "Jizz In My Pants". I take it Microsoft has decided that these results are suitable for kids. I don't know which is worse, the hypocrisy of allowing ads with donkeys fucking (though not of non-ad fucking donkeys; ads are too important to block I guess) or the paternalism they show in taking the decision out of the hands of parents of what is suitable for their kids and what is not.