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Like a lot of other real innovaton, Microsoft tried to strangle BeOS at birth. In this case by leaning on Hitachi to remove BeOS from the boot sequence.

Microsoft Settles Anti-Trust Charges with Be

Microsoft Litigation

It seems that Verizon only talks about international standards when it's trying to impose its will on others. To actually follow global standards is another thing entirely. In the heady cash-by-forklift times of the early Iraq occupation, Verizon was almost given the contract to do Iraq's cellular network... in CDMA, of course. Nevermind that every other country in the region was GSM. I think this says a lot about how Verizon thinks about standards.

When did they ever advertise unlimited email storage?

http://www.internetnews.com/xS...

Georges Harik, product management director for Gmail, said that, on the first anniversary of the service's launch, some very active users had begun to worry that the 1 gigabyte of storage that had seemed immense a year ago would soon be used up.

"We've had anxiety attacks as a few of the people who have been heavy Gmail users have been coming close to the limit," Harik said. "They've been asking us, 'what are you going to do?'"

The company determined, Harik said, that the right thing to do would be "to keep giving people more space forever."

The links have long disappeared due to DCMA takedowns.....

No they haven't. You just do not want slashdot readers to read them, because they do not say what you claim.

http://www.internetnews.com/de...

Quote from that article:

One technology enthusiast at Web site kuro5shin noted many of the hacks (additions) to the code base included some colorful comments and creative use of adjectives in noting programming changes.

In this case, the reviewer concluded the code was generally "excellent." But he also noted the many additions to the Windows code to be almost universally compatible with previous Windows versions. And third-party software has "clearly come at a cost, both in developer-sweat and the elegance (and hence stability and maintainability) of the code."

GP is correct, those who took a look at it indeed came away with the impression that it was quite pristine.

You, OTOH, are just lying.

What, like Welchia?

Yeah, that went well.

Yep, I saw this talk:

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3831956/Black+Hat+Exposes+Smart+Grid+Security+Risks.htm at blackhat in 2009, so what, at least 4 years?

Min

One if Enron's hare-brained schemes was to develop a market in bandwidth . It was one of the things that steered me away from investing in what was then the hottest stock in the market

PostgreSQL didn't release a solid Windows version until 2005. That's the biggest reason why MySQL adoption outpaced it for so long, but the plentiful PHP/MySQL examples certainly contributed too.

http://www.unixmen.com/meet-linux-viruses/

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3601946/Linux+Malware+On+The+Rise.htm

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229

http://www.slideshare.net/kumar_sunil/is-linux-operating-system-virus-free

want more i have tons more

It's not all a matter of dollars and cents. Patents effectively block others from using technology/methods which fall within the scope of the patent, regardless of whether or not it may be the most efficient/commonsensical way of doing things.

Here is a description of the Eolas patent :-

The '985 patent, originally filed Aug. 9, 2002, involves a program embedded in a Web page--or "hypermedia document," as the patent language calls it more generally. Here's an excerpt from the patent abstract's description of the technology:

The present invention allows a user at a client computer connected to a network to locate, retrieve, and manipulate objects in an interactive way. The invention not only allows the user to use a hypermedia format to locate and retrieve program objects, but also allows the user to interact with an application program located at a remote computer.

Interprocess communication between the hypermedia browser and the embedded application program is ongoing after the program object has been launched. The use is able to use a vast amount of computing power beyond that which is contained in the user's client computer.

Eolas sued all the big companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Office Depot, Staples, Playboy, Sun, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase and Adobe.

To dodge the patent, Microsoft changed how IE worked.

It is good that the companies ultimately decided to fight the patent, and won. If the patent was allowed to fester, in the case of IE the alternative proposal was to require users to click on a dialog box for every ActiveX control that appeared on a page. Similar changes would probably have been required in respect of webpages maintained by the other companies. If you visit any of the websites run by any of the companies sued, it is likely that the way you access their functions would be different from what it is now (and probably require more clicking and/or be more annoying).

Could you link to those announcements please?

There are lots of Canonical announcements about machines coming preloaded with Unbuntu. Not many shipments.

• "Canonical Partners with ASUS for Ubuntu Linux" (2011) "This is part of a new engagement and it's great to be working with such an innovative player," Chris Kenyon, vice president OEM Services at Canonical told InternetNews.com. "To put this in perspective we are now working directly with Asus, Lenovo, Dell and Acer on enabling systems."
• "Dell to offer Ubuntu on a select assortment of budget computers" (2007) "Dell announced plans today to offer Ubuntu Linux 7.04 preinstalled on "select consumer products." Dell has at various times offered some overpriced Linux options, but never a "budget" one. Dell currently offers a Ubuntu laptop for developers. It costs $1549 and will ship Real Soon Now. The same machine is available now with Windows for $999.
• "Ubuntu To Ship on 5% of All PCs Sold Next Year" (2012) Yeah, right.

There are other tablet and phone Ubuntu announcements, which you can find with Google. Someone is taking "pre-orders" for a Ubuntu tablet for delivery in late 2013.

Despite all their press releases, Canonical seems unable to get any manufacturer to ship a preloaded Ubuntu machine in volume.

He's talking BS.
Martin Graesslin, the KWin maintainer, began to prepare KWin for Wayland before Mir was even announced. So he designed the transition path to support two and only two back ends. See https://plus.google.com/115606635748721265446/posts/136nV4uojKH for details (public post, no need for a G+ account).

Graesslin also made it repeatedly clear that he won't support single-distro solutions. That means no support for MS Windows in KWin, OSX' Quartz, or Android's SurfaceFlinger. Somehow nobody ever had a problem with that decision. Only after Canonocal announced Mir Ubuntu fanboys began to whine.

There are no technological benefits for Mir over Wayland. Canonical made false claims as outlined on http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxODA but they've since redacted the statements. Wayland even works with Android drivers: http://mer-project.blogspot.fi/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html

The reasons for Mir are not technological, they are purely economical. Canonical wants to establish asymmetric licensing to have an economic advantage over the competition: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
Wayland OTOH is under MIT/X11 license for everybody. This means that not only can any Linux vendor grab it and to anything with it, incl. to make an Android version that uses Wayland: http://ppaalanen.blogspot.com/2012/09/wayland-on-android-upgrade-to-404-and.html
Mir's licensing makes it forever impossible to become part of any major BSD variant. Wayland, however, is being ported to FreeBSD: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMwMzE

Wayland is being pushed by industry giants such as Intel and Red Hat, as well as smaller companies like Collabora (creators of many technologies commonly used on GNU-based Linux such as Telepathy, WebKit-GTK, etc.: https://www.collabora.com/projects/ ).
Mir is just backed by Canonical who, while claiming to be the most popular Linux distributor, still makes no money: http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/canonical-ubuntu-linux-is-still-not-profitable.html

It's a real problem. The Firefox dev team gave up on running add-ons in a separate process (the "electrolysis" project) because the code base was too single-thread oriented. Remember, some of the code dates back to Netscape. There's talk of reviving that project now, but it's mostly talk and meetings.)

Refitting concurrency tends to be very hard and the result tends to be ugly. You get something like Windows 3.x or MacOS 6/7, where easy things are complicated for the wrong reasons.

You might be right.

I was reading this and it mentions Windows only.

"You don't spoof to get lower bills. You spoof so your neighbors get higher bills."

Or just shutoff the electricity to the neighbors you don't like.

If they don't catch fire and burn your house down first..

Add to misery. these smart meters have a much shorter lifespan(5-7 years)
and you are likely to get thr short end of stick(over billing) when it fails..

Just think more Chinese made components(bad caps?) that you can't unplug!!

Not yet.

Large Hadron Collider - powered by Linux

Link

Link

My friend, you are mistaken. You will not find 1 Gbit much less 10 or 100Gbit unless the "right place" to live is a datacenter. Average internet speeds from July last year are still in the single-digit Megabit range. Local storage is several orders of magnitude faster than Internet for the foreseeable future.

And it's not just speed but latency as well.

My friend, you are mistaken. You will not find 1 Gbit much less 10 or 100Gbit unless the "right place" to live is a datacenter. Average internet speeds from July last year are still in the single-digit Megabit range. Local storage is several orders of magnitude faster than Internet for the foreseeable future.

How quickly people forget history. When BeOS came to the x86 market for the first time nobody would preinstall their product because Microsoft threatened to charge more for the windows licenses. Only Toshiba made a deal with Be at the time. But what they couldn't do was tell the customer it was installed (it existed on a hidden partition. This is how Microsoft removed Be from the market and is one example of their anti competitive nature.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/20/be_inc_sues_microsoft/ and http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/print.php/3073811/

Where does it say you can't use Linux for browser testing?

From the rules page:

The targets will be running on the latest, fully patched version of either Windows 7 or Lion.

Back in 2008, Linux was a available as a target in Pwn2Own but in an interview Aaron Portnoy of TippingPoint explained that Linux is now not included in Pwn2Own to avoid controversy.

One of the patents that Microsoft uses in these type cases is “loading status in a hypermedia browser having a limited available display area” Seems to me this is way too vague to be a valid patent.

Here is a link to the actual patent http://www.patents4software.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/6339780.pdf

I prefer the patent that Microsoft has on tabbing through hyperlinks in a browser.

'Tim Bird, a Sony engineering veteran and the chair of the Architecture Group of the Linux Foundation's CE Workgroup, has announced a new concerted effort to get Android's changes to the Linux kernel back into the mainline Linux kernel tree.' Android has been using Linux 2.6.x for its devices since its release, with patches from Google. To date they haven't been merged back into the kernel mainline but existed on kernel.org. Some of the features such as wakelocks would help with Linux tablet projects, but other features aren't fully realized and support remains spotty.

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/12/21/1633235/project-to-mainline-android-kernel-changes-formed

Toward the end of November, the core Android code was returned to the staging tree, from which it had been removed at the end of 2009. Since the code's return to staging, changes have been going in and the code has caught up to its state in the Android tree. The code has now reached a point where, as summarized by Greg Kroah-Hartman on December 16:

http://lwn.net/Articles/472984/

Now almost two years later, a new effort that seems to have the backing of the Linux Foundation is aiming to bring Android back to the mainline. The project is officially titled the 'Android Mainlining Project' and was announced at the end of 2011 by Tim Bird Architecture Group Chair, CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation and Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Network Entertainment.

http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/android-set-to-return-to-the-linux-mainline.-will-it-succeed.html

CDMA is also a flagship of the US. IIRC, when the US invaded Iraq, they planned in the middle of the reconstruction ordeal to build a new cell network. Guess which standard they would choose? CDMA. In some ways it makes sense, since the leading CDMA provider and owner of most of it's patents is Qualcomm.

That's because you're a moron and your assertions are wrong.

Here, I'll help you:
http://www.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/05/attachmate-lays-off-mono-emplo.html

Microsoft has warned time and time again that they are going to use this method to destroy open source and software freedom.

The strategy:
Microsoft approaches open source business
Microsoft: You know its a dangerous neighborhood. you should pay us for protection.
Business Owner: Protection? from who?
Microsoft: Well...from us really.
Microsoft: Oh and sigh this NDA you cannot talk about this to anyone ok?

This campaign is not limited to Android its an attack on all open source and software freedom.
Its a legal way for them to take ownership of other people's code that they had nothing to do with
Microsoft is making sure that companies are too scared to use open source.
The list of companies that have fallen victim to this scheme is getting long
Remember TomTom? And Bufallo? They don't make Android devices but still signed a Linux license.
They claim Open Office violates their patents. Expect them to charge for devices distributed with OO and Libre Office
Basically if your code is anything other than "hobby code" you are liable. Microsoft says you are running an "undisclosed balance sheet" and must pay them.

Non-Android Linux licensees that I'm aware of :-
Tomtom
IO-Data
Buffalo
Amazon(License for use of Linux on Amazon servers)
Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd.
Brother International.
Kyocera Mita Corp
LG Electronics,
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd

I'm sure there's more.

Bottom line If you write useful code that competes with Microsoft look for them to take ownership of your code through the use of software-patents and have a nice day.

The reason ebay can offer their buyer protection program is because ebay can, in turn, resort to the law when necessary. They can and they do.

Bad analogy. A more correct analogy would be if they protected their Microsoft Windows trademark by going after anyone who used the word Windows

"The rulings are a major victory for Lindows.com," Harris said in a statement. "Essentially, the Court's ruling confirms that a company, no matter how much money it spends, cannot buy a word out of the English language."

Unless trademark law has changed since then Bethesda is just being assholes.
If they want to have a trademark that they can protect then they should name their product something unique.
Now if Notch were calling his game for "Bethesda" then they might have a case.

yes because microsoft has never ever ever done anything that might give people reason to be skeptical of studies that essentially proclaim that microsoft products are pieces of heaven that have come down to earth.

No, it wasn't a rebuttal. It was meant to spur you to actually provide an argument. As it is, it took two posts for you to even attempt that. You didn't present it as an opinion - you didn't say "I think the iPhone outclass Android" or "I'm of the opinion that iPhone outclasses Android" - you said "iPhone outclasses Android". That's presenting it as a fact.

Design, responsiveness, developer APIs, usability, aesthetics, integration with music and app stores, security, lack of malware, third party software, third party hardware

And again, you have a list features with no real discussion:

• Design: Where and how are the aesthetics of an iPhone superior to Android
• Responsiveness: What aspects of the Android interface lag, or are less responsive than iOS?
• Developer APIs: Both have them; what makes iPhone's superior?
• Aesthetics: How is this distinct from "Design"
• Integration: Well, I'll dispute the plural since iPhone can only interface with a single app or music store, while Android can use many. I'll give you music store, since Android doesn't do that natively, but what makes iPhone's app store integration better than Android's Google Market?
• Security: Again, any examples?
• Lack of Malware: iPhone, malware is hardly unknown. I'll grant you, Android is more vulnerable than an un-jailbroken iPhone - that's the trade-off you get for being in control of your own device. If you stick to each device's respective app stores, your chances of getting malware are vanishingly slim - AFAIK, there's been one instance where a bunch of apps were uploaded with malware on Android, and Google had them down within days.
• Third Party Software: Looking at sheer numbers, Apple has the advantage - although Android is accelerating faster. I don't really think numbers are a great measure anyway - the proliferation of fart apps and cheap clones tends to cloud the issue. In practical use, I've never heard of an app on the iPhone I wanted that I couldn't get an equivalent of on Android. The reverse isn't true - I've got a couple of apps on my android that my iPhone-ing friends can't replicate, simply because the Android gives devs greater access to the hardware (location-based stuff, generally, such as Locale)
• Third Party Hardware: Can you give an example of an area where Android lacks hardware support? I do see more hardware for the Apple than the Android, but frankly, most of it is crap. Both Android and iPhone have your basic car adapters, music docks, headsets. Yet to find anything available for one but not the other that I'd want.

On to your other list:

• Open source: I'd hesitate to say even most geeks care about this that much. This is targeted at handset manufacturers rather than end-users
• Multiple hardware vendors: On the other hand, I think people do definitely care about this, and this is an outgrowth of the Open Source point. The sheer variety of Android-powered devices means that people can pick devices tailored to their needs, rather than the one-size-fits-all iPhone model.
• Side-loading of apps: The number of people I know who've jailbroken their iPhones suggest to me that people do actually care about this
• Untethered, PC-free synching: I know I was a bit puzzled when one of iPhone using friends started raving about it when he installed iOS5 - it seemed so basic to me, I didn't even know iPhones lacked it previously

And I'll further add customization and widgets - Android lets you configure your phone how you want it - from wallpaper to widgets - whereas iPhones are significantly less custo

Firefox doesn't use that much RAM under normal conditions.

Yes it does. Mozilla know this and have an entire team of people addressing Firefox 4 memory usage issues. They're looking at 18 P1 bugs, 84 total.

My Firefox is has 1.3GB mapped, but is only using 300MB right now (according to the very useful about:memory)... that's a serious fragmentation problem, because as far as my operating system is concerned, that's a 1.3GB program, not a 300MB program.

"The big decision is in: United Airlines plans to wean itself off its decades-long reservations-system provider, Travelport’s Apollo, and to migrate its reservations to HP’s SHARES system in 2012". link

"The Apollo reservation system used by United Airlines was down worldwide for at least four hours Tuesday", Jan 2006 link

Try making a graphical OS and name it "Windows", and tell the judge the name is evident because it uses windowed views.

That's not an apt analogy. An apt analogy would be making a graphical OS, and naming it "graphical OS", or "OS with Windows".

And that would get you thrown out of the court pretty quick if you tried to enforce it. Heck, since you mention "Windows" - do you remember how the actual lawsuit about that exact thing ended in practice? The courts have repeatedly thrown out all claims about "Windows" not being a generic trademark, and eventually Microsoft settled, effectively paying $20M to Lindows to transfer the trademark to MS.

He did it first. He got the put the evident name to his product.

Just because you're the first to come up with the brilliant idea to name a car you make simply "Car", doesn't entitle you to such a generic trademark. Not unless you have actually invented the car (and the word). This guy didn't.

I say 'be careful with Microsoft' because if my memory serves me well, Microsoft had some agreement with now defunct SUN Microsystems over Java and its use...that was until SUN realized that Microsoft had a hidden agenda.

Nothing will prevent Microsoft from attempting to pull off what I will call a 'SUN moment.'

Agree. The similarities kinda end when Cisco doesn't cause the death of people. But that isn't black and white either. It would ignore the fact that while they don't really have a large presence in totalitarian governments, they kinda don't care about who they do business with because indirectly oppressing people is profitable.

I seem to remember a product from Bluestone which was released at Fall Internet World in 1999. I seem to recall it had an XML Editor in it. Surely this is Prior Art. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/234781/Bluestone-Releases-Visual-XML-11.htm

This is a complete and utter lie. In 2008 the only system left standing was Ubuntu

The quality of ASLR implementation is not the sole factor that decides who wins the contest, so looking at winners is not giving you any information. But if you read the interviews with participants, they did explain some aspects of making attacks easier, and ASLR was specifically covered. For example, here is one from 2009, and I quote:

"ASLR is also very tough to defeat. This is the way the process randomizes the location of code in a process. Between these two hurdles, no one knows how to execute arbitrary code in Firefox or IE 8 in Vista right now. For the record, Leopard has neither of these features, at least implemented effectively. In the exploit I won Pwn2Own with, I knew right where my shellcode was located and I knew it would execute on the heap for me. ...
And just so that our readers know, ASLR is implemented in Windows Vista (but not XP) and Vista SP1 is required for the full ASLR. Leopard had some binaries placed randomly, but Snow Leopard is rumored to introduce full ASLR. On Linux, kernel 2.6.12 has a weak form of ASLR like Leopard does, but PaX and ExecShield will implement Windows Vista-like ASLR."

and since then no GNU/Linux has been in the contest.

Which basically means that we don't know how it really stacks up against Windows and OS X. By the way, do you know why they don't do Linux? Quote:

"Linux is not an operating system that has widespread use with any one particular distribution, flavor or configuration. In general Linux is still a server-based operating system, people do use it on the desktop, but you can't go to BestBuy and buy Linux with a specific distro on it that everyone uses that has widespread market share. If we were to include Linux, we'd have even more controversy and we just don't want to deal it."

So it's not because it's somehow magically invulnerable.

As for your other points, I wouldn't trust a liar like you about anything.

Fanboi much? You don't need to "trust" me on anything - you've got Google to check facts, and (hopefully) brain to check conclusions. Use them.

Of course, if you want to stick fingers in your ears and go "Lalala I can't hear you, Linux is the best OS in all respects because how could it possibly be otherwise?", then you're welcome to do so - you can join the company of creationists and other similar religious fundies over there.

According to this link: Why Pwn2Own doesn't target linux (linked in another post), Pwn2Own only targets systems running MS Windows 7. If that is the case then this must have been Safari running on Win7, not OS/X.

I accept that OS/X likely has security holes - the same hole that permitted this exploit might work in the OS/X version of Safari as well after all - but I don't want to read endless MS Fanboi posts about how pathetic OS/X is, if the exploited system was running MS Windows 7

Why Pwn2Own doesn't target Linux

I wish I could find a better link to the story but just the other day, they released a fix for one of their memory leak problems: http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/02/mozilla-firefox-4-beta-12-fixe.html I've always had problems with FF's memory management in windows. I agree that if you have ram, you might as well use it, but I've found that FF has problems giving that memory up to more important tasks.

Gah! This kind of thing drives me nuts!

Here is the truth. Microsoft has one of the most liberal employee moonlighting policies of any high tech company. This includes yours. Microsoft has long allowed moonlighting. There are many employees that moonlight. Of course, a lot of moonlighting is writing software. This is often to extend Microsoft products. But there are others as well, some people write books, some write and perform music, some build furniture and some teach.

I have first hand knowledge of several examples, one of which I can talk bout. I hired the guy that develops Paint.Net/a>.. He worked for me a while and we are currently on the same team. Getting permission for him to continue Paint.NET development was easy and a no-brainer.

The only things Microsoft has ever ask of any moonlighter is/p>

• Ask for permission first. People get it in most cases directly from their manger, or a director. No VPs or HR needed.
• DDont compete with Microsoft. People will not get permission for this. For example, I wouldnt get permission to write a new word processor thus competing with word.
• Dont let it impact your Microsoft job. Note, moonlighting often benefits a persons day job, and often their team.
• Microsoft gets an implicitly license to your stuff. Note this doesnt encumber the employee in any way - they can sell and license their stuff too. But Microsoft can use it with no royalties. After all, were funding it indirectly. Its only fair.

Again, moonlighging is very common at Microsoft. Our policies are quite liberal and have been for a very long time. I understand Bill put them inplace himself.

Here, Microsoft is simply making a very liberal policy even more liberal.

-a href="http://foredecker.wordpress.com/about/">Foredecker

Rule 1: Transparency
A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service shall publicly disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of its broadband Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make informed choices regarding use of such services and for content, application, service, and device providers to develop, market, and maintain Internet offerings.
Rule 2: No Blocking
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management. A person engaged in the provision of mobile broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block consumers from accessing lawful websites, subject to reasonable network management; nor shall such person block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network management.
Rule 3: No Unreasonable Discrimination
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service. Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination.

Haskell (the language) and GHC (the compiler) were both already going before MS joined, yes. But since when do you have to start a project to innovate in it?

I did not say MS does not innovate at all, what I did say was "Almost nothing that is innovative comes from MS." I then went further and said MS either "bought, or like Steve Jobs, copied or stole then brought to the masses."

Other than new methods of limiting competition and spreading FUD, MS has not innovated much in-house.

More broadly, just go to Google Scholar and search for "Microsoft Research".

I did and got about 598,000 results. I next googled Google Research and got 3,120,000 results. To make it more balanced I'll try another search engine too.. Wow, Blekko returned 89M for Microsoft Research and 145M for Google Research. Ah, go ahead and try MS's Bing: Microsoft Research returns 73,100,000 whereas Google Research returns 70,800,000 results. On 2 on out of 3 search engines "Google Research", without the double quotes, returns more results than "Microsoft Research".

Now I'm not sure if searching for "X Research" means much. It's actually start-ups that do most of the innovating. Established incumbents then either try to buy them out or copies them. Just look at web browsers. After Internet Explorer (IE), licensed by Microsoft from Spyglass Inc (which is another story), won the browser war in the '90s MS stopped improving IE. Internet Explorer 6 was released on 27 August 2001. It wasn't until 18 October 2006, more than 5 years later, when Internet Explorer 7 was released. So it wasn't until open source Firefox started gaining marketshare before MS released a new browser itself.

Oh and about Spyglass Inc. MS licensed the source code to Mosaic and agreed to pay them a quarterly fee plus a royalty from Microsoft's Internet Explorer revenue. By including it free with Windows though MS thought "they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc". So Spyglass sued Microsoft before MS finally agreed in a deal to pay Spyglass $20 Million.

Falcon

Put simply, when you have many independent bits of code competing for finite shared resources/time within the kernel (this is different than code just running in user space), you have to put locks on them so that only 1 thread can access them at a time. Once a lock is released then the another thread gets a turn. With a big lock, only one lock exists for every resource. Although a thread may only need access to a single resource, all of the resources get locked.

The alternative is to implement more fine-grained locks on each resource or set of resources. This allows two threads that are using different kernel resources to potentially execute in parallel. The danger is it's more complex and requires careful coding to avoid deadlock or race conditions. That help?

http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2010/11/linux-2637-kills-the-big-kerne.html

Where have you been? The video tag debate is over seems flash won.

You should link to the original blog post by Google itself. The conclusion there is "the <video> tag does not currently meet all the needs of a site like YouTube" (emphasis added). So it will remain opt-in on YouTube for now. Nothing rules out a switch in a year or two – all the essential problems they have with <video> are being worked on.

Flash hasn't won. It just hasn't lost quite yet.

Where have you been? The video tag debate is over seems flash won.

The irony is that companies that do everything China wants often get little in return. Look at Microsoft. They gave China the source code to their software. Gave them nearly free licensing of Windows and they hardly make any money there at all!

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1832381/Gates-Lets-China-Peek-Through-Windows.htm

February 28, 2003
By Mark Berniker: More stories by this author:
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on a tour in China said his company will allow the Chinese government partial access to the source code of its Windows operating system.

Microsoft said it would only share some details about its proprietary source code, but it's considered a major win for Microsoft to have China join its Government Security Program (GSP). China is one of several countries, including Russia, NATO and the United Kingdom, participating in the recently launched Microsoft program aimed, at part, in trying to reverse negative perceptions of the company.

At issue, is whether Microsoft's software provides adequate security for governments, and their classified data. Piracy of Microsoft software in China is also a huge problem, and the Chinese government and Microsoft are keen to jointly stem its tide.

Microsoft has clearly made a decision that China, the world's biggest market with immense potential for growth over the next decade, is a place it will be putting considerable resources towards. Microsoft has said it will invest $750 million in China from 2003-2005.

and now in 2010....

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-24/microsoft-s-ballmer-says-china-piracy-is-a-problem-update1-.html

Lack of progress in protecting intellectual property has led China, which may overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest personal-computer market in a year, to generate less revenue for Microsoft than India and South Korea, Ballmer said. China’s gross domestic product is twice the two economies combined.

You could even require that you had to smile to prove you weren't a picture

Yeah... I'm thinking security theatre, unless the state of the art suddenly regressed after 2000.

I've since read that using a picture of yourself is more reliable than your actual face, as it's less prone to shadow effects from variable lighting.

Was there any breakthrough in face recognition recently? It was easy to defeat as of last year.

http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3804906/Facial-Recognition-Gets-a-Black-Eye-at-Black-Hat.htm

The brief halts on the NYSE when stocks fall 10% allow for big moves on low volume elsewhere, where they continue to trade electronically. Hence Procter & Gamble was halted at $56 on the NYSE, fell to $39 elsewhere, and then reopened back near $56 on the NYSE. That's what really triggered that 15-minute, 7% decline in the market, and it's the real culprit that needs fixing here - we either need a real circuit breaker system, or the good old fashioned uptick rule brought back. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3880681