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Ars Technica has a good article. Another one on Macworld

Ok, if you want in-depth perhaps you're in the wrong place, but if you happen to want it.... ;)

Remember kids, this is the same company that, along with Microsoft, tried to push for US-style software patent laws specifically for the purpose of undermining open source software.

What? Can you repeat that? I couldn't hear you.

The person writing TFA is incorrect. It is a DVR with a DVD player built in.

From TFA: "...for the one-terabyte recorder, which stores data on two 500 gigabyte hard disk drives."

There's a far better write-up over at MacWorld UK.

Honestly, does anyone use an Apple server?

Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like there is something horribly, obviously, wrong with them, but fail to indicate what that might be. Remember: just because you wouldn't choose to use one, for whatever vague reason, doesn't mean that it isn't useful to someone.

For instance, lots of small-to-large music, video, and design studios use them as file servers, render nodes, directory servers, etc. These are traditionally Mac-heavy markets, so it should be no surprise.

They also sell a lot as part of clusters. the US Army uses one, and Virgina Tech's is pretty well-known. There are also a lot of other, much smaller clusters (say, under 10 nodes) used in universities around the world, commonly for bioinformatics.

Yeah, because using open source software to increase the popularity of yet another closed source operating system is an EXCELLENT idea! Just think of the benefits to the open source community to have another large monolithic anti-open source corporation controlling what we can and cannot do with our code! You are BRILLIANT!

It seems that both apple and nokia are strongly in favor of having software patents in the EU. I think one the given reasons for why this is necessary is that without software patents, they'll get eaten alive by open source developers.

However, neither company seems to have a problem using open source software to futher their business objectives. So, it seems like they're simulanteously using and try to hobble open source so it can't compete with their proprioritary offerings. So wouldn't the best characterization of their behavior be selfish exploitation rather than 'support' of OSS.

SME's are the hardest hit here, but as the FFII organisers suggest, SME's need to make direct contact with MEP's, ideally in Brussels itself.

Fat yet hungry wolves like Apple and Microsoft et al http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=11 649&Page=1&pagePos=11 are working hard alongside EU nationals (eg Nokia, Siemens) to falsely lobby on behalf of SME's. The case needs to be made clear to MEP's that SME's have the least to gain from swpats, and the argument needs to be economically framed in the context of the EU's stake in a global IT market. Statistics like these serve as good support material:
http://wiki.ffii.org/Bsa050609En

It's not just that there is much to lose from unbridled software patenting, so much as there is arguably much to gain from disallowing them altogether.

Personally I would have thought the moment US mega-corps become involved, would be glaring reason for MEP's to become anxious over the interests of the directive, but as they say "follow the money".. in this case off a cliff.

The existence of open-source software in Europe may be under threat if companies, including Apple and Microsoft, persuade the European Parliament to expand patent protection in Europe. Apple has, at numerous times in its existence, SCREWED OVER its business partners. There is absolutely no reason not to expect them to do something similar to the open source community once they have eliminated viable alternatives like Linux and FreeBSD.

Apple is already as arrogant and obnoxious as Microsoft. For example, despite the fact that OS X in its current form would not exist without the efforts of the Open Source community, Apple is still actively working behind the scenes in Europe to destroy the ability of the open source community to work with their proprietary formats.

Because we know that Apple would start foolish lawsuits.

But then again, I wish Apple would just go ahead and build an OSX* for x86 systems, and give the consumer market a *real* choice.

Tony the Tiger works for Apple so don't hope for Kellogg getting involved.

Because today, anything can happen!

Kellog exec joins Apple

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=11 184

Macworld is reporting that the Journal of Consumer Research came across a study drawing a parallel between consumerism and religion.

The team looked at several brands, including those form the automobile industry, sci-fi TV series and Macs. "All of these brand communities have been demonstrated to be capable of producing transformative experiences in their consumers and all have traces of magic, religion or the supernatural," sez Macworld.

Not that hard to swallow considering the fervor and zealotry behind people's choice of sugared water.

So are you one of the faithful, a convert or a heretic?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=11 184

Macworld is reporting that the Journal of Consumer Research came across a study drawing a parallel between consumerism and religion.

The team looked at several brands, including those form the automobile industry, sci-fi TV series and Macs. "All of these brand communities have been demonstrated to be capable of producing transformative experiences in their consumers and all have traces of magic, religion or the supernatural," sez Macworld.

Not that hard to swallow considering the fervor and zealotry behind people's choice of sugared water.

So are you one of the faithful, a convert or a heretic?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=11 184

Macworld is reporting that the Journal of Consumer Research came across a study drawing a parallel between consumerism and religion.

The team looked at several brands, including those form the automobile industry, sci-fi TV series and Macs. "All of these brand communities have been demonstrated to be capable of producing transformative experiences in their consumers and all have traces of magic, religion or the supernatural," sez Macworld.

Not that hard to swallow considering the fervor and zealotry behind people's choice of sugared water.

So are you one of the faithful, a convert or a heretic?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=83 09

... how Indigo is treated these days.

From the colour of the year, the 6th chakra or a hype system to M$ software.

Sheesh.

CC.

I'm sure he insisted on coming to SF even without a Blu-ray announcement. Perhaps he had ideas of stepping down even back then. Perhaps SJ tempted him to come and play with the new stuff he would be introducing.

Heck, if I were having thoughts about stepping down, I wouldn't mind one last all-expense paid trip to San Francisco "just to demo an HDV camera [wink wink]."

Believe it or not, just like Apple, Microsoft also used to have an army of fanboys for whom MS could do no wrong. I remember the fevered launch of Windows 95, with them all lining up outside stores at midnight to be the first to own a copy - I don't think even the Apple fanboys have got this bad yet!

oh how little you know... look at these sad muppets... ;)

That's why they raised their price target on AAPL to $100 (and also why AAPL gained six bucks a share two days ago).

MacWorld UK has a related story today.

No matter how you look at it, if the "halo effect" is real, it's a Good Thing(tm) for Apple, and probably for the industry in general, because it proves that there are legitimate alternatives to Windows for the non-techie crowd.

p

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=10 252&Page=1&pagePos=1/MacWorld Article

I scanned through all the 2003 and 2004 PRs, and there's no further mention of .Mac subscriber numbers.

I did find a more recent (June 01, 2004) mention of a "boast" of 250,000 subscibers, but I couldn't determine if they are talking about total subscribers or just UK subscribers.

I figure there are two reasons for the lack of an official Apple PR since October 2002. One, the numbers haven't increased dramatically since then, so there's little to report. Two, iLife was announced shortly after the October 2002 PR, then followed by the iTMS announcement in early 2003. Quite a number of Apple's PRs have been about those two items, which are, admittedly, better PR eye-candy.

To pay for this

Things are coming to a close on this case, and the European theatre is heating up.
Microsoft meets Europe July 27

The bigger they are.........

I (heart) what Apple does as much as and probably more than the next guy, but you have to admit the simularities are suspicious. Apple had/has "desk accessories" in 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3, but the implementation of those desk accessories were always application level. "Dashboard Widgets" are sub-application level desktop citizens, written in Javascript -- just like "Konfabulator Widgets".

Backing up a bit, what I guess I'm trying to say is that Apple gets a lot of milage out of being the "Good Cop" to a good portion of the computer industries' "Bad Cop", and has reaped the generous benefit of this good karma over the past few years with an outpouring of support from Mac users, the open source community, the press, etc. "Borrowing" these ideas and then ingenuously pretending that competing products never truly existed (Watson, Konfabulator, LaunchBar) is simply Bad Karma, and if there's any company that should be mindful of the Karma Index, it should be Apple.

And, practically speaking, it's not like Steve doesn't have a wheelbarrow of cash handy.

~jeff

from Macworld

If by "music company" you mean Sony's online music store, or iTMS, then you seem to be ignoring the economics of the situation. Apple currently pays $0.65 per track in royalties and $0.25 per track in credit card and distribution fees.

Could you sell anything $0.10 at a time while accepting credit card payments and hope to break even?

How much does it cost to maintain a professional looking website hosting terabytes of data? How much does it cost to serve up a 3 mb of bandwidth per track?

How low of a royalty could you expect the RIAA label to accept per track? $0.50? $0.10? To be able to sell music at 10 cents a track, you'd need to convince music labels to accept negligible royalties (ie. pennies per track).

Of course I'd buy lots of albums if they only cost a dollar each. Who wouldnt? I think your sentiment about cheaper prices is right on, but $0.75 a track might be achievable (thats still a 25% savings). $0.10 is just wishful thinking.

There is always more to MS then what you see on the surface. Do you really think MS's DRM will be fully documented and open? No. The version for SMPTE may be, though as you pointed out there are fees for the documentation and SDK which are not really priced for small business or individuals and then there is the license fee which again, I don't consider open in any sense of the word. Concerning MS's DRM, it will still be closed and proprietary, otherwise you would have 1,000+ cracks out there and the RIAA/MPAA would never go for it. The DRM that the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers use may be documented while encumbered by patents, the DRM that will go into the OS to protect digital content will be closed. There is nothing stopping MS from having two version of WM9 and DRM. The SMPTE won't use WM9 since there is a trademark so MS can continue WM9 down the closed proprietary path and have a slightly different version called VP9 or whatever for the SMPTE.

Great, Pudge didn't do his homework on this one.

I considered submitting this story, but I was busy and now I regret it because according to this MacWorld UK article, this is just an unsubstantiated media frenzy. The proof of how widespread these muggings are is still pretty sketchy.

Macworld UK had a story about this earlier today:

'iPod mugging' latest media frenzy

Basically, this Roland guy is the one person any serious journalist has found to have been mugged for his iPod. That being said, carrying around a $400 device probably does raise your chances of being mugged. But there's no evidence iPods are being targeted. You're probably just as likely to be mugged for your battered Walkman.

It looks like you missed the Macworld article

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X
for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens

Links? Here is a longer article with background info.

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens Micr

Or, to put my argument another way, tell me you don't want one of these.

I know I'd knock down my own grandmother to buy one of those. Granted it's just a mock up and the technology might not all be here yet, but you have to admit that's way better than a normal ipod.

No one's suggesting you're gonna watch movies while jogging. While jogging, you'll leave the screen off to save battery and just listen to music. But next time you're on a long plane flight or you're killing time away from home, you can bust that baby out and watch that episode of the Simpsons you tivoed but never got around to.

Legal music downloads may be available in Europe as early as 2nd quarter 2004, according to this 2 month old article.

Looks like Apple's itunes won't be available in Europe anytime soon (apparently Napster seems to want to come back in Europe though).

"Without Mac OS X around to spoil me, I was

forced to get my Linux machines current again, so I could still be productive and use modern software. I was able to upgrade a couple machines to Linux 2.6 and Gnome 2.4, and with the addition of anti-aliased fonts to the Linux desktop I didn't miss my PowerBook quite so much. But now that it's back, I wonder what the hell I was thinking."

I love this guy's company spirit. Slashdot is owned by VA Software, a prominent Linux company. I'd get fired for this kind of open betrayal.

What's worse is the implications this has for Linux in general. I'm a regular guy reading this. If this Cowboy Neal guy, a major geek ten times as skilled with Linux as I am, refuses to use the software or hardware his boss makes, why should I buy it?

Cowboy Neal likely gets an employee discount, and he STILL refuses to use it!

I feel like sending a letter to VA explaining that the reason I refuse to buy from them is because *their own employees* support the competition over their products. Think about it. Linux must be unbelievably crappy if even the guys who work for a Linux company refuse to use it -- I mean, imagine if Steve Jobs got caught using Windows or Bill Gates admitted to being a Linux kernel hacker. Mature adults in the public eye don't pull this kind of backstabbing crap. I don't even care about VA Software, and I'm disgusted. If you accept a job with a Linux company, you have a responsibility to your employer not to use the competition's product -- but if that's too hard for you, at least cheat on your boss in secret rather than openly promoting the competition's product over your own!

The morally-stunted editors of Slashdot obviously don't care if they're biting the hand that feeds them; they want their Bluetooth to be auto-configured, dammit! Laziness and a refusal to learn seem to be the marks of a great editor, as well as the willingness to openly praise and worship the competition's product. I bet neither Gates nor Jobs would stand for such callous, disgusting betrayal. In fact, I KNOW they wouldn't. That's why they're successful, and Linux will soon die. Proprietary software has nothing to worry about. Developers are the air supply that Apple, Microsoft,

Linux + Naivete + Misinformed Management Decisions = Hidden Costs

The Linux culture, like other UNIX culture of the past, is a fractured culture.

An employee base that isn't systematically trained and inevitably turns-over will perpetually be on hand to misconfigure Linux systems.

The same misinformed corporate management class are now exchanging the Microsoft monoculture with the Linux monoculture.

You can see what a mistake it is eliminating diversity every day you receive a myDoom payload in your e-mail.

You can also see that Apple's strategy saves money for the manager who choses wisely in these recent articles...

The MacWorld article is worth quoting:

Company executive chairman DK Matai said: "The swift adoption of Linux last year within the online government and non-government server community, coupled with inadequate training and knowledge on how to keep that environment secure when running vulnerable third party applications, has contributed to a consistently higher proportion of compromised Linux servers. Migration to Open Source can be fool's gold without adequate training and understanding of the impact that third party applications have on overall safety and security."

I think that the low revenues are the key. All these services have a certain fixed overhead, and of course Roxio's results also reflect startup costs. Online music sales, however, are not necessarily an example of the old "I'm losing on every sale but I'll make it up in volume" joke. The iTunes store, for example, is making money, and Apple are expecting the margins to increase exponentially with growth, as they tell here. Considering that Apple have obviously spent way more on promotion than Roxio, it does appear that profits can follow if sales can be achieved.

Well, calling me an idiot while chosing to remain anonymous...

Ok, maybe a well known fault, but this is the sort of hyperbole I'm talking about. Those online petitions contain maybe a thousand names (many of them as original as 'donand.d.duck@disney.com' and 'mac-sux@domain.com'').

Apple has shipped something like 680,000 iBooks in 2003 alone (137,000 in Q4 according to that article) - so a measly few thousand people with logic board faults doesn't really mean all that much for overall build quality and customer satisfaction.

"there are a lot of people with this problem, look up the petitions" - I did, and I looked at the total number of iBooks sold too. The number of people on the petitions (being generous and assuming they're all legit) makes up a mere 0.2% of iBook users just using the 2003 figures for iBook sales.

Zero point two percent, if that. Out of proportion hype? I think so! How often do you hear of major problems with Dell, IBM, Gateway [some other random x86 box maker] because of hardware problems? Certainly not on issues affecting such a small subset of the users.

I submit that you sir, are the idiot.

Not anymore. They may still be the biggest customer, though.

Apple sold the last of their stake in akamai last quarter, as reported in their earnings results.

btw I forgot to include this link Macworld UK - One inch hard drives

Here's an excerpt for lazy people.

Toshiba should release sub-1-inch hard drives in 2004, with samples on view at Las Vegas' giant CES trade show in January.

The move could herald a move to a smaller form-factor for Apple's market-leading iPod music player, as Toshiba produces the 1.8-inch drives currently used in that product. Reducing iPod size would still be limited by that of the product's battery-pack, however.

Toshiba has furnished no further details of the drive, although industry sources say that Toshiba and several other companies, including Matsushita are developing drives with 0.8-inch or 0.7-inch diameter platters. That's smaller than the CompactFlash form-factor Microdrive produced by Hitachi, which is based on a 1-inch platter, and less than half the size of the 1.8-inch drive used in the iPod.

iPod Battery FAQ

http://ipodbatteryfaq.com/

Q: Is the iPod's battery replaceable?

A: Yes. Apple has an official battery replacement program for $99. You send your iPod in (any model iPod), and Apple will replace the battery for $99. AppleCare programs for iPod will also soon be available in Europe.

Q: Is the iPod's battery user-replaceable?

A1: Yes and no. The iPod's case is not designed to be opened, so, in that respect, it's not what would generally be referred to as "user-replaceable". But, the case can be opened, and there are several third parties that offer replacement batteries for the iPod, such as iPodBattery.com (instructions, with pictures: original, non-"dockable" iPod, new, slim "dockable" iPod) and PDASmart, for as low as $49. Some will even do the replacement for you if you send it in.

A2: TechTV's Call for Help has a story, with video , discussing and demonstrating replacing an iPod battery (the video was produced before the Apple service options were available).

Q: What is the iPod's warranty? Does it cover the battery? Is there any way to extend it?

A1: The iPod warranty is one year. It does cover the battery.

A2: You can extend the iPod's warranty, including battery coverage, to two years with AppleCare Protection Plan for iPod. Numerous retailers, such as Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc., also have very inexpensive extended warranty coverage available for iPod. Often these plans simply replace the product with a comparable new unit.

Q: What's the deal? Does Apple think the iPod is disposable?

A: No. Like all Apple products, the iPod is engineered to last. This is why Apple is consistently ranked number one in product quality and support by leading consumer groups, such as Consumer Reports.

Q: I heard that the iPod's battery only lasts 18 months, and then you have to buy a new iPod! Is that true?

A1: NO! The vast, vast majority of even the earliest iPods, now over two years old, continue to function just fine. Some iPods, however, have had issues with batteries. Lithium ion batteries are only good for 300 to 500 charge/discharge cycles (more). For this reason, certain customers' usage patterns may cause the batteries to degrade, or fail, sooner than others.

A2: If the battery does fail, and the iPod is no longer under its original one year warranty or $59 AppleCare Protection Plan for iPod, or any of numerous third party service plans, you don't have to buy a new iPod. You may replace the battery yourself for as little as $49, or have Apple perform the replacement for $99.

Q: Why didn't Apple use better batteries?

A: Apple uses the best lithium ion battery technology available from leading battery manufacturers. This is the best, most cost effective battery technology available given the requirements of the device.

The G5 spanks the Opteron in many of the non-gaming tests, except for the Photoshop tests.

Isn't photoshop the reason for buying a mac?

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Red Hat, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said.

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day. .

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system & G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply a

The criminal arena. The first ever "felony" spam arrest, followed by two more spammers surrendering.

A cybersquatter goes to prison for pr0n linking to mis-spelled children specific sites. Not trying to be redundant, but this article is informative.

My personal favorite, "DVD Jon" acquitted.

Entire User Interface designs are based around broken engineering decisions.

Why shouldn't the tradition continue?

So far Apple is in complete control over what can play their DRM'd AAC files. Moreover, Jobs has been quoted as saying that they have no interest in supporting anything but the iPod. Apple can't stop other players from playing non-DRMd AAC files (or even some other form of DRM for AAC) but they completely control their iTMS DRM. I'm a long time Mac user, but if Apple doesn't let other players into their DRM scheme I'm all for Apple getting slapped hard with monopoly litigation and losing big time.