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Yeah, bleeding money. Like 2.5B profit in 2010, 3.4B in 2011, , 1.1B in 2012.

I dunno about you, but I wish I were bleeding money like that. 7 Billion dollars is a lot of blood.

I don't know Alan, but looking at pictures of the device at http://www.hanscan.com/en/hsc-ac-it2 I'd guess that it's a Fingerprint cards RF-based placement scanner (http://www.fingerprints.com/Products/Sensors/FPC1011F.aspx) with an IR pulse detector (for example, http://pulsesensor.myshopify.com/pages/open-hardware), wrapped by a bunch of simple software apps for time-and-attendance, low-value shopping, etc.

Frankly, everyone in the business is trying to replace credit cards; how else can you envision getting 3% of every transaction made, anywhere, without having to do more than lift a finger now and then?

And there are a lot of people trying to do it:
http://www.paywithisis.com/
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/lenovo-nok-nok-labs-paypal-validity-lead-open-industry-alliance-revolutionize-online-1755467.htm
http://www.inquisitr.com/490728/authentec-iphone-6-fingerprint-detection-and-apple-release-date-rumors/

I wish him luck.

From the press release for the study:

OpenLogic found that among the applications that use the Apache or GPL/LGPL licenses, the compliance rate was only 29%. Android compliance was 27% and iPhone/iOS compliance was 32%. Overall compliance of Android applications using the GPL/LGPL was 0%.

The company that obtains and delivers my electricity does not own the generation methods.

You're in California then? In many places the transmitter is the generator. For instance where I am the power company is Xcel and they own the powerlines and the generators.

Falcon

And the first lineup can only connect via WIFI or tethering to an existing blackberry! WHY would you want two different devices reading the same BES emails????

Actually, it doesn't.

The playbook doesn't have native blackberry email, it tethers to a blackberry via encrypted bluetooth. It's really just a bigger screen for your BES email.

From the press release,

"This means they can opt to use the larger tablet display to seamlessly and securely view any of the email, BBM(TM), calendar, tasks, documents and other content that resides on (or is accessible through) their smartphone. They can also use their tablet and smartphone interchangeably without worrying about syncing or duplicating data."

and

"When connected over Bluetooth, the smartphone content is viewable on the tablet, but the content actually remains stored on the BlackBerry smartphone and is only temporarily cached on the tablet (and subject to IT policy controls). With this approach to information security, IT departments can deploy the BlackBerry PlayBook to employees out-of-the-box without worrying about all the security and manageability issues that arise when corporate data is stored on yet another device. "

>>>Virgin and Boost are Sprint. Cingular is AT&T

No they really aren't. For example Virgin's HQ is in London, United Kingdom, EU

Virgin Mobile USA is not Virgin UK. Sorry, but you're quite simply wrong. See for yourself:

Go to virginmobileusa.marketwire.com and click on "Fact Sheets":

"Virgin Mobile USA Fact Sheet

Overview: Virgin Mobile USA, one of Sprint's Prepaid Brands, offers millions of customers control, flexibility and social connectivity without annual contracts for mobile phone service and prepaid Broadband2Go high-speed Web access, with national coverage for both powered by the Sprint Nationwide Network.

Headquarters: Sprint Prepaid Brands, Warren, NJ"

Oracle has announced a statement today making commitments concerning MySQL that may (or may not) address some of these concerns -- of both Widenius and the EU.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Oracle-Corporation-NASDAQ-ORCL-1090000.html

These include:

* Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs
* Commitment to enhance MySQL in the future under the GPL
* Support not mandatory
* Increase spending on MySQL research and development
* Continuing to maintain the MySQL Reference Manual
* Preserve Customer Choice for Support

And some other things about preserving the conditions of licenses currently held by storage vendors.

Healthy skepticism is of course always a good idea. On first reading, I can't tell how binding these commitments are (the statement says "Oracle hereby publicly commits to the following", and that's about it), and it doesn't exactly make Widenius' commitment to the timeliness of new releases and patches, except for the commitment to increase spending, which Oracle presumably would like to have result in new revenue.

But Oracle is evidently trying to address the EU's concerns in an effort to get the deal approved, and the EU might get them to make these commitments binding. The EU's initial reaction appears to be positive:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4SRxTHKHzTA&pos=7

The European Commission said Oracle’s proposal addresses concerns about the acquisition of Sun’s MySQL database product, signaling the EU will approve the acquisition next month. European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement that she’s “optimistic that the case will have a satisfactory outcome.”

“Neelie Kroes has switched on the green traffic light,” Charles van Sasse van Ysselt, a competition lawyer at NautaDutilh in Brussels, said in a telephone interview today. “She is optimistic and this is a step in the right direction.”

As someone who professionally provided tech support for Macs for more than 15 years, I have to disagree with you. I do think that when Macs have problems, they have BIG problems, but overall they have proven (to me anyway) that they are generally much more reliable than systems made by Windows PC vendors.

As for this SquareTrade article, it wouldn't surprise me if Apple fell a few points behind other manufacturers, though I cannot possibly imagine why someone would buy a new Mac and get a SquareTrade warranty instead of Apple's excellent 3-year warranty. Makes me wonder if the Macs covered by SquareTrade are largely used? You can't buy them at Target.

I also find it very odd that this year's SquareTrade report is almost entirely the reverse of last year's, when HP came out on top. Also, Lenovo is calling shenanigans on this year's data.

This idiocy seems to trace back to a woman who once worked for the Treasury Department and made this claim to a Reuters correspondent at a conference in Riyadh in 2005.

http://threatchaos.com/2009/03/evolution-of-the-cyber-crime-exceeds-drug-trade-meme/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=480

In its PR release, Symantec justifies this claim with a footnote to "Source: US Department of Treasury."

...and here's a linky describing the technology:
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Delphi-Corporation-808637.html

Now bottled water from glaciers is suspect. I feel for these folks:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200906/1244408897.html
and these folks
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Luxury-Water-Utilities-Llc-864814.html

From the second one:
"Glacier water is superior to common water sources, because it is not filtered through the ground where a variety of dissolved solids and organic particles such as rocks, sand, metals, chemicals and underground pollutants can attach to each water molecule. It is essentially an exclusive worry-free water source â" clear of heavy chemicals, drug residues, jet fuel, toxins, dust particulates, etc. â" unlocked from glaciers that are over 10,000 years old. Not only will our clients be able to drink and bathe in this premium untainted water, they can also breathe indoor air that is hydrated or humidified with pollution-free water."

Drink up!

You mean like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231242 Or did you mean SLC? There's also a 256GB version for $500. Pure Si has announced a 1TB 2.5" drive. http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html

Also, your parent was wrong on about everything he said. Go compare the prices of WD Black (WD1001FALS 1TB $119.99) vs RE3 (WD1002FBYS 1TB $189.99) & RE2 GP (WD1000FYPS 1TB $199.99)drives, then Cuda AS (ST31000340AS 1TB $109.99) vs ES/NS (ST31000340NS 1TB $169.99) drives, and finally VR vs Savvio 15k.2 (ST9146852SS) or Cheetah 15k.6 (ST3300656SS). You're looking at a 50% premium for drives certified to just work in RAID, not even work better. And you're looking at at least 100% more/GB for an enterprise performance drive. Calling a Raptor expensive in '09 is just silly. Hell, calling a Raptor a performance drive in '09 is silly.

> Circuit City bought all the Radio Shacks here, and changed their name to "La Source: by Circuit City" Do they all get closed too?

They have also asked to be put under bankruptcy protection law, but the shops in Canada have made a rather good profit last year (around 5M$USD). They don't seem to intend closing.

c.f. http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=918383&lang=F5 (in French)

I'd say "Stupid and Expensive" This awesome report only costs $1000 per copy. (quoted from TFA: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=844462)

Okay first off, a better article than link in summary: Marketwire article

Now as for seeing the actual study: The Standish Group's "The Trends in Open Source" report is available free of charge to Standish Group subscribers. Non-subscribers may obtain copies directly from The Standish Group at: http://www.standishgroup.com/market_research/index.php for $1,000 per copy.

very interesting this mentioning of this patent, especially in the light of this news of today:

> GENEVA and ARMONK, NY--(Marketwire - January 14, 2008) - Leading members of the corporate community have come together in a first-of-its-kind effort to help the environment, unleashing dozens of innovative, environmentally responsible patents to the public domain.

source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=809733

- aaah, btw there is a highly interesting report by the OECD claiming that biofuels might be worse than oldschool fuels: http://www.cfr.org/publication/14293/oecd.html

Last year, 5 banks opened up in Entropia Universe, each with a minimum of $100,000 capital for making loans. You can check your in-game items into a safety deposit box at such a cyber-bank, and receive a credit line (in real dollars), using the in-game item as collateral.

Each bank is sanctioned by MindArk (the software company that made the game), and is allowed to set any policies that they want regarding interest rates, etc. MindArk auctioned off the 5 licenses for these banks for a total of $404,000 in May of last year.

I enjoy mixing my gaming life with my real life, but this has gone a little too far for even me.

BigPondOffice is a rebranded version of thinkfree.com's online office suite

Yes, it is a safe bet that M$ bought the NASDAQ fanboys.

Other stock exchanges using and/or moving to linux? ;-) My pleasure:

New Zealand stock exchange moves from Windoze back end to Red Hat:
http://www.oracle.com/customers/snapshots/nz_exchange.pdf

Tokyo (number 2 in the world) moving to linux:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=775707

Chicago Mercantile Exchange moved years ago...;-):
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;101366230;fp;16;fpid;0

Et cetera, et cetera! (Google is your friend!)

when you purchase your competitor's product

fta:

LANCOR's lawsuit alleges that OLPC purchased two KONYIN Multilingual Keyboard models (KONYIN Nigeria Multilingual Keyboard and KONYIN United States Multilingual Keyboard) with the express purpose of illegally reverse engineering the source codes for use in OLPC's XO Laptops.

On the plus side, the old saying is "there's no such thing as bad advertising", right?

In this case, the connections to Redmond are there for anyone to see. The advertising comes from the desperation efforts of MS continuing from all angles, regardless of how it reflects on them. We have the SCO funding, the "Get the FUD" campaign, the efforts to subvert the standards organizations, the patent suits from Acacia, licensing "deals" with Linux vendors, and now the patent suit in Nigeria against OLPC.

Those are the things that scream loudly that MS believes in FOSS enough that everybody ought to take a look at it.

I'm living in Japan at the moment...;-) In fact, I can see a huge Kyocera building from my back door. It's the headquarters I think, about a 10 minute bike ride away. It's tempting to go in and ask a few questions...:-)

However, it would appear that many Japanese have no problem using linux at all:
(Here's a list of 16 Japanese linux distros from Distrowatch :-))
http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=All&origin=Japan&basedon=All&desktop=All&architecture=All&status=All

And, of course, Japanese commercial distros, such as Turbolinux, etc. don't seem to have a problem using linux, etc.

Neither does the Japanese government, or the Tokyo Stock Market seem to have a problem using linux:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=775707

You, (and your uncle, apparently), need to get out more...:-)

...as someone who is currently living in Japan...

They are far, far ahead of anything in North America. All cars, etc. are now produced and come with at least:

GPS, TV (yes, TV, if you wish. Quite safe, of course. When the car is moving, it is only audio, like radio, but when it stops, such as at a traffic light, it kicks in the video as well!) So, if stuck in traffic, watch your favourite program, news, etc.!!! :-)

And of course, due to GPS, directions to avoid traffic jams, if you wish, etc.

In fact, I am always amazed at how much further ahead the Japanese are in terms of anything electronic, cell phones, computers, etc.
And now that they are switching more and more to linux, watch out! :-) No idiot PHBs here insisting on windoze. Whatever works.
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=775707
Stock exchange, embedded in more and more electronics, schools, etc.

There is another similar article:
http://new.marketwire.com/2.0/rel.jsp?id=729393

Game companies may soon bring there platforms inside a MMORPG http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=259436

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/49559.html

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=103461

Pretty easy to transfer money if you can p0wn a phone...

The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog (yeah, I wonder who "anonymously" submitted it). Here is the actual news item... err, press release... (as linked to from that blog).

But it's nice to see that yet another company is telling off the RIAA.

Quote from TFA:

"It's wrong, and stealing and lying are wrong," AIT President Clarence Briggs said. "Somebody needs to do something about it."

And a quick search finds this page: http://advocate.soundtrax.net/ait-suit.asp, a class action against AIT for, and I double-quote, "Stealing People's Money".

Hmm!

Here is a press release from AIT. My favorite bit?

"The real threat here is to the concept of paid search and ultimately to the entire Internet," said Briggs. "If people lose confidence in the commercial viability of the Internet it threatens the very idea of an emerging global, digital economy. Sooner or later, if something isn't done, the second Internet bubble will burst."

You say "internet bubble-burst", I hear "cheap Ducatis and Aeron chairs on craigslist".

Just thought I'd add a few details and address some of the questions here. My name is Thom O'Connor and work for CommuniGate Systems (CGS), and was the one who put together and ran these tests - you can (mostly) verify this by looking at the comments in the source on the results page.

First off, on the SPECmail test itself. SPECmail is a standardized test (the only one I'm aware of for email) that attempts to closely regulate a level playing field for measuring email performance. It is critical to understand that this is not just measuring SMTP. The 30 million message a day text is a little vague, but it is important that this includes a distribution of delivery, relayed, and retrieved email. Sure, anyone can just relay many millions of messages an hour.

SPECmail does POP and SMTP, so the test measures not just MTA behaviour but also local delivery and then retrieval of the messages. The SPECmail test also uses Quality of Service (QOS) measurements such that a message injected via SMTP to the system MTAs (the CommuniGate Pro Frontend servers in this diagram) must then be delivered locally into the users' account, then be retrieved within 60 seconds. Satisfying the QOS criteria during the benchmark is often the most difficult part.

So, SPECmail itself just does POP and SMTP, which is a little 1990s I agree, but SPEC is coming out with a SPECimap test in the near future, and CGS is also very interested in seeing a SPEC VoIP/SIP test for measuring CommuniGate Pro's Real-Time capabilities.

A few others questions I've seen raised here:

1. The CommuniGate Pro Dynamic Cluster described in this test is fully and completely appropriate for production use in all aspects. In fact, if you're running a 2+ million user ISP on a CommuniGate Pro Dynamic Cluster, we'd recommend you to use these results as a guide for your architecture (although load balancers should be added to the gateway point for all inbound connections). In fact, CGS has ISP customers running architectures which match the layout of the described system almost exactly. All systems in the Cluster service all accounts - you could lose 4 Frontend Servers and 3 Backend Servers, and all users could still access their email (albeit with decreased capacity).

2. HyperThreading was disabled in the BIOS because the downloadable Solaris 10 x86 operating system would not (yet?) support the Intel x86_64 Potomoc chipset properly. That said, on top of the recent security vulnerabilities on the topic, we have also discovered miscellaneous threading and even NFS issues related to having HyperThreading enabled on Linux 2.6, FreeBSD 5.4, and Solaris 10 x86 systems.

3. On NFS...NFS is used safely and securely in this test. The integrity of data storage is one of the major criteria that the SPEC organization closely evaluates when reviewing a SPECmail submittal. Obviously, there are many ways to cheat and/or cut corners using Solid State Disks, unsafe RAM for message queueing, and other techniques that you would never want to use on your production message system. However, the test described here was performed using a standard (albeit excellent) BlueArc Titan Storage System with write caching only in NRRAM and using proper mount options and layout for security, redundancy, and data integrity.

Hope this clears up any misconceptions. Obviously, I'm clearly biased about the work here, but assembling and then passing a SPECmail test of this size is a gigantic effort. If anyone thinks

While the focus of this article is on Groupware products, CommuniGate Pro is unique in that it is scalable to millions of users. It also broke the SpecMail record. Read more here.

The new offering is targeted to provide an operating power of 13W at 1.4 GHz and 16W at 1.6GHz under typical workloads.

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=90376

IB already exists over fibre. Most folks don't use it because it is much more expensive than copper solutions. Copper is going 10-15 meters these days. Mellanox and Gore just announced 40 meters. http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=73927

The quality of 4x IB cable has gotten much better over the last two years. It will continue to improve as 10 GigE also uses the same style cable.

Lookie what I found. Here is a press release about X-play at E3... and look what it says about Morgan:

Morgan Webb is well known as one of the true gamer girls in the industry. Objective and passionate, fans look to Morgan for a no-nonsense approach to all the latest and greatest titles. Morgan who will be featured in the July issue of Maxim has also appeared on "ESPN Cold Pizza" and was one of five TechTV talent in Playboy.com's "Women of TechTV" online poll.

horray! I can't wait for some Morgan Webb skin!!

Lookie what I found. Here is a press release about X-play... and look what it says about Morgan:

Morgan Webb is well known as one of the true gamer girls in the industry. Objective and passionate, fans look to Morgan for a no-nonsense approach to all the latest and greatest titles. Morgan who will be featured in the July issue of Maxim has also appeared on "ESPN Cold Pizza" and was one of five TechTV talent in Playboy.com's "Women of TechTV" online poll.

OMG... real Morgan skin on it's way. Horray!

Bzzt! JSP's and Servlets are indeed part of the J2EE Spec, and they are covered by the same EULA that you cited. I found the answer to my licensing question for Apache. You should read it, as it appears to blow several of your arguments out of the water.

No, but Sun has claimed that Java is "open" in the "open standards", and that is just not true. An "open standard" is a standard anybody can implement, with no licensing restrictions. ANSI C is an open standard. IEEE Scheme is an open standard. Java is not an open standard.

No, Java is not an open standard by that definition, nor do I recall Sun ever claiming anything to this effect. Feel free to prove me wrong. My point is that even though Java is proprietary Intellectual Property (*oooooh there's that word*), Sun has made it a point that they include the Industry at Large, including to a large part, the OSS community, when it comes to guiding the future of the language and platform. Is your argument based on the "If it's not OSS, it's gotta suck" mentality? If so, I'm wasting my breath.

Actually, the fact that Sun is quietly putting these restrictions into their licenses and not asserting them is what makes them particularly worrisome. IP rights like that become particularly destructive if people (like you) come to believe that the standard can be implemented freely only to find out later that they were wrong.

I admitted that I didn't read the EULA before I posted my original comment. If I were to implement the spec for a commercial product, you can bet your arse that It would be corporate lawers, not myself, who would iron out any legalities before the first line of code was written. How "quietly" is Sun putting in these restrictions if they are spelled out at the top of the EULA in relatively plain English?

And Fortune 500 companies have so much money to throw around that their purchases don't even tell you whether something is cost effective or even works.

Yikes!!!! What fortune 500's have you worked for??? Yeah, they have money, but over the past 3 years, their IT bugets have been slashed across the board. Cost effectiveness and ROI (weather percieved or actual) of a solution is paramount. WTF do you think all of our jobs are going to Bangalore???

In different words, there is no logical connection between a company's use of Linux and a company's use of Java.

Well, let's talk about TCO then... Let's say I want to deploy a distributed enterprise Java application. I'll start with the OSS portion first. Linux Enterprise Distro of Choice, Database (either PosgreSQL or MySql), A Tomcat instance plugged into Apache, and JBoss as my EJB container. I can download and deploy these solutions for free, I'll pay for support if I need it. The application will be developed using Eclipse and the necessary plugins (again, all OSS). Now comes the nasty part... I need to install a Hideous, Closed Source, Imperialistic Java Runtime Environment. And let's see.... the cost of that is again..... FREE!!!! I don't have to pay Sun to use Java to deploy my app; it doesn't need to go through a certification process; in all actuality, from this standpoint, Java is just as economical and "Free" as the oss part of my solution. Java plays very nicely with OSS, both from a licensing standpoint, and from a development standpoint. This is why you're seeing enterprises that switch to a Linux/OSS model using Java so much. So I refute your claim that there is no connection.