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It's the most visible because it's the only one that gets advertised by the media

It's most visible because it was radically different from other platforms and single-handedly changed the market. Go ahead, show me 3D gaming on phones before the iPhone. For that matter, look at phone interfaces, capabilities, and internet usage on them before the iPhone. The iPhone raised the bar, and very little has caught up with it yet. State of the art used to be Windows Mobile 6 and PalmOS - yes, Palm OS. Windows Mobile has blown it ever since, LiMo never went anywhere, and Google Android and Palm Pre very likely would not have been developed if the iPhone hadn't radically changed the market. It gets recognition for that, and it's well-deserved.

sales figures show a different story

Really? It's at 23% in the US, and 14% worldwide. And it only came out two years ago, with its famously limited capabilities at the time.

Personally I'd much rather to see a future that continues with multiple companies (of which Apple can be one), with choice, and most importantly, compatible standards so that I can release an application that Just Works on all phones

Yeah, that worked out so well on Windows and the PC world. Multiple vendors never makes things Just Work - it's the antithesis of it. Protocol incompatibilities, inconsistent hardware support, no platform direction.

Look at Apple. For example, they want to support something like OpenCL. They make sure their hardware has the proper GPU's, the OS supports it, GrandCentral is created, the compiler toolchain adds blocks, and oh yeah, they've been working on LLVM/Clang for years. NONE of that happens when you have a heterogeneous environment and no one is coordinated. Apple wants to get rid of legacy ports and bus systems - so they do it. In two years, Apple abandoned floppies, SCSI, ADB, serial, NuBus, etc. Here we are over ten years later and PC's STILL have PS/2 ports and serial ports, right next to USB 3.0. Such progress.

Note that all phones can run so called "apps". Running applications on phones has been common on all but the most basic phones for at least 5 years, and note that the market of Java smartphones is estimated at two billion.

I'm sorry - you can't possibly compare Java Midlets to iPhone applications. Nice that it has two-billion phones. I'd bet that a fraction of a percent of those users have ever cared that it's there, and those that have used it (like I used to on my PalmOS Treo - KMaps and Opera Mini) can easily see what crap it is. Ugly, slow, non-native, battery-hungry, low-performance - that's Java on a phone, and one of the reasons it's not on the iPhone. Ditto for Flash, really.

Sadly, the only thing in your post that made any sense was that Apple should be more open. And it's "should", as in it would be nice. The market has shown that they certainly don't "need" to.

Both of your links are reprints of the first linked article in the summary.... Neither better nor worse as they are the same....

You should pay more attention ;-) Here's a couple I've unearthed with very little digging : "Is the iPhone a Failure? Maybe!", "The iPhone is a Beta Product", "iPhony - Why Apple's new cell phone isn't really revolutionary", "Why the iPhone is a ripoff", "THE LONG VIEW: Why the iPhone will fail", "iPhone Fever: Not Everyone Buys the Hype", "Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone" and "Apple iPhone Doomed To Failure -- Windows Mobile 7 Plans For 2009 Leaked"

It's easy to point and laugh now, except that all those people are still making predictions as analysts.

How the Ig Nobels compare with the Nobels: http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/092809-ignobel.html

Certainly, the Europeans dominate the winners of Noble Prizes in science.

Germans invented the jet aircraft, the guided missile, the computer, calculus, etc. The English invented calculus. The French developed the metric system. Also, the Japanese have done quite well. They invented the blue light-emitting diode, hybrid engines for cars, process technologies for cost effectively producing large LCD screens, etc.

The one group that is missing from this arena of technical accomplishments is Africans and African-Americans. Why are they absent?

We know that African IQ is small than Japanese/European IQ by about 20 points. Can this large difference in IQ explain the gross failure of all societies dominated by Africans?

Face it, people. As a species, we are at this point, totally and completely fucked. It is over. Roll over, do another raid in World of Warcraft, and open another bag of chips; because at this point, that is as good as it's going to get.

Fuck that, I wanna colonise the Kieper Belt.

Oh, wait...

Ironically, Linux is a far better desktop OS than a Workstation OS. Microsoft is just too far ahead on making it easy to manage thousands of workstations with minimal setup.

Perhaps, but I don't think botnets really count as an example of superiority over Linux.

Nobody said anything about Mac OS X

From TFA (which wasn't included, but someone found it and posted the link):

Nevada also has a one-party consent statute, but the state Supreme Court has interpreted it as an all-party rule.

It also specifies that the all-party consent states are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

... I would have included a link to the story!

Headline: Microsoft puts Windows source code into public domain!

When that happens, let me know. Until then, let's put that strawman away.

Gosh golly - where do you think Slashdot gets the idea that Microsoft might use patents as a weapon? Certainly not from anything Microsoft's leaders have said. I mean, it's not like there's a history. This is just irrational hatred for a successful company competing "the old fashioned way." Its got nothing to do with reaping what you sow.

Text:

This is the second of a two-part series on hiring hackers and criminal hackers into IT groups as programmers, network administrators and security personnel.

In a previous series of articles in this column in 2005, I discussed general principles of security when evaluating candidates for any position. A more extensive resource is "Personnel Management and INFOSEC" which, with some expansion, became the chapter on "Employment Practices and Policies" in both the Fourth and Fifth Editions of the Computer Security Handbook (CSH5).

Chapter 12 of the CSH5 is "The Psychology of Computer Criminals" by Dr. Q. Campbell and David M. Kennedy. The authors point out that research on computer criminals suggests that some criminal hackers may exhibit addictive or compulsive behavior resulting from "a combination of compulsive behaviors and curiosity." In addition, "the need for power and recognition by their peers may both be motivating factors for some cybervandals. Computer criminals report feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction when they prove themselves better than system administrators and their peers." [p 12.3]

In another section, the authors report research that suggests that criminal hackers may "alter their thinking to justify their negative actions.... Immoral behaviors can be justified by comparing them to more egregious acts, minimizing the consequences of the actions, displacing responsibility, and blaming the victim[s] themselves."

Another problem is that some criminal hackers may exhibit traits associated with clinical personality disorders such as the narcissistic personality disorder. One of the most important aspects of this disorder is the sense of entitlement. Campbell and Kennedy write, "Entitlement is described as the belief that one is in some way privileged and owed special treatment or recognition.... When corporate authority does not recognize an individual's inflated sense of entitlement, the criminal insider seeks revenge via electronic criminal aggressions."

Dr. Jerrold M. Post wrote Chapter 13 of the CSH5, "The Dangerous Information Technology Insider: Psychological Characteristics and Career Patterns." He agrees that many criminal hackers who are employees (insiders) show signs of personality disorders. In particular, he warns that several types of insiders who have a past history of criminal hacking may engage in dangerous hacking such as inserting logic bombs for extortion, theft of information for industrial espionage, and development of a sense of ownership over the entire system for which they have been hired as system administrators.[p 13.7]

Post has a list of recommendations for all IT hiring which are as follows:

• The hiring process for employees in sensitive positions should be redesigned.

• Monitoring, detection and management should be improved.

• Clear information technology policies should be formulated and briefed to incoming employees. An employee cannot be found in violation of a procedure if it is not clearly formulated and communicated.

• Specialized support services for IT employees should be established. For example, IT employees are often reluctant to meet with an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) counselor but may avail themselves of online support services.

• Screening and selection procedures should be augmented to include online behavior by searching the Web using search engines.

• Termination procedures are formalized.

• Management of CITIs [computer information technology insiders] must be strengthened.

• Enforce computer ethics policies and mandated practices.

• Incorporate innovative approaches to the management of at-risk IT personnel.

• Add human factors to computer security audit.

I recommend the following precautionary measures be added to the usual hirin

This is not my expirience, at work the whole team has an identical laptop (dell latitude 800), the only difference being ofcourse that i'm using linux (ubuntu) while they are all on windows. Now, they are always the first to reach for their powercables while i'm still good.

Try these things:
* configure the power manager
* install powertop and check out some of the suggestions it makes
* check out /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d - it contains a bunch of config files, you can get a lot of benefit out of those.

Sure, by default you probably could get worse battery life compared to windows, and why isn't this done correctly to begin with yadda yadda... it is there, you can fiddle around with it, which for me is good enough at the moment. i'm sure one distro or another will finally get around it and make decent default settings. A year ago, suspend wans't working on my dell either, it does now, and does it very well. You can't tackle everything at once.

Also, don't forget that 'Independent tests show that Red Hat Linux pulls as much as 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware'

"Stephen Norris Capital Partners pumped up to $100 million into SCO believing the rulings against the company could be reversed on appeal to a higher court. The firmâ(TM)s commitment requires SCO to âoeaggressively continueâ its ongoing litigation against Novell and IBM, as well as another case against AutoZone Inc. " ref

If you can't tell me how

I believe that someone has already written a HOWTO. Besides, Comcast is looking into IPv6 deployments for consumers (to save you on that tunneling) around 2010 -2012.

But the reality is this. You can connect to the Internet via IPv6 if you choose to want to. That's a big thing in the whole IPv6 debate. It is a question of if you want to or not, as opposed to if you can or not. Most people at the current moment do not want to, but they can if they truly want to. It would be a whole different debate if you totally lacked the ability to connect via IPv6. Soon enough, most people will want to switch to IPv6, companies that are not ready for this transition will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. (see TFA)

I think the BSA are largely less hated because it is less well known than the RIAA. The fact that it rarely targets individuals is probably part of this. If you don't run a small-to-medium sized business, the BSA are unlikely to really be on your radar. But small business owners who've interacted with the BSA hate them at least as much as your average Slashdot reader hates the RIAA.

TFA: "Because unmanned aircraft have never routinely operated in the national airspace system, the level of public acceptance is unknown. One researcher observed that as unmanned aircraft expand into the non-defense sector, there will inevitably be public debate over the need for and motives behind such proliferation."

I'm wondering why there's a need for drones to interfly commercial airspace here in the US, especially when that blog also had an article about the Air Force wanting to give drones enough machine intelligence to decide for itself whether deadly force is warranted. What could possibly go wrong with that? Are the new drones gonna be used in the much-publicised 'War' On Drugs or something?

True but it won't stop Microsoft from throwing their weight around and dicking over interesting designs.

MSI hybrid-storage netbook anyone?

I'm extrapolating from what I hear on Slashdot, what I hear on other online sites, and what I see and hear in my own workplace and personal life.

I don't know of any scientific studies that have investigated the matter, but if you know of some proving that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, please feel free to share them with us.

Dan Aris

Slashdot and likes is probably the absolutely least representative MS Office user base you could find to gauge average Office users reception to the ribbon ;) I've seen reported several studies with quite positive reception of the ribbon interface. This is one I found quickly. Anecdotal opinions are all over the place. Mine is that I didn't like it at first, but now wouldn't change back, I find it more effective than the menusystem I first missed (I'm a quite heavy daily user of almost all Office apps; Excel, Powerpoint, Word, Outlook).

If you really are interested in the usability work that lead to the ribbon, this is quite interesting.

VoIP is also a big one. The FCC investigated Comcast back in January for degrading competitors' VoIP while pushing their own service (which was not degraded). http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/012109-fcc-comcast-voip-management.html

But some developers are complaining that, possibly because the Android market started out with exclusively free apps, they are having trouble selling applications.

"Over the weekend I've had a few downloads for my $0.99 app, but I guess I was expecting more," wrote "stonedonkey" in the Android forum. "I'm curious if people just aren't willing to pay, if they are having issues, or there just aren't really that many phones in use?"

"I was wondering same myself," wrote another developer, "Sundog." "I certainly expected a game with a demo in the top ten and an installed base of over 50,000 to get more than a couple of dozen purchases over the weekend."

[Reference]

For some reason people feel better rooting for an underdog, even if it starts to show the same exact features as what what they hope it will replace such as tethering being banned People only hear what they want to hear.

Use of encryption in China without providing the government access to your encryption keys is illegal. Here is a citation.

>until I hear about a botnet of macs, I'm going to be skeptical that virus software is necessary on a mac.

Earlier this year a trojan put into the installer of the pirated versions of Photoshop and iWork created a botnet which attacked some site.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/041709-first-mac-os-x-botnet.html

Julie
--
Take a gander at Network World's Google Subnet
Google news for the enterprise.

MS used to run lots of ads, including banner ads on slashdot, about how the london stock exchange chose windows over linux... Those ads stopped very quickly when they had the big outage a few months ago.

Several European banks had their asses handed back to them, too, last spring for trying to shove their Windows-uberalles ideology into their core activities. For several months it was (maybe still is) practically impossible to do basic banking. People could go into others accounts, money from their own accounts could not be transfered, money could not be paid into their accounts. It was a hardship for many small businesses that were stupid enough to put their business accounts at a bank where ideology trumps technology. When your own customers can't pay you, money becomes a problem. There, too, the problem lay squarely on the attempt to use MS .NET instead of something workable. It's just a half-assed copy of Java locked into one vendor. After the banks getting bad press for weeks, there was a vague statement made about the company that takes care of the network, but not tying that statement to the ongoing outages.

It's not important to laugh at MS for making crap products, it's important to not use them. The problem with MS products has been around as long as the company itself so it's not like so-called technical 'experts' can claim ignorance or any other excuse. Adding the phrase "with a computer" doesn't absolve criminal negligence for recommending MS products.

Technology might be a matter of choice, but as the late US Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, has said, the right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. So, that choice does not include the right to screw things up beyond belief for everyone else. It's not a nameless or faceless "terrorist" group that is costing our businesses, shutting down our infrastructure, tangling our air traffic control, our power grid, our hospitals, or stock exchanges and banks. The people promoting Windows and Microsoft technologies have real names and faces and walk among us every day. Take them out and we've won the first round. Why is the military sitting on its hands here? The damage is easy to add up and it's even easier to remove the cause. A side benefit from the cleanup would be a restoration of the freemarket and the usual subsequent boom of economic activity.

The longer a balloon is up - the farther it is going to travel. Anything to change that will drive up costs. And switch around the comparison - so that it makes economic sense. What's the cost of an ultra-endurance airplane compared to a satellite?

The Vulture program is aiming for an aircraft that can keep a 1,000 lb payload up for at least 5 years - over a designated area 99% of the time. That's further out - but it makes more sense than balloons for quite a few reasons.

Julie
--
Take a gander at Network World's Google Subnet
Google news for the enterprise.

...and I found an article backing up Alfresco pretty well:

"You can now stand up an Alfresco Labs server next to a SharePoint Server, and Office will not be able to tell the difference between the two," said John Newton, CTO of Alfresco. "But we are offering considerably more scale than SharePoint can deliver," he said.

I read TFA and also TFA linked from TFA (original sources, anyone?). I'm left wondering whether this is a new Dell distro of Linux, a package bundle on top of Linux or Windows, a package list for something like Kickstart or another automated OS installer, or a consulting and integration lineup with a preferred set of software.

With Dell talking about wanting to be a services company as much as a box-pusher and specifically mentioning training and support in TOFA, it wouldn't surprise me if this was a consulting group within the company. It's worded as if it's just a selection of software pre-installed, though, like they already do with crap bloatware and trialware.

That's really not good enough, honestly.

NoScript implements many other security controls, such as Clickjacking protection and the ability to disable iFrames. It tries to detect and prevent cross-site scripting. Its options for managing your blocked content are quite impressive, too.

Furthermore, the ease with which you can enable/disable sites means that most of the time, I don't even bother whitelisting sites. If I get to a page which needs Javascript, I temporarily enable it. Next time I close my browser, everything's back to no scripts.

It has some additional privacy features, such as the ability to disable web bugs. Overall, I've found no reasonable replacement for NoScript in any other browser, and this is one of the things that ties me to Firefox.

http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2009/052909-20-years-after-tiananmen-china.html&pagename=/news/2009/052909-20-years-after-tiananmen-china.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/052909-20-years-after-tiananmen-china.html&site=datacenter

I don't understand this article. I might of missed it, but from my reading the article clearly has not done is background checking. The article clearly mentions that chrome is out of beta, but gmail which is five years old is not, but I did not see it point out that one is a local application but gmail, and docs are online applications. A year ago slashdot posted an article on Google's view of online beta's. The basic view was that since online applications change at a higher rate to traditional applications they are never out of the beta phase and always capable of testing new content. I admit the company may need to come up with a new word to describe such a view like transitional, but I do not believe its entirely wrong. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/25/1235216&from=rss http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33131 Given this view its only natural that Chrome go through traditional version why gmail and other services do not. These articles also always fail to mention labs.google.com which is really where the company keeps its Alpha and Beta releases before they want them to go entirely public along with the very extended invitational phase that gmail went through.

At last count (last fall) almost half of Google apps were labeled beta, so it's not just a few they're talking about. At that time, Google offered a convoluted explanation for the practice that included: "We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where people expect continual improvements in a product." More here:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/33131

If people in businesses like IT, finance, etc and can telecommute effectively that would also be a huge step

Telecommuting is being killed by MBAs and other ignorant management types who are able to judge effectiveness only by who shows up at 8:00 am and sits in their cubicle all day looking busy. The problem IMHO is that MBAs and other business majors are taught that just about everything in a modern business, and especially with the right technology, can be precisely measured and controlled. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely so precise and it takes the sort of creative thinking and problem solving skills that are rarely found in recent MBA graduates to appreciate that and act accordingly. Finally, when a telecommunications company, such as AT&T, kills their telecommuting programs what sort of signal does that send to the rest of the corporate world?

http://www.networkworld.com/news/1997/0512borland.html

In the end, Microsoft strategy of simply throwing obscene salaries at the Borland talent ultimately worked. It was systematic, it was effective.

Now go suck on Visual Studio.

Yep, Back in the Day, MSFT wanted BORL talent so bad---LITERALLY----they would hire, and pick up Borland employees in LIMO's OFF Borland Property.
(Just to slap it to Borland).

Borland CEO cries foul:May 8, 1997
Calls 'insidious raiding' unfair; seeks cease-and-desist order
http://money.cnn.com/1997/05/08/technology/intv_yocam/

Also, .NET remeber is Anders Hejlsberg "brain child" that he was actually working on while employed at Borland. .NET (initially)---looked WAY TOO MUCH like Delphi.
but then again, we all know MSFT WOULD NEVER steal code or ideas and claim them as their own!

Look up your history....the "Succesful" products from MSFT TODAY (are Borland TALENT!!!).

Conspiracy Theory: Microsoft's .Net IS Borland's Product (2/3)
http://delphi.about.com/od/delphifornet/a/conspiracydnet_2.htm

Borland INVENTED Excel (a.k.a. Quattro Pro), but
spent all it's energy (Supreme Court Verdict I might add)---defending it against IBM).
http://www.slwip.com/CM/IPBulletins/IPBulletins31.asp

(oh, and the Brits...JESUS CHRIST---those clowns are still using Dos Based terminals--bunch of f-nuts!

'Borland last week filed suit against Microsoft, alleging that the Redmond, Wash., giant has been systematically recruiting Borland developers in an attempt to eliminate the company as a competition'

"if we break their apps when we install, it will serve them right. guess they took the approach of shoot first, explain later"

http://www.networkworld.com/news/1997/0512borland.html


In the end, Microsoft strategy of simply throwing obscene salaries at the Borland talent ultimately worked. It was systematic, it was effective.

Now go suck on Visual Studio.

...about ten years ago. Of course, they were calling it "the gigalapse" back then.

I was too hasty. Here's confirmation XPM can be administered through Group Policy

"The attack involves patching particular Windows system files in RAM during the boot process, which explains why physical access is required, and why it doesn't work after a reboot"

'The latest version of VBootkit includes the ability to remotely control the victim's computer. In addition, the software allows an attacker to increase their user privileges to system level, the highest possible level. The software can also able remove a user's password, giving an attacker access to all of their files. Afterwards, VBootkit 2.0 restores the original password, ensuring that the attack will go undetected'

I thought BitLocker was supposed to defend against such exploits if the boot sequence was altered?

BitLocker plus TPM plus PIN should stop this attack as the system takes "measurements" (SHA hashes) of each boot component before it runs it starting from the BIOS. These measurements are passed to the TPM which releases the disk encryption keys if all measurements are correct out. If someone modifies a boot file then the boot fails.

"The attack involves patching particular Windows system files in RAM during the boot process, which explains why physical access is required, and why it doesn't work after a reboot"

'The latest version of VBootkit includes the ability to remotely control the victim's computer. In addition, the software allows an attacker to increase their user privileges to system level, the highest possible level. The software can also able remove a user's password, giving an attacker access to all of their files. Afterwards, VBootkit 2.0 restores the original password, ensuring that the attack will go undetected'

I thought BitLocker was supposed to defend against such exploits if the boot sequence was altered?

Hell, I'm still working on how this is easier than Root-Kitting Windows. The Parent of this article is starting to smell like fish, left 3 days in the sun. My experience with "Researchers" not stating their names is; 1, Its FUD, and 2, They're Show-Offs. When people do not put their names next to their research, then the results are at best, foundationless. I have found that beating the drum for Windows is a Fool's Errand.

You mean like this?

Can be found here and here

Stewart... acknowledged he doesn't have all the answers. "I'm more of an idea guy."

Thanks for the idea! Because nobody has thought of this before. Congrats on the ComputerWorld article, though.

By necessity, the work would have to be done in secret, so as to not alert hackers that a group is on their trail.

But... you just published your idea to the world.

Stewart declined to comment on whether there were teams organized along the lines he suggests already in operation. "I don't want to comment on ones that have or have not started," he said.

So... this may or may not be your own original idea, because there may or may not be teams like this already in existence?

I appreciate that the first security link doesn't work.
As regards the second "OMG UAC!" link, um:
* http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/021407-microsoft-uac-not-a-security.html
^-- summary: "UAC is not a security feature"

I'm sure there's security problems, but that's a pretty bogus one to stake your argument upon.

And don't share your phone promiscuously!

Abstinence is the way - don't use cell phones!

The software cost of upgrading is often effectively nil, because most large enterprise environments are on multi-year Enterprise Agreement contracts that allow for no-additional-cost software upgrades...

Like they haven't been already burned before by that company, at least once, by similar claims.

Deciding that a specific product is inappropriate is out of their purview...

Except if that product is known bad. They have an obligation to prevent further damage and / or to prevent good money from being thrown after bad. The recession is a depression in many areas, as evidenced by among other things, deflation. Regardless of recession or depression the times are harder, and not through getting harder, than has been experience for a few generations. And with that in mind, any wasted money means lost jobs. That wasted money can come through unnecessary licensing as well as lost efficiency.

If the French Gendarmerie can reduce IT costs by 70% through use of FOSS, why isn't Texas allowed to do so as well? Or, as the original post states, why not at least be able to avoid shelling out for MS Vista upgrades and upgrade headaches?

Continuing my comment above: Gamespot has a story about the beginning of the case.

Unfortunately, we cannot depend on Slashdot editors to do much research before they post a story.

Here are 10 Microsoft patents. I haven't investigated further, I'm not in a position to be a Slashdot editor, but the descriptions give the impression that what is being patented are obvious extensions of what is already available, or extensions of what should be open standards. They seem to be the kind of "advance" that would be routine when doing new development.

Unfortunately, there is at present a heavy dependence on using U.S. government power to make money. There also seems to be a lot of trolls trolling other trolls.

Sounds like the right architecture, but at a price.

It amazes me that so many "enterprise" IT companies can sell what are essentially just Linux servers with their brand name tacked-on, at a 5000% mark-up.

It was vulnerable also, they got the patch out quicker.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/030909-foxit-pdf-viewer-also-open.html