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They're way ahead of you: http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleges-must-police-copyright%2C-or-else/2100-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=nefd.lede

[Yahoo] are more interested in getting some traction in a new market rather than being good human beings.

The sad thing is that it doesn't matter what Yahoo! (or any other American company) does to gain market share in China, it can all swiftly be taken away should they anger the wrong person.

Having a lot of ice on hand would be a good way to bridge the gap between when the power goes out and when your backup system gets running. Ice is relatively cheap to store once it's created. A company called Ice Bear used to make an air conditioner based on this principle.
http://www.news.com/Ice-powered-air-conditioner-could-cut-costs/2100-1008_3-6101045.html

Just make sure your equipment doesn't get wet.

Wal-Mart has been experimenting with Linux PCs for a long, long time. Here are just a few examples:

2002 Walmart sells Lindows PCs:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/general-10/wal-mart-ships-linux-pcs-23619/

2003 Microtel computers with SUSE Linux:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,111557-page,1/article.html

2004 Linspire computers on sale at Wal-Mart for $498.00

http://www.news.com/Wal-Mart-debuts-498-Linux-laptop/2100-1044_3-5498006.html

May of 2007, Dell computers on sale at Wal-Mart:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/15701

Wal-Mart is not stupid. They know that as the price of PCs falls, their sales volume rises. They have a vested interested in commoditizing PCs. With Microsoft, Wal-Mart gets a limited mark-up. With Linux PCs made by small vendors, Wal-Mart gets to call the shots. Wal-Mart has dollars signs in their eyes, and those dollars signs are dancing with Tux.

but not so good for Transmeta who have power saving chips long before Intel invent them.

Here are the emails for the county officials and city council for the largest cities in his district. Make sure to send Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) so they might actually read it.

Subject: George Miller hides language in H.R.4137 that would remove federal funding from colleges unable to stop file-sharing

BCC: LDare@cao.cccounty.us, pburk@contracostatv.org, cwamp@contracostatv.org, bkondylis@solanocounty.com, ceward@solanocounty.com, jfsilva@solanocounty.com, mpalmaffy@solanocounty.com, JPSpering@solanocounty.com, sgoerkeshrode@solanocounty.com, cmcook@solanocounty.com, jmvasquez@solanocounty.com, pknelson@solanocounty.com, mjreagan@solanocounty.com, FCZaragoza@SolanoCounty.com, cao-clerk@solanocounty.com, bwagenknecht@co.napa.ca.us, mluce@co.napa.ca.us, ddillon@co.napa.ca.us, bdodd@co.napa.ca.us, hmoskowite@co.napa.ca.us, Diane_Holmes@ci.richmond.ca.us, natbates@comcast.net, tom.butt@intres.com, Lopez.Ludmyrna@comcast.net, johnemarquez@aol.com, elirapty@aol.com, harpreet.sandhu@comcast.net, tony_thurmond@ci.richmond.ca.us, Maria_Viramontes@ci.richmond.ca.us, aevenson@ci.pittsburg.ca.us, mayor@ci.vallejo.ca.us, jdavis@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tpearsall0285@aol.com, sgomes@ci.vallejo.ca.us, tbartee@ci.vallejo.ca.us, hsunga@ci.vallejo.ca.us, garycloutier@sbcglobal.net, citycouncil@ci.concord.ca.us

Dear Sir or Madam,

News source: http://www.news.com/2102-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=st.util.print

Bill source: http://edlabor.house.gov/bills/HEAReauthorizationText.pdf

This is unbelievably unconscionable and corrupt on the part of your elected representative. The MPAA is applauding Rep. George Miller for introducing an anti-piracy bill that threatens the nation's colleges with the loss of $100 Billion a year in federal financial aid, should they fail to have a technology plan to stop illegal file sharing.

The proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page bill, has alarmed university officials. "Such an extraordinarily inappropriate and punitive outcome would result in all students on that campus losing their federal financial aid -- including Pell grants and student loans that are essential to their ability to attend college, advance their education, and acquire the skills necessary to compete in the 21st-century economy," said university officials in a letter to Congress. "Lower-income students, those most in need of federal financial aid, would be harmed most under the entertainment industry's proposal."

Specter suggested granting "indemnification" to telephone companies who allegedly cooperated with the government's surveillance regimes in violation of federal privacy laws. That would mean lawsuits could go forward, but taxpayers would be responsible for covering any legal expenses or damage awards against the communications companies. Damages could run into the tens of billions of dollars if the suits are successful, according to Senate Intelligence committee estimates.

... you know, that *almost* makes sense. "Sorry, our bad. Since it's our fault, we'll take any punishments for you." Which might actually be OK, except for the conflict of interest from this being the government saying that and the fact that any punishments will be much less effective deterrents against a government than against a corporation.

Specter suggested granting "indemnification" to telephone companies who allegedly cooperated with the government's surveillance regimes in violation of federal privacy laws. That would mean lawsuits could go forward, but taxpayers would be responsible for covering any legal expenses or damage awards against the communications companies. Damages could run into the tens of billions of dollars if the suits are successful, according to Senate Intelligence committee estimates.

I think you should have checked the pictures at http://www.news.com/2300-13833_3-6216805-4.html?tag=ne.gall.pg that someone already posted in this thread. You can see that the car stacks are put next to subway entries. I'm sure that Prague's subway is fine (never been there through), but you'll agree that some places in Prague ior its suburbs cannot be reached using the subway. Self-service car rental packed like bikes seems like a fine complement to that. You might also consider the case where you'd like to transport goods, where having a huge bag and strong shoulders might not be enough, and so you would rather go by car. IANAA (not an american) but I think they have subways too there ... at least in some cities.

Link to pictures here. (from the original post here on slashdot)

I don't know which cars you're talking about.. Being an European myself, the only car I can think of that closely resembles the MIT's prototype is the Smart. And even then, only the basic model, the Smart Roadster, for example, has more of a buggy look to it.

Anyway, while I've certainly seen plenty of them around, there even seems to be a tuning cult around them (Smart with a Lamborghini Diablo engine beating a Ferrari), I've yet to see a single one with a bike handle instead of a driving wheel.

But the City Car concept reminds me of the city bike system many European cities have adopted. The idea is basically the same: you have some sort of a sign-up procedure, community card or something like that. With plenty of bike "parks" spread across the city, all you need to do is pick one up from a park near the start point, cycle to the bike park closest to your destination and drop it off.. And it works! The number of people using them in Lyon, for example, really blew my mind. It also raised some issues when, at about 3am, I saw a couple of teenagers driving them while obviously intoxicated.. But I suppose they're bound to get into a lot less trouble than if they were driving a car.

As far as safety is concerned, they were meant to be driven within a city, ie, I seriously doubt they were built for speed, what with those pesky speed limits being the lowest and all. Overall, I've seen some vehicles (a couple of models specially designed for the handicapped come to mind) that seemed way more unsafe/weak than the MIT's prototype.

It might be a really good idea, as long as people don't treat them like crap just because it's not theirs..

With the release of Redhat 5 back in spring, someone at Redhat mentioned that they were working on KVM, does anyone know if Redhat is planning to drop Xen in favor of KVM with next release?

There are tons of smaller notebooks out there. Of course you can't be bothered to spend 60 seconds searching eBay.

I did. Most are a lot more expensive than this, have moving parts, and their backlights have probably dimmed.

No. 3 hour battery life is quite common. And those are very optimistic figures.

I didn't say 3 hours. Maybe you are confusing it with the Asus Eee? The most pessismistic figure I could find was just over 4 hours.

Apparently the RIAA's BS isn't falling on death ears. The pocket hearing aid$ likely helping there.

All things very trivially easy to find in an older, normal laptop.

You've gotta be kidding me. An "older, normal laptop" is over twice the size and twice the weight. Only a used ultraportable (or the Asus eee) could compare to the XO as far as size and portability goes - but the screen definitely wouldn't look very nice under direct sunlight (and if it were usable at all, it'd be at full brightness and power consumption, not with the backlight off for minimum power use), and it would still cost more than this, unless you bought it from a crack addict who stole it. (Wireless is common even for used computers, and what can't run Linux?)

It has very low power consumption, but also a tiny battery due to cost, so battery life isn't significantly better than common notebooks, unless you plan on spending more money, and upgrading the battery yourself.

4 to 6 hours per charge isn't significantly better than common notebooks? Are you joking? Not to mention the >8 hours of use as for minimal tasks such as reading e-books, or the manual generator.

We know that there are certain security issues that google does not worry about.

We know that google will put feature about security.

We also know that google is avoiding those with experience and instead hiring and training those who will tow the party line.

None of this seems particularly hopeful or optimistic. If a device is discoverable, it is easy enough hook up to and transfer a payload. In public areas I usually see at least a couple discoverable cell phones. Even if bluetooth security is working, people will pass trojans to one another, just like they did in the 90's. Trojans do count, and are the primary threat that must be defended aginst. To use and old metaphor, google is allowing a new generation of unsophisticated users to gain access to powerful and potentially dangerous applications. Not so bad in itself, but bad as google is a very young company, who seems to be blind to the benefits of experience, so appears to be ignoring the lessons of 20 years of security experience.

Does this guy look like he's peeing on the car?

http://www.news.com/Getting-charged-up-over-service-stations/2008-11392_3-6216133.html?tag=nefd.lede

As if.

"Just what kind of further study to they need to do to figure out the privacy concerns?"

They get paid to study and can't be judged right or wrong. They love to study things. To death. Not that it does any damn good.

Remember when they took $50K for ".biz" and the 50K was for "studying the proposal" by their legal staff to which they said "ok your plan looks sound" then almost instantly a judge said it was an illegal lottery and shut it down?

Sometimes its fun to write an entire column based on an incredibly unlikely and impractical idea....

You nailed it. Clearly, we have here somebody who read and followed the instructions outlined yesterday in How to Be a Tech Blowhard by Michael Kanellos.

And is this an okay thing to you? Because it isn't to me. Or a lot of people.

Actually yes. Before the flame war starts, remember that bandwidth just like any resource is a commodity with an expense. This is the tragedy of the commons.

Supporting the mega bandwidth users prevents me from obtaining a $20/month plan. 2/3ds of my bill is to pay for the commons pool of bandwidth, not the surfing I do on Slashdot.

If everyone demanded and got and used saturated feeds 24/7, then the typical bill would need to be close to $600/month to provide the service. This is not alright with me. The compromise is either toss off the high usage customers (hidden cap), throttle after a certain amount (check Australia throttling), or go from an unlimited plan to a usage base plan just like cell phones. Pick one. Unlimited for all and growing demand is not going to cut it at current rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap
http://www.news.com/2100-1034_3-5079624.html

The overgrazing of the commons by the few is why fences are being erected to protect the commons from degrading. Now there is still a green patch when I arrive. The other option is per use pricing, or raising the price for all to expand the supply of the commons to meet demand.

Pick one...
Higher prices for all
Dropping high bandwidth users
Capping users monthly bandwidth
Throttling the one application which uses 2/3's of the system bandwidth

Eliminating the last one as an option will require one of the other ones to be used, otherwise the overgrazing of the commons by the few 24/7 torrent users will overuse the bandwidth requiring the purchase of more bandwidth. Guess who will get the bill. It's #1 on the list.

Peer to peer is growing. More computers are now using lots of bandwidth when there is no user planted in the chair in front of the keyboard. The ISP's are noticing the added expense for bandwidth and must do something. Do you have a suggestion? Supporting the growing load without adjusting service plans is not an option for remaining in business. ISP's know simply tripling the price for everyone is not going to cut it.

The fact is, it ISN'T easy to do because of the security measure Apple has consciously put in place.

http://www.news.com/2100-1040-943519.html

I remember several studies during the Inernet boom that indicate the Mac user base is at least far more educated (if that makes one smarter) and have more income due to supposed intelligence. I think it is an interesting phenomena. Paradoxically, the smartest people I know are Mac users, but most of them are really dumb when it comes to using computers. There are very few real Mac Power Users out there.

The Open Group wants Apple to have Mac OS X undergo testing to certify that it complies with its standards for software bearing the Unix name; it also wants Apple to pay a fee. The Open Group says the costs to license the name are reasonable, based on the size of the company and the rough number of copies of the software Apple sells. In any case, no company is required to pay more than $110,000, said Graham Bird, vice president of marketing for The Open Group.

I watched a video once showing how processors are made. Hard to believe the highly polished and uniform wafers start out as a giant glass turd. All kidding aside, the video also showed all the waste produced. And with silicon being worth a billion dollars an acre, a little bit of payback would be appreciated by chip manufacturers. I'm sure.

The first place I saw this was LinuxToday which linked to this cnet article on the matter and I've done some digging since and I've got a few questions. Maybe someone here will know.

Is there a difference between Compound Document Formats and the Compound Document Framework. Are the formats implementations of the framework and if so are they supporting a chosen format or the entire framework?

Do any existing office suites support this framework/format?

http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/1782165/

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9772407-7.html

unfortunately for Lulu:

http://www.wral.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/1979319/

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2007/10/29/daily6.html

Yes, the PS3 cluster is a supercomputer - by today's marketing definition of a supercomputer. I've been watching technology export law since the Kremvax days, back when the US government was actually more worried about Commies getting high technology rather than using leftover cold war ideology as a way to keep the US from going non-wiretappable during the 90s, and export law had to adapt their definitions of supercomputers largely because of how heavily the exportocrats got taunted when it became obvious that the Playstation 2 would be an illegal-to-export supercomputer. There's a good article from CNET about the status in 1999 - the permitted speeds varied by customer country and military/civilian application, but they went from roughly 2000 MTOPS in 1996 to 7000 in 1997 to 20000 in 1999 (that's million theoretical operations per second, so roughly bogoMIPS) to some number of "weighted teraFLOPS" in 2006.

http://www.news.com/2100-1001-203937.html

Now his company has been surpassed in market share by HP and now Apple.

The math is not wrong

While it's possible that financial reports back the $831 total revenue per phone, it still is shortsighted to assume that the difference is all coming from AT&T. If Mozilla gets money from Google for including it as the default seach engine (and on the startup page) for Firefox, Apple could very well be getting similar income from some of the functions in the iPhone that help direct the user to businesses. Both browser and mapping search functions come to mind.

You've got to ask yourself, why does a company want to sponsor you--there's got to be something in it for them, after all. Which means you either have to have some qualification they can't find nearby OR something else. Studies have shown that H1-Bs are paid about 20% LESS than the going rate. This is easily enough done by simply re-titling the job. So that you're doing the same work, but your title determines the pay range. (This is a way to under pay non-H1-Bs also--especially women.) If there wasn't a cost advantage, then they'd just hire an American. There are also cases of Americans being replaced by foreign workers because of the pay advantage.

I guess you do realize that your current employer has to allow you to leave...it's not like you can change jobs freely. Once an employer hires someone that person is essentially stuck until their contract is up, unless they're allowed out of it and someone else picks it up.

The other unseen problem is when you bring over more workers of ANY type, the bigger the pool, the lower the overall salaries go. H1-Bs especially occurred during the internet boom. Salaries rose and businesses started to holler--not because there wasn't available workers (although it was an employee market), but because they didn't want to pay the going rate. So the market got flooded with foreign IT workers and then came the bust. And of course, many of those from overseas didn't want to leave. But it's taken almost 10 years for the IT market to start coming out of this and leveling off. Had these businesses not been allowed to flood the market with outside workers, it would have recovered a lot faster. And there is no magic business (except maybe the funeral industry) that has endless growth and steady business. Right now the energy industry is hot. But it won't last either. It was hot before in the late 70s early 80s--then it turned into double digit unemployment by the mid-late 80s. And that was without the addition of thousands of foreign workers. Every industry has a cycle.

Businesses, unfortunately, are often looking for cheap over quality. The trend it toward "fresh-outs" which are new college graduates. It's MUCH harder to get job offers once you're over about 40--even though you now have several years of experience. It doesn't make sense, but that IS very common. It's also common to hire contract or temp workers--they are not counted as part of a department head count. Not to mention they don't have to pay benefits.

Here's a article that explores both sides: Salary concerns renew H-1B visa opposition. I would also check out the Programmer's Guild site I referenced above.

which she is likely to lose even more certainly than Jammie Thomas lost her case.

the copyright owner isn't going to know or care if you privately distribute a home video to a handful of friends and family members. but post the video to a site accessible to tens of millions and there is going be trouble.

this stretches the meaning of fair use beyond anything a judge is likely to find credible. there is a very real risk that fair use will be much more stringently defined if the EFF takes cases like these into court and loses.

Here's the second link. I guess it pays to preview.

http://www.news.com/2100-1014_3-6195058.html

Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio?

It's not any different from any other phone, so yeah, there's nothing to stop the phone from being able to do that. What's great about a phone running Free Software, is that the owner of the phone gets to choose whether or not it has that "feature," rather than the manufacturer or a government.

If you want it, you can have it. If you don't want it, you won't have it. You, rather than someone else, gets to decide whether it protects your privacy or exposes you.

OEMs want XP (which they got, at least until June of 08): http://www.news.com/The-XP-alternative-for-Vista-PCs/2100-1016_3-6209481.html

Self-explanatory: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/vista_business_sales_bad_xp_good/

Lesson: Marketing is not reality.

OEMs want XP (which they got, at least until June of 08): http://www.news.com/The-XP-alternative-for-Vista-PCs/2100-1016_3-6209481.html

Self-explanatory: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/vista_business_sales_bad_xp_good/

Lesson: Marketing is not reality.

Here is the article that goes with the image.

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." - Bill Gates, 1998?

http://www.news.com/2100-1023-212942.html

Don't be silly. CxOs rarely buy themselves planes. They have the board give them a plane out of the company's funds. Or at least a lease at drastically below market rates.

http://www.news.com/2100-1040-250632.html

"One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.'"

Last gen every rabid Xbox fanboy repeated the lie that Sony made that idiotic claim when in reality, surprise, it was Microsoft.

Now Sony delivers on what Microsoft can only lie about. Microsoft and Xbox fans have been owned.

• virtualization (not really new but) -- Microsoft buys Connectix
• innovative utilities -- Winternals
  
• anti-spyware -- Giant
• VOIP -- Teleco Inc.

</sarcasm> </rant> </bloodpressure>

They had gigabit ethernet running over copper in 1997..

We certainly had a 64kb leased line then which ran over copper (over a phone line, no less.. they just jumpered it differently at the exchange).

56kb was (hopefully) never described as the fastest copper could provide, only what modem technology could do.

I believe the China part, I duno about MS though.

A lot of Asian governments seem to be wary of depending on the US based software giant. They had to bargain to get Chinese to use MS at one point, selling windows at cheaper prices or something to convince China to put up with anti-piracy efforts or blahblahblah. I can't remember exactly what the details were and I can't find a link. oh well. maybe ignore that part since I can't verify what I'm saying. There was something interesting that happened though.

Anyways. My 5 RMB (certainly not dollars) is on China + Asian Linux

http://www.news.com/Asian-Linux-gaining-momentum/2100-1011_3-5278304.html

"Following an agreement inked last year, government officials from South Korea, China and Japan met in Beijing in April to discuss how they can create an open-source alternative to Microsoft Windows, honing in on issues such as the setting of standards, areas of joint technical development and work force exchange."

And now oracle is supporting it. I don't know much about it, but.

China is a country that, as a country, can make a decision and execute it. To read here, you memorize 5,000+ characters. When the Chinese government wants it to be a little easier, they change the character set. What happens? Everyone uses the new characters. I mean, radicals change so it's not *that* hard, but in the US, we can't even change to the metric system. They can build a wall *that* long. They can censor the INTERNET across an entire country. they can....

If China commits itself to using a better operating system, I really believe they could home-grow an OS from scratch better than Winblows or OSX relatively quickly. Not that I think that's saying much.

This could be construed as OT, but I find the timing of this little event to be very suspicious.

Not only with the long term Microsoft execs heading there this month, but more importantly in relation to the SCO case. These guys sued almost directly after the SCO issue fell through. It's the sort of timing you would expect if an entity behind the scenes were switching to "plan b".

Do you mean this lawsuit? I thought M$ sued to get Novell to join the dark side, not after it had already joined...

You're assuming that time machine works over a shared network folder.

I very much doubt this will be the case. To my mind, Time Machine looks an awful lot like a pretty wrapper around a snapshot function, similar to that found in modern logical volume managers and SAN products. Sun's ZFS has such a function, and Apple have licensed ZFS for inclusion in Leopard.

Such a system generally works at the block level (with LVM), though with the filesystem integration ZFS gives it could probably operate more efficiently. In any case, the only way to get at earlier snapshots is to be able to run an application on the machine itself - and if you can do that, you can do more or less anything.