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This is big for Apple. First of iTMS is a loss leader so competitors aren't that big a deal unless the recording industry gets their heads out of their asses, promotes downloads, and standardizes on a few outlets. (No sign of that happening) Anyway, Real will end up selling more iPods for Apple.

Of course this all makes sense. Real is getting hit from Microsoft's player as well as the success of iTunes/iTMS. Unless they get something going, even at a loss, they may disappear in a few years. So they've got to come up with an iTunes/iTMS competior -- likely supporting video unlike iTunes. Will it work? It's hard to say. The old RealJukebox from a few years back was my favorite player but became dated quickly and then was killed in favor of a subscription based RealOne. Plus most other iTMS competitors haven't done well. And there are more coming including one from Sony. Meanwhile Apple's system is garnering the best reviews, despite heavy marketing from companies like Napster. With the new Pepsi ad compaign I don't see anyone toppling them.

But perhaps they can manage to be the Pepse to Apple's Coke. (Yea, ironic, isn't it?) Right now iTMS and others may not make money. But three or four years from now the market may shift such that this becomes the standard distribution channel and bandwidth becomes such that you can make more money at it. Look at Amazon. How long did they lose money?

I couldn't get yahoo to give up the goods, so I went to news.google and found basically the same AP article at the Seattle Times. My opinion is, if they have the same labor laws as the U.S. then and only then can companies which transact in the U.S. employ foreign workers. This "offshore outsourcing" or whatever euphemism the PR teams come up with is simply a means to undermine U.S. labor and the laws that protect it.

That's real money. The most recent estimate a very lazy scrounging through Google recovered was $49 billion at the end of June 2003. To quote CNN Money on Microsoft's $38.2 billion 2002 end of year total,

At the end of last year, according to the company's most recent filings, its cash (and short-term investments that can be converted to cash in less than a year) totaled a whopping $38.2 billion. The Microsoft juggernaut continues to generate another $1 billion a month, putting the total cash today well above $40 billion.

This is a mind-bogglingly large pile of dough. No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal, and only a handful of banks do. It's more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech company with the next largest cash balance. [...]

All that cash gives Microsoft a financial solidity and flexibility that most corporate managers would kill for. For investors in the post-Enron era, it also offers assurances that the company's business is very much for real.

There's one thing I've never seen in a M$FT product, and that's style. How the hell can this product outsell the design icon that the iPod has become? Plus, potential iPod buyers does not necessarily want video functions if that adds to the bulk of their device. Listening to music is for example a pedestrian-friendly activity, which can hardly be said about watching video.

Looks like nothing more than an iPod wanna be.

So if you think laws about reckless or negligent driving will punish those responsible, much less bring the innocent killed back to life, think again.

So if you think laws about reckless or negligent driving will punish those responsible, much less bring the innocent killed back to life, think again.

... there's no real evidence...

You mean, you're ignorant and pompously think that because you don't know something, it's not true. You should've read the AC follow-up to the parent message. It was real:

An analysis of the crash scene also determined the woman was driving between 75 and 80 mph before she plowed into the back of Fikret Attila's stalled car, killing him, his wife and their two young daughters. The posted speed limit is 60 mph, and witnesses said the driver was passing other motorists. The woman -- whose husband is a Bothell Police Department officer -- has declined interview requests from State Patrol detectives...

There are later articles that discuss the decision not to charge her. I remember seeing the teddy bears by the crosses at the side of the road...

It won't be completely clean though, there'll still be some nitrogen oxides (leading to acid rain) produced from combustion with the air. The other down side is they'll need bigger tanks because liquid hydrogen occupies significantly more volume than Kerosene, despite having greater power density.

I hate to quote the crazy guy with the sign, but "Politicians and Diapers need to be changed for the same reason." Saw that one on my way down to see the family, and for once, agreed with the sign.

Aiming for underground isn't wasted effort. Fiber optics cables can be installed in the city's sewers.
It also brings an altogether new meaning to phrase "shitty connection".

Everyone in the IT community already knows what a poor reputation that company has actively worked hard to earn. Articles like the above serve only to provide free marketing and distract from active development rather than pump-n-dump.

Rather than doing free security and sysadmin work for Chairman Bill this holiday season, and rather than providing free publicity for his portfolio, could we please give it a rest and have a MS free week, weekend or at least just a MS free friday? i.e. no articles or press releases about the lastest vaporware, thneed, fud or spin, inlcuding news relays via MS-owned sources like slate, msn, msnbc, msnpr, newseek, etc. It seems every day there is a shameless, uneccesary plug or two. Now that international investors have divested and even their own emloyees have offloaded it is as irrelevant to the stock market as it is for the IT sector. The pyramid scheme has maxed out, if you weren't already bailing, then it's too late.

As far as security goes, businesses and home users alike are finding Gnome and KDE easy to use and the plaforms (Darwin, OpenBSD, Linux, QNX, etc.) more secure, more stable, and easier to maintain. So looking back at MS-Window [lack of] security in 2003, we can say good bye to the terminally insecure and hello to modern technology.

Everyone in the IT community already knows what a poor reputation that company has actively worked hard to earn. Articles like the above serve only to provide free marketing and distract from active development rather than pump-n-dump.

Rather than doing free security and sysadmin work for Chairman Bill this holiday season, and rather than providing free publicity for his portfolio, could we please give it a rest and have a MS free week, weekend or at least just a MS free friday? i.e. no articles or press releases about the lastest vaporware, thneed, fud or spin, inlcuding news relays via MS-owned sources like slate, msn, msnbc, msnpr, newseek, etc. It seems every day there is a shameless, uneccesary plug or two. Now that international investors have divested and even their own emloyees have offloaded it is as irrelevant to the stock market as it is for the IT sector. The pyramid scheme has maxed out, if you weren't already bailing, then it's too late.

As far as security goes, businesses and home users alike are finding Gnome and KDE easy to use and the plaforms (Darwin, OpenBSD, Linux, QNX, etc.) more secure, more stable, and easier to maintain. So looking back at MS-Window [lack of] security in 2003, we can say good bye to the terminally insecure and hello to modern technology.

/. != Linux

The small part that it had played in technology is diminishing as even Joe Six pack is figuring that Windows isn't ready for the Internet and that pretending it is is costing businesses billions, year after year, after year. Both directly and indirectly. And now that international investors have divested and that even its own emloyees have offloaded it is as irrelevant to the stock market as it is for the IT sector.

No reason to keep plugging it, if you're not on the pay roll. Doing so is not only working for free but also causing further harm and excluding other stories and even original sources.

For the holidays, could we please have a MS free week, weekend or at least just a MS free friday? i.e. no articles or press releases about the lastest vaporware, thneed, fud or spin, inlcuding news relays via MS-owned sources like slate, msn, msnbc, msnpr, newseek, etc. It seems every day there is a shameless, uneccesary plug or two. Now that international investors have divested and even their own emloyees have offloaded it is as irrelevant to the stock market as it is for the IT sector.

Anytime anybody posts a link to the washington times I completely dismiss their entire post.

Thats pretty childish, don't you think?

How about these links, then:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/12/17122003 153543.asp
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s1012216.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280 ,-3517412,00.html
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/200 3/12/18/2003080039
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001817106_iraqdig17.html

Those all say pretty much the same thing as the Washington Times, or do you dismiss posts that link to the taipeitimes or guardian, too?

Cell phones now debit cards in S. Korea
Infrared lifestyle: South Koreans pay using cellphones

Even better, go to a news site that doesn't require you to jump through hoops in order to view their site. Here is the exact same article (NO registration required) found at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Even better, go to a news site that doesn't require you to jump through hoops in order to view their site. Here is the exact same article (NO registration required) found at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

A recent Seattle Times article gives eMachines kudos for good tech support, and no, the argument that crappy products need to have good tech support to back them up is a poor slander: no business could stay in business that way.
Quote from article: " If you're thinking about giving a new PC, eMachines has top-notch backup. It makes its computers easier to service over an Internet connection, and the CPU unit itself is a snap to open and self-service."

Clinton never drafted because he never really needed any troops. No one is going to draft just for the sake of it; they will only do it if troops are needed. Clinton's wars were either supported by foreign countries (the present 40-odd "coaltion of the willing" does not count, especially given that half of them are tiny countries only doing it for money or US political support), or the wars weren't full-scale imperial wars which required occupation. The present wars aren't like that.

It all depends on who wins the election though. My guess is that Bush will win again. If he does, he may conscript (if needed). Howard Dean won't conscript (unless he wants a major lynching), but Wesley Clark probably will. So, Bush and Clark will conscript IMO.

The probability of a draft is very low at this point in time. However, it may happen. Here are some articles speculating on conscription. The articles are a little bit old but the point stands. Also, the draft board they refer to was taken down by the military (it's not online anymore):

Will U.S. bring back the draft?
Talk of a draft grows despite denials by White House
Draft boards fuel rumors

I only read the first article. The scanned the others and the message is similar.

The Pentagon wouldn't really want draftees coming in anyway, not after Vietnam, so no matter who's in the White House, you're not going to have conscription until we have a French carrier halfway up the Patomac or something.

French Carrier up the Pontamac? Nah... all you need is a non-existent Iraqi carrier armed with non-existent WMD posing a non-existent threat... I don't whether to cry or laugh at this comment :|

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Well here is the story of retiree Ernest Brenot, 79, of Ridgefield, Washington. He doesn't own a computer, nor does he know how to use one. The RIAA claims he likes Vanilla Ice, U2, Creed, Linkin Park and Guns N' Roses.

Where the hell do they get these lists from? They can't have got something like that from ISP records.

Although the remake probably will.

One of the reasons they're doing this is that students often tend to use multiple extensions on a single outlet, which is the second leading cause of fire deaths, according to this.

In fact, the recent Moscow dorm fire that killed dozens and injured hundreds more was caused by such a fire, by a computer science student with dozens of electrical devices in his dorm. I suppose universities don't want such a thing to happen here.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/ 2001802164_dormfire27.html

A Washington Post investigation last fall said the Justice Department has imprisoned at least 44 people, including seven U.S. citizens, under the same law, with some held for many months and possibly over a year.

Forgot their photo ID

Forgot to register

Were too confused by the ballot

I fail to see how this could have anything to do with Bush "buying" the election.

we've got Katherine Harris and we've got the supreme Court and oh yeah we've got the Governor of Florida who just happens to be the First Retard's brother

Katherine Harris and the US Supreme court enforced the laws as they were written. And by calling the President names, I guess you don't really try to hide your bias.

We could go on with how the war on drugs disenfranchised some hundreds of thousands of blacks thus preventing them from voting, in violation of the Constitution

You mean the war on drugs that Clinton increase spending by 10% each year on? I guess he was trying to buy the election for Bush as well.

we could talk about how recounts were illegally obstructed and in some cases denied.

Maybe you don't remember that it was Gore who was limiting recounts to 3 counties where he thought he could gain the most votes, and it was Gore who was trying to block absentee ballots that were perfectly valid according to Florida state law.

You may remember the old Crowther and Woods "Collosal Cave" Adventure game. Have you ever had a 'cannot get there from here' while trying to do a MS product reinstall. You can get that version of Exchange (for example) reinstalled on this version of NT but not another. You had to reinstall NT. Slowly, then reinstall Exchange starting with an earlier version and then cross patch each insequence so they weren't out of step. I have reduced my exposure to MS to a minimum now as a result.

The thing is that he seems to believe it is fine to sell defective products. He saves money by exepcting customers to patch. Great, but the guy is also selling to domestic users who don't have firewalls. By the time they have finished patching, they are owned. My systems are firewalled, but those owned systems are still hamnering away at my bandwidth before being thrown out.

The Gates and Balmer gang push snake oil. That is the real reason they are so scared by open source.

However, that's money they could be sending into the U.S. in terms of software licenses, which would then trickle down to the rest of us.

So you're saying that money from Brazil that would go to Microsoft would eventually trickle down to everyone in the U.S.??? Maybe if you're a lawyer who is suing or defending MS, but otherwise, no-- Microsoft is sitting on over 50 billion dollars right now as a hedge fund against lawsuits-- their shareholders are actually complaining about the cash hoard.

~Philly

Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Comcast to Offer Online Music

2003-11-11 13:10:14 Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Comcast to Offer Online Music (articles,music) (rejected)

Wal-Mart will launch its own digital music download service through its Web site later this month. Not to be outdone, Best Buy will also launch an iTunes-type online music store - with the ability to buy through in-store kiosks - based on the MusicNow service (formerly FullAudio). And today Comcast announced music downloads via Real Rhapsody for its 5 million broadband Internet subscribers. The Washington Post's Cynthia L. Webb writes about the online music frenzy and the resultant advertising onslaught due to the sheer number of entrants into the music download market, while Bloomberg's Holly M. Sanders offers an analysis of Walmart's imminent entry into online music, which is significant since Wal-Mart already controls 14 percent of global CD music sales. More at the New York Times (via SeattlePI).

Some reasons why Microsoft owes many of us money.

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft (MSFT) has been deeply unprofitable since 1996, when it began to rely on holes in the GAAP accounting standards that allowed it to report historic profits in its NASDAQ filings up until this very day, so making it look like the hottest business since ACME, Inc.. Large fund managers bought into it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, making MS at its peak ($700B) which for comparison made it the largest component of the S&P 500, the equivalent of the 16th largest country or ~1.5% of the GDP of Earth. Heh, and we thought it was Windows.

Who cares? The biggest funds involved were retirement funds of large social programs across the US, who automatically invest in S&P components at rates proportional to the components' value. MS paid for its bottom line with those peoples' money, so much so that pentioners are majority owners of MS today. Too bad for them that the bottom fell out of MS stock and their savings are worthless. But it did help create two of the richest personal accounts on Earth.

You could argue that this was all legal and that they won the king of the hill prize. Perhaps. But is it ethical to block GAAP reforms via corporate shills in Congress (e.g. Joe Lieberman) so your huge losses won't be exposed? Enron execs are being hung out to dry for being only slightly on the other side of that thin line in the sand. No, it's likely MS knew what it was up to. As Bill Parish, who broke the story, tells:

"Microsoft's perspective is best reflected by Bob Herbold, Chief Operating Officer, to whom the CFO reports. Bob very sincerely replied, "Bill, everyone is doing it.""

MSN, the company's Internet service, posted its first quarterly operating profit since its inception in 1995. It came much sooner than executives had previously predicted. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president in the division, said in a July speech that MSN would reach profitability "in the next couple years."

It's a typo from whoever made the ASCII chart conversion.

Here's the actual thing. (Yoinked from a post below.)

So you like being completely and utterly misinformed?

They took 3 polls with 3334 respondents, gathering data on three misperceptions about the Iraq war
(1) Evidence found for link between Iraq and Al Queda
(2) Evidence found of WMDs in Iraq
(3) Positive world opinion about Iraq war

News_source______FOX_____CBS_____ABC_____NBC_____ CNN___Print_____NPR/
_________________________________________________ _____Sources____PBS

0_misperceptions_20%_____30%_____39%_____45%_____ 45%_____53%_____77%
1_or_more
misperceptions___80______71______61______55______ 55______47______23

Yep, you read that right; fully 80% of Faux watchers had at least 1 of the misperceptions; fully 77% of the NPR/PBS crowd had zero. Wow!

They also attempted to control for demographic variations in the audience. Here's what they say (end of P.15)

Looking just at Republicans, the average rate for the three key misperceptions was 43%. For Republican Fox viewers, however the average rate was 54% while for Republicans who get their news from PBS- NPR the average rate is 32%. This same pattern obtains with Democrats and independents.

Misperceptions According to Level of Attention to News
While it would seem that misperceptions are derived from a failure to pay attention to the news, overall, those who pay greater attention to the news are no less likely to have misperceptions. Among those who primarily watch Fox, those who pay more attention are more likely to have misperceptions. Only those who mostly get their news from print media, and to some extent those who primarily watch CNN, have fewer misperceptions as they pay more attention.

This study was commented on in the wash post seattle times twin cities and other places

The one place you I can guarentee you won't find it is fox news!

it really says (that) FNC thinks their viewers are in fact incredibly stupid.

They found that new information flowing across televisions, radios, telephones, Web sites and the Internet had increased by 3 1/2 times to a total of 18 exabytes as of 2002. The amount of new but stored (non-transmitted) information in 2002 was determined to be about five exabytes.

This jives with the other articles. 5 exabytes generated content, 18 exabytes transferred content - still one heck of a lot of bits floating around :)

here is the aritcal

Diebold Inc. sent "cease and desist" letters after the documents and internal e-mails, allegedly stolen by a hacker, were distributed on the Internet. Recipients of the letters included computer programmers, students at colleges including Swarthmore and at least one Internet provider.

Heh... and several million /. readers...

yo.

Washington is apparently not one of those states. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/ texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=ontheroad26e&dat e=20030926

Fatally wounded, Mark McLaughlin lost control of the bus. It lurched through afternoon traffic and burst through a guardrail, plunging 40 feet.

There are too many uncertainties nowadays for companies to spend spend spend on R&D and other things which really sucks, so I would hold my breathe waiting for the 'next big thing'.

Latest Comprelated/Financial news

Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich offered a plan to revive "bloated, underachieving, unfocused" server-computer maker Sun Microsystems -- including a personality makeover for Chief Executive Scott McNealy.

Warning that Sun is headed for a ravine "filled with carcasses" of defunct computer companies, the analyst wrote a research report as an open letter to McNealy and Sun's board. He said they should slash as much as 19 percent of the company's staff members and settle on a single new mission. [Full story

A Wall Street analyst's warning that Sun Microsystems could end up as another corporate carcass has led at least one rival to smell blood.

In an aggressive move, Hewlett-Packard said Friday that it is offering $25,000 in services and other incentives to Sun customers who move their computer systems to HP products.

Full article

No one will spend money (real money) until this government gets their act together. Iraq, Korea, Iran, etc., there is too much to lose in investing, when there is no stability over here.

Just because corporations don't have the right to force you to listen doesn't mean they don't have the right to free speech.

Yeah. Right.

Or this example of someone who has spent $10,000 so far going after a spammer, and has yet to receive anything more than a court settlement but he's still out 10 grand. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/ texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=spam11&date=2003 0911&query=spam

Don't be bitter just because Gore lost the election.

Or this example of someone who has spent $10,000 so far going after a spammer, and has yet to receive anything more than a court settlement but he's still out 10 grand. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/ texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=spam11&date=2003 0911&query=spam

Don't be bitter just because Gore lost the election.

She's at center of high-tech voting debate, about Bev Harris, who wrote the book about voting fraud.

Why is this so hard to do? I mean, really, if you're gonna provide a link, at least make it a link!

After reading this story, I'm convinced Justin Timberlake is the next one to be sued.

I seem to recall a news program doing a special on that very topic. They found that over half the places didn't in fact ID.

Also according to this article: "... Mothers Against Violence in America, a non-profit group dedicated to preventing violence by and against young people, organized its own sting earlier this year, sending children ages 12 to 15 into 17 major retail stores in the area. Fifteen of the stores sold to the children and teens."

So it seems more like the plaintiffs should go after the stores that sold the games. Unless the parents themselves bought them in which case we really know who to blame. If fingers really need to get pointed any more in this case.

/* DISCLAIMER

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything based on it, you are a flaming idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.

DISCLAIMER */

Arrite, now that that's outta the way . . .

File sharing IS a crime under the No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act if the material infringed has a retail value of greater than $1,000. Read it - if you're convicted, the court will order your computer destroyed AND order you trotted off to chokey.

The poster is correct that Canada and the US have an extradition treaty. However, as evidenced by the recent abortion killer case, extradition treaties are not absolute. France only agreed to give him up on the condition that the US would not seek the death penalty against him.

For me, a hometown example of this is a contemptible piece of human garbage named Martin Pang. This guy torched his family's frozen food warehouse so he could collect the insurance money, resulting in the deaths of four firefighters. Brazil refused to extradite him unless we agreed to not charge him with murder. (Under Washington's felony murder rule, if someone gets killed during the course of a felony, you go down for murder one.)

Bum deal, huh? Well, not always. Especially during the Cold War, the US and other civilized countries regularly refused to extradite people back to their communist shitpiles^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H countries who were wanted for political "crimes" on the grounds that those were not extraditable offenses. So, it works both ways.

The point is, I'm sure that if someone were charged with a file-trading related crime in America and fled to Canada, the latter would take the position that file trading-related "crimes" are not extraditable offenses. They did so with the Vietnam war draft dodgers - Canada took the position that crimes related to avoidance of military service were not extraditable. In fact, if it's not a crime in Canada, the odds are that they would not extradite.

Hope this clears up any confusion. But read the disclaimer above carefully before you do anything. Plus, I haven't read the extradition treaty, so I could be wrong and it could be an extraditable offense.