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Most phones have user replaceable batteries, and those that don't have replaceable batteries. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how...

One way is to enable "metered connection" on the network connection
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how...
that's probably the simplest way

Another way
https://4sysops.com/archives/d...

dump the following into a .reg file and run it

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001

Now that's innovation

Well, but it's not. The empirical evidence is against you. Apple's sales are swimming against the stream of declining PC industry sales and profits.

I don't use laptops, but let's take what you say as true: reduced ports (true, though everything will be USB-C eventually anyway), non-upgradeable (indisputable), crummy keyboards (subjective).

Obviously these things are either not dealbreakers or they're things that people actually want. The tradeoff for a light laptop is worth it. Or for a stylish laptop. Or just for a laptop that runs OS X. I think they really believe that these are the best choices to make to appeal to the broadest audience, and it's hard to find fault in that reasoning so far.

I would guess that's what the deal is with not updating the Mac Pro and Mac Mini, though those are bad long-term bets if you ask me. I've owned Mac Minis and a PowerMac and iMacs, and while they're a lot less important to me now than they used to be, taking them away is guaranteeing the slow decline of your development platform. I'm not sure what the end-game is with discontinuing those lines, but I don't have a lot of optimism for the plan.

Isn't the issue with the 'mini and the iMac (and the reason the 2016 MBP was restricted to 16 GB RAM) is the fact that Quad-Core Kaby Lake's aren't out yet, as were promised originally by Intel (or may just now be coming out)?

And as far as the Mac Pro goes, I heard that there is an updated Xeon in the works that Apple is likely waiting for, too, but the news is much murkier on that...

Apple can't release designs with CPUs that they can't purchase yet.

Dramatically understating the scope of the problem does not make for "safety":

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/te...
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
http://www.phonearena.com/news...
http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...

And that's just the citations I could find from a 30-second Google search that didn't even glance beyond the second page of search results. Many (perhaps even most) of those phones were not being charged at the time of the incident.

that's £1799, not $1799. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...

In USD that's about $2738 at today's rate.

A quick search found "SHA-1 hashing algorithm could succumb to $75K attack, researchers say" (08 Oct 15) http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new... "... US$75,000 and $120,000 to mount a viable attack using freely available cloud-computing services" "... someone can create two different files that have the same hash, it's possible to digitally sign one" Try searching for 75K or $75,000 by date and see what other public news can be found :)

Which doesn't allow a web site's certificate to be "cracked". The article is bogus.

The $75K-$120K figure is the estimated cost to find a SHA-1 hash collision. That is, to find two inputs that hash to the same value. The inputs will be random byte strings. Researchers have demonstrated that with such a collision it is possible to create two certificates that have the same signature, but in order to do that they also have to construct the RSA signing keys in a particular way.

But collisions do not enable the construction of fake certificates that appear to be signed by an arbitrary, unknown, private key. For that, you'd need to be able to find an input that hashes to a specific value. This is a completely different -- and dramatically harder -- problem than finding two inputs that hash to the same value. In addition, you'd probably need to find an input with a particular structure that hashes to a particular value, which is harder yet.

Good cryptographic hash functions have both "collision resistance" and "second pre-image resistance". SHA-1's collision resistance has been broken, which does make it insecure for certain uses, in algorithms that depend on collision resistance, but doesn't directly affect other uses -- like digital certificates -- that depend only on second pre-image resistance. It does hint that perhaps there is a weakness that may someday allow a second pre-image attack, which makes moving away from SHA-1 a good idea. But it has no direct impact on the security of CA certificates.

A quick search found "SHA-1 hashing algorithm could succumb to $75K attack, researchers say" (08 Oct 15)

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...

"... US$75,000 and $120,000 to mount a viable attack using freely available cloud-computing services"

"... someone can create two different files that have the same hash, it's possible to digitally sign one"
Try searching for 75K or $75,000 by date and see what other public news can be found :)

A quick search? You could have just read TFA. All the information you pasted above was in it.

A quick search found "SHA-1 hashing algorithm could succumb to $75K attack, researchers say" (08 Oct 15)
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...
"... US$75,000 and $120,000 to mount a viable attack using freely available cloud-computing services"
"... someone can create two different files that have the same hash, it's possible to digitally sign one" Try searching for 75K or $75,000 by date and see what other public news can be found :)

If you going to use a Linux distro for the most comparability that would be a Debian base OS. To have the largest and lights OS there are only 3 that come to mind. This would Avlinux, Musix,& Kxstudio, this are all Debian base and Ubuntu comparable. And most of very light on resources making then good contenders for multiple applications. Plus they all have a great application pool for additional software packages. The last one good be OpenSuse it comes with multiple boot options, and simple to use repositories. And it has great tools for installing software. Most of the tools that you will need will be installed by default with this distributions. As for the part of the adobe software just use 10% of you machines for other applications inside windows. If you have a limitation of budget you can start by VR the Windows PC and just purchase what you need. This will save on the amount of licensees you will have to purchase. You can purchase windows 7 pro and ultimate at low value and they will be supported till 2020. you can update with and WSUS offline software and to install other software for use ninite. To monitor you students teach lessons via the PC screen & messages Here are that links to all of the software https://ninite.com/ http://italc.sourceforge.net/ http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/dow... https://musixdistro.wordpress.... http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinu... http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org... http://www.linuxveda.com/2014/...

This site says you can go back, but only within one month:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how...

God, that start menu looks hideous.

Except I'm not American. I am British by descent, and have lived and worked on three continents. But your point is irrelevant anyway: The term is commonly used outside the USA as well. For example:

UK:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gamin...
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new...
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news...
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/...

CA:
http://circanews.com/news/cord...
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/n...
http://www.chathamdailynews.ca...
http://www.canadiancordcutting...
http://shayne.tablotvweb.nomad...

AU:
http://www.computerworld.com.a...
http://www.theaustralian.com.a...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/co...
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/...

Just because you're ignorant of its usage, that doesn't mean the term isn't broadly used around the world in countries with large English-speaking populations.

You're welcome to take that up with the reviewers listing them in the top 10. I personally don't care, I was just answering the guy's question about how they make money.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/...
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/tes...
http://www.av-test.org/en/anti...
http://anti-virus-software-rev...

The point is that tablets can come out with full Windows 8, which would be a game changer. You'd have full PC functionality in a laptop. Buh-Bye both Android and Apple.

Yes...for only a 10-15 GB tax on storage space. Compare that to Android, at typically 1GB to 3 GB (barring greedy developers over-reserving space for their proprietary pre-installed bloatware...)

Even on a 64 GB device, that's still a 16-24% loss, and of course it's significantly worse on a 16 or 32 GB device unless you're willing (and able) to keep *everything* else on a micro SD card. Good luck installing all of the rest of those bloaty legacy Windows programs you 'need'...however if these prove viable, maybe they'll have a chance.

Now, be nice. Your acidic remarks are unecessary and uncalled-for.

We are currently one of the cheapest products in our marketplace. We do not sell hardware - and for people who really want touch screens, we recommend wall mounted all-in-ones that sit around U$900.

Oh, and by the way, your ~0.5kg is false.

iPad weight = 652 grams (here is a citation: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/). That's the lighter version.
iPad cover weight = 338 grams (citation: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/apple/3345046/best-cases-covers-for-new-ipad/)
Apple make lighter cases, but the lightest I've seen still comes in at about 180 grams.
Total weight 830 grams at best - though if you choose the 'recommended covers', it will be much closer to 1kg.

Also, subby wasn't talking about reading books. He was talking about reading stapled printouts. There is a big weight difference. If you want an eBook reader for bedtime or on a plane - then, sure, grab one. Please do your research before posting snippy responses in /.

Maybe he means more along these lines? Spotify is part owned by the big labels. Artists get a pittance from Spotify, but seeing as it's 1) one of the the few legal ways to listen to lots of music without paying much, and 2) very convenient, it's what I use.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/mobile-phone/3358584/samsung-galaxy-s3-has-9-million-pre-orders/ Those 2 months included the preorder period, surely?

Asking all your customers to buy a new copy of MS Office? Not a great idea.

The ARM version will have Office built in.

As I pointed out in another post above, you will not find the strong opposition from open source groups. There are two main versions of this story floating around most of the IT rags today - they share the same first paragraphs (which mention the strong opposition in passing, as if it is a well-known fact) but differ in the shill quoted. One version, as linked to in the summary, quotes John Simpson from the astroturfing Consumer Watchdog and the other quotes Florian Mueller. A template news release with interchangeable shills as the quoted experts? Best news money can buy.

Seriously, guys, anyone that can provide some links that show "strong opposition from open source"?

I've yet to see it and I note that despite your original question sitting at a score of 5, no one has attempted to provide a serious answer.I doubt you'll find it anywhere but dishonest shills like Mueller or his ilk that post here.

Aside the shilling (and his schillings), what I fail to understand is how FM has something to do with Open Source. I may be worth whooshing...

Mueller was once a darling of the open source movement but then become a paid shill for Microsoft. He still pretends to be in support of open source and claims to be an expert in patent law. He maintains the FOSS Patents blog and gets himself quoted in industry rag stories about the Apple/Google fight on a regular basis. Shills like Bonch love to quote him.

Back to your original question, it might be useful to look at the summary a bit deeper. angry tapir references the earlier story submitted by Bonch, a well-established anti-Google and pro-Apple shill/troll, and mentions Consumer Watchdog by name. Consumer Watchdog is a well-funded astroturfing group associated with Grassroots Enterprise who offer services such as:

# Engaging them over time via a variety of online communication techniques, including, of course, email (***this is the step most people leave out, but it’s the most critical)
# Monitor the online universe — news sites, blogs, the social media, etc. — to figure out how our client or its issues are being perceived, and actively shape that perception.
# Create and execute online programs that drive stakeholders to join our client’s campaign (through paid advertising, buzz building, viral marketing and earned media)
# Work with our 50-state field network to find “grasstops” influentials — individuals with unique relationships in key markets that we can leverage
# Build in-depth behavioral profile of each stakeholder, and identify mavens (or Multipliers) in the mix
# Spur stakeholders to take action we want, measure results in real real-time, and adjust the campaign as necessary

None of the links mention opposition by any specific open source groups. The primarily link to techworld.com quotes someone from, surprise, Consumer Watchdog. Or, if you don't like that article, you could try this one which is identical in the first few paragraphs but instead quotes Florian Mueller.

Wasn't there a firmware problem with batteries in Apple gear that could cause physical problems? Oh wait, yes:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/security/3293448/apple-battery-firmware-open-to-attack-researcher-finds/

So clearly, firmware has the capability to do physical damage to the battery. And if the battery is sufficiently charged, could you not trigger a thermal runaway condition via the firmware? (not quite thermite, but that laptop is going to burn HOT for a bit)

And doesn't Apple now support internet recovery with the EFI/BIOS/firmware?

Solution: BIOS with sufficient stack to connect via TCP to get laptop status remotely (am I stolen brah?), prevent itself from being wiped without a password, and the capability to say "I've been stolen; fuck this noise" and cause a thermal runaway.

This is, of course, never going to be permitted via a vendor for obvious liability reasons, but is *not* outside of the realm of possibility of being coded by someone.

We have a story of an AC about a single instance modded informative. We have an incident involving a pair of serial killers (raped and killed 12 people remember) being shot with a hunting rifle, yet the closest stories google can find are a snopes false granny story and a real robbery incident with a handgun (described by the NRA, who should know, as "among the more dramatic"), so somehow the story of shooting two serial killers doesn't fit in. Now, there are lots of people reading Slashdot, and it's possible that this is a true story, but there is no way it should be modded up without at least an account name to back it up. The advice given is extremely dangerous. If people stop helping each other then the "bad people will win".

Now, to the original AC, and assuming that this was a true story; Please think again about how you say what you say. Your sister may have made a misjudgement, but you have to come to terms with that and realise that what she did was the right thing and most of what happened to her was bad luck. There are ways she could have been more careful; but in the end everybody has to get involved, we have to take some risk and 99.9% of the time it works out fine. If we don't do that then horrible things happen:

• There have been experiments done where thousands of people will not help lost children and even those that do are terrified of the consequences.
• There are many stories like this one where a two year old girl died because a bricklayer was afraid to help.
• Random strangers get ignored on the street
• simple stories about jump starting cars will cease to exist (and I thank all those people who have helped me with mine)

It's not enough to just say "call the cops". There aren't enough cops to investigate every possible strange situation, they won't be able to come reliably if they to. Call the cops means that most of the time people will do nothing. Worse, we end up with a passive society of afraid people who can't act on their own and expect "the authorities" to do everything for them. And even worse, with media hysteria stories like this, we get a culture where those that intervene are considered abnormal or even begin to believe they will get into trouble. You say:

The world has changed. If you are nice, you will be taken advantage of by those who aren't.

Yes; according to the US Department of Justice, the world has changed; it's much safer than it used to be.

The rate of reported rape among women decreased by 10% from 1990 to 1995 (80 per 100,000 compared to 72 per 100,000) (Greenfeld, 1997). In 1995, 97,460 forcible rapes were reported to the police nationwide, representing the lowest number of reported rapes since 1989.

Instead, we have to teach people a bit of a different lesson. Be extremely careful about interactions which are initiated by the other side. Make a visible call to a friend; give the license plate and description of the car that you are going to help. Single women don't help groups of men on their own without first making a call. Single men (who are actually most subject to violence) are careful too. Use judgement. But in the end, most of the time you just have to take some risk in life.

Except, having browsed the web for about 16 years now on Windows, and have never ever managed to do that. I guess unless you have some kind of mental condition that forces you to click every link you come across rather than just clicking on what you want and trust it's about as likely as winning the lottery. In fact, despite having worked in IT support in the past for some years and having worked alongside IT as a developer for even more years, I don't think I've ever once encountered a case of someone being infected by a drive-by on Windows (or any OS for that matter).

Besides, it's not like an Acrobat bug is a Windows bug, and it's not like software bugs in plugins and browsers don't exist on other platforms- MacOS X, iOS, and Linux have all had such vulnerabilities too:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3249447

In fact, other OS' have often been first to fall to such exploits at hacking contests:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/mac_hack/

The gap between theoretical attack vectors and actual attack vectors seems pretty large- to date I suspect far far more infections occur as a result of infected e-mail attachments/memory stick transfers, or people downloading and then executing something they think they trust from phishing sites and whatnot despite these problems being as old as the internet themselves.

Actually Windows 7 does run well on low-powered hardware (within reason), far better than Vista did/does. You can strip Windows 7 down pretty well by disabling the unnecessary crap, optimizing the page file and caching scheme, and turning off the desktop eye candy, killing services you don't use, etc.

It runs comparably well to XP if you do the same thing on XP.

Windows 7 starter edition will run on a 400Mhz pentium III(?). Not as well as linux will, but you can do it:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=3236969&pn=1

Gaming on something like this with Crysis? I think not.

I agree that windows 7 doesn't suck. It's definitely better than Vista or XP ever was. I work on linux OS for a living, as a software developer, but I'm not an evangelist one way or the other. For gaming, I like the fact that you can just install games and not need fuss with it, tweak out WINE for hours etc to get things to work right.

When I get home from work I just want to kill shit, not need to figure out why my mouse cursor disappears in my favorite game client, patch WINE and recompile it to fix the problem, then make sure to use git properly when I'm getting the latest WINE sources, so I don't blow away my patches. I've been there, done it, got the T-Shirt. Gimme my Windows for gaming.

To be fair, during the xp years, gaming on xp could be a bitch. Then again the hardware was horrendous when multi core cpus first came out. The interrupt controllers were broken on multicore nVidia chipsets etc. I had just as many problems using WINE, since the kernel used to KP on bad chipsets before the kernel crew replaced the hardware interrupt timer with a software one.

Games run a lot better these days... The chipsets are far better now than they were in 2004.

Funny, b/c I seem to remember that from a story posted on this very site a few days ago.

And I easily found this story: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=119190

How stating a simple fact became astroturfing I'll never know.

"I have a feeling that the opinion of Vista will stay largely static forever; it may have introduced new features, but it still wasn't that good. This is already how the public feels about WinME -- it added useful features like System Restore, but it wasn't until XP that those features were incorporated in a good OS."

I couldn't say it better myself. Going XP to Vista feels like 98 to ME. ME was absolutely AWFUL. It took Windows 2000 and finally XP before M$ finally got it right (w2k was good but didn't play the games XP could).

I have a feeling Windows 7 won't be there either, I think it'll be Windows 2000 all over again, a big improvement but not XP. But I really think this might be Microsoft's last chance, I think if anyone could topple M$ it'd be Google's Chrome OS. I know you guys are all linux lovers, but I've tried redhat and ubuntu and it's just not there, not enough to switch. If anyone could convince me to switch it'd be Google. Reviews of Android software have been positive, some calling it the open source iPhone so that shows Google knows what they're doing.

I'll have to get Windows 7 for the laptop because it already has Vista but I'll dual boot into Chrome OS when it's released.

I'm confused (read:dumb) over just how Morro will work, but considering past events such as BITS being used as an attack platform or when code red infected the Windows Update site, why should trust be placed in Microsoft's hands anyway?

"Do you have numbers that indicate the orginal iPhone was actually a "flop" in Europe (the ONLY placed outside the US it was sold)?"

Sure have a look here:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1433&blogid=4

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/04/18/europe.low.iphone.sales/

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/04/19/iphone-european-fire-sales-spreading-to-france/

http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=11303

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/04/lackluster-iphone-sales-in-europe.ars

http://techwag.com/index.php/2007/11/11/apples-european-iphone-debut-a-royal-flop/

OS X has yet to be owned remotely. Correct me if I'm wrong here, I'd like to heat about it.

You are wrong.

The original jailbreaking of the iPhone was based on a tiff handling vulnerability in the Safari browser - this could be exploited remotely until the hole was fixed, simply by visiting a website.

http://www.iphone-hacks.com/2007/10/10/iphone-111-jailbroken-again-using-tiff-exploit/

I would be surprised if there are not more holes in the Safari browser which ships with the iPhone (and its desktop equivalent), indeed I've read about a few more since (can't be bothered to look them all up just now) and expect to see the iPhone compromised.

Here's another more recent which could be costly by calling unknown numbers :

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10113

Or another, allowing access to data :

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/iphone-macs-vulnerable-to-safari-hack-attack-154585

Now OS X has been less vulnerable to worms spreading automatically compared to Windows historically (not so much compared to Vistia), has some good security policies in place like the lack of services on by default, firewall and a sane use of password dialogs, but that doesn't make it immune. Apple has not been as vigilant or communicative in this area as they should be.

"Remote access software - Access your files anywhere, anytime using MioNet® remote access services from WD. "

I don't like the sound of requiring a third-party 'service' to access files over the internet. Do they still block certain filetypes from being transferred?
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=11576

Also, I checked out the five reviews WD linked to. Of those 5, 3 were identical. So of the three actual reviews, a throughput of about 10 MB/sec was the norm. Not exactly Gigabit speeds.

This NAS buying thing is harder than it looks :-/

More objective reviewers than "everyone I know" have found that the alleged speed advantage of Win7 doesn't bear scrutiny. Some have also pointed out that it's not really a new OS, just an attempt to recover from a marketing disaster by applying lipstick and eyeliner to that sad old pig we call Vista.

Here's just one example. There's plenty of others out there.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=107030

I'll leave aside the whole DRM question, except to note that an OS which I bought and paid for that puts the "rights" of notoriously predatory and dishonest entertainment corporations before my own is not something I'd want on my computer.

This story was posted on sladhdot a few weeks ago: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=4&entryid=103688

of course I can't find the article with slashdot's crappy search.

Okay, so let's just gloss over the extensions because they are a problem, and focus on plugins, which are only downloaded from Mozilla.

Meaning of course every plugin is vetted and 100% secure, until of course there's one that slips through the net and then the whole concept becomes just another embarrassment to the great "firefox is secure" myth. Security through obscurity is not real security, and as the browser becomes more popular, so do the attempts to find a way to corrupt plugins and make them do nasty things.

And while were playing the "I have a memory gap" problem, how long ago was it that a version of Firefox was actually SHIPPED with an adware plugin ? http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=12975

Look don't get me wrong, IE's track record is god-awful, but the whole ActiveX myth has been laid to rest a long time ago ... and it's only FF zealots who attempt to perpetuate it in the attempt make FF look "more secure", when it seems to have just the same amount of problems.

There's a *bit* more info here (from slashdot, to slashgear, to MacOS rumors, etc.):

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10894

You are joking aren't you, security cameras have this week been proved ineffective in solving and preventing crime!

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10804

i know in my home town that police men on the beat has been completely stopped since the introduction of the blanket cctv coverage in my town but on Friday and Saturday nights shop windows in our high street get smashed and parked cars vandalised, and the drunken fights are now not stopped as no police attend, so who exactly is watching and when the police are approached to obtain footage to find the criminals ppl are always told the camera was facing the wrong way!
they're an excuse for cutbacks in the police force that fail to work and are abused when the are.

the only day i have seen cameras on our sea front move is when there was a rescue day (coast guard ect) and the cameras were pointing out to fecking sea, not watching the crowd!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/player/nol/newsid_7000000/newsid_7007400?redirect=7007418.stm&news=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&nbram=1

The music industry really baffles me. First of all, what average consumer really knows which label their favorite bands are with? I'm sure most people are like me, and really don't care which band is with who. And when these labels start fragmenting how consumers are able to get music, it will just confuse the consumer, and just push them towards piracy.

I once dated a guy who worked for Universal in their licensing department. I guarantee you Universal doesn't understand that the average consumer has no idea what label an artist is on. When you work for a company like Universal you hear these entertainment names constantly, and it gets hard to separate that constant work related input from what you know about an entertainer from the non-work world.

In the end Universal is crippling itself. This isn't new for Universal. They were one of the last studios to begin moving their film archive onto DVD, they also just released DVD's with out even so much as a menu (ie, zero special features) you put the disk in, watched a couple previews you didn't want to watch, and then the movie started.

Universal is a company that has consistently put out the absolute minimum in frills, done the least possible it could in order to sell the item, all the while charging a premium for the DVD. This goes for Movies, and now more recently for Music. In the end they want to charge the CD price premium without providing the CD level quality. Apple won't let them screw their customers like that and so Universal is cutting off it's own nose to spite it's own face.

In the end we can live without the labels, and unfortunately Universal hasn't learned that fact yet. There'll always be great music out there, with or without them.

According to this article iTunes now is the third largest music retailer with 10% of the market (Wal-mart at #1 has 15% of the market.) Considering that Apple has nearly 90% of the digital music players market, Universal's attempt to move it's catalog onto Amazon (which is ranked #4 in the US for music retail) may have been an ill thought out strategic move when matched with the fact that the files only coming in (non-iPod supported) WMA format. In this case it appears that Universal has overestimated audience demand for their music library. Screwing yourself out of 10% total music sales in the US could easily result in Universal not seeing another artist enter the top 10 sales lists until the iTunes boycott ends. Most of todays generic corporate created artists lack any sort of long term market draw or memorability without the corporate backed marketing and chart positions generated by sales. That is the significance of Universal's ill thought out strategy to force Apple's hand.

I could also go off onto a tangent regarding Malcolm McDowell's Tipping Point and how the "cool kids" likely to cause a tipping point effect for an artist are probably the "cool kids" who of course own iPods. An artist without the "cool kids" support is going to find him/herself increasingly less relevant to mainstream consumers. This of course is a harder idea to support with actual numbers, for me it's just a gut feeling that this decision is going to have that sort of anti-cool impact that could result in the wrong kind of "tipping point" (ie, people abandoning an artist.)

"Firefox surges with 25% browser share. Figures show Mozilla gaining from Microsoft" April 17, 2007

More than anything else, this is evidence that they don't believe there's any real threat of people switching to linux or MacOSX. In their view they have a monopoly.

• http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7 687
• http://gyaku.jp/en/index.php?cmd=contentview&pid=0 00112
• http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/origin alContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1245710,00.html

MS might slow things down by suing small companies back to Windows but how many times can they do that to governments ?

Are you sure about that?

Seriously, MS still envies google in that area. For all the hot air Ballmer spews about googles' "cute" apps, and how their hire rate is "insane".... MS has lost this round of the search match, they're not able to compete. Look at the emphasis they've put on it. Why pay people to use windows live if you don't care? Microsoft is becoming the one thing that Bill Gates hoped he'd never see.... a lumbering behemoth not dissimilar to the old IBM. They are having diffifulty keeping up with the present, just look at vista for connfirmation. (Disclaimer: I don't mind vista).

But vista brings forth features that I've had in linux for years. gkrellm does a great job as a sidebar, without the resource usage. The latter part of... scratch that.... MOST OF XP's cycle was spent chasing holes and vulnerabilities.

I like vista, and see it being fairly well adoped in a few years time. But it's not a forward looking technology, just as Live Search isn't forward looking. They care, but there isn't much they can do about it besides pay people to use it.

From 2004 : " Uppsala universitet betalar mindre än en tiondel av ordinarie pris för Office. " , which translate to English as "The University of Uppsala pays less than a tenth of the ordinary price for {MS} Office"

Word on the street was that UU was going to go completely FOSS, or at least completely non-MS, on its workstations. Many other institutions were heading that way until 2000-2002. Turku was a notable case, but there were quite a few others that weren't able to move even that far before MSofters flew in and thus didn't get as much press.

Other bad decisions were made around that time, too: People got sold a lot of junkj hardware, too: gross income deduction in exchange for last year's hardware, at this years full retail prices, delivered 6 to 12 months from now. That gross income reduction cuts rather deeply into the pensions, given the new pension system.

It would be useful, though nearly impossible, to find out all the places that have been trying to dump M$ junk since 1998, but have been threatened with raids, or threatened with audits, or given 95%+ discounts in order to keep or extend the lock-in. As you can see it's been part of the business model for a long time. The BSA/FAST raids seem not just about licensing but about even getting rid of non-MS commercial software.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8 254

But then again, switching a single word of yours: I seriously doubt you'd find a business of any decent size that would convert to Windows Vista en mass is probably true as well.

I submitted that article yesterday but it wasn't accepted--must be my crummy authoring skills.

On a related topic, mother board sales have been falling and a lot of people are blaming the impending release of Vista.

That is why free software is invented - because people did not accept that vendors have automatic "rights" to impose absolutely any arbitrary EULA restriction on how a copy of said software, purchased legally, might be used.

Imagine buying a car, for example, with a EULA along with it that said I couldn't visit, for example Cornwall, without paying an extra license fee to the vehicle manufacturer! Outrageous, obviously - but that's the style of restriction that becomes possible with hardware and software DRM capabilities.

If you accept that vendors can impose conditions like this, then you can easily see a series of ever more onerous conditions that an Apple or Microsoft can impose on proprietary software, and which can now be enforced through Treacherous Computing and Digital Restrictions Managament. For example, you might get a license to use software a bit cheaper if it was restricted to only be used at the weekend, say, or only to connect to approved URL's, or only for a few months till your course ended, say with training materials.

Actually there are a few, sony ericson p910i i think is on ce the mda series of phones with t-mobile and the the xda series from o2, the m2000 from orange. they run wince as well.
The HP iPAQ hw6500 Mobile Messenger , sprints i930 , samsung i730...
see link below
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/default.msp x

incidently active sync is now at 4.2 (link above)

one of nicest phones i've seen lately is the mda pro
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?revie wid=165

generally it is very nice but the screens still 320 by 256 which makes remote desktop more awkward than it could be.
http://www.fpsece.net/index.html playstation emulator for ce
http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php allows you to run things like flight of the amazon queen and beneath a steelsky on ce and as you mentioned there is java gaming as well.

The built in browser IE isn't great so opera may well be a welcome improvement. (id prefer a version of firefox thou)
  Very little reason to make a phone CE? for microsoft there is if you use MSOffice and Outlook there is.

and of course there is GPS which can run while playing your mp3's and be your phone too.

finally can i recommend velcro i put the hook half in a suitable space on my dashboard and the other half on my phone battery pack.

you don't really want to leave your gps in the car its likely to get broken into for this alone. being your phone too means its with you.