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This can be proved experimentally. Not only that but there are quantum encryption products that rely on this simple fact.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1130877,00.as p

http://www.bbn.com/For_Government_Customers/Networ king/Quantum_Cryptography.html

There's a story from Dvorak in the current issue of PC Magazine where the state of Pennsylvania enacted (and the Gov signed into law) House Bill 30:

<copypaste>
Philadelphia wanted to create a municipal Wi-Fi network in the form of a universal MAN (metropolitan area network). This would be like a utility, costing the public next to nothing while providing universal access. You'd be able to log on from anywhere. It would provide municipal news and broadband access to the Net for anyone with a computer and an 802.11 connection.

The telecom lobby got wind of this and had its stooges in the state legislature draft House Bill 30, which actually banned such municipal activity. The rationale for such a ban? You tell me.

This was softened slightly after some protests to a semi-ban, with Comcast and Verizon getting an opportunity (with potential subsidies) to build a MAN themselves within 14 months of any proposed municipal implementation. This means for anyone to implement a MAN with either Wi-Fi or WiMAX, they have essentially to go through Comcast and Verizon, who can stall the project as they see fit. There are ways around this, but the bill was written to make these corporations de facto gatekeepers on behalf of the state.
</copypaste>

And you know Comcast and|or Verizon aren't going to make such a MAN ...costing the public next to nothing....

(in addition to WiFi and|or WiMax, when will this happen to VOIP? If not in large scale, regionally? The corporations may not be able to swing big votes at the Federal level, but they sure can at the state level (as seen above) There is no way corporation$ are going to take these things sitting down while they watch their bread & butter service$ compete against low-cost competitor$. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to take off their rose-colored glasses).

Monad was not going to be shipped with Vista since the announcement of Vista. Read something about it on PCMagazine.com.

Also, this story also states the same thing.

Also, it's not the shell that is insecure....it's the fact that most Windows users are still, to this day, forced to run as administrator to run some random programs that you shouldn't need Admin rights for either. Also, these same users do not know better and also whine when they have to type in a password. You can't change behavior that has been bred in by many years of use of a insecure OS that was insecure by design.

...just last month:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1835857,00.as p

Dvorak was right!

"Wikis and any public reviewing or consensus processes have to be regulated and closed to the public at large for them to work effectively over time."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1835858,00.as p

• WinFS - The next generation / object-oriented file system.
• MBF - Microsoft Business Framework. A set of .Net class libraries designed to run on top of WinFS

Zyxel sells an access point designed for just this purpose: ZyAir B-4000. Much easier than implementing it yourself, unless there is already on Open Source solution based on NoCat or something similar.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1650238,00.as p

http://www.zyxel.com/product/model.php?indexcate=1 060053881&indexcate1=1085450334&indexFlagvalue=102 1876859

no, that was dvorak.

pcmag

"Vista? As in "Hasta la Vista, baby?" That name might be appropriate as a symbolic goodbye since it might be the end of the line for Microsoft's dominance in the OS business."

"The new OS is getting zero buzz. Zero. now the name Vista, along with the new Microsoft Vista logo, has made it worse. Could anything be less exciting?"

"THE FUTURE OF DESKTOP COMPUTING: Apple. Vista will open the door to what I believe will be a radical change in the computing landscape. The trends are clear. Once the new Mac OS appears next year it will gravitate toward the existing x86 community much more rapidly than anticipated..."

"Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. I see too many smart people with Mac laptops nowadays."

"...it is always possible that Apple doesn't understand the power play position it's in and might actually believe that it's better off somehow keeping its OS in a small niche rather than the big market. If the world changed tomorrow to 85 percent Mac "OS x86" its laptop sales alone would triple overnight. Apple didn't put together what many consider the finest in-house industrial design teams in the world to fool around with piddly sales and more redesigns of the iPod."

"That said, how much more of Steve Jobs can we handle? Do we really want to hear him say "I told you so?" If it gets some excitement back into desktop computing, yes, we do. I think we can take it."

Well, he is.

Here's a quote:

"Idle-Time Process. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right."

This is incredible. I used to respect John Dvorak's opinion - mostly a few years ago, when I read PCMag more, although I still did somewhat until today. But for him to be quite that ignorant, is really amazing. Needless to say, after this and all the other things he's recently said, it's clear that he really is a hack.

c'mon man, don't be a buzzkill. Look at all these techies flaunting their copyright knowledge! This is a huge self esteem booster for all involved.
Dvorak gets to masturbate all over the pages of pcmag, and we get to catch him at it and tell his mommy! Its win-win!
Which is exactly what should be happening right now. Start writing to pcmag and telling them to staunch the steady flow of missinformation and downright lies. Start Clickin!

I don't know how to breal it to you but those are one and the same processors.

No they are not... bloody hell, stop asserting things that are blatantly false and get it through your thick skull, networkBoy. I've seen you state that P4-M == Pentium M several times in this thread, and it is not the case.

The Pentium-M is the notebook processor family that forms part of the Centrino platform. It is primarily based upon the P3, and is a really nice architecture. The P4-M is a mobile version of the P4. It has nowhere near the performance per watt of the P-M, and is totally different.

Dvorak speculated in 2003 that Apple would indeed switch to Intel and that they would use the Itanium line rather than x86. That does make sense, because it would mean a high quality Intel processor without much risk of homebrew Macs.

The prosecuter's office that is handling this case can be reached at 727-464-6221.

I suggest we let them know that if you broadcast an SSID into the public airwaves and then grant DHCP leases across it you are authorizing access to your network.

John C. Dvorak wrote a column about that some time ago.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1565274,00.as p

(QUOTE)
Personal and Corporate Responsibility
Let me jump in and propose a simple, logical public policy. Law enforcement doesn't need to get involved whenever some guy in a doughnut shop poaches a nearby Wi-Fi connection to check his e-mail, thinking he's on the shop's network. This shouldn't be a crime, even if he's intentionally poaching. We must put the burden of responsibility on the broadcaster, not the end user. It has to be made clear that people sending open connections all over town should be responsible for them.

Here's what I propose: Once a wireless signal leaves private property, it becomes public domain. If the person transmitting the signal wants it protected, then encryption is up to him or her. If someone beams an Internet connection into my home and I happen to lock onto the signal, he is trespassing on me, not the other way around. Public policy must reflect this logic. Keep it out of my house if you don't want me using it. Keep it out of my car. Keep it away from me in public places.
(/QUOTE)
It's sensible. We don't want the "internet police" swooping down on people who may or may not be exactly sure what internet connection their gee-whiz easy to use Windows XP machine has latched onto. I would know, and most /. peeps would likely know. But would your sister? Your parents? Hardly a sure thing.

Security needs to be the responsibility of the network operator. That would be good public policy. Tell the prosecutor's office that. Or better yet, tell your congressman.

Your post reminded me of a good Dvorak commentary that came out about a year or so ago. -- Usurper_ii

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1565274,00.as p

By John C. Dvorak

To drive around looking for connections to open wireless access points is called wardriving. In Canada, people who are caught doing this can be arrested for stealing bandwidth. The legality of this practice in the U.S., however, is a bit hazy, and there are many mitigating factors. One is that several organizations deliberately leave access points unencrypted so that people can use them as necessary. Also, many computers with built-in wireless simply grab the first signal they detect. Then there's the trespassing issue: The wardriver isn't trespassing on the router, the router is trespassing on the wardriver's airspace.

Free Access

This issue was brought home to me recently when one of my laptops told me it was ready to install new Windows XP upgrades, even though the laptop was not on a network and my wireless access point was off-line. I discovered that a neighbor's wireless router, named "default," had provided the access. Using my Toshiba's View Wireless Connections option, I saw five nearby networks that I could grab, three of which were unencrypted. Obviously there's plenty of free access around for harried travelers. It seems to me that being able to download your e-mail at an open connection is a good thing.

Look into the legality of this, though, and you hear vague comments like "The FBI doesn't know how legal it is" or "It may be illegal, because you're using someone else's connection or you're spying on their network." This issue will create ridiculous legal problems, which is bad news for both consumers and law enforcement, unless a sensible, national policy can be developed.

Personal and Corporate Responsibility

Let me jump in and propose a simple, logical public policy. Law enforcement doesn't need to get involved whenever some guy in a doughnut shop poaches a nearby Wi-Fi connection to check his e-mail, thinking he's on the shop's network. This shouldn't be a crime, even if he's intentionally poaching. We must put the burden of responsibility on the broadcaster, not the end user. It has to be made clear that people sending open connections all over town should be responsible for them.

Here's what I propose: Once a wireless signal leaves private property, it becomes public domain. If the person transmitting the signal wants it protected, then encryption is up to him or her. If someone beams an Internet connection into my home and I happen to lock onto the signal, he is trespassing on me, not the other way around. Public policy must reflect this logic. Keep it out of my house if you don't want me using it. Keep it out of my car. Keep it away from me in public places.

The Public Interest

This policy makes sense because it lets anyone who wants to provide open access do so without hassle or fear. Groups in San Francisco and Seattle are openly promoting free 802.11 connectivity. Many coffee shops, restaurants, and community groups now provide free wireless access, and directories of these hot spots are easy to find online.

This ubiquity of access is to be encouraged as in the public interest. But it can't happen if the law doesn't make the person transmitting the 802.11 signal responsible, instead of blaming any roaming users who are simply grabbing open connections. If this means that a corporate network is wide open to hackers, because the company doesn't bother encrypting the signal it broadcasts all over town, then so be it.

We must not follow the Canadian model that views using unprotected 802.11 connections as bandwidth theft. My computer grabs wireless signals impinging on my house more often than it grabs my own 802.11 connection. It just does. Agencies shouldn't be required to sort this out; it would be a law enforcement nightmare. In fact, it's

Yahoo posts a news story about their biggest competitor's protection mechanism being broken less than 24 hours after release.

Sigh.... welcome to slashdot. Enjoy the show.

Actually, as is shown at the top of the article, the story was actually published on PC Magazine. Yahoo doesn't have it's own news gathering service, they simply aggregate content from others.

Is CVS only renting the camera, and you're expected to return it? I don't see any references to that anywhere.

According to this article you are only renting the camera, and are supposed to give it back when you're done.

Unless you have to sign something when you buy it saying you'll return it, that camera is yours to do with whatever you please.

So if I ask to borrow your car to drive 20 miles, and I don't sign anything, I can take your car on a 2000 mile trip, turn back your odometer, and get away with it? A contract doesn't have to be signed in order to be binding. Sure, you might get away with breaking it, but that doesn't mean you're not stealing.

blakespot

(Now if only he spoke against software patents...)

Oh, wait. He did. But a bit of refreshment shouldn't be bad :)

The ISPs need to act, certainly, but people need to be educated to secure their computers against these worms. It isn't easy, but it can be done. It'll take lots of work, and progress will be extremely slow, but we, yes we, are the people to do it.

What do I mean? Well, we all know that there are plenty of good, free security tools out there, from antivirus programs, antispyware programs, and firewalls. CDs are dirt cheap, and every person reading this probably has a few hundred lying around. Everyone here probably also has plenty of ignorant friends and coworkers. Well, try to educate them! Next time a major Internet security story hits the mainstream media (like, I don't know, the big cc number heist facilitated by a virus), get your employer's blessing to send out an e-mail to everyone asking if they'd like a CD full of free programs to secure their home computers. Then, as people come to see you, pass out the disc, along with some articles on basic security, and tell them to take a few minutes to read and educate themselves. You may not reach all of them, but you will reach some, and if everyone at least tries, we may do some good here.

I'll even supply the URL for a PC Mag article on computer security for the beginners to read.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1754340,00.as p

That's not a review, it's a summary of the press release and it's two weeks old. I'm used to commenters not RTFA, but it's getting a bit much when the posters can't be bothered either. You can find the only real review of the X41 Tablet I'm aware of here:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1823715,00.as p

According to About.com, it affects only a small % of discs. Of course, like all digital data, replication is essential to keeping eternal life (despite the best efforts of the MPAA to stop you ;) ). More about the overalarming cries of DVD rot from PC Magazine, Manifest Technologies, and Enterprise Networks and Servers.

Your 20 year old VHS tapes should have suffered significant quality loss by now. It doesn't have to be defective to go bad; VHS slowly goes bad on its own.

And no, he didn't invent the layout either.

Yamaha YSP-1

Here's my take on it:

Google Audio Search

Audio content on the internet is in chaos. To reign in the chaos, and to capitalize on internet audio file assets, Google will launch an audio search engine or audio file search tool by 2006, but probably sooner.

I think that podcasting will fit into the equation. More and more audio content is flowing onto the web but it is in the dark corners right now. The podcasting directories and search engines basically stink. As time goes on, and as this content grows, it'll be time for Google to enter the fray. There is every reason to believe that advertising would work just fine with podcasting, especially if you find the content have the Master Index (read: Google).

But what about music? iPods are so dominant. Near the end of 2004 Apple's share of the MP3 market was about 87%. Even if that drops it ain't no big thing since the entire pie is still growing like crazy. This dominance of hardware drives dominance of iTunes. (I'm looking for disagreement of course, but throw numbers at me please.)

Let's be fair to this guy; he really had it right. And of course, as flame retardant, I have to state my Mac credentials: I am writing this from my dual-G5 Tiger box... I've never owned an Intel machine. But I'm glad and hopeful for this switch, although a bit worried at the same time.

Today's announcement that Apple will be phasing itself to the Intel architecture comes as no surprise to this writer since it's simply a smart move. I also first got wind of this deal back in 2003 and expected it to have been announced this January. I missed it by one keynote and 5 months. It's not a secret that I have been suggesting that Apple do this through most of the 1990's and most recently in 2001 (see links below). So when I got wind of it actually happening and wrote it up in this column it seemed, at least to many Mac heads, that I was making it up in desperation. I'd invite the readers to go back to those columns and read what the Mac blowhards had to say about it.

Here was the last of many columns suggesting Apple choose Intel

Here was the column where I reported on this deal (read the comments by the Mac blowhards)

Here is the column outlining why I think the switch is a great idea

I'm around 90-percent right in a lot of this...good reading

Today's announcement that Apple will be phasing itself to the Intel architecture comes as no surprise to this writer since it's simply a smart move. I also first got wind of this deal back in 2003 and expected it to have been announced this January. I missed it by one keynote and 5 months. It's not a secret that I have been suggesting that Apple do this through most of the 1990's and most recently in 2001 (see links below). So when I got wind of it actually happening and wrote it up in this column it seemed, at least to many Mac heads, that I was making it up in desperation. I'd invite the readers to go back to those columns and read what the Mac blowhards had to say about it.

Here was the last of many columns suggesting Apple choose Intel

Here was the column where I reported on this deal (read the comments by the Mac blowhards)

Here is the column outlining why I think the switch is a great idea

I'm around 90-percent right in a lot of this...good reading

Today's announcement that Apple will be phasing itself to the Intel architecture comes as no surprise to this writer since it's simply a smart move. I also first got wind of this deal back in 2003 and expected it to have been announced this January. I missed it by one keynote and 5 months. It's not a secret that I have been suggesting that Apple do this through most of the 1990's and most recently in 2001 (see links below). So when I got wind of it actually happening and wrote it up in this column it seemed, at least to many Mac heads, that I was making it up in desperation. I'd invite the readers to go back to those columns and read what the Mac blowhards had to say about it.

Here was the last of many columns suggesting Apple choose Intel

Here was the column where I reported on this deal (read the comments by the Mac blowhards)

Here is the column outlining why I think the switch is a great idea

I'm around 90-percent right in a lot of this...good reading

Today's announcement that Apple will be phasing itself to the Intel architecture comes as no surprise to this writer since it's simply a smart move. I also first got wind of this deal back in 2003 and expected it to have been announced this January. I missed it by one keynote and 5 months. It's not a secret that I have been suggesting that Apple do this through most of the 1990's and most recently in 2001 (see links below). So when I got wind of it actually happening and wrote it up in this column it seemed, at least to many Mac heads, that I was making it up in desperation. I'd invite the readers to go back to those columns and read what the Mac blowhards had to say about it.

Here was the last of many columns suggesting Apple choose Intel

Here was the column where I reported on this deal (read the comments by the Mac blowhards)

Here is the column outlining why I think the switch is a great idea

I'm around 90-percent right in a lot of this...good reading

About the gloating, anyway.

Check out his PC World column , which is full of obnoxious gloating.

I'm surprised he's not claiming that they'll be using the Itanium this time.

Is it this commercial you are talking about?

Yes, very extensive benchmarks. You better follow their advice.

Except for the fact that, at least according to this ZDNet article, Microsoft is backporting the XML reading and writing capability to Office 2000, XP & 2003. So unless you're still using Office 97 (admittedly, there are still many, but it IS 9 years old!). So, what about your point now??

So, that means there is about a 2.7% chance that your next computer will be a Mac?
That's not real high. Maybe you need to love Mac MORE than the "next guy" to consider yourself a real Mac fan.

I saw a great article about the Scooba. It had some interesting details on how the thing actually works. Check it out: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1818914,00.as p

The odd thing about the Scooba is that iRobot's first product was also a floor-cleaning machine. I've heard Rod Brooks tell this story in person a couple of times, and it cracked me up.

PC Magazine, for example, says:

...the company first partnered with JohnsonDiversey (formerly Johnson Wax Professional) in 1998, with the goal of producing a robot floor cleaner. Commercial floor cleaning is roughly a $50 billion business. Angle says that any floor-cleaning system involves three things: sweep, scrub, and polish. No machine on the market did all three at once, but since iRobot developers didn't want to build three separate robots, they set about creating one that could do all three. The end result was the NexGen Multi-Function Floor Care machine. The success of that project led them to Roomba.

If you read between the lines here, you get the real story: they spent a lot of time building this three-function janitor-bot with a big computer in the middle to drive it around the building. They then started showing it to potential customers, every one of whom said the same thing: "A 3-function cleaning machine? That's fantastic! Take that computer out of the middle of it and put a handle on for the janitor and we'll buy a bajillion of 'em!"

So they did. The hole where the computer had been made nice storage. Better yet, iRobot had learned a valuable lesson about disruptive technologies: small steps.

Dvorak's original article predicting this was written in March of 2003. In the first sentence of the article, he said that Apple would switch to Intel processors within 12-18 months.

That 18 months was over September 2004. How is this 2004-2005???

I thought that

The Coming Death of Cheap VoIP
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1812887,00.as p

was pretty interesting. Dvorak is saying that the 911 problem is being exploited by the telcos who want to own voip. 911 is the thin end of the wedge.

Gee, that's reaching deep into the bag of tricks: insult one group by insulting another that's well-known for fanaticism.

Here's Dvorak's own words about his Amiga:
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1996/961003-pcm ag.html

And only a few months ago, he was insulting the Mac community by comparing them to the Amiga:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1745930,00.as p

So why bring up the Amiga? Seems like Dvorak likes to drag a stick across the cages of owners of computers whose market share never exceeds five percent, then uses it as evidence that they're rabid. Puhlease! It's not as if the Linux market is a unified entity.

Well, I guess I can do your research for you: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1815596,00.as p

115.2 GFLOPS for the 360 CPU. And like I said, there's an photo at the PS3 press event that showed the same thing on a graph. Surely you've seen those pictures?

I wouldn't bank on a HDD being included until they say so. If they were planning on it, I suspect they would have said 'HDD included' and not specified capacity if they hadn't decided on that point yet.

You seem to be confusing the recently announced Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 (which is already shipping) with the long beforehand hyped Seagate Momentus stuff.

The following is from a pcmag article:

"Another key decision was software. In July, members of the task force went to visit Digital Research to ask the firm to port its CP/M operating system to the 8086 architecture. Legend has it that founder Gary Kildall was flying his plane at the time. Whatever the reason, Kildall's wife, Dorothy, and DR's attorneys didn't sign the nondisclosure agreement IBM presented. So the IBM team left and flew north to Seattle to meet with Microsoft, from which they had hoped to obtain a version of BASIC.

Firefox made claims that their browser was secure and had security built in from the start. It is right and proper that such a claim, used to convince the public to choose it as a browser be held up to scrutiny.

Now the Firefox partisans will claim that this incident reveals that the response time of the Firefox developers supports their claim.

I would say that the jury is still out. Security problems existed and the Firefox marketing was bullish to suggest you were safe. Now we may know that target is unachievable, but it was a core part of the marketing. Firefox directly attacked its competitors on safety, so it needs to prove itself safer

See this article for how people are reacting:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1775806,00.as p

The lack of background updates is a real issue. Before Windows Updater the biggest problem MS faced was unpatched machines. Those unpatched Firefox machines are a real issue.

So the jury is out on the Firefox teams security claims.

Of course Firefox may have otehr good features, but they need to be held accountable for their claims.

Huh. Out of curiousity, was it an updated/upgraded Knowledge Navigator, or was it a precursor to the eMate? Or something else entirely?

blah, blah, blah. apple has every right. they are a business. they are in it to make money. etc. the point is that everyone is quick to jump on MSFT, but apple can do whatever. yes, it's possible to use non-itms music stores with your ipod. yes, it's possible to put itms music onto a different player. also, it was always possible to use non-IE browsers onto a windows box. the platform (ipod-itms) is structured so that it's unattractive to do that. if you have an ipod, you're going to use itms. if you use itms, you'll sure enough own an ipod. and because both of those are virtual monopolies, your choices are limited by this.

if you do not think ipod is a monopoly ... consider that ipod has 87% of the market. the next closest is 3.6%. itms has a 70% market share. my guess is that both of these #s has gone up since the release of the proliferation of the shuffle.

how hypocritical is it to talk of open standards and platforms, and then talk up apple for closing ipod and itms off to outside players?

Wow! Could that ever happen? Well, ok, it already has. And of course, here's Dvorak's thoughts on it.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1429898,00.as p

It was made by Sharp of all people. It was a nice picture too. I'm not sure that anything is broadcast in 1080p though. This was about 3 months ago so others might have the ability by now.

I told myself I would probably wait until content was available in 1080p before making the plunge. Of course, by then some higher def standard will be on the horizon.

Just like when he insisted Apple would switch to Intel Processors

"IDLE-TIME PROCESS. Once in a while the system will go into an idle mode, requiring from five minutes to half an hour to unwind. It's weird, and I almost always have to reboot. When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing? Once in a while, after you've clicked all over the screen trying to get the system to do something other than idle, all your clicks suddenly ignite and the screen goes crazy with activity. This is not right."