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Well, the parent makes all of its points in the form of a question, and from watching fox news and msnbc I've learned that any time someone asks a leading question to make a point, the question can almost always be answered "no." Let's try it out:

- Isn't this a breach of privacy? No, it's aggregated data, there's nothing personally identifiable about it
- Also, Isn't it illegal with the methods that the networks are using to get personal information, in order to fine tune the battering ram of advertisements the besiege us with every day? No, but it's not even relevant because personal information isn't involved.

See: http://www.pcworld.com/article/183054/the_googletivo_deal_what_it_means_for_you.html.

Having read not only TFA, but TFC (the effing comments), here is a fairly informative comment posted to this article from XEagleDriver:

I think the key is that CA is stepping in, legislatively, and attempting to fix a problem that is already on its way out, not a real issue, . . . Agree with Clint's statement, the table below paints a clearer picture (pun intended) of how CA will be lagging industry's voluntary standards.
Energy Star vs CEC Tier Comparisons

--------------------Energy Star 3.0-----Energy Star 4.0-----CEC Tier 1-----Energy Star 5.0-----CEC Tier 2
Date Implemented In effect now-----------May 2010------------2011----------May 2012------------2013
32" Screen (watts)---120-------------------78-------------------116-------------55------------------75
50" Screen (watts)---353-------------------153------------------245------------108------------------153

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/182653/california_energy_commission_rule_to_impact_hdtv_industry.html [pcworld.com]

NOTES:
Energy Star is a voluntary standard, while CEC is a mandatory CA only requirement.
CONCLUSIONS:
1) CEC Tier 1 will be less restrictive, than the Energy Star 4.0 industry standard which will pre-date Tier 1 implementation.
2) CEC Tier 2 will be less restrictive, than the Energy Star 5.0 industry standard which will pre-date Tier 2 implementation.

Looks like only Energy Star HDTV's will cut the mustard in CA by 2011--no big deal. The rest of the nation will probably already be ahead of these "standards" in the clearly evident move to "green" stuff.

Cheers,
XEagleDriver

In other words, many or most of the current Energy Star certified TV's already satisfy the California requirements. TFA is much ado about nothing.

...but I've seen water cooling for my short time on this earth as the superior cooling method. So much that I ran it myself. Sony even puts it in their system once but it was of a passive system than a pump/coolant system. Big name using it right out of the box. I don't know why leaks would be that big of an issue as this isn't a high pressure water system; being a closed loop it is going to be a very low pressure system unless you are trying to blow water as fast as you can through it. If it moves too fast, it will create a layer of stagnant coolant just off the surfaces and degrade cooling. Low (pressure)and slow (moving) should yield best cooling. No need to move 2000 Lph unless you are using one pump for many heat sources to maintain flow, but I wouldn't put that many devices on one pump.

You're kidding, right? Porn is responsible for a lot of the innovation on the internet people take for granted today.

The big thing that comes immediately to mind is video technology, and streaming video in particular. I'm not saying that Youtube wouldn't exist if not for porn, I'm just saying that Youtube would have come quite a bit later.

See also: http://www.pcworld.com/article/155745/thank_you_porn_12_ways_the_sex_trade_has_changed_the_web.html

Cancel your cable if you want to save a little money and what you are interested in is available online. Free shows and movies online won't last forever, though. Free everything is just not sustainable, and right now they are just trying to capture eyeballs and prove the concept. At some point, expect paywalls to appear, at least for 'premium content' or selected episodes of a season or whatever. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Of course, all they're saying is "may" charge.

It's usually more like $10k per violation. Which is a lot more believable. Although there's a lot of scare mongering out there about $90k to $150k per violation fines. Your boss is more likely to believe the former number, but disregard the latter numbers as pure FUD.

$950,000 BSA Violation Fine (about $8900 per)
U.S. Companies Fined for Using Illegal Software ($70-$110k total fines)

So, as in all things legal, YMMV. At least with the above two links, you can offer concrete evidence of the actual fine amounts rather then some hypothetical amounts.

If you don't want to deal with the bugs the easiest way is to not allow them to get them in the first place. being a PC repairman I had this same problem with my dad, who frankly could tear up a Sherman tank with a toothbrush. Run them as a limited user and set up Comodo EasyVPN (with admin privileges of course) so you can install any software they might "need" and you should be good to go. Now the only time I have to go deal with my dad's computers is when he picks up a new piece of hardware like a camera.

Here is the link for the 32bit version of EasyVPN, they also have an x64 if like me you have moved past 32bit. Your family will love how you can "magically" install stuff without having to be there, and you'll love not having them tear up the PC when you're not around. A win/win in my book.

But in my experience trying to "educate" users is like pissing in the wind, bud. You see there is this thing called "social engineering" and the dancing bunny problem. You see they WANT to see the bunnies, and no matter how many times you say it's a trap! they will completely ignore you and go right ahead and do whatever they need to in order to see the bunnies. So as long as they are allowed admin rights then this will be your expression more often than not. Better to just be the "installer monkey" and keep them in a nice locked down limited user account.

Google copying things? http://www.pcworld.com/article/130497/rival_asks_google_to_yank_copycat_application.html

A simple "the code will be released later" statement from Google would certainly clear that up and keep the wolves at bay. Currently, the only word from them is noncommittal comments from Jean Baptiste Queru. Why so sheepish about it if that's the case? I don't think they like having stories like this about their utopian OS. Seems like a simple fix.

Just imaging if the news had read,
PC users upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 have run into a variety of hair pulling problems since last Thursday when Windows 7 launched. Complaints range from endless reboots to refusals by Windows to accept Microsoft's assigned product keys. As of Monday morning, Microsoft had answered about 2600 questions that poured into support forum regarding upgrades. At last count, around 1400 questions remained unanswered.
Oh wait... it does Not to pick favorites, I'd say both the latest Windows and the latest Ubuntu are less than perfect, but both will improve over time. I would also give Microsoft credit for having spent a lot more than Ubuntu did testing their latest release.

Or is it just another shitstorm of astroturf and payed for reviews that is pretty much the trademark of Microsoft?

Yeah I'm sure they payed off Cnet, PC World, PC Magazine, and even Engadget... You're an idiot.


And technically astroturfing is payed-for reviews since I'm pretty sure most companies pay their employees.

They can always move on to Android OS like MIO is doing: http://www.pcworld.com/article/174434/android_moving_into_mio_mibuddy_navigation_device.html

1) HDDs don't have excessive wear and tear from use. We don't know how long high end SSDs will last - but HDDs can go years of heavy read/write use.

You're joking, right? One of the most common causes of hard drive failures is damage to the heads from the head ramp. That's mechanical damage every time the heads get parked. And in laptops, the rate of damage is even worse because when they get bumped around, the head arm slams itself against the ramp to protect the platters. And the second most common cause is data corruption of the control track, without which the hard drive becomes a brick; there's a theory from one data recovery company that fluid bearings cause vibration that leads to this corruption. And that's not even counting the fact that you have a head arm moving back and forth, bearings spinning, etc. There's plenty of mechanical wear and tear going on, and some of it can be quite catastrophic.

SSDs have none of those mechanical failure modes. And even the risk of solder ball failure (a common cause of hard drive controller board failure) should be significantly lower because solid state drives generally don't dissipate as much heat as spinning drives. Thus, the failure of a SSD is likely to be fairly predictable in write count to the point that you could set your watch by it, and the exceptions are likely to be much fewer than with hard drives.

To put this in perspective, ask yourself this: when is the last time you had RAM suddenly go bad? In my life, I can only think of one single time when I've seen RAM that worked from the factory stop working, and I'm not 100% sure even of that one. Hard drives? I lost four last year alone. So it's not a question of whether SSDs will be more reliable on average, but how many orders of magnitude more reliable they will be. My money is on either 2 or 3.

2) As prices of SSDs drop, companies will flock to the new market, shovelling out short lived crap. (Same thing happened to HDDs)

Maybe so, but this is what reviews are for. :-)

2) HDDs will have superior capacity for a very long time. It will be hard to match that for the "best value" drives priced at around $100, or even the cheapest ones priced at ~$50.

Again, though, if 95% of customers don't need that capacity, there's no reason for them to buy a less reliable technology. And there's little question, given the failure rates on hard drives, that even the most poorly built junk SSDs are going to be more reliable on average, assuming you ignore all drives that are DOA....

3) HDDs can ramp up the cache to have very awesome performance.

I'd settle for a tenth of hard drive performance to have avoided my four hard drive failures last year. It was a brutal year. As soon as I can move entirely to SSDs, I'm switching and never looking back.

Now picture a modern 3.5" drive with dual or quad heads from WD. Add in 4GB of cache, and make it 10000 RPM. Stick it in a DVD drive bay and include battery backup. The cost would literally be hundreds of dollars, but you'd have something like 8TB of space capable of almost maxing out SATA3. (500MB/sec for short bursts under 3 minutes long isn't unrealistic)

And the average computer user would use... pretty much the 4 GB of cache, and wouldn't ever read or write a single byte to the physical platter except for data reliability reasons.... Saying that hard drive vendors could increase space by fourfold doesn't matter. They could increase it a hundredfold and it wouldn't matter if 95% of the customers don't care. It's like the problem with selling software upgrades. If customers don't see enough value in upgrading, they won't.

Yeah, I know, right? Linux will never make it. Any OS with a paltry 60% of the server market (look for it, its in there). is hopeless. Might as well give up now. Especially these poor fools.

Hell, anybody with low marketshare should just throw in the towel and quit wasting everybody's time, right?

Oh...

I never had this problem on my GNU/Linux system. Nor have I ever heard anyone about this issue on Mac OSX.

Try upgrading a Ubuntu 8.04 install to 9.04 or 9.10 on a Fujitsu S7110 laptop. Forget about pretty compbiz fireworks, wireless networking, and external monitor support without driver headaches post upgrade. I'm cool with it though. It's hard to expect more than MS is capable of doing on a $400 platform when linux is free...

As for MacOS. Snow leopard is notorious for problems with upgrades and costs at least as much as Windows when you consider the hardware premium. My boss (6 month old macbook pro) AND a friend of mine (1 year old macbook) ran into the "bricking" problem after upgrading to snow leopard(there is mention in this article):
http://www.pcworld.com/article/171129/snow_leopard_users_4_biggest_gripes.html
What I really don't like is how Apple will never never never ever ever admit that a problem exists, instead they insist that users are installing "unsupported software" or running with "corrupted files" blah blah blah. My roommate loves Apple and argues with me about this sometimes but I just think of Apple like any other PC/OS vendor, I'm not trying to pick on them (or any other vendor) they just aren't as good as a fanboys and "geniuses" will tell you (like any vendor's fanboys and sales people). And interestingly my roommate has yet to attempt the upgrade on his 1 1/2 year old macbook pro...

I am sure that if Linux had the market share that Windows does, it would have many more security problems.

Seeing as you like devil's advocacy, let's examine this for a statement for a minute. It seems reasonable to me that many hackers would prefer to compromise a server rather than a desktop seeing as servers are always on so they're great for a bot-net node and many of them have more interesting things going through them like e-commerce, banking, etc. Let's think about this in light of the fact that according to this article Steve Ballmer himself recently thought Linux has a 60 percent share of the server market.

If that's even remotely close to being true, then it doesn't stand to reason that hackers aren't trying to exploit it. I'd posit that they are. For some reason they just aren't succeeding very well. Hmmm.

As far as I know from reading about hacks to replace the hard drive, the DRM is on a file system and file level and not in hardware on the drives. You can unlock the file system by removing the drive while the system is browsing the drive. You can then connect the drive to your computer with SATA (the connector on the enclosure is just a funky SATA+power connector from MS, while inside of the enclosure the drive uses standard SATA) and access, move, or copy the files, but they will not work without you having signed into your account on the 360. Sure, there is a special firmware on the drive to tell the system it is an official drive, but from what I have seen, that is all it does. There is a hack to install an off-the-shelf SATA drive by replacing the firmware on the drive. The only excuse I can think that they could use is that they do not want to deal with supporting unofficial hardware or what that hardware could do to the system. This is understandable, to a degree. However, the profit margins they must be making by selling a 120 GB drive for $160, when you can get a similar model drive from Newegg for $65 dollars or less (Actual drive is WD1200BEVS, Newegg has WD1200BEVE for $65 and WD1200BEVT for $55, and I believe one or both of them are compatible with the hack), tell me that they are locking you to their drives for pure greed and nothing else.

Well stated, but I think when you also combine this news with the recent story that MSFT is looking to double the price of an XBOX Live subscription to $100/year or more, then it paints a picture that MSFT is getting desperate to squeeze a profit out of their gaming devision for fear of losing the whole thing if they don't soon. Makes me really wonder about their financial picture in general that they seem to not be able to invest in this area with a long term growth vision anymore, even when they are currently losing to the Wii.

... or more likely, pick up the $99.99 60GB Live Starter Pack for Xbox 360.

Or (in an even more likely scenario if you're reading Slashdot) you will opt to do it yourself to get twice that storage for a little over half the cost. This is, of course, assuming that locking out "unauthorized storage" does not also target in some crazy way locking out hard drives.

according to several major computer publishers the '09 version of Norton did a lot better than all other antivirus software according to MaximumPC.com http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/protect_your_pc_from_guys_like_this

and PCWorld.com
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/44052/review/internet_security_2009.html

Not that either are like security mags I'm an MPC fanboy, so take this as you will.

We can sure spot the astroturfers here.

Mitchell asks why people are so ticked off by Vista. I could, and have, gone on for thousands of words, explaining why in detail, Vista's a stinker. But, let sum it up. Vista is the 1985 Yugo GV of Windows operating systems. It's slow, it operates badly, and it smells bad. Which reminds me, do you know how to make a Yugo go 60 MPH? Push it off a cliff.

Using Vista Instead of XP Is Dumb

It's a non-working prototype solar cell glued onto a Sony reader for the purpose of having a photo of what it will some day look like: http://www.pcworld.com/article/173459/lg_develops_solar_panel_for_ebook_reader.html Actually kinda looks photoshopped on to me.

I don't like what I have seen posted in the headline either. Try this or this instead.

Blue Dam is the Chinese government's replacement for Green Dam. Blue Dam is aimed for the servers and make use of hardware and software and is suppose to be multiple times more effective then Green Dam was. It is not part of this lawsuit.
Found an article that better explains it. The chinese government hired Jinhui Computer System Engineering who wrote the software, and would of been the company that stole the code. They are China based so no lawsuits on them.
CBS Interactive is being sued because they are US based and distributed the software. It is still down intellectual property.

Not true. Here's a recent PCWorld story (too lazy to search for the /. story) It's called Google Voice.

That is exactly what they were FORCED into providing by threat of lawsuit.

Everything you see there are those opensource projects that Apple has "borrowed" and must, by the terms of the license provide source for.

Yet for years they stonewalled this. They were finally forced to put this up

Have you been to:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163909/apple_is_sued_after_pressuring_opensource_itunes_project.html
http://www.eff.org/cases/odioworks-v-apple

Here's another link to the same article, hosted at PC World (1 page printable version), just in case we need the mirror: http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,172852/printable.html

Didn't you just post a screenshot of Chrome? But without breaking UI standards?

"Are there any proxies who can filter _all_ sort of packing/zipping/password protected executable files with a 100% hit rate? I doubt it."

What????

Don't you know about limited user rights? That prevents ANY installation of ANY program.

If someone accidentally kills someone else while driving a car, he or she will get less time for manslaughter than this man is supposedly getting for sending an email to a PRIVATE address.

Is this story a hoax? There is only one other report, and that report is identical: Misdirected Spyware Infects Ohio Hospital. Both apparently came from the IDG News Service. This is the last sentence of both stories: "A spokeswoman with the Akron Children's Hospital was unaware of the case and unable to comment." She was unaware of a case that is 18 months old?

Just like short people, the Zune has got no reason to live.

Windows XP is still being sold, right? That brand new computers are shipping by the thousand every single day with Windows XP as the OEM-installed operating system?

Can you say Class Action Lawsuit? LOL

It appears that Microsoft's compromise to allow cheap XP Home licenses on netbooks in an attempt to block the sudden surge in new linux users could backfire. No biggie though, it seems they can produce crap and just shell out a billion to make it go away.

I hadn't heard of this case before, and am confused. It says here that "Childs eventually did hand over his administrative passwords to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom", so why is he still being held? I understand the high bail because they were worried about what he might do to the network, but surely the passwords have been changed by now? Or has the Mayor now sided with Childs against his employers and refused to hand them over, too?

Do what I did for me and two people I know, hack a cheap 120 GB WD hard drive to work. http://www.pcworld.com/article/150970/upgrade_your_xbox_360s_hard_drive_on_the_cheap.html

Forgive my ignorance, but what does the operating system version have to do with anything?

You're forgiven.

OS X 10.6 is a major shift away from the Carbon (C++) framework to Cocoa (Objective-C) framework. In previous versions OS X supported both frameworks, but with the migration to "complete" 64 bit (the default is still 32, but that's another story) the choice was made to stop supporting both frameworks and Carbon lost. Adobe made a major shift between CS3 and CS4 too by dropping support for PPC and focusing only on Intel + cocoa. That's why the OS version matters.

But then, you could have figured that out Googling it with Bing instead of just using the word Retarded.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/144119/adobe_64bit_photoshop_struggle.html

They already did

http://www.pcworld.com/article/166723/hands_on_with_samsungs_android_handset.html

Not sure when it will be available, but I think it was Real Soon Now.

I clicked your search link to test that observation.

This time there was nothing about OSS or Mac, but the 5th result was http://forums.pcworld.com/message/249692 "Bing Search Reveals Pro-Microsoft Results"

Swings and roundabouts in the world of search.

This is probably worded in way that you can understand.

"In fact, it would take little more than a cable modem to deny service to large metropolitan areas in the U.S. For example, a city the size of Washington, D.C., could be taken out by a DoS attack with a bandwidth of about 2.8 megabits per second, they said."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/122878/sms_attack_could_harm_cell_phones.html


And.. You should read the section titled "Seperation of Voice and Data" (as well the whole document) from the researchers at Penn.

"Even if a provider rationalized the expense, the elevated provisioning merely makes DoS attacks more difficult but not im-possible"

http://www.smsanalysis.org/smsanalysis.pdf

This research paper is 4 years old! How long has it been since you left your parents basement?

Bullcrap yourself friendo.

According to PC World, Sprint was more reliable. http://www.pcworld.com/article/167391/a_day_in_the_life_of_3g.html

They're not.

"Apple Not Immune from Bad Economy as Mac Sales Drop - PC World"

http://www.pcworld.com/article/155553/apple_not_immune_from_bad_economy_as_mac_sales_drop.html

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/138352/reports_on_chinese_ipod_sweatshop_suppressed.html?tk=rel_news
How's your crow pie, bitch? Newsflash: China is a COMMUNIST country.

Negropontes' biggest mistake was getting into bed with Wintel. We don't really have any idea of the machinations that went on in the background to sabatage the OLPC. But his road to Damascus conversion must be one of the most unexpected since Scott McNealys.

"AMD is our partner, which means Intel is pissing on me. Bill Gates is not pleased either, but if I am annoying Microsoft and Intel then I figure I am doing something right,", 2006

'Negroponte says that a Windows operating system is in the process of being fine-tuned on the XO as we speak. "Microsoft and OLPC are in discussion on how to release it', 2008

'Intel .. is promoting its Classmate PC (CMPC) in Nigeria to various organisations as well as government'

'The organization is in negotiations with Microsoft to load Windows on dual-boot versions of the XO laptop', May 2008

Blu-ray will become cheaper as soon as the new Blu-ray competition gets started.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

Ballmer and Gates also echoed the note Business Division President Stephen Elop sounded in an interview with CNET News last week--that Microsoft really doesn't know what Chrome OS will look like.

"Who knows what this thing is?" Ballmer said.

It's the Linux kernel with a new UI. Probably will have some other beefed up parts (security or graphics) along with better hardware support on select devices as they throw their weight around. Judging by the name, it will most likely have a windowing look a lot like the browser. Could be different but I'll bet they build it with real estate in mind like the Chrome browser for netbooks.

I'm also guessing that you know a hell of a lot more about Chrome OS than many of Google's own employees as you've never been entirely stupid when it comes to keeping tabs on your enemies. So either you're letting your own personal ego get in the way of your business sense while underestimating Google or you are asking a rhetorical question to spread uncertainty of what Chrome OS could be. Either way it's pretty childish. I may not know exactly what Chrome OS is but I definitely know what Windows Vista is and I do not want.

I just downloaded Google Chrome 3.0.192.0 for Mac and it crashed before I could even open a page. There is no excuse for this; my Mac Pro is perfect in every way with eight 2.93 GHz cores, 32 GB RAM, and a fresh install of Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Ergo any crashing Google Chrome does is Google Chrome's own fault!

Why is it that Apple and Mozilla can do this but Google can't? I ran Internet Explorer 8 for months before its final release, Firefox 3.5 since its 3.1 days, and found Safari 4 Developer Preview more stable than Safari 3. In fact, even WebKit is more stable than Chrome.

What really baffles me, however, isn't the instability I've come to expect from Google, but that Google has the audacity to ask for personal user info to improve its browser. Is the search engine maker datamonger really so desperate for my private information that it's stooped to the level of Trojan horses to get it?

They should ask me that when it doesn't crash on launch.

Everything Google does is just another way to sieve personal data away for targeting ads. This kind of Big Brother crap is more repulsive than the fat programmers that make it possible. Google, with its deep pockets and doctoral scholars, thinks that by holding user data hostage it can maneuver around Apple and Microsoft. While this may be true, I'm not willing to be a part of it.

In using Google's search, Gmail, Chrome or whatever else the faceless robot of a company invents, the user is surrendering their personal information to a giant hivemind. No longer are their personal preferences some choice they make; they're a string of data processed by a Google algorithm: Google dehumanizes its users!

So while Google is arrogant enough to paint spyware shiny so it can parse our browsing habits, the least they could do is make sure it doesn't crash. If Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla can get their preview releases right, why can't Google? And now they're making their own operating systems?

Get real, Google! I'll use your crashing codebloat when my Mac is cold and dead and I'm looking for handouts. Until then, quit mining my personal data!

If you can convince 4 out of 10 of your customers to pay for an unnecessary update that nets them no benefit, I'd say that yes, your marketing department certainly did something right.

LOL. That worked when they marketed Windows ME to home consumers and Windows 2000 to every one else, but I doubt it'll work for Windows 7. Then again, the need for effective marketing can be used an excuse.

From an article that showed hit Google News today:

The closer you are to Windows 7, the more you like it. That's what supporters of the new operating system say. To them, reports that 60 percent of IT admins aren't planning to deploy Microsoft's newest simply don't make sense.

[lots of breathless comments from end users]

The generally positive response from real Windows 7 users apparently isn't reaching the mass of potential customers. This has to happen if Windows 7 is to avoid becoming Vista 2.

The conclusion? Microsoft isn't trying hard enough to educate all those IT guys who think otherwise.

It's not the OS that's the problem, it's the marketing!

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168270/windows_7_forecast_to_squash_vista_quickly.html

The other side of the coin.

I love predictions. Anyone can make them and anyone can back it up with as much BS as they want. The truth is probably somewhere in between...

Major League Baseball Advanced Media totally botched the transition not once, but twice. When switching from Flash to Silverlight last year their new Silverlight-based streaming player didn't work, leaving paying customers without service for days. This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities, and left these same paying customers without the opening day experience they're paying for two years in a row.

Also I'm sure politics played a role too.

MLB 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/144035/mlbs_web_video_strikes_out_on_opening_day.html

MLB 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/major-league-baseball-str_b_185158.html

You can't see a way to make flipping a hardware switch feasible, just because it's a home PC?

The end user of a home PC will probably flip the switch to install a trojan horse. (Otherwise, we wouldn't already have botnets and fake antivirus programs.) I don't see a way to make it feasible for someone who understands what she's doing to flip the switch while preventing the owner of a PC who who doesn't understand what he's doing from flipping the switch.