Slashdot Mirror

October 25, 2007: "Microsoft said sales of its Windows Vista OS experienced double-digit growth through multi-year business contracts, and demand for Microsoft Office, Windows Server and SQL Server was also high."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138958-c,companynews/article.html

You can directly lookup whois information at the internic's lookup page, or use the unix whois command or a Windows utility like Cyberkit to discover whether or not a domain has been registered without leaking your interest to someone who might try to grab it first.

64 bits are WAY FASTER than 32 bits!

the people who are switching aren't switching because of the quality... they're switching because of the shiny. i work in a college IT department and deal with move-in every year. we have a vendor who offers HP business class machines. the reasons i hear people going for apple is because they're prettier. seriously. i had a girl come in with her apple not knowing how to install office, install the virus protection, or how to even eject a CD. she didn't know a thing about her new computer because she bought it solely for the shine fact.

i also want to know what quality? i know at least 3 or 4 people who have apples that have sent them back and forth to apple to get fixed and they just can't get it right. one of them has sent it back and forth 7 times (at $80 a pop on apple's dime... you'd think they would've gotten him a new computer by now). the market share is growing because people value shine, not because of quality.

the people who are switching aren't switching because of the quality... they're switching because of the shiny. i work in a college IT department and deal with move-in every year. we have a vendor who offers HP business class machines. the reasons i hear people going for apple is because they're prettier. seriously. i had a girl come in with her apple not knowing how to install office, install the virus protection, or how to even eject a CD. she didn't know a thing about her new computer because she bought it solely for the shine fact.

i also want to know what quality? i know at least 3 or 4 people who have apples that have sent them back and forth to apple to get fixed and they just can't get it right. one of them has sent it back and forth 7 times (at $80 a pop on apple's dime... you'd think they would've gotten him a new computer by now). the market share is growing because people value shine, not because of quality.

In more important news, scientists are baffled by the latest reports from the independent research group 3rd Space apparently claiming that there are only 8 spots on the human body where you can actually be hit by a projectile.

Get on the wire. Tell everyone how to shoot these bastards down.

I was amused about this "Pay what you want" Vs. Bittorrent and hear is what i found: http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005708.html Anybody download it? And what did it sound like? My guess is if it sucks in sound quality would have people talking to other people and on and on. Word of mouth might have something to do with it. What do you think?

Quite obvious:
They figured that very few would be intrested to buy the product if it costed whatever amount if would cost more than a regular drive if it has 2GB of flash memory.
That was the first thing which springed into my mind and I thought 2GB of regular flash memory would add to much on the price, but it seems like it doesn't use the kind of flash memory we are used to but a more reliable one which cost more, see beneath:

"These first-generation hybrid drives incorporate only 256MB of NAND flash, a pittance in comparison with the 2GB USB flash drive you can buy today for $20. But the memory in the older drive is typically multilevel cell flash (MLC) as opposed to the more reliable--and more expensive--single-level cell flash (SLC) that hybrid drives, as well as SSD models, use. Manufacturers say they decided on 256MB of flash in hybrid drives as an entry point that wouldn't throw the cost of the product out of whack when compared with the cost of a standard 2.5-inch hard drive."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138102-page,2-c,harddrives/article.html#

http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=138102&page=1&type=table&zoomIdx=2 -attached to- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138102-c,harddrives/article.html
Both hybrids, Samsung AND Seagate were not only more expensive, they were considerably slower in tests vs. a traditional harddrive. I understand the drive to be green, but I think I'm going to wait a few years before jumping on this bandwagon!

http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=138102&page=1&type=table&zoomIdx=2 -attached to- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138102-c,harddrives/article.html
Both hybrids, Samsung AND Seagate were not only more expensive, they were considerably slower in tests vs. a traditional harddrive. I understand the drive to be green, but I think I'm going to wait a few years before jumping on this bandwagon!

Btw ... Mac OS and Mac Intel are both OS X so your Vista market share calculation is wrong, but those numbers will change seeing as almost 1 in 5 of laptops currently being sold is a Mac.

I have gotten to the point where I just don't care about these kinds of articles. I don't believe their statistics, I don't believe their reasoning, and I don't think that they have any particular insight into the future. This particular article strikes me as particularly un-insightful, and hardly worth the trouble.

For example, Apple now has 17.6 percent of the laptop market, according to PC World. Those are the computers that people actually use personally. As a frequent traveler, I can say I believe it, the number of Apple laptops you see at airports has grown greatly. It is not uncommon to see more Apple's than every other type in the transit lounge. This didn't fit into his pre-conceived notions, so didn't make the article. He could have talked about this, or about whether laptop use leads to increased use of office machines, or whether Apple's home entertainment solution is working or not, but he just chose to repeat some industry conventional wisdom he probably heard from some Dell sales guy. Mod him down.

Barely, eh? Well, how much of the 360's shipments are due to the oft-quoted 33% system failure rate? You know, that same one that essentially forced them to lengthen the warranty to save face? If they claim to have shipped 8.9M units, but 33% of those are defective, their actual sales could be as low as 5.9M, depending on how many have been traded for new units.

Either way, the Wii has sold more in 10 months than MS has in 2 years. That alone should say something about the target markets.

Oddly, I was actually considering buying a 360 due to some games that looked interesting. But that 33% chance of a red-ring-of-death definitely puts me off. Yeah, I know the warranty covers it, but if my machine is in the mail every few months, for several weeks at a time, that doesn't seem very useful for playing games.

You don't have to pay the ice-cream, as long as you withstand a guy that is shouting and flashing lights at you while you're at the ice-cream stand, and another guy that hands over leaflets to you. These guys are the ones that pay your ice-cream. Also, they might notice (or not, unless they compare their clientèle with the ice-cream seller's one) whether you wear sunglasses, earplugs and refuse to accept the leaflets.

Now, this is closer to the issue at hand.

Banning Firefox is not a solution, since there were (and are and will be) options to avoid advertisements; think proxies (corporate or personal, like WebWasher). I use Firefox, and used to use AdBlock, but I quit; I decided to manage my hostperm.1 file by being very strict, allowing things on a need basis. I now see the occasional advertisement. I don't mind. However, I won't stop using FlashBlock (it gives me a choice), and won't let any site run its scripts unless I trust it.

The thing is, I find it fair to give a little (mind the world, "little") percentage of my bandwidth for advertisement purposes, even if most of the ads are aesthetically unpleasant. However, I want to spread the message to advertisers: "Keep your voice down, stop using those flashes, don't force dozens of leaflets in my throat." BTW, I like Google ads. They have been useful to me once or twice.

I'm on the bubble over that. I saw plenty of references to an 80% miss rate in '05, but most seemed to be referring to an abstract of a vendor presentation to be made at a conference, which struck me as poor journalism.
http://conference.auscert.org.au/conf2005/abstracts.php

But the general manager at auscert seemed to be saying the same thing in 5/06:
-----
The survey, which was published at the start of this year's AusCERT 2006 conference on the Gold Coast, is further evidence that malware writers are targeting their attacks and testing their code to ensure it is undetectable by antivirus products before it is distributed.
According to the survey, 98 percent of respondents have deployed an antivirus application and yet 45 percent reported being infected by a virus or worm.
Graham Ingram, general manager of AusCERT, said that cybercriminals are making a "concerted effort" to defeat antivirus technology -- and they are being successful.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Antivirus-software-is-being-defeated-/0,130061744,139257227,00.htm
-----

So, how about something more up to date?
Friday, April 13, 2007
Storm Worm Blast Still Evades Antivirus
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004102.html

So why would I be on the bubble, instead of completely agreeing with you? Well, I hear the argument that since people can't be trained to not click on unverified attachments, security suites are at least *something*. In the back of my mind is the thought that if people didn't believe in these ratty security nets, perhaps they *would* change their behavior.

Another factor may lie in how corporations mitigate risk through insurance. Being able to check the AV box when seeking insurance might keep a policy affordable.

"Unless you have some other link you'd care to share to make your point?"

Yes, the top-10-cellphone article he was referring to that placed the iPhone at #5 is here:

PC World top 10 Cell phone PDAs .

Not really "top 10 smart phones", though. ;)

I read this with a twinge of curiosity. Vista Home Ultimate came on the new Dell system I received a couple months ago. While the novelty of Vista's graphical enhancements wore off quickly, my irritation at a litany of Vista bugs did not. They include:

  - Two year old Netgear 802.11g wireless card being virtually impossible to install
  - Crackling, popping audio in World of Warcraft (and other games) from the built in audio that defied repeated attempts to fix via driver upgrades
  --- Disabled said audio in BIOS, inserted Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 digital PCI card. Guess what? VISTA INCOMPATIBLE. Creative. THE standard. in.com.patible with Vista's DRM-heavy digital device list. Back to crackling, popping on board audio. So annoying I resorted to playing WoW with no sound.
  - ATI HDTv Wonder PCI card installation - wasted time. Windows Media Center could not tune ANYTHING with any degree of quality when the same card + antenna did brilliantly on my old Win XP box. Furthermore, exhaustive forum searching reveals that Media Center actually cripples the driver for the HD tuner, making it so that you can tune OTA content, OR CATV content, but NOT BOTH. You have to install a hacked up driver from some shady 3rd party website to use the full functionality of your TV card. Again, the ATI product does not appear on Microsoft's DRM-heavy "approved digital device" list.
  - On board gigabit ethernet adapter's network configuration would randomly disappear and have to be reconfigured when the computer was hard rebooted for any reason, including power outages, or video lockups, leading us to..
  - NVidia GForce 7300 PCI Express card included with machine worked flawlessly as delivered, BUT after Microsofts last "patch Tuesday" a few weeks ago, the video would not 'wake up' after the machine had been put to sleep. The "sleep mode" suspend worked great until the last security patch.. It makes no sense to me either. After the patch, the video would not wake with the rest of the system, forcing a hard poweroff/restart, causing the network setting to disappear.. HALF the time.
  -

  So, two nights ago, after backing up, I took my freshly burned Ubuntu 7.04 cd, took a deep breath, and installed. I can get around in Linux, but I am by no means an expert. My installation was smooth. In less than 90 minutes, using Automatix, I had every plugin, driver, and application I could ever want to make my system perform properly. Nvidia OpenGL driver automatically configured, all video/flash plugins for Firefox, DVD playback, the whole 9 yards. Additionally, using the step-by step copy and paste instructions from the ubuntu website, I had Wine installed, and had configured it properly to run World of Warcraft.

    So here I sit. World of Warcraft runs smoothly. Audio is CRYSTAL CLEAR, my Soundblaster Live 5.1 card is supported, no popping, clicking audio. I play the game at 1680x1050 with almost all detail settings turned on at a very smooth framerate. I visit CNN.com and view all embedded video seamlessly, no plugin errors or other irritants. When I need to type papers for college, I have OpenOffice. Ipod works flawlessly with podcast management program.

Why do I need Vista again?

------

Make World of Warcraft work flawlessy in Ubuntu with Wine:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

PC World's noob-friendly "Seven Post-Install Tips for Unbuntu 7.04" :
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130923-page,1-c, linux/article.html

It can't do multi-touch, but the iPhone won't even let me select a song as my ringtone. Some multimedia phone.

But it can play a song, or even a video, on demand. Does your stereo or TV switch to a random song when you get a call? I guess it's not a multimedia device either.

The iPhone won't let me replace the battery

Sure it will. In about three or four years, when the battery life starts to get to be a little low, you send it off and you get a new battery.

it isn't 3G

Nor is the US. It does have WiFi which is far faster.

Flash doesn't work on the web

Boy, you got that right - which is why it doesn't matter much that the iPhone browser doesn't support it. I have not missed it at all.

CSS doesn't display correctly

It's almost ACID2, and I have yet to use a page in real life that does not work on it.

it has a low resolution

Compared to what? A Desktop? Compared to any other smartphone the same size the resolution is quite excellent, I can read Slashdot text almost without zooming in on the page at all!

and the latest PC World (which normally loves Apple products) ranked it fifth out of the 5 smart phones they tested. They said video quality was shockingly low, and the only real praise they had for it was audio output.

That's odd, the only thing I could find on PC World covering the display was this fragment:

"The screen: Tom loved the iPhone's 3.5-inch widescreen 160 dpi display. "Simply incredible," he said. "The color, the clarity, and the sharpness of everything." Universally, this has been the reaction of everyone who's seen my iPhone. "Oh my, just look at that screen!" "That's incredible!" "Heck, that looks nicer than my TV, much less my cell phone!"

The videos on Apple's site really don't convey just how nice the display really is."

Unless you have some other link you'd care to share to make your point?

For $600, some of the real basic missing features are just flat-out shocking.

If you thought that was shocking you should try buying an unlocked RAZR and despair at what you just payed for. The iPhone is a bargain at twice the price.

Speaking of the survey, is anyone else a bit surprised at the RAM numbers? If I'm reading it right nearly 45% of "gamers" have only 512 to 999 mb of ram. This survey started May 30th, 2007 and has been updated many times since.

With ram prices in the gutter I'm a bit shocked. 1gig of ram is less than $50 and has been for about 6 months. Why are these so called "gamers" spending hundreds on new video cards but still chugging along with $25 worth of ram? Many modern games like Supreme Commander won't even run with such little ram.

This might be even more surprising: only 0.43% have 2gigs or more. Less than 1% of gamers bothered to spend ~$100 on 2gigs of ram?

Also, 6.91% of gamers were running NVIDIA GeForce 6600 cards that came out in 2004. Another 4.42% are running the ATI Radeon 9600 which was out in 2003. These are very old cards for any true gamer to be running.

I don't think this survey is a good overall picture of what real gamers are buying and using. Real gamers are not using 4 year old Radeon 9600 cards and 512mb of ram.

I must be one of the only customers who never had a problem with Packard Bell

"This is why I think copyright infringement should be up to the courts to investigate and prove or disprove as a criminal matter and NOT the plaintiff (corporations)" Copyright violation is up to the plaintiffs to prove, rather than the government, because (typically) it is NOT a crime, but a civil matter. But that could change http://openskills.blogspot.com/2007/04/copyright-i nfringement-crime.html/ http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,116791-c,copyrig ht/article.html/ http://www.cynical-c.com/?p=7502/

It is a bit surprising that a place like PC World listed it (though they have since taken it down). I googled "awardmestars" and noticed that there was one other site that removed it in the first twelve site hits.

"text document branch"? Sounds like rubbish to me.

Have another article on it if you want - http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,126331-page,1/ar ticle.html?tk=nl_dnxnws - no mention of partial implementations there, or otherwise there's always the good old community to help out - http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

Also, as it turns out the UI for Office 2007 isn't so bad after all - http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=201800612&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News
Think logically for one second....Microsoft have in fairness spent a fair few billion on this new interface. That's more effort and investment than OO will ever get, ever, so the chances are it is going to be easier for users.

Over how much time? What do those "OS" patches fix? 90% of the time I see Mac fans talking about how their OS needs fewer patches (which, incidentally, is really funny since it SHOULD be getting more - http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135589-pg,1/arti cle.html ) than Windows, they count updates on Windows Update for thinks like WMP and Internet Explorer, yet they specifically omit updates for things like Quicktime and Safari as being important.

Worthless Anti-MS FUD.

The only reason Apple has fewer updates is that they don't bother to fix things like security vulnerabilities because no one cares enough to write viruses for it. Otherwise the huge list of known zero-days would have fixes.

By the way you're completely wrong.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135814-pg,1/arti cle.html

It's not like it will downsample non-drm'ed HD content

Lies

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135814-pg,1/arti cle.html

Yeah I just read here that Apple's iWork '08 supports OOXML very well, while MS is still struggling with their OOXML implementation in Office for the Mac. I can hardly believe that story; why would it be more difficult to implement OOXML on the Mac than on Windows? Does OOXML depend on some built-in properties of the Windows OS? If that is the case it will never be an open standard.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135142-pg,1/arti cle.html

The only way they can profit at the moment is to sell _fewer_ consoles.

So now they are claiming 60 million by the end of June? That would make 20 million coppies sold in June alone because they were boasting 40 million in May. Given that the market is on the order of 230 million a year, and most people don't want Vista, it's unlikely that many desktops were sold and less likely they all had Vista.

If things were really rosy for M$, you would not see systems with gnu/linux. That you do signals the end of the M$ monopoly.

HP's LaserJet printers encode the printer serial number and registration information (at a minimum) in a pattern of little yellow dots so that every sheet of paper can be tracked back to the printer that printed it. They aren't unique in this, however. Many other printer companies do the exact same thing.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118664-page,1/ar ticle.html

I'm not opposed to temporarily disabling functionality to fix something potentially disastorous.

There are three options when implementing UPnP:

1. Implement it to Microsoft's spec.
2. Implement it correctly (by choosing a direction in places the spec contradicts itself or real implementations).
3. Implement it securely.

Choose only one.

I do not think it is possible to implement UPnP securely and have it based on the spec. Also, the specific code they removed existed only for legacy NAT traversals and may not even be needed any more.

I was out of town for a couple days, but I'm happy to elaborate on my post. First off, you mentioned the N800, which I actually considered as an alternative (as well as the N770).

You dismissed the weight difference, but the N800 being 50% heavier (7.2 vs 4.8 ounces) and almost double the volume makes it too-big-so-I'll-leave-at-home instead of pocketable-enough-to-always-carry (not to mention that I would also need to carry a cell phone).

You also talked about how'd you'd rather have an 800x480 screen when viewing videos. So would I, but the N800 has no hardware decoder and can't play h.264 at all. Less intensive codecs only play at QVGA (half the resolution of the iPhone). So sadly, video playback on the N800 isn't too hot and hopefully Nokia will add a decoder to their next version.

BTW, when sstraub wrote (in response to you about the N800): "And don't start about VOIP. That's good as a backup, but you aren't going to roam the streets looking for an open WAP when you need to make a phone call!", you (amusingly) replied: "The n800 does call over VOIP. Every phone in my company is solely VOIP and we have thousands of employees. It works great.". As sstraub pointed out it's still not a phone unless you're connected to a WAP.

Now onto the iPhone. You replied to me "You insist the OS is reliable, and given the phone has barely been out long enough to be tested, that is just a ridiculous claim."

I've been using it for a month. It has never crashed or suffered from random system slow downs... the worst I've had is Safari crash, which while irritating is far better than the other devices I've dealt with. Every WinCE/PPC/WM device I've owned and used (even without any 3rd party software) had system-wide performance and reliability problems right away, requiring resets (starting the day I got them). I've owned multiple devices from Dell, Compaq, and HP; it wasn't a fluke. I've also had no syncing problems with the iPhone, unlike the nightmare that is ActiveSync.

To be fair, the PalmOS and Nokia smartphones I've used faired better than the CE devices, but they also had various reliability issues.

You wrote "Intuitive and fast interface? This is the standby claim that all Apple products have superior interfaces. In reality, I can much more easily (and quickly) navigate on a standard phone with one hand than have to fight with a touchscreen and use two hands."

Unless I'm typing in something with the QWERTY keyboard, I use the iPhone with one hand. However, that wasn't even what I was getting at... the interface on the iPhone is so easy to navigate it requires no manual/training/learning. And it always responds quickly. While I can adapt pretty quickly to interfaces on other phones, the point is that they're a PITA. How is that being a "fanboy" or "revisionist"?

You wrote "Durable touchscreen? A brand new product that hasn't been tested yet has unparalleled durability. These statements come across like blind fanaticism."

It's durable because its screen is capacitance-based instead of pressure sensitive and it's got a scratch-resistant glass layer. It is the only touchscreen smartphone I know of with this feature.

After a month, the screen is still perfect despite not using a case or screen protector. This is in sharp contrast to the other 14 touchscreen PDAs I've owned over the years, all of which scratched very easily. Also note PC World's iPhone test, which would've wreaked havoc on other PDA screens: http://www.pcworld.com/video/id,545-page,1-bid,0/v ideo.html

So why is what I wrote "blind fanaticism"?

You wrote "Feature-rich web browser? Where is the Flash support? Oh, it doesn't exist."

Yes, which is why I listed it among the things the iPhone can't do. It's still a feature-rich web browser given that it renders accurately and quickly and its intelligent zoom

It dies and dies, but it people keep Frankensteining it.

The history of odor-enhanced experience is outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-o-vision

True to dot.com refuse-to-learn-from-history hubris, one company (TriSenx) is planning to release a stinking computer peripheral, priced variously according to different sources as $269 to $369 US. One source claims it's available now http://www.buzzle.com/articles/day-smelly-computer -has-arrived.html .

Another (DigiScents) has been making claims they will do so for at least 7 years http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2006/05/26/great -moments-in-dotcom-history-digiscents/ . It belatedly made PC World's Worst 25 Tech Products Of All Time http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125772-page,8/ar ticle.html

It was supposed to be a joke when it was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It still is. Unfortunately an iSmell may eventually exist. Start petitioning now for the killing of a cubicle mate for using one of these to be considered self-defense.

Voters would be able to see that their vote counted in the right direction, and unless someone else knows your private key, nobody would be able to tell who you voted for.

2 days ago I read on slashdot:

"Rude Awakening wrote with a PC World article, saying that XP sales will actually be higher next year than they were in 2007. Despite Vista's release, Microsoft admitted this week that it expects the previous version of its operating system to make up a larger percentage of its OS sales in 2008."

----------
The slashdot summary was wrong (as usual).
What the article said was this:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134908-page,1/ar ticle.html
"During a conference call with analysts following the earnings results release Thursday afternoon, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company has changed its fiscal year 2008 forecast from an 85/15 split in sales between Vista and XP to a 78/22 split. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50 percent higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier."

The article said *nothing* regarding 2008 XP sales vs 2007 sales.

Keep that laptop off your lap. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,118884-page,1/ar ticle.html Laptops may be the perfect gift for those id10t users who should have a little chlorine thrown in their gene pool. However until they fix the Darwin Award Winner generation issue, I think the popularity of laptops will be... muted. The other issue is the ergonomic nightmare that is the modern laptop. http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/disabilities/rsi/lapto pergo.html Add-on devices for ergonomics defeat the portability purpose of laptops, so with increased laptop use there will be increased RSI and soon the laptop surge will lead to the "Coming Dominance of the Desktop PC" articles. That's my take on this article.

"I'm thrilled to join an already strong team that's delivering truly amazing gaming experiences to customers around the world. I've never been more excited about the future of the industry, and firmly believe Microsoft will lead the next great innovations in gaming."

Those that actually know about the rootkits will know that Sony is at fault.

The sad thing is they are still committed to copy protection. Even after all the stuff on CD's, they continued into DVD's. They went so far as to keep their head down.

Go to a local DVD store/rental store. Pickup a box of Open Season. Look for SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT on the box. At first glance it looks like a Columbia Pictures product. It has extra copy protection.
Sony says that it does not not intend to change the copy protection.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38 938
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004150 .html

To their credit, they will replace the defective by design DVD's if you are having problems with them.
I got mine replaced free of charge.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx? NewsId=20244

If you have one of these DVD's call them right away.
Consumers who have purchased one of the 20 faulty Sony DVD movie titles can call Sony Pictures Home Entertainment at 1-800-860-2878 and request a replacement DVD. Sony says it has corrected the problem with ARccOS copy protection.

I wonder what they mean by corrected the probelem with ARccOS copy protection?

Public realizes cure worse than the disease = -5,000 pts.
Sony recalls discs = +10,000 pts.
Sony releases BluRay and PS3 = 0 pts.
Sony sues DRM Manufacturer = + 1pts.

Being stupid enough to not drop DRM and add it to thier DVD's = Priceless
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38 938
Replacing some copy protected DVD's +1,000 pts.
http://digg.com/movies/Sony_Replaces_Some_Copy_Pro tected_DVDs
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004150 .html
Stating they are committed to DRM = Unbelievable!
EMI and Sony BMG each have committed to sharply increasing the number of CDs that are protected with technology that limits the number and type of copies that can be made.
http://news.com.com/iPods+to+support+copy-protecte d+CDs/2100-1027_3-5959341.html

So, in total, Sony is an unbelievable amount in the hole. I think its safe to say they're still pariahs here.

To top it off they are braging the Blu Ray format is secure for 10+ years. That's easy to say if nobody bothers to buy it and support it.

OEM exports for the Windows PC generates employment and income in China.

To mark its entry into the WTO, Microsoft was the first foreign company admitted into China's software trade association.

Microsoft Research Asia has been based in Beijing since 1998.

Microcoft has purchased a small stake in one of China's largest TV makers and signed an agreement with Shanghai Media Group, the country's second largest media company.

SMG will use Microsoft products across its new-media division, which includes Internet video, IPTV and mobile television. Microsoft Looks for Space in China's Living Room [June 22, 2007]

Microsoft's target is China's emergent middle class, where it is strongly positioned to be successful.

Back in May there were articles floating around that Microsoft expected the Xbox division to be profitable in 2008. However, they've recently decided to offer an extended warrenty to customers in order to deal with the high failure rate of the Xbox 360. An earlier Slashdot article has this estimated to cost Microsoft around one billion dollars.

The earliest reports pegged the Xbox as costing about five hundred through seven hundred dollars to manufacture, a loss of a few hundred dollars on each console sold. This article published around the time of the PS3 launch puts the cost of Xbox 360 components at around seventy dollars under the final unit cost (manufacturing and other costs were not calculated into this figure so it may be safe to assume that they were breaking even or close to it at that time).

With the costs of the new warrenty (in addition to any costs that can be associated with the honoring existing warrenties to cover the high failure rates of the console) and cutting the price which changes the profitability on each unit sold, when does Microsoft now expect their Xbox division to become profitable?

I want one for the Blu-Ray player. I have a 61" DLP set that is just screaming for Blu-Ray or HD DVD, Personally I like Blu-Ray. Currently stand alone Blu-Ray players are $650+ (from a quick Google search). From the reviews I have read it holds up fairly well against them. Plus an awesome gaming machine.

Where does it say that these robots are autonomous?

Computerworld describes them as remote cotrolled.

Even remote-controlled robots with stun guns would worry me. Anything that would make it easier for a cop to hurt someone without looking into the whites of their eyes would worry me.

The cop is wearing a face plate and body armor. The cop doesn't see the whites of your eyes.

So you would rather be taken out - permenently - by the S.W.A.T. team sniper or emerge from a hostage-taking with a "non-lethal" shock from a taser?

Because that is the real-world choice when it comes time to bring you down.

Spyware, Malware, Virii, Exploits, and cost will "eventually" drive a lot of
businesses and government organizations away from windows.

For example, the city of houston is going all open source.

This will induce some ppl to go to linux at home.

It is spreading to other governemnt agencies, and
businesses as well.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,114374-page,1/ar ticle.html

IBM has a bit of clout in some businesses and those
businesses heavily invested with IBM as a solution
provider tend to listen to them.

When you hear the "entire" school system of an "entire"
country is switching to Linux, something is happening.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?no=348867&rel_no=1

Linux may not be making thunderous in roads, but
progress is being made to be sure.

RHEL5 shipped March 14th, 2007. Why not compare it's errata?

I wouldn't count any updates released on 3/14 against RHEL5 on it's ship date - It's a perfect example of how OSS works and how fast patches are available. RH wanted to ship a stable version and didn't want to through last-minute patches into the install routine. What's the first thing you do when you install a new OS? You run the tool for online updates. So on day one 19 patches were available for all the bugs that had popped up since the version freeze to produce RHEL5.

Since 3/14, there have been 42 updates to RHEL-WS5. 11 of them have been after the 90-day mark, so that leaves you with 31 defects in the first 90 days of RHEL-WS5. That's also not using the "reduced" method to match feature-for-feature what Vista has.

However, I think the point is still always going to be that you can't have totally bug-free sofware. But it's how fast are bugs found and fixed. That's what Microsoft can't touch. How long do bugs go unreported so someone can take advantage of them on MS OS? Even once reported, how long do they linger? The same is simply not true for any critical bugs found in OSS.

But it is nice to see MS finally taking security seriously. They've only been trying to do that for 5 years with their Trustworthy Computing Initiative. Why not compare Windows 2003 Server stats, since it was released after the Trustworthy Computing Initiative? 6 months showed 38 defects. If you compare RHEL5 with just the same installed features to match WS2003 in 3 more months, I wonder how it will fair?

Of course, Microsoft had the NSA help them with Vista, which proves again that the more eyes you have on the source code, the better ;-p

I'll stick with CentOS myself... all the benefits of RHEL without the support fee costs.

Come on, are you kidding me?

Dell Dimenson C521: http://images.pcworld.com/reviews/graphics/product s/2006/10.13.06/25424_g1.jpg

Mac Mini: http://www.notmike.com/images/new_macmini.jpg

Slow news day? More like OLD news day. My first thought was--what the fuck is this, early 2001? OS X has been out for SIX FUCKING YEARS--who cares that some douchebag just now spent 30 days with it?

The use of, benefits of, and shortcomings of Mac OS X have been thoroughly documented on a thousand* different sites. It's not like it's even a new version--10.4 has been out for TWO EFFING YEARS!!! Where has this retard been? (Reminds me of the NewsRadio episode when Bill discovered rap.)

Up next: 30 days spent breathing air and drinking water--a Hard OCP exclusive!

* the funny thing is, "thousand"--usually an exaggeration--is in this case a drastic understatement. Googling for 'os x review' yields 67,400,000 matches. Just in case anyone has been under a rock and wants to read some good reviews by smart people, here are a couple:
Review of 10.3 by Bruce Tognazzini, Apple employee #66
Detailed technical review of 10.4 from ars.tecnica with links to reviews of every version of OS X, ever
Typical review from a Mac site
Review of 10.4 from PC World