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For the record, the company was formed to defend the patents. Several posts seems to suggest that NTP is a company that patents vague ideas and waits for a successful company to pounce on.

From http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116441,0 0.asp/
Tom Campana developed a wireless communications system for his pager company that he later patented, and the BlackBerry infringes upon that patent, said James Wallace, an attorney with Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP in Washington, D.C., representing NTP. NTP was incorporated to hold Campana's patents, and does not make any products or provide any services, he said.

Oh, and BTW, in case you're thinking Tom is one greedy SOB, he's dead. http://news.com.com/Key+figure+in+BlackBerry+case+ dies/2100-1041_3-5238198.html/

Don't think I'm defending NTP. I just want everyone to get the facts straight.

Well, after a bit of research Matsushita (also known as Panasonic in the United States) makes light bulbs and hard drives. Although it appears that while they do make these items, their major business is in making parts for them.

As I understand, they have a fairly strong vertical monopoly, although not as strong as the one Mitsubishi is famous for. When Mitsubishi makes products, they really don't have to contract anything out. Let's examine a mitsubishi TV: Mitsubishi mines the metals and drills the oil. They produce the machines to do the mining and drilling. Mitsubishi provides the hospitals which their employees go to when sick. Mitsubishi sets up the schools and education facilities to train employees and their children. Mitsubishi runs the real estate agency which they purchase land to mine and set up factories on. Mitsubishi runs an insurance company, which they no doubt use for internal coverage. Mitsubishi has it's own IT company to coordinate all these divisions. Employees have to eat: Mitsubishi has a foods division. Mitsubishi runs chains of hotels, and guess where Mitsubishi execs stay when traveling. Warehousing, travel and recreation, banking, commerce research, elderly care, pulp and paper for packaging and internal paperwork. Guess who runs the powerplants that run the whole thing? Guess who does all the repairs and service at all levels... I'll give you a hint... it's a division of Mitsubishi. Chemicals, glass, transportation. Hell, they're even in nano and bio technologies just to keep ahead of the game. It seems that the only thing Mitsubishi doesn't have a hand in is the creation of media: They don't have the vast music and movie libraries that, say, Sony does. Oh, but somehow I couldn't find mention of Mitsubishi making hard drives, although they do make light bulbs of all different types.

Here are just a few references pointing out the real percentage of computers infected with spyware:
80%
8 out of 10
88%
Or, just search it.
So, 5 years to admit to the problem as it was 3-ish years ago.

It seem incredulous to me that after hearing some of the major breaches or loss of customer data within the past 60 days or so (Wachovia, Bank of America, DSW, Lexis-Nexis) I have the right to be a bit concerned about giving my social security number to any financial institution. If these large financial institutions and data warehouses can't keep my information secure, why should I give it to them?

The lady at the local bank started looking at me funny after I asked her if my SS# was required to open an account, and started giving me some "post 9/11" corporate response. (Meanwhile, I'm thinking 'yeah, exactly. that's why you shouldn't have it.') And who cares about "128-bit SSL/DES encryption/armed-guard data centers" when you ship unencrypted records via public-class shipping services?

Where's that bit of legislation about returning the social security number to an SSA-only internal identifier when you need it... Maybe we can get some support for some of that now..

MIT is working on something much cooler
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115975,0 0.asp

The article is light on facts, but the way that I've heard it is that they're researching ways using eye tracking cameras and a layer of LCD light deflectors to "aim" images at individual eyes. You don't need glasses or a head tracking beacon, as all of that is done automatically. You can walk around the front of the screen and get the right perspective. If you really needed to walk all the way around something you could put three or four of these back-to-back.

Supposedly it works, but that the tech is too slow for consumer-grade apps currently and it only works for one person at a time, with a multi-person version in the works. Again, the limitation isn't in the design, but how fast you can update the LCD adjusters and the image.

Hmm... consider that many retail outlets sell their products at about twice the price that they actually pay for them (the "cost" figure quoted often times includes internal shipping, storage, expected wages on the item, lighting, advertising, etc.) This doesn't even include the middleman, although that's becoming a smaller piece of the pie as retailers and manufacturers have grown large enough to deal directly with each other, especially in fields like consumer electronics. For the restaurant business a standard sit down meal costs about three times the cost of raw ingredients, but there are is a lot of decently paid labor going in, in addition to decently high facilities and equipment costs.

In a highly efficient factory with volume discounts, etc, I wouldn't doubt that apple can pump them out for around half the "off the shelf" price of its components. PCWorld puts it at about 30-40% profit on the shuffle. Although I really doubt that includes R&D costs.

Disclaimer: I have no personal industry experience in consumer electronics, but know a couple of people who do sales. These people, however, generally do not do purchasing on a nationwide/international scale.

It also occurs to me - another point that I'm sure others have already thought of - that this may be why they are forced to switch to Intel. They can't get chips small enough for a Powerbook G5 line.

It also occurs to me - another point that I'm sure others have already thought of - that this may be why they are forced to switch to Intel. They can't get chips small enough for a Powerbook G5 line.

Here's a similar comparision/benchmark. And Tech Report posts a summary/commentary of the tests:

PC World has posted some benchmark results suggesting that Apple's Power Mac G5 isn't the world's fastest desktop PC after all. The PC World tests compare dual G5 systems to a Pentium 4 3.2GHz, Athlon 64 3200+, Athlon 64 FX-51, and Opteron 246, and the results make Apple's claim to the desktop performance crown look rather foolish. The dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 can't even manage a win in Photoshop, where the dual Opteron system turns in the fastest performance.

I suggest you check out the benchmark results.

LOL. I think that Toshiba and Panasonic are in better position to improve the battery market than anyone. There's even been quite a bit of discussion by one guy over here and here for a while now about this being a long standing problem and possible ways to solve it. As for battery solutions, nuclear batteries are a good idea, but given the number of stupid people in the world, I wonder if it's all that safe. Then again, it may be a good idea to have them anyways as a way to clean up the gene pool a bit? Maybe? ;) Well, all joking aside, nuclear decay batteries are a good idea, but only for low voltage use. Anything above 12v and 20 amps is going to go beyond the current capabilities of nuclear decay technology. So for small devices, they're perfect. Larger devices such as electric cars are going to present a problem...UNLESS, for example, someone finds a way to make them safe, durrable, and able to take being abused like lead acid can. They'd also have to find ways to protect them in event of car fire or accident. If they can do that then they would also be a great solution for electric cars.

I mean, do you go around criticizing DVD-ROM drives because they cost more than CD-ROM drives and only read at 1X?

It's my understanding that DVD 1x != CD 1x. According to this article, DVD 1x is 1.385 MBps (note capital B). CD 1x is 150 kB/s, IIRC. So, to compare apples to apples, DVD drives are ~9x.

... if the drive it's in starts to make a certain clicking sound.

Actually, it looks to me like Das Keyboard may have ripped off Keytronic's Ergoforce - or at least PC World's illustration of it.

I thought that the differing force between various keys has been standard in all keyboards for a very long time. Keytronic has called it Ergoforce.

That's production stuff and almost entirely out of the hands of the on-air talent (surely the most ironic terminology in the television business). What's happening on those shows is that someone's putting not putting in the $ for decent camerawork, good production values, solid writing (yes, those shows are *all* scripted; you think they just "happened" to have that gear handy to the stage? next you'll tell me you think the Car Talk guys are off-the-cuff) and so forth. In the case of G4, alas, I think they call that "hey, it's videogames, these guys will watch anything as long as boobs might appear onscreen at any moment." Remember pre-Lord Of The Rings when fantasy-themed movies invariably sucked? Same situation. Unless we demand better programming, we ain't gonna get it. G4's happy enough being what it is; guys like Kevin have a different idea, and one I frankly like more.

[nostalgic rant=on]That said, I miss TechTV, and I'm associated with a production that was nominally competitive to the network back when. Even if the production values over there weren't always so high, at least you never felt as if the producers were so incredibly cynical about the audience. You could see loved the subject matter, and you wanted to believe that TV by-us-for-us could make a go of it.

But as a former producer there told me after the fall, it's a real bitch to program a network that is in effect for a single person's eyeballs; when that person gets bored, game over. (So to speak.) On-air talent didn't kill TechTV; nor did hinky production values, or perhaps even the unbelievably nasty advertising climate. Paul Allen got bored. And that was, as they say, that. [/rant]

Can Kevin do with no $ what Paul Allen didn't do with all his $? Dunno, hope so, and GO KEVIN!!!

With the number-sequence that this system creates, I cannot reconstruct your fingerprint at all.

That's not the problem. The problem comes when my bank installs the same fingerprint scanner - now the library record and my bank record have the same database key, the same "account number" if you will.

they can even print a fake barcode on any old library card since barcode techology is open and freely available to anyone and everyone. Then, they can surf for child porn on your account.

And how long do you think it will be before fake fingerprints are available to anyone and everyone?

I went through a period of fascination with detective-stuff when I was a kid (too many Hardy Boys books) and learned how to lift latent prints using nothing more complicated than Scotch Tape. Getting ahold of someone else's prints is child's play.

I mean Blu Ray has no obvious benefits over HDDVD

First of all, let's recap. When Apple introduced the G5 two years ago, you may remember the ads which proclaimed "The World's First 64-bit Personal Computer." What they forgot to mention was a pretty fundamental flaw with their claim: their flagship OS X could not actually run any 64-bit applications!

It has taken two years and 2 OS releases for Apple to add limited support for 64-bit applications to OS-X. Even today, apps which utilize any graphical application framework libraries (i.e. any GUI application) cannot run in 64-bit mode. Apple actually expects software vendors to redesign their GUI apps to fork off 64-bit processes to perform any "compute-intensive" or "memory-intensive" work. Right! Nevertheless, I'm sure some vendors will do this work, no matter how silly.

Contrast this with 64-bit support in Windows. Microsoft released its first 64-bit version of Windows in q1 2002 (see PC World announcement from 2001). But few actually remember because it ran only on Itanium, on hardware which virtually no one except elite vendors could purchase. That version of Windows was quite limited, but even then not as limited as Apple's latest Tiger. Even in 2002, 64-bit Windows apps could run in full GUI mode and could utilize all system libraries except for multimedia decoding and DirectX libraries.

The point is this: for app vendors to port their apps to 64-bit Windows, very little work is required. In many cases, simply recompiling does the trick. In other cases, broken integer-pointer casts must be fixed, but little else. Certainly no redesign is required! To make this app transition so smooth required a large amount of work. Millions of lines of code making up the entire Windows codebase (not just the relatively small kernel) had to be made 64-bit clean. Additionally, it took lots of design thought to solve some of the tricky AppCompat issues to enable 32-bit and 64-bit apps to live side-by-side. You can read alot about how this works in Windows XP Pro x64 here.

Second of all, your claim that 64-bit Windows drivers are unavailable and unstable is complete balderdash. I would love to hear which currently-shipping 64-bit systems out there don't have available drivers (and I mean vendor-supplied systems here, not some homebrew with a random motherboard). I would also like to hear about ones that are buggy and unstable. MSN and several other top-tier internet sites have already switched to x64-based servers. From personal experience, I have 64-bit XP running on at least 4 different motherboard chipsets in 24/7 environments and I have yet to see a blue screen on any of them. All with inbox drivers: I didn't lift a finger.

Granted, vendor-supplied drivers for peripherals which don't work with class drivers is currently limited on Windows x64, as happens whenever a new version of Windows comes out that requires driver changes (remember Win2k?). But it's extremely ironic to hear Apple people use the term "limited" in reference to hardware support, even referring to Windows x64. I'd bet that inbox device support for x64 is greater than the totality of device support for OSX Tiger. And as for peripherals, most USB and Firewire devices will work fine, because they utilize class drivers which Microsoft owns and therefore ports itself.

Yes, you can bet that Apple is embarrassed by its lack of 64-bit application support even with its latest Tiger release. But Apple has done a masterful job of sweeping that lack of support under the carpet with fantastic marketing. I know many G5 owners who had no clue until I told them that their G5 actually could not run 64-bit applications because OS-X did not support it. I actually feel kind of bad for them: I'm sure they felt a bit miffed that their promised "World's First 64-bit Personal Computer" was not actually a useful 64-bit system. I know I would be.

Surely MS haven't sued simply because they can see no legal grounds to do so. Otherwise they would have used this against Lindows.

Actually Microsft did sue Lindows and tried to get a preliminary injunction against the company for using "Lindows" saying the name infringed on Microsoft's trademark:

Lindows.com Wins First Round
Judge denies Microsoft's request for injunction over Linux utility's name.
Sam Costello, IDG News Service
Wednesday, March 20, 2002

A judge has denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction against startup Lindows.com, allowing the startup to keep selling its operating system under the name Lindows...

Falcon

Apple cares about making a good-sized profit

That is one way of describing one of the by far highest profit margin targets in the general computer hardware industry (look at the numbers, Apple is about hardware, and it has been documented several times that they target double to triple the profit margin of similar products/companies -- for instance: Apple makes 40% profit margin on iPod Shuffle)

considering that plasma is considered the high-end of displays

AMDZone.com Tech Report Sudhian Hexus Hot Hardware Anandtech xbit xbit PCWorld Trusted Reviews

If it's flash, why can't you use it in Linux? Flash is one of the few plugins that firefox will install with it's auto-plugin thingy.

Anyway, I've never heard of disposable CC numbers, it does sound handy. I think I'll have to look into too.

And for the "why ask slashdot, when you can google it in two minutes" aswer, it looks like, American Express, and MBNA offer them, but without signing up, I don't know what kind a mechanism they use. The PCworld article says something about "Orbiscom's O-power" application, but I can't find technicle details on it. Orbiscom's clients page says that most of the bigger CC people are dabbling in this sort of tech.

Have fun.

Not a monopoly, eh? Why is the title of this article Microsoft Declared a Monopoly?

The Chinese are censoring anti-state/sensitive/anti-social information on the Internet.

The United States will soon censor any copyright-infringing information on the Internet. Here is how:

The media industry will ask Congress to pass a law that bans all ISPs from linking to websites suspected of harboring copyright-infringing materials. Internet censorship in the form of blocking websites harboring "pirated" materials has already happened here in the USA:

Listen4Ever lawsuit
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,104361,0 0.asp

Didn't you know, Google does "no evil?"

What good is broadband if you can only access government-approved content? It's well known that the Chinese government censors its citizens' Internet Web site usage: try this or this or this or this...and that's just for starters. (Try Googling "Internet censorship in China.")

Imagine if we all had personal Gigabit connections directly to the Internet backbone but...the RIAA controlled what sites you could visit. Alternatively, consider this: imagine having that personal Gigabit connection, but you have to subscribe to AOL (with all its...quirks). You can't use any other content provider.

Basically, what China has is a monopoly on information. What good is broadband if you can't even choose what you want to look at?

It weighs a ton. At 20 lbs...

Maybe that's your problem. Given that the 51-m weighs under 10 pounds, maybe you were accidentally sent 2 laptops stuck together. That would explain the heat and noise also.

You wiped a computer because of spyware? What would you say if someone wiped their Linux box because Mozilla would not start.

Just about the same thing. I have not found any spyware that could not be removed. Maybe you actually have to look something up on the internet; but I guess it is a better story if "it was so bad that I had to wipe the box!".

Check out:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/files/killbox.php

and ...

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/ 0,fid,23258,00.asp

And read a bit:

http://www.pchell.com/support/spyware.shtml

Not so hard if you really *want* to be able to do it.

If you got those figures here, you made two mistakes:

1. Those are old numbers.

2. You're reading new shrink wrap shipments as overall market share. Note, too, that free OSes are explicitly excluded (they included only paid-for shrink wrap Linux products).

Note, too, that Apple has made a dramatic turnaround in the past 3 quarters. They shipped an enormous number of new boxes last quarter.

I'm rather surprised that the "living room palmtop" idea hasn't taken off yet. Here's what I'd buy for sure:

Price range: ~$400
Slate-like Tablet PC (pen-driven) interface
1280x1024 or 1400x1050 resolution (1600x1200 would really be ideal)
802.11b/g wireless networking
Has Windows Pocket PC or similar small OS installed, with some games, etc.
Set up so that I can Remote Desktop into my Windows PC upstairs

This would be a godsend. I'd set the thing on my coffee table and use it to just check my email without having to run upstairs to my desktop.

I know Microsoft had this with Mira a while ago, but Mira devices were costly ($900-$1200) and mostly ran at 800x600 or 1024x768. Now that LCDs have dropped so far in price, I really feel this is a good marketing opportunity. Also, put Pocket PC on it and the thing can play games, etc. without having to be connected to the PC upstairs. Marketed properly and with the right price point, I bet we'd see these in most geek living rooms. It could even double as an interactive photo album with a stand and SD card slots, or a DVD player with a USB hookup. I'd welcome a device like this at $400 or less.

Waiting patiently for the manufacturers to catch up to my imagination... :)

Do open source programmers profit? Do they do it for the fun of it? or for the potential future in the for-profit world?
How many people actually USE Linux? Is it as difficult to configure and set up as people say it is? Is there a stable Linux version that is ready to download and use right now?
I am not sure if and when a Linux operating system will be fully realized. I guess what I am asking is, does the average PC-illerate user consider Linux as a viable alternative to Windows? Here is an about one person's experience.

Well, until Tiger, Apple was doing 12 months per release, now it's at about 18 between Panther and Tiger. Assuming the same, April 2005 + 18 months equals... November/December '06

That's "November/December '06" as in equal to or earlier than the scheduled Longhorn realease (mid-page, "The final version of Longhorn is scheduled to be broadly available in December 2006.").

Of course, we'll have to wait till WWDC or later to figure out when 10.5 is actually scheduled for release, so this is all just speculation.

MS seems to be fixing this problem.

OK maybe not: the killer apps will more likely take advantage of the marriage of the two devices, building on top of them. And perl may well have a new niche as the thinking geeks glue, customising the functionality of the camera phone and creating a quick'n'dirty testing ground for new software ideas. Although, if that's so, perl is going to need GD or some other module with extensive graphics support built in too.

To say nothing of the irony of this statement..."security enhancements"?

Actually there is no irony with this statement. In Longhorn the permissions model is being drastically changed to least privileged to prevent at of lazy developers from requiring their app to run as admin. See http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,1203 14,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp. This is HUGE for Windows security. This now eliminates the attack surface that these lazy developers create with their apps. Yea, yea, Unix and Linux have always done this..blah..blah..blah. Well, I'm glad that MS is starting to do it too. It's about time!

So to simply dismiss these "enhancements" due to MS's past track record with security would be a mistake. They know the track record was poor! THAT'S WHY THESE CHANGES ARE BEING MADE! !

It's not about amputated body parts. Fingerprint scanners can be fooled by gummy bears. Once someone has a copy of your fingerprint you can't revoke that password and give yourself a new fingerprint. Biometrics are only good in a limited sphere where other measures are in place.

This is the test to which I was referring

Sorry for the confusion.

Oxyride Car

Oxyride Test

CC.

A little dated, but:
What's In a Name?

I think we've already proved this concept is silly with the Sharp's V603SH.

File Transfer Protocol -- the original "P2P" file sharing from the 1980's.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc959.html

As the Internet was used mainly by the military and by universities back then, it was used to allow researchers to share published papers, research data, and software they had written.

That's why MGM v. Grokster is so bogus. P2P file sharing was one of the main purposes of the Internet (it wasn't to surf cnn.com).

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120228,0 0.asp
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster

Which brings me to another pet peeve. I keep seeing news reports on various topics that say things like "Internet and e-mail access". What they really meant to say was "web and e-mail". HTTP is but one of many protocols that run on the Internet. "The Internet" is much bigger than just "the web".

To make that even more clear, prior to the web, when you signed up to the Internet, you would expect "e-mail and UseNet". Now you expect "e-mail and web and maybe UseNet if the ISP is a) nice and b) retro".

It just illustrates that Internet protocols come and go. FTP was a file sharing protocol. Grokster, Kazaa, etc. are just new file sharing protocols.

UseNet itself is actually also based on peer-to-peer technology. UseNet is the globally distributed message board system. groups.google.com archives UseNet posts, but they are just one of thousands of UseNet servers across the globe collaborating to provide the service. UseNet servers talk to each other as "peers" to synchronize their message postings.

The whole nature of the Internet was originally "peer-to-peer". But two things have come along to keep that concept out of the minds of most Internet users:

a) Web technology, which is more client-server than peer-to-peer. The popularity of the HTTP protocol has made it seem to most people that the web is the Internet, and thus most people think that to participate on the Internet means you are supposed to "log in" to some "official" computer (e.g. browsing to cnn.com)

b) Dynamic IP. The inventors of the Internet thought that 2 billion IP addresses was enough for the world. Well, we've run out, and so now when you get an Internet account you no longer get your own "static" IP address. Instead, you get a "dynamic" IP address. That makes it impossible to register a domain name (like underreported.com) to your own computer at home. Instead, you have to pay a "hosting provider" to use their computer running on their network that happens to be privileged enough to have static IP addresses. In the old days, everyone's computer handled their own e-mail, their own FTP server, etc. FTP is really only effective with static IP addresses. The rise in popularity of so-called "P2P file-sharing apps" is due in part that they were built to work with dynamic IP addresses (because they advertise themselves on a custom protocol as opposed to relying on the DNS (Domain Name System, where names like underreported.com are recorded along with their static IP addresses)).

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112749,p g,8,00.asp

You can look up the prices on your own. But he's right. He shouldn't even have to give sources, anyone who knows anything about hardware can tell you this. Unless their a Mac fan boy.

For the record, I own a PowerBook, my main desktop is a PC, I run a Linux server at home, and I use Solaris at work. I'm open to everything. My brand new PowerBook is slow because my G4 is slow. Deal with it.

Of course, if not recommended for those of you who F**'d up last year's return...

Best practices?

Like this?: http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,1200 40,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

There are others . . .

Well , actually you dont need the glasses to perceive the 3D in this kind of laptops. Once I used one of this ones, And I really didn't ejoyed it, I got a headache .... Its just to weird :P

I wonder how many of those are open source projects of various kinds.

This article says otherwise... Guess I read to much news?

Microsoft Extends Win 98 Support

Something you have (a key, a smartcard)
Something you know (a password, a PIN)
Something you are (a fingerprint, a voiceprint)

Except that "something you are" really reduces to "something you have". You have something that gives a positive result from the scanner - it may be your finger, it may be a piece of gelatin.

The same Microsoft that destroys evidence relating to patent cases .