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In Houston.

Toshiba announced research on a technology for fast charging li-ions over two years ago. This was using nanotech materials for an improved anode (maybe cathode too), enabling fast charging (80% charge in one minute) and long life (99% capacity after 1,000 charges). A similar approach was also annouced, about the same time, by Altair Technologys in Reno. It's all about increasing the effective surface area of the anode, and perhaps making it from stronger stuff.

In traditional Li-ion cells, a big wear factor is that the anode can form a parasitic battery with the electrical contact, causing the terminal to eventually wear out, faster as you approach full cycling the battery. Heat is also a factor, in both terminals and the full cell... the higher internal resistance of the Li-ion vs. NiMH (or better still, NiCAD) limits peak power, and also increases the risk of damage or, particularly in quesitonably made cells, explosions.

Dramatic improvements in both of these are necessary to enable practical (in a commerical sense) pure electric vehicles (BEV). There's no conspiracy necessary... traditional NiMH cells are a problem for full electrics.. which the actual reason none of these cars have been successful. Not to mention the expense... the Toyota EV-RAV4, for example, cost $42,000 and gave you about 100 miles on a charge.. and that with Toyota still selling them at a loss (as they did in the early days of the Prius, too).

In a hybrid, the batteries are only partially cycled (my 2003 Prius runs the NiMH cells over 40% of their capacity range; Toyota extended this to about 60% on the models starting in 2004), and that keeps them very long lived. Natrually, better batteries make a better hybrid, but the fact my Toyota can only go about 2-3 miles on a full charge doesn't impact its general use; the issues around battery technology today make the BEV a small niche product.

But the energy density is just too low even full cycling NiMH to make a BEV with mass appeal... most people would demand at least 200-300 miles of range, charging times on-the-road similar to that of petrol fueling (not the minimum of 15-30 minutes you'll have with today's cells), and long life (full cycling NiMH, they're good for about 500-1000 charges).

Once you have a higher density cell that doesn't wear out and can be charged in under 5 minutes, full EVs will be practical enough for a mainstream automaker to POSSIBLY launch a full production car, not just an experiment. This is critical technology for improving hybrids as well, and keep in mind that all practical FCEVs will also be hybrids (fuel cells suck at peak power demands, they like to be slow and steady, so you need a battery or supercapacitor to enable the peaks).

This was the second of four reports. They are:
Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis" (Released 2 February)
Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (The one just out -- 4 April)
Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change" (Due 3 May)
The Synthesis Report (SYR) (Due 16 November)

See http://www.ipcc.ch/

The economics of making as early a start as possible are looked at quite closely at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/ stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_ index.cfm

Industry will certain play some role in getting things moving. A good example would be "CEOs Ask Bush for Mandatory Emissions Caps" at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55321.html.

The insurance companies are certainly seeing this as important:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international /2007/04/06/78536.htm
There's a link from the above to a PDF hosted at Lloyds:
http://www.lloyds.com/NR/rdonlyres/FCA144E6-24D5-4 25E-B058-3A64E020E18F/0/360_RapidClimateChangeRepo rt.pdf

That's a 31 page PDF titled _Rapid Climate Change_. Major topic coverage:
    Rapid sea level rise
    By Professor David Smith

    Destabilisation of parts of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet
    By Dr Stephan Harrison

    Increased frequency and intensity of floods
    By Dr Matt Wilson

    Climate variability and changes in global drought intensity and frequency
    By Dr Richard Washington

How can the war be over when high def DVD players account for less than 1% of all DVD player sales? Did you know that sales of ACTUAL high def DVD players have 200,000 HD-DVD players sold vs. 30,000 Blu-Ray players? You really can't count all of the PS3 sales in there since not everyone who has one uses it for a Blu-Ray player. The fact is it is still much cheaper to make HD-DVD players and HD-DVD media than it is to make the Blu-Ray counterparts. In my opinion the winner will be the first camp to get a cheap ($100-200) player available in Wal-Mart and HD-DVD has the edge there since the parts are cheaper.

I just did a quick check of Wal-Mart's available HD DVD players and they have a HD-DVD player for $378 while the Blu-Ray player is $898. Hmm, I wonder which one I would buy if I was on a budget. Here are the players:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=540 874&catNavId=62055

The simply fact is that current DVD Emporium figures show Blu-Ray now outselling HD-DVD titles about 70% to 30%, trended Amazon data agrees with this assesment.

Wow, I wonder how those numbers came about. Could it be all of the free vouchers for Blu-Ray discs that Sony gave away to purchasers of the PS3? While that is a significant percentage difference if you look at how it got that way you should come to the conclusion that the numbers have been fudged a little do to the free vouchers.

Ask Microsoft, they are the ones that want the 360 to be a media hub. They would offer a Blu-Ray player for the same reason they offer a cheap HD-DVD option today, it's just the add-on at that point would be $50 and not $200. But it's pretty clear why they are not building HD-DVD into the console, so they have that option.

The reason they did not build the HD drive into the unit was because they didn't want to drive the price of it up and thats it. I can't find the article but there was someone at MS who was quoted saying that they didn't include it in the Elite version for the very fact that they wanted to give the users a choice instead of automatically driving the price up. If you look at this http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/56565.html there is this quote:

"Adding an HD DVD drive, now available as a plug-in accessory, "would have raised the Xbox cost another $200 and that would have gone over [the] PS3 price"

Why would it go over the PS3 cost? Because Sony is selling the PS3 at a pretty hefty loss to them. MS doesn't want to go that route and would instead just like to give the user the choice to spend the extra $200.

I also think that more people will purchase the HD-DVD drive once Halo 3 is released since it sounds like it will be an HD-DVD exclusive title. This will then add more potential players to the market and may result in increased HD-DVD movie sales.

Either way even if they had included the HD-DVD drive they still would have "had the option" to offer a Blu-Ray add-on if they wished. They did not leave the HD-DVD drive out because they are worried the format is going to die.

Believe what you wish but the fact remains that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war is far from over and it is much too early to declare a winner.

The companys still have some offices here, and some may still have their headquarters here, but much less "innovation" is done in the bay area anymore. When Texas started offering companys incentives such as no corporate taxes for x number of years and lower utility and land costs, many either moved entirely or large portions of their establishments there. There was an article awhile back that I just feel like looking for about how the IT field in North Carolina was growing at a faster rate than Sillicon Valley as well. Many people I use to work with left to either take better jobs or follow their jobs to other places with lower costs of living.

Just because a company is Headquartered in an area doesnt mean thats where its main research and development are taking place. Many of the companys in the bay area either outsource or have setup offices in other states and countries where costs of operating are much cheeper. India's IT base is growing by leaps and bounds.

Even as far back as 2004 India was set to over take Silicon Valley in importance in the IT Field.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/35443.html
http://www.paulinaborsook.com/Doco/disappearedSV.p df
http://news.com.com/Is+Bangalore+bigger+than+Silic on+Valley%3F/2100-1022_3-5287616.html

As for it being illegal to harvest stem cells, I wasnt clear enough I suppose. Yes you can harvest new Stem Cells if you are NOT receiving Federal Grant money. There are companys out there that are putting money into research. But not as many as there would be if there were matching availble grants from the Government. The Government has hampered innovation in the field by not supporting it. Granted these problems aren't all from Bush. Ironically Clinton signed the initial rules in 1996 that said they could not be used at all. Bush relaxed those rules by saying non-destructive and only if they were from before 2001. That still limits the availble pool for university and other organizations that rely on grants from the government to support their programs and endevors.

First of all, Google is hosting the video files on their servers. This was the one point that made it easy for Napster to lose. Notice all the file sharing software that came later used P2P for a distribution model. (And even can lose in court.

Secondly, Google is financially benefitting from the distribution of these copyrighted files. They are showing ads, so at the very least gaining revenue from that. I'm sure there are many other indirect points that could show them gaining financially (eyeballs, brand loyalty, etc).

Thirdly, it's possible that Viacom has their own video sharing distribution method in the works. With very little work, they could at least start a project in that direction and use it in court that Google is unfairly stripping their business from them. (Look at Verizon suing and WINNING against Vonage. No coincidence that Verizon is now revealing their own VOIP business).

Lastly, it specifically lists in copyright law, that you MUST have permission of the copyright holder to distribute any of their copyrighted material for commercial uses. I would imagine that sending one DMCA notice to Google is a first step before a lawsuit. Google complied and took down Viacom copyrighted video. But all it takes is one more user to post yet another Viacom video, and suddenly we fall under a situation that already has precedence in court: Google will have to take a huge proactive step in developing software that can detect copyrighted vs. personal videos before being allowed to post a video to youtube. Viacom shouldn't have to troll the whole of YouTube every day to find their videos and resubmit DMCA notices for each one.

As for Darl, I would offer him a deal to walk free if he could produce enough evidence for the government to go after Microsoft's top execs.

I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists because of the nature of their threats. I expect one of them -- or perhaps a group of them -- will go too far at some point and do significant damage to the open-source movement.

• Who is a convicted monopolist ?
  (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Micr osoft
  and: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?refe rence=IP/04/382&format=HTML&aged=0&language=&guiLa nguage=en )
  
• Who is still under investigation in at least U.S. and Europe markets ?
  (see: http://ww.iowaconsumercase.org/ )
• Whose mint new operating system is in direct competition with Apple's Mac OS X ? (see: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/macosx_leopar d_preview.asp )
• Who is trying hard to enter the mp3 player market with an iPod-killer ?
  (see: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/54786.html )

Here's an article about his lawyer. It is the same guy that represented his mom (and that worked out ok...sort of). It is a one man operation, with a little help from the mom herself.

It sounds to me like their short on funds, and I'm not sure what this lawyer is looking to get out of this--a judgment for attorney's fees? I guess he had to countersue for this kid if he is to have any chance of getting money out of this. It's too high profile to quit, but their is no funding to work with (except for this little fund mentioned in the linked article).

The good news with Toshiba televisions is that they can radio for help when there's a problem. The snag is that invoking this service costs US$10,000 per day, so you better hope that it gets fixed damn quick!

I sent this email to Rob Enderle after rediscovering an editorial of his on Forbes in the last Slashdot story about the SCO case. This was what I sent:

----

Based on what you said in your original article dated 4/26/04:

From: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/opinion/33529.h tml

and I quote:

"SCO has just over US$60 million in resources to sustain it while it
fights IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM in what clearly is one of
the most volatile wars in the history of technology. What has been
very interesting is that SCO publicly has been given almost no chance
of winning, while privately the company has convinced several folks,
including me, that it has a strong chance."

Just curious where you stand now with the recent revelations in this SCO case.

----

This was his reply:

----

Someone should be looking into where all of that money went... They
mismanaged this to an incredible degree and pissed away any advantages
they may have had. After Darl threatened me for suggesting the SCO
stockholders should take action I kind of stopped following them all
that much. One wonders if they will even be around in 12 months...

        Rob Enderle
        Principal Analyst
        Enderle Group

Wonder if Rob Enderle has, too.

From http://www.technewsworld.com/story/opinion/33529.h tml:

SCO has just over US$60 million in resources to sustain it while it fights IBM (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM in what clearly is one of the most volatile wars in the history of technology. What has been very interesting is that SCO publicly has been given almost no chance of winning, while privately the company has convinced several folks, including me, that it has a strong chance.

Enjoy your crow dinner, Rob. For desert is Humble Pie.

Soko

Gah! Freaking slashcode's inability to edit posts, and one's tendency to miss one's own errors in a long composition...

That should be 500 mg / liter (speed reading), and 96 tons of mobile lead per year from CRTs; I missed a few factors :-/
9.6 ktons glass * ((500 mg Pb/liter leachate) / (100 mg glass/2 liter fluid)).

Also compare EPA permissible limits for drinking water, which are not necessarily 100% science based.

In case you haven't heard, dead zones (without oxygen) in the oceans are increasing rapidly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/53803.html
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/scifocus/ocea nColor/dead_zones.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Dead _Zone.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-19 -03.asp
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.as px?linkid=59371
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/deadzone_ pla.html?category=earth&guid=20061020143030

It isn't just script kiddies. Organized crime has been making moves into computer crime for some time. There are others too.

Transnational Crime Syndicates
Organized Crime Invades Cyberspace
Cyber Threat Source Descriptions

I would argue that it's common knowledge
that Firefox
doesn't have
anything like
50% of
the browser market,
with most estimates
coming in
at less than
25%.

Over the last 20 years I've watched as American business management seemed to forget about delivering the best product, and focused on maximizing profits instead, as if the two could be entirely separated.

There are a number of cases of this to prove the point.

Walmart and cronies, and the people who shop there, are mainly to blame for a lot of this IMHO. They kept demanding lower and lower prices from manufacturers, which resulted in many of the manufacturers needing to cut costs. Slowly over the years manufacturers have accomplished this in a number of ways by substituting materials, using less material (thinner plastics / metals) and moving manufacturering overseas for cheaper labor.

One case is snowshovels. You can NOT buy a good snowshovel at any of the big box stores. They are all made in china with thin, soft plastic or very thin aluminum. They collapse when you hit a crack in the concrete, or the handle bends, etc. My local hardware store (which just closed after being in business after 92 years because they couldn't compete with Lowes and Home Depot) carried shovels made in Canada that were awesome. The Canadian shovels only costs $5 more, but probably had 1/4th the markup on them. I hope I can find another retailer for those snow shovels if I ever need a new one (which may be many years.)

Another is shoes. We have a local shoe manufacturer that made high-end slippers and sandles for a number of well known major retailers. About 4 years ago, they moved all manufacturing to China. Quality dropped significantly resulting in massive product returns. Since these were private labeled products, the retailers reputation (which is based on only selling quality products) was in question. The local management team spent about 2 years trying to solve the quality issues in China and failed losing tens of millions of dollars (they had moved all their manufacturing equipment to China as well.) Late last year they announced that they were moving production back to the US, and started rehiring some of their old employees (of course most already had other jobs.)

IT is no different. Anyone remember the corporate backlash against Dell for moving support to India? This resulted in support for corporate models being returned to the US (consumer model support is still overseas. I advise against Dell and a couple other companies for this reason.)

From an article in BM: "Offshore outsourcing has grown so fast in countries such as India that the number of people that they have to do the services doesn't meet the demand in a lot of cases. There is a lot of competition for the best resources and they move from job to job for fairly small pay that translates into high turnover rates."

One quote from Mark Jennings, Vice President of Synergroup Systems: "Offshore providers are a popular solution for large corporations that need to cut costs, but overseas vendors are not without issues. Workers in India and other popular offshore countries are difficult to oversee and typically require the creation of a US-based management position, complete with a hefty salary and benefits, to act as a liaison between the offshore workers and the corporation. Companies are faced with language and cultural differences, time zone disconnects and the hidden costs encountered when communication breakdowns cause projects to be compromised."

Not all companies (like Dell) make good decisions on offshoring / outsourcing.

Just ask Rob Enderle.

From this authority -- which began due to a need to keep civilian transmissions from interfering with maritime wireless service -- they simply continued to regulate as frequencies grew higher and higher, and transmission distances shorter and shorter, until the FCC frequently has a say in things in which there is little or no business for Federal regulation.

Depends on how you look at it. At least with regards to section 15(?) of the FCC code with electronic devices emmiting and tollerating EM interference. Remeber the story about a tv that accidentally emited the aircraft emergency signal? The frequency is 121.5MHz.

And you're dead wrong about the Bush admin siding with EFF.

The Bush admin is siding with EFF on this:

The U.S. Justice department and U.S. Patent Office also filed an amicus brief in the case, stating that under the test, "a claimed invention that combined elements already present in the prior art would not have been obvious at the time of invention unless there was a teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the prior art that would have led a person of ordinary skill to combine the prior art references in the manner claimed."

And it's not just them, Microsoft and Cisco are also on tha same side:

FOSS advocates aren't alone in the tech industry in questioning the suggestion test. Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. were among the companies signing on to an earlier brief arguing the appeals court has been "too lenient" in accepting patents. The suggestion test hurts innovation by forcing companies to spend their resources on "defensive, large-scale patenting," the companies argued.

I'm no supporter of Bush or his admin but they are doing right by this. It's one of maybe a handfull of things I think they are doing right.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/52254.html

Why no attention to Microsoft's most secure OS ever getting hacked at the same conference?

Enough with the toy, synthetic and vendor optimized benchmarks. Give us men real benchmarks and lots of them to ensure the results are consistent across the board and not due to specific vendor optimizations for we know certain vendors aren't very honest. Not to pick on Intel but check out the following url's as examples http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html and http://www.technewsworld.com/story/49156.html.

Both 32 and 64-bit versions of both if available
Matlab, Mathematica, Maple
OpenSSL encyrption
Softimage, Maya, Modo
Oracle, MSSQL, Postgresql, Mysql

Feel free to add to the list. AMD looks like they have the architecture superiority while Intel's new Conroe will bandaid their architecture with a larger cache. Curious to see what happens to performance when cache is filled.

What has been your experience with Apple's XServe Clusters ?

But regareding your hard facts and your experience, what do you know that the technicians who built the following systems don't?

• The Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility containing 1100 Xserve G5 cluster nodes running OS X Panther
• The Human Genetics Grid Cluster with 250 PPC G5's running OS X
• The COLSA MACH 5 Cluster using 1566 cluster nodes, which should be running OS X as well. More info here .
• Additionally, the following people using OS X clusters to do biomedical research, and having won awards from Apple. But of course Apple wouldn't be unbiased in their opinions of OS X.

So can you describe your experience with Xgrid and why you think it's so bad. And regarding software, what problems do you see with the following software packages, or have you not used any?

• iNquiry bioinformatics
• grid Mathematica
• MATLAB's Distributed Computing Engine

Actually, Java developers ARE concerned about opening Java up. Here are some recent news articles from Googling "open java":

http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1895,1 955870,00.asp
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/216731.htm
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-analysis-new-ceo-su n-needs-turnaround-plan-that-/2006/04/26/1611586.h tm
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/50449.html

To all of which, Gosling has responded, "Nope", much to the chagrin of Java developers. If you haven't heard them, it's because you've been too busy complaining on Slashdot about Slashdotters using Slashdot to Slashdot.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/49559.html

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=103461

Pretty easy to transfer money if you can p0wn a phone...

Twitter, why do you continue to lie? Whitebox PC's do not make up 75% of the PC market, they make up more like 30%. See here for more information: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33596.html.

Of course the majority of computers that show up to be repaired major brand PC's - they are the majority of the market!

You future of "everything is free" isn't going to happen. Its not sustainable and no one who matters wants it. This isn't new, there have been many low cost PC's available that run Linux. No one is switching.

• case sensitivity
  
• very flaky hardware support
  
• visual inconsistencies (try running Gnome apps on KDE and vice-versa)
  
• scary interface conventions for Windows users (why does Gnome have no cancel buttons? lots of users I know get scared with that)
  
• advocates who bleat about 'idiot vendors not open sourcing their drivers' or 'choosing distro X will solve your problem!' or 'so roll your own distro' when told about these problems, further alienating users who want to use a Linux desktop to get his freaking job done.
  

If you do not yet suffer from any degenerative brain disorder or heart condition, or you do not otherwise require surgery, you may enjoy this article where the IDC claims there is $90 billion in installed software and "only" $59 billion has been paid for, yet the industry is losing $33 billion to this activity. I hope this makes you sick!

Interesting that this announcement from Apple came the quarter after PortalPlayer announced a new technology (called Preface) that's designed to work with Windows Vista only.

So - were they dumped for practical reasons or for punitive reasons? What do people think?

Onto a different aspect of this story - the company being touted as the most likely supplier of replacement chips is Samsung (allready a supplier of a good deal of ipod flash memory). Is it really wise for Apple to trust a competitor with components crucial to Apple's core business? (ipods are Apple's core business now).

Well, I guess Apple are happy doing business like this

Just in case and of you dumb fuck "Macs suck" knuckle draggers are wondering, It's over. U of Wi pulled the plug.

38 hours and not one successful crack.

Mr "Mac OS X is so insecure" didn't even manage to get in.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/49296.html

Actually, China is one the frontend of adopting IPv6. On the other hand, USA is behind, since the cost of upgrading the entire infrastructure is huge.

"FYI, no RESPECTABLE economist thinks off-shoring is a good idea."

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/33283.html

FYI, you're wrong.

TechNewsWorld has an interesting article by an IP lawyer explaining why lititgation risks with Open Source aren't as great as they're often made out to be.

" Rob Enderle is telling the truth when he attacks the OSDL study on statistical grounds,"

Actually no, he is not telling the truth, he is merely following a predictable pattern of attacking everything open source.

I find it quite suspect that someone can suddenly doubt the integrity of an organization when it appears they have always had a rather low opinion of the actions, philosophy, and intent of the organization.

Time and again Enderle has suggested that the open source movement is disingenous and ran by nuts who intimidate and threaten, and lacks mature leadership, and when an IT department chooses open source Enderle suggests that an investigation is in order to determine if policies were followed and whether sound judgement was used.

The OSDL supported TCO study is just that, a study. And it is a study of businesses who have learned how to successfully implement open source software in their business and have reaped the benefits. No statistical befuddlement will ever change the facts.

" Rob Enderle is telling the truth when he attacks the OSDL study on statistical grounds,"

Actually no, he is not telling the truth, he is merely following a predictable pattern of attacking everything open source.

I find it quite suspect that someone can suddenly doubt the integrity of an organization when it appears they have always had a rather low opinion of the actions, philosophy, and intent of the organization.

Time and again Enderle has suggested that the open source movement is disingenous and ran by nuts who intimidate and threaten, and lacks mature leadership, and when an IT department chooses open source Enderle suggests that an investigation is in order to determine if policies were followed and whether sound judgement was used.

The OSDL supported TCO study is just that, a study. And it is a study of businesses who have learned how to successfully implement open source software in their business and have reaped the benefits. No statistical befuddlement will ever change the facts.

" Rob Enderle is telling the truth when he attacks the OSDL study on statistical grounds,"

Actually no, he is not telling the truth, he is merely following a predictable pattern of attacking everything open source.

I find it quite suspect that someone can suddenly doubt the integrity of an organization when it appears they have always had a rather low opinion of the actions, philosophy, and intent of the organization.

Time and again Enderle has suggested that the open source movement is disingenous and ran by nuts who intimidate and threaten, and lacks mature leadership, and when an IT department chooses open source Enderle suggests that an investigation is in order to determine if policies were followed and whether sound judgement was used.

The OSDL supported TCO study is just that, a study. And it is a study of businesses who have learned how to successfully implement open source software in their business and have reaped the benefits. No statistical befuddlement will ever change the facts.

A long time ago, Rob Enderle wrote in an article ("Innovation Loses If Open Source Wins"):

"What this exercise creates is the assumption that open-source software kills software innovation because it effectively, over time, kills the funding for it. Much of the innovation we have today comes from proprietary companies."

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/32154.html

Do you still read what Rob Enderle writes?

Apple has a great product (I own one myself, and I LOVED it), but the ipods have a few flaws, ok,ALOT of flaws.

If Amazon could design a device that a) has a battery that doesnt die after 1 year b) has a hard drive that doesn't die after 1 year I'd be alot happier.

I have a 5 year old mp3 player that still works great (too bad it only holds 128 megs). My 4G ipod just died after 1 year 1 month exactly (never dropped it or anything which would damage it in any way). Now, I understand hardware can die, but for $400, I'd expect it to last more then a year. Luckily I bought a 2 year warranty so I got mine replaced for free, but many other people weren't so lucky and now have a $400 paperweight.

If your ipod isn't under warranty you can always get the battery replaced for around $60-70, if its the hard drive, you might aswell buy a new one. I will never buy another iPod or Apple product again after the stress and fustration this ordeal has caused me.

This last christmas, my sister and her husband decided to buy themselves 2 ipod nanos, they ended up returning them and getting replacements about 5 times because they didnt work (each replacement didnt work either). They eventually gave up on the nano and bought 2 ipod videos.

I'll probably be modded down for speaking out against Apple/ipod.

dead ipods faulty ipods

Ipod Battery Class Action Lawsuit Class Action Lawsuit against Apple for their faulty Ipod Nano Apple settles Ipod Class Action Lawsuit

The iPod Customer Service Story and Other Fairy Tales

http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/

Hopefully Amazon's "ipod" will work for more then a year. I could care less about how it looks, it will be in my pocket 99% of the time anyway. So please, design something that is a quality product, not just pretty looking.

Holy crap! Not only are you not kidding, but they're calling the new system...

wait for it...

Blue&Me!

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/48683.html

So who was calling it "Kama Sutra" ?

That would be the news media. You know, the all-knowing virus experts.

And all the non-tech people see this in the news and think it's a big deal. They keep calling asking if we are being hit by it. Gee, I don't know. It's been out since January 17 and our definitions have been updated about 15 times since then. You haven't been opening email attachments from people you don't know claiming to be sending you porn, have you? No? Then I think we're safe.

Come on people. Listen to those who know about what you are reporting. I had the same *&%$ happen a few weeks ago with the WMF flaw. Someone who thought they knew about security sent an email to everyone in the company telling them about a flaw that our systems were protected against anyway. This was after he sent a draft of the email to me to review to make sure he had the facts straight. I advised him to not send it at all. He sent it anyway. All this is just crying wolf. Some day there will be something we need people to be aware of and they will ignore us because of all the false alarms in the past.

This probably also applies to the corporate sponsors of bills like the proposed law regarding analog hole who seem to be employing curious tactics, which if you think of it is merely an effort to protect the intellectgual property. With typical bad results. And which will provoke a strong reaction in some quarters once it becomes well known.

I know we should try to be rational. Sometimes this is hard to do.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/48358.html Motorola is no stranger to OS Just a few days ago they bought an open source IPTV set top manufacturer. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) on Tuesday announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire a Swedish developer of Internet protocol-based digital set-top boxes. Motorola will purchase open-source technology vendor Kreatel Communications, which provides a combination of set-top boxes, software and professional services aimed at offering stable and future-proof solutions for television services, namely, IPTV. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. See the linked article for more

Amen! Of course the difficulty may be in whether a sites participation is voluntary or required. If required by law then a regulatory commission seems like an almost automatic next step. That could take us down the path to censorship as well. I am for voluntary registration which I think the porn industry has heartily supported.

Estimates:

GMail 5 million
(source: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14525&hed =Hackers+Cracked+Gmail)

Yahoo! Mail 219 million
HotMail 221 million
(source: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/45821.html)

Just because every geek has a gmail account doesn't mean that it has more than hotmail or yahoo mail.

I want to know who these "anti" virus companies are!

Well, one of them was in the news today...

Courtesy of Google News.

IE on the Mac: Bubbye
CNET News.com- Dec 19, 2005
News on Monday that Microsoft plans to discontinue support and development of its Internet Explorer Web browser on the Macintosh hardly came as a surprise.
MS pulls plug on Mac IE Register
Microsoft Drops Support for Mac IE TechNewsWorld
VNUNet.com- InformationWeek- Techtree.com- ZDNet UK- all 112 related

This is kind of odd. Burton Smith is not really a cluster guy, although he probably knows his way around HPC (High Performance Computing). Cray is not really a cluster company (except for the system they bought from Octiga Bay deal). If you want to read a review of what Bill Gates said at the recent Supercomputing conference, check out Where is the Cluster? at Cluster Monkey.

Other planted articles that are startlingly similar:
The actual verisign press release with a cute graph
PC World with a seemingly verbatim copy of the press release
Again from Tech News World
And C|Net's news.com.com even copies the fun and [extreme sarcasm]ever so statistically meaningful[/extreme sarcasm] graph

It is nice to note that VerisSign's Nasdaq abbreviation appears in all of these articles within the first sentence. So I wouldn't be too worried because its not surprising that VeriSign wants us to fear keyloggers.

Just because RIAA tried to shut them down they must be illegal?

Or is it the .ru DNS?

Did you bother looking it up?

"TNW: How do you respond to questions about artist royalties, when you charge so little per song and per album?

Mamotin: We pay all royalties according to our license, which we have obtained from ROMS. These royalties allow us to keep our prices at their current level."

From:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/34512.html

Don't believe every^H^H^H^H^HAnything RIAA tells you.