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Actually, yes.

Going to "Setings->Legal" on my iPod clearly shows the PortalPlayer logo, as well as legal jargon about PortalPlayer technology being used, and PortalPlayer's involvement in the iPod's guts is well documented.

Why not read first?

The push includes another revamp of the company's patch management process, which has been widely criticized as too cumbersome for enterprise users and too confusing for some home users,
...
Ballmer said one key improvement will be a simplification of the way patches are distributed. Microsoft plans to move to a monthly patch release schedule, which he said will make it easier for network administrators to plan updates, which often require system shutdowns before installation.

Looked nice on paper, but seems to me problems like this one deserve to be patched ASAP.

What if the only place to get music was at your local Best Buy and that just about every other outlet sold orders of magnitude less.

You mean kind of like Wal-Mart in the U.S? They capture 10% of all cd sales and have the clout to demand a sanatized version of the lyrics, song titles and cover art?

iTunes often caries both versions a song and even shows 'racy' versions of videos should you choose to watch them. Image that - choice. What will they think of next?

I'm surprised something like this made front page /. news. But then again it IS microsoft.. so hey.. jump on the bandwagon.

Microsoft clearly made their intentions to develop Microsoft branded Antivirus software last year when they bought GeCAD Software - the makers of RAV Antivirus.

Quick google search revealed one of the news stories about that event - http://www.technewsworld.com/story/31139.html

"at the time of the purchase, the company said it would put GeCAD's engineers to work integrating antivirus products with future versions of Windows, including next-generation platforms such as Longhorn." - 18 July, 2003

Dear lord, what's next? A bad review of his beloved Ferrari Laptiop? SCO may loose in court?

My reality is crumbling ... dear god make this madness stop!

see you in court circle jerks !!! its THE place to be seen this year,

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/34195.html

If you're in such a small minority that no one provides a service catering to your special whims, then no, you shouldn't be able to choose what kind of service you want. If no email service to your liking exists, I would hope your first inclination would be to pull up your boot straps and start coding, not to head to Sacramento as a lobbyist.

Gmail regulation will probably be as good for consumers as California's regulation of African hair braiders, Tennessee's regulation of discount coffin sellers, New Orlean's regulation of curbside book vendors, or Louisiana's regulation of flower arrangers. Behind the scenes, so many times, regulation like this (to ostensibly protect consumers) is actually rent seeking: politically-connected private businesses using government to coerce a state-protected cartel for themselves.

The justification for the law sounds nice: we want to protect email users from this new, nasty, privacy-invading Gmail. But I haven't heard a peep of complaint about Gmail from users, only from Google's competition . If Open Government Information Awareness weren't down right now, I'd look up Senator Figueroa's contributors. I smell a rat.

Enderle is the one who called Linux users "terrorists" and who thinks that SCO should win its case...

So, ummm, why would anyone listen to that guy, again? I mean, he decides to fling allegations of "terrorism" when he gets hatemail for being an idiot online, and (worse!) tend to discredit or disbelieve his oh-so-insightful analysis.

The man may be oft-quoted, but he's not exactly the brightest I've ever met... Seems to be one of the "contrarian" archetypes--that is, those who think that anything widely believed must be wrong. That includes, of course, both popular misconceptions and utter nonsense...

Of all items of clothing, said Rob Enderle, a principal analyst for the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif., the shoe is a logical one to be a focus of wearable technology

SCO owns Unix

for our common good, SCO must prevail.

I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists

While the article is overhyped, I would like to point out that the white/beige box PCs have significant market share esp in other countries (like the 3rd world).

The Secret Market Contender: White-Box PCs

If WhenU.com is unhappy about Utah law, I can only imagine how they will respond if either the proposed Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act or the Controlling Invasive and Unauthorized Software Act is passed and signed into law.

These bills have been covered by:

PC World

InfoWorld

ComputerWorld, and

TechNewsWorld

For more information about NASA's Gravity Probe B, you also should read this article from TechNewsWorld. You'll find additional comments and photos from NASA on my blog.

Since it is April Fools Day, why don't we have any SCO stories?

Your wish is my command.

I doubt PC gaming will die out. One of the major reasons is that developers will take money from wherever they can. Now that I've been hearing about this unified game development platform Microsoft cooked up, I think game developers will write the software once and release it both XBOX and PC platforms. As far as Playstation goes, I don't know how easy it is to port a game from the PC/Xbox to Playstation, but it seems to be easy enough where I've seen some games being released on all three platforms at the same time.

The other reason why I believe PC gaming is here to stay is because of the controls and multiplayer play. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the WASD/mouse configuration. With that, it's really easy to whip around a 180 and blast whoever's tailing you. Anyone ever tried to do this with a D-Pad on a console contoller? It's called "Hang on, I'll be with you in a second." Of course, on a console that's usually against a computer opponent, unless you happen to be paying $10/mo for the privilege of playing online with someone. And that brings me to my next point...LANs. Anyone ever heard of someone doing a big LAN party using Xbox/Playstations? Neither have I. And on Xbox, you get 4 players per console, all of whom can see each others' screens because it's split into four tiny quads. Then pair that with the fact that you can only have 4 Xboxes hooked up in the same game, which means you get a maximum of 16 players per game, all of whom are playing on what would probably be less than the equivalent resolution on 320x200 in one small corner of a crappy color TV.

Now ask anyone who has ever participated in a 64-player deathfest why he thinks PC gaming will die out.

Site already slashdotted, some other news about the same subject:
Here and here

PS: The second link is heavier and probably will go down soon.

a. "pros," or professional users who use multiple operating systems and really just view each in terms of their usefulness as a tool and are really indifferent as far as a choice of OSs go.

b. the "priests," or users who view Linux and open source software as the solution, no matter what, as the solution and are fanatical and closed-minded.

c. the "zealots," users who generally use a male body part as their web pseudonym and are terrorists. He says "The Zealots are rude and crude, and the sentence "two beers short of a six-pack" defines them well."

I wonder, has the author ever considered the possible existence of Linux users, like myself, who just like Linux and the whole concept of open software?

Speaking of "proving it more with each article," I don't see anyone mentioning this recent gem by Mr. Enderle. Once again, he connects Linux to terrorism.

I'm sure it'll hit Slashdot's front page in a few hours, but nonsubscribers can beat the rush and see it early.

Don't forget his latest comments to the effect that because MyDoom targetted sco.com, Linux users are terrorists.

Rob Enderle is the founder--and as best I can tell, sole employee--of "The Enderle Group." Basically, he started calling himself an expert on stuff, a few online 'zines believed him, and he got famous on Slashdot for badmouthing Linux.

Unfortunately he's not the only one making the Linux == Terrorism link.

I fully agree with you that it should not be necessary. However, I assume that you are from a country using a latin charset (being Dutch, I am). However, even though we as "westerners" might still be in the majority (are we still?), this might not always be like this.

For example: the number of Chinese internet users went from roughly 600 thousand to 80 million in the timespan 1997-2003. So there will be lots more. And that's only China. I can only imagine that these people want domains in their own charset (at least we have lots of domain names in Dutch here in Holland, but of course we have the advantage of using a Latin charset).

In that case, a general "block" on multilingual domains in the address bar won't work.

I searched linux site:sco.com and got one match linking to this article ripping on Linux Zealots, good read.

http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32278.html http://www.strategicadvantage.com/nwbsmicro.html

It looks like they're going after the UDF 1.5 standard.

Roxio, CD-R Industry Under Legal Fire from Optima

"There's a large number of people in the industry using the OSTA 1.5 UDF protocol, which is -- based on our position -- what the patent covers," he said.

...or want files in .wma format?

Well since the alleged flood on SCO's web site, I was curious enough to go visit it. Interesting are the news items there.

SCO Ranked 75 In Deloitte Technology Fast 500

The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of business software solutions, today announced its ranking-number 75-on the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America.

Darl McBride Ranked in Top 25 IT Executives for 2003

Darl McBride, president and CEO of The SCO Group, was ranked among the top 25 executives in the IT industry, according to CRN. The ranking represents McBride's fight to raise industry awareness of the importance of protecting intellectual property in a digital age"

and then this little troll from SCO in the NEWS

Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux

It's sad to see how people are so misguided.

Did anyone else see this article linked from SCO's main page? It starts off saying 'I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists because of the nature of their threats.'. I knew Darl and Co. were a bunch of asshats, but this is ridiculous.

The Age reports that Cisco routers would block the SYN flood attack SCO claims to suffer from (I think there is some discussion of this on groklaw as well). Anyways, the guys at The Age appear to have a clue.

The second link is to the Google cache of the most recent SCO page. It takes forever to load (I wonder why), but examination of the source file reveals (surprise!) a link to Rob Enderle's anti-Linux propaganda from www.technewsworld.com...

I think that the people reading this thread and possessing the necessary technical knowledge should store the evidence contradicting SCO's "explanations" of today's events in the case SCO claims that the information the judge demanded "got lost because of the vile Linux hacker attack."

As soon as Linux scales well to 128+ CPUs with full binary compatibility (no recompile) and has hot swap CPU/MEMROY/Motherboard support. People who think that Solaris must suck becuase it lacks a cool interface are missing the point.

"The machine is the first supercomputer based on Macs; it is one of the few supercomputers built entirely from off-the-shelf components and it cost a bargain-bucket price -- only $5.2 million. By comparison, most of the top 10 supercomputers cost about $40 million and up. The Earth Simulator cost $350 million."

"The $200 million (US$) computer is the fifth in the DOE's nuclear weapons simulation program, called Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), which allows the U.S. to keep its nuclear stockpile while complying with the nuclear test-ban treaty. Named "ASCI Q," the newest supercomputer will be capable of performing 30 trillion calculations per second.*"

And /.ers treating Microsoft harsher than other companies surprises you?

To save you from shock in the future, please read the rules of slashdot
(but don't ever admit to doing so!)

From "The Oxford Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus" - religous - ... scrupulous; conscientious.

No where does it mention "irrational". But, honestly that was the intent in that choice of words, but not in a negative way. You said that when you share code, you're not comfortable with the thought of others profiting from it. How can you rationalize that one way or another? It is just a feeling, so it is "irrational". But to me religous also infers that one's beliefs should be respected even if you disagree with them.

"Zealotry" is a demonizing term, and often confused with religion. It is a subset of religion. "Zealots" are not respectful of ideas contrary to their beliefs. The GPL has a small percentage of supporters who are "zealots", and do give the whole cause a bad name (though in /. the percentage is quite a bit higher).

My belief that open source (non GPL) is the way to go is also an "irrational" belief because there is no rational argument for "I feel comfortable allowing others to profit from my work." Guess that is why it is the developer's choice, huh?

pauL

Much more info about the bill:

The bipartisan bill sponsored by Wyden and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., would also:

Prohibit sending spam that falsifies the source, destination or routing information.

Require the FTC to study whether commercial e-mails can be labeled as advertising to make it easier to set filters to block spam.

Ban spammers from harvesting addresses off Web sites.

Require commercial e-mail senders to include their physical address.

Impose both civil and criminal penalties on violators.

Actually I prefer this icon, or this one.

Pro-linux people click here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/FUCK-YOU-AND-YOUR-SHI TTY-ANTI-LINUX-ATTITUDE

Anti-Linux folk click here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/I'M-GLAD-ROB-ENDERLE- SUCKS-GATE'S-DICK

And remember: "Click early, click often".

Pro-linux people click here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/FUCK-YOU-AND-YOUR-SHI TTY-ANTI-LINUX-ATTITUDE

Anti-Linux folk click here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/I'M-GLAD-ROB-ENDERLE- SUCKS-GATE'S-DICK

And remember: "Click early, click often".

Divide and Conquer or Judas of Geeks ?

I am about at the end of my internet rope (read: hangman's noose).

From my point of view, the internet stands at the doorstep of 'truckin CB movies with the hate and discontent included'. If you don't understand this scenario, allow me....

I have been interested in and participating with amateur radio since the early 1950s.

When I was in private school, I owned a CB radio with four channels and had a lot of fun, because in those days a lot of people who owned and flew small planes used CB radios too, and they would talk to me. This was an asset, because I ended up earning a cross county license for an Areonca at age 16.

On or about the time we were trying to figure out how to get ARPA to bridge to 'the rest of the world' ('70s) CB radio had started to become popular and the typical CB oriented movies were produced and offered to the public; giving everyone the impression they needed a CB radio too ...and this is when the Channel Masters and the H&D (hate and discontent) started to surface. In fact, one incident led to a shootout in San Francisco, where one person died.

This raises the question, is the internet heading the same way or...

This morning, I read some 'stuff' that got me thinking about what kind of world we have turned into and with a loud sigh, I present a different view.

Starting with this article, Zen and the Art of Being Happy with Microsoft , by Rob Enderle, says, Much of the news surrounding Microsoft seems to focus on mistakes the company has made in the past. There are reporters with broad followings whose agenda appears to be to bring Microsoft down. This problem is exacerbated by the massive increase in blogs written by people who support other platforms -- largely Linux and Mac -- who do an excellent job of reinforcing these negative messages.

I can handle that comment, but in this article Pros, Priests and Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux , Rob Enderle states, 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.

is this the first phase of corporate America trying to steal what was set up to be FREE?

Let's take a closer look at Rob Enderle. According to www.technewsworld.com, Rob Enderle, a TechNewsWorld columnist, is the Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group, a company founded on the concept of providing a unique perspective on personal technology products and trends. and their stated goal is, to bring diverse and challenging views into technology advisory services and consulting.

Calling Open Source folks or Linux Zealots terrorists is not a diverse or challenging view and reeks of If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you're a terrorist, and you will be held accountable by the United States and our friends. by a publicly known liar.

You are entitled to your beliefs and I will defend your right to speak your mind, but as you know, opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one; except in your case, it appears you forgot to wipe. It is also obvious whose toilet you have been feeding from. Just so the public knows, here are a list of stories produced by Rob Enderle and the Enderle Croup:

Pros, Priests and Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux
Transme

Divide and Conquer or Judas of Geeks ?

I am about at the end of my internet rope (read: hangman's noose).

From my point of view, the internet stands at the doorstep of 'truckin CB movies with the hate and discontent included'. If you don't understand this scenario, allow me....

I have been interested in and participating with amateur radio since the early 1950s.

When I was in private school, I owned a CB radio with four channels and had a lot of fun, because in those days a lot of people who owned and flew small planes used CB radios too, and they would talk to me. This was an asset, because I ended up earning a cross county license for an Areonca at age 16.

On or about the time we were trying to figure out how to get ARPA to bridge to 'the rest of the world' ('70s) CB radio had started to become popular and the typical CB oriented movies were produced and offered to the public; giving everyone the impression they needed a CB radio too ...and this is when the Channel Masters and the H&D (hate and discontent) started to surface. In fact, one incident led to a shootout in San Francisco, where one person died.

This raises the question, is the internet heading the same way or...

This morning, I read some 'stuff' that got me thinking about what kind of world we have turned into and with a loud sigh, I present a different view.

Starting with this article, Zen and the Art of Being Happy with Microsoft , by Rob Enderle, says, Much of the news surrounding Microsoft seems to focus on mistakes the company has made in the past. There are reporters with broad followings whose agenda appears to be to bring Microsoft down. This problem is exacerbated by the massive increase in blogs written by people who support other platforms -- largely Linux and Mac -- who do an excellent job of reinforcing these negative messages.

I can handle that comment, but in this article Pros, Priests and Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux , Rob Enderle states, 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.

is this the first phase of corporate America trying to steal what was set up to be FREE?

Let's take a closer look at Rob Enderle. According to www.technewsworld.com, Rob Enderle, a TechNewsWorld columnist, is the Principal Analyst for the Enderle Group, a company founded on the concept of providing a unique perspective on personal technology products and trends. and their stated goal is, to bring diverse and challenging views into technology advisory services and consulting.

Calling Open Source folks or Linux Zealots terrorists is not a diverse or challenging view and reeks of If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you're a terrorist, and you will be held accountable by the United States and our friends. by a publicly known liar.

You are entitled to your beliefs and I will defend your right to speak your mind, but as you know, opinions are like ass holes, everyone has one; except in your case, it appears you forgot to wipe. It is also obvious whose toilet you have been feeding from. Just so the public knows, here are a list of stories produced by Rob Enderle and the Enderle Croup:

Pros, Priests and Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux
Transme

2) How exactly does he think that Linux Zealots will affect the SCO case? It depends on matters of fact, and the contracts between SCO and IBM (and others).

3) He also acknowledges that unix and open source has advantages. He claims the "Pros" favour BSDs as they are less "distracting".

He is also a comitted MS apologist who has previously written a piece claiming that MS's dissatissfied custmomers have only themselves to blame for,among other things, not buyng Premier Support

Try again. The VA cluster is running OSX, as seen here.

... are you seriously maintaining that the release of a white paper (ie: "We plan for our next generation of computers to be EVEN FASTER, woo!") detailing a series of products with no ship dates attached is much more important than a product that has actually shipped?

I guess I should have included news sources in my links, because there sure are a lot of them.

All sarcasm aside, your point is well taken. I like the article on the Sun site because it explains more about how the technology works than any of the news sites, but it seems that Slashdot editors are much more likely to accept a story if the link points to an "impartial" news source rather than a press release. Thanks for the tip.

The Efficeon (god, what an awful name) and the new Eden are both real products that I can now order in batches of 1 or more.

Actually, neither one of those products have shipped:

From Via's press release:

The VIA Eden-N processor is sampling now and is expected to start appearing in secure networking, entertainment and communication devices in Q1, 2004.

From Transmeta's press release:

... the Efficeon processor family will be competitive with, or outperform competing microprocessors operating within critical thermal limits such as the 7W limit for typical fanless notebook designs. Systems based on the processor are expected to begin shipping in the fourth quarter.

SCO

Why WMA you ask? I say two reasons.

1) AAC is only compatible with the iPod. There are a hundred players that play WMA, only a few.... er wait ... one player that plays AAC. Plus it's Apples format, I don't think they've ever offered to license it out.

2) Microsoft Unleashes New XP Media Center

"According to Microsoft, digital content providers such as CinemaNow, Movielink and the soon-to-be-revived Napster will help provide streaming and downloadable media, gaming, movie trailers and live news feeds for XP Media Center 2004. "

Well you are the odd-ball then since most of hollywood is using Linux to do full production of movies. Linux in Hollywood.

A good chunk of the artists out there doing 3D stuff need Photoshop. What are they using in its place? (or do they have a Mac room running Photoshop elsewhere?)

Disney funded Linux developer CodeWeavers to make the CrossOver emulator run Windows Adobe Photoshop 7 on Linux -- without Windows.

Deep paint, with more than 8 bits per channel of color depth, is necessary to support the higher dynamic range of film. Could the Hollywood market support a commercial deep paint tool tailored to motion picture production? Considering the small market niche, studio technologists didn't think so.

Hollywood came up with a novel solution. What if the popular Linux open-source GIMP program was enhanced for motion picture work? Although the industry couldn't justify developing a deep paint program from scratch, it could support a few open-source programmers to make a deep GIMP.

...

Film Gimp was subsequently used by Rhythm & Hues for Scooby-Doo, Dr. Dolittle 2, and Planet of the Apes. Sony Pictures Imageworks picked up Film Gimp for use in Stuart Little 2. Hammerhead Productions used it in Showtime, Blue Crush, and 2 Fast 2 Furious.

HTH. HAND.

Possibly by keeping the XSD proprietary?

You and others with unfettered access to those schemas through the latest MS applications like Office, Excel and C# are quite able to run the XML through any XSLT as much as you like. You can even use openly published XSLT to transform Word XML into other, more open XML based formats, as long as you buy the application and access to MS schema.

What's more problematic is whether others, without access to XSD, will be able to make a Word document saved as XML be able to look the way Word presents it. Or, to edit those XML files with anything but an MS application.

This is analogous to the long-standing problems with the .doc "standard": Strictly, RTF is documented, but it's value is disputed: presentation rules for RTF by Word are not completely documented publicly and different versions of Word can change how a document appears.

There are two distinct groups developing and commercializing similar technology.

The previously-posted story was about a walk-thru screen developed at Tampere University of Technology, Finland, demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 2003, which is being commercialized by FogScreen, Inc.

In the current story, the technology was developed at MIT, demonstrated for the media, and is being commercialized by IO2 Technology".

Both systems appear to use a particle wall or sheet, onto which video is projected. Neither is anywhere close to "holographic," so I'm afraid those late-night session "learning Vulcan" with Virtual T'Pol are still a few years off.

I googled around and unsuccessfully found what I was querying. Anyway http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/20535.html , says that as of January 21, 2003 Apple has only 3.5 market share.

OS is SuSE as it supports Infiniband.

Well, according to this story, the cluster will be running "a beta version of the latest release of OS X", presumably a beta version of Panther.

If this is true, I'd bet, and this is purely a guess, that Panther and XCode, the new development tool built by Apple, have some support for cluster applications. With technologies like Rendezvous on top of Mach/BSD, it could mean beowulf style supercomputers that are both fast and easy to maintain.

The Age is the only place i could find this story, and it contradicts everything that SCO has said so far. The only somewhat related story I could find is this one. Oh well, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I trust SCO about as much as a nigerian spammer on peyote, so I think they're up to something.