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No doubt, credit where credit is due and my hats off to MS in their browsers efficiency, however, it still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft's browser will always be seen as inferior like IE. I guess (sadly) the same as many people see Firefox as always bloated and inefficient compared to Chrome.

MS will no doubt use this to their advantage in ads as much as possible, but I don't think it will change the browser war - until perhaps they (like Google) also spend billions in advertising Edge all over the world in train stations to newspapers to billboards... all over the world! :)

But good news for the rest of us, hopefully it will force competition and hopefully get (especially) Mozilla to create a more efficient browser!

Google blatantly advertisers Chrome on their websites and YouTube (but only to IE users.. heh), they have billboards and TV advertising campaigns, they pay OEM's, hardware manufacturers and shareware/freeware authors to bundle Chrome with their products, they aggressively try to put Chrome on your computer if you install any other software from Google, they pay makers of Angry Birds to have Chrome-only HTML5 version of their game and make websites that purposely only work with Chrome. They game and spam other search engines like Bing too.

Seems like they went full in and do whatever they can to get that market share. Even supporting CISPA.

that's around $234 a piece, for that amount you can get a netbook with better specs compared to olpc

I thought the same thing, but they have a program where the children learn how to replace motherboards and LCDs in the olpc.. Can't do that with a dell netbook, and I'm sure the kids appreciate them more when they realize they'll have to replace the screen themselves if they slam it against a wall. Besides an olpc is a bit more robust than a walmart netbook, I'd compare it more to a toughbook then a normal netbook and you can't buy a new toughbook for anywhere near $200

I think you're confused, it was Microsoft 'end running'

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/421282/u_judge_orders_motorola_enforce_microsoft_injunction_germany

/proc//mem

is the very wrong quotation!
The original source quotes instead:

/proc/<pid>/mem

which is the memory as seen by a certain process whose PID is <pid>.
Moreover, there's no "/proc/mem" file and the "//" whould be interpreted as "/".
But maybe that'd be just the Slashdot editor.

This isn't so much an amendment, as a plan to think about amending it. From the article:

"...plans to offer an amendment that would require a study of the impact of the ISP provisions in the bill before they are implemented. If the study found negative impacts, it's likely the ISP provision would be killed."

The above is pretty much all of the article which is not political filibustering, back patting or stating things which won't change (the payment freezing, and search engine stuff).

TL;DR version: they're thinking about maybe possibly backing down on one point.

"So WIKIPEDIA which claims itself that it IS NOT A SOURCE is better than a former president of Stanford ?" - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28, @05:26PM (#38520102)

When they state my source is widely known, & referred to? They are a GREAT source to bolster my rebuttals which blew you away on your stating the academic institution I graduated from was "shitty" (#18 in top northeast schools, where the best US schools are, & #9 in "best buy/bang for the buck" too!).

In fact, I'll cite them again now on this very note!

Wikipedia states this on their website about USNews, verbatim:

"it has become particularly known for its ranking system and annual reports on American colleges, graduate schools and hospitals." from -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._News_%26_World_Report

AND, many people + other sites/sources of news, & more, refer to it because of its being reputable and a reputable source of information... unlike yourself.

---

"Yeah, taking an out-of-context answer to your accusation of me modding and commenting, just to fit your upcoming question." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28, @05:26PM (#38520102)

Well, you don't have a degree to your name, or any notable accomplishments in comp. sci., so it's just fact!

---

"Victims are infected by an exploit delivered via a tampered Microsoft Word document, which, if opened, delivers Duqu. Gostev's post includes a screenshot of the simple email purporting to come from a marketing manager, "Mr. B. Jason," requesting that the receiver open a Word document and answer a few questions such as "Do you supply marine shipping?"" from -> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/407207/duqu_authors_sprinkle_humor_dangerous_code

So, yes, it uses email & word documents to spread around... that much I was correct on, & that DUQU's served up from Linux C&C servers too as I noted here!

(Does it use other things? Yes!)

---

"Well - We have yet another "-1" mod for you there too" - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28, @05:26PM (#38520102)

That you or others like you are left resorting to, & that's ALL you've got, period! Effete mod downs? They don't bug me...

So what? I have hundreds of upward mods (hard for us AC's to get even a +1, since we start @ 0, & /. hides our posts!)

APK

P.S.=> When will you learn that trying to 'get the better of me' is impossible? Give up - YOU don't possess the intelligence, facts & certainly NOT CREDIBILITY either (much less the ability to back up the fact you put down others with degrees, schools they went to, things they did that were noted good by others & YET YOU HAVE NOT DONE ANY OF THAT YOURSELF - that's called "talking out your ass" buddy... lol!

... apk

As do I. I have a separate dumbphone and laptop because of smartphone data plan costs. It's just that some pundits have predicted that as tablets take over, laptops will become harder to get. For example, Dell recently stopped making 10" laptops.

according to Florian Mueller, who has been closely following patent lawsuits in the mobile industry. Mueller is a patent expert who sometimes does consulting work for companies including Microsoft.

(Kind of disclaimer: I actually work for IDG's Australian subsidiary -- shameless plug: http://www.techworld.com.au/ -- but I don't know the ins and outs of this decision. It's pretty sad though, given the Gamepro brand is pretty venerable in its particular niche.)

Oh, I'm sure that Facebook stuck to the letter of the EULA, which, without doubt, says that Facebook can do whatever they want now, and if you argue about it, they can change the EULA retroactively at will such that there's no question at all about the matter.

Apparently, the German Merck entered into an agreement with FB in March 2010 (cf. Original Story/a)

Fantastic, so now Facebook has the right of determining valid trademarks, on top of all the personal data it collects. I may be cynical here, but I get the feeling that 'playing nice' will involve the largest payment in combination with the best legal team.

According to the original report:
Merck in Germany said in the filing that it entered into an agreement with Facebook on or about March, 2010 for the exclusive use of the web page. Merck said it assigned administrative rights to the web page to a limited number of people, who are its employees, or its external service provider for registration of domain names and social media user names.

As I said above, it just shows what an agreement with Facebook is worth.

They won't fail because their patents are technical and narrow in scope, they will fail because the patents are part of an international standard and when that standard was being devised samsung agreed that it would licence the patents to any company that asked at a fair and non discriminatory price.

Source: http://www.techworld.com.au/article/404221/#closeme
As linked to by: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/17/0325220/dutch-court-rejects-samsung-patent-claims-against-apple

It not being cool to RTFA is promoting ignorance over informed opinion and is no different to the Jocks and Nerds high school bullshit.

I wrote a short obituary for him.

If you're only going to read one page of this article then read page five.
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/398892/developer_q_syllable_os/?pp=5

To summarise the thing that makes this different from everyone else is that the parts of an actual application are split up unix style. For example instead of having two or more applications taking your photo and taking out the red eye, the desktop would have thus functionality written once and the applications will simply glue all these standard pieces together.

My only criticism to this is that we already have this in the form of libraries. Perhaps what this guy is after is something more standardised and higher level then that but I don't see how that's not doable in linux.

the TechWorld article: "The developers feel that modern operating systems have headed off track; in part because of the lack of modularity imposed by commercial interests."

Seems to me that increasing that 8 seconds of recon should be relatively academic. How about adding a little parachute that could increase hang time immensely? Also, perhaps adding a gps transmitter would allow for reuse.

8 seconds is with a parachute. FTFA: "Their first test -- launched from a 37mm flare gun last week at a neighbor's farm -- wasn't exactly a raging success: The powder didn't fully ignite, the miniature camera flew about 30 feet into the air -- apparently too fast to transmit images back to the 5.8Ghz wireless receiver they were using -- and their parachute partially incinerated."

Yeah those ads annoy me too...

"A link to the project site in the summary wouldn't have gone amiss though."

Yes that's totally true. I blame lack of sleep when I was posting it :-)

On the plus side, one of the things I like about my job is that I have the freedom to write about cool open source projects like Uzebox (and Alec is a really great guy). For example, how many people get paid to review Ubuntu Linux Satanic Edition.

Plus I've had Microsoft hosted Exchange for almost 2 years now and can't remember a single outage.

I call bullshit. I have had BPOS with my company for almost a year and have experienced several outages (I am keeping track because this was upper managments call against the advice of IT):

22 June 2011
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-confirms-bpos-cloud-outage
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/23/bpos_outage/

10-13 May 2011
http://www.katacinta.net/cinta/microsoft-online-outage-may-10/
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/386384/outage_hits_hosted_exchange_customers/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/hosted-exchange-customers-hit-service-outages-981
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216697/Microsoft_explains_recent_hosted_e_mail_outages

6 March 2011:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/onlineservicesexchange/thread/7017abf4-a9d9-4c08-85ac-f66912124493/
19 October 2010
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/onlineservicesannouncements/thread/e72e8707-7457-4737-b246-2598769e54cf/
3 & 7 September 2010 & 23 Aug 2010
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-bpos-down-for-90-minutes-second-outage-in-a-month/7302
http://mcpmag.com/articles/2010/09/10/microsoft-reports-major-bpos-outages-slas-affected.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/msonline/archive/2010/09/08/meeting-your-and-our-own-expectations.aspx
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-apologizes-for-spate-of-recent-online-services-outages/7337

Except there was an article last year about the DoD tendering for thin-clients for some of their 75,000 user base. Those are the staffing numbers of actual public servants, which don't include staff employed via external agencies or on a contractual basis.

...there are tools to compromise its keychain in a few minutes?

TFS and TFA refer to the "University of Victoria" which could be the same as "Victoria University" but the announcement was made at the "University of Melbourne" which leaves me confused.

Then there is this:

Natural disasters, resource management, life sciences and e-health will be keyed as high priorities for a new global research and development lab to be opened at the University of Melbourne by IBM.

So I think its Melbourne Uni.

Go ahead and mod me down, but it's only a matter of time before this happens again. You either accept the liability and put your trust in microsoft for patches, or do something else. It's not a stretch to expect more of the same.

"At the same time, the company said it would not patch Windows because doing so would cripple existing applications."
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3236953/microsoft-confirms-unpatched-vulnerabilities-in-key-enterprise-programs/

"The security firms also notified Microsoft of two other unpatched bugs that the Stuxnet worm exploited"..."Microsoft said last week. It has not set a timetable for the fixes, however."
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/361843/microsoft_confirms_it_missed_stuxnet_print_spooler_zero-day

"was first identified by information security researchers in June"
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=207166&ref=g_homelink

I suspect this is another outing for Google's NeatX FreeNX Server

If they make it go through their authentication systems instead of publishing an external IP address that could be a lot safer - ie, as long as the computer's properly protected and access is limited to the appropriate IP range it shouldnt pose any greater risk than running a legacy app on a computer you're sitting at

But I really don't get your "patent minefield" comment at all. That's what Microsoft was HOPING to accomplish, but frankly it seems obvious they failed miserably - that's why for the past couple years they've made significant moves towards coexistence and interoperability with Linux. It's not like they managed to even slow down Red Hat, let alone turn the corporate world against them.

Does not mean they are not working on it: http://www.techworld.com.au/article/333351/illuminating_elephant_open_source_room

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/329382/red_hat_open_sources_desktop_application_protocol

I do have some (very small) sympathy for a company that has seen a 5000% growth in data traffic. Who can realistically plan for that kind of growth?

But, this is not the customer's fault either. Plan better. And how about you stop laying more people off? If you are growing at these record levels why are there lots of articles about layoffs in the last 3 years? I don't understand this. I'll admit that data growth != customer growth but why the huge layoffs?

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/269777/t_cut_12_000_employees_through_2009

Apparently AT&T has 12000 unemployed former employees from just this year. Sounds like bad planning across the board. Maybe this is a good indicator that the top executives are totally clueless to the actual situation of their company.

That assumes that the value of the software is the same, value being usability, performance, etc. For netbooks, servers, and small dedicated devices I don't think Microsoft can compete at all.

More netbooks sell with Windows than Linux. When IT staffers were asked "the operating system of choice for IT netbooks is Windows 7". Some are hoping that because of Moblin Linux will regain market share in netbooks. MS IIS comes in second in webservers, behind Apache. While down from it's high IIS still has a market share of 18% in webservers, excluding Apache more than all the others combined. I don't think Microsoft is in any danger of losing it's market share anytime soon.

I'm all for Linux, but it can't completely replace Microsoft just yet.

For most people both Linux and Macs can replace Windows. People just have this "Microsoft software is needed" attitude. Like a lot of other switchers before switching from Windows to first Linux then OSX I evaluated what I wanted to do, the tasks not the software. I then looked to see if there was any software available for Linux and OSX that could do what I wanted. Other than there being no drop-in replacement for Photoshop for Linux the answer was I could get software that would do what I wanted. And with WINE or Crossover Photoshop CS 2 will run on Linux.

Falcon

The performance degradation in the Intel X-25 is not because of a "firmware bug".

Bugs can cause slowdowns, too

Though it's highly regarded, Intel's X25-M SSD had a firmware bug that adjusted the priorities of random and sequential writes, leading to a major fragmentation problem that dropped throughput dramatically. The issue was originally uncovered by PC Perspective after two months of testing. Those tests showed that write speeds dropped from 80MB/sec. to 30MB/sec. over time, and read speeds dropped from 250MB/sec. to 60MB/sec. for some large block writes.

https://www.techworld.com.au/article/302571/ssd_performance_--_slowdown_inevitable?pp=3

Before firmware update

the result suggested a write speed of 30 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=3

After firmware update

After composing myself, I did the same file copy I had tried earlier. 76 MB/sec.

http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=691&type=expert&pid=4

Not a firmware bug?

Hi, I too was bothered by the lack of detail. I found the following website http://www.techworld.com.au/article/310730/plastic_circuits_make_tougher_greener_computers And there there is a fleeting sentence: ---------------- The circuit board is a plastic sheet in which all components are placed in divots,â Thiel said. âoeThe conductor is screen-printed into a thin cover sheet which is then thermally bonded to the circuit board. --------------- I'm guessing the contact is by pressure. So you have the tracks, and you have the components, and you press the tracks onto the components, a bit like putting an IC onto a socket.

Porting K3b to KDE 4.x is difficult enough, apparently. They even had to modify Qt. It's a very nice app, though; fast, reliable, no configuration needed, and with a good GUI.

The www.techworld.com.au blog link in the summary is broken. It is missing couple of "s" letters.
Here is a working link:

http://www.techworld.com.au/blog/broadbandvoice/2009/03/acmas_blacklist_a_bigots_battleground

This is called government. Microsoft pays pays Barack, who gives money to microsoft. Your money. Oh and if you still want to use the whitehouse site You'll have to pay some more

Isn't government grand ? "Protection money". Even though yes, the government is generally prepared to protect you -just enough so you can keep working to pay some more to "your" next politician's bosses.

That's a little strong, to say the least. It works, it's fast, it's feature rich, and it's secure.

I don't know about the other parts, but I sure hope it will be fast.

A RIA app we're developing is giving us a ton of grief because parts of it are abysmally slow with IE7. It's not a problem if you are using a modern browser (FF3, WebKit etc.), but it's barely viable with IE7. The RC announcement sounded like great news to us, but then I saw this quote from a senior product manager on the IE development team:

"We're at the point, with what people do in the browser, that users can't really tell the difference between browser [performance]"

See the quote in context here. Yep, MS is still the arrogant itself, and us RIA developers will be in a world of pain in the future, too.

"This circuit uses the 'scratch' as a guide or a switching path for information - like when trains are switched from one track to another - except this switch takes only one picosecond to change tracks. This means that in one second the switch is turning on and off about one million times. We are talking about photonic technology that has terabit per second capacity"

A picosecond is one trillionth (10 -12 ) of a second, or one millionth of a microsecond.