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Heh, "since XP," because man, that was freakin' eons ago. Like back before marketshare fell from 63.76% to 63.67%.

Stardock's primary business is Object Desktop and ilk; things which had some functionality and eye candy to Windows. These things will inevitably have less appeal as new versions of Windows are released which include similar functionality out of the box (or as people switch to other OSes which have more customization features).

Microsoft's primary business is a proprietary operating system which has been very successful largely as a result of questionable business practices which have turned a lot of people against them. The only direction their market share can go is down, and once other OSes reach a critical mass such that changing platform is no longer a daunting proposition for the majority of businesses they'll be in for a world of hurt.

Of the two, I think Microsoft is more likely to survive for a long time, but any business has a 100% chance of going under eventually. Either that or they'll be bought out, and the buying company might decide to change policies. For example, Valve promise that if they go under they'll release a patch to unlock all Steam games; but if they enter administration will they be granted the ability to unlock all their assets? While I believe Valve do fully intend to keep that promise if at all possible, the current management may not always be in a position to keep that promise.

Bankruptcy isn't the only reason for activation servers to go offline; remember PlaysForSure? All it takes is a corporate boss deciding the profits made from keeping their DRM servers alive is ought-weighed by the savings to be had from turning them off.

Then there's the possibility of technical problems making the services "temporarily" unavailable, or your licensing information getting lost and you having to try to prove to the company you really did buy the product and have a right to activate it, and so on.

It's funny how you dismiss the demise of SGI and 3DFX so easily. They were pretty big names back in the day; 3DFX essentially created the consumer-level 3D graphics acceleration. Here's some popular games that used the Glide API but there were plenty more. That list made me a little nostalgic. I wasn't into UNIX back then, but I do remember using SGI workstations at university in the late 90's.

This seemed a bit high to me, and I think the $585M is the total amount charged to all conspiring companies to date:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41689/118/

$31M seems a little low but a) they plead guilty and b) they assisted in building the case against the other companies. Still, for a $70B (2006) market, even if they were a small player they seemed to have gotten off a bit easier than I'd expect.

By your logic Microsoft is not a monopoly either.

I don't know what the GP's threshold for monopoly status is, but it's apparent he thinks it's more than 59% market share. You are the one with faulty logic to then reason that because he doesn't think 59% is enough that he must not think 89% is enough.

They have less then 90%: http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40381-113.html about 65%

Even if it is off by 20% they still have only a 85% market share. SO I guess they are no longer a monopoly by your definition?

No, a monopoly means market dominance, to a level decided by a court. 90% market share, for example, could be considered a monopoly (for legal reasons). It doesn't mean there's no one else in the market, just extreme dominance.

Really? The magic 8 ball says that Merriam doesn't give that answer http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

And as I said, just because a judge makes a ruling doesn't make it correct - it just makes it enforceable.

According to this article, http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40381-113.html, As of Dec 1, 2008 IE is below 70%

I bought an ATI when my 8800GTS 512 died; I didn't want to play the lottery as to whether the replacement would have the same manufacturing defects or not.

nVidia are going to have to do something pretty special to attract me back after that; putting two of their power hungry barely-fabricatable huge monolithic GPUs on a single card just isn't it.

In the future, the internet will be faster, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that you'll be able to download regular CD audio. In fact, if you think there's an emerging market for that, you could start it up yourself.

Actually there very well may be a good market for them, afterall "Vinyl records are making a comeback".

one last thing -- CD audio sounds flat and empty compared to DVD-Audio. If you could easily download CD-quality audio, would that be good enough, or would you then want DVD-Audio?

Me, I want vinyl. And a reel to reel tape deck. When I get a new turntable and tape deck the first tyme I play a record I'll record on tape then put the record away for safe keeping and listen to the tape.

Falcon

...and SCO-shilling who is so forgotten I can't even find him on Google anymore

Could it be that you refer to Rob Enderle? Interesting, but old bit about him here

The article at TG Daily http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40823-97.html is headlined "LG to unveil netflixed HDTVs".

From the summary:

What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders.

Cool. But the next article links to Google's Browser Security Handbook, which in the Introduction says this about browser usage:

Microsoft IE 6: 23%
Microsoft IE 7: 47%
Microsoft IE 8 (beta): n/a
Mozilla Firefox 2: 5%
Mozilla Firefox 3: 15%
Apple Safari: 5%
Opera: ~1%
Google Chrome: ~1%
Android: n/a

So Firefox has ~ 20/27 = 74% of the browser usage.

Of course usage is not the same as marketshare, but the numbers do suggest that while the marketshare held by Firefox is increasing overall, compared to the rest of the alternative browsers (Safari, Opera, Chrome) its marketshare would actually be decreasing. Interesting indeed.

Firefox 3.0.x is only open to security and stability updates at this point, so it's highly unlikely that you'll see any increases in its Acid3 score at this point (short of the test itself changing somehow). The recently-released 3.1b2 scores 93/100 (also unlikely to change before it goes final). There are also patches posted in Mozilla's Bugzilla tracker (currently either awaiting review or needing more work to be done) that when landed will get their score up to 97/100, probably for Firefox 3.2. The only part of Acid3 that they haven't yet addressed is SVG Fonts, and it seems that little has been done in that area so far.

Personally, I don't mind their approach of trying to make sure that the issues raised by Acid3 are fixed in a timely manner, but not rushing fixes before they're ready just to have a bigger number. And besides, as long as IE8 still only scores 12/100 (or 21/100 if you're willing to wait long enough), it's kind of a moot point. It seems to me that what's relevant isn't who hits 100/100 first, but who hits it last.

Uh..the PS3 consumes more power when idle than active? Is there an explanation for that somewhere?

If we're talking efficiency, it's better to talk about something like FLOPS/Watt. The Wii certainly uses less power, but how efficiently is it using that power to deliver compute performance?

The Wii supposedly has 2.9 GFLOPS of processing, the 360 has 115, and the PS3 has 218. With that in mind, the processing efficiency of each is:

Wii - 0.18 GFLOP / Watt
360 - 0.97 GFLOP / Watt
PS3 - 1.45 GFLOP / Watt


(from http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37621/128/, May 2008)

That would mean that the PS3 has the best compute bang for your energy buck. (8x the Wii's GFLOP/Watt)

The Wii really isn't in the same compute class as the other two, which doesn't mean it can't be a lot of fun, but the SNES and PS1 were a lot of fun too. I don't think anyone should be lauding Nintendo for their efficiency here when most of it is due to their tiny CPU.

So here is a link to problems for those who can't find the news.

You need to have a chat with the MIT guys...
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39973/113/

NutShell:
Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas.

The Players: Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/13/1255208

"Quantum encryption is perfectly secure, in theory. In practice, however, there are loopholes. Now Japanese scientists have designed a quantum eavesdropper that exploits one of these loopholes to listen in to quantum conversations. QC's security arises from the impossibility of making a perfect copy of a quantum object without destroying it -- so the sender and receiver can always tell if they've been overheard. But it turns out that an eavesdropper can make imperfect copies and use them to extract information from a quantum message without alerting sender or receiver "

also http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39599/108/ reports similar from Norway.

"Los Angeles (CA) â" A tiny material issue in Nvidiaâ(TM)s GPUs has cost Nvidia $200 million so far: The problem boils down to the solder bump material, in Nvidiaâ(TM)s case high-lead that was used in all of the firmâ(TM)s GPUs that were produced until late July , and we still do not know how serious the issue really is. According to our sources, Nvidia has switched to eutectic solder bumps in recent weeks and there is now a new, apparently independent research report, that claims that eutectic solder bumps, which are used for example by AMDâ(TM)s ATI unit, may live much longer than high-lead versions. Of course, switching to eutectic isnâ(TM)t the entire solution, as the material has a much lower melting point than high-lead."

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39506/135/

I was going to suggest a LiveCD but you beat me to it. I'm kind-of surprised that nobody else mentioned it.

Wasn't this the idea behind the OS agnostic peekabooty, Tor, et. al.

Then again ctunnel rolled over faster than an SUV with Firestones and their site still says "Ctunnel is here to protect your anonymity online!" Even though their approach, technology, and the fact that they even keep logs is pretty freaking stupid.

Choosing between a family vacation and a new iMac isn't going to go in Apple's favor. If they are going to remain relevant in a tough economy, they are going to have to seriously lower their prices

While I can't explain why, while we are in a tough economy now Apple's sales are actually good.

In case this Google news topic disappears:

• "Survey: Next 90 days look good for Apple"
• "Survey: Plans to buy a Mac hit an all-time high"
• "Survey: Apple riding high on news of economic woes"
• "Next 90 Days Look Good for Apple despite Consumer Electronics Spending Down"
• "Mac sales may hit record highs despite decline in consumer spending"
• "Consumer electronics spending down, but not for Apple"
• "ChangeWave: Apple Mac planned purchases for next 90 days hit new all-time high"
• "Demand for Macs remains high in spite of spending"
• "Report: Mac Spending Up Despite Poor Outlook for Consumer Electronics"

Falcon

African locusts could help make better cars

London (England) The lowly and much reviled African locust could prevent needless car crashes. Researchers at Volvo and the University of Newcastle are studying anti-collision mechanisms in the locust and hope the information will help build faster and more efficient braking systems.

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-39294-118.html

The overall arc of this episode involves the way Microsoft sees Apple, Macs and related products in terms of connectivity with âoereal peopleâ. In this case, the real people, however, are represented by a family who represents Apple and a story that describes the narrow boundaries this family chose to live in.

There is the 1960s style house (an overall impression of Apple), which is old. It has wood paneling in the basement, typical 60s styling on the outside, and yet there is the fundamental belief system that what they have is very nice. This is exemplified by the fact that the family is very much focused on visuals â" they donâ(TM)t like the look of the car in their neighborâ(TM)s driveway, they keep the property clean and there is fancy (a bit too much perhaps) paint in the childrenâ(TM)s room. Message: Apple in its core is old, but has some nice, clean touches here and there.

There are also those âoefancyâ symbols that go along with the overall theme that the surface matters, not the inside. A âoeleatherâ toy giraffe, cheese on the same old potatoes that are served everyday and a limited supply of Dijon mustard to spice up your life â" a supply that Apple limits uses to lure Windows users into the Apple world. But the supply will run out eventually.

There are so many little jabs at Apple in this commercial. We originally set out to write another dissection article, but the commercial itself is 4.5 minutes long. Such a dissection would've been a dissertation and, out of respect for our readers we decided against it.

There are some humorous bits though would like to highlight. We'll go briefly through the video and bring them out for discussion. In the comments section you can relate to these parts by number.

(1) The scene has a typical, regular average income family sitting around a dinner table. Everyone is passing out food and beginning to eat when the (2) wife begins making comments about appearance. She refers to a car that's been parked in the neighbor's driveway for a while now and how it's inappropriate. After Seinfeld complains that there was some gum in his dinner roll, (3) the wife says she has mustard with white wine sauce. There's a comment made by the father after the grandmother says to Seinfeld, "You're in my seat funny man." He has an almost "please kill me now" look on his face saying, "She's been here 12 years." (4) This is a reference to the time Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1996. And finally, (5) Gates asks, "Didn't we have this yesterday" after being handed his meal. Seinfeld replies, (6) "Put some cheese on it." Note all the visuals provided in this part â" the fancy China and glasses, but missing essentials such as ketchup. Gum in a roll that can be patched with Dijon mustard and potatoes that can be fancied up with cheese. Message: Itâ(TM)s all about the facade.

When we finally see the outside of the house, (7) the yard is so full of bushes and plants that it's just cluttered and has no real practical use, just appearance. Just like the (8) pool scene with the slow flowing water that never warms up making the pool experience less than it should be and the (9) grandmother cleaning up the yard with a leaf blower, all for appearance purposes. In addition, there's a (10) table tennis set downstairs in the basement. The wife has no real ability to play as is indicated in a few scenes. Again, it's something that's not really used and is just there for appearance. The table tennis scene can also be interpreted in a way that you just can play with a Mac.

There are (11) two scenes whereby the father and son are eating the âoemustard with the white wineâ. They are doing it secretly and for âoethe boozeâ, and are trying to escape the reality of their situation, which (12) could be likened to an Apple user's limited ab

Symbian/WinMobile smart phones have tools to lock the handset remotely or in case of new Kaspersky antivirus/security or other 3rd solutions, you can remotely instruct phone to delete all personal data irrecoverably and lock itself. I am almost sure Blackberry, being an enterprise focused device must have similar option.

Remote wipe is a feature of BlackBerry/BES and Windows Mobile/Exchange. No third-party software is needed, unless your phone isn't connected to a BES/Exchange server. When the phone receives the wipe signal, all data stored on the device will be wiped.

The iPhone has remote wipe, but I don't think it has encryption of any of the content stored on the device.

BlackBerry has content encryption and the latest Windows Mobile (6.1) has encryption for the entire user-writable storage area. The key is stored on the device, encrypted with a password. BlackBerry overwrites the key in RAM when the device is locked (that is, when the device is inactive for a certain amount of time or when it is placed in its holster); since WM's encryption operates at a lower level, the key does stay in memory while the device is powered on. Either way, cutting power to the RAM will erase the decrypted copy of the key. Both support encryption of storage cards as well.

As long as the device is set to automatically lock itself out and there is no way to bypass the lock screen, there's not a whole lot you can do to a fully encrypted WM6.1 device without resorting to a RAM attack or finding a weakness in the implementation. Since the BlackBerry will erase the unencrypted copy of the key when the device is not active, it's secure against searching for the key in RAM, too.

The general reckoning seems to be that the issue is thermal expansion rates, not melting point - see, for example this article which someone linked elsewhere in the thread.

There is a better article here:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135/

Re inquirer articles - just cause the messenger wants them dead doesnt mean their message is incorrect.

The real problem is only going to show once the laptops are out of warranty as the customer will then have a choice of discarding the laptop or usually around $500 for a new motherboard. I imagine people will be quite angry.

The genius of what NVidia is doing here, ...

... it does indeed sound a like nvidia are trying to spin things.

Speaking of tinfoil and cranial coverings, one would have to wonder what the Corn Growers Association has to do with the Iowa MS Windows Rebate?

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38895/113/

Are you looking at the same screens as me? Because the shots in the article look like utter shit. Its no wonder nVidia wants you to believe that ray tracing is 10s of years away; its because they can't do it.

They're doing *just* 3 bounces, and they run at "up to" 30fps at 1920x1080 resolution. The shadows are hard, and the lighting is flat, everything looks washed out, and its due to the lighting (ie, the rays) not the textures.

And to what glorious setup do we owe this marvel? Just *4* of their highest-end, workstation-class Quadro GPUs (which probably run 1-2 grand apiece, or about $450 apiece for consumer equivalents.) All this is interfaced to a pretty serious machine, of course... Color me impressed. No seriously, but don't forget to pick my jaw up off the floor first *rolls eyes*.

ATI's Cinema demo was far more impressive, and looks awesome by comparison. It was running at 1280x720 (roughly 1/2 the pixels as 1080p) but was running at around 60fps with anti-aliasing -- virtually running at the same resolution as the nVidia demo, but twice as fast...

And to what *insane* amount of AMD graphics hardware and muti-socket, multicore AMD processors do we owe this ungodly power to? A *single* Radeon 4870 and a standard workstation.

Don't believe me? Look for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzquM5Td6bM&NR=1
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/

What do you think OpenCL brings to the OpenGL Community?

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38764/140/

eykjavik (Iceland) â" Considering the big news coming out of Intel this week (Larrabee) and the expected big News from Nvidia within the next two weeks (x86 CUDA), AMD is under pressure to match its rivals: AMD is making substantial changes to its GPGPU software strategy and announced at its GPG CTO Technology Day that it will ditch its Close-To-Metal platform and switch to OpenCL .

In his speech GPG CTO Technology Day held in Icelandâ(TM)s capital, Raja Koduri, CTO of AMD GPG (ex-ATI), announced that AMD believes that the time for proprietary software solutions such as AMD's own Close-to-Metal and Nvidia's CUDA has passed.

As a result, AMD will throw its efforts behind DirectX 11 Computational Shaders and the OpenCL GPGPU language and will focus on standardized solutions only. Koduri highlighted the GPGPU advances made by companies such as CyberLink, PeakStream (which was acquired by Google), RapidMind, RogueWave, CAPS, ImageScan, Telenetics, Neurda and many others. It is apparent that many companies are bringing GPGPU-accelerated products to market, but AMDâ(TM)s is going a somewhat different way as the companyâ(TM)s stream products will be aligned with DirectX 11 and OpenCL.

Koduri noted that a first product showcasing this strategy will be available in the first quarter of next year. Also, AMD is working on APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) at full speed, which is scheduled for debut in first half of next year.

The decision to go with OpenCL could be a critical step for AMD to compete with Nvidia and Intelâ(TM)s GPGPU and cGPU products that are capturing the headlines today. AMDâ(TM)s low-level programming approach was one of the main reasons why developers preferred Nvidiaâ(TM)s (high-level) CUDA version over the companyâ(TM)s stream processor cards. OpenCL is widely considered to be a possible solution of GPGPU programming that could bridge Nvidia, Intel, AMD and other products and we are hearing more and more developers requesting support for OpenCL.

(Consider the -X ending, implying DirectX, rather than something like PhysicsGL, or PhysL, implying OpenGL -- you know, the actually portable industry standard for graphics.)

...Or maybe PhysX just sounds a hell of a lot better than PhysL?

PhysX is actually not connected to DirectX at all; the PhysX SDK is even available for the Playstation 3 and Linux.

Four ways to turn your concept into a video game:

4. Create a polished game and approach (or be approached by) an established studio. Also known as the Portal approach. Also the flOw approach. "Sony Computer Entertainment approached some future members of thatgamecompany after seeing Cloud and asked them to form a company and signed them on to make three downloadable games for the PlayStation 3. Cloud ended up being a game that wouldn't be possible for a company as small as thatgamecompany to make, so they made flOw instead. thatgamecompany was created on May 15th, 2006."

3. Work your way up in one or more established studios towards the role of game designer. The American McGee approach. "McGee began his career at id Software. He worked on such games as DOOM, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II in the areas of level design, music production, sound effects development, and program coding. In 1998, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as a consultant on many projects and also created his own game, American McGee's Alice." Mind you, that can be the long route, assuming you're even successful.

2. Work with an independent group of hobbyists and promise to split the profits once you make money. This is difficult to pull off, because contributors lose interest when things become difficult. This is enough of a problem that I'd rather have one paid contractor with modest abilities than a dozen unpaid contributors with spectacular abilities. Blech.

1. Establish your own company and finance development as a third party. Many small developers bootstrap with smaller projects in niche or new markets, eventually working their way up towards larger ones. The iPhone is potentially an awesome way to get your title out there. Start by developing a finished game that's small in scope, and demonstrates the very core concepts of your idea. Rinse. Repeat.

My favorite is, of course, to take #1 and run with it. Tighten your belt, and pay a contractor with good references to help you bring your idea to light on the platform where the competition is still pretty weak, and the barrier to entry is low. That was the Palm Pilot during late '90s, and is probably something like WiiWare or the iPhone now.

Good luck!

less ads... is always good http://www.tgdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38703&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=135

These spheres look an awful lot like the ones featured in the ray-traced version of quake wars...

I think Windows 7 is BSD based.

What? Windows 7 M1 was leaked and given to reviewers/testers whom confirmed that it was after-all based upon Vista or Server 2008's code. It requires Vista SP1 to install (at least the current version), and the DVD is 2.9 GB. It is nothing but another crap pile of 20+ years old code. That is not to say old code is bad, but in this case, it is.

Now, maybe in the future Windows will be BSD-based, but for the moment Windows 7 looks like it is heavily Vista-based, especially since it requires Vista SP1 installed as a prerequisite.

See the review.

Head on over here to see what a raytraced Enemy Territory: Quake Wars looks like. Pay particular attention to the water and windows.

Now read everyone else's responses and realize that raytracing is a super-easy way to take advantage of multiple cores and simplify your code at the same time. All the crazy stunts and tricks you have to pull to get some of those lighting and reflection tricks can be thrown out the window, and the extra time could be used to ::crosses fingers:: make better gameplay. We can dream, right?

Of course, that raytraced ET: Quake Wars is running in a 16-core system at 1280x720 and posts between 15 and 30 fps. We've got a ways to go, obviously. On the flipside, you'd pay more for a single core system five years ago than you do for a quad-core today, so we're rapidly gaining on it.

If things go as many in the industry are predicting, though, scaling up the power of a single core just isn't going to happen like it used to. Throwing a bunch of cores in a system does seem like the way computing is going, at least at this juncture. In other words, the cores will be there anyway, why not make use of them?

Finally, with the rise of GPGPU and the NVidia/ATI-specific counterparts, I imagine it actually wouldn't be too difficult to allow your standard GPU to assist in raytracing on newer titles while still handling legacy games. (I might be talking out of my ass on this one, so any graphics nerds, please feel free to correct me there).

I sympathize with your point about the intermittent step backwards. I doubt that it will happen that way; likely, rasterized graphics will be around for quite some time with a gradual ceding to raytraced graphics as 8 core and higher systems become more commonplace. I also agree that graphics look damned good, and I myself have expressed similar views about the costs and obstacles inherent in going even more detailed. In the meantime, though, you can't blame developers or hardware companies for trying to avoid running into the wall of the declining improvement in CPU/GPU speeds. As I said earlier, if the cores are going to be there anyway then we might as well use them.

Rob Enderele, Rob Enderele, Rob Enderele, where do I know that name?

ah, thats where
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2007/09/24/sco-linux-and-rob-enderle-a-conclusion/
http://daringfireball.net/2003/12/enderle
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34004/128

As far as i'm concerned, that man has ZERO credibility.

A single ioFusion card has the concurrent data serving ability of a 1U server cabinet full of media servers. They do this by having 160 channels on a drive controller that also incorporates flash memory. Since each channel is a few orders of magnitude faster than a mechanical hard drive, one card can handle a flurry of concurrent random access requests as fast as 1000 conventional hard drives.

The perfect thing for serving media, where you don't need a few GB per customer, you need the same few GB served out to 1000's or millions of users concurrently. So while $/GB stored stinks, $/GB streamed is fantastic.

According to an article in Japanese Daily Yomiuri, it appears Toshiba decided to compete with upgraded DVD players and not a new high-def, blue laser format.

for those who actually enjoy RTFA'ing and want a bit more comprehensive info than a BBC fluff piece, nvidia's marketing page, and some pretty vids on engadget:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37729/135

The APX 2500 is far more interesting to me than the 600/650. Qualcomm and Broadcom better watch their backs.

This pales in comparison to the ioFusion drive. The videos show tests being run where they are doing 8 operations at the same time, at blazing speeds, copying multiple DVDs in 5 seconds, and simulating swapping a blizzard of 4kb blocks as fast as RAM. Instead of 2 channels, their cards use 160 channels at the same time. This gives a single card the parallel random access bandwidth of a 1000 disk drive SAN.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34065/135/

At $30 per gigabyte, it would be great to have a 10-gig for OS and your current favorite MMO game.

This pales in comparison to the ioFusion drive. The videos show tests being run where they are doing 8 operations at the same time, at blazing speeds, copying multiple DVDs in 5 seconds, and simulating swapping a blizzard of 4kb blocks as fast as RAM. Instead of 2 channels, their cards use 160 channels at the same time. This gives a single card the parallel random access bandwidth of a 1000 disk drive SAN.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34065/135/

At $30 per gigabyte, it would be great to have a 10-gig for OS and your current favorite MMO game.

To be fair though, Samsung just came out with SSD that can do 100MB/s. I'm guessing the one that comes with the Air does not. I'd say wait a while for SSD to mature and for the price to come down. I agree, in general, what the author is saying. http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36084/118/

> What is needed to make your case is a statistical analysis that says C.S. majors earn less and are unable to find work.

Actually no, becuase that was not my case. A BSCS may be employable, but he or she would have been better off to have chosen a different major.

BSCSs may earn more than IT workers who have no degrees, in some cases. But, often there is little, in any, difference. Employers want experience, not degrees, look at the job ads.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, engineers, CPAs, nurses, or many other professions; a BSCS is not a hard requirement for most IT jobs. The degree has very little value relative to it's cost and difficulty. Add that to the aggressive offshoring of IT professionals, and it seems to me that a students time, effort, and money, would be better spent elsewhere.

And here is some data to back that up:

> "According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about *300,000* jobs, but during the period in question, a probable *669,681* H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

> "Gates claims that Microsoft needs more H-1b to hire new foreign graduates. But there are many U.S. graduates with several years of experience trying to find work at Microsoft and other employers - but Gates does not open these "entry level" positions to these Americans. Why? Experienced Americans are only considered for the positions that require an arbitrary 3 to 7 years of experience in several specific skills - then the Americans are summarily rejected for not meeting all of those arbitrary qualifications."

http://tinyurl.com/358alw

> "Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=us

> "Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motapr04,0,4870738.story

> "Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095

> "AMD axes 10% of its staff"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36823/167/

> "Yahoo Profits Slip; To Cut 1,000 Jobs"
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/yahoo-profits-s.html

> "Google lays off about 300 at DoubleClick"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1

> "EBay Cuts 125 Jobs in Europe, North America"
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080320/ebay_jobs.html?.v=4

> "CNET to Lay Off 120"
http://www.redherring.com/Home/24032

> "At least 160 employees at CBS Corp. . . were let go"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stations9apr09,1,7495348.story

> Applied

• Google takes WiFi lobbying up a notch
• Wireless C Block
• Just plain Google
• Google Books
• Google Images
• Google Maps
• Gmail
• Google Analytics
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

without the ads. http://www.tgdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36390&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=118

I may be mistaken, but I believe that in this case the parent had intended to say open NAT/Wireless AP, not router. Typical mistake...in that case of course people would just be running packet sniffers. Man-in-the-middle attacks would generally be unnecessary, in this case, as it would be more productive to just record the packets and try to brute it later. Or, even better, just go after the unencrypted stuff and look for people with shares open, crappy firewalls, etc. I think I remember reading about people showing off how they could sniff google mail on open wireless networks at the recent blackhat convention too...

How is it a story that a bunch of students are going to try to do this, when there are already commercial services providing the same information? Heck, /. even covered this back in 2005!

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/143247

And that was something like the 4th time the story had been posted.

there's also:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/30723/113/

and these guys have been around for ages.

http://www.zipdash.com/

You know what? If they were running a free service that everyone could register with, and it integrated with google maps, then it would be a story.

Oh wait, ZipDash was bought by Google back in 2004...

The news here? That they're paying US$250 for the days work.

The folks at NPD have already said not to make too much of these numbers. Not only do they reflect a single week of data immediately following the Warner announcement and prior to Toshiba cutting prices in half, there were also free Blu-ray player promotions from Panasonic, Sharp and Sony. Easy to "sell" a lot of units when the price tag is $0.

Microsoft Surface idea not that new? http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32389/118/

I just love the openness internet. If Microsoft tried this 10 to 15 years ago, they might have gotten away with it as an original idea. But it is not. Why do you think more politics have to be added to the Patent system? So Microsoft can continue to appear to be innovative when they have faked most of it all along? You don't need to spend 7.1 Billion dollars a year on R&D. Just use Google for free and cut that cost at least by half, if not more! Spend the other half on feeding the poor, or rebuilding from the devastation of Katrina, for example.

Microsoft Surface idea not that new? http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/32389/118/

I just love the openness internet. If Microsoft tried this 10 to 15 years ago, they might have gotten away with it as an original idea. But it is not. Why do you think more politics have to be added to the Patent system? So Microsoft can continue to appear to be innovative when they have faked most of it all along? You don't need to spend 7.1 Billion dollars a year on R&D. Just use Google for free and cut that cost at least by half, if not more! Spend the other half on feeding the poor, or rebuilding from the devastation of Katrina, for example.