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After tremendous testing and community feedback, the 4.4.0 Release is now available for twenty (yep that's the number 20!) popular platforms. Distros that are carrying it in with the license change integrated into their distribution are: NetBSD, Slackware Linux, Conectiva, and others. See our distro support page for the full breakout.

They also have an "interview" with David Dawes about the license change.

It looks like you mean that you (and I) just don't know yet. There are limits to computability that are not purely virtual, nor mathematical (like tractability). For example, a Pentium 4/1.9GHz consumes 87W of electricity and generates 69W of heat, while the remaining 18W is reflected in the bandwidth of information processed, arbitrarily 30.4Gbps (1.9Ghz/2 MIPS * 32b:instruction = 30.4Gbps). That's 5.29nW:b for signal, or the "actual" 25.58nW:b consumed by the whole system, including heat noise. Is the power consumption of an ideal machine 0? Or is there a physical scale constant, proportional to mass, or frequency, or extension and the speed of light, for a machine in our universe? Someone more familiar with Feynmann's quantum computing limits models might have the answer.

Anybody know why? Does he --or anybody at IBM-- see a future for PPC64 and Linux as a desktop contender?

This is why I ask.

And with IBM's recent "open" hardware initiative for PowerPC, things are looking tantalizing: Open OS and Open hardware.

Sorry. Here's the correct link

Another interesting
link at the Inquirer .
Seems IBM is courting third party mobo makers to make PowerPC boards.

Their emracing linux and opening up their hardware platform. Sound Like
their getting their troops in line for THE desktop battle.

I, for one, would love to be running Debian Linux on a ATX PowerPC board. Of
course, they would have to sell enough of them to get the price down.

Good luck to 'em.

You might just get what you want

Woudn't it be great to be a able to pick up and ASUS or Epox PowerPC motherboard and run it with a Power970FX?

One can dream.

and low and behold, i wonder over to the inquirer...

"Windows NT4 remains highly popular"

The link at the Inq

I guess the parent is on to something. It's not about being afraid to migrate to linux, these geniuses are afraid to migrate period.

No, We all need Roadmaps otherwise you would never know for sure you were lost.

Hell no .. we'd still be bitching about the Evil Big Blue!

Microsoft keeps on bundling and instead buys politicians.

Say what you want about IBM (there are lots of things to say), but they had some business morals. Not even magazines getting lots of ads say that about Microsoft...

You want an open source chipset? Here.

So what you're saying is that because Microsoft is making it easier for it's developers to develop for all of its systems, it's a monopoly? It's somehow MS' fault that Sony and Nintendo don't have a computer OS?

Is it Microsoft's fault that Sun didn't have a widely used OS? Netscape's? Yet, MS had to pay up. This situation seems remarkably similar to me, and you didn't really clarify why it's not.*

You're assuming that what they're proposing is an "Apple Box" (not quite sure what that means).

The SDK was released on Apple boxe (sorry, machines). Not sure how much more Apple-y one can get short of booting up with a quaint "ding." (See here). I'm curious, where did you see that Xbox2 is even running on "stripped versions of Windows"? The Xbox1, yes. Xbox2, I'm not so sure, and the Xbox2 was what this article was directly referring to.

* For the record, I thought the case against Microsoft was merely an attempt for states and other companies, who would've done the same thing had they been given the chance, to snag some cash. Still, I'm not sure how this is any different than taking advantage of the fact that your OS is far more distributed.

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X
for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X
for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens

"Heck, maybe some day these processors will power your graphics card too!"

No, some day you will use GPU for many things described above.

NVidia NV4x GPUs will support hardware MPEG1-4 encoding and decoding.

After a couple of years, you can also remove rendering from the list of CPU bound tasks.

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens Micr

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens Micr

Intel has a plan to release 300Mhz Prescott, which would run blazing fast and quiet!

> Perhaps they're planning strategic changes that
> could take them below Apple or AMD in
> clockspeed

Well,of course they are... haven't you heard?

a Centrino platform with a Pentium M at 1.8Ghz already performs like a P4 @ 2.8GHz...

Now, think about the same ship on steroids:
"That is Conroe. It is a desktopified Merom, due out in late 2006. "

Why not buy one of these Western Digital 510 GB SATA disks then, as shown on The Inquirer?

Here or here.

the deathstar may be no more, but here comes the "meows"

Hitachi Deskstar drive "meows" during drive check

i have storage tower that all meow in unison! damn you hitachi! fix this shit!

Plus, even when MS is informed about a security hole, their arrogance prevents them from allowing that the hole is worse than the want to believe. Here's an example from 2004-03-09 where they say the hole is not critical.

But then MS admits that the hole actually is critcal.

Of course, they attempt to spin it:
"This change is based on information concerning a new attack scenario discovered after the bulletin's original release on 9 March," said the company in a statement.

Another link.

Initially, Microsoft said the flaw could only be exploited if the Outlook Today folder is being used as the homepage. Few people do that; generally, the Outlook Today folder is the default homepage only if no e-mail accounts exist. When an e-mail account is set up, the homepage changes to the inbox. But, as it turns out, the vulnerability can be exploited even if Outlook Today isn't the homepage. To exploit the flaw, an attacker would need to send two specially crafted mailto URLs. The first would start Outlook and open the Outlook Today page, and the second would inject the exploit code. The exploit code needs to be injected into vulnerable systems either by a malicious Web site set up by the attacker or via an HTML e-mail.

So, was MS warned or not?

From this article, it could be that they didn't listen in the first place to those whom discovered the hole:

But the bloke who discovered the vulnerability, Finnish security researcher Jouko Pynnonen, got back in touch and told them hackers could attack vulnerable Outlook installations even if Outlook Today isn't the default home page.

Even the article itself linked to an informative comment on the matter.

** UPDATE II A representative for large hard drive distributor Bell Micro said: "This is NOT undocumented and we have done this in the past to load an image of the original installation of the software. When the client corrupted the o/s we had a boot floppy thatopened the unseen partition and copied it to the active or seen partition. It is a not a new feature or discovery. We use it ourselves without any qualms".

• Regarding article "Unused space on hard drives recovered?" at this URL.

  I am the "Linux SATA guy".

  First, users are usually amused to learn that the capacity of modern hard drives is _unknown_, until it goes through the factory's qualification tests. The 120GB hard drive you purchased may have been physically identical to a 250GB hard drive, but simply it only passed qualification at 120GB.

  Intel does the same thing with processors. A 3.0Ghz processor may be sold as 2.4Ghz, simply because it didn't pass qualification at 3.0Ghz but did at a lower clock speed.

  Second, in the ATA standard there is a feature known as the "host protected area". This area is accessible from any OS -- but it requires special ATA commands in order to make this area available to the OS.

  Third, all hard drives reserve a certain amount of free space to use for reallocation of bad sectors. These "spare sectors" are free space on your drive... completely unused until your hard drive starts finding problems on the physical media.

  So this is old news :) Although the host-protected area (HPA) can be used for insidious purposes such as DRM/CPRM that is completely hidden from the users, most of the "invisible free space" exists for a purpose -- either it's spare sectors for bad sector remapping, or its capacity that didn't pass factory qualification, that you don't want to use anyway.

  Feel free to edit/reproduce/publish this email.

  Jeff Garzik

  Not speaking for my employer, speaking as an Open Source guy

which answers the question nicely. You can see the original letter here [scroll down a bit]

Here's some more information.

CHECK IT OUT before you rape your hd

Just to show that this couldn't possibly come as a surprise for whoever PHB'es penned these agreements:

Customers who "upgrade" to the Licensing 6.0 scheme also lose ownership of Microsoft software products and are thereby nudged into limited term licensing with periodic extensions (with or without any code updates), as shall be dictated by Microsoft -- in other words, software leases. -- The Inq. 16 July 2002

..and..

"According to a report on News.com, a survey of 1000 technology managers around the world showed that the 60% of companies that signed up for the deal have ended up paying more." -- The Inq.. 21 March 2003.

So it's not "news" that this scheme would cost you a whole lot with the possibility (and high probability) of giving almost nothing in return.

If anyone who signing up for Licensing 6.0 actually believed that Microsoft would let them get the next great thing "for free", then I've got one nice bridge to sel^H^H^Hlease them.

Just to show that this couldn't possibly come as a surprise for whoever PHB'es penned these agreements:

Customers who "upgrade" to the Licensing 6.0 scheme also lose ownership of Microsoft software products and are thereby nudged into limited term licensing with periodic extensions (with or without any code updates), as shall be dictated by Microsoft -- in other words, software leases. -- The Inq. 16 July 2002

..and..

"According to a report on News.com, a survey of 1000 technology managers around the world showed that the 60% of companies that signed up for the deal have ended up paying more." -- The Inq.. 21 March 2003.

So it's not "news" that this scheme would cost you a whole lot with the possibility (and high probability) of giving almost nothing in return.

If anyone who signing up for Licensing 6.0 actually believed that Microsoft would let them get the next great thing "for free", then I've got one nice bridge to sel^H^H^Hlease them.

Install Adobe Reader 6 :)
From the Start->Run windows menu, open the "x:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader" folder,
[where x is the right drive letter.]
Find the plug_ins folder and rename it plug_ins_disabled
Create a new folder named plug_ins
Copy the following files from "plug_ins_disabled" to "plug_ins":
EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api

IIRC, it's actually going to be three PowerPC 976 CPUs at 65nm, which will be dual core making it effectively six. See here. I imagine it will be quite a female dog programming to take full advantage of all of them.

(This was also posted on my weblog, so my apologies for babbling about things most /.'ers would already know...)

I did wonder a bit about the G5/Xbox2 link back in November, when news first broke that the Xbox2 would likely be running on the G5 chip. At the time, I was idly wondering about the possibility of an Xbox emulator for the Mac (similar to Connectix' old Virtual Gamestation software that allowed Mac users to run Playstation games on their home computer).

Now, though, the news that the seeded G5's are running a custom NT kernel has me wondering along different lines.

In February of '03, Microsoft bought Virtual PC, the PC-emulation software for Macs that allows them to run Windows software inside an emulated PC. They've continued to support and update Virtual PC for the Mac, along with releasing Virtual PC for the PC, allowing Windows machines to run multiple virtual machines on one physical box handy for software testing purposes. Unfortunately, Virtual PC depends on a feature of earlier PowerPC processors that is not present in the G5, so there hasn't been a version of Virtual PC released yet that will run on Apple's flagship G5 desktop machines.

Last month, Microsoft announced that a new G5-compatible version of Virtual PC would be released along with Office 2004. Considering that the Xbox2 SDK is apparently running a customized NT kernel that runs on G5 systems, could some of those same customizations be worked into Virtual PC 7, making for a major speed increase, as more of the low-level code would be running natively on the Mac rather than having to pass through an emulator? I don't really know enough about the innards of how software like this works, so I could be entirely off-base here the differences between the emulation required for Virtual PC and the customizations needed to get the NT kernel running on the PowerPC processor may have absolutely nothing in common but it was enough to get me wondering.

Even more interesting, though, would be if someone could leak some form of benchmarks, even rough ones, showing what kind of performance this customized NT kernel was getting on the SDK machines. I'm assuming it must be at least somewhat respectable, as the machines are being used for creating software for the Xbox2 but how respectable?

And going even more wildly out of the bounds of realityfor years now, there have been rumors of Apple porting the Mac OS to be able to run on Intel-based PCs (realistically, that's not likely to ever be released publicly, but the technology is there). However, what about going the other direction? What if Microsoft were to take these customizations to their kernel and and eventually supplant Virtual PC with an actual build of Longhorn for the G5, either as a "red box" that would allow you to run Windows applications concurrently with Mac OS X applications (we can already run Mac OS X apps, "Classic" Mac OS apps, Unix command-line apps, and Unix X-11 apps all at the same time as it is), or as a dual-boot option (Which OS would you like to run today)?

Likely? I seriously doubt it. But fun to play with.

And I'd still love to find out just how zippy those G5s are running NT. Wouldn't it be a fun little tweak if they were running as fast as (or faster, even) than high-end PCs?

Not the least either. Their sources have been improving, and afaik they were the first to report on Yamhill ~2 years ago.

I dont give this argument much thought normally, as I dont have any desire at the moment beyond x86-64 to learn the nuances of a new proccesing architecture, even though I am a sparc fan, should say was before they started laggin behind,

BUT What I thought was interesting want the article iself but rather a link to this article Xbox2 is Microsoft's attempt to replace PC

I have looked at, or should I say drooled at some of the IBM big iron running the PPC architecture but never gave it much more thought, With IBM now cranking out some nice PPC silicon and MS Jumping on the PPC bandwagon albeit limited, I think I might have to look a little more

Any reccomendations on cheap, well reasonable used IBM PPC systems that are still of the same basic architecture of what is being sold now, like what will run RHEL 3 AS ?

I still think Linux gamers have a big advantage in that developers tend to favour x86.

Fame at last.

The Inquirer has an article about this also.

Not only is Michael's CAPS key b0rked, he's stuck a day in the past.

iAMD64 has a nice ring to it, no?

I hope they bring back the blue man group to promote 64 bit desktop computing. They'd need another 4 limbs each or something though.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

Like the PIII Coppermine CPUs that wouldn't even boot sometimes.

Or the randomly rebooting PII Xeons.

Or the voltage problems with certain PIII Xeons.

Or the memory request system hang bug in the PIII/Xeon.

Or the PIII's SSE bug whose 'fix' killed i810 compatability.

Or the MTH bug in the PIII CPUs that forced Intel customers to replace boards and RAM.

Or the recalled, that's right, recalled PIII chips at 1.13GHz.

Or the recalled (there's that word again) Xeon SERVER chips at 800 and 900MHz.

Or the recalled (that word, AGAIN?!) cc820 "cape cod" Intel motherboards.

Or the data overwriting bug in the P4 CPUs.

Or the P4 chipset bug that killed video performance.

Or the Sun/Oracle P4 bug.

Or the Itanium bug that was severe enough to make Compaq halt Itanium shipments.

Or the Itanium 2 bug that "can cause systems to behave unpredictably or shut down".

Or the numerous other P4/Xeon/XeonMP bugs that have been hanging around.

Yes, I did consider the possibility that there might just be some basis for the belief that Intel's products are superior. Having considered that, in light of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, I shall now proceed to laugh at you.

Ha ha ha.

Now go away, or I shall mock you again.

They've done the same thing for the upcoming EU case: Microsoft recruits EU investigator loaded with competitors' secrets

Speaking of the original dubious certification, a 8-year old just got certified as an MCSE.

MOST of the time? These people are suing for $150,000 (the maximum copyright penalty) per download as often as they can. Under something like that, I can't afford to even take the RISK I might lose, even if I'm absolutely sure I'm in the clear.

iirc, KaZaa keeps track of how many uploads a user has done. For instance, if a user has 10,000 total uploads, a reasonable estimate would be $1/ea (the price on iTunes) for a total of $10,000.

Even if that were tripled, it would still yield $30,000 in this case.

If they're charging by song on the user's hard-disk and the user has 2,000 songs, that would come to $2000, or $6000 if tripled.

As it stands, they've sued 1500 people according to the article. If we use a lowball estimate of 500 songs per person, we come to about 112,500,000,000 (112 billion dollars).

Considering that the international music industry peaked at $40 billion in 2000, claiming that 1500 individuals (of millions) are responsible for nearly 3 times their peak revenue in damages is pretty clearly excessive. And, could be taken as downright intimidating (hence RICO and extortion).

And, the estimate above is obviously much lower than the actual aggregate amount when you take into account their lawsuit against four students for $97 billion into account (article here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9380 )

For anyone still wondering, no, I'm not a lawyer. ;)

I am basing my assertions on two things: The Gartner (they are good when they bring up pro-Microsoft "studies", right?) paper talked about below, and the fact that Windows 95 was delayed, delayed some more, and then delayed some more still. Microsoft does not have a good track record of on-time deliveries, even if their "release dates" are simply targets, even more so if they are still 2-4 years out. Longhorn, if it fits the shoe being crafted for it by MS PR, is much more earth-shattering than Windows 95 was in its day. We're talking about a greater effort than launching people to the moon... after all... Register Link

For whatever reason, Apple fans still tend to ignore anything but Jobs and Co.'s Reality Distortion Field. IBM and Apple releasing a 64-desktop chip does not represent the beginning of 64-bit on the desktop. BOXX and AMD made a pretty nice 64-bit desktop machine that was out for months before the first G5s shipped. Not to mention Digital's Alpha, which shipped years before that.

For whatever reason, Apple fans still tend to ignore anything but Jobs and Co.'s Reality Distortion Field. IBM and Apple releasing a 64-desktop chip does not represent the beginning of 64-bit on the desktop. BOXX and AMD made a pretty nice 64-bit desktop machine that was out for months before the first G5s shipped. Not to mention Digital's Alpha, which shipped years before that.

For whatever reason, Apple fans still tend to ignore anything but Jobs and Co.'s Reality Distortion Field. IBM and Apple releasing a 64-desktop chip does not represent the beginning of 64-bit on the desktop. BOXX and AMD made a pretty nice 64-bit desktop machine that was out for months before the first G5s shipped. Not to mention Digital's Alpha, which shipped years before that.

The The Inquirer has some pretty decent (if biased) coverage of this.

Essentially there will be a single OS for the two (Intel and AMD). Unspoken is that Intel's implementation is AMD64 ISA, but a different technical architecture. If it's compatible, who cares. Secondary confirmation via Ars Technica

If they knew it was a security risk, they'd have fixed it in both IE5 and IE6.

Perhaps the microsoft coders involved in finding this hole added a patch to the ie5->ie6 update or an ie6 only patch like the latest ie6 service pack? (has anyone tested pre ie6-sp1 explorers?). They could just not have had an opertunity to silently include a 5.? patch.

Since microsoft has no idea which version of a specific file a system will have their security patches always replace whole files as opposed to replacing only the defective bytes. This leaves an opertunity to fix other holes in the same file without telling customers about these other holes. If you ever read a microsoft security advisory you would know these are writen from a sales perspective explaining in detail mitigating circomstances needed for exploitation while remaining very vague about the details of the hole. Now if you look at the credits for finding a holes in security advisories it seems microsoft doesn`t find holes by itselfs (Its always e-eye kind of groups, who btw dont have source acces).

Microsoft has been accused already of silently including patches to security holes that had not had much publicity in windows service packs. I would not put it past them to start looking for bugs thenselfs in internet explorer and outlook (being software with very mixed quality from security point of view) and have patches patch 4 or five holes at a time, mentioning only one (lets say, a non critical one) in the advisory. This would especially be a "good" idea in a 99% publicity oriented security improvement project which I dont think the current one is... but who knows, perhaps this whole thing could clear these things up, a possitive effect after all.

Sorry to dispute this, but I'm happy to let you know that your wishes may come true, as per this story in The Inquirer. Obligatory quote:

CHIP FIRM Intel will this week announce details about a new wave in desktop computing using the Centrino bundle.
The wonder is it didn't do it earlier, we ran a crusade for this.
The chip firm is likely to announce it this week.

And Overclockers.com speculates that the whole thing basically means putting the M into desktops without all of the other Centrino crud.

Sorry to dispute this, but I'm happy to let you know that your wishes may come true, as per this story in The Inquirer. Obligatory quote:

CHIP FIRM Intel will this week announce details about a new wave in desktop computing using the Centrino bundle.
The wonder is it didn't do it earlier, we ran a crusade for this.
The chip firm is likely to announce it this week.

And Overclockers.com speculates that the whole thing basically means putting the M into desktops without all of the other Centrino crud.