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One of my favorite things about Flash is that it's easy to block and control.

To coin a phrase, "that is not entirely accurate". It is well documented (2009 Study) that "Private Browsing" does not actually protect you, (blog post) that the Flash cookies + Javascript code simply store the Flash cookies in a location that is not monitored and/or controlled.

Linux using Symlinks to redirect the Flash stuff to a (/tmp) directory that gets automatically erased every time you reboot your PC is a great option. See (Banish flash cookies forever under linux. Since Mac OS X is based on BSD Linux, you should be able to do the same thing with that operating system. With Windows, you could always count on DOS to allow you to erase junk also, however with Windows 7 I honestly have no idea if it is even possible. As many of the articles pointed out, vendors will tell you that you are safe and browsing privately, but the reality is often something else. At best they only do a partial job with Flash. At worst they do nothing. Adobe blames the browsers API, which is interesting. I am not buying that at all. As for browsers, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome do not allow you to control Flash junk 100%, allowing for only a false sense of security. Since Google has partnered with Adobe, this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. See the comparison link below to see how those browsers stacked up based on Privacy.

With Firefox + NoScript + Linux you can at least control the Flash stuff after a reboot of your PC. However between reboots, Flash can track your activity on the web. Since there are over a 100 web browsers to choose from, surely a few of them will allow you to successfully control your Privacy and not just pay lip service to it.

Don't settle for security by obscurity or as this blog post (with examples) showed privacy settings that do not work 100%. A quote from that post, "Still, the private browsing features in Chrome and Firefox are a complete false sense of privacy and security". Why settle....

Another options might be MPlayer or gnash, the point is you do NOT have to use Flash if you do not want too. HTML5 should be another positive development to diminish Flash.

I was annoyed that Google Chrome would let me only block the website cookie, not all the related tracking cookies from 3rd parties that are not named the same as the website. Even if you are not concerned about your privacy, you have to hate your Internet browsing experience slowing to a crawl because a website you are spending a second at wants to set 20 to 30 Flash cookies on your PC. This quote from the comments of the Linux article to banish flash cookies mentioned above, sums it up nicely...

(The real danger in all this is cross-site tracking via third-party web beacons, whether that is stored by browser cookies, Flash Local Storage, browser Local Storage, or IP-address tracking. This article at The Inquirer, for instance, wants to notify DoubleClick, Scorecard Research, Quantserve,

One of my favorite things about Flash is that it's easy to block and control.

To coin a phrase, "that is not entirely accurate". It is well documented (2009 Study) that "Private Browsing" does not actually protect you, (blog post) that the Flash cookies + Javascript code simply store the Flash cookies in a location that is not monitored and/or controlled.

Linux using Symlinks to redirect the Flash stuff to a (/tmp) directory that gets automatically erased every time you reboot your PC is a great option. See (Banish flash cookies forever under linux. Since Mac OS X is based on BSD Linux, you should be able to do the same thing with that operating system. With Windows, you could always count on DOS to allow you to erase junk also, however with Windows 7 I honestly have no idea if it is even possible. As many of the articles pointed out, vendors will tell you that you are safe and browsing privately, but the reality is often something else. At best they only do a partial job with Flash. At worst they do nothing. Adobe blames the browsers API, which is interesting. I am not buying that at all. As for browsers, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome do not allow you to control Flash junk 100%, allowing for only a false sense of security. Since Google has partnered with Adobe, this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. See the comparison link below to see how those browsers stacked up based on Privacy.

With Firefox + NoScript + Linux you can at least control the Flash stuff after a reboot of your PC. However between reboots, Flash can track your activity on the web. Since there are over a 100 web browsers to choose from, surely a few of them will allow you to successfully control your Privacy and not just pay lip service to it.

Don't settle for security by obscurity or as this blog post (with examples) showed privacy settings that do not work 100%. A quote from that post, "Still, the private browsing features in Chrome and Firefox are a complete false sense of privacy and security". Why settle....

Another options might be MPlayer or gnash, the point is you do NOT have to use Flash if you do not want too. HTML5 should be another positive development to diminish Flash.

I was annoyed that Google Chrome would let me only block the website cookie, not all the related tracking cookies from 3rd parties that are not named the same as the website. Even if you are not concerned about your privacy, you have to hate your Internet browsing experience slowing to a crawl because a website you are spending a second at wants to set 20 to 30 Flash cookies on your PC. This quote from the comments of the Linux article to banish flash cookies mentioned above, sums it up nicely...

(The real danger in all this is cross-site tracking via third-party web beacons, whether that is stored by browser cookies, Flash Local Storage, browser Local Storage, or IP-address tracking. This article at The Inquirer, for instance, wants to notify DoubleClick, Scorecard Research, Quantserve,

And do they die en masse every few months? I'm still a bit skittish over the whole bad bump debacle....

it's even stranger since the USA recently used European legal actions as evidence when threatening open prosecution of a major American corporation:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1726603/ftc-intel-announce-settlement

So accusing someone of "talking out their ass" isn't an insult? Does that mean if I tell you to blow me that I'm mearly offering a closer relationship? Strange way with words Mr iTroll, and the reason I pointed out you and the other poster were iTrolls is this: It doesn't matter how badly iSteve screws you over (see banning cross compilation or patenting ways to fuck your phone even after you jailbreak) you find excuses as to why its a good thing. At least the windows guys know Ballmer is an asshole.

As for the "bling factor" are you saying I'm blind now? Or that I don't even know my own father, who still hasn't figured out how to work his CD player in his truck or get the clock on his microwave to stop blinking? Or that I just imagined standing there waiting at the lead contractor's house to pick up their laptop for service and watching $5000 worth of designer clothes get tossed in the trash? Maybe if you took your head out of the sand and talked to someone in your average coffee shop instead of the insulated circle you deal with now, you might actually learn something. My dad can't even work the basic features on the phone he has now and his only reason for wanting an iPhone is because the contractors that control much of this city have them. That's it. And talking to several of them most can't even figure out how to do more than call with the things, but they can tell you to the last penny how much it costs.

I suggest you read up on the phrase Keeping up with the Joneses or learn what Conspicuous consumption is, because apparently these concepts are completely foreign to you. Or perhaps you should go to the nearest college and ask one of the kids there flashing an iPhone while playing on his Macbook Pro "what makes it better than other products?" and see how quick you hear words like "exclusive" or find out how much it costs. It isn't like I'm the only one that has noticed this. Hell look up "people buy Apple because its expensive" on Google and you'll get 13 BILLION hits, most porn stars don't get THAT many hits. But I guess we're all just delusional for not drinking the iKoolaid, huh?

They'll just make sure to compile it with Intel compiler, which optimizes for Intel, and doesn't optimize for AMD, even if it has the required instruction sets. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1567108/intel-compiler-cripples-code-amd-via-chips

It doesn't matter if Wikileaks complies, Pentagon has made it very clear they will make them comply:

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that not embarrassing the US military was "doing the right thing" and he hoped Wikileaks would "honour our demands".

However, asked what the Pentagon would do next, Morrell told the AP that it was up to the FBI and Justice Department to decide how to proceed.

"If doing the right thing is not good enough for them [Wikileaks], then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing," he added.

Of course the right thing to the US government is always whatever the US military says is the right thing, and as the Wikileaks documents that have recently been released show in brutal detail, the US military has an unusual interpretation of what is 'right'.

Have you noticed that Europe has a much bigger uptake of Linux, Firefox and in the older days Amiga? I've often wondered if this is Europe being "open minded"....

I would love to be able to say the same about Australia...

Or maybe it's just because they're anti-American and anti-corporate. Microsoft, Apple, etc. are American corporations, while Linux, Firefox, etc. are not-for-profit and thoroughly international. The seventh Halloween Document is the results of a survey conducted by Microsoft, and one of the findings is that a major reason for favoring Linux is as "an alternative to Microsoft". 61% of French respondents, 37% of Germans, and 35% of Swedes gave this as their top reason for supporting Linux. Not that it works better, or costs less, they just hate Microsoft.

Americans, on the other hand, are much more pro-corporate, and (duh) pro-American. This open-source stuff sounds suspiciously hippie and foreign. Australia is a pretty conservative and pro-American nation too, so the same might apply.

In fact, what's possibly the most pro-open source country in the world? Venezuela. You know, run by Hugo Chávez, who doesn't get along well with America. Is it a big surprise that they don't want their entire computing infrastructure dependent on Americans?

The next time anyone comes up with an explanation that makes them or those they admire (e.g., Europeans) look good, try thinking up a more cynical explanation. It will probably be more correct.

How can the US Patent office find that the Rambus patents are groundless http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1588351/nvidia-us-import-ban, and yet the ITC finds that some how NVIDIA violated 3 patents. This is the circus that never ends.

That was quick:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1722149/google-releases-programmers-app-building-tool

I guess I was stating the obvious.

You have a knack for twisting things and reporting half truths as if they were actually facts. Acer is the #1 (or #2 depending on who is reporting) of laptop sales. Their major growth is because of the laptop/netbook sales. And yes, they have more than two models which apparently is to confusing for you to comprehend. Check this link (and there are many others like it http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1558689/dell-falls-acer
Make note of the last two sentances that directly contradict your previous post.
More than 80 per cent of Dell's customers are companies and they are not buying yet. Acer and HP sell in all regional markets however and have also done better at peddling products to increasingly confident consumers.
But Acer has been doing extremely well. Its shipments surged 25.6 per cent last quarter, the fastest growth among the top PC makers. Most of the sales have been cheap and cheerful netbooks.

Yes, Acer is BOOMING right now and it is NOT from corporate purchases and it is NOT desktops and it is NOT because they offer an easy web site with two laptops.

You can keep saying your are right over and over again but it does not make it right. You claimed Apple is so great and blowing away the competition because they only sell a few models and that is what the consumers want. I proved to you that Apple is NOT blowing away the competition and people are buying from places that have more than two offerings and many of those companies are reporting great sales numbers (more than apple in quantity and percentage) but for some reason, you refuse to beleive it. Yes Dell is in a slump, it happens, CS, faulty computers, crappy web site, and probably many other reasons but Dell is not in a slump because the sales are going to Apple because Apple is easier and better place to buy from. That is how this whole thread started.

2) Your problem needs to be floating point. GPUs push 32-bit floating point numbers really fast. The most recent ones can also do 64-bit FP numbers at half the speed. Anything older is pretty much 32-bit only. For the most part, count on single precision FP for good performance.

That requirement is not necessarily true. Or at least not in the traditional sense of 'floating point.' GPUs make awesome pattern-matchers for data that isn't necessarily floating point.

Elcomsoft (of adobe DRM international arreset fame) has a GPU accelerated password cracker that is essentially a massively parallel dictionary attack,

A number of anti-virus vendors have GPU accelerated scanners - like Kaspersky.

And some people have been working with GPUs for network monitoring via packet analysis too.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1599659/wall-street-journal-admits-ipad-sales-disappointing

http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=6709

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201014/5463/First-day-iPad-sales-fall-short-of-revised-expectations

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=454448

Wow. Four stories about how Apple didn't sell as many iPads as some analysts (not Apple) predicted!

2 million, 2 months. Fastest ever to $1 billion. But some analysts were off by a week or so (in light of a supply shortage, no less), oh no!

keep reading ...

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/20100604-the-ipad-can-t-match-the-laptop-yet-but-when-it-can-the-world-will-change-kohler.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/why-the-apple-ipad-will-fail-in-australia-339302686.htm

http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/38566-five-reasons-the-ipad-will-fail-in-australia

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/04/27/five-reasons-the-ipad-will-fail-in-australia/

http://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/view/ipad-over-hyped-2165

Three identical articles! And two opinions that match yours! Oh my, Apple is doomed!

2 million, 2 months, fastest to $1 billion, top selling tablet, etc., etc. You can quote all the bullshit articles you want, but you can't negate the simple fact that the iPad is off to a stellar start. You can't take the position that with a start like this, the iPad is going to fall flat and expect to be taken seriously. If it is going fail, there are no signs of it. In fact, all signs point to the opposite conclusion.

I'll repeat that: there are no signs at all that the iPad will fail. Just because you don't like it, that doesn't mean...

Fuck, I just realized, nobody can be that stupid. I've been trolled. I need to learn to pay better attention next time.

/end thread

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1599659/wall-street-journal-admits-ipad-sales-disappointing

http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=6709

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201014/5463/First-day-iPad-sales-fall-short-of-revised-expectations

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=454448

keep reading ...

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/20100604-the-ipad-can-t-match-the-laptop-yet-but-when-it-can-the-world-will-change-kohler.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/why-the-apple-ipad-will-fail-in-australia-339302686.htm

http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/38566-five-reasons-the-ipad-will-fail-in-australia

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/04/27/five-reasons-the-ipad-will-fail-in-australia/

http://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/view/ipad-over-hyped-2165

We are in a world without precedent. While I share girlintrainings's skepticism and understand the point, I don't write off the capability of citizens to make the world and the government a better place.

THE WEB IS 17 YEARS OLD. Give it time.

Her point exactly. Would you say that world governments as a whole are heading towards less or more restriction of the internet? Yeah, I thought so.

And much of the censorship apparatus is being manufactured by...yep, you guessed it...Americans.

You can also see a video of the Asus Eee Tablet here, apparently it will be available from September for around $199, not sure how much it will be in the UK (surely be more than £140?) http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1651579/asus-eee-tablet-video

And then whimper when they find out Asus has been making Apple products for years.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1042363/asus-apple-building-tablet-pc

Seriously, have you ever met a fanboy? None of them give a shit who makes their computers, as long as they're sleek and pretty and run OS X.

And then whimper when they find out Asus has been making Apple products for years.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1042363/asus-apple-building-tablet-pc

THE NEW GOVERNMENT'S new secretary for Culture Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt has no plans to axe the Digital Economy Act, regardless of what the coalition parties might have said when they were canvassing for votes.

Every man and his dog's website is reporting a quote on Paidcontent:net, which has Hunt saying, "We're not going to repeal it," in response to questions about the Act, but no one - least of all his PR team - is able to inform us where the statement came from.

Lib-Dems want this gone (or fixed) but Conservatives are balking... wonder how this will play out.

They are lying, they are trying to justify their lawsuits against third party ink vendors in an attempt to keep ink prices high.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1649866/hp-names-dodgy-ink-vendor

http://news.cnet.com/Inkjet-refiller-lashes-out-at-HP-for-lawsuit/2100-1041_3-5647086.html

There is no need for these cartridges to cost so much, once HP has done the R&D the cartridge design and ink formula need not change when a new printer comes out, and for the most part I bet they don't. No ink is worth $8000 a gallon.

http://hothardware.com/News/8000-Per-Gallon-Printer-Ink--Lawsuit/

I'm in the anti-M$ camp, but it really sickens me to see a bunch of zealots that can't even be honest or fair; it makes our side seem whiny. It would be like a Microsoftie uttering some hyperbole like "no successful company is running Linux." See how stupid and detached from reality that sounds?

Hey, look! I put the words "Linux innovations" into some search engines...
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1017183/linux-innovation-missing
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/paytonbyrd/linux-lacks-innovation-13721
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/murphy/is-linux-innovative/972

See, no innovation --these results prove it! Wow, it sure is easy to have a ridiculous opinion. Maybe we could try to appear just a little fair-minded and actually put 10 seconds of real effort into our assertion the M$ has never innovated?

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1597631/no-firefox-windows-mobile

"Parmenter ['head honcho of mobile software development' for Firefox] laments at the lack of a native development kit that's available to developers, meaning that they are unable to create native applications for Windows Phone 7 Series."

True Microsoft doesn't "limit" you to a specific language, but in reality does it really matter if no matter what language you program in, it's just a front end for IL? I'd much rather be able to develop truly native apps

1) A good estimate of the number people who pirate the title

A hard to get number, especially with the existence of offline distribution.

And also not the number you want. What you want is the number of people who pirated it, but who would have paid for it if they couldn't. The rest aren't losing you money.

2) A good estimate of the number of people who would not buy the title had it DRM (which, contrary to Slashdot's estimation, is extremely tiny)

I'm probably rather extreme in my tastes, but I make an effort to make as much effect as possible. For something I really support, like Wolfire's initiative, I'll make sure to plug it everywhere posible. If I'm especially annoyed I'll make sure to get the company to lose at least a couple of sales.

Considering the amount of noise about Starforce, I do think it has to lose quite a few sales.

3) An estimate of the cost of developing adequate DRM policies and code

Hard to get an estimate, companies don't seem to publish prices on this. But doubt it's very cheap.

You haven't provided any of those numbers. Not even rough estimates. You have absolutely no case here, none at all.

Well, provide your numbers then. Real numbers I mean, because the "1 pirated copy=1 lost sale" is nonsense.

Instead of providing figures to back-up your assertion, you throw in shit like your point 5 which is completely irrelevant to the problem

It's very much relevant. I don't know of a single game that hasn't been cracked. No matter what you do, no matter how you try to stop it, eventually I can get a copy from bittorrent. So you'd be wasting money.

There's a Spore torrent on the pirate bay right now. In exchange for the DRM they got a lot of annoyed people who mounted a campaign against it, and went to the point of a class action lawsuit and it still was pointless because it still got cracked before the release and is still right there.

They also ended up relaxing the restrictions, so evidently it had to be losing them money, because otherwise, why would they have done it?

Point 6 which appears to be a scaremongering urban legend at best.

It did happen

Is it possible you're correct? Yes, I concede that. Is it likely? No-- if it was, then you'd see major studios ditching DRM as quickly as possible.

Online music stores have ditched it, which seems to point to something.

Also, it's very attractive to blame every loss of sales on piracy. It's something external you can blame and avoid ever blaming yourself for anything. Many claims not to buy a game because of DRM are met with disbelief.

The "Law Of Look In A Goddamned Gaming Store" says that your assertion is wrong, and I see no reason to believe that all game studios are somehow insane and you're not.

It wouldn't be the first time an ineffective measure was adopted even though it miserably failed to work. See also the war on drugs that keeps their merchants in business, and the prohibition that miserably failed to do anything useful, and still took a long time to get rid of.

I definitely agree with you, non IE browser or non Windows OS is the best way to go and of course not running as root (whatever OS you pick). However, even if GP switches his family to let's say Firefox, and they still run the PC as administrators, one drive by Flash or Java install and the PC is hosed. IMO, with current market share of Windows and the way people use it (as administrators), the single most effective way to cutting out infection vectors is not running your PC as admin. Even bigshot security fellows agree.

I have tried to deal with Apple on a number of occasions, every time it was not something I HAD to do, but something I felt obliged to do. I dutifully called them up, recorded the process, recorded the messages I left (try to get a real person there, I dare you!), and gave them more then enough time to get back to me (several days). I also left the same message on a number of relevant voice mails.

Apple just won't deal with you, they are Apple, and you are beneath them. If you are not a known kiss-up, they won't return your calls, emails, or anything else. Try, don't try, it doesn't matter, they won't get back to you. Insiders have told me that this is policy, not a fluke.

What did I contact them about? This:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1049921/inquirer-confirms-apple-macbook-pros-have-nvidia-bad-bump-material
Nope, no calls back. Could have saved them a big black eye though.

                  -Charlie

Er. TFA say the offer is 400p a share. Currently they trade at around 250p a share. This represents a 60% premium. Given that ARM is very close to its 52 week high, at 400p it's a no-brainer for the shareholders.

I, however, don't really think that Apple is going to buy ARM. The Inquirer has a very good analysis of why not here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1602331/apple-arm

huh?

Er. TFA say the offer is 400p a share. Currently they trade at around 250p a share. This represents a 60% premium. Given that ARM is very close to its 52 week high, at 400p it's a no-brainer for the shareholders.

I, however, don't really think that Apple is going to buy ARM. The Inquirer has a very good analysis of why not here: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1602331/apple-arm

You're thinking of the 9600M, NVIDIA's discrete graphics chip. The 9400 chipset does not have the solder problem.

The world disagrees

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1600105/mind-language

About the Java part that is, Access and IE are both horrible nightmares that should be burned from the earth.

The funny thing is the iPad Case -accessory. Apple has tried to make it look like Courier Tablet and like an actual book, but the truth is that theres no screen on the other side (which you can't see from the picture). What a surprise for the buyer.

Too bad the iPad sales are disappointing:

Over the weekend we saw some footage of empty queue stalls which was vaguely like when we popped into Disneyland Florida in November. -- Eric Savitz said that the figures "didn't quite meet estimates" -- According to the WSJ, Wall Street took a deep breath when analysts heard the figures.

How does dropping flash for HTML5 remove an attack vector? It just replace one attack vector with another.

Other have expounded on it, but I'll summarize: You drop a proprietary (single point of failure) vendor who has been slow about security. Had Adobe been very security conscious, [removing flash for security purposes] may not be a credible argument, but as it stands, Adobe is bad at security.

If Adobe were to move to HTML5, it would no longer be a single-point-of-failure since you can create HTML5 without Adobe.

I wonder how the HPC community is going to respond; there is a not insubstantial community who heard "150Gflop/$400" and "Linux" and decided to build clusters from PS3s. Those machines can probably just have updates held back, but it makes replacement a problem. To forestall the inevitable "that isn't a serious use" argument, US Airforce owns Something like 2,500 PS3s for compute work.
Killing Linux on the PS3 also presents something of an issue for the other Cell "partners", who seem to be looking at the PS3 as a low-cost Cell development starter kit. The other Cell machines on the market are *much* more expensive (an IBM QS22 blade is $8-20k, depending on configuration, and Mercury Computer Systems doesn't even like talking about how much their Cell boards cost). Given that Cell is an enormously difficult architecture to target, having relatively inexpensive systems to test and train on is very desirable for the other vendors, especially now that so many of the HPC folks are fixated on GPGPU, which is also terrible to program for, but has a far lower cost of entry. It could be that IBM's decision not to pursue Cell in the HPC market is how it became politically tenable for Sony to kill off Linux on the PS3.

"Sat-nav is too easy to attack"

"A UK GOVERNMENT BOFFIN has warned that it is too easy to jam GPS signals with cheap gear.

An engineer at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington warned that jamming sat-nav equipment with noise signals was on the rise and more sophisticated methods even allow hackers to program what GPS receivers display.

Speaking to the BBC, David Last, a consultant engineer and former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation said that GPS gives us transportation, distribution industry, 'just-in-time' manufacturing, and emergency services operations.

He said that the Achilles heel of GPS is the extremely weak signals that reach the receiver and that the signals can be easily swamped by equipment here on Earth."

Full article at: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1593314/sat-nav-easy-attack

It's like Apple, too small a base to target !!

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1597220/mac-os-x-zero-day-flaws

MS fixed the problem, but not before being called out on it. If it were intentional, that would be expected but probably some serious antitrust concerns would be valid given the default search preferences on IE/windows, which dominates the market, and is branching out into other devices. It's getting better, proving that it can improve even if it doesn't have the huge number of searches to data-mine. Further, is anything stopping MS from looking at Google's search trend pages? Last, there was an article not too long ago about how Google tries to contextualize searches. Publically available, and easily implemented in a way which wouldn't infringe on their patents.

The alternative is even worse - that the biased results were unintentional. Sure it's been fixed, but if your initial launch has results skewed in favor of the owning company and it wasn't on purpose, that's a gigantic pile of fail rolled up in a little humiliation pastry and covered in skank sauce.

gp's point was that MS is complaining about having fewer searches to data-mine, but can't even get the existing search results "fair and balanced". In other words, they need to improve before whining. GGP of course was indicating that Google's method of competition is to produce fair results, while Microsoft's method would be to bias everything towards Windows. Of course we got here by GGGP suggesting that Google's high marketshare will always continue to guarantee high market share because they have more search data for research.

The whole point of all of this is that if Microsoft has good technology and good results, people will be exposed to it through vendor lock-in, one way or another, and eventually discover for themselves that it either sucks or doesn't suck. Microsoft's best strategy is to focus on getting good results with the data they do have, not whine about a better algorithm getting more hits. Of course it will have more market share, Google's ranking algorithm is extremely mature, apparently unbiased, and constantly improving.

Of course, the irony of the king of lock-in complaining about being locked out when they have Bing as default on Windows as well as increasing numbers of phones is delicious like a very expensive dessert. That the initial roll-out of Bing was so fundamentally flawed the GP post still remembers how skewed the results were and feels the need to comment on it should be a clear sign that Bing has an uphill battle, even if they got a live streaming copy of every Google search, legally and with Google's blessing.

Or in other words: Red herring.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/169750/bing_search_reveals_promicrosoft_results.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1496589/can-trust-bing

Verizon require Blackberry default search be Bing, and not changeable. You can visit google.com of course, but that requires extra typing.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/verizon-forcing-microsoft-bing-search-blackberry-users-100

Illuminating comments thread
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1252533&cid=28175167

AMD, Intel and NVIDIA can move faster than people think

I disagree. It seems CPUs and GPUs are designed and planned well ahead of time. Tapeout occurs many months before products hit the market. Intel's Sandy Bridge apparently taped out in June 2009 and won't be released until 2011. Yonah taped out in October 2004 but wasn't released until January 2006. If it appears that these companies are responding quickly with new, competitive designs, it's because they correctly predicted the market direction and planned accordingly.

The companies can only really move fast in adjusting pricing, marketing, availability, and SKUs.

Not only are they deceitful in their advertising (few if any get the advertised speeds), but Virgin are also one of the biggest enemies of fair Internet access in the UK. Witness the CEO of Virgin Media's reported comments that net neutrality is "a load of bollocks" and that Virgin Media are arranging deals with various content providers to deliver their content faster over their competitors.

Virgin can promise me whatever amount of bandwidth they like (not that they've ever delivered on their advertising from what I hear), I'll never support them and I'll continue to explain to those that ask my advice (I'm one of the go-to technical people for a lot of friends) exactly why I don't like them and suggest competitors.

The malware has been updated so that it won't cause a crash.

Well that is the state of play according to TheInq http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1591069/ex-army-bloke-us-ready-cyber-war

This message brought to you by The Inquirer

Google getting desperate and subtly spamming slashdot now? Hey, perhaps people just don't want a phone made by the "maybeyou shouldn't be doing it in the first place" guys?

If I passed a law that said copyrights now last 10^100 years

But then you might get sued by Google! (It's not just copyright law that's gone messed up.)

The only one i remember is the Intel Compiler optimizations only working on Intel CPU's..

Such as doing some math tasks via MMX - even though AMD's had MMX the compiler wouldn't put in the optimizations unless the CPU was identified as Intel.

People got pissed because Intel's compiler was the defacto default for a alot of people - but if you think about it - why should they be responsiable for optimizing a compiler for a competitors CPU? and dealing with all the bug checkking that has to go into it.

Say they had allowed it to do the optimization and AMD's cpu had an erata that caused it to fail and crash the program because of the optimization - people would be pointing the finger at Intel's compiler..

honestly i would have done what they did - and say screw it - if they want optimizations they can release their own compiler.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1567108/intel-compiler-cripples-code-amd-via-chips

then you have to look at stuff like this

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=518

the marketing racket they had with dell - yea that was wrong - but leave their compiler out of it - AMD should release their own if they want optimizations.

I didn't mod it funny.

Yeah, who needs compilers that make the best code they can, phones that don't crash and know what year it is? Who needs free software when you can patent software licensing itself?

Let us instead ignore the freedom of the platform and look at the Oooh shiny.

AFAIK anything that burns rapidly in a confined space can explode. The explosion is composed of flying bits of the container. Powder lithium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum burn very well. Aluminum is cheap enough to be used as the propellant in solid rocket engines.

Hah, that's rich.

It's not even real competition. NvIDIA's Chinese foundry'll just release another bad batch, the vendors' Indian and Filipino tech support will just tell their angry customers that it was the customers' fault and to fuck off, NvIdia'll exit the x86 market, and we'll be back to square one. I know this because I've dealt with HP's Magandas over this issue, and they had no shame.

Mods, meet my middle finger.

Anyone know if some descendant of WGA is part of Win 7? The description of the problem in TFA (and also the corresponding Inq article reminds me of a botched WGA "software self-help" thing.

Of course, it could just be a garden-variety bug in something besides WGA.

US blackout was computer related

"The W32.Blaster worm may have contributed to the cascading effect of the Aug. 14 blackout, government and industry experts revealed this week"

Rare SCADA vulnerability discovered - May 2008

SCADA Systems Vulnerable to Hackers Feb 2004

I'm not defending Intel at all, but...

ATI's done it: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030526040035.html

NVIDIA's done it: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1048824/nvidia-cheats-3dmark-177

They've probably done it several times in the past with other benchmarking software as well.

They're all dishonest. Don't trust anyone!