Slashdot Mirror

*sigh*

And buried in a previous /. article about the man...

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2474527/

I really should have finished researching him before posting. Sorry.

I'll shut up now.

Microsoft has cut a deal with China Construction Bank, the second largest bank in the world [by market capitalization.]

Microsoft China on March 23 inked a MoU with China Construction Bank, the nation's biggest real estate and mortgage lender, on strategic cooperation.

Under the MoU, both sides will build a new generation online banking IE browser on the base of Windows Internet Explorer. In addition, they will jointly solve problems regarding to certificate management, browser safety monitor system allocation, multi-language version and etc. The new generation USB Key will own non-clink consumer installment function.

CCB expects to top China's online banking market and the cooperation with Microsoft will help improve its online banking service further, said Fan Yifei, vice president of the bank. Microsoft will continue boosting China's online banking market, pointed out Simon L. K. Leung, chairman and president of the company for the Greater China region.

Actually, it is not the first time for the Chinese bank to cooperate with Microsoft. In order to promote online banking software, Microsoft cooperated with a list of commercial banks in China before the launch of Windows 7 and CCB is one of the latter.

Microsoft, CCB to Build Special IE Browser

CCB has 16,000 domestic branches, and has expanded overseas to Singapore, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Tokyo and Seoul. In June 2009, CCB opened its New York Branch and a wholly-owned subsidiary in London.
 

... it probably isn't. This guy is a snake oil salesman.

>provision of communications service

They used that language because it's internet today, and VOIP tomorrow.

>Is a telco or cable company required to keep separate accounts for their internet service?

Geez. http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2296405/

>...the bill would say that *ALL* internet providers would be subject to these rules

That is an excellent suggestion, and I agree that would be the perfect wording. On the other hand, I doubt that the current Telcos are collecting much in the way trash and water fees.

Slashdot material will also cover accusations of LimitNone being a M$ proxy and the perills of non free software in general. The senseless accusations you are talking about will be half covered by the Wintel trade press as they did with the SCO case.

The statement:

People need to realize that Google is just another large publicly traded corporation that will do whatever it takes to increase its revenue, even if that means risking its reputation among developers." is right out of the M$ FUD book.

The alleged theft is laughable:

The lawsuit alleges that Google's product, called "Google Email Uploader" steals gMove's look, feel and functionality.

There were also Vague accusations of "trade secret theft" but there are several excellent free software tools that have been getting this kind of information for years. No further details were given by business wire. Let's look for more, shall we?

• Wired, same stuff Google has not had time to look over the suit and comment.
• CNet, same kind of thing with market size and potential price thrown in for fun.
• TechTree bare facts, no Google comment.
• The Inquirer does better with a brief statement of facts, without Google comment.
• The Wall Street Journal adds insight by noticing that there is a conflict of interest between small companies and large ones in any business relationship but only applies this wisdom to Google. No comment from Google.
• There are many echos in other papers and blog space which contain even less information than the Slashdot summary.
• Something to spook clueless investors about "another" billion dollar suit for Google without background information about the frequency of such things.

So, we see a one sided media blitz, complete with stock market "advice", but completely lacking in input from Google, technical insight and other information. These are M$ hallmarks.

"Now what exactly did Creative have to gain by doing this? Maybe somewhere an unhappy customer who installed these drivers, and for whatever reason, they didn't work or broke something, and that ignorant but well meaning customer blames Creative."

Well, yes. But the big advantage is that by practicing their due diligence of keeping the links off of the forums, they're minimizing the chances of being sued by their licensors (Dolby, et al). Being sued is a huge financial risk, and it's dishonest to ignore this vital component of the situation.

It might be easy to shrug off a lawsuit as no big deal -- after all, it's happening to somebody else, right? But this is Slashdot, where we bemoan the $3K RIAA settlements and state that they "ruin lives." Being nailed for not doing their due diligence here would not make their day, either.

And if you think that Creative has the money -- well, they probably don't. Creative had to sell its headquarters just to avoid taking a huge loss last quarter.

"If they had half a brain, they would have quietly hired him for a very handsome sum of money. If they didn't try then they deserve whatever backlash they get."

Perhaps he'd be an asset to their engineering team, but remember that this isn't a story about Creative being unable to release the drivers -- they'd just rather not pay the licensing fees that will allow them to.

If this isn't clear to anybody reading this... say, for example, that some enterprising fellow fixed some bugs in OS X and then distributed his own "OS X Plus" -- not a diff, not a patch, but modified Apple code, which undoubtedly contains some technology licensed from other vendors. You can bet that Apple would remove all posts on their forum linking to the code, and make it a point to tell the fellow to stop distributing his hacked version of OS X and asking for donations for it. Would this piss off geeks? You bet. Would you and others be here pointing out that Apple's lawyers don't have "half a brain," to use your words? Probably. But Apple would still do it.

Here's the official press release. There's additional articles on Bloomberg and TradingMarkets.

This news was predicted after TomTom bought Tele Atlas last July, NAVTEQ's main competitor.

The press office must be having a great day... http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/637040/

The next Power processor will be the Power6, and is supposed to come out next year. It's still be dual core, but meant to run at 4-5GHz. They also continue with PowerPC products, even without Apple.