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most consumers are used to.

So in answer to your question, it's been working out very well indeed.

A robot is pretty much defined as a device with sensors which acts independently on them. The US Army predator drones are able to land on their own with no operator input and as such definitely count as robots. However, most do not kill automatically, but there seeem to even be some which do that.

However, I think you are right in a deeper way. None of these things are "intelligent" robots in the sense of Asimov stories. The story has a discussion about the possibility of designing these robots to make ethical decisions but one which ignores the fact that these are hard AI problems over which there has been practically no progress since the dawn of computing. These kind of discussions often end up with someone quoting the Asimovian three laws and this even happens on forums with relatively intelligent informed readers but, apart from the fact that laws designed to ensure safety can't really apply to a device designed for killing, that's totally irrelevant since the three laws are stated in English. The real problem is how to state them in actual program code.

I'm one of the authors of the piece and it seems our syndicators screwed up the formatting. Enjoy: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2241597/top-ten-worst-viruses

I'm not as sure about airwaves being viable competition for fiber.

It could be for local access in high density areas such as cities. WiMax is growing by leaps and bounds in Asia. Spending is high in both China and India, by 2013 India may be the biggest WiMax market in Asia. If they can do it I see no reason the US can't, as long as the incumbents are kept out of the way. But of course they'll fight it tooth and nail if they can't have a piece of it. Now I'll admit fiber can provide more bandwidth but it's possible to get as fast a broadband as many people get now from cable and DSL.

Falcon

No, you're doing the math wrong. That's not "the rest of the world", that's "the rest of the *web developers* in the world".

Somehow seems at odds with Microsoft's focus on developers, developers, developers, developers.

For every web developer user who wants standards support, there are maybe a thousand non-web-developer users who want more speed, more browser features, better usability, better security, etc.

Other browsers have generally been ahead of the curve here, for a long time. Honestly, the last time IE had any sort of advantage was against Netscape 4.

It's not really web-ready, as it doesn't have plug-in support or even Javascript at the moment, and it's super-slow... but if Microsoft were to replace the rendering engine of IE, they'd use that one, since it's developed in-house.

Ah, NIH syndrome at its finest. All these other engines have plenty of javascript support, plugins, and speed.

Contrast this to Google and Apple -- Apple adopted KHTML to make Webkit, and Google adopted Webkit. How long did it take each of them to go from zero to a decent browser?

More Slashdot posting?

Back at ya.

Look, whether you like (or admit) it or not, IE shares something like 95% of the standard with every other browser. That's damned good.

Wine implements something like 95% of the Windows API. That's also damned good.

What matters is what's in that missing 5%.

If you were writing a cross-platform desktop application, you'd find that virtually every widget works entirely different between OS X, Windows, Gnome, and KDE...

Fortunately, for desktop applications, there's gtk+, qt, wxwidgets, tk, even swing and such.

And while things like jQuery are starting to make this easier on the Web, it's still not fun. The sad thing is, there is actually a standard there -- whereas there isn't really a standard for cross-platform application development.

Unless you count things like Java. So IE is kind of like when Microsoft broke Java.

Your job *is* easy.

My job, I have to use Javascript, HTML, and CSS on the client-side, unless I'm feeling really masochistic and decide to use Flash.

On the server-side, I can use whatever I want, and that is helpful. But the client is limited to precisely those technologies.

Were I developing desktop applications, I'd have a much wider selection of frameworks to choose from, with far fewer implementation differences... It's also possible I wouldn't have to deal with things like HTTP at all, depending on what I was building.

For one thing, CSS has multiple measures, some of which are machine-relative and some of which aren't. Why can't I set the height of something to "5em + 5px"?

Good point, I suppose that would be useful. I guess the kludge is to stack some divs inside it... ew.

The fact that you *also* lacked the imagination to come up with a scenario like this just tells me that you've been working in CSS too long.

That, or I just don't often run into that scenario -- I tend towards simpler designs.

IE had a Javascript debugger before Firefox existed,

Debugging is part of what Firebug does. The DOM inspector and the live CSS tweaking is equally useful.

Unless you like the fact that one application can't bring down the entire system quite as easily.

In practice, how often did that happen?

Probably about as often as it did on Win95, come to think of it.

They added always-visible text labels to the Dock?

Possibly. However, the size absolutely is configurable, and I wouldn't be

Over on The Oil Drum this was hashed out

From Actual "research"
"surface, it has spread out considerably. The energy density is one-sixth that of the noon-day sun."

So we've went from 2 times the 'normal' PV to now 1/6th the energy density of normal sunlight.

Once again the question to ask is - why go through the hassle of putting collectors in space if land based PV collecting regular old sunlight at 6x times the energy density?

Now you wanna play in space? Why not robotic mining/refining and send the results back down the gravity well? All ya need to do is solve AI and some material science issues. *wink*

Is 160GB really not enough storage? Is a gigabyte of ram really not enough memory? Is a 1.6GHz multithreading processor really not powerful enough for surfing the web, chatting on IM, and listening to MP3s?

I think you're wrong, and I'm not alone. According to IDC, netbooks made up 20% of total portable computer sales in Europe in 2008. Further, Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Centre said that shipments will more than double to 18.3 million in 2009, an annual growth rate of 128 per cent.

What you get out of a netbook that you don't get out of your solution is the same thing you get for buying a Cavalier instead of a Ferrari: A functional device at a fraction of the cost. The fact that they're inexpensive is why they're taking off, and why they're going to be relatively recession-proof. Even better, they're cheap enough that even if it breaks or gets stolen, you can just go buy another one. Netbooks can be had for as little as $250 new. Good luck even getting a good cell phone for that much.

I can see it first-hand. Two of my three brothers own netbooks(The third bought a full-fledged desktop replacement because his PC died), my dad owns TWO(owned an eee, now owns an Aspire One), I own one too. We've all wanted laptops for quite some time, but they were too expensive to justify. At 200-300 dollars, they're not too expensive at all.

"While connecting the dots to infer something may not make it so, Russia has a rich history of cyber attacks against enemies. Isn't it prudent to consider their history when looking at the evidence?"

What evidence a report that claims that Stopgeorgia.ru is hosted by an ISP that's in the same street as GRU headquarters. Like, given the history of the KGB, do you think they would be that stupid.

'* The StopGeorgia.ru forum was part of a bulletproofed network that relied on shell companies and false WHOIS data to (a) prevent its closure through Terms of Service violations, and (b) to maks the involvement of the Russian FSB/GRU. By mimicking the structure of the Russian Business Network, a cyber criminal enterprise, it created plausible deniability that it is a Kremlin-funded Information Operation (IO)'

Why set up a traceable organization when you can instruct your own agents in the real organizations to carry out such blackops. I mean that's the one thing spy organizations are designed to do, infiltrate conventional organizations with their own secret agents. And given the nature of DDOS attacks, it wouldn't take that much organization. Cases in point being the Conficker worm and the BBCs bought in botnet. Are we supposed to take this 'report' at face value, given its timing and its source, a front organization with ties to the US intelligence community.

From http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2236775/researchers-hack-facial

"VNBusinessNews - Researchers from Viet Nam have cracked facial recognition scanners on laptops to bypass security. They will be demonstrating how to hack facial recognition biometrics at the Black Hat security convention in Washington DC this week."

From Feb 20, 2009

I'm sure there's another reason for that.

I was too lazy to try and find an amazing source for you, so I just used "I'm Feeling Lucky"...

http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2143

Also, you have google answer #2, which states some pretty low requirements for a new SKU:

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/01/microsoft-to-google-we-already-offer-that-see-windows-live.ars

Also, here's a nice article to read on someone that actually contacted the UK MS office:

http://labs.vnunet.com/2009/02/windows-7-and-n.html

oh wait, http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2236292/stimulus-bill-nixed-net

Feinstein just introduced this amendment, http://www.publicknowledge.org/pdf/GRA09175_xml.pdf into the stimulus bill.

guess it's not going to be so illegal after all.

Why do they hate us so much?

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2123077/anti-blaster-worm-spreads-patches

• Self-contained PC / keyboard combo with integrated 5-inch touchscreen display
• OS: Windows XP Home Edition
• 1.6GHz Intel Atom microprocessor
• 1GB of DDR2 DRAM
• 16GB or 32GB SSD
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Ultra Wideband HDMI
• USB 2.0 x2, VGA, HDMI, headphone and mic ports
• Weight: 2 lbs

Article here : http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2216462/texting-costs-world

In fact, the reasearcher was told by the NASA that the cost of data received from hubble was about 11,14 euros (~$15) for each Mega Byte, plus some extra fees to transmit data from the "receiver" to the place where they need it. The higher estimate is of about $100/MB.

Let you estimate how much your telco will charge you for 1 MB of SMS... (1 sms = 160 char = 140 Byte because SMS characters are encoded on only 7 bits)

Well, why not? Isn't that what WINE is for?...

The IWF issues a blacklist that all UK ISPs implement so yes, it does act to decide what content is blacklisted in the UK. It is much more than just a hotline.

This blacklist deals with child porn. Criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content aren't filtered by this blacklist but are passed on to the authorities and ISPs to deal with via take downs instead.

Thank you however for demonstrating exactly what the problem is with the IWF. That people don't even realise that it does act as a censor.

See here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/07/bt_iwf_trails/

here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/may/26/onlinesupplement

or here:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2119771/web-watchdog-issues-paedophile-blacklist

Again, I support the work they do currently if it is as suggested, however I do not support the fact that they are allowed to manage it without any oversight or public awareness.

The iPhone has 2.8% market share as of August 2008. It's not even close to being the #1 smartphone in the US. Keep drinking that tasty koolaid though.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/smartphones/iphone-greedily-eats-north-american-market-share-334516.php

Canalys has produced a report showing the iPhone has grown massively in North America. The study looked specifically at smartphone market share statistics in Q3, and the iPhone, in a surprisingly short time span, has managed to grab second position. A 27% market share is nothing to scoff at; what Apple has done in a few months, others have failed to do in years.

This was during the quarter that Apple was basically not manufacturing 1st gen iPhones....
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/06/03/palm-centro-boosts-palm-marketshare-rim-sees-blackberry-market-share-rise-apple-loses-in-iphone-market.html

But, there's always two sides to every story. While RIM and Palm saw their market-share increase, Apple saw its market-share slide. The iPhone took a healthy US smartphone market-share of 26.7% in the fourth quarter last year. But, it seems that RIM and Palm's success has eaten in to the iPhone's niche. The iPhone accounted for just 19.2% of smartphones sales in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 26.7% of sales in Q4 2007.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2227601/apple-iphone-gains-market-share
Oct 7, 2008

The handset now accounts for 17 per cent of the market, second only to Motorola's RazR2. Before the iPhone 3G launch Apple's market share was 11 per cent. ....
Rubin noted that the iPhone is now outselling the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro, making it the number one smartphone in the US.

If Microsoft is not threatening to sue over patents, why would they hand Novell a boatload of money to sign a patent deal with royalties going back to Microsoft for every Novell Linux sold? Microsoft paid Novell a bunch of money to do this deal, and all of this after remarks about patent violations in Linux.

It's quite obvious Microsoft wants people to pay for Linux with royalties going to Microsoft, under the threat of lawsuit. And in case you need the threat spelled out for you, Ballmer did so, multiple times:

http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2006/03/22/ballmer-microsoft-linux-cz_df_0322microsoft.html
"Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy."

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Ballmer_repeats_threats_against_Linux/0,130061733,339273726,00.htm
"I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that open source is not free, and open source will have to respect the intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will."

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2200717/microsoft-sharpens-aims-patent
"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us"

With the growing interest in Linux, I wonder if we'll see more parity of viruses between Windows and Linux.

This should sound familiar to most readers here. We've heard it before:

http://www.simson.net/clips/2000/2000.SecurityFocus.Linux_Viruses.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20000304004534/http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/3/ns-12862.html

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120227/honeymoon-linux-users

And the same general theme has even been fitted for the MacOS crowd:

http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/mac%C2%AD-security/57811.html

It's not that the concept is all that unlikely. Oddly enough, WinNT set a historical precedence for adoption and exploitation. Yet Linux / Unix has yet to pan out the same way.

What we've got to keep in mind is that Linux (and Unix variants) have been in this arena for some time. They have had exposure and faced scrutiny. In fact, the hay-day so far for Unix and Linux malware was probably around 2002 - 2004.

Whether that is the last chapter for Linux malware is yet to be seen. I would expect it isn't. Linux users must remember that it is no silver bullet. But history has shown that it appears to be fairly resilient.

A few years a go a dude in Spain wrote a virus to do this same thing. Pretty creepy if you ask me. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2125724/peeping-tom-webcam-worm-created-virus-writers

That is a fascinating question: here are some articles on the subject - I very much suspect that its a change in interpretation, and who are us little people to argue with that? ;) http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article3965033.ece http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/07/16/super-database-proposed-in-uk-logging-every-phone-call-text-email/ http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2217073/government-plans-database-phone

It may be location-specific, but I don't get any links to Microsoft's site as the first results.

The results for the UK seem reasonable, although the first one wasn't what you'd be expecting (e.g. the first result for "open office" was http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2128963/openoffice). I changed my browser language preference to English/Australia so I'd get more appropriate results (and deleted the live.com cookies), and I got fairly different results. The first few links for "linux" were to linux.org.au, with linux.org the second last result on the first page.

Interestingly, the search for open office with my language preference set to UK English didn't give me any ads, but with it set to AU English I do get some pretty lame "sponsored links":

Open Office 2008 Download - OpenOffice.2008-Version.com
Latest Version of Open Office Suite. Fast Download - 100% Guaranteed.

OPEN OFFICE 2008 WORD - computers.oztion.com.au
Computer software at bargain prices.

Microsoft Open Office - www.gumtree.com.au
Find amazing bargains for computer software. Browse 100's of ads.

Okay... so what about the US? Interestingly, just setting my language preference to EN-US doesn't work; it decides I'd prefer Australian results. Maybe EN-US is so common Microsoft ignore it and do geo detection instead?

Fortunately I have a server at a US colo facility, so using that as my proxy did the trick. If you're from the US, then search.live.com returns one ad for "getfirefox":

Internet Browser - www.Microsoft.com/Windows
Everyday Web Tasks Are Easier w/ Windows Vista. Get Special Offers.

and one ad for "linux":

Linux - www.Microsoft.com/Windows
Special Offers from Windows Vista® w/ the Purchase of Select Laptops.

The ads are pretty clearly marked as being ads (sorry, "sponsored links") so the GP seems to be trying to grind an axe. However, that kind of advertising is usually reserved for 2-bit companies with no real products trying to dupe naive users, so it's a bit surprising to see a company like Microsoft resorting to such cheap tactics.

Interesting that the sponsored link for "firefox" is actually mozilla.com; only "getfirefox" returns Microsoft's ad. A search for "getfirefox.com" has a sponsored link for another site which appears to be trying to make a few bucks by sending people to Google's download for Firefox.

Earlier this year, there was news that someone was putting $100m into SCO: see http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2209808/sco-back-business Quote: "(SNCP) and unnamed Middle Eastern investors. The money will take the company out of bankruptcy protection and turn it into a private concern. "We saw a tremendous investment opportunity in SCO and its vast range of products and services, including many innovations ready, or soon to be ready, to be released into the marketplace," said Stephen Norris, managing partner at SNCP." Here's a pretty good summary if you haven't followed the story (but it doesn't mention the Bad News): http://www.heise-online.co.uk/features/SCO-vs-Linux-mixed-reactions-to-Novell-Unix-copyright-verdict--/110819

Give 'em to meeee!

Not just the bigger card.

"We put in an SD slot in the machine just for Bill. We didn't need it but the OLPC machines are at Microsoft right now, getting Windows put on them."
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2170267/update-green-party-labels

From TFA: Microsoft, Google, and all other websites that currently use CAPTCHA, need to find a solution that puts them a step ahead of the spammers. This may well be it.

It too could eventually prove crackable to computers, at least, with a useable rate of success.

The best way to stay one step ahead of spammers is with a baseball bat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2000/microsoft/700702.stm

And, as an amusing dessert, try some of this:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118681/microsoft-convicted-software-piracy

* Merkey explaining to Guy why it's OK for him to be in a separate reality because his astrologer said so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=138290116
* Merkey the Mormon messiah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=135869262
* The remarkable cosmic events surrounding Merkey's birth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=138290116
* Merkey's "Right to Edit":
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Business_%26_Finance/Investments/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_S/threadview?bn=2942&tid=423118&mid=423118
* Merkey's lawsuit against the internet:
http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/utah.pdf
* Merkey's peyote offer:
http://groups.google.com/group/mlist.linux.kernel/msg/c29b254c15fc5059
* Merkey disavowing his peyote offer YEARS after it was made:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0507.0/0230.html
* Merkey revealing that his Linux kernel buyout offer was part of his native american politicking:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/501519
* Merkey's arthritis cure, developed at Timpanogas:
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0108.1/0587.html
* .. which is also a law firm!:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0010.0/0955.html
* Merkey vouching for SCO's case:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0410.2/2674.html
* Merkey's "Mormon masters" letter showing his hatred:
http://scofacts.org/Novell-TRG-1998-01-30-letter.pdf
* Merkey's _gold_ mine:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.cyberpunk/browse_thread/thread/3ca32f485a1ea07e/244b0f713989de6b?lnk=st
* Merkey's double-Y chromosome giving him a third brain and the powers of Einstein and Nostradamus:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0009.0/1206.html
* MANOS: The fantastic operating system noone ever saw.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2113408/open-source-netware-compatible-unveiled
* Gadugi: More fantastic software noone ever saw:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0410.2/2723.html
* Novell threatens to destroy Merkey's family:
http://lwn.net/2001/0704/a/nwfs.php3
* Merkey gets his ass handed to him by Andre, who not too subtly hints that his NWFS code may be stolen:
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0111.2/0450.html
* Merkey's the Toad dealer:

Umm, he just did? http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2211631/sheryl-sandberg-signs-facebook

"able to count on some excellent tools" and from one of the parent posts "Microsoft would never have been happy about it because it would further erode their lock-in."

also from the article link http://www.royalidea.com/site/?q=node/12 we get this section...
"The aim of UNG is to write complete GNU-like tools and frameworks that will be completely compatible with existing GNU software and standards. These tools will run natively on Vista. This means that software written for the GNU environment will be able to compile and run on Vista with little or no modifications. Major software currently running on GNU/Linux will be able to run natively on Vista."

Microsoft's strategy revolves around the idea of lock in. Looking at this from the point of view of lock in, it then sounds like Microsoft is trying to find a way to get GNU code over onto Vista. If you can't beat them, then assimilate anything useful they have ... like some excellent tools. That way, you get some good and free applications, sitting on top of your proprietary OS. Plus maybe even help remove, some of the reasons some corporate (non-technical) bosses of companies would think their staff would want Linux. "Why both, its got the same apps on Vista?".

While Microsoft controls the OS, they hold the foundations upon which all their competitors try to build a living. They are not going to give that up, but any company switching to Linux is a problem for them. So this is another chess move to try to reduce corporate customers moving towards Linux. Loosing corporate customers is what Microsoft really fears. Big customers moving away from Windows sends out a message to other big customers to act in a similar way. Microsoft wants to prevent this slide, especially as more cheaper embedded systems are very likely in the near future and a lot of them are likely to be using Linux.
e.g. News such as 10 billion ARM CPU sales isn't going to help Microsoft as much as its going to help grow Linux support, as a lot of ARM CPUs are using embedded Linux. Add to this the number of other CPUs using embedded forms of Linux, then industry support for Linux is growing faster than just on desktop machines. Microsoft needs to move to either block or reduce this, to help maintain their OS lock-in.
e.g. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2207797/arm-hits-billion-processor

It's more than a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Gatesists made clear that they would not take "no" for an answer and would continue their plans against Yahoo one way or another. These so-called pension funds are likely part of that approach and just softening up Yahoo, while setting the media against the board in prep for its ousting. One point which is unlikely to ever make many mainstream news sites or forums, even open source ones like Slashdot, is that Microsoftologians are likely to try to replace Yahoo's board. Poisoning the press against the board is a first step.

Later, preventing the Yahoo employees from jumping off with golden parachutes might be a repeat of what MS did to Borland, except against key open source projects. Yahoo contributes in a big way to many open source projects, PHP and BSD being two Very Important (tm) ones. Getting Yahoo would crush a competitor to the spectacularly failed MSN. So without the 'chutes many would have to stay and MS could simply have them sweeping floors or making coffee.

There is also the question of Zimbra, which was recently purchased by Yahoo. MS Exchange is about the only thing that ties Windows into either/both the desktop and the server room. Zimbra is one of the few competitors to MS Exchange, besides Kolab and Citadel, none of which get much press. Quite a few shops would stop or drastically decrease use of MS products without MS Exchange. Zimbra is currently not GPL. Buying Yahoo would allow Zimbra to be put on ice as MS did with FoxPro

Advertising, aka tracking users, is another problem. MS execs want into advertising. Controlling the adservers allows a chance, finally, at income. It also allows access to be tweaked. Ads get served up first before content and delay, especially at the beginning, drastically reduces viewing time and thus mindshare. The first moments are crucial and studies show that the cap is set at 20s. A delay, on purpose or by accident, of even a fifth of a second x one million page views is hundreds of lost viewing hours. So the potential for severe abuse is there in addition to the technical problems MS services and servers are known for.

At the bottom is also a question of money. Many articles somehow neglect that much of the initial offer was funny-money, aka MSFT stock, which MS prints on demand. The noise and smoke about the attempted take over does well at drawing attention away from what must be some rather 'creative' book keeping there in Redmond.

There are plenty more possible reasons to go after Yahoo's board. Having sockpuppets poison the press makes sense for many of them.

Thanks for your demonstration that the only real response you offered to the documentation proving the NSA compromised Crypto AG, the best crypto in the world, for decades was 4 letter words and personal insults. The NSA has made sure nobody on the planet other than the US has had secure communication since the 50's. Naive insistences regarding "tinfoil hats" is a religious mantra that fools repeat over and over and over again hoping their faith-based beliefs that "things like that can't happen in the US" will stay strong. Your religious beliefs are not facts.

Every major telecom carrier in the US except Qwest obediently surrendered the constitutional rights of their customer base to private communications upon demand of the Bush White House to the wiretap every Americans phone and internet usage in 2001 BEFORE 9/11. The facts are every bit of telecom traffic that didn't begin and end within Quest's lines was intercepted at the network level.

"1024-bit encryption is 'compromised'

Upgrade to 2048-bit, says crypto expert
James Middleton, vnunet.com 26 Mar 2002

1024-bit encryption is 'compromised'

Upgrade to 2048-bit, says crypto expert
James Middleton, vnunet.com 26 Mar 2002
ADVERTISEMENT

According to a security debate sparked off by cryptography expert Lucky Green on Bugtraq yesterday, 1,024-bit RSA encryption should be "considered compromised".

The Financial Cryptography conference earlier this month, which largely focused on a paper published by cryptographer Dan Bernstein last October detailing integer factoring methodologies, revealed "significant practical security implications impacting the overwhelming majority of deployed systems utilising RSA as the public key algorithm".

Based on Bernstein's proposed architecture, a panel of experts estimated that a 1,024-bit RSA factoring device can be built using only commercially available technology for a price range of several hundred million to $1bn.

These costs would be significantly lowered with the use of a chip fab. As the panel pointed out: "It is a matter of public record that the National Security Agency [NSA] as well as the Chinese, Russian, French and many other intelligence agencies all operate their own fabs."

And as for the prohibitively high price tag, Green warned that we should keep in mind that the National Reconnaissance Office regularly launches Signal Intelligence satellites costing close to $2bn each.

"Would the NSA have built a device at less than half the cost of one of its satellites to be able to decipher the interception data obtained via many such satellites? The NSA would have to be derelict of duty to not have done so," he said.

The machine proposed by Bernstein would be able to break a 1,024-bit key in seconds to minutes. But the security implications of the practical 'breakability' of such a key run far deeper.

None of the commonly deployed systems, such as HTTPS, SSH, IPSec, S/MIME and PGP, use keys stronger than 1,024-bit, and you would be hard pushed to find vendors offering support for any more than this.

What this means, according to Green, is that "an opponent capable of breaking all of the above will have access to virtually any corporate or private communications and services that are connected to the internet"...."

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118141/1024-bit-encryption-compromised

setup by bought media companies

and hoards of gamers unbalancing the market.

I agree, insofar as the solution to that problem was HD-DVD winning.

> Thanks, and what might explain why they picked a charity for diabetes?

According to Computing magazine, it's because "Diabetes UK ... did not require a signature to set up a standing order."

The OLPC idea needs perhaps 5 or 10 years to mature, in my opinion. After that, when every country in the world realizes how much computers help grow social strength, the market will be far larger and well-defined, and commercial efforts will be very welcome.

The OLPC idea is founded on these understandings: 1) That students will be far more interested in school if they have a way of accessing the world's information, especially where books are not easily available. 2) That students can teach themselves. 3) That computers are fascinating and provide an incentive to learn. 4) That one or two people in a community who are especially good at teaching themselves may provide leadership that helps the entire community grow.

If a foolish entry like Intel's competes, that may kill the entire OLPC experiment. The entire good idea could become discredited or delayed many years.

Intel has in the past been amazingly bad at producing items for users. Until 1991, Intel had a Consumer Products Division that was extremely badly managed. Can it be wise that Intel has decided to go into the low-cost, commodity consumer business, when Intel has always failed at that business? Given Intel's past history and core competency, can Intel become a strong competitor with Mattel?

If Intel wants to compete, it should offer Mr. Negroponte cheaper processors to compete with the AMD processors used now. Producing processors is what Intel does very well, apparently in spite of top management.

Intel, apparently, never wavered from its position that it was in competition with OLPC. Intel tried to kill the program before it got fully started; that's how it appears to the public. Internal attempts at spin control at Intel don't change the public perception that Intel has been, and intends to continue to be, destructive.

Many people seem to think that the underlying problem is that Intel CEO Paul Otellini has extremely poor social skills. It seems to me that the OLPC issue could eventually bring such an accumulation of bad press to Intel that the Intel board fires Otellini.

Certainly Otellini's handling of the One Laptop Per Child initiative could not have been worse. It was as though he said to himself, "How can I get billions of dollars worth of free publicity for Intel, all negative?" Intel's actions have created the impression that Intel wants to kill acceptance of the OLPC so that it can kill the OLPC project and then raise prices on its own products.

Intel marketing should possibly be called Intel "marketing" because it is often propelled by utterly foolish ideas. One example is the Intel trademark "Viiv", which was a bad idea even if people could pronounce it. See, for one example, the article Intel admits defeat with Viiv.

Well, there's also CH-DVD, though finding content might be a problem if you're in the USA. ;)

Of course, I'm waiting for my current SDTV to die before I replace it with a HDTV.

Nope. It would NOT be smacked down like in WWF.
It would be "settled".
The company would pay a visible compensation and an invisible large contribution to campaign funds and the matter would be closed; without the company ever admitting it did wrong.

During 1800s many local counties had laws which prevented convicted companies from doing/establishing business in that locality.
But then now convicted companies like Deibold http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031217/APN/312170634 and Microsoft http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118681/microsoft-convicted-software-piracy
  not to mention Bechtel http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/reconstruct/2006/0905profiteers.htm Custer Battles do business with impunity in all states.

When am convicted of a crime, am forced to wear a badge [of honor] and municipalities would not allow me to setup business if am an ex-convict.
The same rules never apply to corporates. Municipalities like Mass Turnpike authorities welcome Bechtel with open arms.

Until Senator Leahy introduces a legislation (on the sly) that prevents counties from ALL convicts from establishing a business, this will go on.

most of the posts here are pretty much junks and finally one makes sense. You think you can avoid this by switching to linux or other os? How about they burn things in firmware level? or put spyware in BIOS?

Also, some google and you can find the infective drive are also sold in US and UK

http://forums.vnunet.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121580

This must *really* piss you guys off:
Microsoft and Novell extend alliance

I know that 99% of slashdotters desperately want the MS/Novell deal to flop, but you're going to have to accept the fact that it's here to stay. And it's causing companies to switch to Novell at Red Hat's expense. Know that.

What the company did was against the US embargo, actually. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2144178/fortinet-investigates-sanctions/

So yes, it's illegal but the company doesn't care.

Like the Computer world puff piece, slanted coverage and no possibility for visible reader feedback:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2201116/red-hat-novell-targeted-patent

That's the whole point.

They *aren't* saying, they're just FUD-ing.

From a linked story at vnunet.com:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2200498/oin-calls-microsoft-bluff?vnu_lt=vnu_art_related_articles ...Mark Taylor, president of the Open Source Consortium [...] described Microsoft's tactics in damning terms.

"We say show us the patents," he told vnunet.com. "This has been the strategy against open source all along. It's precisely the same tactics as SCO used: implied threats and mafia techniques. This is just FUD. It's smoke and mirrors. "

Taylor added that Microsoft is sorely mistaken if it hopes that its actions will slow down the spread of open source. ....

M$ has a history of trying to protect and extend its domination over the software market with legal wars and threats of legal wars.

With the failure of VISTA, and IE getting serious competition from Firefox, M$ isn't so much a software company any more so much as a litigation company.

I say they have richly earned the thumping they will receive at the hands of Open Source over the next few years.

the EUCD thing (european copyright version of dmca as i understand it) of 2003 certainly had a no-format-shifting clause in it.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2123616/copyright-law-catches-uk-surfers

although i also seem to remember a press release from record companies a few months later saying that they wouldn't chase anybody for this. which is good, given that a lot of the stuff i listen to is vinyl only and they don't make portable 12" players...

Microsoft doesn't hand out free copies of Windows with embedded ads in them.

Not yet, but they might.

CH-DVD, which is basically a HD-DVD plus more copy protection...

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2198290/china-de velops-definition-dvd

I've still yet to care about this format war, but this sounds more promising than either of the other two standards. Too bad it will never get off the ground.

No, Sony is working to make it a fully assed Blu-Ray player to compete with the HD-TnA format.

August 1st: "Monster.com lays off 15 per cent of staff" http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2195363/monster- com-lays-per-cent-staff It makes you think if one event leads to the other...

LOB.

I agree with you. If you look at M$ failed attempt with Blackbird (which was for html and www) in the 90's you will see that Silverlight is a second attempt on media for internet.

I would stay away from Silverlight like it was cancer!

http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/comment/2086343/propr ietary-standards-grow-online (article on Blackbird)

http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/spring96/0113.htm l (another article)

There are reasons to support communities instead of business. Microsoft is one of them!