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> I hope she brings Fox the same integrity and good business sense that she brought to HP.

I'm sure we will.

Now we'll finally get the answer to the question "Which is harder? Running a first rate company into the ground, or being a Bush economic policy apologist?"

For those of you keeping score at home, in this corner, we have the person who helped bring down HP's stock by more than 50% and missed earnings targets. In the other corner, we have the economic policy that turned $250 billion budget surpluses under Clinton into $300 billion budget deficit in just two years!

Sounds like a perfect match.

Mobbing at its finest...

Or do I just wait for others to change

and for more supportive information to come along such as Non-Patentable findings that in essence supports Abstraction Physics and the Virtual Interaction Configuration

So should I sue or just wait for the slanderers and libeler to realize they steped in their own B.S...?

Copyright enforcement on a cease and desist order to prevent the receiver from ...... doing what? Defending themselves? Standing up for consumer rights? ..... ... or just applying copyright Fair Use?

I think what needs to happen so to not allow the receive from publishing the cease and desist order is to have it signed by a judge as a court order.

1. 50 and older: 47 million.
2. 35-49: 42.5 million.
3. 17 and under: 30.3 million.
4. 25-34: 19.9 million.
5. 18-24: 11.2 million.

Having said this, I would like to note that there is a very good reason for bringing out Vista: plain old software engineering. The last thing I expected to do was to defend Microsoft from a software engineering point of view, but here goes.

I think it started when Jim Allchin (whom I much respect) had to report to Bill Gates that he would not be able to deliver the next Windows version (Longhorn) in time ... or at all (see http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39152715,00.htm and the original WSJ interview (subscription required) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112743680328349448.html?mod=todays_us_page_one).

Why ever not?

Here is why: Jim Allchin, group VP in charge of Windows, told the Wall Street Journal he dropped the bombshell last summer, simply telling Gates "It's not going to work". Longhorn was so complex that Microsoft's developers would never be able to make it run properly, Allchin told Gates.

The root of the problem was Microsoft's historical approach to developing software - the so-called 'spaghetti code culture' - where the company's thousands of programmers would each develop their own piece of code and it would then all be stitched together at the end.

In other words: the design was so complex, so haphazard, and consisted of so many interlocking parts that it was no longer really modular.

In software engineering that's a killer. Because it's then impossible to really isolate problems. Let alone fix them. The remedy was as simple as it was brutal: stop the current line of MS Windows (i.e. kill Longhorn), start from scratch, and rigorously use good software engineering practice throughout.

The result is ... MS Windows Vista.

So ... did that approach work?

Yes it did:

As a result of this Microsoft received thousands fewer bug reports than usual when it released the beta version of Windows Vista this summer. Allchin's culture change also appears to be spreading through the rest of Microsoft. Gates said the new tools are now being used by the Office group. "I wish we'd done it earlier," he told the paper.

Unfortunately there is nothing about running current applications that Vista does that Windows XP can't do just as well. But then you don't always go by the best way to run current applications. Longhorn wasn't about that either. If it had been, you would be able to completely stop the development of Windows with XP and call it a completed work of art. Any takers?

It's not that Microsoft did the wrong thing or the right by moving to Vista. They did the *only* thing from a long-term perspective. Too bad the short-term payoff is a bit less rosy, but that's what you get when you redo the internals of a spaghetti-code system that works.

The US, however, has a ban on reprocessing because of proliferation concerns.

Not any more. Carter's idiotic presidential order was overturned by the present Bush's presidential order.

Link 1
Link 2

Thompson is a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. I love the fact that this one insane, eccentric individual can be a persistent thorn in the side of the video game industry. He reminds me of Mathias Rust, the guy who landed his plane in Red Square.

But then, I'm also inspired by the fact that super-lawyer David Boies, who represented hanging chadster Al Gore, Enron CFO Fastow, and of course SCO, was defeated in court by a self-represented gardener. After burning through 13,000 billable hours.

Ride on, gentle knight!

More on that line of thought in Wall St Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119067563990437958.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Federal law-enforcement officials said the FBI was taking a look at the incidents -- and Unisys's response -- but said the allegations were so far not viewed as a major breach of national security. "The FBI is making sure that this was not something out of the ordinary," one official said, noting that attempts by hackers to infiltrate U.S. government computers are "everyday occurrences."

One key issue is whether Unisys failed to install the security programs or whether DHS cut them to save money. Unisys has urged the FBI to look at what the company recommended the agency needed versus what it was willing to pay for.

Dena Graziano, a spokeswoman for Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D., Miss) the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said congressional investigators found "there were several systems put in the closet that should not have been. What we don't know yet is who had them put there."

They all apply to Mother Teresa.

Susan Shields was one of her sisters for 9 1/2 years and writes "Three of Mother Teresa's teachings that are fundamental to her religious congregation are all the more dangerous because they are believed so sincerely by her sisters. Most basic is the belief that as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will. Another is the belief that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer. Their suffering makes God very happy. He then dispenses more graces to humanity. The third is the belief that any attachment to human beings, even the poor being served, supposedly interferes with love of God and must be vigilantly avoided or immediately uprooted. The efforts to prevent any attachments cause continual chaos and confusion, movement and change in the congregation. Mother Teresa did not invent these beliefs - they were prevalent in religious congregations before Vatican II - but she did everything in her power (which was great) to enforce them. Once a sister has accepted these fallacies she will do almost anything. She can allow her health to be destroyed, neglect those she vowed to serve, and switch off her feelings and independent thought. She can turn a blind eye to suffering, inform on her fellow sisters, tell lies with ease, and ignore public laws and regulations. "

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html

From Wikipedia: The Telegraph, an Indian daily, has referred to her as "the Saint of the Gutters", also mentioning calls for "Rome to investigate whether she did anything to alleviate the condition of the poor or just took care of the sick and dying and needed them to further a sentimentally-moral cause".

"In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, following the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture. Monica Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor. Some of Besra's medical staff and, initially, Besra's husband insist that conventional medical treatment eradicated the tumor."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/05/wteres05.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/10/05/ixworld.html

Dr. Aroup Chatterjee is the author of the book Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict. http://website.lineone.net/~bajuu/index1.htm
http://www.meteorbooks.com/

Letters written my Mother Teresa doubting the existence of God: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119059822005736983.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Many attempts have been made to get information about how and where money is spent to CURE people of various diseases or just WHERE it all goes. Tell me, why would an organization that accepts so much in donations not want to proudly show how it's being used to do 'good work'?

"Symphony is based on software available from Open Office, a development project that also provides the basis of Sun Microsystems Corp.'s Star Office and a Google Inc. desktop-software suite."

I imagine that IBM the only real difference between the Symphony and Open Office will be the integration with Lotus notes and user interface to go with it.

Won't queue anything here. Anyone who knows a bit about the EU, know that this is bollocks. They go after anyone abusing the market. As Volkswagen, for example... Not a US company at all...

I first read about Jatropha in the Wall Street Journal, weeks ago. The article focused on Jatropha production in India. They only offer a snippet of the article online ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118788662080906716.html ) but the pictures and captions are also interesting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118720945016998802.html?mod=2_1172_1

I first read about Jatropha in the Wall Street Journal, weeks ago. The article focused on Jatropha production in India. They only offer a snippet of the article online ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118788662080906716.html ) but the pictures and captions are also interesting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118720945016998802.html?mod=2_1172_1

The Cheneys donated 78% of their 2005 income to charity. That includes all of their Haliburton stock options and book royalties. GW Bush and his wife average about 12% every year. The Clintons average about 9% and the Gores about 5%. In fact, in 1997 the Gores gave a grand total of $353 dollars to charity. That's not a typo. Three hundred and fifty eight dollars, less than two tenths of a percent of their income.

Barack Obama made a big deal of his charitable giving, but failed to mention this is a recent development for him that's utterly transparent. In 2002, the year before he declared his candidacy the Obama household income was $259,399 (in the top 2%). That year they donated just $1,050 to charity, or 0.4%. The national average was 2.2% that year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117686685252673734.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

So tell me, is there a process in place whereby a company can recoup legal costs when a litigious patent holder turns out to be holding a pile of nothing?

The issuance of a patent by the USPTO provides a preliminary presumption of validity. So if I obtain a patent on orange trees, and sue the crap out of everyone who grows orange trees without shelling out big bucks to me, I'm not really acting in bad faith. Because the USPTO provided that presumption of validity, it's not like I'm just making wild-ass, unvalidated claims.

However, if I wield my patent too aggressively and start using it to threaten growers of apple trees and fig trees, I'm no longer acting in good faith to police my patent. I'm now acting in bad faith, and can be sued for malicious patent prosecution. Such countersuits are rare, and the odds of winning them are slim. But as this recent decision shows, it's not impossible to win.

For some time there have been proposals to change the US patent system so that the loser pays costs. Thus, even if I acted in good faith, I would still have to pay your court costs if I lost. You can imagine why litigation attorneys are opposed to this approach.

Seriously, this is a non issue.

It's more accurately described as well-polished propaganda. Clearly, Hon Han has hired Public Relations representatives for some other agenda.

This story would lead me to believe they want to buy Western consumer electronics brands. http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articleinvesti ng.aspx?type=media&storyID=nTP151265

Or maybe do it themselves: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118470395184169274 .html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

Either way, this "story" is so light on facts and any objectivity whatsoever it hardly resembles journalism. Since the WSJ is "reporting" it, it will not be scrutinized.

I don't believe that's correct. King Karl has always stated that this would be his last job in politics, and the letter he e-mailed around over the weekend doesn't mention a thing about 2008. I think he'll become far more preoccupied over the coming years with not going down as a laughing stock in the history books. I also think he will fail.

The Wall Street Journal article linked to from the ComputerWorld article has a bit more meat on its bones in terms of actual information about the possible phones and plans. No pictures, unfortunately.

You left out

4. Joe's company gets bad press for selling CDs that don't work in many cd players
5. Joe's customers go online to download copies of the CDs they bought but now can't play on their computers, rip to their iPods, etc
6. A percentage of the customers mentioned in 5 decide that since they are downloading songs from the CD they bought (which Joe's propaganda campaign has been telling them is illegal anyway) they might as well download music from other CDs (which they haven't bought) too
7. Retailers get sick of having to deal with Joe's CDs being returned at a much higher rate than anything else since people consider discs that won't play on their particular hardware defective.
8. Sales of Joe's CDs plummet while his competitors cash in by promoting the fact that their music is DRM free

And why not gyms? Tap into "spinning" bicycles and treadmills directly.

If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"The OECD's methodology is seriously flawed, however. According to an analysis by the Phoenix Center, if all OECD countries including the U.S. enjoyed 100% broadband penetration -- with all homes and businesses being connected -- our rank would fall to 20th. The U.S. would be deemed a relative failure because the OECD methodology measures broadband connections per capita, putting countries with larger household sizes at a statistical disadvantage.

"The OECD also overlooks that the U.S. is the largest broadband market in the world, with over 65 million subscribers -- more than twice the number of America's closest competitor. We got there because of our superior household adoption rates. According to several recent surveys, the average percentage of U.S. households taking broadband is about 42%; the EU average is 23%."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118524094434875755 .html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Funny, Wall Street Journal reports Dems have raised 100 Million more then Republicans: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11851538260 9874577.html?mod=blog/ . That tells me your numbers are not giving us all the information on donations. Isn't that like failing to tell folks the amount of money Speak Of the House's husband is making of the Iraq War while blaming Bush?

Dammy

easy to read http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/ SB118376389957059668.html

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/ SB118376389957059668.html

Very select groups of immigrants provide a net economic gain.

That's wrong. Legal immigrants are a net gain for the economy overall:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11510094830 5787940-tA5PP0Ya_9U0AlXBQQhnaDyMIYc_20060725.html? mod=tff_main_tff_top

http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policy_reports_1997_pr9735 .htm

In france and the united states, we can trivially see the cost of allowing large numbers of unskilled immigrants into the country.

The US doesn't allow "large numbers of unskilled immigrants into the country"; the US has a large illegal migrant population, which is silently tolerated by politicians because they are actually needed to keep economies like California alive.

There is no free lunch. You are giving away the store to these corporations.

So, you're saying that Microsoft is moving their R&D lab to Canada in order to hire unskilled immigrants that will be rioting in the streets and can't pay for their children's education? Get real.

You're confusing legal, skilled workers with illegal, unskilled migration. I have no idea what the benefits and costs of illegal, unskilled migration are (California seems to depend on it). But what people like you are doing is that you are criticizing and restricting the area of immigration that is clearly beneficial (skilled immigration and work visas) because it's easy to do, with the consequence that there will be fewer and fewer skilled immigrants and more and more unskilled migrants.

I'm not sure what you hope to gain by this. Isn't the loss of skilled jobs to Canada a clear enough signal to you? And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

"That means the NRA, which sits on a campaign war chest of $20 million, is expecting to endorse as many as 60 Democrats in House and Senate elections, about the same number it endorsed in every national election since 2002 and three times the 20 or so Democrats it supported in races during the early 1990s." -
That Republicans are, in point of fact, more likely to support the 2nd Amendment does not imply that the NRA endorses them for any other reason.

Or perhaps you are able to back up your bullshit with something to show that the NRA has ever supported a non-2nd Amendment Republican politician over a "pro" Democrat. No? Then STFU, troll.

State-run media reported that some online shoppers began using QQ coins to buy real-world items such as CDs and makeup. So-called QQ Girls started accepting the coins as payment for intimate private chats online. Gamblers caught wind, too, and started using the currency to get around China's anti-gambling laws, converting wins in online mahjong and card games back into cash. Dozens of third-party trading posts sprouted up to ease transactions, turning the QQ coin into a kind of parallel currency.

Xinhua also reports that the operators of some Internet forums are now paid in QQ coins rather than the official currency. And there is evidence that other online sites not associated with Tencent also accept QQ coins.

The idea of turning people into fuel isn't that far-fetched at all. It was only last week that Syntroleum Corp and Tyson Foods announced a multi-million dollar deal to build a plant to turn animal fats into biodiesel ( CNN , WSJ). There were not specific about the source of the "animal fats"...

From Walt Mossberg: "Voice call quality was good, but not great. In some places, especially in weak coverage areas, there was some muffling or garbling. But most calls were perfectly audible. The iPhone can use Bluetooth wireless headsets and it comes with wired iPod-style earbuds that include a microphone."

David Pogue, New York Times

- "so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese."
- After walking around with the iPhone unprotected for 2 weeks, no marks on it. Glass smudges are easily wiped off.
- 700 megabytes is occupied by the phone's software
- Making calls can be a 6 step process if phone is off.
- Web, Email is superior
- Battery Life Test: 5 hours video, 23 hours audio. Note: did not turn off Wi-Fi and other features as Apple suggests.
- Typing was OK. Difficult at first, but learned to "trust" the keyboard. "The BlackBerry won't be going away anytime soon."
- Cites AT&T network as iPhone's biggest downfall. Cites Consumer Reports survey which ranks AT&T network as last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major US cities.
- AT&T's EDGE cellular network: "excruciatingly slow"
- Slideshow of photos taken with iPhone
- Video Review

Steven Levy, Newsweek

- bottom line is that the iPhone is a significant leap
- The iPhone is the rare convergence device where things actually converge.
- e-mail looks more like you're working on a computer than a clunky phone
- YouTube videos work great on Wi-Fi, but can display in a lower quality when you're not at a hotspot and are using AT&T's EDGE network
- unless I did a lot of video watching or Web browsing, [the battery] could generally last the day
- I've been jamming it in my pocket with keyrings, coins and pens, and so far it's nearly as good as new.

Edward Baig, USA Today

- Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype
- The revelation is that it's also comfortable to hold and touch.
- I expected to miss the tactile feel that a physical keyboard provides. I didn't.
- You can hold a conference call with up to five people.
- No voice recognition or voice dialing
- halfway decent internal speakers for listening if you set the thing down
- iPod games are not compatible with iPhone
- our company tech department raised questions about the security settings Apple required with our Microsoft Exchange servers.
- Battery life didn't prove to be a big problem in my unscientific tests

Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal (the submitted article's highlights):

- Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.
- largest, highest resolution screen of any smart phone they've seen, most internal memory
- Impressive battery life and thin
- Feels solid
- Regarding the touch keyboard: "After five days of use, Walt -- who did most of the testing for this review -- was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years."
- Can't use T-Mobile SIM cards
- Wi-Fi capability doesn't fully make up for the lack of a fast cellular data capability
- Multitouch: "effective, practical and fun"
- No way to copy/paste text
- Microsoft's Exchange system support
- Voice call quality was good, but not great
- Can't record video
- No Adobe Flash support
- Songs can't be set as ringtones
- Apple says it plans to add fea

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-A F888_Inequa_20061001190109.gif I am just wondering where on earth you see a "significant closing" of the income gap during the Clinton years? It has always, and will continue to rise. With our current government it is an inevitability. No amount of democrats will change that. What we need is a new system.

Sure can:

Sugar Ethanol
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironm ent/wm1074.cfm
http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247http://fo rums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=247
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/sugar-ethan ol.htmlhttp://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/27 /061127ta_talk_surowiecki
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/03/tax_gasoline_im. html
http://www.iags.org/es82905.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/15/energy-ethanol-br azil_cx_1116energy_adams.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8769619/site/newsweek
(there are tons more links all over)

USA Gas Mileage Standards:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview. htm
http://zfacts.com/p/414.html
http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/FEG2007_GasolineVeh icles.pdf [Warning: PDF]

There are tons and tons and tons of links, data, charts, .pdf files and things you can pour over if you research the topic via Google, local library, watch CSpan, etc.

And to the AC earlier: Yes, corn farmers helped influence the decision, as did domestic sugar producers, but, oil companies are also to blame for this, as they don't want competition from ethanol PERIOD.

Well, in our case, we're developing for 1 linux distro, and we still run into problems with incompatibilities between libgcc, libstdc++, and our application.

You sound really bitter about Solaris. I dunno what's up with that. Everyone I know that's worked with solaris for a fair amount of time really likes it. I've been developing on it for about 10, so maybe I'm biased.

How can you dismiss dtrace as irrelevant? My whole point is that it is relevant and that it's one interesting feature in Solaris 10.
I was just hoping you could point me to a better tracing program than strace. I really didn't expect you to find one better than dtrace.

Actually, dtrace wasn't dreamt up by a sun engineer because he needed to justify his existence. I've read the story, and it was developed because of user demand.
They got lots of advice from Solaris users not at Sun, including a well known sys admin named Jarod Jensen. I believe Dtrace was developed by Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal at Sun. Here is a PDF he put together called dtrace boot camp that gives lots of exercises to demonstrate the kinds of things you can do with it:
http://learningsolaris.com/docs/dtrace_course.2005 .8.18.pdf

Dtrace was also award the most innovative piece of software in 2006 by the wall street journal:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11575530077 0755096-R2Ct41cQ4ZIPMwk4_xh0xU_HnQI_20061011.html? mod=tff_main_tff_top

Can we look at Iraq?
There have been estimated 600,000 civillian deaths to the war on terror.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11605289678 7288831-8l5AMVpCdg07M3w6XdmTXoPuzno_20061109.html? mod=tff_main_tff_topwsj
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast /11casualties.html?ex=1318219200&en=516b1d070ff83c 15&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rssNY Times

Bad karma? What bad karma?

Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates proved even more appealing than cuddly babies in the eighth-annual Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal ranking of the world's best and worst corporate reputations.
Top-ranked Microsoft managed to beat Johnson & Johnson, whose emotionally appealing baby-products business had kept it in first place for a remarkable seven consecutive years. In the Reputation Quotient survey conducted by market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc., respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft. How Boss's Deeds Buff A Firm's Reputation

Apple ranked 22nd in the Harris poll.

This story seems to provide a pretty reasonable background on the deal: How Steve Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth: In Deal With Cingular He Called The Shots; Flirting With Verizon . It provides some clues as to the complexity of the negotiations that Apple engaged in. It doesn't cover everything, though.

1. Retail channel
There were many big problems to solve simultaneously, perhaps including one that couldn't be solved any other way, than partnering with at least one carrier: consumers today buy cell phones from wireless providers. That meant that Apple had to get the iPhone into wireless stores to really break into the market with anything other than a hobbyist handset maker niche. AT&T has over 2000 stores in the U.S., apparently. Other large wireless providers are similar in scale of retail presence. Wireless providers have stores in airports, big malls, little malls, downtown areas, inside of other stores like Radio Shack, Costco, etc. Apple couldn't build that kind of retail network in time to sell the iPhone, it needed to get the device into places where people were already looking for phones.

2. Give and Take of Negotiations & Shaking the Industry
I suspect that Apple would have preferred to be able to secure deals with multiple vendors in the U.S. However, the cell phone industry is seriously distorted, globally, not merely in the U.S. The handset makers think that the wireless carrier is the customer, which is the ultimate cause of cell phone suckage. Cell phones are camels designed by committes of people who have never even imagined a desert oasis, let alone been to one. Apple probably had to grant a period of exclusivity to Cingular / AT&T in order to get the rest of the things Apple needed for the iPhone to be an industry shaker -- which it already has been, despite the fact that it won't even be in consumer hands for a few more weeks. And Apple got a whole lot of stuff, some of it unprecedented including changes to the provider's network to support "visual voicemail". Companies like Verizon, even though they may provide good service to their customers, also are wed to the distorted market. They perceive bluetooth as a competitive threat, and cripple it in their phones to lock their customers into their ringtone sales engine and into paying extra to transfer photos from the phone to their computer. Apple's insistance that the iPhone not be hobbled by the carrier led Verizon to say "Thanks, we'll try it our way." But the Djinni is out of the bottle, on June 29. As consumers learn what these devices can really do, they'll be demanding blue tooth sync, 802.11 connection to their PCs, and other iPhone features from Verizon. Verizon will see its subscriber base shrink if they don't provide similar, un-hobbled capability to their customers.

3. HSPDA vs. EVDO
There's another interesting tidbit regarding the 3G network market in the U.S. that might be a factor. AT&T/T-Mobile/MISC GSM Vendors appear to be seriously lagging behind Verizon/Sprint/Alltell, which blanketed the U.S. Market with 2.4 Mbit EVDO data service many months ago. In fact this seems to be "common wisdom" amongst Slashdot / Gizmodo / Engadget geeks. As everyone knows, AT&T and the many other network providers around the globe are betting on the other major 3G network technology, HSPDA. What seems to have been overlooked, in the frustration with the slow pace of 3G rollout from the GSM vendors, is that HSPDA seems on the brink of crushing EVDO in terms of bandwidth. According to that wikipedia page "Current HSDPA deployments now support 1.8 Mbit/s, 3.6 Mbit/s, 7.2 Mbit/s and 14.4 Mbit/s in downlink." One of my gadget geek friends was able to confirm that HSPDA service is available in his

Anyway, no need to redesign, just fix what they already have.

It's a recognized disability in Sweden.

Not since last year.

this minor (yes, minor) climate change.

Tell that to the polar bears who are drowning in the Arctic Sea.

What's up with the polar bear problem in Hudson Bay then? http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB11345 2435089621905-vnekw47PQGtDyf3iv5XEN71_o5I_20061214 .html

I think it is wrong to imply that networks want to cut out iTunes as a middle man. Evidence to the contrary is clearly exhibited by the announcement today by CBS that they are moving away from offering video exclusively on their website and will begin to widely syndicate their content to other online avenues. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB11791043782 5901533-M5HqezmgdosZtIpH3agsJDzQVDY_20070612.html? mod=tff_main_tff_top Just like in the early days of music downloads, people are looking for end-to-end solutions. They want to watch video on their TV's, not on the web. That is the big stumbling block right now. I do agree that the fate of purchased television episodes has an unknown future however. What I would really like to see is for the networks to offer shows as a free video podcast supported by embedded ads. That would provide the widest compatibility with existing and future products. In Apple's case, the iTunes store coupled with an Apple TV can support this right out of the box today and is a very seamless solution. In fact, I believe that is the main reason that Apple did not build DVR functionality into the Apple TV. The real unkown at this point is the cable/settop box companies and how they will enter the ring. One thing for sure is that change is coming and it's coming fast!

Thanks for posting this... I've been waiting for your post for a couple months... If you take a poll in the US,... I'd bet a majority of the people would agree with you and say that Iraq is indeed currently in a state of civil war. Oh wait... I don't have to guess... we have this Harris poll from November showing 68% of Americans think Iraq is in a civil war and this CNN poll from this March showing 65% think Iraq is in a civil war. In the former (more recent) poll, only 14% of Americans disagreed. So I think it is pretty fair to say that yes, Americans do believe that Iraq is in a civil war.

Now... lets compare this with the opinions of Iraqis living in Iraq. This poll from less than 2 months ago has only 27% of Iraqis thinking they are in a civil war. How can only 27% of Iraqis think they are in a civil war at the exact time that 65% of Americans think they are in a civil war? Simple - you say it over and over enough and people will believe it. I am by no means saying everything is cheery over there - I am sure it is hell... but it apparently isn't a civil war. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the media mentions the words "civil war" in every single broadcast about Iraq? Or that the current congressional leadership reiterates this exact point every time they speak on the issue? Think about this over the next week or so... make a concious note every time a reporter or leader of congress says the words "civil war".

He just needs to put his thoughts on government owned machines. Those things are apparently quite good at forgetting.

Bruce Schneier and Richard Forno's National ID card a disaster in the making discusses some of the many problems with Real ID.

In a nod to states' rights advocates, DHS declares that states are free not to participate in the Real ID system if they choose--but any identification card issued by a state that does not meet Real ID criteria is to be clearly labeled as such, to include "bold lettering" or a "unique design" similar to how many states design driver's licenses for those under 21 years of age. In its own guidance document, the department has proposed branding citizens not possessing a Real ID card in a manner that lets all who see their official state-issued identification know that they're "different," and perhaps potentially dangerous, according to standards established by the federal government. They would become stigmatized, branded, marked, ostracized, segregated. All in the name of protecting the homeland; no wonder this provision appears at the very end of the document.

Americans are rational. And in a post-9/11 world, they are willing to trade some freedom and convenience for more security. But it's not at all clear that Real ID will make us safer. Deputizing motor vehicle office clerks, who would be entrusted with sensitive information and access to a national databank, also entails considerable privacy risk. Fraud and security lapses at DMVs today are hardly uncommon. Just last month, a DMV official in North Carolina was arrested in connection with issuing fraudulent drivers licenses. And if the goal is to stop the next Mohammed Atta, it's worth noting that, even under Real ID, people would be permitted to fly with identification other than licenses.

U.S. policymakers have long rejected a national ID as inconsistent with American freedom. Ordinary people, it has long been believed, should not have to carry a card as if they are criminal suspects and they should not be asked to account to authorities for their whereabouts or activities.

PS: more on this on the Stop Real ID Now! blog.

This Wall Street Journal article indicated it was happening back in March. AT&T has removed the Yahoo logo from their trucks. But so far, no official breakup.

Isn't this exactly what we wanted to happen? What kind of repurcussions is this going to have on patent-crazy companies like Microsoft?

This is one of the reasons why it's good to RTFA ... Microsoft was actually the appellant in this case -- the losing party who pushed the case to the USSC, and just won -- they were fighting AT&T, who claimed that U.S. patents basically could be enforced extraterritorially.

The whole issue was whether Microsoft, a U.S. corporation, was responsible for violating AT&T's U.S. patents (which are not, by and large, enforceable elsewhere, for instance in Europe and Asia -- there's no patent equivalent to the Berne Convention on copyright, really) if they only ever violated them in places where AT&T's patents didn't apply (outside the U.S.).

So if Microsoft went and sold AT&T-patent-encumbered software, but only in Europe, AT&T wanted to sue them for patent infringement here in the U.S. This was obviously a Bad Thing, and would have been a major expansion of patentholder's rights.

The WSJ article about it today was pretty good. (I think that link should work, since it has the "googlenews_wsj" in the URL to bypass their 'Free Preview' bullshit.)

So in this case, Microsoft was actually the good guy.

Sun's new CEO is the driving force behind this. Quite a change from Scott McNealy.