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This was mentioned in an article in the Wall Street Journal today. The article is regarding vendor-backing of LSB2. Near the end, the WSJ stated this product is meant to compete with Sun and HP workstations. Link to related story, as WSJ's requires subscription services.

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/i nfo-battleground04-frameset.html

Just thought I'd chime in with the WSJ map - they only update a few times a month but it's fairly in-depth.

Sandy Bergler Pilfers Terror Memos for Clinton ...is not on the list, so we have a real good idea of the political persuasion of the compilers of the list.

1) That was all over the news for a solid week. It lead all the major broadcast network's 6pm news shows for two days staight, and made it on the cover of both the NYT and the Washington Post, who both did in depth stories on this. How is that ignored, hmm?

2) Berger was completely exonerated of those charges, but that exoneration lead exactly zero 6pm news broadcasts, nor did it his exoneration make it at ALL into the pages of the previously mentioned papers.

3) If you have to resort to lies and spin to make your point stick then you are weak and wicked, and will eventually fall.

"WMP 10 will work with songs from virtually any other online music store

I guess "work" has become a very subjective word. :)"

I'll second this. Read Walt Mossberg's WSJ review of the store -- he couldn't get music purchased from other WMP-based stores to play in WMP10.

This means that not only is WMP10 incompatible by definition with the vast majority of music sold online (70-80% of all music sold is through the iTunes Music Store, which is in protected AAC format not supported by WMP), it apparently won't play what little music is sold in protected WMA format, either.

Given that WMP10 apparently doesn't play any music ever sold online, I'd say that they have an uphill battle. I'm sure that MS and the MS-based retailers will eventually fix the problems that keeps WMP10 from playing the 20-30% of purchased music in MS-based formats. But since Microsoft's store isn't better than Apple's, and MS-based players aren't better than Apple's, about the only advantage that MS has is the ability to pre-install WMP on every copy of Windows. Of course, since Apple is doing deals with PC manufacturers to pre-install iTunes and iTMS on PC's as well, with any luck the market will at least stay competitive, to the benefit of customers...

From Mossberg's review at the WSJ:

-only about 500K songs
-no audio books, gift certificates, spending limits for kids
-Microsoft runs ads on its search pages
-click the "Buy" button, it changes to read "Purchased," but that doesn't mean you have the song
- several thousand of Microsoft's songs will cost more -- some nearly $4 each
-WMP choked when tried to synchronize songs purchased in Microsoft's own format from the Musicmatch, Wal-Mart and Napster online stores, saying it was "unable to obtain license
-Overall, MSN Music is no match for iTunes -- yet.

Mossberg thinks eventually MS will catch up.
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040902.html

Though Apple has apparently designed a great OS for slowing the spread/proliferation of virii and reducing the impact of DoS attacks, it's all being shelved due to Windows IT staff job security.

This is what today's Wall Street Journal said:
So how can you get rid of spyware and how can you avoid it in the first place? One nearly surefire cure is to dump your Windows machine and buy an Apple Macintosh.
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/report-200408.html

Just like the actions of the Swift Boat Veterans group should be turning off a bunch of Republicans, but you haven't heard much from anyone there other than John McCain condemning the actions of that group.

Per your second part, perhaps you haven't heard dissenting Republican voices other than Sen. McCain's, but millions of others likely have in pieces like this one printed in the Wall St. Journal and, likely, elsewhere.

The story here is that people are allowed to have their opinions - it sucks when they're astrotuf-like "opinions," but the parent article is about one group of folks trying to keep other groups from getting their word out: that's not dissent, that's a gagging - Where's the ACLU (and ACLU-like attitude) here?

Just like the actions of the Swift Boat Veterans group should be turning off a bunch of Republicans, but you haven't heard much from anyone there other than John McCain condemning the actions of that group.

Per your second part, perhaps you haven't heard dissenting Republican voices other than Sen. McCain's, but millions of others likely have in pieces like this one printed in the Wall St. Journal and, likely, elsewhere.

The story here is that people are allowed to have their opinions - it sucks when they're astrotuf-like "opinions," but the parent article is about one group of folks trying to keep other groups from getting their word out: that's not dissent, that's a gagging - Where's the ACLU (and ACLU-like attitude) here?

In addition to slashdotters thinking its a bad idea, the Wall Street Journal Online has a follow-up report Novell Acquisition Would Be Bad Move for Sun, Analyst Says

Among the reasons the analyst lists (in case you don't want to subscribe to the WSJ Online):

1. Sun buying Novell would eliminate Novell's (and SuSe's) hardware neutrality, upseting the interests of major Novell partners/shareholders IBM and HP/Compaq.
2. A hostile takeover of Novell would seriously drain Sun's cash per share, removing a major price support for Sun's stock.
3. After acquisition it is likely that Sun's hardware competitors (e.g. IBM, HP) would withdraw support for SuSe Linux. This would be bad for SuSe and bad for Linux in general, since part of IBM's and HP's investment and partnerships with SuSe are intended to prevent Red Hat from dominating Enterprise Linux.

   I would add:

4. Spending a substantial portion of your company's cash reserves to buy a technology and intellectual property portfolio in order to suppress it (instead of exploiting it for profit) is a suicidal strategy. I don't think shareholders on either side would vote for that.
5. If analyst consensus builds against this purchase, then its even more suicidal for Sun, since their stock would fall off a cliff (again) if they attempted it.

I should also mention Novell recently raised $600 million in a corporate debt offering, about $125 million of which was for a stock buyback (not sure how that might affect their takeover prospects). The rest was for future acquisitions, the rumor on Wall Street is that the inside favorite for a future Novell acquisition is MySQL AB.

That would be a great acquisition, adding MySQL to their software stack would complement both Novell's Mono and J2EE application server offerings. My personal favorite other acquisition would be Zend, giving Novell a LAMP application server software stack!

Huh? Seems he gets it just fine.

"It's not as small or light as Apple's iPod mini, but the mini is in a different category, with much lower capacity."

He doesn't say it is inferior. He says it is in a different category. How is that different from what you are saying? If you read his past articles you would see he very much likes the iPod mini and definately gets it. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040211.htm l

The mere fact that Wired and the WSJ are both running stories against this bill suggest it has zero chance of ever passing. But it's nice to see a traditional print newspaper warm to some of the issues near and dear to nerd hearts.

Oh, here's the link to the WSJ article, but it probably requires (pay) subscription.

Walt Mossberg reviewed it in today's Wall Street Journal, as well. You can find the article here. He mostly likes it, but wants to be able to play through multple outputs (either two Airport Expresses or an Airport Express and the local speakers). Also, the lack of remote control and display was a huge downside for him.

I don't really read other mags. I don't have that much time. If I did have the time I'd read the WSJ (Wall Street Journal). That would help me with my investing.

However, I have NO sympathy for the Bush administration when they are the blunt of these criticisms because of their shameless dishonesty in trying to explain what happened:

Later, hiding twice over, he used them as an excuse, saying he did not want to frighten them by ending the reading before finishing the book. Later still, and repeatedly, he said he saw the first plane strike the tower that morning (in fact, no one saw that live; the film was not available until the evening) and that he remarked, "That's some bad pilot"--pure strut. As the Wall Street Journal reported, he also magnified his role in managing the crisis, claiming he gave orders others gave. Conflicting accounts of Bush's communications documented by the 9/11 Commission now raise doubts whether, as he and Cheney told the commissioners, he ordered Cheney to shoot down any hijacked planes still in the air, or whether Cheney, in the White House bunker, acted on his own. (source) (more)

I think you're being a bit willful about disbelieveing that Apple PR people would *ever* dare to mis-reprepresent or exaggerate...

Anyway, I note from the initial Mossberg promo piece in the WSJ: "As for battery life, Apple claims 10 hours, but in my tests the iPod repeatedly got nearly 12 hours."

Ah how times change. There was an iPod once upon a time that got 12 hours on a charge!

Well, how about instead of Wi-Fi we used the already-existing cell phone coverage? Granted, new technology definitely needs to be added, but some pretty decent speeds are being achieved already with technologies such as EDGE and EV-DO. And the future looks extremely promising indeed.

Phones with TV reception are far more likely to receive mass acceptance than these wrist monstrosities. Toshiba and NEC have working models in Japan, check this WSJ review, and SprintPCS is brining MobiTV to some of its models in the U.S.

There was a Slashdot article a while back about a guy who actually wanted more spam. So, people like Mr. Orlando Soto are the reason why the rest of us must suffer. :)

Mr. Soto routinely comes home to some 150 e-mail pitches, and he loves getting them all. The 45-year-old grandfather opens most of them. He answers spam questionnaires. And he buys stuff pitched in spam e-mail -- again and again. "Everyday people call it spam," says Mr. Soto, who prefers calling it "unsolicited" e-mail. "But I'm open to everything."

An error of this magnitude is inconceivable. It really makes me think the figure must be $565 million, in which case this is pretty small potatoes for a big organization that's been around for a long time. (Lose track of $28 million a year - 0.2% of your budget - for 20 years and there's your number.) It certainly reflects inefficiency at NASA, but is there anyone, anywhere, who would be surprised by inefficiency at NASA?

Mossberg's columns, which include Thursday's influential "Personal Technology" plus a couple others, can be read for free at ptech.wsj.com. The rest of the Wall Street Journal online is a paid subscription site.

No Registration Required.

Here's an upcoming test of Mossberg power:

He suggests in today's Wall Street Journal that Google should offer an ad-free Gmail for a nominal fee, much like Slashdot's ad-free version.

In its current form, he fears that Gmail, will undermine Google's integrity, something that is perhaps more important than their technology. He says, "I'm calling on Google to preserve its sterling reputation for honesty and customer focus by offering an alternative form of the new Gmail service. The company should offer Gmail accounts without the ads, and without the scanning, for a modest annual fee. That would put the choice where Google has always placed it: in the hands of its users."

Here's the link, but unfortunately you'll need to be a WSJ online subscriber to see it:

Clean Image Is So Key To Google's Success, Why Take Gmail Risk?

I love thunderbird, if I was on any other OS other then WinXP, I would use it. Except when it comes down to Thunderbird vs. Outlook Express, I'll take OE for speed.

Thunderbird is written in Java (correct me if I'm wrong), and can be terribly slow. That's the only reason OE wins, otherwise I would go for Thunderbird, it can just be painfully slow for me. But that goes for Java apps in general.

BTW, does Thunderbird use SWT or Swing? I know I'm being lazy, and could check for myself, just asking.

I love the work Mozilla has done so far, Firefox alone is great.

Did anyone see the article in The Wallstreet Journal back in January? Walt Mossberg praised NetCaptor for it's tabbed browsing, wonder if he saw Firefox or not.

Josh

Here's the wsj article(for subscribers).

An interesting paragraph-
"According to the filing, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt made $ 250,000 in salarly and got a $301,556 bonus last year, plus other compensation of $2,894. Co-founders Mr. Brin, now president of technology and Mr. Page, now president of products, both got salaries of $150,000 and bonuses of 206,556.".

And you can compare the pay with other US companies. Other companies can learn from google here.

For those worried that Google will become a wall street pawn, here's what the founders are doing about it-
"The offering documents were filed with a lengthy letter, called the "Owner's Manual" for the company. In it, co-founder Larry Page said he and co-founder Sergey Brin have worried that the "standard structure of public ownership may jeopardize the independence and focused objectivity that have been most important in Google's past success and that we consider most fundamental for its future."

As a result, the founders "have designed a corporate structure that will protect Google's ability to innovate and retain its most distinctive characteristics."
Part of that will be a dual-class structure, in which the founders will hold a higher-vote class of stock that will allow them to control much of the company's fate.".

Bottom line? Once you go public, wall street makes you ride to its tunes. Preventing that at google will establish it not only as the intelligent company but a financially astute one too.

Side note-Berkshire hathaway is planning to soak up as many shares are available.
Any ideas what Google will do with the money it raises?

I agree completely. I think our kids are going to be a lost generation, photographically, in a few decades.

MyPublisher makes hard-copy albums out of your digital prints. (Here's a review.) I don't know if these are on photographic paper, or what the shelf life is. If it's equivalent to plain old photographs, this would be a great way to ensure that your photos survive for generations.

FYI, that would be 500kbit, not "500k", and that is the theoretical, absolute, maximum.

Theoretical maximum of EV-DO is upwards of 2gbit/s.

Walt Mossberg tested the service in DC and reported "In my tests, the service did even better. Over several days, I averaged 585 kilobits per second. In fact, much of the time I was connected at over 700 kbps. The service can achieve peak speeds of more than two megabits a second, but I never saw that."

See his Wall Street Journal Article for more info.

I can't listen to it on portable MP3 players other than iPod.

The Wall Street Journal offered the usual explanation for why Mac had fewer malicious programs:

"Security experts say this state of affairs primarily reflects the Mac's very small share of the personal computer market, which makes it an unattractive target for virus writers looking to spread mayhem."

(quoted from "Apple Computer Probes Report of Music-File Virus" -- note the headline says "virus" not "trojan")

I think that's the lazy analysis. The primary reason is because Mac OS X is much better organized and configured by default. However, it's hard to explain that to your readership without sacrificing credibility. They don't want the Windows crowd to think they're Apple zealots. Journalists don't even care what the real deal is; they just write whatever people expect and believe.

"Security experts say..." is just code for "This journalist figured..."

The writer has several articles related to the music industry. Most, if not all, are written from a pro-RIAA slant. Tell him what you think and wake him up to the facts. Email him.

it stealses our precious vision!

There's been a lot of whinging about Micros~1's latest Innovation, with talk of the horrible nerve they have to "re-edit anybody's site, without the owner's knowledge or permission, in a way that tempts users to leave".

Aside from the usual Micros~1 practice of claiming others' technology as their own, and the icky ripoff of the Aqua GUI in their screenshot (What is with this fascination with white or almost-white backgrounds? GUIs, Web pages, everything. White backgrounds are too harsh and make reading difficult. One of the more significant advances between Win3.1 and Win9x was the death of the horrible white background everywhere, and now they're doing their best to revive it.), I see this as a good thing.

For once, they seem to be behaving somewhat responsibly in the integration of new functionality (although I wonder how true this would be were the specter of an antitrust breakup not looming over them). Smart Tags are quite visibly different, both in appearance and behavior. They aren't including any tag packages with IE (although I have no doubt they'll plug their ad-pimping package as much as they possibly can). All processing is done locally, which saves bandwidth and prevents a list of all the URLs you visit being sent to Redmond ("What's Related", anyone?).

Smart Tags scare Web "designers" to no end, because they exploit the most fundamental and useful feature of the World Wide Web: hyperlinks. Hyperlinks scare them for 2 simple reasons:

1. Their sites are boring.
2. They lie to their readers.

Obviously, these can't be used as arguments against the introduction of these tags, so instead they complain about how their sites are being edited behind their backs. But this is a lie and everyone knows it. Their pages are still stored on their server in exactly the same pattern of bytes as before. What frightens them is that the reader might be given the option to go read something else, and this is not right.

What they don't realize is that they never had the right nor the ability to control the presentation of their site. From the moment their pages are posted on a public server, I have the right to do anything I want with them. I can view the source. I can critique their site and their product. And I can disable their grotesque colors, their unreadable fonts, and their gratuitous JavaScript. I can see if their site contains any value to me, and if not, I can leave. A browser is not a television for them to flash pretty images on. It is a tool for me to explore publications, and as such I expect it to provide me with cross-referencing features.

There is public documentation on creating Smart Tag packages. Anyone can write their own annotations and distribute them to friends or the world at large. Of course, this ability is only useful to "the hate groups, the spammers and the junk marketers on the Web". I want to see Smart Tags in Mozilla. I want to see widespread grassroots dictionaries, references, and

sPh

Now I know where our friend Orlando Soto buys his computers.

Hmmm... has anyone ever actually seen "Michael Gonzales" and "Orlando Soto" together? Put glasses on this guy, and he looks an awful lot like this guy...

And double funny that the journalist didn't, you know, do some research and figure this out for himself.

It's herself

Her name is and her email address are in the article: Mylene Mangalindan mylene.mangalindan@wsj.com.

Do the two photographs look similar:

Orland Soto

Richard Reid

There is one thing that makes this article incredibly redeeming: the artist's rendering of Mr. Soto. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/Soto _Orlando-GE05203142004203138.gif

We must find this so-called anonymous coward. We must file to full extent of the DCMA. We must have Ashcroft personally lead the force to take this miscreant down. We must put the full force of the homeland security office to insure that he is disappeared to Cuba.

To add insult to injury, the bastard did not even post a link to subscription page. This may be, of course, because anyone smart enough to block doubleclick cannot get to it without committing further crimes against humanity in the form of hacking the URL. With the link posted, I see no reason why we should not reward the journals generousity by having everyone on /. ask for the two weeks free.

How close is the nearest library? If it's more than a mile away, the cost of gas to get there and back is more than the cost of a delivered paper. If it's more than a couple of blocks away, the cost of the time to walk there (at US minimum wage) is more than the cost of the paper.

(I'm assuming that you're going to go read the Journal, which is $1US everywhere-- local papers vary from place to place, of course, but they're almost always cheaper than that anyway.)

The Wall Street Journal (right arm & shirt off back required) reported last month that Apple were planning to pay off the rest of their debt when it was due on Feb 16. So I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. MacMinute have a summary.

Apparently you haven't been paying attention to the news about Halliburton. Part of the Brave New US is our willingness to accept highest bidders, if they provide enough kickbacks.

Commentary on WSJ.com

Darl says: 'No amount of money into a defense fund can protect somebody if they're the guilty party,' as you can read on Groklaw.

Is it just me or world-class third-world poorhole dictator mr. Sat^Hddam looks really simmilar to world-class purist-annoying camera-loving tenor singer Luciano Pavarotti?

See here and here.

Really, couldn't this have been set up by an orthodox italian opera singer?

You can find a better article about the OS X vs. Windows with respect to viruses here.

I have never been able to shake my perception of PC Magazine/ZD as just a shill for their biggest advertisers. Just ask yourself: Who butters their bread?

I'm a little confused by the article - I just got the Treo 600 with the $15 a month PCS Vision service and I love it. The Treo is amazing (as has been described). The blazer web browser renders webpages great (I was /.'ing on it the other day) and at VERY acceptable transfer speeds. AIM is already enabled and SMS/POP3 service is forthcoming.

Like Mossberg says, Mac's can't be hacked!

Ok how about just perjury alone. Forged video evidence was also presented in the anti-trust trial in the U.S.

Ok how about the court's decision, upheld on appeal, that the company used illegal methods to maintain a desktop monopoly?

There are also the false and misleading advertising, against palm, novell, and regarding MS-Passport. MS-Passport cannot be secure even in theory, so any claims were clearly known to be falsehoods. And since MS-Office 2003 is tied into that, expect more legal action.

Then there have been a series of fines regarding patent infringements. The most recent being from SPX.

Where I come from, all that's called lying or stealing.

Actually, they are planning to sue a large Linux user according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, I'm afraid, but you could try this printable view). Boies the lawyer claims that they will be suing a representative large copyright violator (Linux user) in the near future. That should teach all those deadbeats not to pay their SCO license fee, eh?

The article also said SCO is giving Boies' law firm $1 million cash and 400,000 shares. I wonder when this turns into a conflict of interest for Boies, if not an SEC pump and dump type of violation.

Amazing.

Actually, they are planning to sue a large Linux user according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, I'm afraid, but you could try this printable view). Boies the lawyer claims that they will be suing a representative large copyright violator (Linux user) in the near future. That should teach all those deadbeats not to pay their SCO license fee, eh?

The article also said SCO is giving Boies' law firm $1 million cash and 400,000 shares. I wonder when this turns into a conflict of interest for Boies, if not an SEC pump and dump type of violation.

Amazing.

Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.

Poppycock.

When desktop publishing was new, everyone rushed to make the most complicated newsletters possible. Soon it seemed like you needed years of experience to generate a simple newsletter.

But it was all a farce. If you looked at the professional work, it had never gotten gaudy. Well, okay, some did, but the old respectable sources kept with the simple and elegant. That simple elegance has proven timeless.

The same goes for web sites. If you just use some bare bones formatting you'll end up with simple elegance. By way of example, check out a random article from useit.com. It looks good to me. 99% basic HTML. In fact the simplicity reinforces the seriousness of the page.

Well, that's about it.