Domain: zdnet.co.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to zdnet.co.uk.
Comments · 1,298
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Works great..
Works great on my iBook with a Bluetooth dongle and my T68i. I've been using it to keep contacts in sync for the past 3 months with narry an issue. On top of that, it works great as a wireless remote using Salling Clicker. You can control anything that works with AppleScript. I've used it for presentations, controlling itunes, and playing DVDs. Sounds like the grass is greener here, than on the other side of the fence.
I'm sick of people claiming this or that thing is dead, or is going to be dead. As long as it works well for someone, and fits a niche better than any other product its alive! As long as its supported by OS X, I'll be using it. And from the looks of Apple's front page, as well as their inclusion of bluetooth adapters in their recent machines it looks like it'll be around for quite some time. -
Intersting reading Dan McBride interview from yearInteresting looking back to this article from August last year when Dan McBride joined the Caldera (now SCO).
Example quote:
"The first four weeks on the job I've spent a lot of time looking for value points...there are a couple of interesting things in there that I found out about Caldera that I didn't know before. One, the intellectual properties that we hold -- we own SVRx, UnixWare, SCO Unix -- in terms of the Unix timeline, the thread that runs through the middle of these is really SVRx."I guess he found them 'interesting' enough to make them the main focus of the company.
Chris.
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Reducing cost not priceMS is hemorrhaging badly with the xbox. Eventually, as its customer base erodes, revenue from sales from their two cash cows MS-Windows and MS-Office are going to dip down below the point where that can continue to float catastrophes like xbox, smartphone, MSN, tablet PC and others. Or, since governments and businesses are starting to call it on bullshit, a single large fine could take it out for good.
MS is putting a lot into marketing right now and Ballmer has announced that more is coming. However, once enough execs, foreign governments, and stock funds have divested (i.e. found someone else to be left holding the bag) even that won't be necessary.
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Reducing cost not priceMS is hemorrhaging badly with the xbox. Eventually, as its customer base erodes, revenue from sales from their two cash cows MS-Windows and MS-Office are going to dip down below the point where that can continue to float catastrophes like xbox, smartphone, MSN, tablet PC and others. Or, since governments and businesses are starting to call it on bullshit, a single large fine could take it out for good.
MS is putting a lot into marketing right now and Ballmer has announced that more is coming. However, once enough execs, foreign governments, and stock funds have divested (i.e. found someone else to be left holding the bag) even that won't be necessary.
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President of India Recommended Re:More converters.Recently the President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, also recommended it. Despite the MS largesse to India, the sentiment is towards providing a level playing field to Open Source and Linux, though the reality on the ground is quite different. If the US was incapble of keeping MS in check, what can India reasonably do to change the reality LOL
Here is the link Indian President Adds Salt to MicroSoft Woes http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2135401,00
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Re:More converters...Yes. But you have to take into account that overall it is still a very small percentage (of desktop computers) that run or will run Linux.
The highly applauded switch of the city of Munich to Linux had an order volume of 30 millions of Euros over a couple of years. That's just about nothing in M$'s budget. (They have fighted so heavily for it just for it's symbolic and psychological value.)
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Re:What problem...here it isApparently, in your "enlightenment & understanding" you haven't read others concerns about RFID.
While it may be FUD only, this technology being used to track ALL that you buy is the concern. RFID will eventually be "mainstreamed" and many people such as yourself won't see a problem with it being in money or in credit cards. Again, no FUD just fact, the FBI has already planned an investigation about RFID in money Why is this a privacy concern? What I'm about to say may be an ethical issue but it is seen different ways by different people. What if I want to buy some marijuana with that note? What if I want to pay the kid down the down the street to cut my lawn? What if that same kid does drugs? Now, I am suspect for being in "drug ring" if they can trace all those RFIDs.
Same with purchases from Walmart. What if I happen to purchase a combination of items unknowingly, that the average drug user purchases. Will I be profiled for that buying habit too?
I am with you, it's coming no matter what. It will be hard to stop. But, there are legitimate concerns.
I will hope that Walmart will adopt the Philips chip that you can turn off if the customer so wills to.
You would be amazed at what your grocery store bonus card data holds about you! Returns, complaints to the store, not just sales data. Again, what if something with an RFID or something trackable has your fingerprints on it, are you suspect when the "bad guy" buys it from Goodwill or steals it? Not only do we need Walmart to understand that before they make this step that we want on off switches, but we would also like disassociation capability. IE, erasure of your association with an RFID. Also, yearly reports by email or mail on what your RFID info holds and what data they truly are keeping about you would be nice.
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Good sources instead of product placementI realize the editors are obligated to plug MS, including MSNBC, in any way, shape, or form that they can, but that only lends them credibility. Most of the articles are edited from wire feeds like Reuters, API, UP, AFP (usch), BBC, and so on. Please use those.
In this case, other sites that covered this week's pair of Microsoft worms first -- and they'll cover next week's first, and so on. ZDNet, eWeek, Infoworld, Reuters, the Register and others covered it first. ZDNet has the bad habit however of sliding stories that reflect badly on MS quickly off the top pages and into obscurity.
Worms like sobig and bugbear only affect products with design flaws. Brian Valentine, senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development, said it best:
Our products just aren't engineered for security.
In short, there's nothing you can do to improve your security except upgrade to a different client: Mozilla or Opera instead of MSIE, Eudora or others instead of OutLook, OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect instead of MS-Office. Usually by upgrading you get better functionality, ease of use in addition to stability. -
Good sources instead of product placementI realize the editors are obligated to plug MS, including MSNBC, in any way, shape, or form that they can, but that only lends them credibility. Most of the articles are edited from wire feeds like Reuters, API, UP, AFP (usch), BBC, and so on. Please use those.
In this case, other sites that covered this week's pair of Microsoft worms first -- and they'll cover next week's first, and so on. ZDNet, eWeek, Infoworld, Reuters, the Register and others covered it first. ZDNet has the bad habit however of sliding stories that reflect badly on MS quickly off the top pages and into obscurity.
Worms like sobig and bugbear only affect products with design flaws. Brian Valentine, senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development, said it best:
Our products just aren't engineered for security.
In short, there's nothing you can do to improve your security except upgrade to a different client: Mozilla or Opera instead of MSIE, Eudora or others instead of OutLook, OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect instead of MS-Office. Usually by upgrading you get better functionality, ease of use in addition to stability. -
Death spiral started last year, time to cash outYes, they need cash cows besides Windows and Office, but every thing else is running a loss, even Xbox and those two will dry up before that happens. The profit from those two has been entirely dependent on monopoly rents. Using BSA last year not only borrowed against this year's spending budget, but ensured that customers are going to work out a way not to get burned again.
Enron, too, was rolling in dough until they got audited. Regarding the mythical $40 billion, although Microsoft reported a profit in 1998, it was later corrected to be a loss of $18 000 000 000 USD. Now that was when times were good and they had product to sell.
If Microsoft were to dry up and blow away, the IT sector would actually pick up. With Deflation/Depression/Recession hanging over the U.S. the last thing needed is economic sabotage caused from trying to keep the dead company afloat at the expense of the rest of the economy.
Time to cash out.
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Software that worksYes, the consumer needs workstations that just work, is easy to use and has loads of familiar applications both commercial and F/OSS (OpenOffice.org). Windows has gotten progressively harder to maintain and the security problems have not gone away, they're still just getting treated as a PR problem. If you look below the hourly press releases, you see that there are weekly advisories for Microsoft regarding remote exploits, many of which do not even need the user.
RedHat, SuSe, and Mandrake have gotten pretty much point-n-click installation. KDE and Gnome are so easy to use that non-technical people can find their way without help.
However, the OS X has got them all beat. It's not perfect, it's still missing multiple desktops, but OS X is stable, easy to use and loads of familiar applications, plus it has exceptionally easy maintenance. That it also looks good, makes ideal for places where you have to look at it a lot -- home or a public reception area.
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Software that worksYes, the consumer needs workstations that just work, is easy to use and has loads of familiar applications both commercial and F/OSS (OpenOffice.org). Windows has gotten progressively harder to maintain and the security problems have not gone away, they're still just getting treated as a PR problem. If you look below the hourly press releases, you see that there are weekly advisories for Microsoft regarding remote exploits, many of which do not even need the user.
RedHat, SuSe, and Mandrake have gotten pretty much point-n-click installation. KDE and Gnome are so easy to use that non-technical people can find their way without help.
However, the OS X has got them all beat. It's not perfect, it's still missing multiple desktops, but OS X is stable, easy to use and loads of familiar applications, plus it has exceptionally easy maintenance. That it also looks good, makes ideal for places where you have to look at it a lot -- home or a public reception area.
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Re:Shakey
Longhorn will come when we think itâ(TM)s really ready.
Fortunately for Ballmer, customers will see the "value of innovation" and "need" to buy Longhorn because that will be the only way to "upgrade IE"
:)The tightly connected orbits of Windows, Office and Internet Explorer (Outlook&Exchange) are reminescent of the bola; they will be used to trip up any attempt to escape from "innovation and integration".
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Obscure UI?
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"As-is"With Open Source and Free Software, if one provider drops support anyone can pick it up. When commercial providers go bankrupt, the code becomes part of the asets and tied up in the courts. The only way for Microsoft, or any other closed-source vendor, to beat the saftey advantages of F/OSS would be to put the code in escrow before they go bankrupt, which in the case of Microsoft seems to be a distinct possibility. Here's a taste:
- $18 billion in losses in 1998
- ...hideous losses...
- Xbox losses double
- huge fine over security
- ongoing anti-trust problems
Even MS if survives the summer, they've already left Win95/98 behind and tried (or have) dropped NT. So, in regards to "who do you sue?" logic, read your license. MS-Windows could be chock full of remote exploits or send your personal data abroad or monitor your files and habits or break your third party applications and you'd have no recourse whatsoever -- except maybe upgrade to OS X/*BSD/Linux/QNX/etc.
Nice of Timothy to set up a straw man
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Germa-who?
"Before you say a quick 'no', be aware of the recent decision by the German courts that eBay.com, despite being an American company, is subject to German law (hence the removal of their nazi paraphanelia)."
Uh, no, that was France. Plus, if you didn't know, eBay avoided any legal problems.
Guess what: US companies aren't subject to German laws. If people order shit that's illegal, the German post office is supposed to stop it. And, because they're nice, those companies (as you read in the article) will try and follow those rules. But it's not a legal requirement. -
Re:browser wars over?!Mozilla is a fine browser and perhaps some groups in AOL need to be slapped into using it.
Browser -- yes. But Netscape was more than just a browser: it was a Communicator, remember? You might want to read this ZDNet story about how some Time-Warner employees who were directed to use Netscape software revolted -- back to Outlook and Lotus Notes.
I can sort of understand why they did that. We use Lotus Notes at work, and I've been fascinated by how expectations from email software of most business users differ radically from most techies.
Email for me is pieces of text exchanged back and forth. Email for my boss is
- "groupware"
- Integrated forms and scripting.
- Workflow (ugh, hate that word)
- "Rich text" -- HTML doesn't count, both Notes and Outlook allow Microsoft Word (!) to be used as the email editor.
- "Blocking" mail from being forwarded outside the corporate network (yeah, I know it's stupid and so do the designers of Notes, but they implemented it nevertheless)
- Integration with proprietary directories: Domino, AD.
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Re:Don't take this threat lightly!
Yes, IBM has invested [Carl Sagan Voice]Billions and Billions of Dollars in Linux. Linux has been IBM's main thrust in the last few years. There is even a Linux compatability layer in AIX now (for all we know, Linux may ultimately supplant AIX once IBM has ported all their technology to Linux), and they are selling Linux on IBM hardware like there is no tomorrow. They know they can make money on the hardware and services, and services made them more money than anything else in the past few years.
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Re:Pheonix ate my homework....
You may find this story interesting.
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Security update for Kazaa v 2.1
Kazaa & iMesh in 'serious' security alert
10:23 Tuesday 27th May 2003
Patrick Gray, ZDNet Australia
P2P file sharing network users were urged to install a patch to fix a 'serious' security vulnerability that has been discovered by Random Nut
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Re:This was a well-written article?
And it's not as simple as hardware/software prices/support. There's some critical stuff that cannot and does not show up in the specs, and it's not cheap.
I agree. Perhaps, after all Linux can not seem to run very top-end systems. Worse yet, you will not find it in the enterprise systems As to the Desktop, Well skip that as well
You can solve yesterday's problems on tomorrow's computers quite cheaply.
Same thing here as well (with out the sarcasm). Tomorrow's problems are being solved on todays computers due to their low cost. Otherwise, we would be waiting till the costs of the computers were less than the costs of the problem. -
Re:IraqAccording to Zdnet:
A source close to Government Intelligence services in the UK said: "This is complete cobblers. For a start, the suggestion that there's a shortage of standard PC hardware in Iraq is silly. PCs are commodities like cars and washing machines, and they can get as many PIII and P4 PCs as they like, sanctions or no sanctions".
I feel I should make a WMD joke here...but I won't. -
Easy to disable? Philips RFID shows the problem...After reading this story about Philips making RFIDs "capable of being shut off" I did some research on how this was done. Apparently the RFID is sent a magnetic signal. I found out, that it appears if RFIDS are subjected to very strong magnetic forces it disables them ANYWAY.
So, my question is, if RFIDs are to be embedded in money, will it still be accepted if the RFID is off or not working. Will you have to take it to a bank (hassle) and get the whole note replaced or REactivated?
I would think people that work in highly magnetic work conditions or that are subject to mild radiation (cell phone users, utility workers, possily computer users) might face this problem.
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Re:Pocket IE and Palm web browserZDesk has an article a couple of months ago with Opera stating that they will not release a Windows CE port of the browser:
"But we don't want Microsoft to win in this space, so we will never do a Windows CE port."
Pocket PC is a branch of the Windows CE codeset, so it probably implies that Opera will not be releasing a browser for Pocket PC PDAs, which is a shame :( -
Really?
With Windows, every version retains legacy compatability for almost all applications written for a previous version.
When Rob Short, the vice-president of Windows Core Technology, was asked, "How many applications will transfer over from [Windows] NT4 or 2000 [to Windows Server 2003]?" he answered: "I'm not sure what the exact number is for taking an NT4 application and running it -- it's in the high 60 percent. It's not 90... Most of the time, if the application is following the [security] rules then it will run. But I must admit the rules haven't been well publicised."
Full Windows backward compatibility is a myth. -
Re:Not an uncommon business practice..Not the same at all. One gains vendor lock-in through proprietary file formats. The other does not.
If you think that depending on a subscription to a suite of tools to continue having access to an undocumented, proprietary file format, think again. Look at the DMCA+EEA in the U.S. and the EUCD in Europe. If you think that the format will not be agressively protected, then look at the court cases like Skylarov or Johansen.
Stepping aside from file formats, one suite of tools is plagued weekly by security problems due to inherent security problems. The other isn't.
For either reason, OpenOffice, StarOffice, or something with comparable levels of flexibility is the obvious choice.
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Considering the contextIt would be no surprise if there were some sort of co-ordination with SCO. Considering their situation, this could be their last summer. A big summer marketing campaign is about the only thing that can be done quickly.
What I find annoying is that material about other products seems to get kicked off quickly from the front pages of many sites and some even disappear. This is unfortunate because information is essential in making informed decisions. Microsoft products have been unable to survive in a free market nor compete on technical merits, and then there are the image problems, security issues, fines.
The market has already changed and Microsoft has not. RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and OS X are all far easier to install, use and maintain. And these are more secure. In other words, they are for all practical purposes, drop in replacements for most home and many business desktops, minus the games. For games, there's Playstation and Gamecube. The market has already said what it has to say about xbox
The U.S. economy is hurting so badly that deflation is now a danger. Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates' insistence on trying to keep a dead company afloat is just causing further harm. Enough all ready, if the executives haven't exercised their options by now, tough. Businesses and agencies now realize that by going with the better (i.e. non-Microsoft) systems, not only do they gain more flexibility, but can spend their time working rather than repair.
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Considering the contextIt would be no surprise if there were some sort of co-ordination with SCO. Considering their situation, this could be their last summer. A big summer marketing campaign is about the only thing that can be done quickly.
What I find annoying is that material about other products seems to get kicked off quickly from the front pages of many sites and some even disappear. This is unfortunate because information is essential in making informed decisions. Microsoft products have been unable to survive in a free market nor compete on technical merits, and then there are the image problems, security issues, fines.
The market has already changed and Microsoft has not. RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and OS X are all far easier to install, use and maintain. And these are more secure. In other words, they are for all practical purposes, drop in replacements for most home and many business desktops, minus the games. For games, there's Playstation and Gamecube. The market has already said what it has to say about xbox
The U.S. economy is hurting so badly that deflation is now a danger. Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates' insistence on trying to keep a dead company afloat is just causing further harm. Enough all ready, if the executives haven't exercised their options by now, tough. Businesses and agencies now realize that by going with the better (i.e. non-Microsoft) systems, not only do they gain more flexibility, but can spend their time working rather than repair.
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Considering the contextIt would be no surprise if there were some sort of co-ordination with SCO. Considering their situation, this could be their last summer. A big summer marketing campaign is about the only thing that can be done quickly.
What I find annoying is that material about other products seems to get kicked off quickly from the front pages of many sites and some even disappear. This is unfortunate because information is essential in making informed decisions. Microsoft products have been unable to survive in a free market nor compete on technical merits, and then there are the image problems, security issues, fines.
The market has already changed and Microsoft has not. RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and OS X are all far easier to install, use and maintain. And these are more secure. In other words, they are for all practical purposes, drop in replacements for most home and many business desktops, minus the games. For games, there's Playstation and Gamecube. The market has already said what it has to say about xbox
The U.S. economy is hurting so badly that deflation is now a danger. Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates' insistence on trying to keep a dead company afloat is just causing further harm. Enough all ready, if the executives haven't exercised their options by now, tough. Businesses and agencies now realize that by going with the better (i.e. non-Microsoft) systems, not only do they gain more flexibility, but can spend their time working rather than repair.
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Yeah, but it made you look anyway.Yeah, but it made you look anyway. It made a good distraction from huge fines, this week's MSTD (Fizzer), more enlightened users, redistibution of wealth and probably a few more goodies...
Kinda like when DanQuayle used to get sent out to publicly spell potato/potatoe/tomato/tomatoe to take the heat off of Big Bush. Or when Monica showed off her stained dress to let the DMCA have a little breathing room.
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DRM... am I crazy or am I the last sane one?
Slashdotters defending DRM... am I crazy or am I the last sane one? I'm not sure sure anymore.
Slashdot continues to get more mainstream readership, even getting mentioned in print articles these days. As a side effect of this visibility, the activity of astroturfers has increased -- notice that the pro-MS AC(s) tend to have the same writing style and logical fallacies. When other readers put them in their place, a handful UIDs dog pile one or two posters with ad hominem attacks or the "you-just-don't-like-Microsoft" (appeal to emotion?) attack. Microsoft has a long practice of 'turfing in it's marketing:
- MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
- fake "grass roots" letter writing
- another fake letter writing campaign
- paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
- paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
- paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
- MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
- Stuffed an on-line ballot box
- planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
- funded favorable think-tank whitepapers
- 'Astroturf' PR campaign exposes Microsoft goals.
- Joseph Menn. "Lobbyists Tied to Microsoft Wrote Citizens' Letters." The Los Angeles Times; Aug 23, 2001; pg. A.1 (print)
- Windows Outstuffs Linux in Poll
- Dead People, Fake Letters, Support Microsoft - Report
- Dead people rise in support of Microsoft
- Microsoft employee's move against AOL backfires
- The Freedom to Innovate Network - an 'Astroturf' Organisation
Also, right now MS is in a panicked marketing blitz. notice all the product placement on the tech sites. The embarassing stuff just disappears from the top page less than a day, but the press releases sit there for weeks.
It makes sense. Most Windows users have both Windows and Office because it's what the OEMs had installed on the machines they bought, nothing more or less. Most of these are either apathetic or know nothin else, so they will not write. Others are pissed off at the low quality, made worse by Microsoft treating security and stability issues as PR issues -- How many times have you heard "computers" crash from BSD, Novell, QNX, Linux, or OS X users? Or is it just the MSCEs? Most remaining clients could go easily over to OS X or one of the Linux distros and the next IT boom would start, like the previous one, without Microsoft.
In short, they need DRM to survive the summer and few, except for MS and RIAA staff
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DRM... am I crazy or am I the last sane one?
Slashdotters defending DRM... am I crazy or am I the last sane one? I'm not sure sure anymore.
Slashdot continues to get more mainstream readership, even getting mentioned in print articles these days. As a side effect of this visibility, the activity of astroturfers has increased -- notice that the pro-MS AC(s) tend to have the same writing style and logical fallacies. When other readers put them in their place, a handful UIDs dog pile one or two posters with ad hominem attacks or the "you-just-don't-like-Microsoft" (appeal to emotion?) attack. Microsoft has a long practice of 'turfing in it's marketing:
- MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
- fake "grass roots" letter writing
- another fake letter writing campaign
- paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
- paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
- paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
- MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
- Stuffed an on-line ballot box
- planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
- funded favorable think-tank whitepapers
- 'Astroturf' PR campaign exposes Microsoft goals.
- Joseph Menn. "Lobbyists Tied to Microsoft Wrote Citizens' Letters." The Los Angeles Times; Aug 23, 2001; pg. A.1 (print)
- Windows Outstuffs Linux in Poll
- Dead People, Fake Letters, Support Microsoft - Report
- Dead people rise in support of Microsoft
- Microsoft employee's move against AOL backfires
- The Freedom to Innovate Network - an 'Astroturf' Organisation
Also, right now MS is in a panicked marketing blitz. notice all the product placement on the tech sites. The embarassing stuff just disappears from the top page less than a day, but the press releases sit there for weeks.
It makes sense. Most Windows users have both Windows and Office because it's what the OEMs had installed on the machines they bought, nothing more or less. Most of these are either apathetic or know nothin else, so they will not write. Others are pissed off at the low quality, made worse by Microsoft treating security and stability issues as PR issues -- How many times have you heard "computers" crash from BSD, Novell, QNX, Linux, or OS X users? Or is it just the MSCEs? Most remaining clients could go easily over to OS X or one of the Linux distros and the next IT boom would start, like the previous one, without Microsoft.
In short, they need DRM to survive the summer and few, except for MS and RIAA staff
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Buy Microsoft, Go to JailThe bad reputation for poor security has been earned by treating secuirty as a PR problem. Any business storing sensitive data on Microsoft based systems is really asking for trouble, perhaps even a willful negligence lawsuit. It's not enough to slap old programs into a new carton and call them secure.
The crowd is starting to murmur, "the emperor [chairman] has no clothes".
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Re:What Happened to the tabletPC?
Rupert Goodwins, who said that on ZDNet, got confused -- he was talking about a Viewsonic smart display (basically a dumb terminal), not a Tablet PC.
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Re:One more for the road-Couple extras.
Speaker did not 'bow' to lobbyists
"In his May 2 opinion piece, Ken Barber accused me of killing legislation regarding open-source software (House Bill 2892) "after powerful out-of-state corporate interests showed up at the Oregon Capitol, seeking to make the bill go away."
How could DRM on Linux impact admins?
Linux e-mail set-up slashes costs to £8 per user
Mozilla backs down on browser name
BTW with the iLoo coming out. If it fails will it be Microsoft's Water-iLoo?
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RIAA to distribute trojan horses on P2P services?
So now I hear (on ZDnet/Reuters) that the RIAA may be planning to distribute fake song files on P2P services... they would do anything from redirecting the user to a music website to locking up the user's computer for a period of time. Man, nothing would give me more pleasure than to see the RIAA prosecuted under federal law for something like this. DOJ, are you listening? Say, that might highlight the difference between the RIAA and "the government".
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Silicon Does Not Emit Light?Silicon, the main material used in semiconductors, does not emit light, and therefore can't be used in optoelectronic products, Avouris said.
I beg to differ. Silicon has been made to emit light in various ways for over a decade.
"Scientists at Surrey University, led by researcher Kevin Homewood, are showing off a prototype silicon-based light-emitting diode (LED) -- an invention that could be of significance to the whole electronics and communication industry.
"By enabling silicon to emit light, the scientists say they may have found a way to use light to efficiently transfer data around microchips. This could lead to smaller, more powerful computers and improve data communications significantly."
ZDNet UK: Light-emitting silicon boosts chip speeds: 8th March 2001
"The photoluminescence emanating from a regular array of 1.2 m sized dots composed of Si nanocrystals was studied with spatial, spectral and temporal resolution."
New Journal of Physics: Nanostructuration with visible-light-emitting silicon nanocrystals
"GENEVA, Switzerland -- STMicrolectronics claims to have achieved a breakthrough in the creation of light-emitting silicon and said it would have engineering samples of monolithic silicon devices based on the technology, combining electrical isolation and optical communication, before the end of 2002.
"The development allows silicon light emitters to match the efficiency of compound semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide for the first time, the company said."
EE Times: STMicro claims light-emitting silicon breakthrough: October 28, 2002
"The discovery of visible luminescence from porous silicon [1] has stimulated a large interest in this material. Numerous studies have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve efficient visible luminescence from porous silicon layers [2]. This material system has significant economic potential as efficient visible emitters could be fabricated on silicon wafers and incorporated with current microelectronic devices using existing silicon processing technologies."
[1] L. T. Canham. "Silicon quantum wire array fabrication by electrochemical and chemical dissolution of wafers." Appl. Phys.Lett., 1990, 57 1046 - 1048.
[2] For a recent review of the work in porous silicon see : Thin Solid Films, 1995, 225 and "Porous Silicon", edited by Z. Chuan and R Tsu, World Scientific, Singapore, 1995.
BTW, technically, photocells are optoelectronic devices, as are LEDs.
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Re:Just like windows
That's funny, seeing how Microsoft is trying to develop a command line version of Windows.
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Re:GreatThen, after thinking about all that you might decide that it's a good idea to pay IBM to provide a supercomputer to do your stuff on.
One Opteron based supercomputer is being built by Cray. It will use up to 10,000 Opterons.
SGI is building Itanium supercomputers.
Both companies know a bit about such boxes.
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Re:Cost of not patching?
Microsoft's R&D department is laughing at you.
It's probably more of a nervous chuckle than a laugh. After all, Win2003 developers are paying attention. To the point:
Why is there no command line only version?
We're looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the layers and what's available at each layer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have -- having only the pieces you want running. That's something Linux has that's ahead of us, but we're looking at it. We will have a command line-only version, but whether it'll have all the features in is another matter. A lot of the tools depend on having the graphical interface. Printing, for example, requires all the graphics subsystems because we have the "what you see is what you get" model. You need to have the whole of the display stuff to render it. It's a very tangled subsystem.
Maybe there's something to that whole simplicity idea. -
Nice Troll, but I'll bite.
The Xbox provides something you overlooked, competition. With this console on the market other companies are forced to address their price matrix, and adjust accordingly. Who wins? We, the gamers do. Your inability to form a coherent thought without the intentional adolescent misspelling leads me to believe that my points are wasted on you.
An interesting read It is a little more recent than your vauge statistics from "last November".
"Video game sales disappoint
Reuters
Sales of video games in the United States rose 8 percent in March over the same month last year as Japan's Nintendo lit up the charts with three hit games, industry analysts said on Tuesday, citing market research.
Sales of games for the latest generation of consoles -- Sony's PlayStation2, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube -- rose 36 percent, Deutsche Bank Securities' Jeetil Patel said, while sales for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance handheld rose 32 percent.
Patel and other analysts based their figures on monthly market research from the privately held NPD Group.
SoundView Technology Group analyst Shawn Milne estimated Nintendo's sales for March at $101.5m, or about £65m, up 168 percent from a year ago and well ahead of No. 2 Electronic Arts at $62.3m.
The top-selling game of the month, he said, was "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" for GameCube, doing nearly $41m in sales on 826,352 units sold.
"We view the March industry software data as disappointing, noting that, excluding the strong software sell-through by Nintendo, industry software sales would have been down 8.3 percent," J.P. Morgan analyst Dean Gianoukos said in a note.
But Gianoukos also said he expected EA, Activision and THQ to meet or beat their estimates for the March quarter.
Sony's PS2 ended the month with a 37.8 percent share of the hardware market, Gianoukos said, followed by 14.7 percent for the Xbox and 10.7 percent for the GameCube.
There was a 70 percent decline from a year earlier in sales of games for so-called "legacy" platforms like Sony's original PlayStation and Nintendo's last-generation N64, Patel said.
That decline was a drag on overall sales growth, he said."
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Re:That's all very well but
A major stumbling block for Ogg is that until fairly recently it was necessary to use a floating point processor to play the format. In the arena of portable devices, only PDAs have floating point capability, which is why you can play Ogg files on your Zaurus and not on your iPod. AAC is already supported by many devices, so Apple has a larger potential market (although at present only iPods can play the files).
Actually the Zaurus DOESN'T have any floating point either, the ogg player is all integer. Details can be found in this ZDNet story. -
Apple Records vs. Apple Computer
I wonder if this goes against that terms of their settlement with Apple Records... according to this brief history [ZDNet] Apple Computer settled with Apple Records sometime in 1989...
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Re:MicrosoftAnd them inserting IIS components into the kernel is secure? I mean, they'll be going HTTP request parsing in the freaking KERNEL now!!!
Are you forgetting this?
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MS coders learning from UNIX & Linux
I've always been impressed with descriptions of Window's technologies while they're being developed. Like it or not, Microsoft has -- and can afford to pay and retain -- some of the smartest minds in the field. I'd love to work with these guys, who seem to be open to using standards and who don't have so much FUD in their eyes or are so egotistical they can't learn from the *nixes.
The problem is that all these bright ideas go through Microsoft's "profit maximization machine" at some point and we get "embrace and extend" and other fun phonomena. I'll stop before I get back into that tired rant.
At any rate, here are two lessons learned -- by MS -- from *nixes, quoted from the article on the command line server. "Windows core technology guru Rob Short" says...
We'll be able to patch probably two thirds of the components without shutting the system down. That's an area where the Unix guys are ahead of us, because of the way they do redirection -- they can patch a file and then change the symbolic link. That's an area where we've got a problem, and we'll fix it in the near future when possible.
Later a quote on Linux:
[Question] Why is there no command line only version?
[Short's answer] We're looking longer term to see what can be done, looking at the layers and what's available at each layer and how do we make it much closer to the thing the Linux guys have -- having only the pieces you want running. That's something Linux has that's ahead of us, but we're looking at it. We will have a command line-only version, but whether it'll have all the features in is another matter. -
Experience DRM with MS-Server 2003The review articles seem to mention few changes from 2000/XP so it's funny how none of the artices really touch on the DRM problem and the licensing trap which seem to be the real purpose behind the new products.
Either problem alone would scare potential buyers, so it seems to be forbidden to discuss.
It would be convenient to skip the upcoming deluge of advertisements and astroturf and see trade magazines feature the F/OSS tools instead. Ads cost a fortune and MS could instead use the money to 1) hire developers to rewrite software in a secure, stable form, 2) hire lawyers for the upcoming willful negligence lawsuits.
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Experience DRM with MS-Server 2003The review articles seem to mention few changes from 2000/XP so it's funny how none of the artices really touch on the DRM problem and the licensing trap which seem to be the real purpose behind the new products.
Either problem alone would scare potential buyers, so it seems to be forbidden to discuss.
It would be convenient to skip the upcoming deluge of advertisements and astroturf and see trade magazines feature the F/OSS tools instead. Ads cost a fortune and MS could instead use the money to 1) hire developers to rewrite software in a secure, stable form, 2) hire lawyers for the upcoming willful negligence lawsuits.
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Synergy
It seems like this would be an ideal complement to a system that was built with mram - non-volatile (modernised 'core') memory since no battery backup would be required. But I'm sure you already had that in mind.
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Sidenote about RSA
The inventors of the RSA algorithm (Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman) were awarded the Turing Award on Monday. This was announced at the opening of the RSA conference. More information can be found in this article.
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Re:128 kbps is hardly broadband
quite true. See here.