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...with Apple Records to not compete in the music industry (which they went to court over in 1989), but it appears that the two settled with a payoff to Apple Records. I hope that what a previous poster said is true and that they're hoping to have a vested interest in any future DRM technologies levied upon them by the rest of the industry.

"Intel's reason for the simple reason that the Opteron allows for legacy programs to work."

Itanium is capable of emulating a 32-bit processor and running 32-bit applications. It's slower than a native version, sure - BUT IT WORKS. I quote from ZDNet:

"Itanium chips will come with circuitry that enables them to run software written for current 32-bit Intel chips"

I don't understand people who insist in spreading the propaganda that Itanium won't run 32-bit applications - when it damn well will. I can understand corporations worried about their legacy applications perhaps not running as fast - but they WILL STILL RUN on Itanium.

As a programmer, I don't understand why anyone cares about preserving the legacy of 32-bit architecture by expanding it (yet again) for 64-bits. It needs to be reworked - not preserved. I'm personally biased because I run an open source operating system on my machine with free tools, for me aquiring 64-bit software will be a no-cost option.

You accuse others of rabid zealotry, but maybe you might want to sit back and consider the possibility that Microsoft really is using McCarthy-style propaganda and scare tactics, instead of competing in the marketplace. Sure, it's their right to do so, just as it's my right (and the collective right of the rest of their targets) to ridicule them for it.

Your laptop can be a beer-fetching robot

IMO, Tivo now offers two services: the ability to find and record shows easily, and the ability to stream information stored on a PC to consumer electronics devices. This last bit will probably be quite useful for those with video clips (*cough*) stored on their PC.

Still, it's worth checking out the alternatives, especially PC-centric ones like ATI's All-In-Wonder cards. Competition is good.

Nope, it's an AMD chip.

People aren't applying the patches in spite of clear warnings.

Even if the patches worked, and even if it had been an old-style, slow worm, you can't patch fast enough. But it wasn't. Slammer reached saturation in 8.5 minutes. Most likely this story was a tidbit to draw fire away from the quarterly financial statement or from the DRM/Palladium stealth payload in Windows Server 2003 + Office 2003.

Sure folks may wish to run Microsoft products for ideological reasons, but there aren't any technical ones and now the market is changing. C*Os have figured out the OS X, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, OpenBSD, etc. are much easier install and maintain than Windows Xp and far more flexible and secure -- both on the workstation and the server. Novell Netware should also be mentioned as excellent. C'mon when was the last time you heard of MS machine reaching an uptime of more than 200 days? That would be embarassingly short for QNX and Novell.

Microsoft has been to computing what Big Tobacco was to sports.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121692,00. html

It's not a matter of if you must upgrade, but when. However, realize that buying new products from the same company will not necessarily protect from this happening again. It would be a bad idea not to use the situation to explore options. Many are making the move.

There may be some ideological reasons to try Microsoft's server experiments, but no technical ones. Even the ideological ones don't float: no matter how much you admire Bill G's enormous personal wealth, giving him more of your company's money is not going to make you rich(er).

So many corners have been cut on service and products that it looks like Microsoft may not live out the summer. WinNT and other legacy software can keep running with the help of work-arounds as long as no one was dumb enough to sign a subscription.

GameTab - Game Reviews Database

MSIE is so unpolished that you can still get hit by simply visiting a web page. If you turn off scripting in MSIE, you can get rid of many vulnerabilities, but you also get rid of the only non-religious reason to run MSIE. In which case, you'd be far better off running Opera, Mozilla, or other top of the line browsers. MSIE lags far behind other browsers in function and ease of use. There'd be no point in Open Sourcing it unless Microsoft was planning to drop MSIE and hand maintenance over to devotees.

People are catching on to the fact that Microsoft is a marketing engine and not a software company. OS X has the software and is easiest for users, but even the linux distros are just as easy as Windows and are pretty much there with everything except games. Linux distros and OS X have all Windows versions beat, hands-down, on ease of maintenance.

MSIE is so unpolished that you can still get hit by simply visiting a web page. If you turn off scripting in MSIE, you can get rid of many vulnerabilities, but you also get rid of the only non-religious reason to run MSIE. In which case, you'd be far better off running Opera, Mozilla, or other top of the line browsers. MSIE lags far behind other browsers in function and ease of use. There'd be no point in Open Sourcing it unless Microsoft was planning to drop MSIE and hand maintenance over to devotees.

People are catching on to the fact that Microsoft is a marketing engine and not a software company. OS X has the software and is easiest for users, but even the linux distros are just as easy as Windows and are pretty much there with everything except games. Linux distros and OS X have all Windows versions beat, hands-down, on ease of maintenance.

MSIE is so unpolished that you can still get hit by simply visiting a web page. If you turn off scripting in MSIE, you can get rid of many vulnerabilities, but you also get rid of the only non-religious reason to run MSIE. In which case, you'd be far better off running Opera, Mozilla, or other top of the line browsers. MSIE lags far behind other browsers in function and ease of use. There'd be no point in Open Sourcing it unless Microsoft was planning to drop MSIE and hand maintenance over to devotees.

People are catching on to the fact that Microsoft is a marketing engine and not a software company. OS X has the software and is easiest for users, but even the linux distros are just as easy as Windows and are pretty much there with everything except games. Linux distros and OS X have all Windows versions beat, hands-down, on ease of maintenance.

MSIE is so unpolished that you can still get hit by simply visiting a web page. If you turn off scripting in MSIE, you can get rid of many vulnerabilities, but you also get rid of the only non-religious reason to run MSIE. In which case, you'd be far better off running Opera, Mozilla, or other top of the line browsers. MSIE lags far behind other browsers in function and ease of use. There'd be no point in Open Sourcing it unless Microsoft was planning to drop MSIE and hand maintenance over to devotees.

People are catching on to the fact that Microsoft is a marketing engine and not a software company. OS X has the software and is easiest for users, but even the linux distros are just as easy as Windows and are pretty much there with everything except games. Linux distros and OS X have all Windows versions beat, hands-down, on ease of maintenance.

It seems like this chap is inheriting some challenging budget problems, and will need reasonably serious diplomatic skills to sort out the legacy of Stuart Lynn (ad-hoc member controversy) and negotiations over non-roman letter domain names.

The Register.

ZdNet.

People who I know must have orders 250+ between them. There is no way they would honour this - and every person who ordered realised it was a mistake, so they have nothing to whine about.

Yourdon also later recanted in another book, "The Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer".

The fact is that these things go in cycles. One year it is that Japan is going to replace the US as the leading economic power, a few years later Japan is in a terminal recession.

What will happen is that American programmers will find niches and work practices that can't be outsourced, and foreign programmers will be in so much demand that they will be able to raise their prices.

Already there is word from India that they are starting to see shortages of senior level programmers, and are pirating experienced people from each other. Clearly this will lead to increased prices.

In the meantime we have the Bureau of Labor predicting that there will be a world wide doubling in demand for IT professionals over the next 7 years.

Oh yes, pirates harm Microsoft so much that they only have a 30% profit margin.

You're thinking of Apple. Microsoft has an 80 percent profit margin on products like Windows and Office.

MSN blocks email from rival ISPs

Get your facts right before correcting someone on history.

The 1997 investment (what else can you call buying shares on the stock market?) of $150 mil wasn't a lawsuit settlment. And there had been no copyright lawsuit between the two companies anyhow.

That transaction was a deal between the CEOs of the two companies. Amoung other things, it included an agreement to share patents, which lead to a patent lawsuit being dropped. And, it got Microsoft's Internet Explorer preinstalled on every Mac, which was a tactical move to stifle development of competing web browsers.

(We can only speculate as to what other private arrangements were made to secure that cash- it might've included Apple withholding damaging evidence for the anti-trust trial)

This ZDNet story sayst that the 1989 suit got settled by Apple Computer paying Apple Records.

According to this article, Apple tried to get their insurance company to cover the $26.4 million settlement, but ultimately lost that decision in court.

AFAIK IM was invented by Mirabilis with ICQ. ICQ until sometime back had a huge user community but that has been changing. AOL only later acquired ICQ (in 1998?). So, AOL doesn't/shouldn't get credit for innovation in IM.

BTW AOL also has secured a patent.

It's like flushing your time down the toilet.

You're right--it's for 13-year-old girls, or FBI agents pretending to be 13-year-old girls

Contrary to popular rumour, millions of dollars have been let in contracts to do the groundwork for TIA. Any USC students out there? Did you know your alma mater is going to help build the surveillance state known as the USA? TIA lives

What effect these few changes have had on third party applications? The DRM baked into Office 2003 seems to required purchasing quite a few upgrades. What's are the technical and licensing gothca's?

Too lazy to send in a story.

At the same time, many are finding that in many cases they don't need MS-Windows any more even on the desktop. OS X and even some of the major Linux distributions are turning out to be more efficient and cost effective choices for some on the desktop. StarOffice and OpenOffice have made such advances that unless one really likes the security problems and incompatible file formats of MS-Office there's no reason not to migrate.

There is also an article about this here.

They not searched for any kind of possible bug, the article says specifically what they were looking for:

Reasoning looked for programming problems such as memory that was marked as free when it was in fact still in use, memory that was being used without being properly initialised, and attempts to store data that exceeded the space reserved for it. This last problem is often associated with buffer overruns, a major weakness that under some circumstances can let an attacker take over a computer.

It should be OK for even the police/fbi to do.

Yes, but I asked about UK law. I know US law is a lot more permissive in this respect. As I said, I don't know much about law, but this would definitely be illegal in the UK.

There was a bit of a news story recently about about the UK Government considering changing the law to make entrapment of paedophiles by police officers posing as children in online chat rooms legal.

Interesting that Article 6 of the EU Convention on Human Rights outlaws evidence gathered by entrapment.

According to this ZDNet article costs are £15 - £21 ($25 to $35), which I'd pay for an 8 to 12 hour journey.

Only downside is that the article reports the service as being a bit slow and patchy - I guess they'll nail that in time.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2129912,00. html

The digital video recorder company will no longer manufacture new devices for the UK, but will continue to support existing customers.

The biggest problem with the Mac user base, is blind loyalty.

here is source one

source two

this was a great move as well

this is a classic

another example of Apple's fine legal department

I can link to countless other tales as well and just a little friendly advice, recounting X amount experience comes off as foolish and condescending. Personal experience with anything is not an accurate benchmark. Apple has a great product with OSX, as a tibook owner, I'm very happy, but Apple the company is not as great as their user base perceives it to be and somehow they think buying an Apple product makes them part of a movement, which is completely ludicrous, but a marketing success nonetheless for Apple

Then this must be FUD too, because it says only two profitable divisions.

1. 
   Pentium Floating-point division bug (it's close enough, isn't it?)
   Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums Pentium crash codes
   Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats Unable to convert to int
   Pentium III can't even start up You went faster with an 8088
   SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash Pretty blue screens abound.
   PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage Watch the task manager, Phil.
   Yay, PIII MTH crashes! Does MTH stand for Meth?
   Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz Fastest crashes ever.
   Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz More Xeon quality in a box.
   Total Recall 4: CC820 How many defects? Can't recall...
   Pentium 4 overwriting data Hope it wasn't something important.
   Pentium 4 chipset bug Fast video performance? Naaa.
   P4 Oracle/Sun problems More workarounds than work
   Itanium shipments halted That's an expensive oops.
   

1. 
   Pentium Floating-point division bug (it's close enough, isn't it?)
   Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums Pentium crash codes
   Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats Unable to convert to int
   Pentium III can't even start up You went faster with an 8088
   SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash Pretty blue screens abound.
   PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage Watch the task manager, Phil.
   Yay, PIII MTH crashes! Does MTH stand for Meth?
   Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz Fastest crashes ever.
   Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz More Xeon quality in a box.
   Total Recall 4: CC820 How many defects? Can't recall...
   Pentium 4 overwriting data Hope it wasn't something important.
   Pentium 4 chipset bug Fast video performance? Naaa.
   P4 Oracle/Sun problems More workarounds than work
   Itanium shipments halted That's an expensive oops.
   

If Sony makes the PS3 backwards compatable with the PS2 like the PS2 was to the PS1, M$ will end up with technically superior compeditor with a crud load of games from the beginning. On top of this M$ has to deal with the reputation for instability and security issues which it has aquired on the desktop.

here is an excerpt from an old press article: "one of the first companies to offer hacker insurance, has begun charging its clients 5 percent to 15 percent more if they use Microsoft's Windows NT software ... has been selling hacker insurance since 1998, based his decision on more than 400 security analyses [ ... ] system administrators working on open source systems tend to be better trained and stay with their employers longer than those at firms using Windows" read on: short (long)

ZDNet and Yahoo.

I read an article at Cnet that had an interview Peter Houston, one of the directors charged with leading the new strategy, shortly before he got on a plane to attend the opening of LinuxWorld.

Speaking of which, over at CNET.com, there's an article about Linux revenues: " "Three and a half billion dollars in revenue--not bad for a free operating system," said James Governor, an analyst at research firm Redmonk. "It is clear that there are real, high-dollar Linux transformations going on" as companies switch from more expensive technology to Linux systems."

Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer

But with the depreciation of hardware over time, does it still cost them? Thoughts appreciated. -MMT

"cyberliability insurance" is higher for windows servers according to this article. The same should apply to cars.

I haven't seen anyone (save a few Slashdot trolls) seriously argue that binary-only software is inherently more secure, either in theory or in practice.

Then you must not get out much.


Alexis de Tocqueville Institution published a white paper (funded by Microsoft) that argues this very point. Do you consider them "slashdot trolls"?

How about Steve Lipner, manager of Microsoft's security response center? Is he a troll too?

Hmm, ZDNet has another (unnamed this time) source from MS, who claims that too. You're saying that MS's spokespeople troll /.?

I've also seen company websites (SoftArc comes immediatly to mind) that stated (in effect) "we don't release source code because it's more secure that way" - sorry, no link for this one, as they've changed their site... but there is a chice quote on their security page, where they explain that their products are more secure because "connections employ entirely proprietary protocols"

The thing is that this FUD is spewed about by people who don't know what they're talking about, and believed by others who haven't thought about it too much. "Security through obscurity" makes an inutitive kind of common sense, unless you think about it for awhile, or are exposed to the flaws (which aren't as intuitive.) It's the same kind of sense that got the DMCA passed.

Mr. Diffie isn't writing for the security community, but for the people outside the security community, who might be led to believe that obscurity does provide security.

Yes, they did make the chips for Cyrix, but they also licensed them. "Licensing" and "making" are two completely different things. You can make chips for a company, but that doesn't give you the right to turn around and sell them. IBM licensed the technology and was able to sell them as well.

Also, you are wrong about IBM not undercutting Cyrix. IBM clearly undercut Cyrix, which was a major part of the problem for Cyrix. Here is one of many links that describe how IBM undercut Cyrix. (I used google and searched with IBM cyrix and undercut)

Here is the important paragraph:

"For several years, the fabless Cyrix paid IBM to build its processors in the latter's Burlington, Vermont, facility. The deal also called for IBM to take 50 percent of the Cyrix chips and market them under its own label. In the beginning it was a good deal for IBM, which didn't own an X86 core and didn't have an entry-level desktop offering but it wasn't so great for Cyrix. IBM frequently undercut Cyrix' prices, which made it difficult for Cyrix to win deals with PC makers. "

Nintendo updates GBA
Much as sources including reputed UK gaming mag Edge have been speculating over
the last few months, the GBA SP boasts an updated clamshell design, improved ...

Nintendo announces Backlit GBA
Dubbed GBA SP, the new model comes in a redesigned clamshell case with
a screen that flips up (think cellphone) to reveal the control pad. ...

New Game Boy Advance revealed ... conditions. Partly to offset the demands of the internal light, Nintendo
has added rechargeable batteries to the GBA SP. And to ...
The Next Game Boy Is Here
Nintendo to sell premium model of Game Boy Advance

Actually, yes. MSFT has an amazing history of shilling and astroturfing:

• 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

I'm sure there's more, that's just all I can scrounge up in a few minutes. I seem to remember another MSFT-funded think-tank ("Indepence Institute"?) white paper, and there was an interesting "Brill's Content" article on how MSFT tracks reporters and what they write about MSFT. Actually, isn't the above enough? 10 items from 9 different sources about all varieties of shilling and astroturfing in forums from small to nation-wide. Yes, I think it's prudent to believe that MSFT employees watch Slashdot and mod-up pro-MSFT articles, or even submit them.

I'd go so far as to say that the average person should be suspicious of any pro-MSFT article or viewpoint posted in a public forum. If you, the reader, are pro-MSFT, I'm sorry: if you lie down with pigs, you can't expect to wake up in the morning smelling like roses.

For this reason, my email is configured not to download HTML and is blocked from accessing any ports aside from POP3 and SMTP by my firewall just in case...

Nice try. Microsoft has already publically announced 64-bit Windows support for x86-64.

Relevant quote:

AMD's newly named Opteron server processor will get its own 64-bit version of Windows, and the 64-bit desktop Athlons will not be forgotten either

Linux is ready as well.

Now, if we can just get MacOS X.... =)

IBM thinks we're fine for another 10 years and has the research to back it up.

Microsoft's .NET is losing big way to J2EE. Have a look at this

ZDNet UK

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