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This is a small minority. Are those few pages really worth keeping on the Windows upgrade treadmill?

Yes. Or, you could use Internet Explorer for Solaris or HP-UX. The fact remains that Internet Explorer will render all major companies' web sites, whereas Mozilla will not.

Not for professionals, but for many people it's more than enough. So buy a few workstations with Photoshop, and let the GIMP do its thing on the rest of the machines: being "good enough" instead of a full replacement.

The GIMP is installed on all Linux and Solaris machines on campus, but you'd be hard-pressed to see any substantial amount of art majors using it. In the largest fine arts building on campus, the computers are all high-end PCs running Windows and G4 towers running Mac OS 9.1 (and soon, Mac OS X). Photoshop is all around. Remember that college is preparing people for careers, so it's only fair that they learn on professional-grade software. Stating that you know Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than stating that you know the GIMP, when you're applying to professional art firms.

In terms of what? Have you really used the latest StarOffice/OpenOffice.org packages? Yes, MS Office does have larger feature set, but how many of those features that StarOffice doesn't have really get used?

"With simple files, such as lightly formatted Word documents or straightforward Excel spreadsheets, StarOffice usually performs adequately. But Writer had problems paginating a lightly formatted, although very long, Word document. Try to convert a document full of heavy formatting and styles, and StarOffice 6.0 may choke. When we used StarOffice to open Word documents with tables, charts and rigorous formatting for forms, the StarOffice version looked very different from the original. In some cases, Writer stuck blank pages into the document or truncated and displaced lines of text." -- from a ZDNet UK review of StarOffice 6.0. I wouldn't consider tables, charts, and forms to be obscure or rarely-used features. Macros are used regularly in large business's documents, and StarOffice support for converting or even creating macros is still primitive at best.

Make no mistake: Linux and Solaris are rapidly advancing their offerings of general-purpose professional software, but they're not quite caught up yet. Call me back in a year or two.

BBC News reports that IBM has signed a major contract to provide GNU/Linux OS computers to Germany's Interior Ministry, which oversees law enforcement ( IBM signs Linux deal with Germany ). A Microsoft spokeswoman was disconcerted by the news, nonsensically stating that, "Any policy that favours one thing over another isn't helpful." Slashdot ( Germany, IBM Sign Major Linux Deal ).

Kuro5hin has a good story on a new report from Taiwan's official news agency that the goverment is pushing a Software Libre program ( Taiwan to start national plan to push free software ). Not only will the program include software development, but also extensive training and education. Most interesting is that the "national education system will switch to Open Source in order to provide a diverse IT education environment and ensure the people's rights to freedom of information." See also, Slashdot ( Taiwan to Start National Push For Free Software ).

Might Taiwan's initiative be related to a ZDNet News report on some of the difficulties Microsoft's licensing practices are creating in Taiwan ( Taiwan: MS may have violated trade laws )? This issue was discussed in depth on Kuro5hin ( Backlash against Microsoft intensifies in Taiwan; MS investigated for price gouging ).

Governments outside the U.S. are increasingly coming to the realization that it makes little sense to send their taxpayer dollars to Redmond, WA, USA as part of a "Microsoft Tax." Use of open source software not only saves the government money, but also helps to develop an indigenous IT industry.

Will the U.S. government realize the benefits of openness as well? Jamie Love, of the Consumer Project on Technology hopes so. He and Ralph Nader have sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget encouraging the consideration of various policies that, through software procurement, will address quesions of Microsoft's monopoly as well as other issues ( Procurement policy and competition and security in software markets ). While the letter doesn't specifically recommend the adoption of open source software, it clearly a major aspect to consider.

Below are some of the practices Nader and Love want OMB to examine:

• OMB is asked to provide information on federal expenditures for Microsoft products, determine if a software "monoculture" makes the federal government more vulnerable to computer viruses or unauthorized access to federal computers, and to consider a number of strategies to use the US government's purchasing power to promote competition and make Microsoft behave.
• OMB is asked to consider if Microsoft should be required (as a matter of procurement policy) to fully disclose the file formats of its office productivity and multimedia programs, so that the data created in such programs could be reliably read by non-Microsoft software.
• OMB is asked to consider if it should place a cap of the market share for any one vender of PC client software, and have the size of the cap depend upon Microsoft's willingness to open up its interface information, or port its MS Office products to additional platforms.
• OMB is also asked to consider if it would be more efficient to buy code for office productivity products (and release into the public domain), rather than spend billions to lease software.

Ralph Nader said "The federal government spends billions of dollars on software purchases from one company that is continually raising prices, making its products incompatible with previous versions in order to force upgrades, deliberately creating interoperability problems with would-be competitors, and is well known for engaging in many other anticompetitive practices. Would a business that was spending this much money be such a passive consumer? "

James Love said "The US Government could easily solve all of its concerns over the Microsoft's anticompetitive conduct by being a smarter consumer. Taxpayers are spending millions to restrain Microsoft's monopoly, and billions to support the Microsoft monopoly. There needs to be a more coherent strategy."

Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/). Minor typographical corrections made.

Taiwan has been recently involved in some legal hassles with Microsoft over licensing fees and excessive price increases. I wonder if this plan is a genuine effort to use free software just a bluff to put a scare into Microsoft?

Hahaha what a funny comment... rotflmao, and then you realize it is no fiction at all and that even systems that are used by people that are involved with carnivore collected data run outbreak. This data may not even be filtered as the court order specifies, does the court really understand whats going on when presented with basicly a tcpdump filter expresion, do they have an *objective* technical review of the filtering applied? This very story is about a carnivore box which captured to much data.

It would be entirely posible that a judge would create a court order that is not specific on the technical details of the filter (how does a device connected to an isp border router know what of ip`s it should drop packets from, Would it have acces to the radius authentication data when connected to a border router??? unlikely) so the tech adapting the carnivore box for this particular isp asumes a little freedom, he would not want to miss any packets and the boss agrees that monitoring UBL@aol.com is really importand..... Then some outbreak/exchange using investigator cant figure out what to make of the data he is presented with. Sure it goes to forensic experts first wich reasamble the packets into plain text e-mails (the ones the judge wanted) but they also had a really complicated looking story about this new "jabber" thingy.

So the investigator who is no scully whatsoever asks some techs what it is all about, they agree that if the not-so-scully fbi agent mails the collected data they will run their l33t perl script to reasambe the jabber sesion packets in a plain text. They have been testing this quick perl hack for in office testing, their hobby is arp cache poisoning the office to monitor browsing habbits across the switch (they made their hobby their job, who wouldn`t want to do that) They figured it would be cool to see each others jabber sesion....

Tech does de-jabber.pl tcpdumped.log|mail not-so-scully@exchange.somelittlebranchwithnomoney . bi.gov The not-so-scully investigator is disapointed, all the decoded jabber sesionS talk about is the newest britaney and eminem cd`s, so after saving the mail to c:\my documents the not-so-scully investigator goes to read his next mail which seams a lot more promising... it reads "I send you the file to have your advice"

And now it turns out, mike the 18 year old kid who is really happy about his ubl@aol.com addres (cool, his friends always have a laugh about that) has been hanging around the mosque with his muslim friend becouse they trade the newest eminem en britany cd`s there, not 747 fligh manuals....

Now this is scary *fiction* ofcourse, just like the whole sircam picking up fbi files and carnivore capturing the wrong mails things looked like a joke once to.

here it says he's "helping law enforcement track down pedophiles

and here it says that the FBI's deal to have him write snoop software saved him from jail.

Do you have a link about this official acknowledgement by the dutch government? Thanks.

Sure:

Dutch government acknowledges Echelon spy network

Echelon is the largest contributor to the exasperation that Europe feels towards America. Essentially, Europe is happy to back the US line on everything as they, too, stand to gain from the promoting the fantasy of a free market that puts the rest of the world at a permanent disadvantage.

What stuns European leaders is the fact the US is just as enthusiastic about screwing them: using this incredibly sophisticated spy network, lavishly funded by the American people, to undermine European companies, all the while evangelistically talking up the idea of Free Markets.

And the kicker is that, in order not to rock the boat, the European leaders have to pretend they don't know that Echelon exists! So far only the Netherlands government has officially acknowledged what everyone already knows.

Here's an article describing the growing concerns of America's most important partner. The main problem is that the contradiction between the Free Market talk and actual actions such as Echelon threaten to stoke a widespread antipathy towards America.

BTW, I'm so tired of the way in which any post that in any way examines American foreign policy gets modded down. If we're discussing Echelon, of all things, we should be able to discuss it's real implications without feeling that someone is attacking the American Way of Life.

Speaking of cool keyboards, how bout those virtual keyboards on zdnet and elsewhere. They project keyboards on any surface and use cameras to sense where your fingers are. Msn story with a photo. Different model at ananova. I know there's no tactile feedback, but think of the compactness.

"'Pocket PC' is a generic term used throughout the industry," company representative Marianne Peterson said to a judge in a near-empty court. "Microsoft is simply not infringing this trademark...and asks the court to dismiss the case." Cnet

"The evidence relied on by Lindows is insufficient for two reasons," said Microsoft. "First, it shows use of 'windows' as the name of a feature, not as the name of a genus of products. Such feature references may show that 'windows' is descriptive of the goods, but not generic. Second, Lindows' evidence shows repeated uses of Windows as Microsoft's trademark. Thus, it offers no support for a finding of genericness." zdnet

Maybe not a complete contradiction, but amusing nonetheless.

I promise you free sex, beer and rock'n'roll!

... [6 months pass, eula change]...I promise you free sex only with these mammals (see reference for complete list) ...
... [6 months pass, eula change]...I promise you free beer only if you pay for it, the beer we are delivering conducts to all these terms ...
...[6 months pass, eula change]...I promise you free rock'n'roll but only if you agree to listen to 23 hours of "partner messages daily ...

And there you are, 1.5 years later you find yourself fucking an opossum, drinking disgusting beer and listeting to it-anthems on background 23 hours a day.

And yes, this is perfectly legal. Or can you spot a difference between this story and how Hotmail treated their "customers" after Microsoft took control.

British Telecom has already sued over this... ;-)

Ok, sorry for the original light post.

I got the 7.2% infected stat from
Yahoo! Japan headlines, which was quoting ZDNet, which was quoting Panda Software, an anti-virus removal service company.

And I got this link ftp://ftp.kaspersky.ru/utils/clrav.com from Download.com, which requires you to register to use it's auto-download service. So I'm trusting download.com to be referring me a "safe" program.

And I guess I'll use the term viruses instead of virii from now on :)

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2109354,00. html

I don't know about you, but 40 miles from London doesn't quite count as the middle of nowhere to me. According to a recent article in New Scientist (hard copy edition - no link, sorry) the MoD is even preventing wind turbine farms from being placed in the North Sea because of the possiblity that they may interfere with radar. I think that those guys are going to be quite concerned about EM pulses going off in the English Channel.

More realistically, some unidentified ship from some place will drag it's anchor on the sea floor and sever the undersea fiber-optic cable, like happened before. Or for a satellite link, flood their dish with directional static, targetted at where their side-lobes would be. But this would probably be of limited effect.

MP3 players and handheld computers could be the tools that disgruntled UK employees use to sabotage computer systems or steal vital data, warn security experts.

mp3 players? are they afraid employees will steal this vital data? ;-P

(i was clued into this awful reality by this story.)

With a song like this you know they mean business.
There's even a jungle remix! w00t!

:wq
(Personally, tho, I like IBM's "Ever Onward". Just has that
"1930's cartoon with happy singing cows" feel to it.)

It's ironic, because Tivo seems to be doing its very best to destroy Linux's reputation as a stable platform. More and more people are getting bit by the broken upgrade bug. This problem will continue to grow, as long as Tivo refuses to admit that bug exists and blames the problem on "hardware glitches" and "weak video signals".

Now, if you get bitten by this bug (and if Tivo remains in denial, you will get bitten eventually), you will spend a fair amount of time talking to Tivo tech support. And eventually they will say, "Look, all computers crash occasionally. Doesn't your home computer crash?" When I was fed that line, I laughed out loud. See, I work on a cross-platform Windows/Linux product, so I have two machines on my desk, one for each platform. The Linux box goes months without a crash or a problem that can only be fixed by a reboot. The Windows box has never lasted more than a couple weeks, and often needs to be rebooted several times a day, depending on what stresses I'm placing on it. I mentioned it to the call-center drone. He didn't have a response. Obviously not on the flowchart.

Right now I'm manually rebooting my Tivo at least once a day. I have "record suggestions" disabled and I record everything at basic quality. That keeps the machine working most of the time. I should probably call them again and bully them into doing a fresh install.

But even if they fix this problem, I've had it with their "our shit doesn't smell" attitude. I don't care how slick their products get. I don't care if they figure out a way to filter out the clichés from JAG, or record the lost episodes of Brimstone. I will never, ever, consider buying another Tivo product.

Clearly the Xbox is not doing so hot. Mindshare reigns supreme in such things. From my own (long, sordid, embarrasing) experience with console gaming, all it takes is for gamers to start with the 'ConsoleX is dead' talk. Which is infuriating from a certain point of view (just ask a DreamCast owner), but that's the way things go. The game market is like the stock market - perception is everything.

So now we have MS losing over $100 US on ever Xbox, and Sony has announced PS2 on a chip, which will significantly, drive the cost down. This has got to drive MS nuts, as they're not used to competing on these terms (i.e. brutally efficient hardware manufacturing. Really, who wants to compete with the Japanese here.) They know they need control of the living room. It's the beachhead for the next battle. And Sony is entrenched like a mntherfncker.

Didn't Microsoft's slogan used to be "a computer on every desk and in every home in America", or something to that effect? Always thought that was odd for a software company... well, before they started putting their OS into phones, consoles, and Things With Buttons.

No doubt, last week's TEN new IIS security holes, announced by Microsoft all in one go (smart move...take the publicity hit all in one go, rather than dribble the news out AS THE HOLES ARE CONFIRMED (or even "as the patches become available"). Of course, such behaviour is diametrically opposed to the interests of those fools still running IIS; but then, it shouldn't be a surprise by now that PR is a bigger priority than security for Microsoft. "Trustworthy computing", my sweaty arse!

If I ever become a manager, installing IIS or IE will be a sacking offence. I simply cannot understand why the much trumpeted "shareholder value" and "due diligence" and "director's personal liabilities" have not seen IIS dropped like a dead fish from any half-way competently run web site.

My sympathy, by the way, to any unfortunates trapped in a job where you must admin an IIS. I suggest a stealth Apache install, perhaps as a hotfailover system - next time you have to kill IIS for "emergency maintenance", point out to the pointy haired cretins that you won't have any downtime, as you may always rely on Apache being there to pick up the slack.

Stallman is well known among free software fans as the writer of the GNU Public Licence, the licensing model used by most open-source software writers to ensure that their software remains in the public domain.

The whole idea of GPL and Copyleft in general is to not put the software in the public domain. Read What Is Copyleft, my emphasis:

Copyleft is a general method for making a program free software and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free software as well.

The simplest way to make a program free is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software. They can make changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product. People who receive the program in that modified form do not have the freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it away.

In the GNU project, our aim is to give all users the freedom to redistribute and change GNU software. If middlemen could strip off the freedom, we might have many users, but those users would not have freedom. So instead of putting GNU software in the public domain, we ``copyleft'' it. Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. [...]

It's GNU General Public License, by the way.

I hate to be the first to call "Bovine Excreta!" but you are so full of it it's a wonder it doesn't come out your nose.

How about the obscure legalese in which patents are written? The lawyers who draft these things are desperate to minimise the amount of useable information contained in a patent, with a great deal of success. Slashdot runs many stories claiming "XYZ Patented!" followed by hundreds of comments by qualified engineers who have scrutinised the patent and come out completely confused as to the scope of the patent claim.

Of course, yet again, all this is covered in the main article. Why don't you read the main article? Read the article, you pathetic apologist.

From the IBM lyrics:
we can't fail for all can see,
that to serve humanity
has been our aim.

Now that's a company we all will support, they exist to serve us, not to make profit or something, nope, just to serve humanity.
Or would they mean serve as in AS400?

HA HA HA HA

SGI's:

"I have a dream, and it's called a graphics pipe/ it really works, and it's not just PR hype".

You have to hear it...

My flatmate is doing some work for Newlands Scientific

Oh, he must be the one in all the pictures.

My flatmate is doing some work for Newlands Scientific

Oh, he must be the one in all the pictures.

My flatmate is doing some work for Newlands Scientific

Oh, he must be the one in all the pictures.

If you, like me, are on dial-up and would rather be linked to the entire article on one page, click here .

Well I found the background for the codename 'Banias' which ties into the mention that it's being developed in Israel. But I couldn't find a damn thing about the codename 'Prescott'. Anyone? Could it be really referring to the British deputy prime minister?

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2085308,00. html ...

Banias, formerly Caesarea Philippi, is the Arabic name for the Hellenistic city of Paneas whose name derives from Pan, the Greek god of herds and shepherds. His cult was observed in a large cave at the foot of Mount Hermon, where a source of the River Jordan emerges.

Pepperdine University has conducted digs in the area that have unearthed parts of a palace from Herod Agrippa II. Modern-day Banias is located in Israel, where the Intel design team for the new chip is based. The company typically codenames its chips after geographical features.

They're probably doing the same to CNN

See here and here

WTF, do they have a special division searching the internet and rigging polls?

Before Apple held back QuickTime 6, quite a few other companies reacted with horror to the MPEG LA proposed licensing terms as well. Those critical include On2, an provider of open source compression solutions, and the Internet Streaming Media Alliance of which Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Sun are members, amongst others.

In this case, Apple is in the right in standing against what amounts to an internet tax on end-users.

Outside of the US though, all we see is that we are paying higher prices to get movies long after they have been released in the US. It just feels anticompetitive to us as we could often import them more cheaply or buy them on holiday in the US.

Now the music companies are also trying to make music CD's you can't play/copy onto computers. I was interested to read that, Philips who licences the CD formats to other companies, isn't going along with this. Apparently if the music companies modify CD's not to play on computers, they mustn't use the standard "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo, as their modifications fall outside of this standard according to Philips. Philips is even looking at making CD writers that could cope with the modified CDs anyway.

See the article: Philips, the co-creator of the CD, is refusing to play along with music CDs that are designed to prevent playback on PCs

The TOOT does this to AltaVista.

--
Benjamin Coates

I went to vote in today's poll. Normally, I think my vote has been counted, but today I received this message:

slashdot login at company's proxy has already voted. (proxy for env.http_x_forwarded_for)

That's a shame, because all web access (for over 200 employees) at my company comes thru one proxy.

It looks like Slashdot's gunning for NAT users as well!

(Maybe CowboyNeal's trying to stop The Evil Empire rigging our polls too.)

Happens all the time. I fear anything I do good, from making charitible contributions to writing software could end up putting me in jail.

Sure AOL bought Winamp, ICQ, and Netscape and left them mostly unchanged...

Something to consider here is that this didn't just involve the browser. In fact, development of the browser continued under the Mozilla project - one could argue Open Source saved the browser. Netscape's entire business infrastructure was disrupted from partners to their plugins program to their Netcenter portal which was considered Netscape's greatest asset.

AOL certainly had a grave effect on Netscape. And we know of it because Netscape was a large, highly visiable company. One has to wonder what little intrigues went on at Nullsoft and Mirabilis.

From ZD-Net's Review

Pogo is essentially a mobile thin client. The problem with using a thin client over the GSM network is that bandwidth is limited to 9.6Kbit/s, compared to a standard wired modem at around 40Kbit/s. Pogo has got around this with some very clever compression software. Pogo Technology's server takes the Web page you want to access and strips out animations, reduces the colours to the 256 the Pogo can display, and swaps the fonts for those that look good on the Pogo screen. Then it compresses the data -- typically to a sixth of the normal amount -- and sends it to the handheld device, where it's uncompressed and displayed.

in which case its claims of 56k transfer rates are highly optimistic.
From ZDNet's Review: Compression technology makes the browsing experience roughly equivalent to using a 56Kbit/s wired modem. (bolding is mine)

This probably means that all graphics, etc. are compressed prior to being sent to the pogo. The screen isn't as large as your computer monitor, so it can get away with it without a noticeable difference. So no, it is not going to get you 56k transfer, but it may feel like it.

From the ZDnet review Pogo is essentially a mobile thin client. The problem with using a thin client over the GSM network is that bandwidth is limited to 9.6Kbit/s, compared to a standard wired modem at around 40Kbit/s. Pogo has got around this with some very clever compression software. Pogo Technology's server takes the Web page you want to access and strips out animations, reduces the colours to the 256 the Pogo can display, and swaps the fonts for those that look good on the Pogo screen. Then it compresses the data -- typically to a sixth of the normal amount -- and sends it to the handheld device, where it's uncompressed and displayed. Some file downloads and Web pages are still painfully slow, but in general using the Pogo over GSM feels good -- akin to a wired modem, and very much better than a Nokia 9210 using HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) at 28.8Kbit/s. Of course, what would be even better is the clever compression and more bandwidth, and that may yet come. The hardware in the Pogo uses a standard radio module from Wavecom. In fact, it's the same module that Handspring uses in its new Treo devices. The Wavecom module has all the hardware necessary to do GPRS, so you may see a 30Kbit/s upgrade for the Pogo in the next few months.

From the Review
link mentioned elsewhere:

"There will be support for programmers who want to write their own Pogo
programs using the API known as Boing, with a Flash-based Software
Developer's Kit."

It's clear this is a proprietary subscription oriented device.

So until someone identifies the OS as other than this AmigaDE/Taos intent
thing.....

Making it a real link surely works better...

According to the ZDnet Review that somebody below pointed out, "There is some heavy-duty protection to guard against viruses." What that means exactly I don't know though.

Spaces or something in the previous URL,
try this:
http://www1.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/rstories/0,3040,e7 111404,00.html

In prior years, the olympics.com sites were handled by IBM. They did a great job, considering the way that the web and the Internet were growing through those years. Here's a report they created discussing the their "User-Centered" design approach. For a cool example of a portion of the site targeted for the people at the events, check out the details of the regional weather site they did.

They broke several Internet world-records each year (most hits in a day, hits per minute, etc) they ran the technology using the Lotus Notes Domino servers on RS/6000. The story I heard was that IBM had faced all the tech challenges it wanted to, and that the inter-personal challenges were making their involvement in upcoming olympics less attractive (ie NBC being a pain). I remember at the time that I chuckled to myself "lets see who else thinks they can pull this one off!"

Now that Microsoft is involved (remember when they blocked non-IE browsers from their MSN site?) I'm not surprised at the results so far.

p.s. The fact that the site is not international, here in the year 2002, is an absolute shame! Hell, the 1998 site was at least in English French AND Japanese !

I'm on the list, and they did. From the e-mail:

Also, we feel obligated to disclose to you that we were compelled to disclose your email address to Microsoft during the discovery process as well as the content of many of your messages sent to us. We were not happy about doing this, but we had little choice. We have received assurances from Microsoft that they will not use or disclose your address for any purpose beyond this case.

While he's at it, he should also provide a link to a poll on his website, asking whether any of those people had been initially confused when researching the new OS.

Bad idea! Don't you remember how Microsoft engaged in blatant ballot stuffing for .NET on the ZDNet poll on web services? They'd just have all their employees give the "Palm Beach voter's excuse": "We thought we had signed up for the OS by Pat Buchanan .. er Bill Gates."

I'm on the list, and they did. From the e-mail:

Also, we feel obligated to disclose to you that we were compelled to disclose your email address to Microsoft during the discovery process as well as the content of many of your messages sent to us. We were not happy about doing this, but we had little choice. We have received assurances from Microsoft that they will not use or disclose your address for any purpose beyond this case.

While he's at it, he should also provide a link to a poll on his website, asking whether any of those people had been initially confused when researching the new OS.

Bad idea! Don't you remember how Microsoft engaged in blatant ballot stuffing for .NET on the ZDNet poll on web services? They'd just have all their employees give the "Palm Beach voter's excuse": "We thought we had signed up for the OS by Pat Buchanan .. er Bill Gates."

I'm not exactly a libertarian, but this is really idiotic government interference in the free market. Why dictate what products people should have, like some Soviet-style central planner?

If they're really concerned about "equality", why not just give families a tax credit or whatever equivalent to the price of a computer, and let them decide how they want to spend it? (I know, I know, they'll probably spend it on beer or some other politically incorrect product, but guess what: They will anyway.)

...was "voted" to be the "Platform of Choice".

lol

As we heard today, Microsoft rigged a ZDNet poll to make .Net look more popular than Java. What do you think of this as a tactic, and why aren't Sun keeping up with industry practices? :-)

And while you're at it, vote for "Linux on the desktop" as the most important technology in 2002 as well. ;-)

Here's an excerpt from an article a few clicks away from that story:

C# is also expected to support IL, a method of development that permits developers to access code dumped in the garbage collector, without wasting time moving it back into the main development environment. A set of workarounds currently exists to permit access to dumped code, but implementing them soaks up developers' valuable time.

WTF???