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They can also be hacked, which is also pretty neat if you're the hacker, but not if you're trying to build an infrastructure based on the cards.

Come to think of it, Chaum's electronic money (digital cash), especially the off-line anonymous variants, would be very well suited to the kind of mobile payments discussed in the article; and such a solution would preserve all the important properties of "ordinary" cash.

I don't know... from what I read, Windows 2008 adoption is "unusually" high...

http://4sysops.com/archives/windows-server-2008-adoption-is-better-than-vistas/

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/jun07/06-05WinServer08.mspx

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39359154,00.htm

I don't know if you can draw a correlation from that though. ;)

Yes, I had a data plan on that plan. And I activated it. I WAS NOT ROAMING except in France. I bought a UK SIM in the UK and used a local's Maltese SIM in Malta.

Maybe you're confusing EDGE with GPRS or UMTS?

I'm not making this up. Europe went straight to 3G (partly because of the ridiculous amounts of money they overpaid for the spectrum) and EDGE coverage is spotty at best.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39250156,00.htm

DET, the source of the 'admission' that Microsoft-based laptops aren't too expensive, is also a long time customer of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner OBS, who according to this article saved $208,000 a year on an intranet. According to the report, the savings occurred as a result of certain inefficiencies such as:

"Because DET uses a range of technology platforms .. When staff needed to apply for access to network resources, they had to fill in a paper form. It could take up to 10 working days before an applicant received access"

"Information about meetings for ITD managers and various DET committees was distributed by email"

"Some staff maintained individual news archives .. on high-availability network or email servers"

"As part of the pilot project, Microsoft engaged independent business analyst BearingPoint to measure the potential impact of the Microsoft solution"

"For almost 10 years, BearingPoint and Microsoft have worked together"

There's no point in being terse and dismissive.

Software patents are dangerous. Public domain affects copyright issues. As does the GPL. And the GPL can do very little to help except to deny the redistribution privilege if a patent causes you to be unable to distribute the software with royalty-free usage rights.

Many patents are absurd and trivial, and cannot be circumvented.

Your MP3 player is subject to a patent. Most codecs are subject to patents. How do you circumvent codec patents?

Historically, patents *have* caused problems for free software. The patent on the LZW compression/decompression in GIFs, the patents on the creation of MP3s. Libungif was not a reasonable workaround. Discluding the ability to create mp3s is not a reasonable workaround. Those two, IMHO happen to be non-trivial patents.

This is not a problem exclusively limited to free software. The Eolas lawsuit demonstrates the danger of a *trivial* patent. Microsoft almost lost the ability to include plugins due to the Eolas patent. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39116982,00.htm

Frauenhofer ALLOWS you to play MP3s. Eolas ALLOWED Firefox to use plugins. This freedom is granted on a case-by-case basis with no long-term commitment. It is fickle and in the case of the patents I described, not circumventable in any reasonable way.

Microsoft's legal team could only fight to have the Eolas patent overthrown. I seriously doubt that FOSS could do similar to an Eolas.

So this has nothing to do with the public domain. This has nothing to do with the GPL and parts which you try to rewrite will at best be expensive, and at worst be impossible to work around.

Software patents need to be reformed or abolished. Until then, no software is free.

The article actually mentions red flag and the fact that microsoft gave China access to all the XP source code!! I didn't know that!

On the other hand, I have yet to hear a business model you can dance to.

Then you haven't really looked hard enough, Have you?

The disadvantages are:
* Any black-hat who hadn't noticed the problem now knows about it and can write an exploit.

I would expect black-hats to have scripts already laying around for such a battleship-sized hole, and not need to be told because their existing network of zombie machines would be so likely to catch that, but I don't know, I am not a black-hat. I do see your point that Friday press releases are bad form though. Unless the vulnerability has been exploited and not identified by the authors, my first reaction is that it probably could have waited until Monday.

Then again, vulnerabilities that are ignored or denied are already matters of record, so maybe it's better to keep all proprietary software houses "on their toes" to the maximum degree possible, just based on the evidence that without oversight, they'll do absolutely nothing to protect customers' property rights from theft during online transactions. After all, SSL is not some obscure package in use on only two abandoned workstations that somebody just didn't remember to unplug from a defunct warehouse in the 1970's. It is used a lot, and expected to at least require a few million clock cycles to defeat. No, a lot of users don't know "how difficult" 64-bit or 128-bit encryption is to defeat, in clock cycles, they just expect they're substantially safer with it than without it. Claiming to support SSL but then not encrypting data sent to an https URL seems pretty damned amateurish. That ought to have been caught in house, and if HK believes Zimbra users are already vulnerable, and the main effect of his announcement is to cure users' ignorance of the danger they're in already, then I can understand why he decided not to wait until Monday as a courtesy to Yahoo! The text of his post obviously contains a lot of intentional sarcasm, to a dev team that I agree is clearly not even trying. Or they're employed by a proprietary software house but counting on free QA workers for every aspect of development, not just usability. Either way, I hope HK gets his T-shirt.

Then again, maybe the Yahoo! Zimbra team made that behavior intentionally, only for 127.0.0.1 and/or localhost.localdomain, just to phish for aggressive testers and first thing tomorrow morning, the joke's on HK. But Ockham and I suspect they just screwed up.

Cray just announced a new closed-source $25K supercomputer two months ago.
IBM is going open source on its supercomputers, but last August is not what I would call "the last few years".

And the only personalities Microsoft has is Bill Gates (now retired), and Balmer, better known as the amazing flying monkey boy.

That was an odd thing to throw in there... Who exactly does Apple have, besides The Incredible Shrinking Jobs? No one in particular, since Steve likes being a one-man show.

(Don't speculate on who will replace him, since they'll probably get axed.)

I thought this sounded oddly familiar... not too long ago I was helping a client out of a mess caused by Trend Micro identifying Windows system files as being infected by a "Generic Trojan"

The problem was exacerbated by Trend Micro failing to properly quarantine the files and it ended up just corrupting them. Almost needless to say, the repair instructions were useless.

The mini 12 reminds me of an updated version of the x200 I bought off eBay for $200 ( http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/notebooks/0,1000000333,10000587,00.htm )

Granted the x200 is a little bigger, and not 3G ready... but out of the box it's pretty good. I got the 933 version and upgraded it to 640Mb of memory and Win2k. It runs snappy, Firefox and Thunderbird run good, and if I want the extra features, I just snap it into the dock with the DVD/CDR, floppy drive and more.

So if you want a pretty good alternative to buying the Mini 12 that's pretty inexpensive, check out the x200.

there's a difference between software as a service and renting software. when you use the postal system you're not renting the postal network. you're simply using their service. and when you subscribe to broadband, you're not renting the ISP's broadband network. and there's nothing wrong with renting as a payment/service model. when you pay for whether shared or dedicated web hosting, it's rented disk space, hardware use, etc. just like when you rent a house, you keep vital possessions in it without worrying about losing it because you happen to be renting.

those are illogical and unrelated concerns. even if you keep all your data on your own hard drive and run your software on your PC, the PC or hard drive can breakdown; the software vendor can stop supporting your application; and their EULA can have a vendor lock-in clause that prevents you from exporting your own data to an open/accessible format.

all of these problems can be avoided with common sense whether you're using cloud computing or not. if you're hosting an enterprise application on a cloud server, you'll probably have your host perform regular backups. you can even have them send you the back ups so you can have a local copy. but cloud computing has built-in redundancy that should prevent most catastrophic failures. whereas, if your company is running its own web server and it goes down, whether because of a DDoS attack or admin screwup, your business is out of commission until that server is back up; same with vital databases or other production servers.

cloud computing is inherently scalable and reliable--redundant sites make it ideal for business continuity and disaster recovery. they are also arguably more sustainable/carbon-neutral. so people knocking cloud computing generally don't understand the needs of companies like Google who benefit, and actually need, cloud computing. the average end-user does see the importance of cloud computing because they have no web applications that need to be hosted on a cloud. but they rely on cloud computing everyday without knowing it.

the average user uses everyday web service like Gmail, Google, Google Calendar, flickr, digg, Wikipedia, facebook, BitTorrent, SETI@Home, etc. these are all cloud applications. they wouldn't be possible without cloud computing. even if you use Google Apps like Google Docs, if you choose an ethical company like Google who respects consumer rights and gives you the freedom to take you data with you wherever you want, whenever you want (they still treat it as the user's data), you're better off than if you simply used a desktop application. you can still save your Google Docs onto your hard drive, but it also lets you access your files from any computer you want. it has an autosave feature to prevent data loss, a revision history to revert unwanted changes, allows real-time online collaboration, and it lets you tag and archive documents for organization purposes.

network outages are a problem regardless of whether you use cloud computing or not, just like power outages are no reason to not use computers for for crucial business applications. for consumers who aren't living in 3rd world countries with shoddy internet access, cloud applications provide freedom, reliability, redundancy, and other advantages over desktop applications. the occasional internet outage isn't a problem if you have the common sense to keep local copies of crucial documents.

i probably shouldn't feed trolls, but i'll humor you...

• good Samaritan faces up to 10 years in prison for exposing security flaw in university's computer system.
• Schoolboy hacker faces 38 years in prison for changing his grades.
• an Asperger sufferer faces 60 years for looking for government info on UFOs on military computers.
• and let's not forget Kevin Mitnick who spent 5 years in prison and 8 months of it in solitary confinement.
• while a spam king who committed malicious acts against tens of millions of average computer users only gets 47 months after making millions.

seems like greed-driven malware writers, spammers, and other digital bottom-feeders go free with a slap to the wrist while harmless teenage hackers get the book thrown at them. from a ZDNet article, "US bill would treat all hackers as terrorists":

A major anti-terrorism bill now being considered by the US government has been criticised for disproportionately targeting low-level computer intruders, making small crimes punishable by a penalty of life in prison.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the main civil liberties group in the US focussing on the digital world, condemned parts of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) now in Congress, which would treat all computer trespass as terrorism. "Treating low-level computer crimes as terrorist acts is not an appropriate response to recent events," said EFF executive director Shari Steele in a statement. "A relatively harmless online prankster should not face a potential life sentence in prison." ...
In the US, the EFF criticised the portion of the new bill that adds low-level computer intrusion -- which could be something as innocuous as a teenager having a look around a commercial Web server -- to the list of "federal terrorism offences". Such offences carry penalties of up to life imprisonment, and give investigators broad powers of asset seizure, as well as threatening those who "harbour" offenders.

meanwhile violent offenders face much lighter sentences:

• Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban convicted of killing severely wounded 16-year-old Iraqi during fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Sentenced to one year's confinement, demoted to private and given bad-conduct discharge.
• Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in same case as Alban. Sentenced to three years in prison, had rank reduced to private and given dishonorable discharge. Horne's prison sentence later reduced to one year.
• Cpl. Dustin Berg convicted and sentenced to 18 months in military prison for shooting death of Iraqi police officer.
• Spc. Rami Dajani convicted of making a false statement following fatal shooting of Iraqi translator. Sentenced to 18 months' confinement and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.
• Spc. Charley L. Hooser convicted of involuntary manslaughter in same case involving Dajani. Hooser sentenced to three years in prison and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.
• Capt. Rogelio "Roger" Maynulet convicted of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter in shooting death of wounded Iraqi. Dismissed from armed forces.
• Marine Maj. Clarke Paulus convicted of dereliction of duty and maltreatment in case stemming from death of Iraqi prisoner who was dragged out of holding cell by the

I actually posted hoping someone else would chime in with that info but after poking around I found it.

Apparently the company is named "Artificial Intelligence" and they call the program "Hal" which doesn't make it easy to google them.

Here is a link to an old story:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,2085638,00.htm

http://www.taborcommunications.com/archives/100855.html

Yep.. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,2077456,00.htm

I don't see how Adobe is related to the topic. PDF is not an "Adobe's format" anymore. PDF can be implemented by anyone without requiring any deals or license from Adobe. There are hundreds of feature-rich open-source implementations. PDF has nothing to do with Adobe.

Yes, everybody thought so. Then Adobe got pissy at Microsoft for implementing it. This news was widely covered everywhere, including Slashdot.

Whom did they sue? Can you give us some references?

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39273094,00.htm
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39159285,00.htm
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/188701275
http://www.pdfzone.com/c/a/Authoring/Adobe-to-Sue-Microsoft-Over-PDF-Support-in-Office-2007/
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/4509/53/
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012_3-6079320.html
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_to_Drop_PDF_Support_in_Office/1149284222

I have to correct myself, though: They didn't actually sue, because Microsoft settled first (by relegating the PDF support to a optional install.)

What Adobe wants is irrelevant. Nobody needs Adobe's permission to implement PDF support. Anyways, can you give us some reference to Adobe's behaviour?

Yes, everybody thought that. Then they got pissy at Microsoft for implementing it. Wow, this conversation is kind of repetitive.

ms didn't "back-down". It truly hates the idea of providing proper pdf support.

Actually, they did. Is your memory seriously this short? It only happened, what, 2 years ago? It was covered in all the trade press, extensively, it got probably 1000+ comments on Slashdot stories. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

You don't need a new OS, you need a new motherboard.

Asus has "Express Gate" on their newer mobos that allow you to boot into a web-surfing, email only mini OS in "less than 5 seconds" without having to worry about whether you slept, suspended or hibernated the previous tme you shut down your PC.

Ok, its basically an on-board Linix distro, so you do need a better OS after all.

It's starting to happen. Give it another 20 years and Indian wages will be high enough that this sort of stuff won't happen because Indian wages will be almost as high as a US worker's wages.

Then the problem will simply move elsewhere. There will always be someone at the bottom of the wage food chain, willing to work for relative peanuts.
This is already happening.

There is definitely something wrong when laptop or PC manufacturers depend on shoving crap down customers throats to turn a profit. Is it too much of a stretch to think that profit should be a result of quality products and services and differentiation instead of corporate deals that offer little or no advantage to the customer who is actually buying the product from the maker?

Because the profit margins are so low OEMs have to make up for it somewhere. And with the economy in the shape it's in people are looking for ways to save, whether by keeping the PC they have now or by buying a low cost PC.

Falcon

If a government body wants to save costs, saying "it will create thousands of jobs" isn't exactly a good thing. Amazingly enough when people get jobs, they expect to be paid.

I knew it was familiar..

The launch of Windows Vista next year will be directly responsible for creating more than 50,000 IT jobs in six large European countries, and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for European companies, according to a Microsoft-funded IDC study released on Thursday.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39283327,00.htm

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/misc/print/0,1000000169,39461788-39001068c,00.htm

I'm not sure if this is the competition you're referring to:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/03/28/os-x-first-os-to-be-hacked-in-pwn-2-own-contest/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-X-Hacked-Vista-SP1-Hacked-Ubuntu-Linux-Survives-Unscathed-82079.shtml
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39375171,00.htm
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9906001-37.html

On day two things turned around when contests were allowed to instruct contest organizers to visit a web page or open an email. Within two minutes Miller had prepared his exploit code and instructed organizers to visit a web site. Game over. Miller had seized control of the MacBook Air and landed himself a nice prize, seemingly using a hole in Safari as contestants were only permitted to take advantage of preinstalled software.

The attackers didn't have direct physical access so much as taking advantage of the weakest element of security, the user.

"That had more to do with the PC not being able to multitask well rather than lack of a CPU in the floppy drive"

Oh yeah. That worked really well.

So soon we forget. Actually, so few of us actually knew.

Since you still refuse to publish a URL of your supposed YEARS of fighting the voting machine.

We'll start you off nice and slow this morning.

Your homework consists simply reading several articles. Then removing your foot from your mouth.

Hunt for the (backdoor)kill switch in microchips.

US reveals plans to hit back at cyber threats (note the part about CHIPS)

Investigating Machine Identification Code Technology in Color Laser Printers (if you can do this you can do anything)

The Hunt for the Kill Switch (This is the best of the articles in my opinion)

So your idea of "computerized tabulation" will work only if the public John Doe/ Jane Doe/ You/ Me/ Slashdot Readers/ "We The People" and anyone else is allowed to destructively reverse engineer every electronic voting machine component under an electron microscope looking for backdoor logic (Which is NOT allowed), and any network, hub, switch, vault, radio transmitter, Radio receiver, or memory device that might have been used in conjunction with the election (Again the public is NOT allowed to, not to mention it would be physically impossible and too costly at the expense of bringing down the entire communications infrastructure.), and monitor the whole spectrum 24/7 at all geographic locations during an election. (ain't going to happen) And monitor the power supply for rogue signals, or frequency or voltage anomalies.

So really what your saying is it's okay for someone to walk in on election day, reach into their pocket, activate their hidden transmitter, and flip the vote, by a plethora of methods.

And that's just the HARDWARE.

Shall we wait until you digest all that before we talk about the SOFTWARE and WHAT'S ALREADY BEEN FOUND?

hint #1
Top To Bottom Review

hint #2
Federal Vote-Counting Accuracy Mandate Is Ignored
Violations abound, but no federal action is taken

And again I remind you that 100% hand counts of ballots that have 100% chain of custody (even that is broken) with 100% public oversight (currently the public is denied access and ballots have been illegally destroyed) have never been compared to the 100% machine tabulation.

Furthermore your continued publicizing of the myth that "hand counted paper ballots are unrealistic due to population." Is just that. A MYTH!

If your ideas are so open source, show them right here right now. Quit saying you don't know where to take these ideas, I'm telling you right now.

Publish it! Publish it right here, right now.

Get a free frigging yahoo/geocities account, and publish it. Make a god damned blog and publish it. Rar the shit up and upload it to Rapidshare. Create an account at sourceforge and PUBLISH IT!

Microsoft has always charged less in developing nations with weak or fragile economies.

Uh ... no. Resoundingly no. Are you ten years old?

from Nov. 2003:

Recent moves by Asian governments to push adoption of open-source software will not change Microsoft's global single-price policy, according to a senior executive from the software giant.

Of course they caved in when Thailand started selling a million desktops with Linux.

I had always given Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. That they weren't really all that bad, just unusually incompetent and maybe a bit greedy with a touch of power-hungry. Now I'm fully convinced that there is some kind of rotten fucking evil permeating that organization.

I went through this transition, now comes the powerlessness associated with knowing there is little you can do stop them, none of your friends will even understand this - of course, where you can you try to fight the man, the man will eventually bludgeon you into submission.

The sad reality is that the market will slowly be corralled into accepting Vista and all the requisite DRM baggage that it carries. The key here is that the frog is heated very slowly in the pot and the market will accept, like sheep, what is fed to them. Of course the ardent Microsoft supporters will say Vista ain't so bad, and sure their products are nice to work with, but they are also a nightmare of interoperability when you try and work with anything else.

I don't want to encourage purchase of their products because when you dig deeper into the behavior of Microsoft the 'evil' conclusion is consistently reinforced. A corporation has the same legal rights as an individual in society it begs the question "What sort of individual is Microsoft", I found this and made the comparison.

HOW TO SPOT A PSYCHOPATH - 5 WAYS TO AVOID HIRING PSYCHOPATHS COPYRIGHT 2008 MICHAEL MERCER, PH.D.

1. Pre-Employment Tests - especially certain test scores

From my research on pre-employment tests, there are specific test scores that may indicate a job applicant is a psychopath. Specifically, psychopaths may get low or high scores on certain measures/scales in pre-employment tests:

* low scores on two measures - (a) Truthfulness and (b) Following Rules

Check , Check

* high scores on two measures - (a) Aggressiveness and (b) Power Motivation

Check, Check

Lesson: Be cautious with job applicants who get such scores on pre-employment tests.

2. Job Interviews

If you suspect a job applicant may be a psychopath, then you can ask questions to elicit answers revealing if the applicant threatens or intimidates people. Reason: Psychopaths get a huge thrill from intimidating through (a) real or implied threats, (b) verbal hostility, and (c) manipulation.

threats, hostility, manipulation, manipulation, manipulation.

3. Reference Checks

Call the job applicant's ex-bosses at home, and ask for a "personal reference." Obtain specific examples of how the applicant "handled difficulties and friction with other employees." Listen for warning signs of threats, intimidation, anger, or ridicule.

intimidation, anger,

FYI:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39117406,00.htm

Yes, but you may notice the fight between P2P programs and ISPs/big media. They may very well push most people into a web and email-only "internet." Where point to point communication is limited.

Then there is the DMCA and other laws which allow just about anyone to silence a small time website.

And, don't let us forget DRM and laws such as the SSSCA, which could create a situation where the common person could easily be limited as to how many people they can reach, assuming they are allowed to publish anything at all.

Just because it wasn't codified into law doesn't mean DRM still isn't a problem. The Xbox was Microsoft's DRM prototype, and while its program loading protections where cracked, they can always be made stronger.

From the xbox linux site:

In order to lock out both copied games as well as homebrew software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, Microsoft built a chain of trust on the Xbox reaching from the hardware to the execution of game code, in order to avoid the infiltration of code that has not been authorized by Microsoft.

Though I am not a fan of the appearance, it is quite a powerful phone, with a 500mhz processor, which is not quite as powerful as the 700mhz processor on the iphone, but still decent nevertheless. Ofcourse, the benefiting factor being that it is open source, where as the iphone is not. It will be a great time when we are able to buy a phone, with the basic functionality installed, then choose what particular software we want to add on the phone, for free. The main problem with phones today is that there is really no way that the community can fix or improve the software without complications, but if the company is actually encouraging open source software to be developed they will provide the necessary tools (APIs etc) for the community to do these improvements themselves, saving them money in the process. It also appears that more phone companies are starting to follow this open source trend, but will probably still keep their strangle hold on their customer base by using DRM and SIM locks, you can read the article here. Openmoko are definitely in the right direction, I wish them much success.

Dialup just does not support botting, so it is better to leave them on dialup.

In this case, we have people who probably aren't patching their software (at least promptly). Which may incur damage to their computers (and stored files like pictures and movies) someday. Not to mention the bot-net issues you mentioned (spam typically isn't that big).

Remember, there are some malware writers who try to make their binaries as small as possible. And a 50k binary (50k can be downloaded within seconds, even on dialup) could be enough in some attacks.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39157478,00.htm (I love the Longhorn reference)

The data tariffs are reasonable for VoIP - depends where you live I suppose - in the UK cell calls to landlines and your provider's network are typically cheapest, calls to other networks are quite expensive, and international calls are extortionate. If it wasn't cheaper to use VoIP, then they wouldn't have to ban it. They also ban instant messaging with a data plan, trying instead to force you to pay 10p or so for every SMS you send.

This was the filesystem that HP tried to port to HPUX and failed. They licensed Veritas instead.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39175690,00.htm "It had initially planned to complete the migration of the TruCluster/AdvFS feature from Tru64 Unix to HP-UX 11i v3 in the middle of 2006."

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1214253121145+28353475&threadId=754760 "No TruCluster or AdvFS for HP-UX after all"

It probably would have made the release too, except that it got canned after it was working.

It wasn't that HP failed to port ADVfs and trucluster to HPUX -- it was that they decided to stop it in favor of the other solution for arguably political and financial reasons. The people at HP in California were more than happy for the DEC people in New Hampshire to go away, even at the cost of licensing something that was no better than what they already owned outright, but would need to fund support for.

One wonders why they have bothered with this release at this point.

-dB

This was the filesystem that HP tried to port to HPUX and failed. They licensed Veritas instead.
I figured that the multithreading that I'd always heard worked so well in AdvFS/Tru64 was hard to port to the non-multithreaded HPUX kernel.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39175690,00.htm
"It had initially planned to complete the migration of the TruCluster/AdvFS feature from Tru64 Unix to HP-UX 11i v3 in the middle of 2006."

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1214253121145+28353475&threadId=754760
"No TruCluster or AdvFS for HP-UX after all"

I stopped buying music and movie 6+ years ago (with a few rare exceptions).

The last thing I want to do is give money to people who will one day turn around and sue me for doing my job:

ISP staff face MP3 lawsuit
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39146188,00.htm

I think they realised they'd painted themselves into a corner... the official reason for the delays was backwards compatibility issues due to changes during the standardisation process. I suspect they've ended up in a situation where even making the Office OOXML output standard-compliant would break backwards compatibility, even if they didn't implement or use any of the new features.

...you do realize that this is commonplace everywhere, right? They usually attach them to things like anti-child porn or anti-terrorist bills (okay, not that extreme, perhaps). That way if anybody votes against the bill (you can't vote against the tiny part attached to it), the person slipping that part in will point and say "see!? He wants the terrorists to win! He likes child porn!"

It's not too unlike trying to slip in a vote on software patents at an agricultural meeting.
( citation needed? mkay : http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39185041,00.htm )

To a lot of people in the countries targeted, the OLPC offer was as much of a joke as Marie Antoinette's offer of cake!

Here we are in a situation where a large number of children still do not have access to a school or a teacher - and even those that do more often than not drop out to work in farms before completing even a couple years. Heck, even the sole teacher managing the sole school in miles dissappears equally often and is usually very difficult to replace.

And you want us to spend on a laptop?

Having seen from close quarters, the Media Labs Asia fiasco (see for example, http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39279997,00.htm) unfold in India - then I felt amazed at the insincerity in this organisation's plans. People soon realised that we had enough of our own govt funded researchers who deliver nothing - we didn't need to import some more from the developed world!

Now seeing the parent organisation in US from almost within - I realise it is not evil as such - just somehow it has this Antoinette-ish behavior built into its very DNA. Some feel it is what its name says - "Media" Labs - and is indeed a PR front for MIT - pretty adept at generating media attention and not much more.

In the UK we've got no defence against US extradition requests, so if the Feds decide that a Brit P2Per has been 'importing or exporting copyright materials' they can haul them across the pond without so much as a jot of testable evidence. Now that's frightening.

Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally.
Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally.

2008-06-02 19:06:05 Venezuela, Not Denmark, Is Fourth To Appeal OOXML (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)
The recent report Denmark Becomes Fourth Nation To Protest OOXML is a bit of confusion. There have been many many protests, however the IEC acknowledges four appeals- Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela. It appears the letters from Denmark and Norway are being disregarded, as they come from the Chairmen of their respective Technical Committees rather than the administrative heads of the national organisations.

Ok, I won't grouse about rejected submissions. However I damn well will grouse about Slashdot editors re-posting wrong information after getting a submission informing them IT WAS WRONG THE FIRST TIME THEY RAN IT.

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Yep - there's even a webpage for the Air Force's cyber attackers.

The NSA is known to hide backdoors in US software distributed overseas (think "Windows") and the CIA and NSA almost certainly also have cyber war departments - although they don't broadcast that fact via a webpage.

The CIA has actually managed to blow up a Russian pipeline using cyber attacks - in 1982!

China is just returning fire from US attacks that have been occurring since the dawn of the information age.

The UK government has already said to ISPs "Stop your users downloading illegally or we'll pass legislation forcing you to":

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39290371,00.htm

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2008/02/25/uk-isp%E2%80%99s-must-stop-illegal-downloads/

(You've got to admire that approach to democracy out of sheer morbid fascination, really, haven't you. It amounts to "You're not doing anything illegal, but if you don't stop doing it we'll make it illegal!")

Virgin Media haven't really got any choice here, and I think we'll see similar announcements regarding other ISPs within the next 6-12 months.

"After the two-month appeal period, we now have four appeals -- Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela," Jonathan Buck, the director of communications for IEC, told ZDNet.co.uk on Monday http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39427754,00.htm

While it may look bad, it's still only 1/5th of a metric Britain.

-Grey

"... enormous energy consumption of data centers"

That is one of the few world problems that is already being solved. Intel and AMD and others are working on the next generation of processors, that use less power: Intel Says Chips Will Run Faster, Using Less Power. Intel is currently delivering processors built on 45 nanometer rules. (At that size, there are perhaps 1000 transistors in the width of a human hair.)

They are working on a 32 nanometer process, which has already been demonstrated. The next after that is 22 nanometers and then 16 nanometers and 11 nanometers as the Wikipedia articles say. The smaller conductor width rules use smaller transistors which use less power.

At the same time, they will make processors with wider silicon wafers, 18 inches wide rather than the 12 inch wide wafers they use now. The smaller devices and larger wafers mean that there will be many more processors per wafer, making the costs go down.

What these companies are doing is VERY impressive.

The companies have not been as good at proposing new uses for the greater processing power. Data centers need the greater processing power as well as use of smaller amounts of energy, but where else is more processing power needed? Will grandma's octo-core cell phone of the future not just report the weather, but calculate it? Will games use full ray-tracing?

I suspect that the greater processing power is needed, but all the needs haven't yet been discovered. To me, that's a very interesting problem.

It was in the article:

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000001048,39419834-10,00.htm

And I agree with most of these, particularly Apple. I recently spent several hours trying to remove Quicktime from my system and replace it with Quicktime alternative. I had to go in and hand edit the registry. The damn program was incidious about wriggling it's way back into my system tray and running processes if every single reference to it wasn't removed from the registry. That will be the last piece of Apple software I ever install on my system.

I certainly don't care that HM Government can follow me around if they choose to. Can you explain to me why I should?

Examples:
You have fallen foul of some official with 'camera access'. Let's say you're dating their ex who ditched them. The official finds you like going to (perfectly legal) S&M bars. They inform your puritanical employer, who sacks you on some trumped up but plausible sounding grounds; you never even get to know how this came about. And no, this is not a fantasy; the police national computer (UK) has been abused repeatedly in similar circumstances. See http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39160706,00.htm for a start.

You're a prominent anti-goverment campagner; perfectly legal but a pain in the butt to the authorities. The authorities use camera tracking and surveillence to pre-empt and discredit your actions or fit you up for a crime.

There are any number of way this sort of tracking can be abused; but you'll probably be alright if your life is totally unremarkable and you never (even accidentally) get on the wrong side of any officials with camera access and never protest about anything or rock the boat in any way.