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I don't know about elsewhere, but, EDS have a reputation for unrivaled incompetence in Australia

"It's amazing that anyone could manage to cock it up so successfully."

"The Ministry of Defence has forced IT services giant EDS to sign a "failure clause" before it will let the company to continue its bid for the £4bn Defence Information Infrastructure contract

Subtract 10 years from each of your estimations. Subcutanous RFID chips are available now .

The solution is to elect leaders who understand why privacy is important and who aren't being paid by these companies to make their "solutions" legally mandatory.

I didn't say most countries, I said most EU countries, Australia, and Canada. Canada I guess I was wrong about. They have managed to stave it off. As far as the EU, I guess I saw a bunch of articles like this and this a few years back. Additionally, I seem to remember at least Switzerland, the UK, and Germany passing stricter regulation.

If you could clarify the situation for me, I and other readers here would be grateful, I'm sure.

I didn't say most countries, I said most EU countries, Australia, and Canada. Canada I guess I was wrong about. They have managed to stave it off. As far as the EU, I guess I saw a bunch of articles like this and this a few years back. Additionally, I seem to remember at least Switzerland, the UK, and Germany passing stricter regulation.

If you could clarify the situation for me, I and other readers here would be grateful, I'm sure.

If the numbers in TFA are true (36 million students, growing to 52 million by the end of 2009), then this is absolutely huge in terms of Linux install base. In fact, I think this project would approximately double the install base.

I know that "counting" the number of Linux installs is essentially impossible, but here are some random numbers I've accumulated that point to the approximate size of the Linux user base:
1. The Linux Counter estimated 29 million installs in 2005. This estimate involved numerous assumptions, such as extrapolating from 8 million installs reported by Red Hat in 1998.
2. According to an IDC study, the Linux marketshare for PCs was ~3% in 2003.
3. There are about 1 billion Internet users. Browser logs indicate that Linux accounts for ~0.8% to ~3.9% of web traffic. This gives us an estimate of 8 million to 39 million Linux users. (The upper estimate is undoubtedly an over-estimate since the value comes from W3Schools, which probably has a greater fraction of 'technical' users.)
4. According to Canonical's server logs from OS updates, there are approximately 6 million active users of Ubuntu (see here and here). Assuming that Ubuntu represents 30% of Linux usage (based on this), you can come up with an estimate of 20 million Linux users.
5. According to Fedora's logs for OS updates, there are approximately 2.8 million installations of Fedora Core 6, and 1.6 million of Fedora 7. Assuming Fedora represents 9% of Linux installs (again, based on this), you can estimate 48 million Linux users.

Obviously all of these methods have their own problems. I'm not claiming that any of these estimates are robust. However they do at least suggest a range for the number of Linux users (~20 million) and the marketshare of Linux (~1% to 2%).

So, this single project, it would seem, is drastically increasing (doubling?) Linux usage. This is huge, in my opinion, because a generation of students who have learned Linux will be far more likely to use and improve upon FLOSS when they enter the job market.

According to one paper presented at last year's SubOptic conference in Baltimore, Maryland, rates of cable fault in water over 1km deep are less than 0.1 faults per year, per 1,000km of installed cable. This implies around 50 deepwater repairs per year, globally. At depths of less than 1km, failure rates hovered between 1-2 per 1,000km in the 1990s, but have been steadily declining. According to a SubOptic 2004 paper, the rate in 2003 was 0.2 fault per 1,000km.

He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to shipsâ(TM) anchors. âoeThey donâ(TM)t even track terrorism,â he said. âoeCable cuts are a routine part of the business.â

Now we just need someone to translate the BSA's 'statistics' into something approaching reality. As zdnet put it when discussing previous claims:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39205464,00.htm

'Unless the BSA gets its act together and replaces overstated and misconstrued data with properly researched and carefully presented facts, it will become known as an arrogant organ of propaganda.'

Ok, so it's the Register. They broke the story, so I linked them. Try

• news.com.com.com
• zdnet.co.uk

If you prefer other sources.

The MS Office system includes components not to be found in OpenOffice.org. Outlook is simply the most visible example.

I know. Yet still some organisations seem to think they can get on quite allright without those components. cf. Ernie Ball, Bristol City Council and Munich Council.

I accept that these cases are the exception, not the rule. But the OP's question was "what's in it for me?". My answer is "One or two things, but probably not if you've already gone out and bought Office" and that is what it remains.

Small time coders don't need protection in a world without patents (so long as you also prevent cartels and monopolies), because it's very easy to break into a market

There was once this company called 'Netscape' ...

And once the small guys break into a market, or more correctly, create a market by building a customer base and finding a sustainable way to generate revenue profitably, the big guys will copy the idea wholesale

No, I'm not joking, I'm just wrong.

I got the Linux Foundation confused with the Australian gambit to trademark "Linux" and then charge anyone using the term money.

Thanks for setting me straight.

You're the exact type of person who will be the very first to blame IT for the hack/breach that'll happen if they install your unapproved software, or loosen up security because it interferes with your convenience.

We in IT security (I'm a CISSP) know you very well, in fact your type (over-demanding internal users) poses the worst security threats above and beyond external threats and malware. You are also "Cleopatra" -- Queen of Denial.

I think you may have missed the news: Microsoft already agreed to disclose exactly that: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39291688,00.htm

Mystery of Microsoft's automatic updates

** Sigh **

Your reality field needs adjusting.

In September 2001, Microsoft and the DoJ were still battling it out under the auspices of US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who took over from Jackson after the Court of Appeals ruling. Ever since Bush came to power Microsoft's chances had been looking better, and the events of 11 September are thought to have made the DoJ mode amenable to a quick settlement, the Bush administration being keen to avoid an outcome that would put further pressure on the US economy.

- Judge Jackson was a conservative Republican Judge.
August 24, 2001. Two months ago, the federal appeals court here
removed Judge Jackson and chastised him for
discussing the case with reporters. The appeals court
unanimously upheld many of his most important
findings that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the
Sherman Antitrust Act, but it ordered the case to be returned to a new district
judge to reconsider his order to split the company in two.


- Judge Kollar-Kotelly, a seasoned trial court
judge and Clinton appointee to the Federal bench, to
determine how to penalize the company for abusing
its monopoly power in the software business.

- The appeals court replaced Judge Jackson, not Bush or the DoJ.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/tsearch/judge+thomas+penfield+jackson.htm
http://www.luga.at/mailing-lists/rr/2001/08/msg00012.html

Enjoy,

EVERYTIME, which is way to frequent, that my mac book Pro crashes, running the monolithic microkernel MacOSX (10.4 - 10.5.1), the Mac asks if I want to report it to Apple. I always say yes and berate them for having IO Drivers in the Kernel (since that's been the reason for the crashes - every time. I encourage them to remove the drivers from the their monolithic microkernel and put them into their own protected space.

Someone has to tell Apple that their Kernel design implementation sucks big time - simply because it crashes WAY TOO OFTEN. MacOSX 10.4 through the current up to date Mac OSX 10.5.1 Leopard (System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.1 (9B18), Kernel Version: Darwin 9.1.0) crashes very frequently week with IO problems (see the actual crash logs at the end of this posting). Usually these problems are with device drivers such as EyeTV or Parallels. If this was a true microkernel design like Minix or QNX the entire machine would not have to be rebooted, just the EyeTV or Parallels apps would need to be rebooted. Why the heck should a problem with the USB driver bring down the entire OS? How on earth can that be justified Apple? It can't so improve the quality by removing ALL drivers from the Kernel and put them in their own processes. Thank you very much in advance.

APPLE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REMOVE ALL DRIVERS FROM THE MACH XNU MICROKERNEL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THANKS. AT LEAST GIVE ME THE CHOICE OF HAVING THEM SEPARATED - THE EXTRA CPU % COST IS A PRICE THAT I AS A USER WOULD MAKE TO GAIN THE FAULT TOLERANCE AND RELIABILITY. Below you'll see my actual kernel crash logs for six months - as you can see the number of crashes are intolerable and just amazing to behold when a true microkernel that separates out drivers would have prevented reboots in all these cases.

I HEREBY Challenage ALL Mac OSX users to publish their Kernel Crash Logs for ALL the world to see. Maybe this way APPLE will take microkernels seriously.

Links to the issue of the flawed XNU kernel. (Gee, XNU, almost sounds like the XeNU character out of the Scientology creation mythology. XeNU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu. ;--).

The culprit: bad monolithic design of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU#I.2FO_Kit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6105
http://www.maconintel.com/news.php?article=177
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/how-long-will-apple-keep-the-mach-microkernel/

"Frankly, I think it's a piece of crap," Torvalds says of Mach [XeNU], the microkernel on which Apple's new operating system is based. "It contains all the design mistakes you can make, and manages to even make up a few of its own." - Linus Torvalds, http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2085525,00.htm

I only quote Linus because he's right regarding MACh XeNU. However, he's wrong about microkernels in general as the frequent crashing of Linux reveals.

---- ACTUAL MacBook Pro Monolithic XNU Kernel Crash Logs ----- REAL WORLD CRASHES REVEALED -----

Sat Mar 24 07:38:10 2007
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0035AE53): freeing free mbuf
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x36563ca8 : 0x128d08 (0x3c9ac4 0x36563ccc 0x131de5 0x0)
0x36563ce8 : 0x35ae53 (0x3ea228 0x9cfc 0x36563d28 0x2)
0x36563d08 : 0x35b1f3 (0x4835b800 0x804c 0x36563d28 0x800)
0x36563d28 : 0xa3d6ad (0x4835b800 0x36563dec 0x6 0x6007c0e0)

Errr, your research leaves something to be desired.

Microsoft reported the Sweden situation themselves. And they did so within hours of the so-called 'vote promise' email.

As for your EFFI corruption link, correlation != causation. From your linked page:

One should be careful in interpreting the result, though. For example, the statistical test does not naturally tell anything about the reason of the relation between corruption level and voting behaviour of a country; in any case, whatever the reason for the correlation, also some quite uncorrupted countries voted for the approval. And although the trend is interesting and the results informative, the [above] conclusion is still not particularly strong due to a relatively small number of voting countries

Besides a passing reference to 'what happened in Sweden', I didn't see any reference to 'buying votes' in that link, either.

Both IBM and MS encouraged members to join the various ISO committees in different countries.

well, there were some buggy cdrom drives (lg ?) that reacted weirdly on some command they should have ignored and some distro actually _could_ brick those computers (mandrake, i think) ;)

ah, my memory sometimes works - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39117461,00.htm

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39292511,00.htm

Since 2006, Barracuda Networks has been receiving communications from Trend Micro's legal team requesting Barracuda either pay licence fees when using ClamAV, or stop incorporating the software into its products, according to Barracuda's chief executive and president, Dean Drako.

I don't know what you consider threats then, but if company X tells you to cough up or stop using an OS package that they claim infringes on their patents, *I* would consider that a threat.

I really don't see in what sense Groklaw supposedly made a mistake. In fact I think Groklaw's presentation of fact is correct. Unless you can point to solid evidence that shows otherwise I'll just have to assume that you misread the material you saw.

It has happened many times with wireless modem cards (3G/GPRS) - not

£7000 Charge For Useage When Sim NOT In Use

case #1.

case #2

other cases
(Has anyone ever seen a $48,797.09 phone bill from ATT ????)

Consoles are actually an excellent example of the fact that people who buy cheap systems will avoid paying for software unless they absolutely have to. If this wasn't the case, then they wouldn't have increasingly complex internal DRM systems, there wouldn't have been enough of a market for "mod chips" that bypass said DRM systems for them to exist, and the console manufacturers wouldn't have regarded those "mod chips" as enough of a threat to their licensing revenue to bother doing everything in their power to prevent them being manufactured, sold, or installed.

Here are some links which show (a) piracy flourishes when people can bypass a system's internal DRM, and (b) all three major console manufacturers take this threat very seriously indeed:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/28984/Piracy-drive-threatens-Nintendo-DS
http://www.thetanooki.com/2007/11/26/r4-chip-costing-nintendo-millions-in-ds-software-sales/
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1355-Nintendos-success-is-breeding-Piracy-Problems.html
http://www.gamersevolved.com/nintendo-ds-tries-to-put-stop-to-piracy.html
http://www.gamingbits.com/content/view/2884/2/
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39161307,00.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/sony-busts-down-mod-chip-retailer-with-9-mil-lawsuit/
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/07/31/sony-wins-australian-mod-chip-case
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4407.cfm
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13847/532/
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3401.cfm
http://www.news.com/2100-1040-962797.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6042
http://www.geek.com/three-people-facing-charges-for-xbox-piracy/

There are countless other similar links that prove how reluctant people are to pay for software on any low-cost platform if they can find a way of not doing so.

Someone hasn't been paying attention

It was actually done with natural gas pipeline (resulting in biggest non-nuclear explosion): http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39147917,00.htm

It seems Microsoft has admitted the mistake. Sadly, the reaction is not security update.

Microsoft updated the advisory on Friday evening and included links to four downloadable updates that would unblock the file formats. One update was provided for each of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and CorelDraw file types.

"Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."

Intel employees I've met have gone further than that. They are saying that the management of Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini is reprehensible. They say he is socially unskilled. They are saying he creates dissension and reduces morale among Intel employees by creating adversarial situations.

Certainly Otellini's handling of the One Laptop Per Child initiative could not have been worse. It was as though he said to himself, "How can I get billions of dollars worth of free publicity for Intel, all negative?" Intel's actions have created the impression that Intel wants to kill acceptance of the OLPC so that it can kill the OLPC project and then raise prices on its own products.

Anyone thinking of buying an Intel consumer product should know that Intel had a consumer products division in 2001 and decided to close it: Intel axes its consumer electronics unit. Why? In my opinion, the Intel Consumer Products Division was extremely poorly managed.

Also, Intel's marketing has been incredibly poorly managed. At one point, Intel was trying to sell processors by giving away dolls. Typical reaction: "Could this be the end of the bunny ads? We sure as hell hope so..."

There is no evidence that I can see that Intel is managed better today. Here is an April 2006 example I found quickly: Intel's consumer fumbling, in which Intel is trying to sell products using an unpronounceable trademark.

"Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."

Intel employees I've met have gone further than that. They are saying that the management of Intel CEO Paul S. Otellini is reprehensible. They say he is socially unskilled. They are saying he creates dissension and reduces morale among Intel employees by creating adversarial situations.

Certainly Otellini's handling of the One Laptop Per Child initiative could not have been worse. It was as though he said to himself, "How can I get billions of dollars worth of free publicity for Intel, all negative?" Intel's actions have created the impression that Intel wants to kill acceptance of the OLPC so that it can kill the OLPC project and then raise prices on its own products.

Anyone thinking of buying an Intel consumer product should know that Intel had a consumer products division in 2001 and decided to close it: Intel axes its consumer electronics unit. Why? In my opinion, the Intel Consumer Products Division was extremely poorly managed.

Also, Intel's marketing has been incredibly poorly managed. At one point, Intel was trying to sell processors by giving away dolls. Typical reaction: "Could this be the end of the bunny ads? We sure as hell hope so..."

There is no evidence that I can see that Intel is managed better today. Here is an April 2006 example I found quickly: Intel's consumer fumbling, in which Intel is trying to sell products using an unpronounceable trademark.

I agree. Are they then going to China to stop counterfeits of all types? What about all the scammers in the USA? If ebay was serious, they would require proper registration at the gate. They would disallow user generated content which contain active scripting formats, and they would completely do away with html based emails which contain links, and 'second chance offers'. They would quit depending solely on the 'community' to police the site (READ: FREELOADING). This is nothing but feeble PR spin, which borders on racism. Simple as that, & they know it. ebay is fraught with troubles of all sorts, & trying desperately to help their sagging image. The fact is, they try a lot harder to conceal the fraud rather than fix the real problems. They have been caught covering up & spewing falsehoods over this entire hacking & Vladuz situation over & again. Back in the summer of '07, around late June-early July they had a similar PR stunt. "eBay cracks down on Romanian fraudsters" http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39287770,00.htm After that, the hackers UNLOADED on ebay bigtime! We started to see 10s of thousands of fake listings on hijacked accounts rather than just dozens or hundreds. Anyone ever heard of jimmy.cry?

it doesn't mean that (US Law) applies to all other countries.

At the risk of speaking in absolutes, no computer hardware warranty can be voided by any software you install, even unauthorized hacked OSX. HP claims an 'unwritten rule' where linux voids your warranty, but they likely mean that they won't support the software, which is completely understandable. UK retailer PC World got kicked around in the press, then relented for refusing to fix a broken hinge on a laptop with gentoo installed. Even if anyone did give you shit, you can always just install windows then try again.

Unless you mean installing on a PC voids your OSX warranty/license, which is almost certainly the case.

You may be thinking of this.

Troll, FUD, Flamebait, wow guys get some original material or shut up already. I didn't find anything directly on update.microsoft.com but a very quick google search will show you just how "secure" Microsoft keeps their own shit.

http://www.news.com/2100-7349_3-6085589.html
http://www.zone-h.org/content/view/227/31/
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6085589.html
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/03/001103hnhacker.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/10/ms.taiwan.idg/index.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,2086058,00.htm

There are many more but I'm not really in the mood for doing other folks homework for them.

Brett, as the author of the parent, I am asking a hypothetical question, and pointing out an obvious (to me at least) potential misuse. I attributed Lauren, and included a link to his content. The readers here can see for themselves that Rogers is inserting content into the stream not provided by Google. I am sure more possible abuses exist that we have not considered. For example's sake, would you like a spammer hijacking your content injection server? How about someone operating a botnet forcing your users to download postcard.exe?

As an ISP, you may have valuable insight into this process. However to call my post inaccurate and inflammatory is plain wrong. As a writer, you know to attribute sources. I did so. The reader has the opportunity and ability to see the source materials referenced. There is nothing inaccurate or inflammatory here. As far as the catagory goes, I didn't see a "Rogers-inserts-friendly-service-message" entry in the pull-down. Sometimes we just have to make a choice.

On a personal note, I find that ISPs believing they have the right to alter my web experience disturbing. While the TOS from the ISP may say otherwise, I feel that a social contract and obligation exists on the part of the ISP to provide good service and do no harm to end users. I feel that content/context injection violates this contract.

ISPs in general make stupid assumptions regarding end users. For example, many ISPs cast a blind eye to Linux users, and force us to boot into a Windows partition to get past the first tier support person. Of course everyone on the Internet uses IE, and has Word installed. If an ISP doesn't understand its customers, how can it make intelligent choices regarding traffic management?

If your reason for liking this method is to contact your customers, why are you bothering? You have many options from terminating service to forcing them to a page of your choice. Even a META refresh or a 301 redirect appears to me to be more ethical than injecting traffic on to a 3rd party website.

'Happy New Year' worm fizzles out

What is a 301 Server Redirect?

Meta Refresh Tag

> Why when you buy a 100GB hard drive does it only have about 96GB available on it?

In a related article, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that the cost of software is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only $160...

http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39291080-2,00.htm
6. Intellectual property law

Print view: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/misc/print/0,1000000169,39291080-39001111c,00.htm

I like the war analogy - War against "environmental change, disease and international political and economic upheaval!" ... so, because no one likes change, and everyone has their own goals and motives first, technological advancement will not meet its full potential. AKA, we need the buggers to attack so we can unite around Ender Wiggins.

You forgot collusion, which the Kazaa owners have mysteriously settled http://www.sharmannetworks.com/content/view/full/321/

Other collusion investigations have quietly ended (surprised?) as well. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39118776,00.htm

A nice summary of how the whole thing works: http://techdirt.com/articles/20060112/1223218.shtml

This kind of mea culpa is a way to deflect the obvious control of global media distribution. They are still going to overcharge you for a DVD, and screw most of the creative/production people with questionable accounting. Please don't start a "but actors are getting paid..." discussion. A FEW actors get paid ridiculous sums, media conglomerates get paid even more and no one is the wiser.

Whether /.'ers like it or not, there's no reason to celebrate.

A more modular design of laptops would indeed be progress (also resolving upgrade/replacement/service issues), e.g. these open source, LEGO-like computer modules that run LINUX, perhaps in combination with components which stack on a shelf, combined with electronic paper displays when in 'mobile' mode. Perhaps a future as discussed earlier here.

CC.

This actually happened back in '99 - chap sent an encrypted confession of a crime to Jack Straw, pointing out that under his proposed law, he could be jailed for not releasing the key to the police.

Okay, so it's not "bombarded", but it really did happen.

CLDC 1.1 does indeed support float (but not double), and the spec was ratified in March 2003.

MIDP is actually quite a capable graphical platform these days, especially with APIs like the Mobile 3D Graphics (JSR184) and Scalable Vector Graphics (JSR226). Many high-end phones already have ARM11-class CPUs with floating point, and the new Cortex A8 and A9 also have FPUs on board. Dedicated GPUs are starting to penetrate into the top end of the mobile space. (Here's a recent link: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39290158,00.htm)

It will be interesting to see the hardware specs of the new phone and extrapolate what it's going to be able to do.

No - Linus did NOT copy Minux. He owned a copy of minux, and used it as a development platform to create Linux. He definitely did not "copy" Minux. Even Dr. Andy Tannebaum has said so.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39155268,00.htm

Addendum: having said the Eee PC 701's battery life (given its weight, size and price) is not at all bad - the question is will it support a UNIXy OS without too much hassle, and looking at the ZDNet review mentioned elsewhere, it looks like the usual story: looks like more trouble than it's worth (for me at least).

Yeah that was a pretty dumb statement. The funny thing is that he actually did try to put XP on it, almost immediately, and failed. So a colleague of his installed Ubuntu on it since he couldn't find any way to restore the original operating system.
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006278o-2000331777b,00.htm

I've been wanting a laptop of sorts for a couple of years now but they're just to big, recently started looking into UMPCs because they mostly have the same functionality of a laptop but are significantly smaller, when I saw this one I ordered it pretty quickly and I'm glad I did because I fear it's going to be slashdotted, as in if you haven't pre-ordered one you're going to have trouble getting one before christmas.

So far the nicest looking (features & looks) UMPC I've seen online is the Fujitsu LifeBook U810 UMPC, but it isn't yet widely available and with a price tag of $600 that'll translate into £400 easily (damn rip-off UK)

Did anyone else see that the CNet reviewer nuked the OS on the Eee he was reviewing? ZDNet found out when they used it after him and installed Ubuntu http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006278o-2000331777b,00.htm

And the Gutsy Gibbon seems to run great on them too! http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006278o-2000331777b,00.htm