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How about the UK: see for example here

Also, in the UK someone was fined £1000 and lost his job just for typing in a URL with "../../.." on the end of it. Story here.

Given that Microsoft was fined 280m euros, perhaps this tactic backfired.

I wondered how much that was in terms of Microsoft's income; could they afford this easily or would it really change minds? According to Gervase Markham, Microsoft made £14 million a day from Microsoft Windows client licenses alone. 280 million Euros is about £188 million today, so Microsoft will need to spend roughly half a month's worth of Windows license fees to pay off that fine. So, challenging the fine with the lawyers Microsoft is already paying (and have no intention of firing) makes a lot of financial sense. Countries around the world have shown by example that they will either back down or stifle themselves from making Microsoft do something Microsoft doesn't want to do. Therefore, there's nothing lost in trying to reduce the fine.

When the fine was announced, Neelie Kroes was quoted as saying "The fine is at a substantial level to induce Microsoft to comply. They have to behave.".

Given that Microsoft was fined 280m euros, perhaps this tactic backfired.

I wondered how much that was in terms of Microsoft's income; could they afford this easily or would it really change minds? According to Gervase Markham, Microsoft made £14 million a day from Microsoft Windows client licenses alone. 280 million Euros is about £188 million today, so Microsoft will need to spend roughly half a month's worth of Windows license fees to pay off that fine. So, challenging the fine with the lawyers Microsoft is already paying (and have no intention of firing) makes a lot of financial sense. Countries around the world have shown by example that they will either back down or stifle themselves from making Microsoft do something Microsoft doesn't want to do. Therefore, there's nothing lost in trying to reduce the fine.

When the fine was announced, Neelie Kroes was quoted as saying "The fine is at a substantial level to induce Microsoft to comply. They have to behave.".

It took a diverse, healthy, wealthy, competitive market that was good for everybody and crushed it with OEM agreements, giveaways and secret API's. This is an established truth from the US trial statement of facts. Now it is trying to do the same in Europe. And it's not just the IT sector that's affected. Nowadays defects in MS products are harming every part of the economy, public and private sector that runs on computers. These designe defects are costing billions per quarter and getting more dangerous by the year as MS begins to make inroads into infrastructure (electricity) and air transport.

So lay off with that, "aww you just hate MS" crap. Brand recognition cuts both ways.

M$ is a dangerous, anti-American movement. It's bad policy for US representatives to be pushed into doing diplomacy work for M$. M$ is most definitely not in US interests. Some politicians may have been rented, but as a nation, M$ is a bigger threat than China.

Really.

This slashgeo.org story:
All Points Blog links to a ZDNet article where we learn the time tracking tool in Google Earth Pro will now be available in Google Earth Free (and GE Plus, of course!). From the article: "The feature in which a slider is used to scroll through time [...] now features a simplified interface. [...] showing how scientists, who had tracked the movements of a whale shark using GPS, had then mapped the creature's path using the application. Business uses could include fleet tracking or mapping the movements of transport infrastructure according to Google. Jones also described how the new version would enable users to track all of the geostationary satellites orbiting the earth." Ed Parsons was first to mention this news item.

And yes, it does also work with SketchUp buildings. Meaning you can scroll through time and watch buildings evoluate. Some published KML demonstrate this.

that were rejected by the /. editors :-)
[ok, I'm too lazy, here's a direct copy of slashgeo's stories]

Following yesterday stories, izo writes "It's here. Fresh, crispy and shiny — Google Earth ver 4.0.2080 . There is new timeline interface and few new kml tags. [Although there is no demo to test it] My personal winner with this release is .dae caching and fixed refreshing. Now you can create simple "animations" with "moving" 3d objects using Update kml tag. P.S. To avoid problems with flickering mouse cursor uninstall your old GE before installing new one." Update: 09/14 13:49 GMT by S : The Google Earth Blog offers additional information including: "doing a "Check for Update" in the application will NOT get you the new version - you have to download from Google as if it were your first time for GE 4". Read Ogle Earth on the release too.

Ogle Earth was the first to share the news about today's major content update for Google Earth. OE links to a ZDNet article. While the Google Earth Blog tells us about the addition of 3D buildings in cities all over Japan. From the article: "Google Earth will include before and after satellite images of environmentally endangered locations originally published by the U.N. Environment Program as a coffee-table book." and from the Ogle Earth blog: "New stuff in the "Featured content" folder in the Layers sidebar. Some of it's been there for a while, but brand new is a layer by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), a layer by the US National Park service, and expanded global content by the Discovery Channel."

All Points Blog links to a ZDNet article where we learn the time tracking tool in Google Earth Pro will now be available in Google Earth Free (and GE Plus, of course!). From the article: "The feature in which a slider is used to scroll through time [...] now features a simplified interface. [...] showing how scientists, who had tracked the movements of a whale shark using GPS, had then mapped the creature's path using the application. Business uses could include fleet tracking or mapping the movements of transport infrastructure according to Google. Jones also described how the new version would enable users to track all of the geostationary satellites orbiting the earth." Ed Parsons was first to mention this news item.

The Google earth Blog attempts to summarize the September 8th major satellite/photo imagery update for Google Maps and Google Earth.

It has already been done with the PS2.

owning a big chunk of Gyration Inc

Ahh! that makes total sense, I always thought the Wiimote looked like a gyration mouse.
The old gyration mouse || the new one looks even more like a remote

it was pretty cool a few years ago when I had one for htpc, the tech is probably even better now. i feel better about the wiimote now.

Outside of Europe and the US, electricity is expensive, broadband is nonexistent, and dialup internet sessions are metered by the minute.

Sure. Except: The number of households and businesses worldwide with high-speed DSL Internet connections has hit 26 million -- with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong leading the way..

From the same article "The full top 20 looks like this: 1. SOUTH KOREA 2. TAIWAN 3. HONG KONG 4. Belgium 5. Canada 6. Denmark 7. Germany 8. SINGAPORE 9. JAPAN 10. Sweden.... "

Other data puts NZ, Australia, Japan and S. Korea in the top 20 per head of population.

I mean, think of it. I can now play the music I bought for my PC on my Mac. I must install a patch so I can't do that anymore.

Good thing MS was on the ball with this one. Can you imagine how many billions would be lost if they waited, say, six months to fix that? They probably saved the entire econo--er, recording industry single-handedly!

</sarcasm>

while emulators haven't received a lot of legal attention in the past, IP holders

I am an IP holder; my IP is 69.246.213.81, leased from my ISP. If you are referring to copyright, say "copyright". And yes, I am a copyright owner as well.

may also start attacking them as "adjuncts to piracy".

Could Microsoft reasonably attack Bochs, claiming that it "enables" the use of unauthorized copies of MS-DOS? No, because FreeDOS (which recently turned 1.0) works on Bochs. Likewise, when I use VisualBoyAdvance to run my own programs and others', whose copyright am I infringing?

It appears Microsoft won.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39246565,00.htm

Strange because when I was doing my Electrical Engineering degree in 1981 one of our projects was to write an OS and mini file-system for an embedded device and this was not out of the ordinary since people were doing this prior to the 1980's. You would think that File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is NOT in fact, "novel and non-obvious" at least to a trainee engineer.

Unfortunately for the Patent System it appears that what is obvious to a skilled person in that field is not obvious to people outside that field such as Law makers. Basically it appears that if you have money (and Microsoft does) then you can patent anything by bringing in their so called "Expert Witnesses".

What happened to not being able to patent a process of which software really is a mathematical process.

As far as I'm aware, Greenpeace had little to do with this story, more like grassroot protesters and Apple's own shareholders, who rightly said Dell and HP had both better policies. Apple did appear with a bad score in a Greenpeace report, but that's one voice amongst many.

Recycling is important, Apple is flush with cash and rides on the image of a modern, innovative, user-friendly company. It should be recycling more, but doesn't. In particular, currently its recycling program is limited to the continental US. I think this is not good enough. Fortunately, other companies have much better policies, whose goal is to become global.

It's interesting so watch what happens when reality intrudes harshly on the image Apple wants to give of itself.

Schwartz is in the middle of trying to pull Sun out of a very deep hole. The company's stock is still trading at under $5/share.

It seems he is doing quite well, They are positioned quite well for the future too, with companies like Google warning that power consumption has started to cost a lot more money than the hardware. That makes well engineered hardware more competetive against large numbers of cheap boxes.

Let's face it, the ONLY platform vulnerable to attacks of any kind, is MS. As seen in this article.

Hmmm.... oh yes, let's not forget that there aren't ANY kind of security notices concerning anything on linux.

Nope, definitely NOTHING about linux, or Mac OSX for that matter.

Nope, all those systems, in fact, antyhing but Windows is absolutely bulletproof. Yeap.

So, who's going to jump on the bandwagon with me and bash Microsoft because it's cool? Nevermind that these other products have flaws too, we'll just bash MS so much that no one will ever know we have problems over here with *nix systems and with MacOSX.

/sarcasm OFF

Found a reference to it: John Dvorak had a funny discussion about the article here

Actually, what is pretty cool is that you can be modded +4, Insightful when you clearly haven't read the article (or even the summary, actually).

Hint: the article is not about security vulnerabilities in Windows Mobile, it's about security problems in the apps people run on it, with the apps using poor/no encryption, or leaking data/passwords into the registry, etc. Most of these apps are not written by MS (although the example of MS Money, and it's 'pmoney' algorithm is amusing, if a little familiar).

The bit where you say it can't run on non-Apple hardware. http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180, 39235916,00.htm

True, there are legal considerations to be had... but OS X can run quite happily on a PC from a technical standpoint.

Yahoo has not only censored information on its China-based web site but has also, actively, helped Beijing to arrest, imprison, and torture people who commit "thought crimes".

Yahoo's actions are understandable even if they cannot be condoned. Half of the team that established Yahoo is a Chinese from Taiwan. His name is Jerry Yang.

In Chinese society, people are mostly indifferent to human rights.

Yang simply steered his company along similar lines. He enthusiastically set up a joint venture with Alibaba, a Chinese company, long before Yahoo's competitors entered China.

The working atmosphere inside Yahoo reflects, to a certain extent, Chinese values. We Slashdotters may be concerned about human rights, but most employees within the walls of Yahoo just do not care. To them, Yahoo = 8 hours of daily work = paycheck. Whether a victim of Chinese brutality rots in a Beijing prison matters not a wit to the Yahoo employees.

Just buy a network storage device with a RAID

Fire, Flood, Theft, Hardware faulure (esp the RAID controller) RAID IS NOT BACKUP!

Copying it to newer media when hard drives are obsolted is an excellent suggestion but if your serious about photos lasting 100 years removable media is needed (preferably two copys one kept offsite). Unfortunatly there are no good domestic backup options, DVD degrate, HDD can fail (even when powered down), tapes are way too expensive. The Iomega Rev drive looks interesting but (click) is untested

Perhaps the best suggestion I've seen is effectivly doing a DVD RAID and make a parity disk here and here for details, I only have one reservation about the suggestion in thoes posts. They propose burning the PAR2 files onto the same DVD I'd be inclined to burn it to a seperate disk but leave the outer sectors of the data disk blank as the outer edge is often the first part to fail (as the plastic splits apart). for extra peace of mind reburn (or at least test) the backups every couple of years.

"Oh my god! You saw that new app they released on Linux? I can't wait for it to be ported to Windows!"?

This was actually true a few months ago. Then someone released a semi-working build of Evolution for Windows. (I have a copy) I'm going to wait until a good stable build is released before I start replacing outlook on my customer's machines. The ones that need it now, have been switched to Thunderbird.

http://evolution-win32.sourceforge.net/download.ph p
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,3902039 6,39202478,00.htm

I'm sure these had no effect on DirectX taking off:

Microsoft claim shakes graphics world
3D graphics world shaken by patent claims
Standards stalled over royalty disputes
Microsoft clarifies OpenGL position...sort of
OpenGL 1.4 unveiled

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,213507 4,00.htm and http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59565,00. html come to mind, everytime I pull a fresh crisp note from the money machine. In Amsterdam (Netherlands) public transport is switching to a mag-stripe card system. Things are getting worse and worse, every failure of law inforcement results in stricter regulation for the rest of society. Internet, phone, transport: nothing is excluded from spying and prying eyes.

Ira Levin wrote a nice story, This Perfect Day, describing a society in which every action is attached to a person, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Perfect_Day. I said nice, not brilliant, but entertaining.

You probably have some insider information but everything I read so far suggested that with hardware virtualization support Xen can run unmodified Windows. See Xen passes Windows milestone for example. Another example, Novell follows Red Hat with Xen announcement which says "But with hardware features in Intel processors today and AMD processors due in coming months, Xen will be able to run other operating systems as well, including Microsoft Windows.".

Perdona....

Try this - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39278431,00.htm

The funny thing is, the US has unoffically admitted that the EU stance is actually quite a good one - http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,3...39278 431,00.htm

This procedure will benefit everyone; more-opennes == more competition == greater choice for consumers.

That caused one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions the world has ever seen and significant damage to the Soviet economy?

If the ISP gets paid by other networks to recieve data from the ISP then the ISP might think twice about closing accounts that create large amount of revenue for it.

As others have pointed out, the tiny number of customers in question probably aren't generating large amounts of revenue for the ISP.

Moreover, the fact that the ISP has been told about the infringing use of their network potentially lays them open to huge legal liability. We had Godfrey vs. Demon back in 1999, and ISPs in the UK have been shivering ever since.

Ok, you seem to have a clue, so I have a question. Is this really new? These cars must already been using embedded systems for their data measuring on-to-go and data transport. I also remember e.g. the compaq or HP advertizements for their F1 computers, and they were actually mentioning that they were using linux. Would this move actually mean that Microsoft is trying to get the linux systems out for these 'showcase' Formula 1 pcs? And is it likely to work?

That was hillarious, thanks. A good way to start off my morning.

Apparently they've been planning on this for some time now. Check out the prequel to this story from last January. It's about as equally informative as the "update."

Yes, exactly.

Open Source is totally unprofitable

when the greeks banned video games http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/mobile/0,39020360 ,2121692,00.htm too much sun, me thinks

Actually, one can argue that the only reason why DX is successful is because of its submissions, or should I say acquisitions. Microsoft joined OpenGL ARB and all they did was stall the OpenGL with threats of patent infringement. That's all that was needed for them to take the lead. Any graphics developer will tell you what a fine API DirectX is.

You know what that means, right? It means that not accepting MS Office files is just the tip of the iceberg. It means every other format the government uses will have to be open too, including audio/video codecs, and -- best yet -- CAD FORMATS!

Well, from the real article this seems not to be so simple.

They use sentences like "Belgium's government departments will be instructed to use an open file format for internal communications", "all document exchanges within the services of the Belgian Government will have to be in an open, standard format" and "Belgium's Federal services must use ODF when exchanging documents, though other formats will still be allowed for internal use". (The sucky emphasis is mine)

And when you take into account the fact of AutoCAD's DWG being de facto standard and the fact that principles and reality often collide in decisions like this, I wouldn't throw my AutoCAD away just yet.

Nevertheless it's exciting to see what this decision does in reality and what this means for European Union...

I want to know why these guys switched from Solaris to Linux when Solaris is now free?

Can anyone with first hand knowledge answer my question?

From TFA:

'the development of KDE was part funded by the German government.'

That might have had something to do with it too.

...selling at less then half the price

...better understanding of the market then we do

Item #9 please?

Check out: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/22/bt_21cn_re ynolds/ and http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks /0,39020427,39220184,00.htm

And there's been plenty more discussion about this online and in the UK media. Probably been posted or commented on here too...

Apparently you aren't actually keeping up with the industry.

Symantec's CEO, John Thompson, made comments that everyone ought to buy a Mac.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39269294,00.htm

(Disclaimer: I work for Symantec. My opinions are my own and not necessarily reflective of my employer.)

Did you just compare OS X to Win 98 and Win Me? If that's what you are basing your whole OS X / Windows argument on, there is your problem. No self respecting Windows user would be caught dead using an OS that old. It would be like running Mandrake 2.x or something. Why would you bother?

Exactly. That's why I'm comparing OS X to Win 98 and ME in terms of virus activity. They have similar market share (roughly 5%), and 98/ME is innundated with current day viruses. An OS X virus would have as much impact economically/socially, but vastly more impact in the media (Worlds First Automated OS X worm).

However, whether you like it or not, computers are as accessible as they are largely because of Microsoft and not because of *nix or Apple.

That's a goofy statement. There's no way to prove it true or false, but I see no reason why OS/2, Novell's GUI efforts, XFree86, or Macintosh OS could have made computing accessible.

The reason I hate Microsoft is not because they are successful. The reason I hate Microsoft is because they ruthlessly (and unethically) bash companies into the ground via illegal tactics. And this is not a disputable claim; it's been verified, repeatedly, in court. Even worse, the above merely refers to contractual fraud/deception; include monopoly tactics, and the picture is bleaker.

Even the venerable IE has its roots in a shady deal with a company (SpyGlass) who would have _never_ licensed to Microsoft had they known what Microsoft was planning.

Furthermore, Microsoft fills the airwaves with disgusting, falsehood-ridden fud. "Linux is a cancer" "Our customers aren't interested in interoperability" "Linux is 10 times as expensive to run as Windows" "Linux was stolen from Minix"

Not to mention Microsoft contribution of both FUD and $$ to the SCO case.

Yes, its safe to say I hate them. In terms of business ethics, Microsoft is pretty much as low as you can go.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39118537,00.htm

Or has the law changed since 2003?

Mind you, that's a standard British wall socket.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/i/z/nw/illo/story-graphics/ jade-intergration.jpg

http://www.tradekey.com/product_view/id/59861.htm

No! As mentioned in several of the replies to that comment, that's not a solid state drive. Google the part number and go to the second page and you'll find the stats, which clearly states it's a 5400 RPM hard drive.

According to this month-old article about Samsung announcing (probably not coincidentally) a 32GB flash hard drive gives a price of it over $900.

It took a leaked Microsoft memo to find out Windows 2000 shipped with 65,000 bugs. Even the author of the memo wrote, ""How many of you would spend $500 on a piece of software with over 63,000 potential known defects?"

The problem is with a number that large, no matter how small the proportion is to code size, the backlash would be huge. No potential customer could hear that number and then actually want to buy a copy. I believe they should disclose as much information as possible. But from their perspective no amount of marketing could make up for the negative impact of disclosure.

Businesses and individuals may soon have to release their encryption keys to the police or face imprisonment, when Part 3 of the RIP Act comes into effect

(UK)

But we do put bugs in computer systems that we sell to foreign governments. During the cold war the Soviets and Chinese had to beg, borrow and steal US computer equipment. You better believe that most of what they could get their hands on had spy equipment or flaws onboard. Stolen US software directly caused the largest non-nuclear explosion ever seen from space.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020381,391479 17,00.htm

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180, 39235916,00.htm

Forgot the link.

In a 2006 report titled "Still no reaction from Yahoo! after fourth case of collaboration with chinese police uncovered", Reporters without Borders pleaded, "Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo! to withdraw its Internet servers from China as a fourth case was revealed of the company's collaboration with Chinese police that led to the jailing of a cyberdissident."

Keeping the servers in the United States of America (USA) would ensure that any Chinese policeman (a.k.a. thug) seeking e-information must first submit his request through American diplomatic channels. Of course, once the Chinese thug's request reaches the Americans, the Americans will just flush the request down the toilet.

Note that although both Google and Microsoft have censored their search engines in China, both Google and Microsoft continue to keep their servers in the United States of America. Yet, Yahoo continues to keep their servers (serving the Chinese market) in China. Yahoo has thus far refused to move its servers to the USA.

>C) From the article "McKinnon faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine." How is that a disproportionate sentence?

It's in line with sentences for some violent crimes, which this was not. Especially since, according to other sources, he's facing a possible 70 year sentence. Judges seldom apply the theoretical maximum, but reflect that 70 years is a de facto life sentence and any proposed plea bargain will be an offer he can't refuse.

hi SwiftKick, thanks for doing a critical reading of my review. Seriously. Who wants someone to say only good things about their work? You never learn anything that way.

Okay, now having said that, put up your dukes, dude, because you are WRONG! ;-) and here's why.

How does it merit 9/10 stars when it has so many drawbacks (which you listed on the last page) that could be considered pretty serious? Good question. Answer: because of the Pepper Pad's POTENTIAL!! Sure, there are problems, which I outlined in the article, but look at what the PP can be in the future. Please re-read the section entitled the ghost of Mark Andreeson returns:

"Marc Andreeson once boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to a slightly buggy set of drivers, and with the Pepper Pad, you can see a tiny microcosm of how that could yet come true."

http://madpenguin.org/cms/index.php/?m=show&id=682 7&page=3

If you look at the Pepper Pad only as a toy, which is its selling point to individual consumers, you are not seeing the big picture. IMHO, the Pepper Pad deserves a 9/10 because it is one small additional voice toward emphasizing that the "Network is the Computer", and the operating system is less relevant. Please read "Seeing What's Next" by Clayton Christensen, Erik Roth, and Scott Anthony. There, they talk in depth about how disruptive innovations such as the Pepper Pad could be the undoing of Microsoft's monopoly. Here, in summary, is what Christensen thinks of web applications and Microsoft:

"Where Linux takes root is in new applications, like Web servers and handheld devices. As those get better, applications will get sucked off the desktop onto the Internet, and that's what will undo Microsoft," he [Christensen] said. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,3902039 6,39170562,00.htm

Remember, SwiftKick, Sony unseated then-market leader RCA by using underpowered transistors in handeheld radios that, at first, underperformed RCA's desktop radios' sound quality. RCA, like Microsoft, had lots, lots more money and market power, but those virtues were eroded rapidly as RCA abandoned transistors to Sony's tiny, weak radios. RCA spent lots on R & D, but concluded that they 1) transistors had no place in RCA's high margin, vacuum tube desktop radios, which emphasized good volume and good sound; 2) RCA had no business case for selling low-margin transistor radios. You can read more about that history in my article here http://linux.sys-con.com/read/46891.htm?CFID=37723 &CFTOKEN=8D2FC61E-57CA-1091-4E26E06B45B1DB04

If you look only at what the Pepper Pad is today, you're not seeing its importance, IMHO.