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Microsoft investing $1Billion in TCI
Posted by mojoski on Friday January 02, 1998 @01:13AM
from the one-more-step-towards-ruling-the-world dept.

ZD-Net News is reporting that Micrsoft is about to announce a $1 Billion investment in Tele-Communications Inc. Looks like they might have control over the whole set-top box industry after all.. What do you think?

1. I have seen no evidence that Apple has increased the speed of its patching of security vulnerabilities since the study was conducted (this latest patch delay being just one example). Do you have any evidence that Apple has changed?

2. Red Hat is the best-supported corporate Desktop Linux distro, so it makes since to use them as a base of comparison as opposed to something more consumer-oriented like Ubuntu.

3. Multiple other studies have show that Apple lags behind in fixing security flaws.[1] [2]

Do you have any actual quantitative data to present to provide some context or counterpoint to the data I have presented, because speculation and cherry-picking is not really a valid criticism. The truth is in the numbers.

SOURCES:

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

[2] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/secu...

Well Kitkat is apparently making good inroads as it went from 13.6% in June to 24.5% [android.com] in early September

iOS 8 was at 46 percent after four days. Obviously, since Apple control all the hardware, it's much easier for them to get people to upgrade, but it's still a big problem for the Android ecosystem. Presumably, app developers are having to support fairly ancient versions of the operating system in order to reach a sizeable proportion of the market, whereas an iOS developer can reach 95% of the installed base with an iOS7+ app.

The Microsoft that delays releasing patches for zero-day vulnerabilities so the NSA can exploit them first? The one that took 7 years to fix a known vulnerability? The one that took 7 months to fix a remote IE exploit after it was reported, just because it wasn't public enough?

And with linux, as long as you install from your distribution (that already have most if not all that you will ever need to install), you have security fixes for all of what you have installed, not just the kernel or a minimal core of apps.

No you can't.. Support for the i386 was dropped in kernel 3.8

You can easily google for it on lots of other sites, but you knew that right? We may never know if it was exploited, but it was certainly extremely easy to exploit, so it doesn't fall anywhere near the realm of a "hypothetical" bug.

As far as google serving up ads with malware, (a) that didn't go on for 18 months, and (b) while I don't condone javascript in ads (or ever have this enabled), this is actually, generally, a lot safer than it used to be. This particular malware, which made the news precisely because it is rare for google to serve malware, requires either an ancient flash install or an unpatched XP/IE installation, in order to infect a system.

Trying to serve others' javascript safely is a much more complex problem than implementing SSL correctly, and that this attack for ancient systems went on for half-a-month, while Apple's exploit for all current iOS systems was available for 18 months, may not be making the point you think it is.

cherry picking is not a good argument

No, much better to make blanket assertions that Apple handles data better because that isn't its business (which is the original assertion that I was responding to).

Those examples were just that -- examples. Did you bother to read the link I gave about how apps from the same companies leak more user data on Apple than on Android?

I'm gonna go build my own slashdot, with blackjack and hookers!

... I think the bar should be much higher..

Wait... old slashdot, blackjack, hookers, AND a bar designed for tall people? Shut up and take my money.

Okay.

On a more serious note, I'm one of many that would be willing to a pay a small amount for an ad-free Facebook experience. Remove the ads and the buzzfeeds, the link-spam, and remove everything with more than 10 'shares' or reposts. Show me only my actual friend updates and comments and photos. In fact, that was in the news last year. Social Fixer is good for a workaround, but the company could make people the customer instead of the product if they wanted.

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone

Nope. They sure can't! We mostly agreed that this was a non-issue (aside from the fact that Apple claimed their fingerprint reader read *below* the surface, which this hack clearly shows to be false) because who would go through that much hassle to access your phone data? In reality, a large number of people would, but not your typical phone thief. Of course, your typical phone thief *will* go through that trouble to access your entire wallet.

Linux computer for senior citizens
or roll your own. There are some incredibly lower power linux compatible boxes around. Like a mint box or those atom boxes that people use for HTPC builds. Throw a light distro on there with some windows theme to camouflage it. get a modem and be done with it.

maybe you could ssh/ vpn in to fix stuff, maybe you cant. But for sending large files I don't know why you wouldn't just ship them flash drives with whatever you wanted to show them. it would cost very little to send them back and forth.

Maybe you could attach them to carrier pigeons or something.

if gmail is blocked, then you're in an unusual situation where nobody here can give you good advice without knowing more about what's going on.

Get everything through Tor with bridge? That of course assumes that you can install tor with bridge list somewhere else, and at some point update tor on site.

Speaking of which, OpenBSD/illumos might be a good idea comparatively because of their less popularity compare to linux (so even less malwares target those given what they do on a regular basis.)

Have you given any thought to what Tor would be like on dial-up? You've gone off into a pretty goofy solution simply to justify getting his parents to use gmail instead of a local mail client. Why not use Occam's Razor here before we fill up the cart at best buy with all the latest stuff and build some Rube Goldberg type monstrosity that needs a killowatt more power than their hut can provide.

Just let them stick to their email provider for now and buy them a linux computer for old people

You can convert them to the google/apple/microsoft cult later on.

You and Bill Gates agree...

http://www.zdnet.com/bill-gate...

most kickstarters that I've seen get big money, like the iPod dock & blender/boombox/coolerwere recursive projects...the 'thank you' gift is the product that the company you're supporting is trying to make

it's silly...but i'm glad kickstarter and the like exist...they should just adapt their message & rules just a bit to make this weird moebius strip of commerce and charity unnecessary

as far as gaming, if people want to donate money to an idea, screenshot, and prayer then I think they should be able to...

fyi, that ipod dock kickstarter i linked to above is an insane roller coaster & exhibit A of how kickstarter can be good and bad...the guy ended up barely breaking even after a new ipod design came out right during his production and he had to do several recalls...it was a disaster...

IMHO the Elevation Dock is an example of...something...i'm not hating but it's obvious most of these kickstarter millionaires have no clue what they are doing & spend more time on pictures and the video than product design at times...but that's my jealousy. If people want to throw money away for questionable 'innovations' then that's their choice...the system exists, not all kickstarter products will be crap

Since HP is apparently paying every tech news site include Slashdot not to mention their recent court ruling, I'll just leave this here:

Dude, what are you talking about?

It was on the frigging front page this morning, ZDNet, and a bunch of other places have covered it.

If you're gonna claim some kind of conspiracy theory, at least go with one that's plausible.

No, you can use a 2400dpi photo of the fingerprint on the glass: http://www.zdnet.com/apple-iphone-fingerprint-reader-confirmed-as-easy-to-hack-7000021065/. It's not trivial, but it's certainly not beyond a determined attacker.

Australia's land mass is comparable to that of the US but with roughly half the population of California, however there's more competition between ISP's in rural Ballarat than there is in downtown Los Angeles.\

I just tested my speed on zdnet and it comes out at ~18mbps, a pleasant surprise since it was ~12mbps for many years, the faster speed has not increased my bill. ZDnet also have an informative list of average speeds by nation, spoiler the US can't even keep up with NZ.

*slow clap* because anecdotal evidence

I hate to break it to you (actually no, I enjoy it) but Blu-Ray is a dead format, Sony won the physical media war just in time for digital media to enter the scene

http://www.zdnet.com/whatever-...

Want an eye opener? Ok!
Blu-Ray sales (ending June 29th)
http://www.the-numbers.com/wee...
Biggest seller? Frozen with 7 million units

DVD sales (ending June 29th)
http://www.the-numbers.com/wee...
Biggest seller? Transformers with 16 million units, oh and there are more big numbers in that list adding up to an overwhelming difference in per unit sales

Maybe it's just a slow month you say? Here are the numbers for 2013:
http://www.the-numbers.com/hom...
http://www.the-numbers.com/hom...

Same story. DVD is still consistently moving more units, much to my surprise, I honestly thought it would be closer.

All this format war / pissing match conversation is pointless anyway because the day of the disc is done and digital sales will continue to increase.

http://bgr.com/2014/01/08/digi...

Turns out a stream from Netflix is good enough for most people, packaged media is dead meat

Personally speaking, I prefer the BluRay copy of "Breaking Bad" then a not quite always HD stream... then again I have a record collection, so what does that say about me

but the fact remains... Windows/Microsoft has been playing catch-up in security where Linux has been leading over the last decade.

So where are those facts?

Because they way I look at it there has been several embarrasing, high-profile successful attacks on Linux servers over the past few years:

Debian server compromised: http://www.zdnet.com/debian-se...
Ubuntu servers compromised: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
kernel.org compromised: http://lwn.net/Articles/457142... (we're still waiting for the post morten on that)
linuxfoundation.org and linux.com compromised: http://thehackernews.com/2011/...
red hat and fedora servers compromised: http://www.cnet.com/news/red-h...

(and we do not even mention the OpenSSL fiasco)

So where are the widespread Windows Server compromises?

To be frank, I don't think anyone bothers reporting on them anymore. For a journalist "Linux server compromised" sounds far more sexy than "windows server compromised." These guys, after all, have to get readers in order to put food on the table.

but the fact remains... Windows/Microsoft has been playing catch-up in security where Linux has been leading over the last decade.

So where are those facts?

Because they way I look at it there has been several embarrasing, high-profile successful attacks on Linux servers over the past few years:

Debian server compromised: http://www.zdnet.com/debian-se...
Ubuntu servers compromised: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
kernel.org compromised: http://lwn.net/Articles/457142... (we're still waiting for the post morten on that)
linuxfoundation.org and linux.com compromised: http://thehackernews.com/2011/...
red hat and fedora servers compromised: http://www.cnet.com/news/red-h...

(and we do not even mention the OpenSSL fiasco)

So where are the widespread Windows Server compromises?

Also if they're free as in freedom.

With respect to he VLC media player ... Apple didn't care it was GPL, the developer was OK with the App Store, but a 3rd party threatened to sue Apple so Apple pulled the app.

"The iOS VLC app was created by Applidium, a French mobile software company. In an Ars Technica interview, Applidium co-founder Romain Goyet said "The way I see it, we're not violating anyone's freedom. We worked for free, opened all our source code, and the app is available for free for anyone to download. People are enjoying a nice free and open source video player on the AppStore, and some people are trying to ruin it in the name of 'freedom.'" ... In a follow-up VideoLAN mailing list post, VideoLAN association president Jean-Baptiste Kempf wrote, "With 'friends' like you, we don't need any enemies. If I understand correctly, the FSF new policy is to blow up communities?""
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open...

The FSF argues that Apple prohibits modifying and/or redistributing the app. That is a somewhat bogus argument. The binary is digitally signed, it won't run if modified or transferred to another device lacking the appropriate key. However the source code is available. A user is free to modify and distribute in terms of source code. They can submit their modified alternative binary to the app store. They can give a few friends binaries via ad hoc distribution. Yes, this costs money. The GPL doesn't prohibit things costing money, you can charge for distribution if you like and people are free to ignore your distribution and go to the source code. Nor does the GPL doesn't mandate a free developer environment.

Its seems the FSF has far more to do with GPL apps not being on iOS than Apple.

If they are unrelated arguments the why did you puth them in the same paragraph? If they are unrelated then your following statement is unsupported; Recognizer parking marks: already done some years ago, it's basic computer vision technology.

So the second part has nothing to do with parking so why is it in the thread about parking?

Here is how the Audi did it.

You said

"References? If you are talking about the DARPA Grand Challenges [wikipedia.org] noe of the winning technology was even close to commercially viable. They were proof of concept at best."

I was answering that.

The car uses an array of internal and external sensors to get its position: Audi claims they can be as accurate up to 10cm, but only if they have access to special laser sensors inside the parking structure (four of those scanners had been set up in the parking structure to support the demo). These might be redundant in the future, as the car maker is working on a laser sensor that will be integrated in the car itself (think the sensor tower on top of Google's self-driving car, but completely integrated in the chassis).

The self-parking system also needs access to the car park's management system, in order to find and allocate a free parking space and transmit the route to the car. Since most modern car parks have more than one level or are underground, GPS-based positioning is not really an option, so instead the management system uses Wi-Fi to transmit the route.

That's lots of infrastructure. In the second video the driver selected the spot and there was a car to park next to. The Volvo scenario has three strategically placed cars to mark the parking spot. Notice that the car drove across many painted lines, a no-no in most lots, and ignored many parking spots. That video looks very suspicious considering the car starts and ends in the exact same place every time. Running a car on a script with a simple algorithm to stop and wait for an obstacle to move is a trick.

I doubt that any of those vehicles given an open parking lot would know where to park. The forward parking problem is not "solved".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijk3iXu9Kpk

This clearly shows that CV was able to detect street marks as soon as 2009.

More on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It may not be "solved" as in "everybody will have it on every car tomorrow", but as in "the tech is proven, is there and it's evolving steadily".

If they are unrelated arguments the why did you puth them in the same paragraph? If they are unrelated then your following statement is unsupported;
Recognizer parking marks: already done some years ago, it's basic computer vision technology.

So the second part has nothing to do with parking so why is it in the thread about parking?

Here is how the Audi did it.

The car uses an array of internal and external sensors to get its position: Audi claims they can be as accurate up to 10cm, but only if they have access to special laser sensors inside the parking structure (four of those scanners had been set up in the parking structure to support the demo). These might be redundant in the future, as the car maker is working on a laser sensor that will be integrated in the car itself (think the sensor tower on top of Google's self-driving car, but completely integrated in the chassis).

The self-parking system also needs access to the car park's management system, in order to find and allocate a free parking space and transmit the route to the car. Since most modern car parks have more than one level or are underground, GPS-based positioning is not really an option, so instead the management system uses Wi-Fi to transmit the route.

That's lots of infrastructure.
In the second video the driver selected the spot and there was a car to park next to.
The Volvo scenario has three strategically placed cars to mark the parking spot. Notice that the car drove across many painted lines, a no-no in most lots, and ignored many parking spots. That video looks very suspicious considering the car starts and ends in the exact same place every time. Running a car on a script with a simple algorithm to stop and wait for an obstacle to move is a trick.

I doubt that any of those vehicles given an open parking lot would know where to park. The forward parking problem is not "solved".

Personally I would be terrified by a "German mark of approval" on an IT product:
http://www.zdnet.com/german-id...

Here's a link to the article, since the editor didn't see fit to provide one.

I found it:

http://www.zdnet.com/death-of-the-car-the-tech-behind-helsinkis-ambitious-plan-to-kill-off-private-vehicles-7000032735/

Here

This was covered zdnet.com. Apparently the submitter forgot his link.

http://www.zdnet.com/death-of-...

AFAIK it's the only mobile OS doing so.

That seems to be true. Here's additional proof that Windows Phone and iOS do not currently support such feature.

So?

I used to run a big adult site. We wanted servers closer to the customers for speed. We made enough that we didn't really care about the connection costs. We'd put up server farms around the world where it suited our customers best.

We owned every piece of equipment in our cabinet or cage (depending on the location). The provider equipment ended at the fiber they dropped to us, and the power outlets.

Netflix was hosted with Amazon for a while. A couple years ago, they claimed to have started their own CDN.

Their own CDN site talks about putting Netflix gear out for free. So they are basically saying they want the free ride. No one gets rack space, power, and connections for free. The right thing to do would be to lease the space like everyone else does.

But hey, they're loving to cry about being treated unfairly. They are the loudest ones about it. Honestly, other than speed complaints that are usually a fault, not a conspiracy, I don't know of anyone else talking about the same thing.

It is possible that the world is ganging up on Netflix. It happened to Cogent, more than once. That was mostly they refused to pay on their contractual obligations.

Took 5-seconds to find:

http://www.zdnet.com/the-true-...

http://www.biznix.org/whylinux...

See subject-line, & even more examples (more than ever before & FAR from a complete total) - & adbanners ROB THE SPEED/BANDWIDTH WE PAY TO BE ONLINE as well:

Black Hat: Ad networks lay path to million-strong browser botnet

http://www.itworld.com/securit...

OpenX ad servers "pre-compromised" - official distro contained remote code backdoor:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

Ad exec: Online ad industry complicit in NSA PRISM datamining:

http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...

Bing serving malware ridden ads:

http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

APK

P.S.=> Had enough yet, raymorris? I've got even MORE coming (as to what folks think of adbanners slowing them down, stealing their speed/bandwidth they PAID FOR to be online no less, folks NOT liking being tracked by adbanners, & advertisers STEALING FOLKS' BROWSING HISTORIES even)... apk

Having seen plenty of code from Asia, I'll take code from the United States any day. The worst code I have ever dealt with all came from China and Taiwan. The worst code I saw came from this Chinese company: http://www.zdnet.com/hack-in-t...

It seems what was tracked in the past has now moved to a drift net system.
From 2007 "....a tracking system capable of pinpointing specific workstations that searched for and downloaded....."
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/secu...

The French police seem to have had a good amount of success as well: http://www.zdnet.com/french-po...

There are probably always going to be use cases for the majority of users to be fine with Open or Libre office. Some specialized functionality in finance might merit excel. There is nothing I've found on Linux that easily replaces Visio or Project ( libre-project is fine for reading, but I've had many issues with creating them). It's what I use at home (lubuntu). At work, I do have to say I prefer Outlook/Exchange for integrated mail and calendar, but I could probably live without Word/Excel/PPT.

Here's to hoping Libreoffice and the other forks can continue to expand and refine their software.

http://www.zdnet.com/what-one-...

To make solar cost competitive with fossil fuels you have to do some massive number fudging

False.

by exaggerating the cost of every single externality beyond all logical bounds

You mean "count them at all". Every penny in solar must be counted, from mining materials through installation. But the side effects of fossil fuels - ones that have been with us for some time now, not future hypotheticals - are discounted. Floods, droughts, fires, famine, pollution - are not allowed into the storyline.

Is that not disclosed in their Terms of Service or is it more like, "big boobs on TV so I didn't bother to read the agreement"?

Hi. Compliance with the accredited registrar policy is not optional; it is part of a signed agreement between the registrar and ICANN. ICANN posted an advisory clearly alerting registrars to their obligations: 1. Registrars are prohibited from denying a domain name transfer request based on non-payment of fees for pending or future registration periods during the Auto-Renew Grace Period; and 2. A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.

GoDaddy adopted practices that were directly contrary to the ICANN policy.

It doesn't matter if GoDaddy disclosed it in the terms of service, the ICANN terms have priority: the practice was a violation of policies that accredited registrars have promised to adhere to, before being allowed to be accredited registrars, and before being able to maintain that status and any access to the registry database or the ability to be in the business of transferring or creating domain registrations.

You lack faith in Microsoft, sir.

Windows 8 is going wonderful! Everyone loves the new UI. That is why Windows 9 will never bring back the Start menu. Just watch, you'll see!

PC Sales are not being affected by the new mobile device trend. Microsoft will dominate mobile devices and phones any day now! You'll see!

Oh, and some day Microsoft will make a dent in data centers, and Microsoft Azure Cloud will become important. Of course, Azure Cloud is the only cloud service that was built for Windows instead of Linux workloads. And Windows is used by some large* computing cluster users, um, somewhere. And businesses using Linux workloads would be happy to trust their business built on Linux to Microsoft, a company that to this very day is working to destroy Linux.

(*and by large, I mean much larger scale than you are thinking if you are thinking of Windows)

You're telling us not to trust a web based service, but then tell us you keep your data shared like google drive or dropbox? I see no appreciable difference in practice there. Lastpass is essentially Keepass + a specialized dropbox-type service. Your advice is especially ironic given the spotty security dropbox is known for.

At some point, you have to make informed decisions about the tradeoffs between security and convenience. For me, using Lastpass is a convenient way to synchronize the strongest possible unique passwords - essentially gibberish - across my multiple computers. I feel that having strong, unique passwords across the web is critical to keeping my numerous accounts secure.

This is exactly how security is supposed to work - a researcher discovers a potential flaw, discloses it to the vulnerable companies, who then promptly fix it and discloses this fact in detail to it's customers. The system is arguably more secure than before, not less.

Incidentally, as it turns out, this attack is apparently only applicable to those not using a browser plugin. That's not to discount the seriousness, but I was never actually vulnerable to this attack, since I only use Lastpass from my PC using Firefox + Lastpass plugin.

Oh come on now... the guy may be a tea party-aligned rape fugitive who overrode his political party to caucus with the Neo-Nazis, gave the dictator of Belarus an advance on leaks to be used in purges against his enemies, attempted to blackmail aid agencies by threatening to release information that could get their sources killed (including Amnesty International, to the tune of $700k), makes his volunteers sign 7-figure ultra-repressive NDAs, caused the defection of most of Wikileaks's staff due to complaints from authoritarianism to diverting the organization's money to himself, writes on his blog about how he's a god to women and women's brains can't do math, made a fake op-ed in the name of one of his opponents supposedly supporting him and promoted it with a fake twitter account in his name, wanted his book to be called "Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores", wanted it to be full of his sex stories and at one point interrupted his ghostwriter to leer at a couple of 14-year-olds before remarking that one was "fine until I saw the teeth", cyberstalked a 17 year old before he got famous, and so on down the line ad nauseum... ....that's still no reason to wish him ill.

The sounds of your speech were immediately encoded into a compact digital form that preserves its information. The signal from your connected phone was relayed wirelessly through a nearby cell tower and through a series of land lines back to your Internet Service Provider where it then communicated with a server in the cloud, loaded with a series of models honed to comprehend language.

Simultaneously, your speech was evaluated locally, on your device. A recognizer installed on your phone communicates with that server in the cloud to gauge whether the command can be best handled locally -- such as if you had asked it to play a song on your phone -- or if it must connect to the network for further assistance. (If the local recognizer deems its model sufficient to process your speech, it tells the server in the cloud that it is no longer needed: "Thanks very much, we're OK here.")

The server compares your speech against a statistical model to estimate, based on the sounds you spoke and the order in which you spoke them, what letters might constitute it. (At the same time, the local recognizer compares your speech to an abridged version of that statistical model.) For both, the highest-probability estimates get the go-ahead.

Based on these opinions, your speech -- now understood as a series of vowels and consonants -- is then run through a language model, which estimates the words that your speech is comprised of. Given a sufficient level of confidence, the computer then creates a candidate list of interpretations for what the sequence of words in your speech might mean.

If there is enough confidence in this result, and there is -- the computer determines that your intent is to send an SMS, Erica Olssen is your addressee (and therefore her contact information should be pulled from your phone's contact list) and the rest is your actual note to her -- your text message magically appears on screen, no hands necessary. If your speech is too ambiguous at any point during the process, the computers will defer to you, the user: did you mean Erica Olssen, or Erica Schmidt?

Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?

For the benefit of those, such as myself, who did not get the reference, CCC is a low bond credit rating.

Also, a couple of things to keep in mind here about the history of MS corporate strategy. First, MS has a record of adopting (e. g. Kerberos) or imposing (e.g. OpenXML) open standards for the purpose of corrupting or abusing those standards. A record of unscrupulous behavior breeds distrust and it would be reasonable to suspect that MS could have something similar on mind for the Android platform. Good summary of the Kerberos episode here:

In November 1998 an internal memo leaked out of Microsoft which clearly stated that Open Source software not only performs and scales much better than Microsoft Products (it discussed especially the quality and availability of Linux), but also proposed that Microsoft attack these superior products by "de-commoditizing protocols". In other words, when faced with a superior competitor, Microsoft's preferred approach is to corrupt global standards and to introduce proprietary protocols that bind the user to the Microsoft environment.

Don't believe me; see for yourself - read the Halloween documents, made available by Eric S. Raymond. Incidentally, Microsoft has acknowledged the authenticity of these documents and actually responded to them. It's interesting reading. Very.

A good example of this policy in action (apart from the HTML and Java deviations described above) is Microsoft's attempt to appropriate the Kerberos protocol. Kerberos is an authentication protocol developed by MIT, distributed as Open Source software. Microsoft added an "innovative improvement" to Kerberos, by misusing a reserved field to specify whether or not an NT machine was allowed to authenticate another Kerberos system, rendering this corrupted version of Kerberos incompatible with Open Source versions in the process. (The misuse of a reserved field, or any field for that matter, is of course a gross violation of protocol standards.) Then Microsoft went on to state that they had "created" an "improved version of Kerberos", called the result their own intellectual property, and threatened to sue anyone who would dare to put it in their software, including Kerberos' inventor MIT. Only the global uproar that followed caused Microsoft to reconsider this nonsense.

Secondly, and more innocuously, someone at MS might have wised up and realized that profits from their Android patent licensing would be better than losses from another round of failed MS OS phone investment.

Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft?

Definitely not. This might have been so in the 1990s and early 2000s. But Microsoft is nowadays a major kernel contributor and has been offering Linux as a first-class operating systemn on the Azure cloud computing platform since at least 2010.

This article may help you understand why Oracle continues to grow (they just surpassed IBM in revenues from enterprise software sales).

To summarise it quickly for you:

• Worldwide software revenue totalled $407.3bn last year
• Microsoft continues to be the unquestionable enterprise software giant
• Oracle which narrowly overtook IBM is in second place
• Oracle's strong showing was thanks to trends such as big data and analytics.
• The software industry is in the middle of a "multiyear cyclical transition"
• Cloud is driving the bulk of this change
• Pure cloud player Salesforce.com is now the tenth largest enterprise software vendor

Many of the top 10 enterprise software companies are not sexy brands, and most do not even have any consumer products or services. Names that dominate this list include Oracle, IBM, SAP, EMC, CA Technologies and Salesforce.com.

So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do.

Really? That's just not so. What is more, the abusive contracts/TOS/AUP do restrict what you allowed to do. Whether or not that's actively policed is a different question.

These types of restrictions are one of the biggest threats to the real promise of the Internet IMHO -- the truly free sharing of ideas and information.

I think the headline was meant to point out that people are actually using azure...

The latest Gartner's Magic Quadrant actually shows that Microsoft is on distant second, right after Amazon on IAaS business. In fact, Azure and AWS are currently the only occupants of the leader quadrant

This German court seems to have objections to Apple's privacy policy, you should send them that totally relevant story

Nvidia has been into the driver optimisation business *FOR AGES*, and they are already very good at it.

So good they've been killing their own cards for years now.

2010 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hard...
2011 http://forums.guru3d.com/showt...
2013 http://modcrash.com/nvidia-dis...

This has never happened once to AMD cards, because they're more conservative with their optimizations. NV isn't even the price/performance leader and rarely is. So you get to spend more, and they optimize the crap out of your drivers and card until they break it.
They're almost averaging once a year in killing cards. No thanks. While both have bugs, I prefer AMD's superior driver support that doesn't kill your card.

Pretty much the only thing he's revealed that most Americans actually care about was the mass surveillance on US Citizens, and a lot of that was oversold.

You are pointing to a discredited article written just as the Snowden revelations started to come out. Really?

It's not just the spy bureaucracy. According to polls most of the American people do not approve of his actions. And this is a democracy, so that matters.

Snowden's core problem is that the American people approve of a good half of the programs Greenwald has outed. Spying on people like Angie Merkel is the entire reason we instructed our Congress to spend $30-$40 per person on an NSA. Period. End of story. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Same goes for most of the other NSA revelations (spying on Brazil's government, helping the Aussies spy on Indonesia, etc.). Pretty much the only thing he's revealed that most Americans actually care about was the mass surveillance on US Citizens, and a lot of that was oversold.

It doesn't help that he ended up in Russia. With the Crimea mess he just looks like Putin's puppet. To an extent that can be blamed on the "spy bureaucracy," but if Snowden knew he was gonna piss of the State Department, and he knew that he'd only be allowed to travel if State didn't revoke his documents, then he probably should not have gone through Moscow. Moreover I suspect our spy bureaucracy is actually good enough to get the timing right on that. There wasn't that much time between boarding a plane in HK and switching flights. I suspect the Chinese didn't want him, so they let him through with revoked documents, and then Putin him decided to keep him in a glass box.

To an extent I sympathize with him, but what's that old saying about the Game of Thrones? You win or you die? Snowden could have chosen to leak his documents anonymously through a Congressman. Amash would have loved to blame Obama for evil. Wyden is always good on these issues. And he probably could have done so anonymously, because the NSA can't piss off Congress or they all get fired, and Congress doesn't like it when the Executive branch hinders them in their core duty of making life difficult of said Executive branch. But he went through the media, which meant nobody in power in the US had any particular reason to protect him, so now he's Putin's bitch. It would be nice if this was Star Trek and shit like this didn't happen, but it ain't.