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Clearly. It couldn't be complexity or anything.

Same time every year, (just as H1bs come up for discussion).

Feb 2004:
Reforms demanded as H-1B visa limit reached
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5161069.html

April 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5687039.html
Gates wants limits scrapped on H1bs

March 2006
Bill Gates says H1B needs more freedom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/17/AR2006031701798.html

2007, Gates talks out of his ass.

They want more H1Bs, it helps reduce the short term cost of programmers, lets them keep a cap on their salary bill and increase their profits. It fucks up the normal supply-demand market that drives people to go to University, but what does he care, he can always fill the shortfall with more imported programmers.

Same time every year, (just as H1bs come up for discussion).

Feb 2004:
Reforms demanded as H-1B visa limit reached
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5161069.html

April 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5687039.html
Gates wants limits scrapped on H1bs

March 2006
Bill Gates says H1B needs more freedom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/17/AR2006031701798.html

2007, Gates talks out of his ass.

They want more H1Bs, it helps reduce the short term cost of programmers, lets them keep a cap on their salary bill and increase their profits. It fucks up the normal supply-demand market that drives people to go to University, but what does he care, he can always fill the shortfall with more imported programmers.

The key is the API. I have been using Google Apps for over 6 month now and its pretty cool. But there have been some outspoken critics about it.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4537

But it does definitely have the potential of shifting the market. The key for this is (on old Google tradition) the ability to integrate over the net. Big companies like Avaya will ad tremendous value to Google Apps.
http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/corporat e/pressroom/pressreleases/2007/pr-070222.htm

We are currently working on an open source "business application platform" (think salesforce.com). Its working right now with Google Apps but we are obviously thinking of integrating it with other open source products like OpenExchange etc... We are just doing our first beta. if you are interested let me know.
http://www.applicationexchange.com/

I know I cannot be the only person thinking "what a loser." Maybe this guy has some motive behind his actions, but if you're in the world of IT Security you are relatively familiar with Romanian whackers. They can take the most mundane abuse of something and claim it as hacking. This is a perfect example. Is someone cracking, phishing, or scamming their way onto eBay's message boards that much of a "prank" or "hack"? I do not think so. Does it spell out that there is a security weakness somewhere? Absolutely. You will find this in almost any large organization when someone specifically targets them, their employees, and/or users. I cannot begin to account for how many times various ISP have been publicly hacked/owned/pranked, far worse than this.

Do that many people really get their news from eBay message boards? This guy is getting on account and posting messages. What is his next hack going to be? Use a stolen or fraudulently created account to post a *FAKE* auction? This guy can hardly penetrate systems at will. I think there's a reason he only seems to pop up at certain times. Classify this guy as another moron that needs to find something better to do.

Hopefully this loser will join the ranks of Victor Faur. Not so much in notoriety, but in the loss of the right to use a computer or travel internationally. :)

"Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of the ZDNet blog "Hardware 2.0" gives a lukewarm review of Windows Vista, having tried out various betas and final release over a period of over 19 months."

"Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of the ZDNet blog "Hardware 2.0" gives a lukewarm review of Windows Vista, having tried out various betas and final release over a period of over 19 months."

I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867

Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:

http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207

There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=236

Technically, Cisco had legal control of the name, but in fact, all they did throughout the product cycle was do the bare legal requirements at the last minute, over and over. The fact is, in their filings, they showed the box of an old Skype phone they had brought out a year before, but had not called that. The picture on the cover is a mockup, and you can plainly see that "iPhone" is pasted on the box. They later, in November or December 2006, at the last possible moment, put out the same old unit, in a box that actually said, "iPhone" at last. Apparently, the pdf manual on the website didn't call it that. Looks like a purely legal rush to me, and hardly a real necessity to use that name on an important product. It looks, yawn, like a cordless phone from one of a dozen manufacturers, and as a Skype phone it's scarcely unique. I don't know how important in the law, but in the real world it sure is. They were actually willing to rebrand something just to farm for dollars, no?

Now, lemme tell you about secret agreements. If Apple had paid a ton of money, you'd be hearing semi-official rumors by now. Sort of like, "See how much our lawyers gouged out of them?" They would be officially denied, but insiders would have a good idea. The lack of even inflated figures, that the PR department denies after the rumor has had a chance to percolate, kind of says, "They caved" to me.

Whatever a patent attorney would say about this case, it's clear that either through personal animosity, or the desire to make a buck, Cisco put up a legal roadblock. If it was important to the Cisco brand, they would have put up a huge fight, and Apple probably would have had no choice but to back off. Possession being 9/10 of the law and all. But it's not important to Cisco, they were just playing games.

The rumors of the "iPhone" were never confirmed by Apple, but everybody used it. It didn't officially exist and it was already branded. I'm sure they had a name in reserve, if Cisco wanted to play hardball, and make the prospective of maybe losing the case in a couple of years and having to pay Cisco x dollars per phone, or shut down the iPhone until it could be renamed, or some other disaster. But Cisco just had bluster.

Now, why is it that Linksys routers are unique for their total lack of Mac support? I mean, you can use them, but you have to dust off the geek to get him going.

I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867

Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:

http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207

There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.

I'm not sure what this means, but I dont believe this is correct. Privilege escalation exploits get found and patched a couple times a year. The patch applies to all versions of the OS, since they're all the same core. Are you saying that they release patches but fix the patch so that it explicitly wont run on the Home versions?

First, you'll note I was speaking specifically of local, not remote elevations. In general, MS only patches local escalation exploits under the following conditions: It is found in the server edition and publicly known or it is found in the desktop version and it is publicly known and someone feels like it. Prior to Vista, this did not matter much because nearly everyone as an admin in order to do anything anyway. It is so trivial to find a local escalation in Windows it is not even considered an issue. The consensus of the security community is and has been that if you can run code you can elevate that code.

I'm not at all sure what you mean by this, but as stated, this is flatly incorrect.

Read this article which was also covered on Slashdot. By default installers run with admin privileges, which means they will be designed to run with admin privileges for the foreseeable future. That means little timmy will regularly download installers and be given the exact same procedure for installing a rootkit as for installing a freeware game of something.

Absolutely nothing has changed with PS/PS2 emulation.

Do you see a lot of screen corruption and jagged edges where there should be straight lines? If so, you need to download and install firmware update 1.5.

The only problem that existed was with the PS3's scaling of the frambuffer for 720 and 1080 tv sets.

One problem that this update doesn't fix is the upscale issue for PS1 or PS2 games. I've been told that a fix for these issues is also in the pipeline.

Absolutely nothing has changed with PS/PS2 emulation.

Do you see a lot of screen corruption and jagged edges where there should be straight lines? If so, you need to download and install firmware update 1.5.

The only problem that existed was with the PS3's scaling of the frambuffer for 720 and 1080 tv sets.

One problem that this update doesn't fix is the upscale issue for PS1 or PS2 games. I've been told that a fix for these issues is also in the pipeline.

This stinks of self-promotion.

Of course it's self-promotion. Why does the guy stick his picture on the front of the article?

Attention geek bloggers: You are not attractive. Stop posting pictures of your dorky looking selves at the top of your blog.

(Note: in case you're wondering how I got so many pictures to prove my point, I simply looked up the fud tag on Slashdot and started clicking away :)

This stinks of self-promotion.

Of course it's self-promotion. Why does the guy stick his picture on the front of the article?

Attention geek bloggers: You are not attractive. Stop posting pictures of your dorky looking selves at the top of your blog.

(Note: in case you're wondering how I got so many pictures to prove my point, I simply looked up the fud tag on Slashdot and started clicking away :)

but we've already got iPhone Killers out there!

From ZDNet:

"the 'IdeaStorm' Terms of Service makes it clear that Dell has the right to use any of the ideas "royalty-free" and without compensation. This is obviously a legal necessity, but effectively means that the company isn't just accepting feedback on its own ideas but is in fact crowdsourcing innovation -- for little or no cost."

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=95

I think you are partly right in this assumption, but for the wrong reasons. Some failure modes are a function of temperature and other failure modes are a function of temperature variation. A long time ago platter expansion and contraction was a major cause of problems when drives used stepper motor positioning; since they switched to servo positioning, the drive automatically tracks the expansion and contraction of the platters and that is pretty much a non-issue as long as the coating on the platters is not affected.

This report reads like it was done by statisticians, not engineers. Handling of temperature, in particular, reveals this. As someone who has designed electronic circuits, been involved in reliability analysis, and repaired broken computers and other equipment at both the board level and chip level, I get the impression that the writers have not done any of those things.

Also, the conditions in google RAID arrays are likely very different than may be encountered in many other areas such as office and desktop PCs. In the raid arrays drives are not powered down daily and you also expect better cooling design.

The higher failure of lower average temperature drives is a definite eyebrow raiser. Not because it disproves the common wisdom (which still applies in the expected range) but because it is probably the clue that some important data was overlooked. If you actually extrapolate the right side of the graph, you see that failure does increase dramatically with temperature over the range of temperatures that would be experienced in normal cooling situations and particularly cooling failures.

Google has drives that are running at room temperature? This could point to some serious temperature fluctuation, measurement error, or to extremely aggressive cooling local cooling (chilled water or freon A/C) or a server room that is chilled like a walk in freezer. In which case, those drive failures are probably caused by moisture. At normal operating temperatures, a drive will drive off moisture. At the cooler temperatures, there may be condensation issues on the drive itself or on cooling components near the drive.

The reason that we don't see high temperature rate failures is that the sample of temperatures is abnormally low. The most common temperature related failures would be when you have a cooling failure or poor cooling. Good cooling does improve the lifetime of the drive. That does not mean, however, that cooling to extremes is a good idea. In a typical PC, the drive is going to run at somewhere around 40 degrees C. The drive on this computer, right now, which is mounted in a typical mid tower case in a slightly chilly room (it is winter here) that would be a lot more chilly without three computers heating it, is running at 39degrees. That temperature corresponds to the crest of the failure vs. temperature curve on googles graphs. What temperature do you think drive manufacturers would optimize their designs for? A typical commercial grade chip is rated 0 to 70 degrees C so the thresholds would be expected to be optimized for 35 degrees C. Drive manufacturers would expect the normal operating temperature to be around 40 degrees C. The paper says they use consumer grade drives. The datasheet for a WD 250GB hard drive says the minimum operating (ambient, not drive temperature) is 5 degrees C (41F) to 55 degrees C (131F). I noticed in doing a google search that some drives specified a minimum storage temperature of -13C.

Also, if the average temperature is low, that may be an indication that the drives in that particular population are drives that are spun down or even powered down much of the time, perhaps because the particular datasets they are serving are infrequently used or because they data is entirely cached in RAM.

Also, they talked about average temperature over the life

Wow, look at this. As Everynicklstaken says:

"ZDNet did not take a look at this. You took a look at this, and posted it to your ZDNet blog.
Full disclosure = A good thing."

Everynickelstaken's post is a little lost down there. I think it should get more play.

Click on: "ZDNet take a look at this and you get: http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=93
and you get "Steve O'Hear," ZDNet blogger extraordinaire.

Click on "mrspin" and get this: http://www.insearchofthevalley.com/

and you get "Steve O'Hear" again!

Kind of recursive. "I've got this theory and I've got proof. Click here for the proof. I wrote that, too."

I'm sure this will all get sorted out soon. I distinctly remember George Bush promising broadband for all by 2007. Please don't say that we're going to end up with "broadband for some, tiny American flags for others." I won't believe it.

Rote says yes, and that 'Second Life users are a unique audience, in that, they are first adopters. It is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community.'

Yeeesh! Smug SL user & lame* presidential candidate stories rolled into one! Thanks slashdot :-)

Second life is great to show your "internet savvy", coz the mainstream press (newsites, tv, legacy print, etc) can report on your 'internet presence' with impressive pics of a 3d world.

Second life is not great for the direct influence it has on the American public.

*the story, not the candidate, dunno about him.

PS. A comment on the linked article said Obama also had a SL presence. But with no backing evidence. Anyone on SL want to confirm/deny this for us?

PPS. Did anyone else think the photo of the author of the linked article looked 'shopped?

Some phones are starting to encrypt their storage, so breaking into them through the servicing routes is not going to get you much information. Windows Mobile 6 will encrypt any external storage card if configured to, for example.

This sig does not contain any SCO code.

Are you sure about that?

Your sig contains the word "This", which is an obvious obfuscation of "this", which is a C++ keyword.

And, according to Darl McBride, SCO owns C++.

I've had problems with it. Namely this problem. We ended up having almost every install of Office corrupted, as well as huge numbers of random system files as a result. My previous employer had to run System Restore on virtually every single computer on the network. The only computers that weren't down that day were the servers that were running Solaris and the Macs in the QA department. After that experience, I swore I'd never willingly install any of McAfee's products again.

Of course, the picture that was called up was This one, so I can see why it generated so many system calls.

http://www.tata.com/tcs/media/20060131.htm

http://news.com.com/Indias+outsourcing+industry+fa ces+labor+shortage/2100-1022_3-6040987.html

http://news.zdnet.com/India+faces+worker+shortage/ 2100-9589_22-5730972.html

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/off shoring/0,3800003026,39123944,00.htm

It looks like they are going through the same cycle the US and Europe has.

We do not know anything about the deal. The only factoids we know is that it is between Novell and Microsoft, that a lot of money was transferred, that it's only valid for 5 years, and that after the deal was closed, both parties seem to disagree as to what the deal means, judging from public comments of the CEO's, Hovsepian and Ballmer ("undisclosed balance sheet liability").
IANAL but surely a contract is only binding if both parties mean the same thing?
P.S. this is a blog entry about the U.B.S.L: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=216

ZDNet has also covered the story.

if you were any sort of DECENT consultant, you would have stated this on a blog, with link-whoring to scoble (no link because WE DONT LINK!!!), adaptive path, wikpedia, patented the term "1's and 0's" (in the process starting a flamewar with any site using them), and started a range of high priced conferences in exotic locations.

Here is the direct quote:
"Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department."

Please do not blindly support the bill without first understanding just what exactly it proposes.
I had another post covering why I think this is bad here and proposed an alternate solution here

Direct quote
"Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department."

"Tuning" in general might be a good thing, but you need to base you optimization on something - why not math? The question is not moot at all...

What I'm actually trying to say is that I don't have any mod points right now but consider your post to be overrated ;)

Google. What a mystique! They can 'innovate' new forms of -

Cross-site scripting exploits:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-01-01-n12 .html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=338

Exposure of personal and sensitive data:
http://www.finjan.com/Pressrelease.aspx?id=1261&Pr essLan=1230&lan=3

Data loss:
http://dream.sims.berkeley.edu/MT/vanhouse/archive s/000663.html
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_featur es/google_email_troubles_continue.html

Site failure:
http://status.blogger.com/

Privacy violation:
http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
http://www.google-watch.org/krane.html

Has anyone considered that the reason ATI/NVidia won't open source their drivers/firmware is because there are blatant copyright and patent violations in their code? I'm not saying there are violations, but if there are, then I would expect each to violently defend against anyone seeing their source code. To date, the best argument heard is that access to the code would provide their competitors an unfair advantage into their optimization techniques, which most of us recognize to be hog wash. At worst, they wrap it up in "we have licensed proprietary algorithms" declarations and refuse to give the community a chance to work around those algorithms.

There is only one way forward. NVidia should fund the effort to rewrite their firmware/drivers, providing only the hardware register descriptions and nuances. I'm quite sure others have asked NVidia to do this already, but Intel moving forward with this plan should force the other's hand. I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't chimed in here because for every open specification we get in the OSS world, they also get. That's where all those Microsoft drivers come from. And only on occasion is a vendor-supplied driver better that the Microsoft one. Open sourcing any drivers also helps Microsoft support more hardware out of the box, without a multitude of licensing agreements and royalty schemes.

And of course, NVidia (and now ATI) have been adding more treasure to their war chests with the PCIe motherboards. I just bought a new motherboard and it's extremely hard to find a new board with PCI-Express that doesn't have an nForce or ATI chipset.

It's going to be a tough game for Intel because it's not just graphics drivers. AMD could play into this game if they took a decisive maneuver with their GPU integration into the CPU. Remember that AMD now owns ATI.

Will Wikipedia face the same fate of the Open Directory Project -- where marketeers have spammed the site to render it useless. Check out the ZDNet post...

Microsoft Vista Family Pack. Buy one Ultimate and get next licenses for $50 or $100.

1) Expectations too high?

It seems like a lot of people now seem to have rather low expectations of the device feature wise, with not many other specific details ironed out. And so what people are really looking forward to with the Apple iPhone is a well designed product with intuitive gestures, which they will probably deliver on from hands-on accounts. Does no-one think what expectations would have been like with only FCC leaked rumors abounding?

All of the points he raised are valid (as far as well know) in terms of other smart phone features the iPhone does not seem to have (ignoring what the iPhone does have the others do not) but refute the point that announcing the iphone at the keynote raised expectations too high; instead it seems it set them to a reasonable level instead of stratospheric guesses.

2) Sales expectations too high?

Possibly, but perhaps the real internal projections are higher and Apple is giving a conservative estimate, just as they do with iPods every quarter. In fact ten million units sold in a year and a half does not seem like an overly unrealistic goal given than the iPhone can create "cross-switchers" - people who are tired of a phone and an iPod being seperate, and want both in one. Or people who want a smart phone and dislike the current selection. People keep harping on the price yet Apple sells way more iPods than that at pretty high prices every quarter, so even with a service plan you know a lot of people are going to go for it.

3) Jobs gave competitors a head start. Yes, the same head start they would have had anyway from FCC leaks. A non-issue, and a negative spin on the impact unveiling the phone has on other people in the phone space - consider a recent concept video from Nokia that was recently floating around Digg that showed a dual-screen smart phone that they said was a "idea, an example of a phone that might be three or four years off". How is Nokia supposed to compress four years of development into five months and get it FCC approved? The keynote only served as a swift kick in the ass to phone companies that really needed one (Treo, I'm looking at you!!!). As a consumer, I am more than happy at any "head start" that leads to good products sooner rather than later!

4) Jobs undermined Apple TV hype?

This one I kind of agree with, but it was sort of unavoidable really. They had to announce the iPhone to build it, and the iTV release coincided... it won't matter much though if it has good marketing behind it to let people know why they would want or need one. This is where Apple stores are going to have to play a key role I think because people are going to have to see it in action.

5) Jobs put iPod sales at risk?

So which is it man, unrealistic expecations of ten million units sold by the end of 2008, or that it will cannibalize existing iPod sales? That the device is so different means it more expands the realm of iPod buyers rather than clearcuts any particular category of existing iPods. People buying the 30/80GB iPods won't care - the storage is too smal. People buying Nanos and Minis for the gymn or purse will not care, as they are a lot cheaper. It's really for people that want a PDA with an innovative interface that also happens to be really good at playing music.

6) Jobs wrecked Cisco talks

Perhaps - but perhaps Apple lawyers came to the realization the night before that Cisco doesn't really have a valid claim on the name after all! Why pay now if there's a chance you don't have to pay at all? That may be a correct observation - but deliberate.

And soon you too will be able to use your camera-phone to stop crime in its tracks!

As far as I know, this is the strategy employed by TiVoToGo, which lets you take video off of a TiVo and watch it on your laptop. Here's one article discussing it. Personally, I'd take a watermark over restriction any day.

Google is lousy for Product Reviews. Seach for a review on anything, and you'll get pages of web shops with the text "Add your own review" (invariably empty). I guess many people searching for "reviews" are consumers, rather than frustrated product review authors!

I've stuck in a few feedback items for Google to clean this up. No luck yet. Hopefully Google will get around to fixing it.

Meanwhile zdnet.com and pcmag.com are good places to start for mainstream PC products. For example: http://review.zdnet.com/4566-3243_16-0.html?filter =500300_5120955_

Uh... I've heard of one too many cell phones smoking. I don't want to see another one....

:-)

Uh... I've heard of one too many cell phones smoking. I don't want to see another one....

:-)

I think this would be right place to post this new information. Our leader, Mr. Jobs claims nobody wants Java on devices and of course, this thing which claims to be 5 years ahead does not come with J2ME (yes,forget desktop) capability.

I wanted to post here before story gets archived since Slashdot gets the blame each time another freak announcement appears on main page.

There are 4 BILLION devices running Java btw.

Ed Burnette from ZDNet broke the story:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=238

Lets hope nothing happens to Apple desktop/portable because of this "Thing" and decisions like that. I am old enough to remember Amiga's game console adventures and what happened later.

This seems to indicate that Photoshop runs significantly faster on the G4 compared to the Macbook Pro. (First Google search result for benchmarks macbook pro photoshop)

I hadn't noticed that the iPhone mark on the specimen file with the Declaration of Use was actually a sticker, as point out in this article.

As the article states, such fact opens new possibilities regarding the cancellation of the iPhone mark registration for lack of use.