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There's no question that I'm a big Apple fan. It's certainly possible for Apple to do wrong, and they certainly have, but they've also created great products. In the end, to me great products are what matter so I'm certainly a big fan of the company.

That being said, Cisco's case is looking dodgy and downright amateurish. They were required to submit a statement saying that they are still using the trademark and give a sample showing its use. Their continuous use claim is invalid, because there was no continuous use, and the sample looked like an afterthought, and not a serious attempt to use the name.

Here are the details:

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

Looks to me like the trademark was not in continuous commercial use for the required time, and so Cisco's quite likely to lose it. Then it's Apple's legitimately, and Cisco would lose the lawsuit if it was pursued to its conclusion.

D

The word is that it's too expensive. The comments here say it all. People like it, but not enough to pay $500 ... or switch to Cingular!

10 million customers in a year ... more like 2 million I'd say. Hey, but 10 million sounds good to investors.

That's the best description of those craptacular add-ons from OEM suppliers I've seen yet. Circusware, hehe. I remember the first time installing a retail copy of Windows on a home built PC. Startling in how clean it was. No trial anti-virus or AOL logos (okay, it was a while ago).

I thought it was interesting that Michael Dell asked how much people would pay to get a clean copy of the OS without all the bundled crapware. You can read it in this article: Zdnet blog

I would've asked how much it was worth to him to get me to stop building my own PC's and buy another Dell? The arrogance of the position that I would have to pay extra to get rid of crap I didn't want in the first place really chaps my undies. Screw you, Mikey. You can take your cheap ass hardware and OEM circusware, along with your call center techs who don't speak English as a native language, and stick it all right up your ass. Don't act like you have a right to my business. If you want my money, earn it you arrogant bitch.

I don't understand how searching for records of people paying the subscription amount to a known kiddie porn purveyor during the time he was known to be in business could be construed as overly broad.

Ok, so then if we want to have police contact your ISP, and run hashcodes on all files transported and match those against all known hashcodes of child porn, that's ok too? It not like you could, you know, get child porn spam, or child porn banner ads, or child porn delivered as a 1x1 pixel by someone who has a bone to pick with you, or child porn viewed accidently like a goatse pic on Slashdot, or even have hash collisions. No, none of that could happen any more than a credit card number could be stolen and used by someone other than the account holder. It's foolproof.

It damn well should be foolproof, because we all know you don't have to be convicted of anything related to child porn. You only have to stand accused to have your reputation destroyed and your career ended. What the police should be doing is working on busting the child pornographer. You know, the person that's doing the abuse, and recording it, and making money doing it. No, that isn't happening. That person is still free. That person is still abusing children. That person is still making money. Contact the foreign authorities, arrange to have the pornographer picked up. Contact the ISP. Shut down the site. You know, police work.

What the hell do they think they're doing?! Oh well, saving children is too hard this week! We can fuck over some German credit card holders though. We won't really have anything more than circumstantial evidence, but it will be enough to get a warrant and search all 322 of them at length while the abuser continues making more porn to sell. And hey, if any of them happen to be political enemies, all the better!!

That's true. Many people don't. Radical ideas are not usually embraced by the masses till they become mainstream. What's amusing to me is that linus still doesn't get it even after he got humiliated by bitkeeper. Well maybe he gets it a little because he released git under the GPL.

Any fringe group can make such a claim. I'd hardly describe Linus Torvalds and most productive kernel developers to be merely amongst the middle of the herd of the population. They have been aware of the arguments for a long time. They simply disagree. I'd argue that they're more savvy and pragmatic; it is mainly only the zealots that don't have better things to do, like actually contributing lots of code, that worry about extending the GPL even further. It seems to me that most of the key developers on the most important GPL projects are also the least likely to agree with these GPL extensions (more than just Linux kernel developers)

Why would they contribute under the GPL if they didn't agree?

Several reasons:

1) They may have signed up for completely pragmatic reasons. In other words, they found the existing code or platform (Linux, MySQL, etc) to offer enough value to accept to requirements imposed by the GPL at the time they made their initial decision and/or on the date of their last contribution.

2) They may have started on a GPL project because they agreed with the existing requirements of the existing GPL license for their specific project. For instance, Linus may have felt that getting back any code modifications to the kernel important, given the fundamental nature of operating systems, to be important enough to justify its impositions. That does not mean, however, that he agrees with the extremist direction Stallman and others are trying to take it in. He does, in fact, disagree with trying to place any limits on the freedom of the end-user as the GPL v3 is trying to do.

3) They may have been essentially forced into it. If I develop an (open source) application that depends on another set of code that was developed under a different license (e.g., artistic) when I made the choice, I may be essentially forced to adopt the new license (GPL v2) to get the updates I need (or try to maintain it alone). Likewise, one project switching to GPL v3 may force anything associated with it to as well.

4) They may simply have been ignorant of the recent changes in the GPL or they may have inadvertantly included (new) GPL (v X) code in and thus been compelled to go along. This is becoming increasingly likely as Stallman seems to be wanting to make more and more changes to the licensing and re-defining what is and is-not compatible. Linux may not adopt the GPL v3, but if some modules are included with that license, it starts to become a burden on the user to keep track of all the different licenses and their implications.

The reason you don't want to write your own is that nothing you write will be able to compete with mysql. You know this so you want to use their code but you don't want to play by their rules. You just wish they would let you use their code any way you want and you are frustrated when you realize that they are not going to work for you for free.

The point is not that I can't accept "the rules". I accept in principle that someone can set whatever rules they want on their own copyrighted work. The problem I have is that I may make commitments based on Version X of "the rules" with the understanding that this is the basic framework underwhich everyone has agreed to operate, only to find out later that Version X+1 (or +10) is so extreme that I'm screwed. What's more, I may make contributions based on Version X with the tacit understanding that the community is in fundamental agreement and will move along accordingly, only to find that now some zealot has modified my c

The article was written on Reuters. Apparently those anti-intellectuals over at ZDNet thought it was interesting enough to comment on it.

Here's an idea... this weekend, drink some grain alcohol and go drive yourself into a telephone pole you stupid hick.

When did you last hear of a security breach on Alcatel DECT Phone address books?

Here are more notes to go with my parent comment:

Disk Image backups are required to back up the operating system drive. Disk Image backups are sector-by-sector backups. Some people call that operating system cloning or disk cloning. There is a free Linux/Unix utility called DD. DD has a Windows version, too. My understanding is that DD has no compression, so that the backups are much larger than with commercial software that compresses the images.

Microsoft has made Windows XP difficult to back up. It is necessary to have 3rd party software that can back up the operating system and also files that are in use. Windows XP will not allow copy, xcopy, or robocopy backups of the system registry for, example. For that you must have drive imaging software like Acronis TrueImage or another.

If a user forgets to close all programs, some important files may still be loaded at night and in use when backups are scheduled. That's why it is necessary to be able to back up files that are in use. Microsoft provides the API to do that, but very limited backup software called NTBackup.

Tip: Encryption is necessary. Backups that are not encrypted are somewhat useless, since it is too risky to take them off site. Remember that password protection is not encryption.

Be careful about backup software that a big company bought from some other company. When that happens, usually the technical people are fired and the company that buys the rights is not prepared technically to respect what the fired people have done. Microsoft bought rights to NTBackup from Veritas. My understanding is that Veritas bought it from Conner and Conner bought it from Arcada.

Recently Symantec bought Veritas. My experience with Symantec is that their software often has huge bugs, and their telephone support is possibly close to the worst.

I found this confused-looking but extensive list of Windows backup software: Backup Software For Windows 2000

I haven't checked the information yet, but here's an abstract on the rest, found through google:

The Power6 processor will run between 4GHz and 5GHz and it has been proven to chew away data at a speed of 6GHz in the lab.

IBM see things a little differently and they decided to raise the frequency in both cores of the processor.

For high-end models, four POWER6 MPUs will be packaged in a single multi-chip module, along with four L3 victim caches, each 32MB.

On the management side, IBM is also improving their virtualization capabilities in the POWER6. In particular products, a single processor may be able to host 2-300 virtual instances, although theoretically up to 1024 VMs are possible. Memory partitioning and migration have been added as well, which reduces system down time for repairs.

IBM is claiming a factor of two performance increase, which would be consistent with the vastly higher clockspeeds and increases in raw system bandwidth.

IBM's roadmaps currently include the POWER6+, which is presumably a 45nm derivative product. Judging by past practices, the POWER6+ will debut in the second half of 2008, probably just in time to dash the hopes of rivals.

The Power and PowerPC lines will grow one step closer together with Power6, which incorporates the AltiVec instruction set that speeds up many multimedia tasks. AltiVec, also known as VMX, increases efficiency by letting a single processing instruction be applied to multiple data elements. That's helpful for video and audio tasks on desktop machines, but servers will benefit as well in, for example, high-performance computing tasks such as genetic data processing, McCredie said

Where Power5 can transfer data on and off the chip at a rate of 150 gigabytes per second, Power6 can do so at 300GBps, McCredie said.

Oh, and it is also good for BCD's (binary coded decimals) which obviously points to the expected customers (high end financial firms, presumably).

Sources:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/New-Power6-IBM-Proc essor-Trashes-Competition-with-6-GHz-17765.shtml
http://realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT101 606194731
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6124451.html

DOS? Bah, DOS is a Bloated clutter. CP/M all the way!

# Slowaris wins out over linux. Literally when pigs fly.

What if I had stuck with the stock configuration? That original RAM configuration of 512MB would be OK with Vista

I've tried Windows Vista on systems that are considerably older than this one, with equally good results. For instance, I have one 2002-vintage system with similar upgrades (including a new CPU) that is running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition with the full Aero interface just fine.

At 80$ a season, they're not going to sell.

Er, they charge $80 for a series because people pay it, and they're selling very well. I'm not buying, but I know plenty of people who do, and while that's just anecdotal, the numbers back me up.

Personally, I'd rather pay someone to kick me than watch something twice -- let alone multiple times -- but maybe that's just me. Between books, magazines, the net, programming, and gaming, there's enough to do that's new and fresh that I see little point in watching something twice. Perhaps playing it for the benefits of someone else, but even that's tedious.

• French parliament dumping Windows for Linux
  
• Munich breaks with Windows for Linux
  
• City of Vienna Chooses Linux
  
• ...
  

This ZDNet blog entry has more details: The ultimate revenge? Novell's Allison to join Google.

I wouldn't feel too bad for him. He's moving to google http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=170/ which I'm sure isn't too bad for his career or his bank account. It's easier to have strong principles when you have a safety net. I've always found a job offer from a competitor to be the perfect opportunity to get things off my chest followed by a resignation.

/. writeup totally confused: Read a better writeup. California and Texas have settled - five other states still get to rake Sony across the coals.

Here are the real links that refer to today's media briefing:

ZDnet blog posting by Garett Rogers.
NASA's media advisory about today's media briefing (link via Gregg's blog post).
Article in New Scientist about Google and NASA's iEarth software (link via Gregg's blog post).

Start rant

The press release submitted by eldavojohn was issued on September 28, 2005! The media briefing hadn't even started when this posting was approved!

Attention slashdot "editors" -- the reason why you're losing mindshare to digg and other sites is for editing like this -- only a novice or clueless "editor" would get taken in by a bogus submission about a real event ocurring because they didn't trivally check its contents.

It's far too easy to slip things past slashdot's "editors", since a single "editor" can have the wool pulled over his eyes. Thus the surge in popularity of sites like digg, since (to build on esr's quote) Given enough eyeballs, all scams are transparent.

-- An unhappy long-time reader.

End rant

The Weather Channel has also released a customized version of IE 7... http://downloads.zdnet.com/download.aspx?scid=3271 &docid=273085&part=rss&tag=rss&subj=ZDNet+Download s&promo=100112/

• Example #1: the Go PDA in the early 90s.

  Microsoft convinced Go's investors to pull out, and the company died. Why?

  NOT because it was in Microsoft's business interests. At the time PocketPC/WindowsMobile did not exist, and PDAs do not take away business from Desktops, so Go was not a competitor to Microsoft. Rather, they would have been synergy -- the devices would have needed to plug into PCs for syncing. The only other explanation I can see is that Microsoft wants to prevent innovation. Sounds far fetched, until you see that it is actually a pattern. Read on...

• Example #2: Microsoft vs. iTunes.
  The Zune is actually Microsoft's *fifth* attempt to compete with iTunes Before Zune there was the hyped venture with MTV. Before that was an earlier Microsoft music store. etc.

  The point: what did Microsoft gain by these efforts (before the Zune?). It's well known that Apple makes its money off of selling the iPod, whereas the store is only slightly above break-even (it is the music companies get what profit there is to be had from the store). So here we have Microsoft attacking an innovative area, even though it 1) does not compete with Microsoft and 2) Microsoft will not profit (indeed, they had to spend money to setup their various stores). Microsoft's shareholders should object to this behavior by the way.

• Example #3: Google.
  Once again, an innovative area (search) that was complementary to Microsoft's business. Microsoft makes it a priority to try to kill Google, even though they have plenty of other more important things to do, like getting their OS to ship on time rather than 3 years late (thus creating actual revenue), or fixing some bugs at least.

• Example #4: Microsoft Research. MSR is a candidate for the single largest group of brains on the planet. They're much bigger than any university CS department for example.

  What do they do with all those people? Ignore them, for the most part. One would expect them to be doing wonders, yet all we see of Microsoft is it's attempts to copy Google and Apple. It must be hard to be at MSR. I guess it's a comfortable job.

I assume there must be is a deep insecurity at the top of Microsoft that leads to this negative behavior.

Microsoft seemed invincible in 1999. One could imagine them taking over the internet and in effect becoming the corporation that controlled the world. Fortunately that didn't happen, and it now seems like Microsoft is quickly becoming irrelevant, except for the Xbox.

The cell phone is the new computing platform, and if you read the international (rather than US) computing press you already know that Microsoft is way behind Linux on phones.

"On smartphones, Windows had a 4% stake of the operating systems in the same quarter, ranking third behind Symbian and Linux, with 64.8% and 26%, respectively."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6089270.html
http://www.symbian.com/files/rx/file8405.pdf

The Go story was discussed in part in this slashdot article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/06/15 35231
"I used the Go OS, which was powerful, well-designed, feature-rich and ran acceptably on a 386-based touchscreen tablet - a real advance at that time....Microsoft suckered Go into telling secrets under NDA, and once they had the details, MS's marketing guys played the vaporware game on Go in the public arena. A key clue was that after Go fell, MS pen computing vanished for almost a decade."

There's another quite positive review of Firefox 3 on ZDNet

No problems installing it Stability seems on par with Firefox 2.0
Speed seems on par with Firefox 2.0
Memory leak (bug/feature) still seems to be present (during normal browsing memory usage went from about 30MB to 130MB and then only went down to 75MB when web pages were closed, and them over the period of an hour the memory usage climbed to 95MB)
Interface is almost identical to that of Firefox 2.0
The browser passes the Acid 2 test with flying colors

The core's looking good.

Just wanted to pick on a point here which you raised which I'd be interested in learning more about. You comment 'WMP is, of course, a joke.' - "of course", why is that?

I use Windows Media Player 10 and have done for a long time for my music needs. I have Naspter (and subscribe) which integrates perfectly with WMP, I can listen to any music I want to at the click of a button, I can get music inforamtion on music I've both bought from Napster or ripped myself. Windows Media Player has my entire music library stored and handles it well and uses very little CPU or memory usage, I can leave it playing in the background most of the time quite happily. My two problems with it was that it didn't like tracker music files, but thanks to directplay that was easily solved, and that it was big, solved by finding a great skin named Tiny Player which is perfect. I have a pocket PC, a creative zen vision and a GP2X which I use for music/videos, and WMP handles both fine when it comes to automatically or manually handling. Therefore, I would like to challenge your comment that it is a joke - it's easy, it's simple and it works well and even those I know who have relatively little computer knowledge have been able to use it without problem. I find itunes a bit on the bloated side - I much prefer WMP with it's 10mb memory footprint maximised and 4mb footprint minimised - there's not really an excuse for bloaty applications, and this ZDNet article about utorrent in 130kbytes and its superb low memory footprint and resource friendly programming sums up my view quite well - http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=153. Just because computers these days doesn't mean there is good justification for lazy programming and resource hogging which simply wasn't possible in the past.

I'd also like to add that my pocket PC, gp2x and creative zen vision all function great, I get great playback, battery life and features from all of them and have never had any problems.

Their claim that signals can be translated through tunneling in a biological system which likely swamps those potential signals with noise is what really troubles me.

Actually, there seems to be quite a lot of noise in our brain.

Tape systems are quite expensive. Even more expensive than HD solutions. I didn't think that was possible.

The DRM module doesn't block unsigned drivers, allowing injection of attack code.

Do you have a reference for that? Everything I've seen (e.g. this) suggests that the DRM module shuts down, prevent playing of licensed content, in the presence of unsigned drivers.

Clean hands doctrine seems to apply here. I know it was the guys kids not him, but that's the case with many RIAA lawsuits isn't it?

The downside is there is virtually no support from the server manufacturers for it.

the guy is an EX-employee, who is *supposed* to have spoken on Microsoft's behalf

No, according to The Friendly Article,

Brian Burke, the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs,

t is my understanding that it was Burke who led the lobbying effort on Beacon Hill against ODF, and also urged legislators to introduce the amendment intended to take away much of the ITD's planning power generally, and as regards standards specifically, and hand it to a task force made up of political appointees.

Furthermore

Galvin also received a show of support from Microsoft in the form of a $200 December 2005 donation from Brian Burke, Microsoft's Northeast regional government affairs director

Last fall, both Pacheco and Galvin voiced concerns about the ODF initiative, criticizing the process that led to the ODF mandate.

Additionally,

an indication from Microsoft's Brian Burke during the last semi-public meeting on the matter (Sept 16) that he had been discussing the matter with the state's senators on Beacon Hill (Boston's equivalent of Capitol Hill).

And also,

a Massachusetts organized meeting on June 9, 2005 that was attended by Sun, IBM, Adobe, and many others. Representing Microsoft at the meeting were McKee, state government affairs manager Brian Burke and account technology specialist Leslie Tan

So I think it's pretty well established that:

1. He isn't merely a lobbyist, he's a chief lobbyist
2. In all likelihood, he's represented Microsoft's interests (i.e. pushed anti-ODF) for the duration of this discussion

Can you provide evidence that the advisory post is a full-time job and/or that Burke has left Microsoft, let alone being seen as "disloyal"? Maybe my google-fu isn't up to your ability, but I just can't find evidence to support your allegations.

Did any of you bother to check and see whether any of the other members were pro-ODF at all?

In what way was my statement limited to Microsoft?! It is my opinion that the rulemakers and regulartors shouldn't be directly involved with the groups they're regulating, be they from Microsoft, IBM, or Linus.

Since you brought it up, the relevant ones (i.e. the "Technology" Committee) are all listed prominently in The Friendly Article, along with their affiliations. Given, I've not done extensive background on them, but neither do they seem to be primary movers in pushing ODF. Can you provide evidence to the contrary? If so, I'll be against them too!

The mere mention of Microsoft instantly instills FUD.

And the Microsoft fanboys immediately post counter FUD to any aspersions cast upon the Great Microsoft! Sheesh. Give me a break and go get informed.

the guy is an EX-employee, who is *supposed* to have spoken on Microsoft's behalf

No, according to The Friendly Article,

Brian Burke, the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs,

t is my understanding that it was Burke who led the lobbying effort on Beacon Hill against ODF, and also urged legislators to introduce the amendment intended to take away much of the ITD's planning power generally, and as regards standards specifically, and hand it to a task force made up of political appointees.

Furthermore

Galvin also received a show of support from Microsoft in the form of a $200 December 2005 donation from Brian Burke, Microsoft's Northeast regional government affairs director

Last fall, both Pacheco and Galvin voiced concerns about the ODF initiative, criticizing the process that led to the ODF mandate.

Additionally,

an indication from Microsoft's Brian Burke during the last semi-public meeting on the matter (Sept 16) that he had been discussing the matter with the state's senators on Beacon Hill (Boston's equivalent of Capitol Hill).

And also,

a Massachusetts organized meeting on June 9, 2005 that was attended by Sun, IBM, Adobe, and many others. Representing Microsoft at the meeting were McKee, state government affairs manager Brian Burke and account technology specialist Leslie Tan

So I think it's pretty well established that:

1. He isn't merely a lobbyist, he's a chief lobbyist
2. In all likelihood, he's represented Microsoft's interests (i.e. pushed anti-ODF) for the duration of this discussion

Can you provide evidence that the advisory post is a full-time job and/or that Burke has left Microsoft, let alone being seen as "disloyal"? Maybe my google-fu isn't up to your ability, but I just can't find evidence to support your allegations.

Did any of you bother to check and see whether any of the other members were pro-ODF at all?

In what way was my statement limited to Microsoft?! It is my opinion that the rulemakers and regulartors shouldn't be directly involved with the groups they're regulating, be they from Microsoft, IBM, or Linus.

Since you brought it up, the relevant ones (i.e. the "Technology" Committee) are all listed prominently in The Friendly Article, along with their affiliations. Given, I've not done extensive background on them, but neither do they seem to be primary movers in pushing ODF. Can you provide evidence to the contrary? If so, I'll be against them too!

The mere mention of Microsoft instantly instills FUD.

And the Microsoft fanboys immediately post counter FUD to any aspersions cast upon the Great Microsoft! Sheesh. Give me a break and go get informed.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=29

this really going to be that popular. I mean, look at this http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6137236.html story from last week, talking about how little people actually use their video ipods for video. I can't imagine cell phones being much different.

Microsoft admits WGA failures "coming up more commonly now"

Besides all that there's the general notion that the more you treat your customers like criminals the less they'll want to do business with you.

I work in NMR, and the largest routine fields we work with are 21.1 Tesla (1H:900MHz),and the Florida State U National High Field lab has a working 45 Tesla NMR, which to my knowledge has the highest field.

According to this article, the peak fields for this magnet are 3.9T; Is this the world's largest magnetic field, or just the largest magnet physically?

ATLAS is a particle physics experiment which has been designed to analyze data gathered from CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) scheduled to start its activity next year. One of the components of the ATLAS detector is its huge magnet system described in the CNET article. But read more for additional details and pictures of this gigantic magnet system.

Your link does not prove your point.

But this one proves mine.

Smile! You've learned something new today!

Portions of Microsoft's response quoted on groklaw and David Berlind's blog.

MS has never tried something like *this* before.

Incredibly, in a poll over on ZDNet, 70% of those who responded (currently around 750 individuals) would vote for BillG! I thought that ZDNet was pretty anti Gates - hidden admiration perhaps?

Storm the Gates programming competition

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=24

Let me get this straight, essentially Microsoft has successfully divided the Linux community in twain by making some sort of psuedo-deal with Novell. The details of which are pretty shady and the specifics are hard to find. Both companies are using generic speak to describe the deal they've sealed. Except that it's not sealed yet as there's still some tweaking yet to be done. And now people are spreading all kinds of rumors and the SAMBA group is upset at Novell and suddenly it's like I'm back in high school again and Microsoft asked Novell to go to the senior prom--but we all know he only did that because Novell will put out in the back seat of Microsoft's dad's Cadillac. Everyone else is pissed.

The "alternative to Microsoft" community is divided and all Microsoft had to do was dump $500 million on Novell & play some mind games with them about possible suits if they didn't take this deal. Masterfully done, Microsoft. Once again, your business strategy is state of the art while your technology doesn't really have to be.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=21

I have heard tales of malware that can grab a screen capture in the vicinity of the cursor at any mouse-click. Does anyone know if such a threat actually exists?

Never mind, I ended up following the steps described in http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=365 and that seems to have worked.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6134584.html?ta g=zdfd.newsfeed

George Ou at ZDNet has published a procedure on how to use the Linksys drivers with devices from other vendors such as Dell and HP. Of course this is not an ideal solution but if it works it's better than nothing.

I agree. Home users clearly have no need for Volume Shadow Copy, full-disk encryption, full-disk backup, nor the ability to install more than one language and switch at will.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=39

Microsoft just wants users to pay more for Windows. First they have to get the Premium edition to get Flip3D. Then they need to buy an Anytime Upgrade if they want useful features like those above - and the upgrade will probably cost as much as the OEM Premium license.

Plus there's Ultimate Extras, which we probably won't know the value of until the January consumer launch. (It's the only trick MS still has up their sleeves.)

I yield to no man in my bewilderment as to why the hell the 90% of computer savvy consumers who would be better off with Windows 98, Apple, or Linux insist on buying Microsoft's ever more complex, bloated, and questionably usable software. And I don't have the slightest idea why any sane person would contemplate buying a computer with Windows Vista. Maybe there are folks out there whose life includes too little aggravation.

But I don't see how Microsoft's ongoing blunder with Vista is going to bump PC prices by "hundreds of dollars". OEM pricing of Windows XP Home is something of a secret, but it's clearly under $100. Probably significantly under $100. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=118 . If you actually read the first article linked in the post and get past the absurd pricing of boxed copies of Windows (gee, I wonder why Microsoft has a piracy problem.) you find that Vista Home Premium is going to cost OEMs 10% more than XP Home. I make that something like $8-$10 a copy.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like your Vista machine might cost a few bucks extra, but no more than a couple of cups of upscale coffee.

Should Microsoft get whacked for their occasionally abominable conduct. Won't bother me a bit if they are. But it won't likely happen until a Democratic president appoints a Democratic Attorney General. That's barring the unexpected appearance of the reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt. Don't expect the Democrats to do anything much before 2008. They are, if they have any sense at all, going to be focusing on making sure that there are new headlines every week spotlighting some idiocy or other of the Bush administration during the five year reign of stupidity following 9/11. Fortunately for them, there is a near infinite supply of tragedy, lunacy, corruption, and even a few honest mistakes for them to draw on. No need to demonize Microsoft when Dick Cheney and George W Bush are stuck there in the headlights and there is enough ammunition handy to blast them and anyone who ever appeared in a photo with them into orbit around Alpha Centauri.

I yield to no man in my bewilderment as to why the hell the 90% of computer savvy consumers who would be better off with Windows 98, Apple, or Linux insist on buying Microsoft's ever more complex, bloated, and questionably usable software. And I don't have the slightest idea why any sane person would contemplate buying a computer with Windows Vista. Maybe there are folks out there whose life includes too little aggravation.

But I don't see how Microsoft's ongoing blunder with Vista is going to bump PC prices by "hundreds of dollars". OEM pricing of Windows XP Home is something of a secret, but it's clearly under $100. Probably significantly under $100. See http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=118 . If you actually read the first article linked in the post and get past the absurd pricing of boxed copies of Windows (gee, I wonder why Microsoft has a piracy problem.) you find that Vista Home Premium is going to cost OEMs 10% more than XP Home. I make that something like $8-$10 a copy.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like your Vista machine might cost a few bucks extra, but no more than a couple of cups of upscale coffee.

Should Microsoft get whacked for their occasionally abominable conduct. Won't bother me a bit if they are. But it won't likely happen until a Democratic president appoints a Democratic Attorney General. That's barring the unexpected appearance of the reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt. Don't expect the Democrats to do anything much before 2008. They are, if they have any sense at all, going to be focusing on making sure that there are new headlines every week spotlighting some idiocy or other of the Bush administration during the five year reign of stupidity following 9/11. Fortunately for them, there is a near infinite supply of tragedy, lunacy, corruption, and even a few honest mistakes for them to draw on. No need to demonize Microsoft when Dick Cheney and George W Bush are stuck there in the headlights and there is enough ammunition handy to blast them and anyone who ever appeared in a photo with them into orbit around Alpha Centauri.

Just use Netbeans which can use VB 6 and build java apps.

Links:

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=40344

http://blogs.sun.com/herbertc/entry/project_sempli ce_visual_basic_for

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/herbertc?entry=pr oject_semplice_visual_basic_for

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/05/19/write-ja va-web-apps-in-visual-basic-or-javascript/

http://vbwire.com/brief.asp?9342

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=107