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Microsoft claim shakes graphics world

3D graphics world shaken by patent claims

Standards stalled over royalty disputes

Microsoft clarifies OpenGL position ... sort of

OpenGL 1.4 unveiled

Microsoft claim shakes graphics world

3D graphics world shaken by patent claims

Standards stalled over royalty disputes

Microsoft clarifies OpenGL position ... sort of

OpenGL 1.4 unveiled

Intel Viiv is stupid and broken
Intel to cut Linux out of the content market
DRM: Three dirty letters you won't hear in a CES keynote

Martin also said he supports the right for network operators to differentiate their networks and prioritize traffic on their networks.

"We need to make sure we have a regulatory environment (in which network operators) can invest in the network and can recoup their costs," he said.

What on earth does UCE have to do with your feeble language comprehension abilities? The ZDNet article whence originated the acronym did, in fact, use commas. So not only did you steal content from ZDNet without attribution, you also fucked it up in the process--and then, on top of it all, now you're blaming the original source for your mistake. Par for the course, for an anti-DRM zealot.

By the way, it seems that you also need to look up the definition of "inherent."

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know if this situation has ever gone to court before. But I would think that an argument could be made that the government cannot force you to decrypt a document based exactly on the premise you provided: the Fifth Amendment protects you from self-incrimination.

However... an analogy I can think of is if you had an incriminating piece of evidence (or the police think you do) in a safe. Can law enforcement force you to open it? I don't believe they can. But they probably have other ways to get inside it.

With encryption, it depends on what you're using. If you're just password protecting a Word Document with the off-the-shelf Microsoft Office encryption, the government could get that information without your cooperation.

But say you're using this type of encryption. The government's options would be limited to trying to obtain the information by a different means (i.e., going to the recipient of the data you sent).

Either that, or ignoring the Constitution. Nah, the government would never do that.

I notice too, that they haven't bought anyone out recently.

Actually, they are still pretty active on the buyout scene - one particular one that i am thinking about right now is the recent buyout of UMT Portfolio Management software see http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5998084.html for more details.

You probably won't be very interested in this, but it is quite big actually (if only in my field) and is sure to give MS quite a boost in the Project and Portfolio Management software arenas

Hate to tell you, but this is alreay at critical mass. Look at the number of big-time patent fights that are going on now:

• Lawyer insists Microsoft infringed antipiracy patent
• RIM, NTP and Patent Madness
• SCO Heading For The Edge?

The list continues to grow. Somewhere, someone is writing code in the warm little cocoon of ignorance and once they have released it into the wild, they will be set upon by flocks of hungry vultures^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers and will eventually be sued into backruptcy and destitution. Ah, it's a great time to be a programmer!

vice versa happened a couple of weeks ago.

Intel has already stated that the Conroe will be dual-core only. The quad-core chip is called the Clovertown, and is due out next year (early 2007).

IBM could do this now, there's a Security chip in most IBM laptops, Heck, the security tech used in TCPA was Developed by IBM

It would be suicide for them to drop MS, because everyone and their uncle will just switch to Dell, and they know it. He's probably talking about what they are doing internally at IBM, which I wouldn't be surprised if it was running AIX or some in house mainframe system.

I agree, but it's not my idea. I stole it from ZDNet. Who am I to argue with a video?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=947

Here's a link on ZDNet for all the non-believers

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5172426.html

This article seems to indicate that my comment above really may have been a lot more "Insightful" than "Offtopic."

although it's hard to imagine anyone being able to challenge Google's market share in the near future

I agree that it's extremely hard, and very few humans on this planet can do it, but one tries really hard, it's actually possible to imagine someone beating 9.45%.

Don't try this at home.

If Microsoft were making SOOO much money as is generally assumed

During the height of the dotcom crash, Microsoft was packing away between USD2 and 4 billion per quarter . The only profit-takers (except for a couple of million once from MSN, iirc) were the Windows and Office units, at 70-90% profit margins each. Coincidentally, these are for-sale products (i.e. not bundled like IE) in which they have a monopoly (and very good lockin). As ZDNet notes,

One telling statistic may shed light on how Microsoft fairs in markets where it does not control huge market share. Profit margins for desktop versions of Windows came in shy of 86 percent, according to the 10-Q. That's up from about 82 percent during the same period a year earlier. Office profit margins were 78 percent in the first quarter compared with 76 percent a year earlier. Licensing 6 likely contributed to the profit-margin gains, analysts say.

By contrast, Windows Server, which according to IDC held less than 50 percent server market share in 2001, had 34 percent profit margins. A year earlier, Windows Server profit margins topped 26 percent.

Why can't they just ask Google for a list of keywords that they think might fall in the border areas between obscene and non-obscene results, and then ask for permission to run a simulation on them from the DOJ headquarters? The answer? Power. The DOJ wants to be able to force them to give them something for nothing because they asked for it. Google is being forced to foot the bill for what amounts to an unfunded mandate on a private entity. In olden times, what did black people call being forced to work without compensation and criminal record? Slavery!

This case does, however, remind me why I have come to have little respect for the ACLU. According to CNet/ZDNet, the ACLU is not just content with getting the same data, they want the trade secrets as well. Google is just getting bitch slapped no matter how you look at this. They are caught between the fascists at the DOJ and the socialists at the ACLU who could care less about Google's trade secrets.

Well, first he said word on the street not inside sources. But, i have heard that from different vendors since before i came to slashdot or even started playing with linux.

You see i had a copy of windows 98SE i bought for a desktop that couldn't run it. Unfortionatly one of the application i wanted to run needed Windows 98SE so i tryed to puchase a desktop to use my OS with. I did find one or two vendors willing to sell me a desktop with freedos but there was no price reduction. The excuse given to me by differetn supplyers was that they did pay for a copy of windows on every computer that leave the door so thier audits checked out and they got a deeper discount on the software pricing. You might be wondering why some vendor would tell me stuff like this, Well it was because I tryed to use the account from the company I worked for and eventualy talked to uperlevel managment. True or not, thats the excuse I got.

So at one time or another, you can take it as fact that the excuse for paying the same price with or without windows installed was given to customers. If it was true or not or still is what happens is something we can only guess on. This article suggests it still happens.

Since he seems to be a contributing editor right now, can we just turn off stories submitted by Roland "LOOK WHAT SOMEONE ELSE CREATED THROUGH MY WEBSITE BECAUSE I CAN SUMMARIZE WITH GREAT DEXTERITY AND ADD NO VALUABLE COMMENTARY" Piquepaille? It's like posting links to slashdot on slashdot!

What the fuck?! Can't this guy work for a living? Oh! He's French! That explains it...

AOL MSN and Yahoo fell over themselves to hand over search data without a warrant. Yahoo executive refused to answer if he had or would hand over data to the NSA without a warrant.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6040129.html

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a McCarthy style list you can get your name on from these people.

Wha? I don't believe this at all. Do you have anything to back that claim up?

If anything, Google is probably more recognizable to people in general. They are, at least, to ad execs.

For many additional details and references about these chemical computers, read this overview on ZDNet.

Microsoft's general counsel said "Transparency is vitally important in what can be a very opaque process in Brussels. We've decided to open this up so people can understand the issues."

Also a ZDNet article, FSF berates apathy over Microsoft antitrust case , reports that the FSFE has criticised EU IT firms for not supporting the EC in its antitrust case against Microsoft.

ZDNet report that George Greve said in a blog entry that "[the] FSFE has been working on this case for many years, from the original investigation, over the 2004 decision, to the European Court case where it is now one of two [active] remaining third parties on the side of the European Commission. I only hope that more companies will help us defending their interests in this -- to this date, FSFE has received virtually no support for this case from the industry. Consequently, all the credit belongs to the free software community, including in particular the Fellows of the FSFE."

Greve also responds to the new EU complaint by ECIS applauding it, but pointing out that this may seem inconsistent as Microsoft has already reached individual settlements with ECIS members such as RealNetworks and Sun.

Also there is a good Guardian article from a few days ago which summarises and criticises recent rebuffs by MS to the EC's decision.

Also there is an entry on Tod Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Lessig advocates Microsoft , reporting that Lessig supports Microsoft's InfoCard project.

In its suit, Tangent claims that Microsoft "has not been complying fully" with the final judgment that was entered into in the government case in November 2002. That settlement required Microsoft to, among other things, provide other companies with technical documentation needed to interoperate with the Windows desktop operating system.

"Microsoft has delayed producing usable specifications and its specifications have been inaccurate and incomplete," Tangent said. "Moreover, although Microsoft was required to offer licenses to third parties, the terms of those licenses were too burdensome."

The suit cites recent disagreements between regulators and Microsoft and also claims that Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS "promises more bundling tying and undocumented interfaces."

The latest news is that, according to Yahoo! News and BBC News, a fresh anti-trust complaint has been filed with the EC against Microsoft by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (composed of IBM, Oracle, RealNetworks, Sun & Nokia). Although the complaint was filed privately, ECIS hinted (see the links) that it related to MS Office.

The story here is about Tangent, a computer manufacturer who filed a federal suit against MS in a Northern Californian court on Valentine's Day. I've found two articles which go into more detail on this: Gameshout and ZDNet.

Basically, the complaints in this suit relate to:

• MS's promotion of its DRM software
• lack of documentation for the MS Office document formats
• pricing of MS software artifically high
• pressurising content owners to use proprietary MS media formats
• server interoperability (see the original EC case for which MS are currently being fined $2.8M daily).

But what I would be more interested in is out of all these switchers, what's the ratio that switch to Linux compared to Windows?

Steve Ballmer says that 25% of Unix boxes disappearing are replaced with Windows (the rest are presumably replaced by Linux).

According to Yahoo! News and BBC News, a fresh anti-trust complaint has been filed with the EC against Microsoft by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (composed of IBM, Oracle, RealNetworks, Sun & Nokia). Although the complaint was filed privately, ECIS hinted that it related to MS Office.

Also, computer manufacturer, Tangent, filed a federal suit against MS in a Northern Californian court on Valentine's Day. According to Gameshout and ZDNet, complaints relate to MS's promotion of its DRM software, lack of documentation for the MS Office document formats, pricing of software artifically high, pressurising content owners to use proprietary MS media formats and server interoperability.

- Windows Starter 2007
- Windows Vista Home Basic
- Windows Vista Home Basic N
- Windows Vista Home Premium
- Windows Vista Business
- Windows Vista Business N
- Windows Vista Ultimate
- Windows Vista Enterprise

The 'N' versions of Windows (Europe-only) will be simply ignored by the vast majority of buyers and retailers. Some retailers (maybe most) will not even stock the 'N' versions. Source:

Still 'no demand' for media-player-free Windows

So far, that leaves:

- Windows Vista Home Basic
- Windows Vista Home Premium
- Windows Vista Business
- Windows Vista Ultimate

This is the home page for the wikiCalc Alpha Test

Introduction

The wikiCalc program is a web authoring tool for pages that include data that is more than just unformatted prose. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet. It can be easily set up to publish to basic web server space accessed by FTP and there is no need to set up server-side programs like CGI. It can, though, run on a server and be used with nothing more than a browser on the client.

wikiCalc is currently released in Alpha test. This means that it is largely untested, has bugs, and is missing features that will hopefully be in the 1.0 release (and Beta versions leading up to that). It does, though, implement a large enough subset of the targeted features to get a good idea of what the product is all about. It is also useful in its own right and seems to be able to create, publish, and maintain a wide variety of web pages already. For example, this page and many of the ones it links to about wikiCalc were created with the wikiCalc Alpha. (The graphical design comes from a CSS file and the side bar is in a simple custom template. Much like a blogging tool, you can automatically wrap the output in static nice-looking stuff if you don't want the default.)

The Alpha release is available for use on Windows, Mac, Linux/Unix, and other platforms that can run the Perl language. On Windows you need only download a single .exe file that will install wikiCalc, a Perl runtime, and assorted sample files. Other platforms need to have Perl already installed (but they commonly come with it pre-installed).

The program is written by Dan Bricklin (me) and is available under a GPL 2.0 license. When shipped it will also be available with a dual-license non-GPL proprietary license. You can read my essay explaining a little more about what wikiCalc is and why I created it on the "About wikiCalc 0.1" page on my blog.

Note that this is the 0.2 alpha version which uses AJAX techniques when editing cells. It includes a "Demonstration Setup" option to get you up to speed quickly if you just want to see what a browser-based spreadsheet feels like.

wikiCalc is currently aimed at users who are comfortable figuring out how best to use a new tool. It is very flexible and there are many options to meet many different needs. It should be especially of interest to the DIY (Do It Yourself) and VAR (Value Added Reseller) crowd. Such people can set it up for use by others.

. . . skipping part about downloading and running . . .

News and Reviews

Here are links to some of what others have written about wikiCalc:

David Berlind on ZDNet

Wow, a "professor" observed these things, Dvorak? Of psychology, no less? He must be right!

Ok, let's see what you've got...

Epstein made four observations. The first was that the Apple Switch ad campaign was over, and nobody switched.

Um. Wow, okay.

First of all, the Switch campaign was just an ad campaign. Ad campaigns come and go. Even successful ones. (Think "Be all you can be" or "Dude, yer gettin' a Dell!" And yes, those were both very successful campaigns.)

Also, Apple marketshare, unit sales, profits, and revenues are at their highest ever, and growing at a faster rate than, for example, Dell.

So, point 1, wrong.

The second was that the iPod lost its FireWire connector because the PC world was the new target audience.

First of all, this is completely irrelevant to any discussion about whether or not Apple might switch operating systems, which is what I thought we were talking about. FireWire, or the lack of it, has zero to do with Windows. Additionally, since all DV and HDV cameras and decks have FireWire and require its use as the primary - and usually only - means of video transport, FireWire isn't going anywhere on Macs in general anytime soon. Further, since all Macs since the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) support USB booting, and since all new Macs and PCs are universally guaranteed to have USB 2.0, going with USB on the iPod and eliminating additional support chipsets for things like FireWire - especially on a peripheral - seems prudent.

But I'm getting sidetracked by Dvorak, here, because the iPod not having FireWire is completely, utterly unrelated to any discussion about whether or not Apple might be switching to Windows.

Point 2, wrong. Actually, not even wrong...just utterly irrelevant.

Also, although the iPod was designed to get people to move to the Mac, this didn't happen.

Um, no. The iPod was designed to be a product that, you know, sold well. Which it, you know, did. Wildly so.

This whole "iPod was deisgned to sell Macs" business was a fantasy created by press and analysts who attribute that guess to Apple as if it were their sole intent. So we'll just ignore that the iPod is one of the most successful consumer products ever, and at the same time say it failed at some imaginary goal and purpose that there is no solid proof Apple ever created it for.

And on top of it all, most of the anecdotal evidence suggests that the "halo effect", as it were, actually works in some areas, at least marginally. To say nothing of the fact that, as I said before, Apple marketshare, unit sales, profits, and revenues are at their highest ever.

Point 3, wrong in both premise and substance.

And, of course, that Apple had switched to the Intel microprocessor.

Ahh, Dvorak must be feeling emboldened by his decade-plus of wrong predictions that Apple was on the verge of switching to Intel finally coming true.

There are many, many reasons Apple switched to Intel, all discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. "Switching to Windows" isn't one of them. Has Dvorak missed the amount of time, secrecy, and effort Apple has put into keeping it's options open for Mac OS X to run on alternate hardware platforms? Christ, Dvorak.

To say nothing of the fact that if Apple's secret purpose was to start a switch to Windows, you'd think they'd have at least made it possible to, oh, I don't know, RUN WINDOWS on the Intel-based Macs easily, which isn't possible at this time?

Point 4, wrong again. Well, at least Dvorak's consistent, if anything.

Dvorak is also actually missing the biggest play for Apple here: being able to run Windows and other x86 OSes in virtualization . That would be the holy grail for many academics, researchers, scientists, and other users, most of whom use Macs because they don't want to use Windows. With hardware partitio

Yes, remember that DRM is CRAP[amusing video]

when you consider the fact that the UK is very close to having a national ID card

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_national_iden tity_card
and
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6039076.html
and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2039223, 00.html

this kind of thing, while dissapointing, should come as no surprise. The UK has been big on "security" for some time. Cameras are everywhere, especially in the larger cities. The plan to have a back door into windows boxes is dissapoining because of the hole it can leave for exploits and the fact that those who are very interested in keeping information on their computers hidden from prying eyes (e.g. actual terrorists - or at least the smarter ones) will be able to do so until the information is no longer useful (i.e. people are dead).

Welcome to another part of our brave new world.

No, you are making the same mistake this guy made. You are severely underestimating what the MacBook Pro includes. You will find a more equilibrated comparison here, although admittedly that guy is comparing to an Inspiron 9400.

So, to return to your chosen model, you will need to add: WinXP Pro (come one, don't tell me Media Center edition actually is good enough for you!) ($149), the a/b/g wireless card ($25), Bluetooth ($49).

That brings the price (after rebates) to roughly $1600, but you still are missing a load of things that aren't an option on the Dell's website: an integrated webcam that's actually very good, faster Ethernet, better audio options (digital in/out, and I don't see any info about microphone or integrated speakers in the Dell), light sensors and illuminated keyboard (that's actually useful), remote control (you need to downgrade to Media Center edition to get the honor of configuring one), Magsafe, and a truckload of software that doesn't suck. Oh, and the Mac will run Vista, but the Dell will require nasty hacks to run Leopard.

In the end you are right, the Dell is still cheaper. But not nearly as by much as you think.

As the cloning discussions reveal, this one-factor authentication is too weak. Two Factor Authenticaion is the solution to this. It's the constant trade-off between security and convenience. This company neglects the convenience factor without improving the security factor. Obviously, the public outcry will change their mind, if their employee's opinions haven't already. Besides, all they are storing are video camera footage tapes. Obviously, they want to be able to prove whether or not there has been tampering. So work on methods to detect tampering and just make it reasonably difficult to get physical access to the vault. Someone really needs to read some Bruce Schneier books.

Something confuses me about this whole thing. Hasn't MPEG-4 always required a license. I never really paid attention to who controlled the licensing. A quick google search brings up a company called MPEG LA which represents the various companies that hold patents related to the MPEG-4 standard. One article even mentions a change in the licensing plan. It mentions Apple as one the companies that hold a patent on MPEG. On top of this isn't DVD compression base on MPEG-4 and DVD decoding also requires licensing.

Ug, this patent stuff is going the make my head explode.

this is only the latest attempt to make money from email

Bill Gates suggeted it in 2003

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5154155.html

The post office tried it in 2003 and you can't even find "email" on their website now.

The "hook" to get people to pay is that it will elimnate spam.
The problem with this "theory" is that we all know that spammers
would pay to have their spam delivered and AOL and Yahoo would take their money.

Second, if AOL, Yahoo or Microsoft did profit from delivering email then
why shouldn't the company it was sent from get their cut?

I should point out that "Sony Blu-Ray HD DVDs" is probabyly a bad phrase to use, as the main competetor to 'Blu-Ray' is 'HD-DVD' (Yes, HD applies to Blu-Ray too).
With regard to the competition, ZDNet has coverage of Blu-Rays expected cost compared to HD-DVD based on the retooling cost, which experts expect could be up to $1 billion worldwide for Blu-Ray, and one tenth of that for HD-DVD (Which relies on pretty simmilar technology to existing DVDs).

One other point which may help out HD-DVD is the materiel cost. HD-DVD uses the the same materiels as DVD, whereas Blu-Ray uses a "high-tech film layer currently produced only by Sony."

What might be most damaging for Blu-Ray however, is Microsoft's direct support for HD-DVD. They've already announced that Longhorn will support HD-DVD, and the XBox360 will be recieving an HD-DVD addon. (Its in various news sources that I won't ref here).

This may be a Betamax type thing where the technically superiour device doesn't win due to corporate activity.

Obligitory wikipedia links:
Blu-Ray
HD DVD
Betamax

McNealy said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently gave Sun a big shot in the arm by lowering the license fee that the database company charges for Sun servers.

"I sat down with Larry and said, 'Larry, you're killing us,'" McNealy said. "Part of the problem is we didn't have the fastest microprocessors, so you had to throw a lot of microprocessors at it. When you charge $30,000 per core, we ended up looking very expensive."

Some legal experts warn that Google searches are no substitute for the painstaking process of evidence and testimony. "If a judge is taking as proof facts that are reported in any public medium that pertain to individual actions by persons involved in a case, that is troubling," said George Fisher, a Stanford University law professor. "Those are the sorts of facts that are supposed to be proved in the courtroom under the rules of evidence."
...
"The evidentiary requirements are very important. If a judge goes off in his chambers and does a Google search and issues an opinion, the parties have not had a chance to argue about what 40,000 hits means. That's an important safeguard."The casual use of Google--instead of relying on more rigorous research techniques--has raised eyebrows inside the judiciary.

So who was calling it "Kama Sutra" ?

That would be the news media. You know, the all-knowing virus experts.

And all the non-tech people see this in the news and think it's a big deal. They keep calling asking if we are being hit by it. Gee, I don't know. It's been out since January 17 and our definitions have been updated about 15 times since then. You haven't been opening email attachments from people you don't know claiming to be sending you porn, have you? No? Then I think we're safe.

Come on people. Listen to those who know about what you are reporting. I had the same *&%$ happen a few weeks ago with the WMF flaw. Someone who thought they knew about security sent an email to everyone in the company telling them about a flaw that our systems were protected against anyway. This was after he sent a draft of the email to me to review to make sure he had the facts straight. I advised him to not send it at all. He sent it anyway. All this is just crying wolf. Some day there will be something we need people to be aware of and they will ignore us because of all the false alarms in the past.

Ok, in some parts of the world it is already Feb 3rd and some damage is already probably done.
If you know any story related to this event, please share with us .

Samir Datt wrote to tell us about "unconfirmed reports" of damage in Bangalore, Ludhiana and Delhi. (email arrived 1am EST, 6am GMT).

"Er, do you have evidence, citations, anything to back your claim? Or should we just trust you because a man named tkrotchko can't be wrong?"

Actually, my name is Tom, and I never claimed to be infallible. But Mitnick's claims simply don't pass the sniff test, and don't stand up to even my back-of-the-envelope analysis.

"Show me the evidence or shut up."

Wow. A charmer. I understand you like MS stuff (I do too), and that may cause you to look at their efforts with a less than critical eye.

Are you looking for anecdotal or statistical evidence??

I'm not a great writer, and so I'll just pull some stuff together that you're free to rip apart.

Let's take a look here:
      http://secunia.com/product/1173/

I'll summarize for you:

Windows 2003 vulnerabilities were remotely exploitable 61% of the time, further the Criticality pie-chart shows that Windows exploits were highly or extremely critical 39% of the time.

By contrast, Red Hat shows a smaller amount of exploitable vulnerabilities, both locally and more important remotely.

Let's look at what happened in the alerts from US-CERT:
        * 22 Technical Cyber Security Alerts were issued in 2005
        * 11 of those alerts were for Windows platforms
        * 3 were for Oracle products
        * 2 were for Cisco products
        * 1 was for Mac OS X
        * None were for Linux

I think a really good, fair summary is here:
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php?p=501

And I apologize for giving you a blog, but it's late.

Lets look beyond Linux to the BSD's. Let's take NetBSD, this is widely considered the most secure OS because it was built on a foundation of security. There have been no exploits that I'm aware of on this platform for years, and yet the source is widely available. How can that be? The source is there, there must be an exploit? If not, that seems to completely discredit Mitnick's point.

If we move on to Windows XP workstation, there are still significant numbers of pre-SP2 installs, which are *inherently* vulnerable just being attached to the Internet without a hardware firewall. Its a fair bet that almost all of these boxes have been exploited and serve as a zombie for some n'er-do-well to exploit.

Lets push these statistics aside. Windows is closed and proprietary and Linux/BSD is not. Mitnick's claims that OSS is easier to exploit is not borne out either statistically, or by simple analysis of what's going on. Windows is arguable more exploitable that Red Hat, and it is inarguable the BSD's are more secure than Windows as a server. IIS was singled out as something that should not be used by large enterprises by the Gartner group, hardly an OSS advocate.

Where's the beef here? Like I said, Mitnick is a smart guy, but he doesn't appear to have facts on his side.

Now I've put up, and I will shut up, for this is one of those rare times that I believe I am inarguably correct.

Sure, but your friends at the former KGB, and Communist China have an inside perspective. But hey, if you can sell crap like that to places that safeguard your countries most important secrets, why not share it with your enemies? You know they in turn are sharing it with their friends in North Korea, Pakistan and elsewhere. Terrorists indeed. No need to worry about that stuff proliferating because it's already gone. Given such an irresponsible sales record, it's hard to imagine them calling the source code a trade secret.

What could be more important than making a buck? Certainly not the freedom of some poor dope who thought he had something of value in his hands. Why, if he could do it anyone could and M$ would dissapear and the terrorists would win, right?

I can't believe they would try to trot out the terrorist bogey man.

you do realise there's a Red Screen of Death now...

DVD's are random access, don't wear and did not need the replacement of the rest of the reproducing equipment.

DVD is just as scratchable as CD-ROM, as they use roughly the same polycarbonate layer. Blu-ray, on the other hand, has been said to be more scratch-resistant, and this could be an advantage with G-rated animated movies.

A well made computer can last for a pretty long time.

Even a $500 eMachines PC?

It is also still useful as a programmer for a number of X-10 power control modules scattered around the house.

Nothing to do with pop-under ads, right?

Hard drives are pretty cheap these days.

RAM is cheap, but don't tell that to anybody who has a motherboard that takes single-speed SDRAM. Likewise, as PC OEMs move to Serial ATA, watch it become hard to find old-fashioned parallel ATA drives new in box at an affordable price.

tepples wrote: All new computers that are preloaded with Windows Vista will have a Trusted Platform Module

arminw wrote: Are you saying that MS will not make a version of VISTA to upgrade the millions of already existing ordinary PCs?

Not exactly. Windows Vista Upgrade won't require a TPM except to access some high-security features such as, say, HD-DVD playback or whole-disc encryption. Windows Vista OEM version, on the other hand, will need a TPM, or the PC vendor or motherboard vendor won't be allowed to advertise the hardware as "Designed for Microsoft Windows Vista". And the TPM has to be version 1.2 or newer.

However, if this were true, then that is another good reason to buy an OSX or Linux system.

Macintel has a working TPM, and Rosetta is rumored to use it. As for Linux, no Linux PCs are advertised on national TV, so watch residential Linux users be dismissed as collateral damage once the TNC transition occurs.

MS has tried and failed to control the Internet

As long as 67 percent of residential users who use a web browser use IE as the primary web browser, Microsoft controls at least the World Wide Web side of the Internet.

"Ordered" might be a strong word for it, but it seems they did.

For details on 180 solutions tricks go to http://www.benedelman.org. It has screenshots of 180 solutions in action...pretty detailed and interesting to read. I'm especially amused by this recent bit of jousting going on between 180 solutions and Ben Edelman. Here Ben accuses 180 solutions of targetting kids as well as being deceptive. 180 solutions responded and here are Ben's latest additions to the arguments. This is a great (and sad) example of how people choose to define the law when it's not explicitly defined.

Just substitute Apple for Microsoft, Mac for Xbox and Internet for Xbox Live in the following...
Denial Of Service - Putting people at threat:

Want to guess how long it will take?

It is inevitable that someone mucking around trying to get their XBox360 to do something will trip the hardwired Trusted Platform Modules lock down. Effectively turning the trusted black box into a useless dead heap.

It is inevitable that this and other methods discovered will be publicly known, since the discoverer will want to warn others.

It is also inevitable this and other methods will become the basis for a widespread denial of service attack. Firstly through a fake Email campaign ( "Microsoft alert - follow these instructions to secure your XBox" or "Get Free games/porn - do this to your XBox" ) and later through viruses and networked worms embedded in Microsoft's mediaplayer formats.

Soon a worm that locks users out of their Xbox will be spread via Microsoft's Xbox live service.

Then it will be inevitable that criminals adapt the malware to display a message instructing the hapless victim how to make a payment to fix the problem. The messages would soon contain threats that their Xbox now contains contraband installed by the malware that would get the user in legal peril if they choose to take the Xbox back for repair or to the authorities. The potential rewards to the offshore cyber-criminals would far outweigh the risks.

http://itheresies.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_itheresi es_archive.html
Hollywood and the recording industry hold an effective monopoly on a large section of popular content. Both Microsoft and Apple are now offering the ability to content providers to demand that users must use unmodified systems to view said content. It locks you out of parts of your system that will inevitably be abused by third parties wanting to abuse you.

Posted by: David Mohring Posted on: 11/29/05

I don't understand why they limit their betas to Microsoft developers.

In order to catch the more severe bugs before the software goes public. Even internal testing at Microsoft (their "eat your own dogfood" principle) proceeds incrementally.