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and Some sensible advice on how really to secure it

Mind you I don't recommend that you turn on SSID broadcast, or turn off mac addr. filtering, but, these options will diter only novice users from stumbling accidently on your WLAN.

But security is not about stopping these novice users, who are less likely to cause any damage in the first place, It's more about stopping someone who is really determined to get in, in order to at best steal your bandwidth or at worst do some real damage like get sensetive data from your PCs.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-5410018.html/

The FCC promised the public that by giving them complete control over the fiber lines, they (the telcos) would build them and make them competitive with the cable companies. But then I guess the Bells wanted more (don't they always)and the FCC seems more than happy to give them the whole infrastructure which was built using a lot of tax incentives and government loans (not to mention the early outright doles).

This looks to be sad times for competition and public good.

The real contender is WPA2, which employs the far stronger AES symmetric algorithm in place of RC4, and adds much-desired features such as fast roaming:

WPA2 overview.

If your hardware supports it, use WPA2. If not, settle for nothing less than WPA, as WEP is a joke and trivial to break into.

Cisco Web Site Hacked 3:18 PM

According to an article at ZDNet, Cisco's web site has been hacked and they are advising users to change their passwords. As someone who was at Ciscogate (Michael Lynn's Blackhat presentation) I can not go without wondering if this event is related. Lynn stated in his presentation last week that the older IOS archives were removed from the download site due to his research. That begs the question, did someone hack Cisco's site in an attempt to get at those versions of IOS? BTW, if you are still looking for the orginal presentation this previous slashdot story mentions an article at Wired, which has a link to lynn-cisco.pdf

Cisco Web Site Hacked 3:18 PM

According to an article at ZDNet, Cisco's web site has been hacked and they are advising users to change their passwords. As someone who was at Ciscogate (Michael Lynn's Blackhat presentation) I can not go without wondering if this event is related. Lynn stated in his presentation last week that the older IOS archives were removed from the download site due to his research. That begs the question, did someone hack Cisco's site in an attempt to get at those versions of IOS? BTW, if you are still looking for the orginal presentation this previous slashdot story mentions an article at Wired, which has a link to lynn-cisco.pdf

And the ZDNet article has the info on how it was "legally obtained": White Buffalo, an Austin, Texas, start-up that boasts of making "a ton of moolah" by promoting relationship-based Web sites, began its bulk e-mail campaign in February 2003 by filing a freedom of information request that gave it nearly all the university's e-mail addresses.

Nowhere does the article say that UT sold the spammers a list of addresses only that it was "legally obtained". In fact, if you read the ZDnet article, it says the spammers got the list "by filing a freedom of information request that gave it nearly all the university's e-mail addresses". UT didn't sell the list.

I would guess that the Novell layoffs are a prelude to cutting SUSE loose Fedora style given that the layoffs story says that Linux has been flat for Novell. OpenSUSE would essentially give Novell some free workers and for the long term would keep SUSE alive, not that it's dying or anything like that. I suspect SUSE will be around long after Novell bites the dust.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5736190-2.html

However, Apple said Rosetta can't run several types of code: ... kernel extensions; applications that depend on kernel extensions ...

I think the SCO lawyers have already been paid all the cash they are going to get. And for any other work they do they get a % of the win.

Article here

Where employees are rewarded for thinking up something new. Like this

Firefox has been downloaded 75 million times. Many of these were upgrades from previous versions, which had already been counted.

Over 500 million songs have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Many of these were purchased by the same person who had previously downloaded other iTMS songs (and often, the songs were part of an album and not purchased separately).

These really have nothing to do with each other, but it's sort of startling to consider the popularity of Firefox, which many of us depend on all the time and is free, compared to the popularity of something like the iTunes Music Store, which many of us never intend to give a dime to (draconian DRM and all that).

ZDnet reports that David Lynn and Cisco have agreed to a legal settlement. Lynn doesnt't talk about the matter at Blackhat or Defcon and returns all related material to Cisco. I suppose Cisco drops its charges against him, though that's not mentioned.
I'm glad for Michael Lynn that this affair ended quickly and not too harshly. Kudos to him for his courage.

Here's where it's coming from. Two former members of the Bush Administration have signed on as board members with two RFID firms. Can you say paid endorsement? How about inhouse lobbyist? How about hide your guns but keep them close? Nuff of that. How about hacks, cracks, or phreaks? I know they can be fried in a microwave, but unless someone shows that these things are useless or dangerous (like reprogramming, changing IDs) there's going to be a lot of people who will say Good, or Uuuhhh? or just flip the channel. Just a thought. Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged. Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specializes in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5793685.html SUNNYVALE, Calif. - April 5, 2005 - Savi Technology, Inc., a leading provider of active RFID solutions for supply chain management and security, announced today the appointment of Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former Governor of Pennsylvania, to the company's Board of Directors. http://www.savi.com/news/2005/2005.04.05.shtml

I wonder how long it will be until things like VoIP encryption is illegal to implement on the user-to-user end. Once the government catches wind via some wacked-out organization, they're going to be pushing legislation to ban such products - all in the name of preventing terrorism, of course.

Heck, my opinion is it's only because of the history of the open nature of computing that this industry is allowed to have encryptions like SSL where the government can't tap the line.

And if you don't believe me, see the recent treaty discussions going on in the senate right now that requires participating nations to take up laws which include wiretapping.

Apparently the NASDAQ is run on these machines.

NonStop systems, originally sold by a company called Tandem, have run the core of Nasdaq since 1982.

Well, apparently, Oracle has changed (http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5788788.html).

Still, charging 1.5x the price for each piece of software run on dual-core boxes (or more) is really evil.

I was just reading that SpreadFirefox.com was cracked. Apparently they were using Drupal.

No, the email in question was clearly from Michael Davidson, and not from some consultant. Below are the headers, so you can see for yourself.

Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:26:51 -0700
From: Michael Davidson
Organization: Caldera International
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: Reg Broughton
Subject: Re: Patents and IP Investigation
[1]

Again, Mr. Davidson was a SCO engineer, not a consultant.

In the Aug. 13, 2002, e-mail, engineer Michael Davidson said "At the end, we had found absolutely nothing ie (sic) no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever."
[2]

References:
[1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200507141 44923365
[2] http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5789132.html

From http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5345317.html

"Many of the license provisions worry open-source developers. According to an analysis done by Larry Rosen, general counsel of the Open Source Initiative, Microsoft's License would require mail service providers incorporating Sender ID into their products to tell Microsoft about customers using it. "

"The software giant also has not informed the IETF of potential patents pending on the technologies, and the license is not compatible with open-source development groups and requires users to be subject to U.S. export control laws, the analysis stated."

Hey! Leave the teabag outta this! Bill Gates himself promised this would be a slam dunk! It would be like printing our own money for crying-out-flipping-loud! According to Bill,http://news.zdnet.com/i/ne/nm/2003/mcbride/nm l_mcbride.jpg SCO stock would be at $90 a share and I'd be wallowing in the babes! Boo-Ya baby! Too bad its all gone to the crapper with you-all that can actually think. Damn you non-lemming slash-dotters. Damn you to all hell. You and them filthy apes...

XXOO, Daryl BcBride of friggin' Frankstein
http://news.zdnet.com/i/ne/nm/2003/mcbride/nml_mcb ride.jpg

Hey! Leave the teabag outta this! Bill Gates himself promised this would be a slam dunk! It would be like printing our own money for crying-out-flipping-loud! According to Bill,http://news.zdnet.com/i/ne/nm/2003/mcbride/nm l_mcbride.jpg SCO stock would be at $90 a share and I'd be wallowing in the babes! Boo-Ya baby! Too bad its all gone to the crapper with you-all that can actually think. Damn you non-lemming slash-dotters. Damn you to all hell. You and them filthy apes...

XXOO, Daryl BcBride of friggin' Frankstein
http://news.zdnet.com/i/ne/nm/2003/mcbride/nml_mcb ride.jpg

Lenovo will resell blade desktop systems from ClearCube Technologies as the Chinese giant kicks off its effort to woo the international set.

Under the deal, the two companies will cooperate to sell ClearCube's blade systems, initially to the customers Lenovo acquired when it IBM's PC unit. The units sold by Lenovo will bear ClearCube's brand. IBM Global Services already resells ClearCube desktop systems.

Similar to blade servers, blade desktops are complete desktop PCs, but instead of coming in a plastic chassis, the computers are circuit boards stuffed into a rack in a computer room. At their desk, users have only a keyboard, mouse, monitor and a networking unit that connects them to their computer.

Putting the PCs in a rack cuts support and real estate costs, according to Raj Shah, chief marketing officer of ClearCube. Several financial firms and branches of the military have installed the company's computers. (The North American Aerospace Defense Command uses them .)

The company is also in the midst of a trial with health care specialist McKesson. At select hospitals, a swivel screen is placed in patient rooms. Patients can order movies or get information on their problems; doctors can also log in to the system with a magnetic card to retrieve patient records.

Though the market is small, it's growing rapidly, according to ClearCube. Revenue for the small company tripled last year, albeit from a small base, said Shah, and is growing in triple figures this year. Hitachi's services organization and SAIC also resell the company's computers.

So far, Hewlett-Packard is the only major computer maker with its own blade PC system, but its take on the concept has not sold particularly well, according to analysts. One reason is that the first versions relied on chips from Transmeta, the struggling processor designer.

If blades are so promising, why don't other manufacturers jump in? The management and security software layers required in blade deployments take time, energy and money, which few want to risk.

"The PC companies have been asleep at the wheel for the past few years. No one is innovating," Shah said. "How much has the corporate desktop PC changed in the last 20 years?"

Shah also pointed out that ClearCube has about 80 patents; competitors therefore would have to figure out how to get around the company's intellectual property.

The IBM purchase marks the point of no return for Lenovo's long ambitions to become an international tech powerhouse. Except for some token sales in Italy and Southeast Asia, the company has sold PCs only in China. Even there, it has lost market share to Dell and HP in recent quarters.

The company unfurled a tablet PC back in June and said it planned to open a center to design different types of PCs for different markets such as potentially cheap PCs for places such as India.

Lenovo will resell blade desktop systems from ClearCube Technologies as the Chinese giant kicks off its effort to woo the international set.

Under the deal, the two companies will cooperate to sell ClearCube's blade systems, initially to the customers Lenovo acquired when it IBM's PC unit. The units sold by Lenovo will bear ClearCube's brand. IBM Global Services already resells ClearCube desktop systems.

Similar to blade servers, blade desktops are complete desktop PCs, but instead of coming in a plastic chassis, the computers are circuit boards stuffed into a rack in a computer room. At their desk, users have only a keyboard, mouse, monitor and a networking unit that connects them to their computer.

Putting the PCs in a rack cuts support and real estate costs, according to Raj Shah, chief marketing officer of ClearCube. Several financial firms and branches of the military have installed the company's computers. (The North American Aerospace Defense Command uses them .)

The company is also in the midst of a trial with health care specialist McKesson. At select hospitals, a swivel screen is placed in patient rooms. Patients can order movies or get information on their problems; doctors can also log in to the system with a magnetic card to retrieve patient records.

Though the market is small, it's growing rapidly, according to ClearCube. Revenue for the small company tripled last year, albeit from a small base, said Shah, and is growing in triple figures this year. Hitachi's services organization and SAIC also resell the company's computers.

So far, Hewlett-Packard is the only major computer maker with its own blade PC system, but its take on the concept has not sold particularly well, according to analysts. One reason is that the first versions relied on chips from Transmeta, the struggling processor designer.

If blades are so promising, why don't other manufacturers jump in? The management and security software layers required in blade deployments take time, energy and money, which few want to risk.

"The PC companies have been asleep at the wheel for the past few years. No one is innovating," Shah said. "How much has the corporate desktop PC changed in the last 20 years?"

Shah also pointed out that ClearCube has about 80 patents; competitors therefore would have to figure out how to get around the company's intellectual property.

The IBM purchase marks the point of no return for Lenovo's long ambitions to become an international tech powerhouse. Except for some token sales in Italy and Southeast Asia, the company has sold PCs only in China. Even there, it has lost market share to Dell and HP in recent quarters.

The company unfurled a tablet PC back in June and said it planned to open a center to design different types of PCs for different markets such as potentially cheap PCs for places such as India.

Lenovo will resell blade desktop systems from ClearCube Technologies as the Chinese giant kicks off its effort to woo the international set.

Under the deal, the two companies will cooperate to sell ClearCube's blade systems, initially to the customers Lenovo acquired when it IBM's PC unit. The units sold by Lenovo will bear ClearCube's brand. IBM Global Services already resells ClearCube desktop systems.

Similar to blade servers, blade desktops are complete desktop PCs, but instead of coming in a plastic chassis, the computers are circuit boards stuffed into a rack in a computer room. At their desk, users have only a keyboard, mouse, monitor and a networking unit that connects them to their computer.

Putting the PCs in a rack cuts support and real estate costs, according to Raj Shah, chief marketing officer of ClearCube. Several financial firms and branches of the military have installed the company's computers. (The North American Aerospace Defense Command uses them .)

The company is also in the midst of a trial with health care specialist McKesson. At select hospitals, a swivel screen is placed in patient rooms. Patients can order movies or get information on their problems; doctors can also log in to the system with a magnetic card to retrieve patient records.

Though the market is small, it's growing rapidly, according to ClearCube. Revenue for the small company tripled last year, albeit from a small base, said Shah, and is growing in triple figures this year. Hitachi's services organization and SAIC also resell the company's computers.

So far, Hewlett-Packard is the only major computer maker with its own blade PC system, but its take on the concept has not sold particularly well, according to analysts. One reason is that the first versions relied on chips from Transmeta, the struggling processor designer.

If blades are so promising, why don't other manufacturers jump in? The management and security software layers required in blade deployments take time, energy and money, which few want to risk.

"The PC companies have been asleep at the wheel for the past few years. No one is innovating," Shah said. "How much has the corporate desktop PC changed in the last 20 years?"

Shah also pointed out that ClearCube has about 80 patents; competitors therefore would have to figure out how to get around the company's intellectual property.

The IBM purchase marks the point of no return for Lenovo's long ambitions to become an international tech powerhouse. Except for some token sales in Italy and Southeast Asia, the company has sold PCs only in China. Even there, it has lost market share to Dell and HP in recent quarters.

The company unfurled a tablet PC back in June and said it planned to open a center to design different types of PCs for different markets such as potentially cheap PCs for places such as India.

Keeping the password file in a non-standard location like /hack/me/now is simple security through obscurity. Kind of like using ROT13 to encrypt your DRMed ebooks. This is a very common security technology used through out the IT industry. It's just a question of time before Bezos patents it!

On a side note, it is quite sad to see that a single application can crash the total OS. I hope when Palm switches to Linux this will all be over, with better resource management and all that.

Now regarding wifi extendability. There are SD wifi cards out there that work with other palms, and there is a ROM hack that allows you to use this SD wifi card on your treo 650. Haven't tried this one myself yet. Yes it's a shame that you have to do this ugly hack to get it running, and it may not be what you want to do for all the treos your company uses.

The people I know do not have $1000 of disposable income just lying around

Remember, this is not $1000 in one go, this is over a 4-5 year period. I would not be too surprised if people bought 4-5 games per year. Also, if these people are gamers this is not wasted money -- you may very well spend £50/month ($100) on a full digital TV package, amounting to $1200pa, all in the name of entertainment. Certainly, I don't know what it is like in the US (I'm a UK man myself), but games go for £40 here ($70-80) and most people I know have over 30 games that they've amassed over the 5 years. I would suspect that around 2/3 of those were bought at full price (no, those people would not say they have £800 to blow on full-price games).

Your figures for installed userbase is also incredibly off.

I'd check my sources, but i'm pretty sure I read that in a Slashdot article. Having done a quick search:

Microsoft and its Xbox is a distant No. 2 in the North American console market, behind Sony with its PlayStation2 but ahead of Nintendo and its GameCube, according to data from IDC. Olhava estimated that last year, Sony shipped about 5 million units, making up 42 percent of the market, while Microsoft shipped about 3.4 million for 28.3 percent in 2004. Nintendo shipped 2.5 million consoles for 21.2 percent of the market.

Overall, Xbox is also behind the PlayStation2, with 12.1 million currently on the market, compared with 30.8 million Sony units. GameCube logs in with 9.1 million units. (source) (Ok, this strictly isn't installed userbase, but you get the general point.)

I would be *inclined* to say; however, regarding Nintendo's profit, that it is mostly gained by the handheld division. Unless GameCubes are manufactured very very cheaply, they must make little profit on hardware sales (they're about £50-60 each, $100-120).

PS - You raise valid points, so ignore the sig in this instance.

In a few years when Linux global desktop market share reaches 10% (10 x 10!) why will Linux be differnet than Windows? Specifically, other than not (yet!) being targeted by virus/trojan/{spy,mal}ware authors, what makes linux more secure than windows?

Because Linux is a moving target. Take look at DistroWatch sometime, there are more than one hundred distributions out there and you can't write a worm that'll infect them all. Linux might end up in the same situation as Windows but my bet is that even if it does, it'll never, ever become as bad as the situation Windows is in. Think about it, if you find a flaw in Windows then theoretically all Windows boxes will fall. I wouldn't be surprised if a common flaw was discovered that could take down a third, maybe even half of all Linux machines on the net but when it comes to Windows, one flaw could mean every single Windows machine out there. In some ways, thanks to it's dominance, Microsoft and Windows becomes a single point of failure for our infrastructure.

The only single point of failure for Linux systems is what they all have in common, the kernel, but even the kernel can be customized and configured to such an extent that exploiting all Linux machines at once would be very, very difficult (e.g. keep grsecurity, selinux in mind etc.). Not to forget, we also have the BSD's to replace Linux if things got really hairy.

Here are a some interesting links for you explaining this line of reasoning:
http://www.ccianet.org/papers/cyberinsecurity.pdf
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5081214.html?ta g=nl
http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/generalsecurity/i/ issue_mono.htm

This sounds exactly like another screwup by the NSA to do a tap of a major trunk line. In case you don't know about this, read here for more information about this crap.
(http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html?le gacy=zdnn)

And it was not too long ago that connections to France went down, supposedly from a "problem" with an undersea cable too.

This sounds exactly like another screwup by the NSA to do a tap of a major trunk line. In case you don't know about this, read here for more information about this crap.
(http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html?le gacy=zdnn)

And it was not too long ago that connections to France went down, supposedly from a "problem" with an undersea cable too.

I was thinking the same thing earlier today.

Seeing how we think Osama might be in that country. And seeing how we have submarines with undersea cable tapping capabilities.

Note that the article about there being too much data was in 2001. Moore's Law might have allowed us to compute this amount of data by now.

It was a dismal failure: the second chapter was bought by few and re-distributed by many;

the monetary losses were likely negligible -- the novella was being given away for free at many booksellers
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-519549.html?leg acy=zdnn

I am on dsl so this ruling doesn't affect me immediately. The distinction the supreme court seemed to be making was between information service providers and common carriers. But as this link indicates http://news.zdnet.com/2100-6005_22-5764187.html The FCC is trying to define phone companies as information service providers too. That will suck. The only choices will be cable, the phone company and satellite.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/census96/table1.htm/

According to the stats shown we have 5,000,000 million ACTIVE high speed hook-ups.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8160/

I just don't buy that HALF of the households in Canada have active high speed internet connectivity. Availability, yes. But active. No.

I thought the IETF wouldn't approve patented specs as standards. This MS move to take over the Internet must come bundled with some pretty good checks to "the right people".

Indeed. Supply and demand. I'm sure IBM will *try* to hire 14,000 employees.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9589_22-5730972.html

Guess what this means, Indian workers are going to be able to demand higher wages, so they will.

There's this article to show that hackers do work with Microsoft.

There was another article I read within the last few weeks (zdnet maybe, I can't remember) that mentioned how MS was going to set up a network of boxes and literally invite hackers to break into them, with the specific intent of finding the common holes that hackers get into, and security procedures that hackers commonly circumvent, to make a better product.

Now, my gut tells me that the guys who break into a PC to make it send out spam all day long (all the while selling that PC's cpu cycles for $0.05/day) will more than likely NOT share their information with Microsoft.

That's my point. The person licensing the code has to include that statement for future versions to apply. The person may choose not to in which case future versions don't apply.

Looks like there's also a bunch of files that don't include that clause. Including files that Linus holds the copyright to. I don't think he put that statment in the main COPYING file for nothing. Some specifically state version "2 only" or version 1. This one was cute.

This driver is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. If you want to use any later version of the GNU GPL, you will probably be allowed to, but you have to ask me and Tekram before.

"Version 3 of the GPL, when it does arrive, won't necessarily apply to Linux, however. Linux leader Linus Torvalds specifically chose version 2 of the GPL to govern Linux--but omitted a provision that would permit using a later version of the license."

1st (in 2003) they give up the source code of windows, to their communist government...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-990526.html

Now they work w/ the communist government to oppress the chinese people.

Another reason why open source products are NECESSARY in a free-thinking society.

Mandrake changed it's name because of a merger I believe.

mandrake were having to change their name anyway because it conflicted with "Mandrake The Magician"...

Well, I was involved with this on a number of levels and can say there was no announcement. What happened was a slip up and spin control. The original article contained quotes that were taken from the end of an interview with Tony Siress on a completely different topic. He was mostly talking about OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X. Note the quote that was interpreted as being the "announcement" of a cooperation:

"I don't want to sell StarOffice for OS X," Siress said. "I want Apple to bundle it. I'll give them the code. I'd love it if I could get the team at Apple to do joint development and they distribute it at no cost--that it's their product. Nobody makes a product more beautiful on Apple than Apple."

Does that sound like a product and bundling announcement? Hell no. It was Tony going off on what he'd "like" to happen, that he'd "like" to have a partnership with Apple and a bundling deal. It never existed. The StarOffice team that he was talking about was the one that existed under Patrick Luby back in 2000 prior to when Sun open sourced the failed remnants of the Mac port.

It also turns out that by this time Patrick had already been working on NeoOffice/J and, being a former Sun employee and manager of the Mac port, he was beginning to show early versions of his application to people within Sun. This is one of the projects that was mentioned by Sun managers as the Java port, even though it wasn't even a Sun project. Tony himself referenced NeoOffice/J's ancestor in his interview.

Tony later explained the mixup to the OOo community, which was later picked up by the press. He was talking out his ass and made my life hell for a whole week.

CNet was embarassed, of course, since they essentially now looked like fools by "breaking" completly false information. So they ran a counter-argument story that had longer quotes from the interview. The Quartz version that he's referring to was the Quartz porting work I had been doing in OpenOffice.org. The Java version he's referring to was the early work by Patrick. It even had some quotes from a Sun PR person confirming that Tony said what he had said. Sun PR sacrificed Tony to maintain a working relationship with CNet (apparently there had been a Sun PR person involved with the original interview but they hadn't stopped Tony from making off-topic comments).

The key point you'll see in that "refutation" article that makes it known he's full of it is the quote on laptops at the bottom. He mentions Apple wanting to sell Sun PowerBooks. His "contact" at Apple was a sales rep who was trying to sell laptops, not an engineer!

After that fun blunder, Tony never really was allowed to speak to the press again, particularly on StarOffice related issues.

Conspiracy theorists love making a big deal out of this up until this day (witness the parent), but in the end it was all a bunch of bull caused by an eager manager and an overexuberant reporter "breaking" a supposed story without doing any fact checking to confirm the horseshit coming out of the manager's mouth.

The good thing was that it pissed me and Dan off so much we created the NeoOffice project (NeoOffice/C) to prove it could be done. Eventually Patrick was convinced to open source the code Tony referred to and thus NeoOffice/J was born. Bad thing is it wrecked any chance of Sun or Apple actually providing OpenOffice.org engineering support since the PR n

Taken from: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5733756.html?ta g=nl.e589

However, Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.

Took a while (not surprisingly) for this to appear here. As far as being supportive of Apple doing this, I'd love to see the reaction of people if Microsoft decided to build their own PC's and pull this kind of stunt.

I don't think Microsoft is some god-send by any means, it just bugs me that they are held to such a higher standard for criticism than most other companies, especially when companies like Apple pull just as devious stunts.

Lookout! http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/Gates_gives_magical_software_tour.html

So Intel buys Apple and works with their OEMs to get products out in the market. The OEMs would love to be able to offer a higher margin product with better reliability than Microsoft. Intel/Apple enters the market just as Microsoft announces yet another delay in their next generation OS. By the way, the new Apple OS for the Intel Architecture has a compatibility mode with Windows (I'm just guessing on this one).

• Mactel developer decisions by Paul Murphy
• Going for Broke - Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really. by Robert X. Cringely

Microsoft is now getting one of those giants like IBM who will constantly be bugged by private patent owners (bogus or real) for money. My experience is that though large companies have many patents, the quality of their portfolio is relatively low as they like big numbers. Small companies, on the other hand, have either a completely worthless portfolio or a small but very powerfull portfolio. And a small production, so the backfire risk of a patent lawsuit towards Microsoft is negligible.

But I do not think a (the?) new US patent system backed by Microsoft will solve that problem for Microsoft. It will probably make it worse. Suffer, dudes...

The patent, as all patents, are about methods.
BUT, he didt create a program that applied these methods. The article makes it seem like he just opened up excell, and did nothing..

source here
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-5735432.html

On AMD Dual Cores, there is a specific bus for communication between cores and with the memory module, while in Intel types they have to use the main bus.

So intel choice for Netburst dual core lowers the total efficiency (since the cores have to share with the rest of the system, situation akin to regular dual processors) while AMD dual cores have a special bus which is even faster than the regular main bus, lowering latency and increasing communication capacities between the cores

A recent CNET News article describes Yonah's (dual-core Dothan) 2MB cache being shared between the two cores, rather than having 512KB - 1MB cache dedicated to each core (like Pentium D and Athlon 64 X2). If you believe the Intel rep's hype, the improved communication between the cores and shared 2MB cache should boost performance "something crazy" over caches dedicated to each core. We'll see.

Rosetta works fine for me. I write on the tablet in natural handwriting and it recognizes it and converts it to text!

For those not in the know, Rosetta was the name for the handwriting recognition engine that is now called Inkwell. By the time this comes out, this technology will probably be called Bonjour or something.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5733756.html?ta g=zdfd.newsfeed
>ZDNet reports
>Steve Jobs said that IBM's PowerPC road map
>would only deliver about a fifth the
>performace per watt as a comparable Intel chip.

Hey Steve, what are you smoking? It was Intel who had to stop Pentium4 development because thermal problem were not manageable beyond 100+ Watts!

It was Intel who had boasted about Pentium4 architecture being good to 10 (ten) gigahertz by design and then they failed to deliver even a 4Ghz CPU because of overheating.

Today Intel is releasing Pentium-M processors, which are in fact based on the Pentium-III core, yes the venerable good ol' year 1999 P-III comes to the rescue. Intel drove into a dead end and hit the wall!