I know about control click, it would be seriously tedious using that in Windows.
Fortunately the multitouch trackpad might have a solution here, two finger tap maps to a right click. Only problem being that it may not work in Windows under boot camp, but should under a VM I would guess.
It is pretty interesting though that really the only feature of the Mac Book that disqualifies it as the best lightweight, non-tablet laptop to run Windows on is the lack of a two button mouse. I really would not consider the Lenovo as being its equal.
Now if Apple could only get over their earlier blunder with the Newton and make a tablet format laptop they would win on every front. I would pay an extra $500 for a tablet. Not because I would want handwriting recognition but because what I really want is a really big iPhone for Web Browsing, media surfing and such. A tablet is also pretty useful for facilitating group discussions, sketching and the like.
I am not at all sure what the paper shows, or even what definition of 'identity theft' is being used. Do the authors mean taking out fraudulent loans in the victim's name or fraudulent use of a credit card they hold?
The difference is pretty important as the number of customers of a bank is not going to make it more or less attractive as a place to take a fraudulent loan out at. That is going to be determined by the fraud measures in place and how well known the brand is. If we are talking about loan frauds then why don't we see sub-prime bucket shop operations like DiTech represented?
I suspect that the majority of these cases are actually credit card fraud and they scale to the number of cards issued. MBNA is the issuer of a vast number of affinity cards. So I would expect a high fraud rate.
Another bias is that this is FTC complaints. So what is being measured is people complaining about a loss which is not the same as theft rates. The people complaining to the FTC are probably people who have lost money because the bank refuses to reimburse them.
So yet another academic study that presents a corpus of information that is superficially interesting but does not really tell us very much at all.
If you offer blood to a vampire, it soon returns stronger and in greater numbers. The plague and pestilence will not end until you drive a stake through its heart. If that costs $100m up front, it's money well invested.
Yes, but the problem is that the stakes cost $2 million each and the supply of vampires is rather larger than you might imagine.
Why is it the duty of the victims to take on what has become a government sponsored extortion racket? Doesn't the government have a responsibility to act as well?
Get real people. Stop blaming the software for the faults of the idiot users. They're too fucking stupid to use computers safely and they'll never learn. Why are they allowed to persist wasting everyone's time?
If you built a light switch that electrocuted people when used incorrectly your company and you would be sued into oblivion and good riddance.
Blaming the user is what the software industry has been overly fond of, but nowhere near as fond as the banks. We could eliminate card present fraud in the US by deployment of Chip and PIN (done right, not cheap and nasty as is the cause of the recently reported issues in the UK). Why are people calling this Internet crime, not bank fraud as it should be?
Actually the main complaint I have on Lepoard is that the dock does not work as well as the Vista equivalent and it takes up a huge amount of real estate. That and the difficulty of navigating between windows - until I found the window navigation key this morning, but even so, not as slick as the task bar.
But despite everything I find that OSX is a good enough Windows substitute to not immediately run off to install boot camp and a windows partition. But thats largely bacause the MacBook Air only comes with an 80Gb drive so there are incentives to avoid using unnecessary space.
Of course if it was not for the Mac cultists, I might have bought a mac long ago.
Now if Apple would only arrange the mouse button so that when running windows you could click on one side or the other to provide a two button mouse substitute, I would without question recommend the MacBook Air as the nicest ultraportable to run Vista on. I would not buy the Lenovo AS300, the Lenovo I would consider as the alternative is the convertible X61 tablet PC.
On the Safari issue, come on guys, at this point it is fair to suggest that people choose browsers with support for EV certificates and other anti-phishing technology. I did have a plug in written for Firefox after there were press comments about the delay.
Yes Safari should have anti-phishing technology built in. I have no ideas what their plans are in that space, I would expect that they are working on it. But, from the point of view of stopping Internet crime, I am much less worried about when Safari has certain features or not than whether they are willing to share some of their unrivaled knowledge in the usability space. The fact is that Security Usability is a very hard topic and nobody is doing it well today (Apple included, sorry). The difference is that unlike product usability, security usability cannot be a product differentiator. The security of the Internet will always be the security of the least secure machines. Think different is a recipe for failure when teaching security to consumers.
If they started participating in CAB-Forum and the W3C Web Security Context Working group, I am sure they would find it to their mutual benefit.
I recently cleaned up a relative's machine after reports that it was running slowly. He suspected a virus, the problem was that he had five different A/V packages on it, none of which he had asked for. Every tech support guy who had touched the machine had loaded his company package of goodies on it, including their A/V cramware. Then the A/V packages were fighting so it took 15 minutes to bring up explorer.
I killed all the A/V apart from the one that comes with AOL (which was the only one being updated in any case). Machine worked again. Problem solved.
The problem with the Air is that I don't know how I'd install XP on it, and I need XP for proper MS Office utils.
The main obstacle to running Windows is that 80Gb does not leave a lot of space to run two large O/S at the same time. I am currently thinking of going the VM route which would allow me to keep the Vista boot system on a USB key. That should be quite feasible once 16Gb USB drives cost a little less. $200 is a bit much to pay.
The lack of 3G is not so surprising when you consider the short development time for the iPhone. They had to leave features off to make it out the door in time for one. I have heard that GPS was left off for the same reason, even though its pretty obvious that the person putting Google Earth on the iPhone realized the need for GPS.
The amazing thing about the iPhone is that unlike every other phone produced by a computer company, the first generation did not completely suck. I have a first generation iPaq phone and it is terrible in every imaginable way. My Palm Treo is abysmal, the browser is crud and the Palm O/S basically unstable. Apple were only able to do what they did by focusing on features that they knew were guaranteed to work.
The lack of 3G is hardly a problem when only 1% of the AT&T network has 3G deployed. First generation purchasers will upgrade to the new model.
Having bought a MacBook Air I agree that the battery life issue is a concern. So far its not been a problem as I have not done any coast to coast trips yet. But this could be fixed relatively simply. There is no reason that an add on battery needs to fit into the MacBook case. Just give me a battery boost pack that I can plug into the MagSafe power connector.
Better yet of course would be a boost pack that also carried a big 250 Gb drive.
A more urgent complaint then would be to ask that Apple either provide such an accessory themselves or license the MagSafe connector so third parties can make add ons. But even if they don't there are undoubtedly third party add ons being developed right now that consist of a battery you plug into using the airline power adaptor.
No the idea of upgrading to Vista has fallen by the wayside.
The price of a Vista upgrade is $100 for the basic version. The price of a new PC that probably runs faster than your current machine is $600. The falling cost of hardware makes the upgrade route very much less interesting.
The prices of the full versions of Vista has me mystified. The only people required to pay full price are people who put their own machines together in ways that does not qualify for an OEM copy and people who run Vista in a virtual machine and don't have an earlier copy of Windows to upgrade from.
Is the idea here to soak Mac users? Surely the optimum clearing price for the full versions is rather lower.
Vista does have some advantages over Lepoard, the launch bar works better than the dock and its much easier to manage window clutter. But on the down side the loss of the multi-touch trackpad gestures is significant.
Anyone know how Vista runs on a MacBook Air under VMWare?
While it was Sun and MS that originally started this crap, Sun pulled out once caught (and sold their ill gotten stock), and it has been a total MS deal every since. Vista has not taken off. Had it done so, then SCO would have chap 7 long ago.
It was and continues to be a total SCO deal. The money they extorted from Sun and Microsoft is pretty much in line with other IPR ransom demands. IBM has so far spent at least $100 million litigating this one, Novell at least $10 million. IBM could have settled for less than they have spent, Novell had no reason to get involved at all.
I can promise you that when you get one of these demands, you don't think 'maybe I should pay so these people will go screw over someone else'. Instead its 'I really wish someone would stand up to this scum, pity its not going to happen'.
Anyone care to imagine what the Slashdot consensus would have been if Microsoft had chosen to stand and fight on this one and IBM had settled?
The mistake SCO made was to demand money from a company that simply could not settle the case at any price.
What he said is 'I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography.'
I don't see how its going to be any easier to find fighting pornography or sites dedicated to the provision thereof. Thats what Google is for, the world is you oyster with Google, Jello and copious quantities of lube.
There were no Taliban members in the September 11 attack. None. The Taliban was guilty of allowing the Saudi prince to operate from within Afghanistan, and while guilty of their own atrocities, terrorism wasn't one of them.
On the contrary, terrorism was the Taleban modus operandi. They seized power through terrorism, they maintained power through terrorism. Bin Laden ain't a prince either.
The Taleban supported Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda supported the Taleban. They provided them with material support for their attacks on the US. Their support for Al Qaeda went far beyond mere toleration.
What is rather more interesting here is whether the Taleban are actually able to succeed in attacking the cell phone towers or whether the NATO forces are able to defend them. Its probably not that difficult to destroy the currently installed towers that were not designed to withstand attack. Sustaining a denial of service attack over an extended period of time is less likely to succeed. It is not likely to be very popular with the locals either.
Whatever the outcome is, it is unlikely to be ambiguous. If the Taleban fail to keep the cell towers down it is a very visible sign that they are a spent force politically. If they succeed it demonstrates only that they can perform nuisance actions against undefended installations.
He talks about it in his blog post which was posted on the 21st.
The post is titled "the day after". In other words he failed to make the point in his original release. There is no reason to expect that people would check back the next day for information that should have been presented at the start.
This proves that YOU are the "tedious windbag", blabbering on with no knowledge of what you are talking about, and making up "facts" as you go along.
I criticized St Lessig for crapy media management. He had a chance to get his message out, he botched it. I still have no idea what Lessig is about or what he stands for. All I can see is a pile of platitudes that are actually quite commonplace in political campaigns. If you don't know why you are running or what you stand for you run on 'change'.
We actually have a fair few politicians who run on a pledge that they won't accept PAC money. Kerry kept his pledge, he accepted his wife's money instead. McCain is currently running against lobbyists while one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on the hill is on his campaign staff and works out of his battlebus. McCain made use of federal matching funds in this campaign, it saved him the $2-3 million it would otherwise have cost him to petition for ballot access, the banks granted him a loan on the expectation that federal matching funds would be available as collateral. But now its inconvenient he is breaking his contract.
So given the history of politicians speaking with forked tongues, why should we believe Lessig going to be any different? He might think he is different, but so did all the rest of the politicians on the hill before they got started.
I thought he made it pretty clear that he was considering running for the Democrat nomination against Jackie Speier.
Not until this podcast he didn't. And then only if you bothered to listen in to his tedious windbaggery. It was like watching a rerun of Sagan in Cosmos.
You have to get to the point quickly in politics. The Podcast is a dreadful medium for communicating news. The content of that podcast could be stated in three short paragraphs. He took five minutes.
If you are going to do a podcast you have to put yourself in the frame, particularly for a pod where you are the product.
You cannot talk about change without setting out a comprehensive statement of the change you intend. Obama has written two books and has a 50 page manifesto with some pretty detailed points. Lessig failed to explain what he thought the problem was with Congress, gave no specifics of how he would change it, no indication of his chances of success. All he said was that he wanted to change Congress, well, whoop-de-do, Newt Gingrich changed Congress, Tom DeLay changed Congress, Duke Cunningham, Ney, Abramoff and the rest of the culture of corruption Republicans all changed Congress.
You can't run as a new media Democrat if you demonstrate that you are completely clueless about the use of media.
I gave up two minutes in. Did he actually manage to make a substantive statement?
But I can't feel too bad for folk who parted with their money on the expectation that he was going to run before he told us some pretty important information like, which party ticket? if as an independent then who would he vote for as speaker?
The party system exists for a reason and its not all bad. Saying that you are going to change congress without saying how or why is just more rhetorical bullshit. Bush delivered that message in 2000, right down to the fix washington pledge. Obama is somewhat guilty of the same, but he does at least have an extensive platform where he explains his actual positions. McCain has nothing I could find on the Internet, Obama has a platform that was clearly written by someone with a clue.
Lessig, well hasn't told me diddly. He could be a Republican for all he has told me. All I know about him for sure is that he became very well known on the net in the wake of being appointed special master in the MSFT trial, being rejected by the Appeals court and then reappointed and then rejected a second time. Made him really popular on slashdot when they thought Jackson was doing them a favor, looks rather less impressive in retrospect.
He has milked his appeal since, come up with some provocative statements on IPR that play well to his base. But what is his position on the other 98% of issues before Congress?
In short are we really sure that we are not buying a Nader type figure here? Well we are now because he is stepping down. But if he had continued the run the most likely outcome would be that he would split the progressive vote and let a Republican in.
Of course Nader's decision to run might well be the reason he decided not to.
No, I doubt that the reason for blocking YouTube was motivated by the purported concern for the prophet.
Rather more likely is that this has something to do with the recent elections in Pakistan. The Musharaf just lost the election he had hoped would allow him to complete his transition from dictatorship to elected President. Instead he lost control of the process with the assassination of Bhutto.
Independent TV is a much bigger threat to the regime than independent press. Blogs have rather less credibility than actual video of a demonstration.
I suspect that the ISP chose this method of blocking the traffic for precisely the reason that it would cause the maximum notice. Implement a local block in Pakistan and the Pakistanis complain. Implement the block in such a way that it affects the whole region and you have so many more people working to circumvent the censorship.
BGP security has been a big concern for me for some time. In fact it is such a concern that it is one of the issues I did not address in my book on Internet crime precisely because I did not want to give people ideas.
XBL subscription and point cards aren't sold at the "point of sale"
No, but top up cards for pay as you go cellular plans have been sold at POS since the mid 90s.
Yet more free prior art consulting...
There are lawyers who have tried to convince me that I can do more for the industry by helping them sink bogus patents than by actually like inventing stuff or writing books on how to stop Internet crime. Unlike some folk here I do accept that software can be patentable, but thats not the problem, the problem is the junk patents that should never have been applied for or granted.
Junk patents devalue genuine ones. They also mean that every few weeks we have another slashdot story where IBM or Microsoft have patented the wheel or such like, almost certainly as a defensive move, but once the patent is granted it can be used for anything.
Microsoft is not in trouble from Google, but Yahoo is.
Yahoo plus Microsoft clout potentially creates a Pepsi to Google's Coke in the search area. All those advertising dollars that are fleeing from network TV have two places to go, not just one.
Yahoo has been trying to get on equal terms by itself, Microsoft has been spending squillions to buy up the best brains they can in the area but they don't have the business base to work from.
The bigger concern for the industry though should be where Mr Softy and The Goo go next. Microsoft can buy SAP and Yahoo, its not either/or. Google is likely to buy stuff as well. The same math works for them.
I have a Vista system and a MacBook. The two systems are pretty much the same when it comes to usability. Windows Vista has the edge in some ares, Apple in others.
Apple definitely has the edge in configuration. Microsoft has to get its act together and recognize that UPnP is dead. Bonjour is deployed, works and is supported by a huge number of hardware providers. It took me minutes to hook my Mac up to my network attached printers and Windows Home server.
Microsoft has the edge when a configuration goes wrong though. 95% of the time the Mac just works. But when they don't work there is no information to work from.
Vista has the lead in certain aspects of the windowing system. Aero is prettier. The menu on the top of the window works better on a large display than the Mac menu at the top of the screen. On a laptop I think its the other way round. But why not make this a user choice on both platforms?
The Mac is more consistent, but that can bite you in unexpected ways. The Dock is configured through the settings menu, not through a menu associated with the dock, I find that counter-intuitive. Desktop clutter seems to be a worse problem than on my XP laptop. I feel short of pixels even though the screen is actually bigger than my thinkpad.
On the class action suit, well Apple has been on the receiving end of class action suits as well. Every computer company has. The outcome of these suits appears to be entirely unrelated to the cause, the lawyers have ever incentive to reach a quick settlement where they get a huge payout and the customers are left with nothing more than some vouchers that give money off another purchase.
Slashdot as ever behaves like Rush Limbaugh reacting to partisan scandals. Allegations that a Democrat engaged in certain behavior sends him into apoplexy (e.g. Clinton boinks an intern), allegations that a Republican did something of the sort causes him to attack the press (e.g. McCain accused of corruptly intervening on behalf of a lobbyist he may or may not have been committing adultery with). Moral indignation loses its force when it is partisan.
It's not that hard to presume that they know they are missing information. Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was
That is the White House line and its a lie. Existing authorizations continue to be in force for a year. That takes us past the next inauguration.
The only case where the administration could not conduct a warantless tap is if there was an entirely new terrorist organization to emerge in the next twelve months. And they could still get a wiretap, they just have to get a warrant.
The issue here is not providing immunity to the telcos, it is providing immunity to the Administration. They want to be able to shred all the evidence of their criminal activities before a Democrat takes over. And they are willing to hold the security of the country hostage till they get their way.
Up till now it has been sufficient for the Bushies to cry National Security and the Democrats would run frightened to hide. Now they have accidentally called the Administration's bluff they have discovered the consequences of standing up to Bully Bush - absolutely nothing. Bush's approval ratings dropped by ten points to 19%. The wiretap issue was gone after a single media cycle.
You don't know why you need thin till you have thin. Thin is not spin, thin is in. Once you have thin all other laptops seem dim.
The Thinkpad comparison is ridiculous. The Thinkpad is not a response to the MBA, its a machine that came out about the same time with one MBA technology, the solid state drive. I would not pay $1000 for a SSD. Its a technology that is definitely going to have a big impact but not make mainstream till a 128Gb drive costs $300.
There are two types of laptop, portables and desktop replacements. This is a portable, it is not a desktop replacement by any stretch of the imagination. My desktop has a 1KW power supply and puts out enough heat to warm the server room nicely. It has water cooling and was built to drive three 30" displays. That is a desktop. The day a laptop comes with even one 30" display will be a while coming.
Apple are very smart to emphasize 'thin' over small and light. If they made a 17" model with a high res screen I would definitely buy one.
I don't give a hoot for the number of ports, power, USB and DVI are plenty. The only complaint I have is that its only a single link DVI connector and there is no support for my 30" display, a fact made rather worse by the fact that these displays are only just coming available with scaling chips.
My only real complaint is the lack of a supplemental power accessory. Just give me a battery pack I can plug into the magsafe adapter for long flights.
The lack of DVD built in only worried me before I found that DVD ripper technology has advanced in recent years. The bigger challenge there is the fact that the built in disk is rather small to be loading DVDs onto the machine.
The term is used in computer security to mean attacking the human component of a security system. Securing the Internet is easy, its securing whats on each end thats hard: users, the banking system, etc.
And yes, the term is bogus, it was invented by a bunch of crackers who are into junk science in a big way. Neuro-Linguistic Programming and similar garbage.
Unless you intend to run Windows on the Mac laptop then why compare?
Well some of us have a Mac and have not joined the cult. Point in fact here is that I am currently typing this on my new Macbook Air which I have owned for two days now without feeling the need to wear black jeans and a turtleneck.
Now the reason I have bought a Mac is probably unique (see my blog, I am not typing it in again), but I don't feel the lack of Mac features when I am using my Vista machine. In fact the only real difference between the two is that I can use one downstairs on the couch and the other has a 30" display.
I had been considering the Lenovo prior to realizing that I needed to get a Mac if I was going to write anything on Security Usability. Even though Apple is not doing any better than Microsoft on the measures I am concerned with it is necessary to answer those whose answer to every usability problem is 'get a Mac'.
The reason I would not get the Lenovo X300 is that I would wait for the convertible tablet model. I don't rate the handwriting analysis as a killer application, at this point I type faster than I write. But the ability to scribble and whiteboard is very useful.
On the side by side comparison, I don't think the Lenovo comes close to the MacBook Air. First it is a thousand bucks more and second its not much different to the X61. Its a Thinkpad with a solid state drive, well big whoopsie, I didn't pay for the SSD on my MacBook and I wouldn't pay that on the Thinkpad either. To be worth having the SSD has to cost half as much and provide twice as much space.
Here is a hint, nobody knows if your MacBook Air has an SSD or a hard drive inside. You can buy three years of AppleCare and a TimeVault for $550. By the time the AppleCare runs out there will be a new MacBook Air.
Slashdot Mirror
I know about control click, it would be seriously tedious using that in Windows.
Fortunately the multitouch trackpad might have a solution here, two finger tap maps to a right click. Only problem being that it may not work in Windows under boot camp, but should under a VM I would guess.
It is pretty interesting though that really the only feature of the Mac Book that disqualifies it as the best lightweight, non-tablet laptop to run Windows on is the lack of a two button mouse. I really would not consider the Lenovo as being its equal.
Now if Apple could only get over their earlier blunder with the Newton and make a tablet format laptop they would win on every front. I would pay an extra $500 for a tablet. Not because I would want handwriting recognition but because what I really want is a really big iPhone for Web Browsing, media surfing and such. A tablet is also pretty useful for facilitating group discussions, sketching and the like.
The difference is pretty important as the number of customers of a bank is not going to make it more or less attractive as a place to take a fraudulent loan out at. That is going to be determined by the fraud measures in place and how well known the brand is. If we are talking about loan frauds then why don't we see sub-prime bucket shop operations like DiTech represented?
I suspect that the majority of these cases are actually credit card fraud and they scale to the number of cards issued. MBNA is the issuer of a vast number of affinity cards. So I would expect a high fraud rate.
Another bias is that this is FTC complaints. So what is being measured is people complaining about a loss which is not the same as theft rates. The people complaining to the FTC are probably people who have lost money because the bank refuses to reimburse them.
So yet another academic study that presents a corpus of information that is superficially interesting but does not really tell us very much at all.
Yes, but the problem is that the stakes cost $2 million each and the supply of vampires is rather larger than you might imagine.
Why is it the duty of the victims to take on what has become a government sponsored extortion racket? Doesn't the government have a responsibility to act as well?
If you built a light switch that electrocuted people when used incorrectly your company and you would be sued into oblivion and good riddance.
Blaming the user is what the software industry has been overly fond of, but nowhere near as fond as the banks. We could eliminate card present fraud in the US by deployment of Chip and PIN (done right, not cheap and nasty as is the cause of the recently reported issues in the UK). Why are people calling this Internet crime, not bank fraud as it should be?
But despite everything I find that OSX is a good enough Windows substitute to not immediately run off to install boot camp and a windows partition. But thats largely bacause the MacBook Air only comes with an 80Gb drive so there are incentives to avoid using unnecessary space.
Of course if it was not for the Mac cultists, I might have bought a mac long ago.
Now if Apple would only arrange the mouse button so that when running windows you could click on one side or the other to provide a two button mouse substitute, I would without question recommend the MacBook Air as the nicest ultraportable to run Vista on. I would not buy the Lenovo AS300, the Lenovo I would consider as the alternative is the convertible X61 tablet PC.
On the Safari issue, come on guys, at this point it is fair to suggest that people choose browsers with support for EV certificates and other anti-phishing technology. I did have a plug in written for Firefox after there were press comments about the delay.
Yes Safari should have anti-phishing technology built in. I have no ideas what their plans are in that space, I would expect that they are working on it. But, from the point of view of stopping Internet crime, I am much less worried about when Safari has certain features or not than whether they are willing to share some of their unrivaled knowledge in the usability space. The fact is that Security Usability is a very hard topic and nobody is doing it well today (Apple included, sorry). The difference is that unlike product usability, security usability cannot be a product differentiator. The security of the Internet will always be the security of the least secure machines. Think different is a recipe for failure when teaching security to consumers.
If they started participating in CAB-Forum and the W3C Web Security Context Working group, I am sure they would find it to their mutual benefit.
So thats 15% who go ahead and give their CC number after we have told them to stop.
I killed all the A/V apart from the one that comes with AOL (which was the only one being updated in any case). Machine worked again. Problem solved.
The main obstacle to running Windows is that 80Gb does not leave a lot of space to run two large O/S at the same time. I am currently thinking of going the VM route which would allow me to keep the Vista boot system on a USB key. That should be quite feasible once 16Gb USB drives cost a little less. $200 is a bit much to pay.
The amazing thing about the iPhone is that unlike every other phone produced by a computer company, the first generation did not completely suck. I have a first generation iPaq phone and it is terrible in every imaginable way. My Palm Treo is abysmal, the browser is crud and the Palm O/S basically unstable. Apple were only able to do what they did by focusing on features that they knew were guaranteed to work.
The lack of 3G is hardly a problem when only 1% of the AT&T network has 3G deployed. First generation purchasers will upgrade to the new model.
Having bought a MacBook Air I agree that the battery life issue is a concern. So far its not been a problem as I have not done any coast to coast trips yet. But this could be fixed relatively simply. There is no reason that an add on battery needs to fit into the MacBook case. Just give me a battery boost pack that I can plug into the MagSafe power connector.
Better yet of course would be a boost pack that also carried a big 250 Gb drive.
A more urgent complaint then would be to ask that Apple either provide such an accessory themselves or license the MagSafe connector so third parties can make add ons. But even if they don't there are undoubtedly third party add ons being developed right now that consist of a battery you plug into using the airline power adaptor.
The price of a Vista upgrade is $100 for the basic version. The price of a new PC that probably runs faster than your current machine is $600. The falling cost of hardware makes the upgrade route very much less interesting.
The prices of the full versions of Vista has me mystified. The only people required to pay full price are people who put their own machines together in ways that does not qualify for an OEM copy and people who run Vista in a virtual machine and don't have an earlier copy of Windows to upgrade from.
Is the idea here to soak Mac users? Surely the optimum clearing price for the full versions is rather lower.
Vista does have some advantages over Lepoard, the launch bar works better than the dock and its much easier to manage window clutter. But on the down side the loss of the multi-touch trackpad gestures is significant.
Anyone know how Vista runs on a MacBook Air under VMWare?
It was and continues to be a total SCO deal. The money they extorted from Sun and Microsoft is pretty much in line with other IPR ransom demands. IBM has so far spent at least $100 million litigating this one, Novell at least $10 million. IBM could have settled for less than they have spent, Novell had no reason to get involved at all.
I can promise you that when you get one of these demands, you don't think 'maybe I should pay so these people will go screw over someone else'. Instead its 'I really wish someone would stand up to this scum, pity its not going to happen'.
Anyone care to imagine what the Slashdot consensus would have been if Microsoft had chosen to stand and fight on this one and IBM had settled?
The mistake SCO made was to demand money from a company that simply could not settle the case at any price.
I don't see how its going to be any easier to find fighting pornography or sites dedicated to the provision thereof. Thats what Google is for, the world is you oyster with Google, Jello and copious quantities of lube.
On the contrary, terrorism was the Taleban modus operandi. They seized power through terrorism, they maintained power through terrorism. Bin Laden ain't a prince either.
The Taleban supported Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda supported the Taleban. They provided them with material support for their attacks on the US. Their support for Al Qaeda went far beyond mere toleration.
What is rather more interesting here is whether the Taleban are actually able to succeed in attacking the cell phone towers or whether the NATO forces are able to defend them. Its probably not that difficult to destroy the currently installed towers that were not designed to withstand attack. Sustaining a denial of service attack over an extended period of time is less likely to succeed. It is not likely to be very popular with the locals either.
Whatever the outcome is, it is unlikely to be ambiguous. If the Taleban fail to keep the cell towers down it is a very visible sign that they are a spent force politically. If they succeed it demonstrates only that they can perform nuisance actions against undefended installations.
The post is titled "the day after". In other words he failed to make the point in his original release. There is no reason to expect that people would check back the next day for information that should have been presented at the start.
This proves that YOU are the "tedious windbag", blabbering on with no knowledge of what you are talking about, and making up "facts" as you go along.
I criticized St Lessig for crapy media management. He had a chance to get his message out, he botched it. I still have no idea what Lessig is about or what he stands for. All I can see is a pile of platitudes that are actually quite commonplace in political campaigns. If you don't know why you are running or what you stand for you run on 'change'.
We actually have a fair few politicians who run on a pledge that they won't accept PAC money. Kerry kept his pledge, he accepted his wife's money instead. McCain is currently running against lobbyists while one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on the hill is on his campaign staff and works out of his battlebus. McCain made use of federal matching funds in this campaign, it saved him the $2-3 million it would otherwise have cost him to petition for ballot access, the banks granted him a loan on the expectation that federal matching funds would be available as collateral. But now its inconvenient he is breaking his contract.
So given the history of politicians speaking with forked tongues, why should we believe Lessig going to be any different? He might think he is different, but so did all the rest of the politicians on the hill before they got started.
Not until this podcast he didn't. And then only if you bothered to listen in to his tedious windbaggery. It was like watching a rerun of Sagan in Cosmos.
You have to get to the point quickly in politics. The Podcast is a dreadful medium for communicating news. The content of that podcast could be stated in three short paragraphs. He took five minutes.
If you are going to do a podcast you have to put yourself in the frame, particularly for a pod where you are the product.
You cannot talk about change without setting out a comprehensive statement of the change you intend. Obama has written two books and has a 50 page manifesto with some pretty detailed points. Lessig failed to explain what he thought the problem was with Congress, gave no specifics of how he would change it, no indication of his chances of success. All he said was that he wanted to change Congress, well, whoop-de-do, Newt Gingrich changed Congress, Tom DeLay changed Congress, Duke Cunningham, Ney, Abramoff and the rest of the culture of corruption Republicans all changed Congress.
You can't run as a new media Democrat if you demonstrate that you are completely clueless about the use of media.
But I can't feel too bad for folk who parted with their money on the expectation that he was going to run before he told us some pretty important information like, which party ticket? if as an independent then who would he vote for as speaker?
The party system exists for a reason and its not all bad. Saying that you are going to change congress without saying how or why is just more rhetorical bullshit. Bush delivered that message in 2000, right down to the fix washington pledge. Obama is somewhat guilty of the same, but he does at least have an extensive platform where he explains his actual positions. McCain has nothing I could find on the Internet, Obama has a platform that was clearly written by someone with a clue.
Lessig, well hasn't told me diddly. He could be a Republican for all he has told me. All I know about him for sure is that he became very well known on the net in the wake of being appointed special master in the MSFT trial, being rejected by the Appeals court and then reappointed and then rejected a second time. Made him really popular on slashdot when they thought Jackson was doing them a favor, looks rather less impressive in retrospect.
He has milked his appeal since, come up with some provocative statements on IPR that play well to his base. But what is his position on the other 98% of issues before Congress?
In short are we really sure that we are not buying a Nader type figure here? Well we are now because he is stepping down. But if he had continued the run the most likely outcome would be that he would split the progressive vote and let a Republican in.
Of course Nader's decision to run might well be the reason he decided not to.
Rather more likely is that this has something to do with the recent elections in Pakistan. The Musharaf just lost the election he had hoped would allow him to complete his transition from dictatorship to elected President. Instead he lost control of the process with the assassination of Bhutto.
Independent TV is a much bigger threat to the regime than independent press. Blogs have rather less credibility than actual video of a demonstration.
I suspect that the ISP chose this method of blocking the traffic for precisely the reason that it would cause the maximum notice. Implement a local block in Pakistan and the Pakistanis complain. Implement the block in such a way that it affects the whole region and you have so many more people working to circumvent the censorship.
BGP security has been a big concern for me for some time. In fact it is such a concern that it is one of the issues I did not address in my book on Internet crime precisely because I did not want to give people ideas.
No, but top up cards for pay as you go cellular plans have been sold at POS since the mid 90s.
Yet more free prior art consulting...
There are lawyers who have tried to convince me that I can do more for the industry by helping them sink bogus patents than by actually like inventing stuff or writing books on how to stop Internet crime. Unlike some folk here I do accept that software can be patentable, but thats not the problem, the problem is the junk patents that should never have been applied for or granted.
Junk patents devalue genuine ones. They also mean that every few weeks we have another slashdot story where IBM or Microsoft have patented the wheel or such like, almost certainly as a defensive move, but once the patent is granted it can be used for anything.
Yahoo plus Microsoft clout potentially creates a Pepsi to Google's Coke in the search area. All those advertising dollars that are fleeing from network TV have two places to go, not just one.
Yahoo has been trying to get on equal terms by itself, Microsoft has been spending squillions to buy up the best brains they can in the area but they don't have the business base to work from.
The bigger concern for the industry though should be where Mr Softy and The Goo go next. Microsoft can buy SAP and Yahoo, its not either/or. Google is likely to buy stuff as well. The same math works for them.
Apple definitely has the edge in configuration. Microsoft has to get its act together and recognize that UPnP is dead. Bonjour is deployed, works and is supported by a huge number of hardware providers. It took me minutes to hook my Mac up to my network attached printers and Windows Home server.
Microsoft has the edge when a configuration goes wrong though. 95% of the time the Mac just works. But when they don't work there is no information to work from.
Vista has the lead in certain aspects of the windowing system. Aero is prettier. The menu on the top of the window works better on a large display than the Mac menu at the top of the screen. On a laptop I think its the other way round. But why not make this a user choice on both platforms?
The Mac is more consistent, but that can bite you in unexpected ways. The Dock is configured through the settings menu, not through a menu associated with the dock, I find that counter-intuitive. Desktop clutter seems to be a worse problem than on my XP laptop. I feel short of pixels even though the screen is actually bigger than my thinkpad.
On the class action suit, well Apple has been on the receiving end of class action suits as well. Every computer company has. The outcome of these suits appears to be entirely unrelated to the cause, the lawyers have ever incentive to reach a quick settlement where they get a huge payout and the customers are left with nothing more than some vouchers that give money off another purchase.
Slashdot as ever behaves like Rush Limbaugh reacting to partisan scandals. Allegations that a Democrat engaged in certain behavior sends him into apoplexy (e.g. Clinton boinks an intern), allegations that a Republican did something of the sort causes him to attack the press (e.g. McCain accused of corruptly intervening on behalf of a lobbyist he may or may not have been committing adultery with). Moral indignation loses its force when it is partisan.
That is the White House line and its a lie. Existing authorizations continue to be in force for a year. That takes us past the next inauguration.
The only case where the administration could not conduct a warantless tap is if there was an entirely new terrorist organization to emerge in the next twelve months. And they could still get a wiretap, they just have to get a warrant.
The issue here is not providing immunity to the telcos, it is providing immunity to the Administration. They want to be able to shred all the evidence of their criminal activities before a Democrat takes over. And they are willing to hold the security of the country hostage till they get their way.
Up till now it has been sufficient for the Bushies to cry National Security and the Democrats would run frightened to hide. Now they have accidentally called the Administration's bluff they have discovered the consequences of standing up to Bully Bush - absolutely nothing. Bush's approval ratings dropped by ten points to 19%. The wiretap issue was gone after a single media cycle.
How about Sun's legal threats against people who innovate on top of Java in unauthorized fashion?
Is there any party Microsoft has made a patent sharing agreement with to date that is not a net recipient?
Microsoft to Novell: "Take this money or we will sue you"
Novell to Microsoft: "Curse your threats, we surrender!"
Slashdot to Novell: "Thhhrrrruuuppppp!!!!!"
The Thinkpad comparison is ridiculous. The Thinkpad is not a response to the MBA, its a machine that came out about the same time with one MBA technology, the solid state drive. I would not pay $1000 for a SSD. Its a technology that is definitely going to have a big impact but not make mainstream till a 128Gb drive costs $300.
There are two types of laptop, portables and desktop replacements. This is a portable, it is not a desktop replacement by any stretch of the imagination. My desktop has a 1KW power supply and puts out enough heat to warm the server room nicely. It has water cooling and was built to drive three 30" displays. That is a desktop. The day a laptop comes with even one 30" display will be a while coming.
Apple are very smart to emphasize 'thin' over small and light. If they made a 17" model with a high res screen I would definitely buy one.
I don't give a hoot for the number of ports, power, USB and DVI are plenty. The only complaint I have is that its only a single link DVI connector and there is no support for my 30" display, a fact made rather worse by the fact that these displays are only just coming available with scaling chips.
My only real complaint is the lack of a supplemental power accessory. Just give me a battery pack I can plug into the magsafe adapter for long flights.
The lack of DVD built in only worried me before I found that DVD ripper technology has advanced in recent years. The bigger challenge there is the fact that the built in disk is rather small to be loading DVDs onto the machine.
No, its two words.
The term is used in computer security to mean attacking the human component of a security system. Securing the Internet is easy, its securing whats on each end thats hard: users, the banking system, etc.
And yes, the term is bogus, it was invented by a bunch of crackers who are into junk science in a big way. Neuro-Linguistic Programming and similar garbage.
Well some of us have a Mac and have not joined the cult. Point in fact here is that I am currently typing this on my new Macbook Air which I have owned for two days now without feeling the need to wear black jeans and a turtleneck.
Now the reason I have bought a Mac is probably unique (see my blog, I am not typing it in again), but I don't feel the lack of Mac features when I am using my Vista machine. In fact the only real difference between the two is that I can use one downstairs on the couch and the other has a 30" display.
I had been considering the Lenovo prior to realizing that I needed to get a Mac if I was going to write anything on Security Usability. Even though Apple is not doing any better than Microsoft on the measures I am concerned with it is necessary to answer those whose answer to every usability problem is 'get a Mac'.
The reason I would not get the Lenovo X300 is that I would wait for the convertible tablet model. I don't rate the handwriting analysis as a killer application, at this point I type faster than I write. But the ability to scribble and whiteboard is very useful.
On the side by side comparison, I don't think the Lenovo comes close to the MacBook Air. First it is a thousand bucks more and second its not much different to the X61. Its a Thinkpad with a solid state drive, well big whoopsie, I didn't pay for the SSD on my MacBook and I wouldn't pay that on the Thinkpad either. To be worth having the SSD has to cost half as much and provide twice as much space.
Here is a hint, nobody knows if your MacBook Air has an SSD or a hard drive inside. You can buy three years of AppleCare and a TimeVault for $550. By the time the AppleCare runs out there will be a new MacBook Air.