And I still don't know anyone who owns one....
on
A Million Zunes Sold
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
At my monthly tech meeting we have a gadget show-n-tell, so far no Zunes have shown up. It is strange that MS claims 1,000,000 sold and I do not know anyone who has a Zune... Things that make you go hmmmm.....
MS is just jealous that IBM's stock price almost caught up to MS's. Those evil people at IBM, turning OpenSource into a business model! The Battle Royale will be MS vs. IBM. The good news is that IBM is good at this game and has already played it with SCO. Hmmmm.. what shape SCO is in these days.... can you say "DELISTED"? I knew that you could...:)
Ha, the ironies of ironies. MS who has been crushing little innovators for years and assilimating their stolen ideas is now upset because Microsoft's "obvious" patents have been violated.
This should lead to a great deal of entertainment for all of us in the computer industry as we watch Microsoft self destruct and become the next SCO. Now that Microsoft's evil apprentice (SCO) has been turned into a dry husk by IBM, Microsoft has no choice but to step out of the shadows and declare war on open source. However, Microsoft will only be able to fight this war in North American since Europe is free from software patent sillyness and China could care less about Copyrights, Patents, or Trademarks.
Let the self destruction begin! The lackluster and mostly useless Vista was the first step in the Microsoft selfdestruction process, now bring out the lawyers. Microsoft should be able to get the computer industry and user base allied against them within a month or two. Ohhh, this is going to be fun, fun, fun to watch! I hope Microsoft can get started next week!
It seems like it would be easier to spend money on innovation that would benfit the Windows user community, but I guess it is better to spend money on DRM and lawyers. Steve! Turn to the Dark Side! Embrace it! You do not know the power of the dark side! It will consume you!:)
I didn't write the laws. We either enforce the laws or change them, but not ignore them. 98% of all illegal entries into the USA are unprosecuted and mostly "catch and release". We are a nation of laws and "the useless laws weaken the necessary one."
The American Indians found out what happens when you don't control immigration. In any case, Yes, BOA is giving credit cards to people violating US law by being here illegally.
MBNA Corp. / BOA has been offering credit cards to illegals aliens in the United States. That means you can get a credit card with out a social security number or credit check. Unconfirmed sources have said that the program is a total disaster and is costing the bank quite a bit of money. I suspect MBNA Corp. will have to cut quite a few more programs and perks to keep funding credit cards for illegal aliens. Looks like they shot themselves in the foot.
VISTA hacked again? In about three years I predict this OS will actually be usable due to helper apps which allow end users to use the computer as they see fit, instead of how MS and friends think you should use it. DRM is such a waste of human resources, but I guess this is the game we have to play.
Bill Gates wants more cheap labor to waste of useless software. What a waste of human intellect and talent. How about making the computer RUN faster, be more intuitive, and reliable?
You are correct! We are also going to shoot our country in the foot and one day wake up to the realization that a country of mere consumers can not survive without decent jobs. Our government is corporately owned and operated so the options for change are most likely 1) revolution or 2) foreign invasion (Mexico, China). It's all too sad to think about.
This is great news! No need to retrain or hire college grads! Just give us more cheap labor! Cheap labor enables us to continue to compensate our CXO officers at insanely high levels. No need to think farther that the next quarter. Cheap labor today means profit next quarter.
Makes you wonder, why couldn't we get some H1-B CIO's and CEO's:) Anyway, this is my shot for today.
These same people look at evolution, can't see how a bacteria instantly develops into a human being and therefore it must be done by magic. Evolution is possible because of two things. First because if you have enough time even the most unlikely event is bound to happen but far more importantly, because the end result isn't nearly so fantastic as we would like to believe.
Ok, I agree with you on "average intelligence" and "vi vs. emacs" but the part about "evolution isn't nearly so fantastics as we would like to believe" threw me.
You can treat life as a statsitcal probablility if you like. If so, evolution doesn't fit for two main reasons which have nothing to do with the FSM.
1. Why are species extinct and where are the new species? Let's assume that given enough time a lizard will 'evolve' or a-speciate into a dinosaur or bird. Of all the pets and zoo animals humans monitor on a daily basis, no one has ever witnessed the magic.
2. Assuming something evolved into something else "a-speciation" what is the probability that 1) at least two evolved, found each other and were able to mate and reproduce while finding a suitable environment and food source before dying. Additionally, to have a healthy genepool at least 8-15 pairs would have to simultaneously a-speciate to not die off in a few generations due to inbred defects.
Evolution sounds good and it's easy to say, "Look everything is made up of DNA! Viola! Evolution". However, the facts and probabilities don't match. Using Wikipedia, assuming life began about 3.5 billion years ago and evolution is a linear process (not exponential), and based on the number of known species (even though the word species doesn't really have a valid definition, to me, any two lifeforms genetically compatible for reproduction constitutes a species) we should see the magic of evolution on average once every two hundred years. If the process is exponential, we should see it about once every 10-20 years. So far, no magic has been witnessed.
No fish have turned into birds or lizards into dinosaurs. Also, no extinct species have magically re-evolved. If someone can produce this evidence we can stop the debate, at least in my mind since that is how the scientific method is supposed to work.
Believe me, the US is now emphasizing science/math in the classroom. In fact, the new high school standards are going to see to it that next years 7th graders have no chance of graduation. The problem as I see it in America is not science/math but that the fabric of society (the family) is no longer stable and reliable. From an idealogical point of view, the problem with America is that we have replaced the ideals of Democracy with a quasi capitalistic system. I say quasi, because as more people lose at the game of capitalism, the government is becoming more and more socialist and wealth is once again becoming more and more concentrated.
From a moral and ethical point of view in America, it is more important to win, be cool (tatooed, Razor Cell Phone, designer clothes, drink the right drink, do the right drug, ride the cool car/motorcycle), and be passively addicted to stupidity (Sitcoms, Youtube, MySpace, Text Messaging, professional sports, movies) than it is to be smart, hardworking, moral/Godly, and fair. America has largely become a consumer driven "me first", passive, and non-thinking soceity at a time when we need to be engaged in a moment of clarity about the long range plans for our country, livelihoods, and families.
I apologize to my fellow Americans for being harsh, but we have got to 'kick it up a notch' or we are done.
Wow... I do my own prior art search and have the presumption of patentability!!!! I am filing to patent the "doubly linked list" this weekend. I think Microsoft patented the "linked list" last week, so I will embrace and extend their patent:)
It's all insanity. No wonder the US is no longer the Technology King. We spend all our time and money on lawyers and patent lawyers are NOT cheap.
Of course they are selling more. If you want XP with a new system from one of the PC manufacturers like DELL, it will cost you $79 for XP or you can have VISTA for FREE!
I don't know anyone in my circle that has purchased VISTA. Personally, I am holding off for about (3) years until all the DRM and hardware issues are all worked out. I can't see any compelling reason to move to VISTA and if I do buy a new system with it pre-loaded for FREE, I will move that system to dual boot Linux/XP.
I know this is off-thread, but is there anyway to speed up Windows booting? At least with Linux you can tune and serialize or parallelize the boot process for speed. Is there anyway to do this with Windows? The 35 processes that launch out of my system tray just don't want play nice together on boot:)
Sorry for the offtopic, but this is a sincere post.
However, the IP address would most likely be in the same subnet or net-block. Net-blocks are typically geographically oriented, so by looking at the last DHCP address, you could find the geographic region where the computer was physically connected to the Verizon network.
The ISP could tell you were the netblocks 208.192.6.0 and 208.192.7.0 geographically assigned.
This could serve as a double check on the information provided by the ISP. Also, one could ask if you were in geographic region X when the alleged actions occured.
Wow! I just finished reading the ASCII transcript and would be embarassed to bring this case. Just looking at the following facts:
The "expert" did about 45 minutes worth of work and produced no evidence to support the allegations and produced almost no documentation.
The "expert" does not fully understand how the software that gathered the evidence functions
The "expert" does not know if the information he received from the ISP (Verizon/3rd Party) is accurate.
The "expert" does not know if the clocks were synchronized between the evidence gatherers and the ISP.
The "expert" can not identify which computer is involved in the allegations.
The "expert" can not identity what physical person is involved in the allegations.
The "expert" understands the Internet is insecure and computers can be taken over and remote controlled.
The "expert" understands there are several methods which could have mistakenly identified the accused, e.g. "ip spoofing".
The "expert" either lied under oath or is not really an expert when he said he could not make certain determinations about a computer based soley on the harddrive. He stated he could not tell if the computer had a "wireless network card" by looking soley at the registry without the computer that the registry came from. Huh???? Hint to the "expert", look for "WLAN" in the Registry, double hint, WLAN='Wireless LAN'.
The "expert" could not demonstrate that the files uploaded/downloaded were copyrighted material and simply had a screen shot of some filenames and ip addresses from a 3rd party.
The "expert" acknowledged that screenshots could be faked.
The "expert" acknowledged that public IP addresses can change often and could be spoofed
This entire case hinges on screenshots, mystery analysis software "encase", a questionable expert, and an IP address obtained from an ISP. The evidence in this case doesn't even make it to the standard of "hearsay" not to mention the fact that the plaintiff lawyer appears to be highly inexperienced with Turets syndrome and keeps blurting "Objection to form."
I suspect that if one were to dig deeper into the so-called evidence, one would learn that information obtained from Verizon is prone to error, and that the procedures for generating the screenshots from KaZaa are based on assumptions which are prone to error and probably performed by monkeys. I want to read the deposition from the "dude/monkey" who took the screenshots, please post that one next.
If I were the lawyer for the defendant, I would already be filing my motion for dismissal "with prejudice" with the award of reasonable lawyer fees for having brought a case without any evidence.
Are there any standards for evidence? Is a printout obtained via supoena really a standard for evidence? If so, I can prove anything you like and as a bonus, I even have a professional certification.:)
Yes that's right. You can dodge taxes in the US and often times NOTHING happens. In fact, 30% of federal employees aren't bothering to pay their federal taxes,
Corporations owe $18 Billion and now only make up 7.4% of those who pay federal taxes., So now, the IRS has time to go after EBAY? Geez, why not go for the low hanging fruit and get the people and companies who truly OWE THE MONEY to the tune of $20 billion or better? What a bunch of #$%^&*.
Until now, String Theory has been that, a theory. It has been endless multidimensional mathmetics, on might cynically say to generate Phd's. Now an experiment is on the horizon which could be used to prove/disprove string theory. This should be interesting, especially if the extra dimensions are not observed.
All of this imagery is publically available and pointless to obfuscate. Google and is not a threat to national security, unless of course government entities accidentally allow sensitive websites to be indexed.
Dude, you can't slipstream in IDE drivers. Think about it. If you could get the machine to boot then you wouldn't need the extra IDE drivers in the first place, now would you? I reminds me of the episode of Cheers when Woodie bought the VCR (new technology at the time) and Sam asked him how he planned to hook it up. Woodie responded, "No problem Sam, it came with a VCR tape that explains the whole setup."
I suppose he could have built is own OEM bootable windows CD from the OEM HP CD and put in the drivers, but it shouldn't be that difficult. The point of the TFA is that doing something simple, like RAID-ing a Windows Server with the tools provided by vendors is near impossible in a reasonable amount of time.
Just think about the impact MS Vista and Office-2007 are going to have on e-waste. If you want the new MS bloat code with the almost as good as MAC interface, then you are going to need (minimum) a 64-bit processor, liquid cooled video card, and 2GB of RAM. Africa needs to brace for the boat load of PIII's and low-end P4's about to show up.
It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.
I think that so few people care about Vista the the Beta is meaningless. I know very few in the core technical community even thinking about Vista. Seems like most are taking a "wait and see" approach. Other than eye-candy and DRM, the product is mostly pointless. Not to mention, every piece of hardware you and your company owns will need to be replaced before running Vista.
I think I would rather save my pennies and go Mac+OSX before investing in Vista. At least on OSX I can do some decent video editing and get a unix shell, plus the machine will look cool on my desk:)
Slashdot Mirror
At my monthly tech meeting we have a gadget show-n-tell, so far no Zunes have shown up. It is strange that MS claims 1,000,000 sold and I do not know anyone who has a Zune... Things that make you go hmmmm.....
MS is just jealous that IBM's stock price almost caught up to MS's. Those evil people at IBM, turning OpenSource into a business model! The Battle Royale will be MS vs. IBM. The good news is that IBM is good at this game and has already played it with SCO. Hmmmm.. what shape SCO is in these days.... can you say "DELISTED"? I knew that you could... :)
Ha, the ironies of ironies. MS who has been crushing little innovators for years and assilimating their stolen ideas is now upset because Microsoft's "obvious" patents have been violated.
:)
This should lead to a great deal of entertainment for all of us in the computer industry as we watch Microsoft self destruct and become the next SCO. Now that Microsoft's evil apprentice (SCO) has been turned into a dry husk by IBM, Microsoft has no choice but to step out of the shadows and declare war on open source. However, Microsoft will only be able to fight this war in North American since Europe is free from software patent sillyness and China could care less about Copyrights, Patents, or Trademarks.
Let the self destruction begin! The lackluster and mostly useless Vista was the first step in the Microsoft selfdestruction process, now bring out the lawyers. Microsoft should be able to get the computer industry and user base allied against them within a month or two. Ohhh, this is going to be fun, fun, fun to watch! I hope Microsoft can get started next week!
It seems like it would be easier to spend money on innovation that would benfit the Windows user community, but I guess it is better to spend money on DRM and lawyers. Steve! Turn to the Dark Side! Embrace it! You do not know the power of the dark side! It will consume you!
Any money that comes from a judgement in a lawsuit is TAX FREE? This is money to right a wrong and/or give relief. What taxes are you referring to?
Great post, if I had mod points, you would get them today. I agree with you on AT&T/SBC comment, they are horrible.
So, if we have a deficit of women in IT, how about we just give the H1-B's to women?
"Nobody is "illegal", fascist."
I didn't write the laws. We either enforce the laws or change them, but not ignore them. 98% of all illegal entries into the USA are unprosecuted and mostly "catch and release". We are a nation of laws and "the useless laws weaken the necessary one."
The American Indians found out what happens when you don't control immigration. In any case, Yes, BOA is giving credit cards to people violating US law by being here illegally.
MBNA Corp. / BOA has been offering credit cards to illegals aliens in the United States. That means you can get a credit card with out a social security number or credit check. Unconfirmed sources have said that the program is a total disaster and is costing the bank quite a bit of money. I suspect MBNA Corp. will have to cut quite a few more programs and perks to keep funding credit cards for illegal aliens. Looks like they shot themselves in the foot.
VISTA hacked again? In about three years I predict this OS will actually be usable due to helper apps which allow end users to use the computer as they see fit, instead of how MS and friends think you should use it. DRM is such a waste of human resources, but I guess this is the game we have to play.
Bill Gates wants more cheap labor to waste of useless software. What a waste of human intellect and talent. How about making the computer RUN faster, be more intuitive, and reliable?
How about, Buy Vista and get a FREE Zune... Oh wait.... Vista DRM doesn't support the Zune or Fairplay. Almost a good idea.
You are correct! We are also going to shoot our country in the foot and one day wake up to the realization that a country of mere consumers can not survive without decent jobs. Our government is corporately owned and operated so the options for change are most likely 1) revolution or 2) foreign invasion (Mexico, China). It's all too sad to think about.
This is great news! No need to retrain or hire college grads! Just give us more cheap labor! Cheap labor enables us to continue to compensate our CXO officers at insanely high levels. No need to think farther that the next quarter. Cheap labor today means profit next quarter.
:) Anyway, this is my shot for today.
Makes you wonder, why couldn't we get some H1-B CIO's and CEO's
These same people look at evolution, can't see how a bacteria instantly develops into a human being and therefore it must be done by magic. Evolution is possible because of two things. First because if you have enough time even the most unlikely event is bound to happen but far more importantly, because the end result isn't nearly so fantastic as we would like to believe.
Ok, I agree with you on "average intelligence" and "vi vs. emacs" but the part about "evolution isn't nearly so fantastics as we would like to believe" threw me.
You can treat life as a statsitcal probablility if you like. If so, evolution doesn't fit for two main reasons which have nothing to do with the FSM.
1. Why are species extinct and where are the new species? Let's assume that given enough time a lizard will 'evolve' or a-speciate into a dinosaur or bird. Of all the pets and zoo animals humans monitor on a daily basis, no one has ever witnessed the magic.
2. Assuming something evolved into something else "a-speciation" what is the probability that 1) at least two evolved, found each other and were able to mate and reproduce while finding a suitable environment and food source before dying. Additionally, to have a healthy genepool at least 8-15 pairs would have to simultaneously a-speciate to not die off in a few generations due to inbred defects.
Evolution sounds good and it's easy to say, "Look everything is made up of DNA! Viola! Evolution". However, the facts and probabilities don't match. Using Wikipedia, assuming life began about 3.5 billion years ago and evolution is a linear process (not exponential), and based on the number of known species (even though the word species doesn't really have a valid definition, to me, any two lifeforms genetically compatible for reproduction constitutes a species) we should see the magic of evolution on average once every two hundred years. If the process is exponential, we should see it about once every 10-20 years. So far, no magic has been witnessed.
No fish have turned into birds or lizards into dinosaurs. Also, no extinct species have magically re-evolved. If someone can produce this evidence we can stop the debate, at least in my mind since that is how the scientific method is supposed to work.
Believe me, the US is now emphasizing science/math in the classroom. In fact, the new high school standards are going to see to it that next years 7th graders have no chance of graduation. The problem as I see it in America is not science/math but that the fabric of society (the family) is no longer stable and reliable. From an idealogical point of view, the problem with America is that we have replaced the ideals of Democracy with a quasi capitalistic system. I say quasi, because as more people lose at the game of capitalism, the government is becoming more and more socialist and wealth is once again becoming more and more concentrated.
From a moral and ethical point of view in America, it is more important to win, be cool (tatooed, Razor Cell Phone, designer clothes, drink the right drink, do the right drug, ride the cool car/motorcycle), and be passively addicted to stupidity (Sitcoms, Youtube, MySpace, Text Messaging, professional sports, movies) than it is to be smart, hardworking, moral/Godly, and fair. America has largely become a consumer driven "me first", passive, and non-thinking soceity at a time when we need to be engaged in a moment of clarity about the long range plans for our country, livelihoods, and families.
I apologize to my fellow Americans for being harsh, but we have got to 'kick it up a notch' or we are done.
Wow... I do my own prior art search and have the presumption of patentability!!!! I am filing to patent the "doubly linked list" this weekend. I think Microsoft patented the "linked list" last week, so I will embrace and extend their patent :)
It's all insanity. No wonder the US is no longer the Technology King. We spend all our time and money on lawyers and patent lawyers are NOT cheap.
Of course they are selling more. If you want XP with a new system from one of the PC manufacturers like DELL, it will cost you $79 for XP or you can have VISTA for FREE!
I don't know anyone in my circle that has purchased VISTA. Personally, I am holding off for about (3) years until all the DRM and hardware issues are all worked out. I can't see any compelling reason to move to VISTA and if I do buy a new system with it pre-loaded for FREE, I will move that system to dual boot Linux/XP.
I know this is off-thread, but is there anyway to speed up Windows booting? At least with Linux you can tune and serialize or parallelize the boot process for speed. Is there anyway to do this with Windows? The 35 processes that launch out of my system tray just don't want play nice together on boot :)
Sorry for the offtopic, but this is a sincere post.
However, the IP address would most likely be in the same subnet or net-block. Net-blocks are typically geographically oriented, so by looking at the last DHCP address, you could find the geographic region where the computer was physically connected to the Verizon network.
Example:
DHCP Request Monday - 208.192.6.50
DHCP Request Tuesday - 208.192.6.203
DHCP Request Wednesday - 208.192.7.20
The ISP could tell you were the netblocks 208.192.6.0 and 208.192.7.0 geographically assigned.
This could serve as a double check on the information provided by the ISP. Also, one could ask if you were in geographic region X when the alleged actions occured.
This entire case hinges on screenshots, mystery analysis software "encase", a questionable expert, and an IP address obtained from an ISP. The evidence in this case doesn't even make it to the standard of "hearsay" not to mention the fact that the plaintiff lawyer appears to be highly inexperienced with Turets syndrome and keeps blurting "Objection to form."
I suspect that if one were to dig deeper into the so-called evidence, one would learn that information obtained from Verizon is prone to error, and that the procedures for generating the screenshots from KaZaa are based on assumptions which are prone to error and probably performed by monkeys. I want to read the deposition from the "dude/monkey" who took the screenshots, please post that one next.
If I were the lawyer for the defendant, I would already be filing my motion for dismissal "with prejudice" with the award of reasonable lawyer fees for having brought a case without any evidence.
Are there any standards for evidence? Is a printout obtained via supoena really a standard for evidence? If so, I can prove anything you like and as a bonus, I even have a professional certification.
Yes that's right. You can dodge taxes in the US and often times NOTHING happens. In fact, 30% of federal employees aren't bothering to pay their federal taxes, Corporations owe $18 Billion and now only make up 7.4% of those who pay federal taxes., So now, the IRS has time to go after EBAY? Geez, why not go for the low hanging fruit and get the people and companies who truly OWE THE MONEY to the tune of $20 billion or better? What a bunch of #$%^&*.
Until now, String Theory has been that, a theory. It has been endless multidimensional mathmetics, on might cynically say to generate Phd's. Now an experiment is on the horizon which could be used to prove/disprove string theory. This should be interesting, especially if the extra dimensions are not observed.
Get a brane! -- String theory humor
Here are some top secret sites:
THe Pentagon
Area 51
Yuma Proving Grounds Marine Base
All of this imagery is publically available and pointless to obfuscate. Google and is not a threat to national security, unless of course government entities accidentally allow sensitive websites to be indexed.
Dude, you can't slipstream in IDE drivers. Think about it. If you could get the machine to boot then you wouldn't need the extra IDE drivers in the first place, now would you? I reminds me of the episode of Cheers when Woodie bought the VCR (new technology at the time) and Sam asked him how he planned to hook it up. Woodie responded, "No problem Sam, it came with a VCR tape that explains the whole setup."
I suppose he could have built is own OEM bootable windows CD from the OEM HP CD and put in the drivers, but it shouldn't be that difficult. The point of the TFA is that doing something simple, like RAID-ing a Windows Server with the tools provided by vendors is near impossible in a reasonable amount of time.
Just think about the impact MS Vista and Office-2007 are going to have on e-waste. If you want the new MS bloat code with the almost as good as MAC interface, then you are going to need (minimum) a 64-bit processor, liquid cooled video card, and 2GB of RAM. Africa needs to brace for the boat load of PIII's and low-end P4's about to show up.
It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.
My sentiments exactly... Vista? "Who cares??"
:)
I think that so few people care about Vista the the Beta is meaningless. I know very few in the core technical community even thinking about Vista. Seems like most are taking a "wait and see" approach. Other than eye-candy and DRM, the product is mostly pointless. Not to mention, every piece of hardware you and your company owns will need to be replaced before running Vista.
I think I would rather save my pennies and go Mac+OSX before investing in Vista. At least on OSX I can do some decent video editing and get a unix shell, plus the machine will look cool on my desk