Years down the road?

Let's say microsoft goes down hill, do they still have to abide? If open source company A "wins" the market share, yet open source company "B" cant use company A's protocol, is that fair? Can Microsoft have a case if they can't connect with Company A's protocol, but Company A's protocol has source to Microsoft's protocol?

Linux server support

See, using Linux proves to be a better server :)

To be fair, if I taking over a system, a windows box would be bogged down to hell already, competing with trojans, etc.

Atleast with a *nix based system, the admins would "assume" they are virus free, and instead of looking at their top reports, just enjoy their colourful and pretty UI (which, btw, is VERY pretty, baryl is awesome).

Not trying to be too complaining,

But why did he not TRY to put out the fire?

Sheesh, greed and hoping his house would have burnt down? Sniff up the toxic fumes?!

You prefer no updates?

Antoinette, as-tu aucun ... sigh.

So, OSX has no updates? *nix has no updates? TRy going a week without updates on your *nix release, you'll be surprised. OSX? They are just really really good at marketing.

Apple, a few weeks ago, they disabled a feature instead of fixing it. The crap fight would have been insane.

Jupiter joins Sun....

I read Jupiter joins Sun and really got confused. I need to read more slowly and carefully to avoid unnecessary laughs and giggles...

"events such as floods and droughts"?

1-1=0?

Don't they kinda cancel each other out. Either way, as I've said it before, the less we plow out of the town, the more the ground can "absorb" the rain water and the more the plants (trees) can shade the land keeping it from drying up.

BUT, you will always have a shifting climate. Last I looked, the deserts are always changing, whether we like it or not.

For the last few hundred years, we've been living our way; but unless we evolve (or learn to deal) like other creatures, we're up for extinction. Good example: Your house is destroyed every 2 years because of hurricanes. So you rebuild again. You expect this? Great, you've moved on. You sue the government? Time to take up a hobby scuba diving without gear.

If there's a fight....

I can see a fight happening for resources. 5-15 million tons usually means 1 million tons really there, and only 500 thousand easily "mined". And going through 100 tons a year is a number I see growing exponentially... did we not learn from oil? Oh well, atleast it gets us off out rear ends and out to space for future R&D (I approve!)

The only thing is, if we do fight, I hope we keep the fight in space. If you want a piece of the moon, so be it, blast eachother in space. If you want it on land, well, you're 100 years too late.

Google?

I dont get it, google doesn't "modify" linux code and it just works for them?

Doesn't open source mean they have to "give back" to the community?

We're entering a world where you can choose what OS you want to use, either developed by hundreds, dedicated to that specific function, or developed by millions, working on various random bits.

You can either shift your coders to work on your corporations "need", or pay someone else (microsoft), to do it. Either way, it is that companies choice.

Microsoft is no longer the only "evil" one. Companies have enough money to develop DRM for *nix based system, develop user friendly desktops (ubuntu), but whether they decide to invest or not, will be dependent on them. Microsoft is still focused on software and nothing more. They will be at the heart of the battles for years to come, but that's it, software.

Remember, 25+ years ago, there were choices out there, but companies charged way too much for their OS and one popped up with a cheaper alternative (and coded directly in house). If peope are not satisfied with Windows and other MS brands, invest in a new OS, INVEST into it!!

Not everything in life is free, I believe in choice, but I do not believe everything is a right.

I love those tools!

I generally write my own, but even with access to source code, I love testing these tools out on my products I write.

Of course, I'm no fool, I know no tool will ever compare to a real hacker who knows what he's doing and keeps his stuff to himself (like when I was a kid).

DRM?

Isn't this like DRM but in hardware?

at last commentor: Title

It's obviously not rocket science either...

Yeah for pinpoint tracking!

I am glad they will be able to advertise my location to the local restaurants nearby!

I cant wait for the day to be walking down the street and be asked by a restaurant employee: "hey, <email alias>, would you like to join us for our <my favorite meal> special?"

Are you sure?

Are you sure they did not make a mistake?

(I had a government official insist I had my name wrong...)

Website and Collections

I'm still confused by their fully-functional site...unless you read the FAQ, you would have no idea they're going down.

Their canadian version is still up though.

And, here's the thing I do not get, I visited their chapter11 site, where companies get to put in how much is "owed" to them, and there's a bunch of claims for over a million dollars...unless that company purchased 1000+ units at 1000+ dollars, how in the world did they "lose" 3mil when they went bankrupt?!

Microsoft?

Didn't people say the same about Micr◌soft before?

Just saying..

Positive and negative

This guy gave the iPhone positive remarks excluding the keyboard + price.

Just my two cents.

/ I'm keeping my Symbian Nokia and HTC Dash cuz I like putting my own crap on it :)

Not all links are colored...

Do this search:

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=monkeys&meta=

On my system, the ads and mixed with the searches.

Some countries are similiar. It's NOT the case in UK, US and Canada (and france, and germany, and...)

Above posted VS windows mobile

I dont know what the above posted said about the 100mhz cpu, but MOST windows mobile devices run at 400mhz, minimum is 200, and I'm seen some 600's (overclocked my OLD dell axim from 600 to 733!!)

Canadian "reps"

Most of their customer service reps are up in Canada, more specifically, TIMMINS, ONTARIO.

Cant say how I know... but do check out a map, it's really REALLY remote.

EBAY Ad!

Apple IPhone: Condition: USED. Classic.

X360 and rings of death

I've had mine going for 8 months, no rings of death, but I keep mine clean, on a shelf, open to the air, and doesnt move much.

My friend had to change his once already.

Strength lies in human-less passwords

The ones I've seen go up lately rely on private certificates. I am not sure of the bits, but without users choosing their own passwords, should help a lot. Also, users do not even need to write down a password either!

Most complain though, keeping a smart card around is "so" hard.

IE 1 FF 0

In this case, if IE decided to do any parsing, MS would be blamed for somehow controlling the user.

IE can handle that data, therefor passes it along. Firefox should KNOW better than to accept data from ANYWHERE (be it IE, a browser, a link, etc) without validating it.

You can't say, well, I trust IE so its IE's fault. It's like me saying, he told me his name was Shirley, so I believed him. It's HIS fault.

Interesting...

Microsoft's own net security team was rated as the 10 worst jobs, but they are still running daily.

Curious...

Major issue with google and new pc's

Just thought I'd point out, new pc's that integrate google desktop search are a PAIN to seperate it.

I loaded up a system and it had google desktop. I hit "decline" to the EULA thingy, yet, it still happily started indexing. After 2 uninstalls, the first one failing because I needed a "reboot", I got rid of that part.

Now, normally I *USE* google.com for searches. But, in the case of the new dell I used, I had NO CHOICE. I went to a wrong site, an internal link to dell.com/something came back. If I go into search preferences, no matter whom I chose, google was ALWAYS the search provider...

So far, I can deal with that. But what happens down the line when I get fed up with google...are they a monopoly?

Google being HINDERED by MS search? I think not. As soon as ANY process runs, MS' indexer is stopped. That process has so little priority, anything can run over it.

Hell, I installed google desktop search a last year on my work and home machine (we wont go there), and it really hogged it down. I got rid of it when I searched for some documents at work and it happily returned my private documents from my HOME machine...without my input (it used my gmail alias to connect both search indexes)

Head Wind?

I know when I fly little planes, I get a bit more speed when the wind is in my favour, I'm losing altitute, and I'm nose-heavy...

"I have a Mac... why do I need anything else?"

*golf clap*

Security by ignorance and obscurity.

I am sure my qnx box will NEVER be hacked. Really, I doubt it will. The same goes with my NT 3.51 box in my garage. I will PAY $50,000 to anyone who can hack it. Really. The box has NOT been patched, 2nd release batch, offical MS install cd. Infact, I believe the latest uptime was running at 6 months (power outtage 6 months ago, and I did not have fuel in the generator). AV? Definetaly not, I've only got 350mhz and 128mb ram. Firewall? Again, no go. Modem? No PCI/ISA slots open. NIC? Again, no slots. CDROM? Doesn't work no more. Floppy? YES!

Any takers? You got to be anonymous and can't have physical access... Good luck. Get the files from my c drive, and it's yours...

re: profit?

Profit???

Everything is made in china with Apple...I doubt apple is giving them a "nice" cut.

RE: NRT

Nice, I like that. I think I will poke at google :)

It doesn't affect their "searches", the data is safe and it makes you more "random".

Thanks for the idea/link.

Amusing paradigm

I remember a few years ago, they promissed "Do no evil".

Atleast with Microsoft, they still have supporters. Google seems to be pushing everyone away.

I admit, I still use gmail...but searches? I'm not sure anymore. I get more cialis results when I search online... :(

El reg and its common sense readers

Thank the higher power we have some users of common sense.

i'm not saying that MS is our saviour, but thankfully MS TELLS us its patches are of the serious nature..

Last "Automatic" update I received on my bsd box (ya ya ya), it just said it resolves important buffer overflow issues in "select" situations. I dug a bit deaper, and it had to do with a root exploit during some sql read ops. Was not even that hard to reproduce either, assuming I dont use a firewall.

Now, going to bash a MAC real quick too, still getting "important" updates eh? Tell me when your software is perfect...then I'll find another bug.

No matter WHAT software you use, there is ALWAYS going to be one more bug.

extras..

Actually, vista ultimate has more than just those 4 extras... those ARE extras, but getting the Basic Vista does not include ALL that comes with Vista Ultimate, just thought I'd point that out.

Also, extra copies of ultimate is $40-50 ish once you buy the first one.

Using XP Pro here...

Pleased

I'm pleased to not see too many stupid remarks, especially including the: "its getting popular and it's going to be more targetted".

Also, when it comes to "hacking" the windows/symbian line of devices; their developpers allow the use of 3rd party apps. Apple does not, so any extra steps taken to "learn" about it is impressive to me. (less than proding the board)

Mountain goats

I've seen this done with mountain goats. Quite funny.

Now, I dont know who planted it, it's considered "natural" and the animal actually ATE it. Animals know whats okay and not okay to eat, and they went for it.

re: Ripped off? WTF?

sorry I did not get back to you sooner, a good kernel compile takes time (actually, I screwed something up and I'm within a windows envrionment at the moment)

I am a bsd/windows user myself; and a VERY early mac user. I was impressed with the neat interface back in the 80's, played some interesting shooter games, and that's about it. They had their own os at the time, almost no decent console support. And, they were extremely expensive.

RE: Bruce

I guess you're right bruce, if this was considered a Handheld PERSONAL COMPUTER, you would be able to run your own, someone elses, software.

But, on an iphone, you HAVE to use apples software. Even in the early 80's, you have ONLY support apple software. Mac's got out of their hole when they opened their os to have 3rd party support, including their blatantly ripped off bsd source and software.

3rd party search

I wonder if I can use yahoo to search my folders instead of google...

To the last commentor...

Actually, the search feature in vista is a menubar "replacement".

Google's desktop search was "add-on". Also, when microsoft's "indexer" sees the system get busy, it CANCELS. None of this BS about "hogging" resources on google!! Google's app would have WAY higher priority than the build in indexer.

That's annoying...

Explains my random issues. Couldn't figure out why my vista box would not shutdown after some specific assembler code I worked on (involving a lot of "official" cpu code, page swaps and dma). I even loaded up fedora and it'd cause lovely spinlocks (just as annoying as a vista lockup, less that CPU)

Compatibility VS control

You would prefer MS goes the Apple way and FORCES hardware upon the USER?

Sheesh, MS comes about and TRIES to make hardware compatible with almost anything, people moan.

The recently released iPhone is a great example of apple belief: "You will only run on our hardware, our software". If their backend servers detect otherwise, enjoy your $600 paperweight.

I'm not saying MS is perfect in all regards, but there's always going to be people on both sides of the fence. My laptop uses XP Pro, I love it. My core 2 duo desktop, 2GB ram, latest hardware, loves Vista. No slowdowns. Each system has its thing; I still remember buying a 4meg ram upgrade for $100 so I can run Windows 95, from Windows 3.11 for workgroups. What were my options? right, linux, $300+ for the "open" os.

Goos...Goose....Googlos...GooGos?

I'm still waiting for the google OS to ship, full support for google.com, gmail, etc.

Compititors? Heck no, that'll affect their text ad business!

Anti-compitive? Why, not google.

I'm going to log into yahoo and google the definition. Wait, no good answers. Lets log into MS Live, google some queries, still nothing. A few search engines later, I still google some terms and can't quite find what I'm looking for.

Sorry for the bads news, here, you can have a Kleenex (Oxford) by (insert ANY company here).

"Shared" API's

Personally, I develop MS based software often. I have no issues with the available APIs out there. Sometimes it does look like it was written quickly enough just to get it done, but it's called trial and error on my part.

I'm also tired of non-technical reporters freaking out when THEY cant understand MS API's...

Now back to the search feature, Mac's search feature is built in as well.. just saying