Posts by Michael C

HP strikes back on charges for 'free' Windows 7 upgrade

it was never free

Microsoft told everyone from the beginning that the Os upgrade would be free to qualified purchasers, but most OEMs would charge a nominal fee for shipping.

$5-10 I can expect, but $2 (in the us that would be nearly $40!) is rediculous for a small DVD case, if it was not just a disk in a paper cleeve with a sitcker on it...

HP should be slapped for this. Further, it should not be BY REQUEST, the disks should have been sent out automatically to those who bothered to register for them, and HP could have simply included $3-5 in the price to cover it...

Apple loses students to netbooks and Windows

@sleepy

Yup, not only do they get a free $250 MP3 player, they also get between $50 and $300 off that mac notebook too, and discounts on software, a free printer, and more.

Most universities think the White Macbook clearly meets their requirements, and a $949 notebook that can plaw WoW, edit video, comes with webcam and bluetooth, and a free iPod and free printer starts sounding like a pretty damned good deal next to the 2 recomended Dell systems (E6400 and 6500, $1094 - 1189), which though have slightly faster CPUs (2.26 vs 2.13, not MUCH faster), they have slower memory and poor graphics in comparison, and half the battery life. and no free ipod or printer... With the discounts available (and counting the free ipod and printer savings) even the 15" macbook pro is cheaper than the recomended Dell systems, and it can also dual boot Windows and Linux too (and at Clemson they'll help you set that up)

You can't use a NetBook at Clemson not because Dell paid Clemson to say that (i'm talking at the dumbass anonymous coward here), but because the NetBook does NOT meet Clemson's minimum requirements of supporting Vista business or Mac OS X (XP Home or basic is not supported as you require domain authentication as a student to get access to student service systems). Further, Clemson's onsite support staff and department have in stock parts only for reccomended and supported modes, have preconfigured OS images available with all the approriate security software, and are approved to repair those models. If you bring something else, local staff refuses to support the machine, and you have to buy all the licenced software they require. A $200 Netbook, even if it could support the required software would cost over $600 extra to do so....

I mention Clemson only because it was easy to find their site. I have no association to clemson, I went to a different university...

sample size of 300

OK, so some idiot runs a story based on a sample of select students in a select area regarding what they do or don't intend to go back to school with, and they come up with NET BOOK? OK, the notebooks don't even come CLOSE to meeting the requirements provided by most universities in the first place, and I know of no school listing a NetBook as an acceptable machine for any incoming freshman class. As if that alone was not a clue, IT WAS A SAMPLE SAIZE OF 300! That would be an invalid sample size even if the article was about the incoming class of a SINGLE university, and has no potential bearing on the habits of actual people going to schools.

The average notebook price purchase for a generic person is an under $700 machine, students average price is several hundred dollars more. University laptop requirements are typically significantly inflated, require the business (pro) operating system, not home or basic, and are typically intended to be machines that will actually last the full 4 years of a student;s career in college.

For reference, please see Clemson University IT support statement, about halfway down the page, regarding netbooks:

http://www.clemson.edu/ccit/hardware_software/hardware/purchasing/index.html

If you show up with a netbook, University IT staff will likely send you away without allowing your machine on their network, and without access to required campus resources.

I found a similar statement at USC, Hofstra, SUNY, Furman, MIT, Miami, and more in quick searches. Students coming in to school are requires to purchase supported notebooks as most universities. At every one I checked, MULTIPLE Mac models were listed, most had 1 or 2 dell options, some required you to order preconfigured machines with university specific pre-installed OS images!

Anti-virus forgetfulness fubars Fox forecast

It that the retail version?

I can't really tell from the poor video I saw, was that the RETAIL version of Norton AV? I've got the enterprise version running on a laptop i kept from my last job, and it's expiration warnings are tray popups, not full screen displays... I don't use norton on any other systems; haven't since 2003 or so when the software started getting so overblown with fancy features it slowed the machine down too much.

If they're using the retail version, I'm sure someone from Norton was giving a polite call to Fox reminding them that those versions are not permitted on commercially used systems, they have a different licence for that...

How to set up your HDTV like a pro

Was easy on mine

I've got a Westinghouse 37" set. I poped in a THX DVD that had some test paterns, got things balanced pretty good (out of the box it was WAY too bright, and had some off color balances).

It's nice enough to maintain per-input settings. The wife doesn't even know where to find the TV remote, let alone who to get to the right menus to screw with it, so she's not an issue.

I did my fathers TV when he got a new one, and noticed the next time I was there it was comletely out of whack. not to mention, he'd been using both the set top box AND the TV's image stretch features, and his 16:9 image was all stretched out and didn't fit the screen right, I had to reset both to "normal" seperately and program his remotes so he stopped using more than 1. Then i reprogrammed his TV and took advantage of a "parental controls" feature and locked the menus for image adjustment with a password so he couldn't screw it up again...

Microsoft warns of 'irreparable harm' on court's Word injunction

Lack of integration would hurt our firm

Yea, there are other options, but we have MASSIVE investments in document management systems, document collaboration systems, and user training in those systems. We're working on reasearching processes to move to open source editors and open formats, but unfortunately, without the plug-in options available Microsoft currently provides, this means writing our own complete DCM solution, or binding into one of those that work with OpenOffice or another solution. Fact is, we might be able to save 4-5 million every 2 years not buying SA upgrades for Office, but any way we slice it, rearchitecting our DCM solutions is going to cost many times that if we move away from SharePoint, Exchange, and other existing developed code and processes. We estimate DCM saves us more than the licences cost, both in terms of man hours, and in document archiving and disaster recovery costs.

The solution? 1: force microsoft to decouple the infringing code, in all future versions (including Office 2010 soon to be released, even if that means delaying that product to do it). 2: In addition to the $200m fine, Microsoft pays $10 per licence distributed of Office 2003 and Office 2007 from October 10 forward to the owner of the patent. (regardless of the method; VL, SA upgrades, Technet copies, etc; any licence key activated for any reason, even freely distributed ones). 3: With #2 in place, Microsoft is considered "licenced" for the technology for the versions that already contain it.

Shop risks legal action for posting 'shoplifter' CCTV online

Post a sign

"By entering this premesis you are hereby informed CCTV is in use for surveilance purposes. Images or video footage of individuals suspected of cmitting a crime on the premesis may be circulated both to authorities and across other public mediums including but not limited to the internet in the attempt to identify said suspects. Beware your actions in this store are being recorded, and video footage associated with a known crime may be made public. You agree, by entering this establishment to waive any rights against the proprieter should images you you appear online associated with a crime. individuals captured in posted footage not associated with the crime resorded will be obscured."

Done, problem solved.

Of course, it;s just as easy to hand tohe footage over to police, then let THE POLICE host the images.

Apple won't take tablet to September iPod event, says mole

We'll wait

Look, it's been rumored for a looooong time that the iTablet would come out in 2010, and no sooner. Such a new product also calls for its own event, not taking the limelight away from new pods and accessories. Look for a preview anouncement in November if not into late January, with a product hitting shelves late spring at the earliest.

Apple MacBook Air June 2009

Fail?

Many of you claim this machine failed miserably, that noone wants them, that they missed the market.

1) they missed the market YOU think they were aiming at, which is actually NOt the market they were choosing. The market for the air is people who want FULL SIZE light and portable machines... People who want a simlg slim briefcase or bag to contain ALL their business work, not to have a briefcase AND a laptop bag. These are peopole who want portabilitiy, but the ability to still work with video and graphiucs on a limited basis, and who don't want to have a magnifying glass to read the screen.

2) Apple has sold a TON of these machines. I see one leaving my local BestBuy in the hands of a happy copnsumer every time I'm there... In fact, my understanding is they outsell 13" pro machine...

3) External DVD is an option... no it's not included, but most of the competing ultra-thins don;t include one either.

4) Having a removable battery completely defeats the idea of portable. not only would it dramatically increase the size, but also you;d have to carry that extra battery. It runs 5-7 hours on a charge, and charges in 30 minutes to 80%. Tell me where you'll be for 5 hours where you can't find an outlet and where the notebook will be under constant use and I'll show you somewhere else you could be using it. Besides, most of the machines with removable batteries only have 2-3 hour charges anyway, so 2 batteries in your machine is the equivalent of my internal. Also, how do you charge 2-3 batteries??? I've had several notebook sin the past where I've been convinced to get a second battery. In most cases I rarely used it, in others, the second one was never charged as i dodn't have the time to babysit it for 2 hours while it charged so I could swap out the battery!

5) 1 USB, I agree, a bummer, but when have you needed more than 1 USB port when on the run where it was not also convenient to bring a 2 oz 4 port adapter? Yes, I'd like to see a 2nd port built to me that's not important for a presentation and lightweight portable machine. Even when i need both a mouse and a USB stick, I can unplug the mouse, copy files, and plug it back in (of course, a bluetooth mouse solves that problem).

6) 2GB of RAm an issue? expect a 4GB option shortly. But really, it's a Mac, it needs half the RAM of a Windows machine, and it;s intended purpose is presentations, basic photo management, word processing, and the web... if you need more than the equivalent of 4GB of ram, suck it up and carry 1.5 extra pounds... Adding a doot to access memory modules, or the HDD, would add thickness. It;s not required.

7) this is NOT meant to be your only PC, but it IS meant to be a lot more than a netbook... Apple is NOT entering the NetBook market, give up on it, they will NOT be releasing a ultra CHEAP ultra portable any time soon. They have no interest in the 9-10" market. Their OS is designed for usabiltiy, and that's basically impossible on a 1024x700 screen... Also, this is a PRESENTATION machine, targeted in a large part at business professionals. It needs to SMOOTHLY play music and video during a presentation while running dual display, and support web conferencine without jitter or stutter, you;re simply not going to do that on a cheapo celeron or budget machine, and making a budget machine smaller without firther depreciating it's performance costs more, not less. Start with a $900 business notebook, cut the weight in half and size ot a 3rd, and you have a macbook air.

IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices

You don't BUY a mainframe for this...

...you already have one. (or really, not less than 2, as buying 1 frame is almost never done...)

If you already HAVE a few frames, because you need to run many DB2 databases, have lots of legacy code, or whatever. Lets say you've licensed 4,000 mips on each, and have lots of spare capacity. Now, adding some IFLs to run Linux is not only easy, it;s cheap, and adds to no other infrastructure.

But lets go with your base assumptions, a completely new mainframe chassis (2 actually) vs enough VMWare nahalem chassis not just to run the guests, but to also add VMotion and enough additional redundant chassis and SAN storage to handle full failover of a datcenter. (If you have enough guests to warent a mainframe, you probably already have more than 1 datacenter in your building, and if you don;t, it;s a REAL good idea you look at your infrastructure redundancy design...)

Lets also look at a few other details your cost analysis missed:

Storage: In the mainframe, hundreds of Linux "guests" can use a single binary image. Hundreds of VM ware guests needs hundreds of times the base OS image storage. Yea, you need data storage, but that's the same price either way, but a 5GB OS image on the mainframe compared to 0.5TB on 100 linux guests is a HUGE difference. (since the base frame has all the I/O components and dedicated I/O processors you'd need, you're just basically buying DAS storage, but for the VM Ware systems, it;s SAN for you...)

DR: (goes to storage as well). On VMWare, your 100 guests need significant storage either on tape or disk for backups. On the mainframe, just a base copy is all you need to back up, plus the differrencing data. There's also no licnecing needed to do this on a mainframe, but each of your 100 linux guests in VM ware needs a backup agent and so does the VM Ware host.

Software (honestly, this is the biggest one!): Lets look at Websphere, Oracle, or any number of other apps you need to buy for these linux guests. On the Host side, 1 "processor" license covers the entire IFL. 5 websphere licences (at 120PVUs each) covers all 5 engines, and hundreds of Linux guests. In VMWare, each of those processors is 120PVUs (if you're talking nahalem xeons). A single rack chassis costs almost as much to license as the whole mainframe... Add to this MQ, DB2, antivirus, scanning and remediation clients, monitoring clients, and more that the mainframe basically either takes care of already, or simply doesn't need).

VMWare itself: Ouch thats's expensive... how many cores did you license it for on the small boxes? including enterprise support, HA, vMotion, storage replication (you do plan on having more than 1 SAN chassis, right, and are not putting 10-20TB of mission critical system images on one bot that could take 3-4 days to recover with even the best DR solutions, right?), management software, and more?

Switching/routing: Mainframe, just needs a few 10Gs to connect to the network. Multiple VMWare chassis? lots and lots of cabling, inband and out of band VLan configurations, fully redundant rack to rack cabling and switching, not to mention the HBAs, SAN fiber switches, and more...

memory: Yes, mainframe memory is nearly $2,000 per GB. Of course, the base frame comes with some significant memory (128GB i believe), and each IFL adds to that. But again, single binary imaging allows a very small memory footprint change per additional guest. We're adding between 64 and 128MB of active memory footprint per additional guest. on VMWare you're likely adding 1-2GB if not more. Sure, you can get 2GB kits dirt cheap, but with only 8 or 12 memory slots, that's not getting you far. Likely you'll be buying 8G and 16G kits, which do not scale linearly in price so well... and the frame has a good head start....

We've been deploying zVM for about 3 years. Upper management CONSTANTLY looks at each new project to compare costs. We actually look at everything I metioned above and more to make our determineation to deploy new or upgraded systems on zVM, VMWare, BlaceCenters, or standalone boxes. If the software runs on zVM (keeping in mind it's not linux, but Linux for OS390X hardware platform, which is a seperately compiled version of Linux, hence the no-need-for-antivirus position), it is ALLWAYS cheaper than VMWare (usually by half or more), and in some cases we've seen a 10 fold savings (especially when dealing with per core or per guest licence models).

Health emails from US voters overload fed website

What?

The number was for ONE REPUBLICAN'S office, not the ENTIRE Whitehouse.gov email system...

Outlook (finally) coming to the Mac

Oops, pricing issue in Mac favor?

Well, if Snow Leapord is going to itself feature native Exchange support, and Outlook will be available to replace entourage in the Student Teacher edition, then mac users, for $129, can get what Windows users need to pay $399 for! Big smile :D

Apple poaches eBay data center guru

You're WONDERING what they're doing?

Apple has a MASSIVE data load to deal with. They're continuing to not only add content to iTunes, but they're also improving the resolution of that content, and the bandwidth requirements for delivering each file as well. Combine that with Apple's continuing movement into personal websites, information and file sharing, data backup, hosted services, and more, yea, they need a MASSIVE datacenter. Also the interconnections between iTunes and Twitter, facebook, etc likely has some significant server side presence, and expanding their server side role in the iPhone push technology is happening fast.

Also, Apple probably could use a place to work on xGrid systems and massively parallel cluster applications and other cloud based services and application virtualization. Further, Apple is rumored to be working on both their own search engine as well as their own financial transaction system. A hulu-like product is also completely possible in the very near future.

Just the physical storage pool for 1080p content covering every major movie and TV episode released in a calendar year is amazing, not to mention taking their more than a million song database and converting it all to lossless rips.

I can't even imagine the aggregate switch capacity Apple needs, let alone the bandwidth costs. I would not doubt that of that billion, nearly a 100 million in in ISP connectivity over 3-5 years, and another 100million in switch hardware, before we talk structural and traditional server costs...

Best Buy demos Dell netbook running... Mac OS X

Nice catch anonymous coward

I was going to also point out that the machine in the first image is a black plastic machine, and the one seen at the top of the second is a silver metallic system, but you beat me to it...

Had you actually used a username, you might have gotten proper credit....

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data

@Simon Neill

People have been imprisoned for 10 years and longer for contempt of court, and those were for CIVIL cases, where general imprisonment is not usually on the table. The longest case was 14 years for a man who refused to hand over a divoce settlement to his ex-wife.

I can't find a link for the longest criminal contempt imprisonment, I understand it;s longer. Typical contempt imprisonment is coercive, and so long as you refuse to comply, being brought into the court consecutively after each sentence to see if you will in fact comply with the court order, you can again be senteced successively. A typical contempt sentence is up to 18 months for a single act, but continued failure to comply results in additional 18 month or longer sentences, and in most states, they'll give you 2 sentences of civil contempt (even in a criminal case) and after that they become criminal contempt charges (even in a civil case) and the sentences can be more severe, up to the maximum sentence of the crime you;re charged with.

destroying or obfuscating evidence

you might have a knee jerk reaction and say "why should the law be able to tell me to decrypt anything I have?" but in reality, when it comes to a warrent issued to colelct specific evidence, your actions to prevent that collection are in fact criminal, and allways have been; the law passed in 2007 is simply a clarification ensuring there would be no confusion in the matter. Since the history of warents, you've been required to hand over keys to locks, passwords to systems, and remove any other obstacle preventing officers from excersizing the warrant. Why should encryption be any different?

If a court demands you produce financial records, and you hide that information or destroy it, when the court is aware already of it's existence, you're typically imprisoned until either you produce it, or you're imprisoned up to a lenght of time equal to the maximum punishment for the specific crime you're charged with plus an additional time for continued contempt of court. People have been imprisoned for dacades for their refusal to supply properly requested data central to a case against an individual.

This law does NOT give the courts permission to simply make you unencrypt your information on somple request, you or your company actually needs to be charged with a specific crime that would necessitate the collection of certain data or ducuments you'd be expected to have. Then the warrent is issued for the collection of JUST THAT. Should they inadvertantly discover child porn on your PC while looking for bank fraud records, they're bound by law to ignore that, and charges against you for having those files would in fact be against the law (at least here in the US it is). Now, a loophole is such that anything discovered in "plain sight" can be noted, and during the search an additional warrant could be issued to further investigate the "evidence of an additional crime," however, the initial warrant to search FOR data withing your encrypted files does not give them permission to search ALL your files, only to collect specific data associated with the case against you (or someone else), and any other evidence would in fact have to be "in plain view" and discovered under the normal course of the search for targeted evidence.

Microsoft nails retail store logo and locations

No Free Windows Support

A lot of people ore going to be disenfranchised quickly as they bring their OEM PCs to see Microsoft reps for support of issues and find out microsoft charges a minimum $59 for consumer support on RETAIL OS versions, but all support for OEM products is done by the manufacturer. If you have a Dell or HP, and bring in to a microsoft store for help, minimum you'll pay $59 to talk to their "geek", posibly $99 to buy a Microsoft "token" while next door at Apple people are receiving training, getting help, and more, completely for free... Sure, if it's a "known" microsoft issue that there's a patch for, they'll refund your $59, but not until after they determine the problem is a covered problem... Most customers however would bring their PC in to simply be redirected to Dell support and told to bugger off.

When they're passing buy the Apple store all pissed off, having not been helped, and some guy with a Mac waiting outside to get in the store (they're often crowded, and subject to saftey regulations, and they let people in only as fast as people leave, with a very high tech concierge system and friendly people), and tell the Mac guy "good luck, they'll probably charge you for support too." the Mac guy will say, "nope, i made an appointment, and they told me it's free, I don;t even have a waranty!"

Then the concierge will say "would you like a tour? We'd be happy to show you a Mac to replace that Dell..." and Apple might win another customer. Regardless of price, a lot of disenfranchised customers will decide to simply buy from the competition to spite the original manufacturer... That, or they'll demand the $59 be compensated by Dell somehow. in the end, this can only work to ensure microsoft also starts offering completely free support in their storefronts, which then will have people from companies far and wide standing in line to have their business PCs fixed too, and rape microsoft for billions in service revenue profits.

Court filings are protected by copyright, says lawyer

Paid for it's publishing....

I might agree with the lawyers if not for the fact that 1) they're we;; paid for the huindreds of hours put in writing those briefs, and 2) they're well aware that those briefs, once presented in court, become part of the court record, which is in fact public domain material under the Freedom of Information Act.

In essence, it can be argued that each attorney proucing a breif in in essence being paid, in part, a one time royalty on the publishing of that information.

Arguing that your personal interpretation of the law, which may or may not have resulted in the finding innocent of your client, is not something that should automatically be applied to other cases dealing with the same or similar circumstaces or facts is a violation of due process. Whole volumes of information have been published for hundreds of years based on the findings of court cases EXACTLY so other lawuers could benefit from the results of the case for their own independedt use in other cases. This is the lifeblood of appelate law, and the information presented in court that led to that ruling is of critical value to the OTHER DEFENDENTS, and should not in any way, especially through copywrite, be kept from those defendents.

Will Google regret the mega data center?

not about the location or the business model

The problem with this is NOT that planning large datacenters is a problem, it;s that they planned around TAX LOOPHOLES.

ANY business plan that counts of skirting the tax system is a BAD plan. Eventually the local or state system will catch up and change a law to get what they're do.

I don't mind so much tax breaks on temporary basis for businesses who move a large facility into an area with large unemployment, so long as the tax break is 10 years or less and the contract for minimum employment levels at minimum pay grades is for 2-3 times longer than the break lasts. However, placing a facility somewhere because a certain thing is simply not taxed where it is almost everywhere else is insanity. As soon as they figure out they're missing out on what everyone else tatxes you for, they will too...

Taxes should be a fact. A base rate across the board on all systems and services. Companies choosing where to locate because it costs less to run a certain business one place vs another because of proximity to a resource i understand, or for logistics reasons, but when it extends to looking at local laws to determine profitablity based on regional variations in tax code, they're only setting themselves up to fail.

Dell mobile phone launch just days away?

heven't heard because no one cares...

If this is just leaking out, it's likely because no one gives a crap, not even the phone companies themselves.

Besides, like everything else Dell has released, it's likely just another repackaged piece of junk from some other company. Their PDAs were nothing new or exciting, their printes died off, their PCs are cheap plastic garbage with time bombs for batteries, and their servers run overly hot and lack enterprise class tools and components.

A Dell is what you buy when you can't afford real computer hardware. We already have a cellphone company for that, it's called Nokia.

Sony's Windows 7 virtualization switch-off (partly) reversed

And Apple is overpriced

Everyone hammers on Apple for being too expensive, and too proprietary. Sure, compared to bottom end cheap plastic Dell and HP configurations, and stipping out any of the "bonus" hardware features a Mac comes with, looking purely at CPU, Memory, Disk, Screen, and Graphics (even ignoring things like Wireless N, Bluetooth, webcame and more), you can often find a "comprerable" Dell at a lower price. However, when you look at not just base specs, but all the other features of the class of machine (build quality, port connectivity, wireless options, battery life, and weight, but still not including giimick features like backlit keyboards), Apple often comes out the cheaper machine in the end. Factor in software for basic home media purposes (photo management, home movie editing, CD/RW software) and compare it to a machine capable of supporting Vista Ultimate (the only valid comparrison for OS X's feature set), the Apple can beat the Dell on price in every single machine category. You can NOT blame Apple for not offering bargain basement models as anything one would want to do on a home media computer can't be done on $300 cheapo boxes that have no hardware graphics, and Apple simply doesn't care about people who only surf the web and send e-mail, they're in Apple's opinion not PC customers but "netbook" or "web appliance" customers, a category Apple has no interest in due to both low profit and high support costs (users who buy $400 machines typically cost more to support than users who are well informed and buy more capable systems).

At the other end of the spectrum is Sony and Toshiba. Companies who's wares are so proprietary, often you can't even install the Windows disk directly to the machine, but you MUST have Sony's specific install media to either "prep" the machine before you install windows, or you need to simply use their pre-imaged copy, and you can only install the copy of Windows they provide, and then upgrade to another version, if you're licky enough for them to offer drivers for it. Their machines are a bit prettier than others (still not as attractive as Apple, but that's a personal opinion), and come with tons of gimmicks installed, but in the end, they're just overpriced, proporietary systems. Sony is notorious for having issues with overheating (not getting "hot" necessarily, but using a thermal envelope to tight the CPU is regularly downclocked automatically to compensate). They use a lot of cheap plastic slimline components that break easily, non standard connectors, weak hinges, flimsy screen support structures (making screens prone to cracks), and for as much as they pack into their machines, they actually offer very few if any options. A model comes one way, if you want something different, pick a different model.

Sony also LOVES to use non-standard RAM chips, making memory upgrades cost small fortunes, and they make system upgrades extremely difficult, requiring seasoned pros to open notebooks to replace HDDs without breaking things. Repair costs out of warranty are off the charts compared to other manufacturers.

Sony also loves disdableing embeded features. VT, HT, and other chipset features are often disabled. They'll often do this to have a justification between their business line and retail line, or to show more dramatic performance differences bettween 2 chips that don't really differ that much in GHz numbers to justify multi-hundred dollar differences in price.

I supported multiple businesses (and for a while years ago retail customers) who had Sony and Tochiba systems. They were a nightmare to support, allways took longer to repair, or took much more trouble to get re-installed (especially if the custoemr failed to make the backup disks for the OS partition when Sony stopped shipping disks with the machine itself).

Sony makes crap, and charges a $200 "sony tax" just for the brand name. They're the Tommy Hilfiger of the electronics world.

Palm slams Apple, hoodwinks iTunes

It's not rocket science to code something

Look, the iTunes library is a fracking XML file... There are DOZENS of apps that access that file for it's information, and use it to manage syncing music to devices, add/manage music in the library through external tools, offer remote control ability, update ID3 tags and album art, and more.

Apple has plug-in support for such external apps, and the XML file can be modified in REAL TIME, without causing issues with iTunes.

All Palm had to do was write a small app to interface with what other companies have already done. Many of these companies offer their software from $9.99 to $29.99 (like Tune-Up which offers LIFETIME upgrades to their library management app for $29.99), annd some of them have that as their only line of profit. Surely Palm could have dedicated a few people to write an app that might have added $3-5 to the price of the device, instead they'll blow millions on legal cases, have disgruntled customers, and in the end almost certainly loose their case. Or, they could have partnered with Apple, which may very well have worked if the Pre settled on full iTunes integration as that could only make Apple money...

iTunes is just a library management package. The music is all on the hard disk stored in simple folders. The data about it is in a simple XML file. All palm needed was to have a simple interface to read a file, then sync songs based on use selections. iTunes still doesn't manage photos, and the Pre can't play podcasts and iTunes video due to those still containing FairPLay DRM unlike music. All integrating "directly" did for them was to make the process look "slightly" more seamless, but without Apple's permission, seriously, how long did they think this was going to last? The SECOND the press got wind, ervy single one predicted the very next update to iTunes would break the functionality, and they were all right.

I'm not a fan of Apple restricting access the way they do, but honestly, what's Apple really supposed to do here? That iPod icon is not just an icon. Clicking on it brings up all the preferences to manage the device, syncs not just music, but all forms of iTunes meda supported, manages the USB disk porttion of the iPod, manages iPhone device settings, handles formware and software updates, loads games, apps, and more. Asking for integration of non-iPod devices would mean Apple would have been forced to modify that entire interface, and create generic support for devices out of their own pocket. Who would have paid for that, since once it was there, anyone could have used it. No, they were going to retrict it, and if someone really wanted specific device support, I'm sure Apple offered to integrate, but I'm sure the price was VERY high. Much cheaper if you just integrate to the XML file and be done with it... Palm was too cheap even to do that. What's that mean for the rest of the Pre's software??? How many OTHER corners were cut?

Nissan turns over new Leaf

Not your only car

If you;re looking for ranges of 300-500 miles, this is not the car for you (or not your ONLY car). Leccy cars are intended FOR COMMUTERS and daily travel around town.

Granted, with access to 50Kw charging stations, which should not be hard to find one every 100 miles or so espacially with the onboard system to automatically assist you there, and 20-30 minute charge times, that's not bad. However, this is a starting point, its NOT the car for everyone.

For people needing longer ranges with infrequent occasion, a Chevy Volty or equivalent, Leccy car with gas generator onbaord, can run about 400 miles on a small tank. For people who travel more than 100 miles a day on average, one of these might do, or you might just have to wait and stick to deisel...

In a few years (2 tops) these cars will be shipping with LiTi batteries instead of LiIon, getting double the range, and charge times in the 8-10 minute range. Hell, every 200 miles I'm at least going to need to piss, and 8 minutes to wait for a recharge wild draining the lizard is not a bad proposition to be able to run at 1/3rd the cost of gasoline.

Also, the $33k per car figure should drop significantly over the next few years. It;s priced there partly because of the $12-15K cost of the battery pack, and partly because people just want em, and they're not making that many yet... Batery producers are expecting 30% anual reductions in cost/Kw stored. The LiTi batteries (and other up and coming combinations) are stabler, charge faster, have longer lifecycles, are cheaper to make (lots cheaper), and pack more energy into the same space weight or both.

Let the first takers burn some extra green trying to be green. Pick up your Leccy in 2-3 years and you'll likely pay under $20K, charge in under 15 minutes to 80%, and get double the range....

Of course, even if we could make the perfect Leccy car in the next 5 years, at a price every one of us would be stupid not to buy, we can't. The grid is 20-30 years from being able to support even 10% of us driving around in these. today is 3% of us switched, we would fry the grid. There's simply not that much electricity being made atm.

Microsoft ultra-thins to 'out cool' netbooks, Apple

By Chirstmas they'll what?

- Design a new form factor chassis for a non-existant model that's rigid enough to be so thin but light enough to be worth it

- test ultra-low thermal envolope CPUs or new ultrathin cooling systems that don;t yet exist

- design new motherboards and daughterboards to fir new chassis form factor

- pretend noone needs an Optical drive on a Windows box, and then design a matching external drive everyone will order as an upgrade.

- write new drivers for all the hardware we've not used before in this new model line

- Design a manufaturing line to actually make these things, then build it in a factory, not to mention we'll actually need several as many parts are made in different places and assembled elsewhere...

- Make it cool enough to sport a $200-300 price premium for it's size compared to slightly larger much faster, cheaper machines.

- STILL BE CHEAPER THAN APPLE'S AIR

- have all this in full ramped up production by what, October 1st, in order to make enough product to beat the Christmas retail freeze data, and have enough stock to ship to over 5,000 retail outlets and still have some for the web site, in multiple models and configurations and colors to boot.

Balmer is one of the most clueless blowhards to ever be authorized to speak to the press on behalf of a large firm. He has NO IDEA about the amount of effort it takes to engineer a product, let alone one that only Apple really has made successful in the past. Engineering such a machine was tried by a few competitors, and they all failed, and lost millions on the effort. Slimline, low power machines like these are niche products, and in this market, and with Apple's continuing success, and with the other's sliding market share, any manufacturer knows that trying to take on Apple on their own turf with a new product line is destined to fail, since if Apple even felt the tiniest bit threatend, they could knock a few hundred off the cost of their machine and still profit (since the line and research/development has long since been recouped on their end).

I'm not a fanboi of Apple, but even I see this as a completely stupid idea even in a good market, and to make it a reality in less than 3-4 months? complete insanity!

IBM demonstrates dedication to deduplication replication

Dedupe new data?

Um, with replication, you're primarily sending newly created blocks... There really should not be a large amount of data to dedupe in NEW data! Yes, there's some, but mostly that's from people flinging files around in e-mail and copying them to multiple personal folders scattered all around the companies serevrs. That is handled by simply configuring workspaces and restricting internal attachment direct delivery within the mail system... That's not only free, but reduces the storage burden on the mail system and throughput of those servers, saving money too.

We have about 3,000 servers here. We're currently testing 3 different SAN vendor's technologies that support storage virtualization, dedupe, and replication. Thus far, we've discovered that thanks to our architecture, excluding OS and application volumes and considdering only data, we can only save about 6% using deduplication. The cost of the dedupe licensins in each case exceeds the cost of even an additional 10% storage.

since we have a vast system imaging and deployment methodology, we don't back up or store server boot and app drives on SAN, only data. Our servers are not "recovered", they're simply re-imaged if they crash, on a new hardware or VM box, so making OS backups is unimportant. Also, a large number of our systems are non-windows, and virtualized in shared binary VM machines (the ultimate form of dedupe).

Ads watchdog bows to iPhone's might

@jay28

The iPhone advert does NOT say the iPhone is the first to use Cut/Paste. In fact, it makes no mention of being the "first" for any feature it's ever introduced in any add with the exception of Visual Voicemail (which it did bring to market with the help of Cingular for cellphones before any other vendor, though several corporate VoIP products, including ShoreTel, did it forst for desk phones, but even that they never overtly promoted as "first" in an add).

They simply show off the innovative (and I admit, after using it a while now, incredibly easy, hanbdy, and intuitive compared to any other mobile implementation of a similar feature) feature and demonstrate it;s ease of use.

As for the add for the app store, at its time of release, the iPhone had over 50,000 apps. At the time of filing the lawsuit, G1 has about 500 (It had about 2,100 when they actually appeared for the case, but by that time Apple had crossed 60,000). They also do not claim to "have an app for everything", but instead for "just about" everything, and the web itself pretty much fills in the gaps. The G1 has a lot of great apps, sure, some of which are not available on the Apple device(mostly as the iPhone does not require such features as graphed battery utilization or multitasking resource controlls), but they do not hit nearly as many categories of application, nor are they adding apps at any where near the pace, so for the expected run time of this commercial series, Google really doesn't have a leg to stand on.

That said, I'd love to see what this group would have to say about Microsoft's 'PC shopper" adds. Those are clearly inappropriate product comparrisons, associating midrange systems to low end products that don't share common specs on any level, yet still associating the perceived "value" difference. Even my father questioned why the Macs were "so much more expensive;" that is, until he bought a PC notebook at Bestbuy without first asking me for $900, and 5 days later returned it and bought another Mac for $1400... and ate the 15% restocking fee on the PC quite happily. My mom's nearly 3 year old macbook Pro was faster and more powerful than the PC, heck even running Windows in a VM instance on the old machine ran circles around the new HP... Actually, the PC only had a 0.2GHz faster processor, and had slower RAM than her older machine! Also, the sticker shock on the software he needed to buy for the PC to do what his old Mac did for free was a big part of it... Office, Pinnacle Studio, Nero, AV and AS added more than $500 to the price tag, and that software sucked by comparrison to iLife.

As a disclaimer, I own 3 machines that run Windows (1 vista, 2 XP), a server running '08, a Linux box, and a beat up old AIX server. I do not have a Mac in my house currently (last I had was nearly 4 years ago). Granted, I work in enterprise IT analytics, so using non-OS X systems is a daily job requirement, and we don;t own a digital camcorder or digital camera (I have an SLR with about $2000 in lenses, and haven't taken the bite to replace the filb body with a good digital one yet) so other than a pretty OS, i don;t currently have a need to have a mac. However, Christmas that;'s changing, and we're getting the digital body, an HD camcorder, and a 17" Mac pro...

Hackintosher aims 'blazin' guns' at Apple

You did not buy the OS...

...you only bought an UPGRADE to the OS... Apple does NOT sell the OS wholesale at all. You have to actually have a working Macintosh in order to use the retail copy. Sure, the disk in the box performs both a "full install" as well as an "upgrade install," but so does your upgrade copy of Vista, XP, etc... The only difference is that Microsoft requires an activation key, and validation of previous purchase (insert old CD or type in old CD key to validate your upgrade), and Apple can assume you have a Mac, and since all Macs come with OS X (Not all PCs come with Windows) and doesn't need such a process, making the "upgrade" status less obvious.

If the EULA does fall (a HUGE if, as it would have MASSIVE rammifications throughout the industry, and no small judge is likely to risk the backlash of such a decision without federal appelate backing) then Apple will simply relable all the existing copies "Upgrade" (reflecting it;s actual status) and then start selling "full versions" for the appropriate price (likely between $300 and $400 a copy, reflecting appropriately their profit margin on a system).

...and for those of you STILL saying things like: "Get a grip, get a life, get a Mac! Or, buy 3 PC's for the same money......." You still fail to make actual performance/price comparrisons. If you DID, you'de know that each Apple machine falls nicely between $100+- of each equivalent HP, Dell, etc machine. Yes, you can get an el-cheapo PC notebook for $500, and the cheapest Mac notebook starts at $850, but the cheaspest Dell that compares to that $850 mac is a 15" monster costing over $1000, weighing nearly double, and has only a 2 hour battery life (and lacks bluetooth, firewire, an SD reader, backlit keyboard, is made of cheap plastic, the warranty costs more, and the vid card is inferior compared to the CHEAPER Mac). The higher in class system you go, the cheaper Apple gets. At the top end, their systems undercut Dell's pricing by $400+. Some MacPro desktop configurations are $2,000-3,000 cheaper than the competition.

What good is a $500 notebook if it can barely meet the minimum specs to run Windows? If it's a "netbook" equivalent in a larger form factor, Apple has made it QUITE CLEAR, that is NOT their target user base, they're only interested in people who either use lots of media (manage tens of throusands of pictures or edit home videos), or people who use the machines professionally. Low end users are only profitable until the first time they call tech support, and low end machines that can't properly handle the OS and applications cause users to call support more frequently. Apple will not lower their standars of Support to Dell's level, now will they distribute different "versions" of their OS crippled to support the hardware underneath it.

If you want a PC for your kid for researching school project and word processing, get them a cheap machine with Linux. If you have a grandma who wants to video chat and online shop, but that's about her level of technical understanding, get her a cheap PC. If you are a family, have a camera and camcorder, and communicate regularly with other members of your family who do the same, and maybe want to actually play some games on that machine as well, than an Apple Mac is in 80% of cases the CHEAPER option.

Windfarm Britain means (very) expensive electricity

how about a REAL view

These morons are either 1) in the pockets of people who stand to loose money due to the competition introduced by wind power, or 2) are not up to speed on how wind power is deployed.

Here's the deal: When a wind farm is deployed, the expected output is 20-30%, not 70-80% like traditional power... Also, multiple farms are combined over a several hundred mile area, allowing areas experiencing low winds to draw power from areas getting high winds. They also don't produce power "willy-nilly" from all the turbines at once, they're in a carefully, computer controlled, system, where turbines are turned into and out of the wind, and brakes are used to slow some turbines when necessary to balance output.

You'll also hear things like "Though it only takes a 5 knot wind to run the turbine, the minimum startup wind is 11MPH, and we rarely hit that, meaning many turbines that could produce power won't be." BULL, the turbines already running can produce power to kick start another one. No it's not ideal, but the power to hard start a turbine in 7knot winds (which takes a few minutes to spin up the gears), is offset in a very short period by it actually running... Worst case, grid power can be used to start turbines if all the ones in a farm stall.

You also have to considder where these things are placed. At ground level, you might have no breeze at all. At 150m high, that's a diferent story. Also, farms are located typically in areas of natural wind, due to geological formations, established wind and weather paterns, etc. They don't just randomly stick on in someon'es back yard...

With a single farm of 100 or so turbines, yes, balancing output is a major problem. With several dozen of these farms scattered across a 700 or 800 mile area , odds are there will be enough aggregate wind to generate the expected 20-30% total output, plus a bit more to account for long distance transmission losses. Using superconducting lines (already being deployed in lots of places, and curently ONLINE AND RUNNING in several countries), and building out new grid technologies, this can be further extended to multi-thousand mile grid ranges.

Then we add smartgrid technology. Today, items in your homes draw very varied power, typically on a 20-50 minute stagger. Tie a community together with a few hundred houses, and it;s possible that variance can be amplified when multipole houses all pull heavy draw concurrently. Smart Grid enabled appliances talk to the grid to see how many other houses are drawing from available power, and naturally stagger heavy load draw (kicking over air conditioner compressors, starting the dryer, etc). Your personal delay in your appliance turning over is only moments (and imperceivable), but that balance can essentially normalize the load so then all we're dealing with is actual variance by time of day (showers in morning, AC in afternoon, cooking and TVs in the evening, Heat at night, etc).

Next step, what to do with overproduction... Where available, things like pumping water uphill, or superheating a salt vein can be used as supplemental carbon nuetral power. It's expensive, but it's a one time fee as it requires no continuing fuel costs or disposal efforts, and over a 50 year or longer plan (150 years is typical for a large scale investment like this, unlike 50 years for coal/nuclear), then it;s cheaper in the long term by many fold.

Also, you can look further into technologies like WindFuels from Doty Energy (dotyenergy.com) which have solutions specifically to handle overproduction from wind and solar, and can actually generate usable regular fuels from that energy in a carbon nuetral process!

Stop listening to the FUD. Even with additional expenses to handle grid stabvility (which we HAVE to make ANYWAY in order to support electric vehicles on a large scale, it;s still a better investment than other technologies, and it's no impact on the enviuronment.

Apple MacBook Pro 13in June 2009 release

finally a low price on the pro line

...now can we get a larger basic line please?????

Granted, I'm shelling our $1850 next month for a 15" pro with the 9600G graphics chip added, but I'd really like a 15" base model for kicking around town... 13" machines are simply too small for my tastes, but i don't need the horsepower (and pricetag) of the performance machine in the unit I bring back and forth to work. Besides, the gaming notebook is really the wife's machine, I have a powerful desktop (and prefer to sit at a desk when gaming, as opposed to her wanting to sit on a couch to play).

Apple, Microsoft sued over iPod, Zune controls

And I present, the Newton as counter evidence...

Released in 1993 (and thus clearly predating the 1999 patent filing by this man), and for which the OS was under constant development by Apple as a platform until into 1999 when it was discontinued, and functions were merged into other divisions for future use (of which additional patents for devices that never materialized continue to pop up).

The newton used a full surface touch screen (albeit requiring a stylus, but the method of input in the patent in question describes techniques, not technologies, and does not preclude the use of "finger" as an input). The newton accepted compands via stokes or guestures as well as text and drawings from the pen. It's existance clearly invalidates the patent in question.

Guestures themselves as an input method are also protected by patents for multi-touch by Apple, and by others for various Operating system or Browser interfaces. This is a complete shot in the dark, and likely to cost the accuser a significant amount of money paying Apple's lawyers after he looses.

Opera slams Microsoft's Windows 7 E move - again

missing the points

If MS doesn't include IE, you can't download other browsers. If they do include IE, they're not including an alternate, and even if I install an alternate, all I can do is switch off IE, I can't REMOVE it.

I don't want them to not include IE, I want them to INCLUDE and UNINSTALLER!

Once I've put in the app of my choice, I want there's GONE.

For other apps, it;s easy enough simply not to bundle, since as long as i have a browser, it's real easy to go get the medai player, or office package of my choice, but if they drop the browser, I can't easily get another one (unless I happen to know an FTP site off the top of my head, since I'd be incapble of looking on up on that machine),

If Microsoft is allowing it to be in a "not installed" state, why would that be technologically different from UNinstalling it? If 7 can operate with IE "not installed" why can't i make it a "not installed" stae LATER? That is what M$ is failing to convince the EU of, and why this is a major issue.

They knew this was an issue several years ago, and yet even given the opportuniuty to change the code base, correct the lack of an uninstaller and modify the GUI to have it;s own independent, not tied to IE rendering engine, but they did not act, and somehow it's our fault?

Next thing you know, they'll comply, but then they'll update their website to only work with a newer version of Silverlight that only IE 9 supports, and force everyone to upgrade to it to make Windows Update work at all, or to use any microsoft services...

Apple's panties in bunch over Microsoft ads

replies

@Cirby: Though Apple and Microsoft in the public eye are bitter enemies, lets not forget there are numerous microsoft products for Apple, and their CEOs regulary appear on each others stages. This is more of two highly competitive collegues trying to best each other than two comanies hoping the other dies. Though a call to the FCC and FTC would likey have had these comemrcials yanked, possbilt with fines attached, Apple had the coutest to "ask" they be removed now that pricing was in fact in line. Though, this could easily be a microsoft prank as there's no counter from Apple yet....

@Eric: Price compare a machine from Apple and any equivalent machine you can get in a retail store. Apple is in line, and often CHEAPER. No, there's no $500 mac notebook, but there's no $11,000 deisel powerd utility truck either. The mac is not sold to be a generic web surfing laptop, its sold to be a machine to edit video, manage tens of thousands of images, and display your life for others to see. You can't do that on a piece of plastic crap with a $500 price tag. Look at a Dell Studio 14". the closest config possible is $1179 to Apple's $1049, and the apple has better specs and features (and in internal CD drive). Sure, the Dell STARTS at $579, but with crap components, no bluetooth, Home Basic, Wireless G, a 2 hr battery, and no optical drive at all. Bringing it up to Apples specs (and bumping the drive in the apple to a 250GB to match) makes the dell cost more, and that's not including having to buy a few hundred dollars in photo and video software the mac comes with free.

@reality: In the US, adds like this are "questionable" and the FTC rarely acts. In other nations, failure to make a DIRECT feature comparison on price would be illegal, and serious fines for microsoft's commercials would be sent flying. in other countries, simply comparing yourself to anyone is illegal, you can only speak to your own stats and prices and leave the consumer to check for themselves. Fact is, compaying a 15" pro series macbook with a dozen more features and faster compnents to a 13" plastic POS for $780, especially when the price displayed in the commercial is $400 higher than accurate pricing today, Microsoft will either comply, or the media attention will have the FTC looking into it without Apple's insistance directly. (especially when their suppoosed "random" people have turned up in at least one commercial to be actors, and they're clearly "paid" for their performance, and are aware it;s a promotion and aware of the vendor in question).

Amazon sued for cracks in Kindle

Simple stupidity

I have still yet to see the value in spending hundreds of dollars on a device for which you still need to purchase books, in Amazon's case at full retainl price though they don't actually have any material cost or disctribution cost, and that may have at best a limited lifespan. Further, they're DRMd and can not be shared as traditional books can be, it has limitations of a battery, can't be used outdoors for extended periods in summer heat, is susceptible to wear and tear, droping, liquids, and theft.

If e-books were $1-2 for editions available in paperback, and $5-6 for editions only available in hardcover (for the early adopters), and if they came on a system easily portable and sharable file format, and had guarantees in place that when a new technology comes around, all existing purchased books could be migrated free to the new format/technology, then MAYBE I'd pay $60 for an electronic reader... Still, even as a avid reader, I'm lucky to churn through 20 serious books (600-1000 pages each) a year. A device might, if i took good care of it, last 5 years, with at least one battery replacement over that time.

A book lasts my lifetime. I also tend to buy hardcovers, especially at bulk sales, so I'm typically paying $2-7 a book. 20 books a year times another 50 years is I'm lucky, times a fair average of $5 a book (excluding inflation), means $5000. If i have to replace a $150 or so device (including batteries and accessories) over that time every 5 years, then that's $1500 alone (again not including inflation). That means the electronic copies, just to be worth it for my readin habbits, need to be $3.50 max each (on average). This also assumes my above complaints that the books need to be protable, sharable, and are freely migrated to each new compatible format.

It just does not make sense!

This is besides the aesthetic appeal not only of having a real book in one's hands, which can not be beat; the potential of having the real author sign my book (several of mine are signed) dramatically adding value; the appeal of having shelves of books to show off to company and say "yes, I've read all but a few of those", and the visual aesthetics that a properly filled bookshelf brings to a room... i just do not understand the appeal of the digital book, especially with such a bulky, expensive and fragile proprietary device...

Apple ends Palm Pre's iTunes charade

@Fab de Marco

When Microsoft removes all their own memory leak issues from their own software running on their own OS then I'll support your position on ensuring Apple's software runs without such on Windows as well. Until then, it;s just another thing about windows we're forced to deal with since it can't clean up it's own leaks (or simply prevent them) as other more grown up OS's do.

Pssst... Apple tablet on way, whisper Chinese moles

NO netbooks...

Apple made it VERY clear there would NOT be an Apple netbook. They DESPISE the term, and the form factor, and the use cases for it.

Apple has noted they're working on a tablet, yes. There's also patent applications out for integrating multi-touch into OS X. WHY would you think a 10" machine would NOT run OS X, if they have patents to put touch into the OS? Also, the CPU they have developed is likely NOT for this machine. It's likely for the also rumored 6-7" Media Tablet, completely different from their notebook tablet rumors. It's also a CPU for future iPhiones. It's 300% more powerful than Arm, native 64 bit, and uses a similar thermal envelope and power draw, and it can integrate nicely with a GPU as well. It's a natural fit for a much more powerful iPhone package formatted around a much higher resolution screen and improved 3D gaming, yet a system still small enough to be easily portable.

However, using PA Semi's new chip for a full OS X implementation would limit the tablet to internet, picture management, and some media capabilities, but would greatly detract from the other appeals of the OS (video editing and such), and would also prevent Windows and Linux virtualization on the platform.

I think we're looking at 2 rumors for 2 different products: a 10" tablet that runs on a similar platform to the white macbook, but without an included DVD drive, and runs the full suite of Mac OS X, and a seperate product that is a smaller form factor running on their new chip, and being targeted as a protable game and media player, and running on something very similar to the iPhone OS (possibly with some additional file editing capabilities, and some local addressable file storage)

Dell Studio 15

1366x768?

That's an odd resolution for a 15" machine, slightly wider and squatter than even typical widescreen systems, and being a non-uniform resolution, many games may not support it properly.

Cats mix baby 'cry' with purr to score dinner

My own experience

We have 3 cats. 1 basically only makes noise when you annoy her, get in her way, or when one of the other 2 cats get too close. She does purr when petted, and does enjoy petting, but only when it suits her. She does not beg, or try to get anything out of me and the wife, completely independent, though she does nuzzle and rub to show affection.

Cat 2 makes the prescribed noise when she demands scratching or brushing, but that's about it. Usually right at bed time, and if you don't pet her viggorously for at least 10-20 minutes, she'll nip you while purring, and if you continue to fail to comply, the'll make that nip something more like a bite. She'll also manage to get her head under your hand, lift it up, and then shake as if to instruct you how to properly pet a cat...

Cat 3 does exactly what the article sais. As soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning he purr/crys and attempts to lead me downstairs to the food bowl. He'll watch me the entire time, continually checking to ensure I'm following, and make little meow/cries. Typically, when i get to his bowl, there's actually still food in it from the previous feeding, but I add more as he will not stop the chorus until i do so (and there's usually little enough to get them thorugh the day if I don;t add some). What irks me is that even if the bowl is completely empty, and he persists until I present food, he'll eat for all of 10 seconds, then go lay on the couch...

Office 2010 tech preview: Expect the expected

The ribbon

It's not really that bad. Yes it's different, and takes some getting used to, but my ONLY 2 real complaints with the ribbon are 1) it's not fracking customizable!!!, and 2) there's not a "favorites" ribbon, placing all of my most used tools and buttons on a single ribbon space while leaving them intact on their normal ribbons. Also being able to show/hide ribbons (even context sensitive, which would be prefered) would be a nice trick, but i don't miss that it;s not there.

Also, since 90% of screens are now ridescreen, being able to move the ribbon to the side of the screen instead of the top should be an option. It's simply too much real estate to be on top...

In 2010 Microsoft is claiming it is customizable but "that feature may not remain with the production release" If they're not adding customizability to the ribbon, i won;t be going to 2010. I am stuck in 2007 now, but only because Excel is SO much of an improvement over 2003, and Visio added a few nice tricks too.

Apple celebrates first year of App Store hijinks

Admitedly few good apps?

OK, it's small by percentage, but I've dowloaded and tried (or tried on someone else's) iPhone over 200-250 apps I've really liked. Many have been demos or free trials, and although i though the game or app was real good, $5.99-9.99 apps go on my waiting list and I get them if/when they go on sale. I only own 3-4 apps i paid $5.99 for (and fieldrunners is one of them).

I have all my 11 screens full save a few spots. About 1/3rd is games. Half those apps were free, the majority of the rest were 0.99 or 1.99 (some on sale, others were just that price to start with). I have no "gimick" apps on my device. I've nabbed a few free ones in the past thinking they were somethine more inteeresting, and quickly purged them from iTunes and the phone, but overall of the more than 200 apps I actually have on my PC, and about 150 on the phone at any time, I have maybe 10 I'm keeping around i considder "useless" and thats only because of forthcoming promised free content updates.

There might be 56,000 active apps in the store, and I agree more than half are outright crap or "unfinished" apps that need work or major content additions, and about 20% of the remaining are trial versions of full apps, but there's easy 1,000 completely usefull apps in that store, and that's not counting the specialty apps like medical dictionaries and diagnostic tools only a few select people are interested in.

What's on my device, the core 40-50 apps I use aty least once a week, and the few "can't live without" utilities that i don't use often but simply won;t delete, maybe I've spent $70-80 total. On my old Palm, just 3-4 apps cost me that much, and their UI sucked...

OK, there's not a version of Microsoft Office yet (give em time, they admit they're working on it; it took 3 years to get one out for the Palm OS, and a while for other platforms too). Some of the other things people are asking for (in small but vocal numbers) also have yet to appear. But in general, spend $50 on apps for any other device and see what you get compared to what's in the app store for the same price. Maybe that game on the iPhone isn't as major of a release as it is for the PSP, but it was $2 on the iPhone and $40 for your PSP...

...and it's only been a year, and 3 major OS releases and the promise of 4.0 and new multiprocess capability coming. (like background GPS TomTom demoed).

The phone's not perfect, but it;s a heck of a platform and evolving fast. Many of the apps suck (especially as a percentage of the whole), but there's an easy 500-1000 AWESOME apps, and multiple serious competitors leaving you choices in most app genres.

Sprint punts 99¢ netbook

5GB? c'mon!

When I can get an unlimited tethering plan for most phones for $40 (potentially $25 with an iPhone plan if the proposed $55 includes the 30 people already pay) then why would i pay $60 for only 5GB? And 250MB... crap, just the windows patch alone on the netbook would exceed that most months, let alone some casual brosing and a little internet radio. My PHONE exceeds that most months just with push enabled and a few apps downloaded. I'm not even streaming music on it... (i realized on the 2G iPhone the use of edge blocked all other edge traffic, including calls, texts, and email, so i got out of the habit of using it. It actually works fine on the 3g, i just don't use it).

Besides, it;s a crap machine. tiny keyboard, no real power... For a few hundred bucks more I can get a Mac 13" that's far more useful, only a ound heavier, and it can actually run 3D, edit music, and more. If I really need it, I can get a cell card for it's expresscard slot... or a USB equiovalent (and then use that on nearly ANY notebook, not just the cheapo one...)

VW confirms e-car plans

elecs w/ gas backup

Electric is the future, but not full electric... and certainly not battery swapping! Like I'm going to let someone take my brand new LiPo or LiTit battery packs, costing upwards of $8,000 out of my car and replace them with possibly mishandled, used, Walmart knock offs or remanufactured batteries that could be years old? Not to mention the sheer logistics nightmare of trying to move 400lbs of batteries out of a car, store them, rotate them ,charge them, and to ship them back and forth between multiple sides of the road and from town to town as driving habbits cause packs to migrate all over hell and back... And who's going to buy all these $8,000 packs to have on hand to swap? They barely pay themselves back over 8-10 years as it is, and you want me, a gas station owner, to invest in robots to swap en, systems to charge em, computers to monitor em, pay shipping and transport costs, and wait 3-5 years before I can recoup that cost? and what about the guy with the shitty batter with dozens of bad cells who swaps out for a younger stronger battery at my expense? HELL no, no station would ever voluntarily take on that cost, not to mention we have a hard enough time just making enough batteries to go in the cars rolling off lines, and you proppose possbily doubling that? ...and where is your corner gas station, or freeway rest stop going to store enough batteru packs to refil 500 cards a day? and enough staff to lug around those huge heavy packs and stock them?

LiTit systems can fast charge to 80+% in under 10 miunutes (some have done it in under 5). That's about as long as it takes me to refil at the pump today. No, I can't get high amp 4 phase power in my house (2-4 hour charging is fine there anyway), but at stations connected to the commercial power grid, and for a few pennies markup over my regular home power bill (provided it works out to be cheaper than gasoline per mile driven), then I'm perfectly happy. We don;t NEED battery swapping because it would TAKE LONGER than recharging where there's ample power...

Even still, I'll require a gas backup (eventually, hopefully, a small recyclic turbine, not an ICE.) The engines in elecs with backups are specially tuned to operate as generators. There's no complicated dual transmissions, orbital gears, or other complex mechanisms to allow the engine to also drive the wheels, it only needs to come on when the juice is low and operate at no other speed than the ideal efficiency rating to operate the recharger. Max fuel economy can be acheived. High powered capacitors handle accelerating force, and also allow high speed back charge when braking.

Gas engines waste enrger when idling, and when running at odd performance ratios. Running them at a dedicated speed only long enough to recharge makes sense. The Volt uses a similar system.

Using a gas engine to recharge batteries, i can drive where I can't otherwise find a charger. I can still top off at home or at a station where electricity is cheaper than gas, but I can also get a 400+ mile range out of an existing electric car design without adding hundreds of extra ounds in massive expensive battery packs. I need enough electricity to go about 100 miles, that's it.

Full electrics are a dream for small commuter cars with short drives and preditable use, but for a family car or the average non-city folk, no, not anytime in the near future. Not until every stop on every freeway has a high speed charging station, and every small town and city corner has one too.

Users claim iPhone 3.0 GPS mis-map mishaps

...when at home...

OK, here's one for you morons. GPS DOES NOT WORK INDOORS! It is a LINE OF SIGHT radio system that needs to have a direct connection to multiple (not less than 3) sattelites at a time.

In your home, the GPS might get signals from a few birds, but likely the structure of your house and proximity to windows is greatly screwing with your signal.

As a backup the iPhone uses a-GPS, which is colocation based on information provided from cellular towers, which is ALSO not designed to work indoors. (as cellular signals in the 3G range do not very well penetrate walls, and the phone does not understand how to deal with the signal reflection inside your house)

Finally, it uses your WiFi IP address to try to determine your location.

Recently BOTH of my iPhones, a 2G and a 3G S started reporting my location at home to be somewhere about 3 miles away. If i walk down the block outside of WiFi range (or disable it) my location returns to normal, provided I'm outside. If I connect to my neighbors wifi, my location changes again, this time about 2 miles in another direction. However, the location given on my wifi, and the location given on my neighbors wifi, though different, are dead on consistant.

This appears to be an issue with how the iPhone is gathering IP location information. In my case, the 4 base stations I can connect to near my house are all for AT&T DSL customers. The few neighbors i have that use Road Runner either don't have wifi, or have it secured with SSIDs off.

When outdoors, the GPS is dead on accurate, at least to 5-10m or so (which is actually better than the advertised accuracy of civilian GPS).

Also, GPS does not get your location accurately instantly. It takes a few cycles of the signal (5-10 seconds) to get a valid reading, and that reading is enhanced when the device is in motion as software in a GPS can begin to make assumptions based on the roads around, the direction of your travel, and your speed, to fine tune the accuracy.

As Apple suggested, if your phone GPS is actually reporting inaccurate information, when you can be certain it;s actually getting GPS, not A-GPS or WiFi data, as in when you are OUTSIDE, and MOVING, and have given the device time to locate itself (up to 30 seconds), then SEND IT TO APPLE FOR TESTING as they suggested. Perhaps there is a firmware issue with the new GPS chip... or a batch of them could easily be defective. This happens.... to ALL manufacturers. just google for GPS recalls, there have been quite a few. (Garmin, Belkin, and others)

Prof: People reject news which conflicts with beliefs

Now I understand

So maybe this is why the bulk of people in higher sciences, certain positions of power that require open minds, and most of the poeple in history documented as either being simply "smarter" or having had come up with revolutionary ideas or inventions have all been peopole who either did not believe in a God, or did, but at least directly questioned that belief (whether openly, or in private writings).

When you're already questioning your own beliefs, clearly it's very easy to listen to information that may provide answers to those questions. ...and by extension, if you are acustomed to questioning, and listening, then you;re more likely not only to be exposed to more information, but to actually absorb that information and try to do something with int (usually leading to more questions, but occasionally, with enough questions someone actually forms a unique idea).

Of course, this also directly correlates to and supports the data that the higher your IQ, the less likely you follow a structured religion. That is NOT saying IF you follow a religion you are dumb (I know 6 members of Mensa who are HIGHLY active with their churches. i also know a gentleman who owns a science reasearch firm, has over 100 patents in moleclear science, magnetics, and more to his name, and an IQ just over 165 who is one of his church's leaders), it's simply that if your IQ is lower, you are more easily drawn to religion. (however, there are also studies that show that the method which the church teaches youth may limit the development of the logic sections of the brain, and may limit the ability to question either through social behaviors learned or through brain development, so if you do take your kids to church, id also suggest ensuring their tendencies to question are nurtered, subdued.)

Sony to bring PS2 compatibility back to PS3?

PS3 roadblocks

In order of importance:

1) $299 price point, with all current features intact. (ports, options, connections, Blue Ray, user replaceable drives, every single existing feature). Making it smaller is nice only if they do NOT cripple it;s connectivity and options.

2) PS2 compatability reintroduced. Hardware or software based makes no difference to me.

3) upgrade to Wireless N. c'mon, its time. LEAVE the NIC port there though...

4) Native Hulu and NetFlix Apps. Using the browser suxx for this.

5) Them to stop being cheap and put an damned HDMI cable in the box...

iPhone v Pre - the celebrity smartphone deathmatch

@ Anonymous wish list

Fitness apps: iFitness, GymBuddy, Trail Guru (free), also 3G S works with nike+ now too. There are MANY more fitness apps out there, these are just the ones I use on the iPhone.

You don;t need a removable battery, you "might" need an external battery charger. More likely, you need a charging cable ($9). I've had very few days that I ran my battery dead before bed time, and I use the phone heavily. I charge it at work via USB, and dock it next to the TV in the living room when I'm not using it, but many days, that's just unnecessary. 20 minutes of charging and I can go 5 more hours of playing music. Adding a replaceable battery, why? If it;s defective, they'll replace it for you. Having one that clips in only adds weight, bulk, and contacts that can go bad. Also, dropping a LiIon or LiPo battery is BAD, and the cause of most phone fires.

32GB done. Stereo Bluetooth, done. GPS, coming (from TomTom, AT&T Nav is already available)

high res screen: just how many pixels DO you want in a 3.x in device??? As it is, they're smaller than the eye can see unaided at 2 feet (typical viewing distance from face). It supports progressive output to a TV, so with the right files, you can watch in 720i. What more do you want?

5+ MP? Without a mechanical lense? on a 0.25in die? The doise would be rediculous... Have you seen the size of the 5MP lenses on camera phones that take good pictures??? They're massive, and obtrusive, and still take crappier pictures than $40 point-n-shoot cameras. If you want quality pictures, bring a real camera... The new 3MP shoots nice pics that also print nice. Without a REAL flash (no LED flashes do NOT count), low light pictures are going to suck, and they'll suck WORSE at 5MP, if you understand optics and CCD technology...

Multitasking: All the iPhone apps (and the forthcoming TomTom GPS software) do multitask. Name an app other than mail, messaging, music, GPS, phone, nike+, and background dowloading, that you need to have running, using CPU and RAM? Anything else can simply use the notification service, or can "suspend" and close. If all the apps can resume where you left off, and any app that collects alerts can, and the core functions for realtime use all background already, what's left? You're not running a torrent client on your phone.... What are you doing, wardriving? get a netbook if you need more, geeze.

Flash is dead. Long Live WebKit and HTML 5. We can get better quality video now with less bandwidth and without the CPU and RAM burdens of flash. The new open web standards combined with Java replace evernything else.

Hiking apps: There are several. I use Trailguru (free). There's also Park Maps, Path Tracker, Trail behind, the list goes on... many are free, most are 0.99. There's also a slew of state park maps, not to mention google...

Joiku? You mean wifi sharing? Well, good luck getting AT&T to let you do that. Then again, I've been in VERY few places where I'd use my notebook where wifi wasn't simply generally available. Since I have an iPhone and AT&T service at home, I get free wifi access at most airports, startbucks, McDonalds, and all other AT&T hotspots, not to mention everywhere else it;s just generally free... I'm not even considdereing using tethering. That was a big deal a few years ago when finding WiFi was difficult. Now its easy...

Everyone's beating up Apple on carrier lock-in, but try buying a Pre from someone other than sprint. Try buying a Storm from multiple vendors. Every major hot new device is locked in. until the FTC does somhing about it (fingers TIGHTLY crossed, candles and incents burning, live chicken on standby...) you're just screwed from ALL of them... You Can allways buy it at full proce ($599) and take it to anyone that supports 3G...

There is no perfect device. I'm not even saying the iPhone is the best device or OS, just that currently, for me, it is, and many of the concerns expressed by others like yourself are simply misinformed FUD. Given the iPhone has the best (and cheapest by far) apps, decent plans (compared to the competition which ALL have higgher costing data plans, unless you can tolerate Sprint and having a phone that CAN'T be brought to another network later, which i can't). The iPhone is mature, stable, a great gaming platform, and continuing to improve. Apps are cheap and pleantiful. The interface is nice enough to look at and actually works, backgrounding is a non-issue. ...plus, in a few months, when either Verizon or Tmobile releases the iPhone as well, AT&T's plan prices will drop to Sprint's $99 all inclusive level overnight... and the existing plan states you can switch plans with no contract penalty (other than potentially loosing some rollover minutes, which won;t matter if you go unlimited).

@Ted

Genuinely, thanks you... Posts as straightforward and helpful as yours are rare.

Of course, I already did that, but was kind of hoping others might too :)

Anyway, Thanks.

@ Vasilis (and rick)

Size and weight: A "soap dish" it might be, wider and longer, but it;s SO much thinner, and it;s rounded profile makes it VERY easy to get in and out of my pocket, and in fact, it spends MOST of it;s life in my shirt pocket... I hardly notice it.

Fit and Finish: Why do I need to buy a screen protector??? If Apple can make a smudge free scratch proof screen, why can't Palm? Why should I spend money (regularly) on covers? Also, they weight EXACTLY THE SAME, so no, the glass is NOT a disadvantage for Apple.

Keyboard: Though i do prefer tactile keyboards, I have gotten VERY used to the iPhones virtual keyboard, and it's very good spelling prediciton. Not being able to type sideways on the pre by itself is a nonstarter for me. Their decision to not have the keyboard slide out in landscape is the single dumbest move they made, and if people who hate the iPhone keyboard think the Pre's is worse, victor iPhone.

Display: the 0.x in larger screen DOES make a difference. Also it being smudge free doesn't hurt. I keep it in my pocket all the time, including at happy hour at the pub, as does nearly all of the IT staff here as the iPhone outnumbers ALL other smart phones combined in a survey of our 130 man systems team and 2300 person IT department. If you don;t like it in your pocket, it;s slimmer profile gives it a win on your belt clip... lett likely to bump into things.

USB: um... I have an 8GB USB drive on my keychain that cost $30. Adding that to my iPhone would have cost $100 at the time ($100 for 16GB now). Also, I can't very easily LOAN my iPoone to people, and anything I carry on a portable drive is usually NOT phone data. I can sync any files I want to the iPone REMOTELY from my home PC through FREE software, and can VNC into it directly anytime I want from the phone... Other than video, music, messages, notes, what files WOULD i put on the phne that can't cust as easily go on cheaper USB flash???? This is a pointless argument.

Battery: hmmm.. have am I more likely to have in the middle of nowhere: My charging cable or dock from my car and a handy USB port or ANYONE with an iPod cable handy, or a battery that I'm far more likely to 1) leave at home anyway, or 2) find is dead since I'll rearely switch to it, and 3) ISN'T YET AVAILABLE IN STORES and costs 4x what a charging cable does, and weighs more too! 2% of people use a spare. Why? the phone, undcer heavy use, lasts 24 hours, and is rarely far from a $9 charging cable that's universal to all iPods and Apple devices... i own 7 charging cables/docks, and the total of them cost less than 1 spare battery i couldn't even buy yet for the Pre that UI'd never have with me in a charged state anyway.

Video playback: Codecs? well, since there's no SDK, don;t hold your breath. And any file you have on your PC, there's a free converter to an iPhone compatible format anyway.... (which does play more than just the Apple file format, just not AVI and WMV).

Audio Playback: So, you're telling me that the genious function wasn't an automatic win for Apple here??? Not HAVEING to manage playlists to get a good mix on the fly with a few clicks on the device was not considdered a HUGE advantage???? Oh, and when Apple breaks the iTunes Pre hack, what then for your Pre?

Phone: Contact management is easier. Integration with phone numbers on web pages is better. it has complete voice control over the phone (and nearly everythign else). Scrolling for a contact is easier. The interface looks better. I CAN do a quick and effective search, contacts are not jumbled together in a massive single unfoormatted list, in nearly every way, the iPhoine is better. Visual voicemail, when not available, falls back to traditional voicemail, so it DOES have both worlds, the Pre does not. Winner Apple. On voice quality: tie.

Multitaskeing: Name a single app you need to use in the background on an iPhone that either doesn't already, could easily be handled by simple notifications without backgrounding, or can simply be put to sleep and resumed. EVERY app on the iphone can support notifacations, resume in place without first having to force a "save", or can already be backgrounded. The ONLY limitation (promised to be fixed by 3.2 at the latest) is that only 1 web site can be processing a download at a time. The Pre also has this limitation currently. This is a NON argument.

Interface: Did you READ the review of the Pre's OS interface????? It's CRAP! Disorganized, complicated to navigate, requires more clicks, limits lists of apps to 9, limits number of app pages, doens't support landscape in most apps, is slow to respond, is buggy... Maybe when the web OS is at version 3 it will compete, but even iPone OS 1.0 was MUCH more eveolved than the Pre's release. Granting Palm a win because they've been developing PDA OS's longer? um... Remember the Newton? Predated the entire Palm company by several years....

Search: I CAN use any search engine (for the web) on the iPhone. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the ability to search what's on the PHONE. Can't search e-amil. Pre looses. period. 1 pane for search on iPhone, returns everything. (in real time btw, have to hit "search" button on Pre to start getting results, and some results are only available when you have a signal!!!) App developers can tie into search as well, and make their data searchible. Oh, i can also seartch BY VOICE COMAND on the iPhone... (google app).

Apps: 1: there is no PRE SDK yet... 2: there were only 29,000 unique Palm apps released in it;s 10 year OS history. Apple has 50,000 and growing at a pace to double that in a year. 3: most Palm apps were $19-49 each, iPhone apps average $2-3. Even Full blown office apps are only $10-20. The EXPENSIVE games are $5-10, including titles that sell for $30 for the DS. 4: The old app emulator? have you seen the reviews? most apps don't work anyway since it can only run basic apps, and no apps that require hardware level support requirements (most video players, networking apps, games except simple ones, don't work). If you HAVE a large investment in Palm apps, maybe it's worth it, if those apps are compatible, but 90% of them could probably be completely replaced with about $30 spent in the app store... This does not include jailbreak apps for the iPhone that are rerally cool and free.

Lets add a few Rick missed:

Voice control: Oops, not on the pre...

GPS support: It's there, in basic maps on the Pre. No TomTom/Garmin/etc turn-by-turn app. Might come later, but I'm never going to buy a device on promises...

Support: Walk into an Apple store, even with an out-of-waranty iPhone, and they'll not only help you, but not only myself, but several co-workers have had their out-of-waranty devices replaced free by Apple. The wealth of user information, and friendlieness of Apple support ius FAR better than Palm has ever been. Palm actually CHARGES for application based (non hardware issue) support calls...

Remote: The device controlls AppleTV and iTunes remotels. RDP and VNC apps are available to control PCs remotely as well.

Sync: Syncs not only with iTunes natively, and Exchange servers natively, and nearly every e-mail provider iether through Push, POP, or IMAP, but it also syncs IN REAL TIME, wirelessly, with MobileMe and with several iPhone apps (including free ones).

Major socail site support: Loading video from the device direct to YouTube or FaceBook? Oops, not on the pre, not ever since it can't do video. Sync with mobile me sites and share pictures in real time with other people, not on the Pre. Loopt, Facebook, and a dozen other services native app support? Apple yes, Pre no.

Security: Proven in pwn2own: Apple yes, Pre no. Since loading 3rd party unscanned code is possible, even through remote connections, the Pre looks like it will be pretty easy to hack... And since ALL that dat ais automatically pulled from so many sites and services, and not secured in a walled off database, it will be THE choice for hackers to go after with identity theft mobile viruses...

Ubiquity: There are 20+ million iPhone/touch users. Ask nearly anyone and they'll not only recomend apps to you, they'll share tips, tricks, and more. There's a thriving online community, and the app ratings are usually spot on except on the first day or two after release. Going anywhere, I can ask 3-4 people and find someone with a charging cable handy. Walking into any store I can find the cables, docks, devices, cases, and more. The Pre, only sold at Sprint, has no stuff at Walmarts and Bestbuy's, and if I can't find a Sprint store (closest one is 30 minutes across town from me) I can't replace broken/lost accessories. Also, apps I buy for the phone ALSO work on the Wife's iPod, as do all the devices I've bought for the phone. It's a universal platform.

Nike support: Not only is their the FREE trial guru which I use biking and hiking to track my progress, but with nike+, now i don't need my iPod and my phone, and at 4.8oz, I've had no complaints running with it on my arm in the gym.

Video Out: I can connect my iPhone to an HDTV with a $30 cable. Several portable TVs actually INCLUDE iPod docs, and many 30" Plus flat panels are starting to as well. What can the Pre do???

Multitasking

The iPhoine DOES multitask.... Mail, SMS, MMS, iPod, phone, mobileme sync, push service, all run in the background, as does the notification service.

What else WOULD you run in the background? Chat? no... you only need notifications of an incoming message, you don't need the entire app footprint in RAM using battery power to maintain a heartbeat to the server... Web pages cached remain whether the app is active or not. Games save to a sleep state and can resume where they left off, as can most other apps. When you're not actively using them, as long as you can resume where you left off, what's the big deal???

I admit, the iPod interface could use some "plug-ins" letting things like Pandora run in the background THROUGH the iPod interface instead of needing to be their own who applications, but that's something completely possible in the future. That said, how long do you think Pandora will play in the background while you're doing something else in the foreground?

I WOULD like the ability to queue a large download in one app, switch to another, then come back and find my download done (this works in mail, but not in Safari). This however is apparently being addressed.

@Danny

If you're using IMAP for mobile Exchange access, you're doing it wrong...

ActiveSync config on an iPhone is a snap. I don't know what the Pre can and can't do. I agree, standing up BES is simply a tax we're not willing to pay for our 14,000 users.

Now, if you;re in an environment that falls under DISA, DOD STIG, or other heavy security requirements, then by the letter of the law, not only are you required to use Win Mobile 6+, but you also need 3rd party security servers and per-phone apps, and an seperate server for device auditing. And oh yea, PED are forbidden too...

Apple, when are you going to add native support for the Exchange 2007 features that will allow your device to pass DISA STIG? Do this and you;ll instantly become the Exchange Admin's prefered device (and cost about $160 per phone less to deploy in 3rd party software and server licensing than WinMobile per 5,000 users).

Chickens could 'power hydrogen cars'

Please, H2 is dead, stop wasting money!

I don't care WHAT advances you make in producing, storing, or using H2. Fact is, we will NEVER put it in our cars on a large scale. Even if we can make afforable engines (yet to be shown, even gievn 15 year outlooks), and even if we can make it at a price comperable to gasoline, we still have major issues:

1) it's an EXPLOSIVE gas. Even the BEST containers slowly leak H2, lots of it, over time. In an enclosed space (your garrage, the ceiling tiles in parking structures, etc) is will collect and eventually blow up.

2) With the exception of metal infused H2 (heavy, expensive, takes 8 hourts to fill, and gets 1/5th the range of tank options) you'd be driving a BOMB, and so would any terorist who wanted to get his hands on one.

3) We have NO infrastructure for distributing H2.

4) we have no infrastructure for long term and mass storage of H2.

5) liquid H2 requires constant refrigeration, meaning you drive an hour a day, but waste 23 hours with the car plugged in to keep it from blowing up. The alternate is supercompression, which means 6-8 hours to fill a tank, and incredibly dangerous logistics issues doing so.

6) Fuel cells. Constant replacement costs for the membrances. Logistics nightmare, noone knows how to fix them... the mostly can't be fixed and have to be replaced if damaged. Oh yea, they're fragile...

Why not look at a REAL option. Gasoline. ...just not from oil. Dotyenergy.com. It's called RFTS. It;s a process for making gasoline that's been in use since WWII. CO2 and H20 in, O2 and Gasoline out. The process uses electricity to make H2, RWGS to make CO and O2, and RFTS to process that into gasoline. Power comes from off-peak wind (readily available and 100% clean). CO2 comes from sequestration from coal (gasoline burned is CO2 that was already going to be released, meaning a 40-60% reduction in CO2 output). In 20-30 years, we'll get the CO2 from onsite sequestration right out of the air.

The process can make gas at $60-80 a barrel, depending on the local market. They're working on producing their first mid scale facility. They have over 60 world patents on inprovementys to the process, heat exchanges, and other aspects of the system.

WindFuels can't be monopolized by big oil (full scale plants would be affordable to a wide range of investors). It can be made anywhere. Every country can be completely independent of the oil monopolies. It is a very clean process, FAR cleaner than refining regular fules. In every way, thisd process is the answer, at least for the next 50 years until we have viable 100% electric systems.

Check out dotyenergy.com. I am not an employee, nor have I been compensated in ANY way for my comments. This is simply good science, that unfortunately, doesn't qwualify for current government grant offerings (it's not biofuel, it;s not solar, it uses wind energy, but isn't standing up farms, it uses H2 but not for direct use in fuel, it uses sequestration but not onsite, it;s in the middle ground between all these other grant offers....)

Tank to your congressmen. Talk to your rich friends. This is NOT vaporware, it;s all stuff we've been USING for 50 years, this just takes several PROVEN systems, puts them together in a logical fashion, and adds incremental improvements that make it cost competitive. We just need to START BUILDING FACILITIES!!!

If you don't believe the data, ask them for a copy of their entire design. TRY to find fault with it. They're challenging people to do so, and making 100% of their data available to the public (if you pay for the printing and shipping costs, fo which they're really asking only for the cost (about $100) not $3000 like some firms ask for a "report".