You're looking at it the wrong way.

User listening data is not really that useful as a tool for filing lawsuits. It is useful as a tool for tracking and potentially identifying leaks. For example: suppose User X listened to a new album ten days before it was actually released, and is friends (on the site) with User Y who listened to it twelve days before the release date, and User Y is friends with User Z whose profile matches up with an intern at the studio. Odds are that User Z -- the intern -- is the source of the leak.

And then users X, Y and Z are all sued in court for copyright infringement.

Apple's netbook / tablet PC will be out sometime in 2010 and, as usual, it will rewrite the rules and Microsoft will then change these silly specifications in an attempt to try and catch up to Apple. I've seen this movie before.

And justifiably so. This entire thing is a joke. This guys lawyers are going to have a field day suing the overzealous assholes involved in this clearly illegal search and seizure and I'd go after the government lawyers that should have known better than to try and defend their actions as well.

More Slashdot hyperbole. Voicemail isn't going away anytime soon. Voicemail will go away about the same time Linux is widely adopted on the desktop. That is to say, not anytime soon.

Well it's about fucking time.

"Editions" ... for an OS?? LOL @ you fucking suckers. Screw MS. They've been screwing you since XP "Home Edition" ...

I agree. I thought the initial made for TV movie was good enough that I'd give the show a chance. I really loved the first few episodes but I gradually lost interest. Stopped watching completely somewhere during season 2.

Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now.

You can find a study that will say just about anything. If Andriod sales overtake iPhone sales it'll be because it's a better phone that provides the average consumer with a better experience than the iPhone presently offers. The average consumer could care less about the development model of the apps that you can download on a phone. They don't even know what that means.

Apple's biggest weakness isn't it's app development model. It is it's exclusive contract with AT&T. As soon as that's over, watch out. I know a ton of people who want an iPhone but they either can't or won't switch to AT&T in order to get one.

Best Buy has plenty of online competition even if it's the only physical retailer in an area. I think that will keep them on their toes.

This could be a public relations disaster in the making for Netflix.

Since most Netflix members still use the service to watch DVD's I highly doubt it.

So they wan to help laid off workers, just not their own laid off workers?

Microsoft Bungles Severance, Asks Laid Off Workers for Money Back

How Microsoft-esque

The word cloud in this context is a stupid buzz word that we can all do without.

Should we bring back everything popular from eight years ago? How about floppy discs? Some things should be left in the past. Emailing pictures to people is more sensible than MMS.

Except that not everybody has an e-mail address. Several close friends of mine either don't have an e-mail address or don't check their e-mail often. All of them have cell phones with MMS. The "e-mail it" approach is candy ass. There shouldn't be anything that a free cellphone (given to you by the cell phone company when you sign a contract) can do that the iPhone can not do.

The original iPhone has been out for almost two years now. I can understand that they'd give a higher priority to shoring up the OS, getting a 3G version out there and then putting out an SDK, but IMO after that their priority should be filling in some of the holes in functionality. It's ridiculous that things like the ability to forward text messages, MMS, and copy and paste are still missing from the iPhone almost two years after it has been released.

It's money that could be better spent elsewhere and it is a boondoggle.

Is it supposed to be surprising that they didn't rewrite their entire codebase for every new OS release?!? Obviously Windows 7 is going to be built on top of the Vista codebase, that's how almost every software release works. Usually if a company decides to rewrite a program from the ground up (see: Adobe from time to time), the rewritten version is less featureful, less stable, and takes much longer to come out than the previous version.

Yes but when it comes to OS's in the long run it's beyond worth it. See OS X. It's time for Microsoft to abandon the Windows code base and re-write Windows from the ground up. Build virtualization right into the OS for those who need backward compatibility. Oh and they should have no more than 3 versions. A home version, a business version and a server version. I'd prefer only one that could do it all but this is Microsoft we're talking about. If they are smart they'll eliminate bloat within the company first. The amount of bureaucracy is laughable and if they don't do that first a re-wright from the ground up will take as long to produce as Duke Nukem Forever.