Amen-- Cognos is a mess. The thing I hate the most is that their support staff only know certain aspects of the suite. If you have an issue with Cognos Planning, but you are accidently routed to someone in the Cognos Business Intelligence support group, they have to reroute your case and you'll be waiting at least several hours before they call you back. Heaven forbid you have an issue with integration between the two suites.

Nothing more than a brand? Perhaps on the consumer side, but they are one of the only soup to nuts technology providers for large enterprises. IBM got out of the PC/laptop business and HP put the future of their PC/laptop unit in question while Dell has shown they are committed to staying in the market. If you want to consolidate your vendors and purchase servers and laptops from the same company, Dell is the only obvious choice currently. A few years back they miss stepped by offshoring their tech support, but they have since brought it back to the states and quality has improved. With their purchases of EqualLogic and Compellent, Dell is also becoming a force in the SAN market. Other strategic purchases such as SecureWorks, Force 10, and Kace shows that Dell is willing to diversify to continue to stay relevant while continuing to server their core x86 market.

I know the real reason why they are announcing Flash 11 now-- they are almost out of alphabet letters for Flash 10! If you look at the "Macromed" folder (Yeah, it still refers to Macromedia even 6 years after being acquired) under System32/SysWOW64 folder you'll find the browser plugins. The version today released today (10.3.183.10) is named "FlashUtil10x_Plugin.exe" and the version before that was of course "FlashUtil10w_Plugin.exe". That only gives them two more letters to use before they have to figure out a new naming scheme. Best to go to a new version number so they can start over from the beginning of the alphabet. ::chuckle::

This looks more like an Announcement than a Release. The bits won't be available for download until October. However, there was a new version of Flash Player 10 released today (10.3.183.10) that resolves a cross-site scripting issue.

"In a Microsoft minute-- oooeeeeooooo, everything can change!"

I'm confused-- how is this a USB stick if it plugs into an HDMI port? Wouldn't that make it an HDMI stick? Inclusion of a USB port does not make it a USB stick.

Like others have pointed out, this article is referring to when the general masses first moved to instant messaging and is not indicative of the /. crowd. Along those same lines, AIM wasn't really replaced by Facebook or any other computer based system. It really laid the ground work for the telecom cash cow of text messaging. Since not everyone was behind a keyboard/monitor at all times, texting offered a true "instant message." The old online instant messengers only got people used to the concept of conversing in short messages rather than calling them up on the phone.

Android 3.1 is not already out. Flash Player required Android 3.0.1 in order to be installed.

Try holding a device in one hand and doing a multitouch gesture with the same hand. It would be a real treat to see you do that without dropping the device.

But can it be used for headshots?

Seriously. This has been going on for YEARS. Why is this being posted here?

From TFA (and I live in Cleveland as well), the 5,800 tons number is from a 15,000 household pilot program. The $2.5 million cost is for extending the program to cover ~150k households. Me thinks your maths are a bit off.

Your network admins fail if they think controlling internet access through DNS entries alone will keep you caged.

Are you kidding me? Perhaps for the /. crowd, but what about the average Facebook wielding user? Almost every "application" on the site states that you are forsaking your own privacy and that of your "friends." Those requirements don't stop many from agreeing to the terms of use. The average user doesn't even think of privacy.

If the share is indexed, Windows Search 4.0 will query the index on the remote server. Here is a link to the admin documentation with more information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772446(WS.10).aspx