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Comment Ballmer's performance (Score 2) 240

by soft_guy (#44265625) Attached to: Maybe Steve Ballmer Doesn't Deserve the Hate
I think that Ballmer is a decent operations guy, but obviously not a tech visionary, nor does he have good taste and an iron fist the way Steve Jobs did. I think that Microsoft was in a very strong position when he took over and that it just isn't that hard to keep Microsoft on its current glide path given a halfway decent operations guy in charge. John Sculley, who is widely viewed to have run Apple into the ground, could almost certainly done just as good of a job running Microsoft as Steve Ballmer. I realize this is speculation, but I think its true.
It's funny. Laugh.

Jack Thompson Sends Subpoena to Bush 273

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the oddly-this-used-in-his-defense-of-mental-instability dept.
Ariastis writes "Jack Thompson has filed documents with a federal court in Florida requesting to subpoena President George W. Bush for a deposition to retain Thompson's license to practice law. Ah, and Jeb Bush too, for good measure."
Microsoft

Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now 912

Posted by Zonk from the our-os-is-so-awesomez dept.
SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has admitted, in an email to the press, that 'some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release.' The company is now pleading with customers not to wait until the release of SP1 at the end of the year, launching a 'fact rich' program to try to convince them to 'proceed with confidence'. The announcement coincides with an embarrassing double-backflip: Microsoft had pre-briefed journalists that it was going to allow home users to run Vista basic and premium under virtual machines like VMWare, but it changed its mind at the last minute and pulled the announcement."
Privacy

Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales' 565

Posted by Zonk from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.
Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"
The Internet

Woman's House Robbed After Fake Craigslist Post 365

Posted by CowboyNeal from the trust-no-one dept.
flanksteak writes "The Seattle Times is reporting that a woman in nearby Tacoma had her rental property stripped of almost everything after someone posted a fake Craigslist announcement that everything in the house could be hauled away no questions asked. When contacted, Craigslist said they would release data about the poster if they were issued a subpoena."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Music and DRM

Submitted by
mrcdeckard
mrcdeckard writes: "Steve Jobs posted an essay today, wherein he talks about Apples' agreement with the "Big Four" record labels, and goes on to outline three possible scenarios for the future. From the text:

"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."
"
Microsoft

Submission + - MSFT Evangelist Apologizes for "Pawns" Com

Submitted by gogat0rs
gogat0rs writes: Former Microsoft Tech Evangelist James Plamondon, who made headlines this week when a 1996 speech he gave became public during a Microsoft antitrust trial in Iowa, has appologized to the Microsoft developer community for using a metaphor which described key industry influencers and developers as "pawns." Plamodon wrote that calling developers "pawns" was both "offensive and inaccurate." He goes on to say, "It mischaracterizes the mutually supportive relationship that must exist between a platform vendor and its platforms' early adopters, such as that which Microsoft and independent software developers created in the 1990s. I regret having used the 'pawns' metaphor; I apologize for any misplaced ill will it may have caused towards Microsoft; and I won't use it in [the] future." Since the apology was issued, the full text of the Plamondon speech has been released as a public document on a Comes v. Microsoft website, along with eighty other exhibits.
User Journal

Journal SPAM: PC World editor slain at California home 1

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

PITTSBURG, California (AP) -- A senior editor for PC World Magazine was fatally shot in his home in what authorities said Wednesday was a drug-related attack.

Rex Farrance, 59, the San Francisco, California-based magazine's senior technical editor, was shot in the chest after four masked men broke into his home Tuesday evening, Pittsburg police said.
OS X

Submission + - iPhone not running OS X

Submitted by
rochlin
rochlin writes: "The iPhone looks to be running on a Samsung provided ARM core processor. That means it's not running on an Intel (or PPC) core. That means it's not running OS X in any meaningful sense (Apple can brand toilet paper as running OS X if they like). Darwin, the BSD based operating system that underlies what Apple has previously called OS X does not run on ARM processors. The Darwin/Apple Public Source licensing agreement says the source would have to be made available if it is modified and sold (paraphrased. read it yourself). A Cingular rep has said the iPhone version of the OS source will not be made available. It will be closed, like the iPod OS and not Darwin. So if it ain't Darwin, it ain't OS X (in any meaningful way).An InfoWorld article on an FBR Research report breaks down iPhone component providers and lists Samsung as the chip maker for the main application/video cpu. So, that leaves the question... What OS is this phone really running? (not Linux or the source would need to be open)"
Education

Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P. 132

Posted by Zonk from the myspace-just-a-little-bit-safer dept.
elearning 2.0 writes "It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety and sites like MySpace. The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding — therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space."
Quickies

Submission + - Sleep Disturbances associated with suicide

Submitted by brainvoid
brainvoid writes: In the first known report of its kind, a study published in the January 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that sleep disturbances are common among suicide attempters, and that nightmares are associated with suicidality.
The study, conducted by Nisse Sjöström, RN, and colleagues of Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, Sweden, focused on 165 patients between the ages of 18-68, who were admitted to medical units or psychiatric wards at Sahlgrenska after a suicide attempt. It was discovered that 89 percent of subjects reported some kind of sleep disturbance. The most common complaint was difficulties initiating sleep (73 percent), followed by difficulties maintaining sleep (69 percent), nightmares (66 percent) and early morning awakening (58 percent). Nightmares were associated with a five-fold increase in risk for high suicidality.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?ne wsid=59937
Networking

Submission + - Michigan county launches free WiFi network

Submitted by
hlovy
hlovy writes: "Wireless Oakland is part of a longer-term plan to "close the digital divide" by first blanketing the county's 910 square miles with free Internet service, then providing "low-cost or no-cost" computers and training to the county's "underserved population groups." Story and video can be found here."
Google

Submission + - Google drop tips service

Submitted by
Koninklijke
Koninklijke writes: "Google have decided to remove the Google tips feature after some prominent bloggers questioned their impartiality. These tips were a way of promoting other services that Google offered by placing a notice above the search results whenever certain search terms were entered. Although most people admitted that the tips weren't a reason to distrust Google they believed it was a step in the wrong direction as Google as set high standards for itself in the past."

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