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It's funny. Laugh.

John C. Dvorak's Big Secret->

Submitted by BorkBorkBork
BorkBorkBork writes "Say it ain't so. John C. Dvorak, long time Apple troll (or anything troll, actually) was pulled into a story about a Vista laptop gone horribly wrong. The article centers around a PC exorcist who was hired to make it right, but in it was this shocking admission:

I called John C. Dvorak, a prominent columnist for PC Magazine and a podcaster on the Podshow network. "I advise everybody to buy a Macintosh because Apple products are the easiest to use," he said. "If you own a PC, you have to find a local nerd, a kid, maybe a relative. Every family has one unless they've just moved here from a foreign country. That's the only solution."
Did he forget to say "don't publish this" before saying that? Most telling in the article is a line about the exorcist himself from the viewpoint of the PC owner: "He started tinkering with computers during the green-screen era of the 1990s". Oh, wow."
Link to Original Source
Media

Apple's Market Share Up->

Submitted by Divebus
Divebus writes "Snips from the article: "Reflecting strong holiday sales of both MacBooks and iPhones, Apple's (AAPL) market share grew sharply in December, as measured by a Net Applications survey released today. The Mac OS share, by contrast, grew 7.4% in the past month, nearly double November's rate. The iPhone grew even more sharply, jumping 33% over November's numbers. The Linux operating system also showed strong growth (up better than 10% to hit a .63% share), as did "other," a category that includes the iPod touch, Web TV and the Nintendo Wii."

Folklore says the Linux install base is much larger than Apple's OS X but a measurement like this says otherwise. This method only appears to measure market share for computers certain hitting web sites. Market share is always the focus of these articles when growth/decline may be the more interesting data point."
Link to Original Source
The Internet

Another Nail in the Windows Media Player coffin

Submitted by Divebus
Divebus writes "Imagine my surprise when I lookded at CNN today and found yet another major web presence which has abandoned Windows Media Player and installed something else, namely Flash 9. Who's next? Or better yet, what's left of the great Microsoft Media Empire and what will it take for the remainder to see the light?.. and I don't mean Silverlight."
Security

Hacking Our Media Portals

Submitted by Long March Hare
Long March Hare writes "Recently, I was a approached by a group of people doing a study about hacking electronic media delivery systems in the U.S. and how to defend against it. The premise of the question revolved around a foreign power clearly gearing up to disrupt our networked systems if we (the U.S.) became hostile with [insert guess here]. Theoretically, "they" could disrupt communication, banking and the Government as reported in countless articles (obligatory link). This is a different potential threat. It seemed ridiculous at first but the nightmare of The Joker laughing out of every television and radio in Gotham City could be a high impact psychological warfare goal.

How could an attacker insert themselves into our existing media technologies to disrupt news, movies, VOD services, IP based cable television boxes, teleconferencing, VoIP telephones, cell phones, anything on YouTube, music services, IPTV etc? Much attention has been paid to keeping people from stealing some of these services but could attackers gain access to the data connections and insert their own content by hacking clients directly, hijacking network connections or taking over the servers? What is anyone in the business doing to defend against this possibility? Has this even been considered by anyone in this sector? What defenses should be in place for these [now] seemingly low threat services? Should there be backup systems available to switch on in the event of an attack? Could our media content delivery satellite systems be hijacked or overpowered by other satellites? Waddayathink?"
Microsoft

Zune Executive to Leave Microsoft

Submitted by Divebus
Divebus writes "REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — A Microsoft Corp. executive responsible for its newly launched Zune digital music player will leave the company. The software maker said the departure of Bryan Lee, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, was for personal reasons and "absolutely not" related to sales of the music player, which came out in mid-November to soft reviews.

Right. Absolutely nothing to do with it. Never crossed their minds."
Enlightenment

George Orwell Was Indeed Right

Submitted by Dead_In_3_Days
Dead_In_3_Days writes "In the realm of Holy Crap, I've just stumbled upon the most frightening/maddening piece of video I've ever seen. On Google Video, you'll find "America: Freedom to Fascism" from Aaron Russo, a bona fide Hollywood feature film producer. This is no sensationalist Michael Moore tripe, although it potentially had some of those elements. The film began with the premise of discovering the legality of the IRS. Through investigative discovery and interviews, it quickly expanded to how the American Banking Industry essentially took over the Government of the United States way back in 1913. Some of the testimony is downright hair raising and certainly eye opening. It also nicely fits some technical puzzle pieces together concerning the use of RFID chips, voting machine fraud, National IDs and where we're likely headed. Couple this with our increasing loss of rights, plus abuses of Special Interest groups customizing laws to criminalize American Citizens, it's now clear to me that we Americans had lost our Constitutional Democracy long ago... and The Planet will soon follow."
Security

Nike + iPod Tracking Systems

Submitted by Divebus
Divebus writes "Just in time to boost Zune sales, KING TV 5 in Seattle (http://www.king5.com/) blew the following story wide open and CNN.com followed:

"It's one of Time magazines "gadgets of the year" — a hybrid of consumer genius from the marketing giants at both Apple and Nike. But it also has a serious security problem that could leave innocent users vulnerable to invasion of their personal privacy, and it's all exposed by a few UW grad students."

It's really hilarious and ridiculous at the same time, yet the news anchor puts on a concerned face when announcing the serious security flaw. Coming from Seattle makes me call FUD on this story right away but it could have some merit. CNN.com missed the point by announcing you could be "Tracked through your iPod". It's the transmitters that count, silly, not the iPod.

The premise is to salt enough wireless receivers in the path of your victim to track the movements of whoever is wearing the Nike + iPod Sport Kit. The researchers ponder how it could be used by stalkers to track unsuspecting prey. You just have to hope they get within 30 feet of your receivers and that the kit is turned on. First, the power switch defeats the whole thing. Second, who in the hell is going to set up their own vast cellular receiver network to track anyone like that? Wouldn't binoculars be simpler? How about just hiding behind a tree? On the other hand, what if you didn't know someone slipped a transmitter into your backpack? The researchers have a web site — http://www.physorg.com/news84118849.html"

Equal bytes for women.