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Comment: direct buying isn't the problem... (Score 1) 366

by GI Jones (#32980728) Attached to: Nexus One a Failed Experiment In Online Sales

How many iPhones, HTC EVOs and other early adopter phones are purchased without ever touching one? I bet it is the majority. The inability to touch and hold the phone wasn't the problem, the problem was that we live under a cell phone system is is based on phone subsidization and multi-year contracts. If a phone could be purchased at full price and a phone service could be paired with it that didn't carry a subsidization premium, they might have done much better. Bottom line is that Americans don't like paying a premium for a phone unless it is made by Apple.

The Internet

Comcast Sued Over BitTorrent Manipulation->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A California man filed suit in state court Tuesday against internet service provider Comcast, arguing that the company's secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes."
Link to Original Source
Caldera

SCO to be delisted from Nasdaq

Submitted by
Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes "SCO has six months to get its share price trading above $1 for a sustained period or it will be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange. SCO has been trading below $1 since March 13. It now has until October 22 to get above $1 for 10 consecutive days, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. SCO's share price plunged below $1 in December 2006 after US District Judge Dale Kimball affirmed an earlier ruling limiting the SCO's claims against IBM to just 106 items of evidence. Just days later Novell filed a request for a partial summary judgment that could cripple SCO's already diminished breach of contract and copyright case against IBM. The company has avoided delisting once before, but perhaps SCO's days are numbered."
Censorship

YouTube, MySpace banned on DoD computers

Submitted by
vivaoporto
vivaoporto writes "The U.S. Department of Defense said it will block worldwide access to 13 websites including MySpace and YouTube Today from the unclassified defense Department Internet(NIPRNet), according to media reports.

The ban, which takes place immediately, actually was imposed in February and was not prompted by any event or study, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman. He confirmed that bandwidth was the issue and said the decision is "not about content."

The new policy takes effect as the military has, ironically, aggressively turned to YouTube as a means of broadcasting what it considers to be the more positive aspects of its work in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way of countering what it considers to be negative news coverage.

The sites blocked by the Defense Department: MySpace, YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, hi5, Photobucket, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and Live365."
Graphics

NVIDIA will release Lost Planet benchmark tomorrow

Submitted by
crazyeyes
crazyeyes writes "Odd choice for Capcom to have NVIDIA release the Lost Planet benchmark on nZone.com, instead of their own website. Must speak wonders about the power of NVIDIA's TWIMTBP program. According to this editorial, NVIDIA will release the benchmark tomorrow. It will be one of the few DX10 benchmarks. Will be interesting to see how the NVIDIA 8800 cards run. ATI fans will probably want to avoid this benchmark. Apparently, it sucks on ATI cards ."
Businesses

The value of sponsored independent research?

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes "IT 'whitepapers,' put out by corporations and organizations including Microsoft, IBM, and Red Hat, are in-depth reports used to promote technologies and products. There's no pretense of objectivity in these documents, but what about sponsored whitepapers that are produced by independent technology research companies? Computerworld's Don Tennant describes an IDC whitepaper called "Russia as Offshore Software Development Location: Should You Consider This Your Next Move?", which was sponsored by Russoft, the association of software development companies from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. He says that the Russoft sponsorship is very obvious, but wonders about the value of these whitepapers, compared to ones that are written by the vendors themselves:

IDC is making it very clear what you're getting and is leaving it up to you to decide what it's worth. That, indeed, is my question. What are these white papers worth to you? There's no doubt that readers find value in white papers prepared by the vendors themselves, because many are downloaded from our Web site every day. Is it in that context that these vendor-sponsored IDC white papers are read, or do they carry some premium of neutrality in spite of the vendor sponsorship?
This ties into the larger question of the value, believability, and quality of other types of documentation produced by hardware, software, and services vendors — ad copy, press releases, manuals, etc. I know it's hard to generalize, but what are the rules of thumb you use when evaluating the trustworthiness and accuracy of such information?"
Software

The Acid Test: QA as a Bridge to a Game Career

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "Over at educational site Game Career Guide, there's a new article asking whether game testing is a good way to get into the game industry, and game tester Zachary Slater comments of the conundrum: "QA could be a worthwhile career path for console and computer games if only it were treated and respected as such... It isn't and probably won't be. Game developers and publishers seem to regard QA as an unfortunate expense required in the development process. It is a problem for anyone who wants to actually focus on it that they won't be respected for doing so. When you're asked, 'Where you want to be in five years?' the answer is rarely QA. People who do answer this question with QA are regarded as underachievers.""
Java

James Gosling on Open Sourcing Java

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "James Gosling, the father of Java, gave an interesting interview at JavaOne in which he spoke about a lot of things including JavaFX & the recent events of Java becoming Open Source. What he had to say about the problems they were facing with the open source community(s): "One of the issues we've had with open-sourcing is that often people try to generalize the open-source community as this one big kumbaya happy family, but in fact it's a bunch of warring states. They all have their Great Wall of China and they lob stones back and forth.""
Microsoft

Microsoft Details FOSS Patent Breaches 576

Posted by Zonk
from the just-a-little-bit-dangerous dept.
CptRevelation writes "Microsoft has released more detailed information on the patents supposedly in breach by the open-source community. Despite their accusations of infringement, they state they would rather do licensing deals instead of any legal action. 'Open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates 42 patents. Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs touch 68 other patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by Fortune magazine. Microsoft also said Open Office, an open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.'"

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner. -- Calvin Keegan