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Microsoft

Ballmer repeats threats against Linux

Submitted by daria42
daria42 writes "Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property. In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last week, Microsoft's chief executive said the company's partnership with Novell, which it signed in November 2006, "demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world.""
Businesses

End PC Payola with a PC Builder Code of Conduct

Submitted by
dhart
dhart writes "PC payola is why new PCs aren't pre-installed with free and open source software, and why consumers are deprived of choice. Payola perpetuates force-feeding consumers with pre-installed popup-infested circus-ware, leaving them confused about 'what to click' and feeling helpless about their out-of-control PCs. This sad situation creates fertile ground for sleazy malware writers. Here's a chance to tell one OEM, Dell, what you think about PC payola. (dhart strikes again)."
Data Storage

Google paper on disk reliability

Submitted by oski4410
oski4410 writes "The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract:

"Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.""

He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.

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