The title on the article is misleading. The author is confusing the "Software as a Service" distribution model with the "Just In Time" (JIT) compilation model. The article subject is about how Microsoft, through the Roslyn architecture, is allowing SDK level access to the JIT compiler that runs the .NET applications on the host computer.

Unintentional error. Google Voice is just one (bad) example of how phone companies can use data caps to monetize "free" usage of unlimited data plans for VoIP usage. As technology advances, VoIP over cellular data will become increasingly more common.

I think that the data cap moves we are seeing in the data communications sector represent a market-wide trend to protect the existing profitable "value added" services such as voice calling and premium television services. Companies seem to be afraid of becoming just another "dumb pipe" as connection speeds get fast enough to handle third party "value added" services (e.g. Netflix and Google Voice). These companies believe that, by using data caps and unregulated third party data usage meters, they can ensure the protection of their highly profitable "value added" service sector. In many respects, this practice represents a trend of "predatory pricing" and "refusal to deal" in the communications industry.

For example... In the cellular world, the 5 GB data cap effectively tolls previously "free" services such as Google Voice. On the broadband side of things, a 150 to 250 GB cap effectively limits the ability of Netflix and Hulu to compete with the first party in providing premium high definition video content.

In many ways, these data cap moves are representative of an anti-competitive protectionist oligopoly. They also represent an end-run around the principals of network neutrality. By using unregulated meters that only bill for third party network usage, these companies have effectively "rigged the pump" to ensure that they can charge almost any rate for almost any service. Better regulation and oversight is needed at the Federal Government level to ensure fairness and competition in this otherwise anti-competitive industry.

Debian.org was compromised back in 2003. You can read a blow-by-blow account of the attack at: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/11/msg00012.html and http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/12/msg00001.html

It took Debian about 3 weeks to get all affected services back online after the attack.

The Stanford Prison Experiment would probably be more relevant to the TSA situation than Milgram's experiment. However, both are great examples of the failings of humanity in a scientific context.

The GNOME 3 UI looks very similar to the Android 3 UI. Maybe the GNOME team is trying to "bridge the gap" and bring a smart phone style user interface to the general purpose PC market. Unfortunately, this strategy will most likely fail due to the differences in input method. The PC keyboard+mouse system is vastly different than a smart phone multitouch screen system.

Example One.

John Doe is an amateur (non student) photographer and graphical artist who wants to use professional level tools. John decides to grab Adobe Creative Suite Master Edition. He has several choices:

1. The legitimate route that will cost Joe $1600 plus all the activation B.S. from Adobe's licensing and activation department.
=== or ===
2. The sketchy quasi-legitimate route that will cost Joe $200 plus grief from Adobe's activation department since he did not buy from an "authorized retailer."
=== or ===
3. The illegitimate route that costs a day and a half of time (and no money) to download, configure, and install.

All things being equal, most Joes will probably pick Option 3. A day and a half of time costs less to Joe than the $200+grief or $1600. Nothing was lost to the economy because Joe values the software at $150 and had no way to acquire it except through illegitimate means which cost Joe about $50 in lost time. In Economics classrooms, this whole concept is referred to as "Opportunity Cost" and "Price Elasticity of Demand."

I certainly hope that his current anti-Islamic hate campaign ends very badly for him.

Let me get this straight: The Emperor was caught with his pants down, some people took pictures and posted it to etc.com, people started learning via etc.com that the Emperor has no clothes on, and now the Emperor wants to ban all knowledge of the incident by destroying the greatest communications invention since the printing press. I think the approach in this situation is completely wrong. Several common sayings such as "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," "shoot first and ask questions later," and "shoot the messenger" all come to mind and none of them should be encouraged.

I propose the following solution to the problem: Do a comprehensive security audit of the information and everyone that had access to it. Find out who leaked the information, how they received access to the information, and how they removed the information from secured storage. In addition, do a comprehensive audit on the classification of documents. Having a minimal amount of classified material will cut down on the risk of loosing it. Document classification should be used to guard national security interests (e.g. the keys to the castle) instead of hiding potentially embarrassing material or promoting a political agenda. When you have successfully identified the responsible party and method of attack, fix the glitch and prosecute the offender to the fullest extent of the law. The Internet does not need collective punishment for the actions of a select few individuals.

This is a nice idea but it is too easy to circumvent. To circumvent this idea, you need to generate a globally unique identification number for each coupon. That globally unique number would reference an entry in the master customer database that would contain redemption status and the other biographical information that is being tracked. You do not need to have all the data on each coupon. All you need is a unique identifier (i.e. the globally unique number) to link the coupon with the other database data.

I certainly hope this story doesn't turn into a modern day retelling of Pygmalion .

The conclusion that this article makes are not really new. Nick Yee did similar studies on MMOG addiction with EverQuest many years ago. These were the studies that I could find:

The Norrathian Scrolls: The Virtual Skinner Box

Ariadne: Understanding Game Addiction

Maybe they could cut out the virtual machine and offer Windows XP SP3 as a separate product? It would eliminate all of the virtual machine overhead.

This move to bundle this with Virtual Server seems analogous to the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows 98. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to kill VMWare and Parallel's market share like they killed Netscape's browser share.

Finally, it is pretty sad when your operating system requires a virtual machine to emulate what the operating system should do natively. I would have preferred it if Microsoft went all the way with this option and did a complete revamp of the Windows executable and security architecture with the implementation of this virtual machine architecture (Apple implemented this during the OS 9 to OS X transition). As it is implemented right now, the virtual machine seems like a waste of resources as it is duplicates existing functionality while requiring more overhead and a separate configuration.

I saw a television series about the technology. In the series I saw, the Philadelphia Parking Authority goes around with a van that scans vehicle license plates for outstanding parking tickets and other infractions. I did not connect the two concepts together until after I posted this article.

Thank you for the Chicago civics lesson. I did not name any of the internal players because the (non-Chicago) news does not bother covering it. However, they had a lot of coverage of Blagojevich during his impeachment trial.

As for the "two strikes" rule... I can see that help the collection rate. However, I am sure that the "frequent" offenders will find yet another way around the automated system.