Analyst Roger Kay takes a cue from the NAB, with the 'Mac Tax'
It should be no surprise, especially to long-time Mac users, that noted analyst Roger L. Kay, currently with Endpoint Technologies, is a supporter of the Windows "ecosystem." His opinions with regard to Windows are very much on the record, and he and I have often joined together with our colleagues, in brisk, lively, but fair discussions about the relative value of software and hardware on different platforms.
So frankly, Kay's latest white paper (PDF available here) which is a cost examination for home users planning complete at-home networks on Windows vs. Mac platforms (which Microsoft admits to having sponsored), comes to conclusions which should be no surprise to anyone on two fronts: First, Kay illustrates how much more individuals are likely to pay for Apple versus brand-name equipment from suppliers such as Dell and HP. Second, Kay takes Apple to task for charging a premium, and that he's done so isn't news either.
Google's Street View vehicle trounced by law of physics
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left -- and, sometimes, two rights make a wrong. Take, for instance, Google's Street View function, well-liked by the uncertain motorist. Take, also, the idea of focused concentration on the road, a very good idea for drivers. Unfortunately, those two good ideas didn't combine so well for a Street View photo van in Pittsburgh.
As noted by Gawker and displayed by Google, a recent pass by the vehicle not too far from the baseball stadium was going well -- sunny day, everything's A-OK -- until the pole-borne camera attempted to occupy the same space as a low bridge overhead. The aftermath is visible online; not so useful for mapping purposes, but a nice warning as to how not to go about the journey.
Time Warner Cable responds to bandwidth cap complaints with price cap plan
In a statement this morning, Time Warner COO Landel Hobbs announced a $150-per-month pricing tier for high volume users, which he says is meant to stem user complaints over Time Warner's tests of capped bandwidth usage.
"We've heard the passionate feedback and we've taken action to address our customers' concerns," according to Hobbs.
Another round of AnyDVD improvements cracks more BD+ discs
Download AnyDVD HD 6.5.4.0 from Fileforum now.
In what's becoming a monthly affair for Slysoft, the makers of the DVD and Blu-ray backup disc system AnyDVD have released another update, this time with the capability to back up even more discs with the more sophisticated BD+ protection scheme.
Live Labs will be a little less live, as Lindsay moves to RIM
Restructuring is a process that a great many companies, both big and small, are going through in recent days. But Microsoft isn't accustomed to being one of those companies that shares its pain with its users -- case in point, the 2006 announcement of Windows Vista's delay, which was announced to the public as being "on track," in an unscheduled "road map update."
The sad fact this morning is that Live Labs, the Microsoft project responsible for one of the most innovative promotions in all of software this year -- the synthesizing of hundreds of simultaneous photographs of Pres. Obama's inauguration -- is being downsized. This morning's announcement from Microsoft was an effort to say it's not painful and it doesn't mean too much and everything's fine, which in and of itself is an indicator that it's not.
Silicon Valley phone and Internet service down, sabotage suspected
Service to Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint customers in the southern San Francisco Bay area was lost today in an incident being blamed on sabotage. Phone and Internet access went down on Thursday morning when four underground fiberoptic cables in San Jose and two cables in San Carlos, California were cut.
The outage also disrupted 911 emergency services. NETCOM, the dispatch center for local fire and policies agencies, has been able to receive 911 calls placed from landline phones today, but not from cell phones, according to the Mercury News. Police said they are investigating how the cables were cut. Service was expected to be fully restored by this evening. A smaller Comcast outage impacting 4,500 customers in San Jose started at around 1:00 pm PDT today.
EU to debate whether the Internet has outmoded public broadcasting
In what could be a long, but fundamental, rethinking of the role governments play in subsidizing the public dissemination of information throughout Europe, the EU Parliament will begin considering a possible redrafting of regulations passed in 2001 regarding the role of public broadcasters -- which in Europe means the corporations subsidized by taxes or licenses rather than advertising. At issue is a new question brought about by the evolution of the Internet: As long as private entities are spending billions to make broadband and wireless information services available, why should public broadcasters get all the breaks and be subsidized to compete on the same level?
"It must be noted that commercial broadcasters, of whom a number are subject to public service requirements, also play a significant role in achieving the objectives of the Amsterdam Protocol to the extent that they contribute to pluralism, enrich cultural and political debate and widen the choice of programmes," reads the latest draft of an EU commission report (PDF available here). That report calls for public comment on the role of public broadcasters' subsidies, during a period slated to begin in July.
Protesters confront Author's Guild over Kindle text-to-speech
By taking Amazon to task over the text-to-speech function of the Kindle 2, the Author's Guild has put itself in an undesirable position. Whereas the feature was originally open for use on any text contained within the device, the Author's Guild is now pressuring Amazon into letting publishers decide on an individual basis whether a book should be enabled with "voice performance" abilities.
At the end of March, twenty groups representing visually and cognitively impaired individuals, such as the American Council of the Blind, the International Dyslexia Association, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, joined together and formed the Reading Rights Coalition to oppose the action of the Author's Guild.
Will Windows XP keep ruling the netbook?
Since the shipment last year of the earliest netbooks, Linux has fallen drastically behind Windows XP, according to new research by two industry analyst groups, Ovum and the NPD Group. Meanwhile, some people are touting both Windows 7 and the Android variant of Linux as future replacements of sorts for the existing netbook operating systems.
Specifically, XP's share of netbook units shipped soared from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February 2009, according to data released this week by NPD Retail Tracking Service.
New hope for US memory maker Spansion after big Samsung settlement
Bringing to a quiet end a case where one of America's brightest hopes for competing in microprocessors had vowed to go down swinging, Spansion -- the producer of flash memory born from an AMD spinoff -- settled its case brought last November against global NAND flash powerhouse Samsung. Spansion will receive a one-time payment of $70 million in cash, and the two companies have agreed to share each others' patent portfolios.
The news is exactly what Spansion needs right now to survive, having filing for bankruptcy just last month. A few weeks ago, the company reported fiscal first quarter revenue of about $400 million, which isn't small change by any means. But that's a 15% annual drop, and the flash memory business has notoriously thin margins.
Microsoft used software activation without a license, jury finds
In a unanimous and complete decision by a Rhode Island US District Court jury yesterday, Microsoft was found guilty of willfully infringing upon an inventor's 1996 patent for a continual software activation and licensing system -- effectively saying that Microsoft stole the technology for preventing users from stealing its technology. The inventor -- an Australian named Richard B. Frederickson, III, of Uniloc Private, Ltd. -- was awarded $388 million USD, or more than half a billion Australian dollars.
The records on Frederickson's suit, dating back to 2005, are too old for public online availability, otherwise we'd do our usual citation of the original suit. But the single patent that Frederickson was defending was for a system that only enables software to run at any time at all, only if the licensing mechanism lets it do so. It's the software activation scheme that has become one of Windows' and Office's trademarks -- the very system that Microsoft first introduced to Betanews in 2001. At that time, the company emphasized the discovery it claimed to have made, of a system that can detect when the underlying hardware for the software has been changed from the original point of licensing, to disable images of that software from being copied and run on multiple PCs.
French battle back on restrictive HADOPI copyright law
Liberty, equality, fraternity... money? France's National Assembly has tossed out the HADOPI bill approved late in the night last week by 16 members of France's Senate. The bill, amended, is apt to be re-introduced later in 2009.
The sticking point on Thursday for the "Creation and Internet Law," known as HADOPI after its French acronym (la Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet), wasn't its notorious graduated-response / "three strikes" aspect, which states that after three accusations of piracy the government may take away an accused person's Internet access for up to a year.
You're a Mac, you're a PC...Now it's our turn, says Linux
The Mac vs. PC viral video and advertising war continues to rage, but now Linux has gotten involved. The nonprofit Linux Foundation began a contest in December challenging users to design a commercial for Linux that would take the "I'm a Mac....I'm a PC" self-branding campaign and spin it to fit the open source community: "WE are Linux."
The contest winners were announced today, just about a week after the latest salvo of Microsoft ads where computer shoppers are followed around as they look for their perfect machine. The first of these viral ads caused an explosion of blogospheric proportions at the end of March, when the cute girl in the commercial said, "I guess I'm just not cool enough for a Mac."
An accidental alert triggers a Live Messenger uproar
If one of your friends or business contacts on Windows Live Messenger has a different handle now than he did a few days ago, the reason may be because he received a message from Microsoft telling her she needed to do so, on account of a "recent system enhancement."
A blog post on Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger site yesterday explained that an unknown number of Messenger users may have received this alert in the center of their desktops. But the blog post apologized, saying the message was sent in error. "You will be able to continue to use your current e-mail address," the post read, "and there is no reason to make any changes."
Apple sued in 'exceptional' case of multi-touch infringement
Elan Microelectronics, a Taiwanese integrated circuit design firm, has sued Apple in the Northern District of California for infringement on two of its US touchscreen patents.
Observers can file this one under "should have seen it coming."
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