Microsoft plans to offer hardware vendors significant price cuts on Windows XP licenses for low-cost computing products, but the deal will only be available for computers with low hardware specs. This tactic is part of Microsoft s strategy to stifle adoption of Linux by computer manufacturers that are targeting the budget market, where low cost and high flexibility give the open source operating system an edge.
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The popularity of the game-changing Asus Eee PC, which ships with a heavily-modified version of the Xandros Linux distribution, spawned a whole new class of inexpensive computers. Other vendors have entered the market with their own competing products, many of which also use the open source operating system. Windows is a poor fit for such computers, which are designed and priced like budget appliances. Vista requires too much hardware overhead, while Windows XP licenses add extra expense to the budget hardware that can be avoided by using Linux. So as products like the Eee bring Linux into homes and schools, Microsoft has struggled to squeeze into the growing budget hardware niche.

According to IDG, which obtained details about the price cuts from hardware vendors, Microsoft will offer Windows XP licenses for $26 for developing countries and $32 for the rest of the world. In order to qualify for these deep discounts, products will have to be limited to a maximum of 1GB of RAM, 10.2 inch screens, and single-core processors clocked no higher than 1GHz though there are apparently some exceptions . Products must also not have hard drives exceeding 80 GB in capacity and cannot have touch-screen technology.

How about just cut the price period? Up sales... increase $$$ flow!

Microsoft vies for budget laptop market with XP price cuts

Procera Networks will announce today a new standard in deep packet inspection DPI gear: an 80Gbps monster called the PacketLogic PL10000 that is targeted at tier-1 network operators. At up to $800,000 a unit, these aren t cheap, but when you want to throttle, inspect, and shape traffic in real-time on a major network, this is now the fastest thing on the market and by a large margin .

Procera s appliances all run the same software, so the difference between them is in the interfaces and the number of racks the units take up. The PL10000, the company s top-of-the-line offering and provides 5 10Gbps channels and 9 1Gbps channels in a 12 rack unit. It can handle 80Gbps of total speed, but most ISPs will want to keep an eye on traffic moving in both directions, bringing this down to 40Gbps each way.

Throttle 5 million P2P users with $800K DPI monster

The Bush administration last week filed responses to a federal magistrate judge's questions relating to ongoing litigation over what critics say is thousands of missing e-mails. Administration lawyers submitted a 22-page legal brief and a 7-page declaration from Theresa Payton, CIO of the White House's Office of Administration. The brief strenuously objected to the demands of the lead plaintiff, the National Security Archive (which filed suit alongside Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), that special measures be taken to preserve hard drives and removable media that could be useful in future forensic efforts to retrieve e-mails.

White House insists it has e-mail recovery under control

A recently-discovered flaw in Gmail is capable of turning Google's e-mail service into a highly effective spam machine. According to the Information Security Research Team (INSERT), Gmail is susceptible to a man-in-the-middle attack that allows a spammer to send thousands of bulk e-mails through Google's SMTP service without fear of detection. This attack bypasses both Google's identity fraud protection mechanisms and the current 500-address limit on bulk e-ma

Doveryai, no Proveryai : Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server...

This project was inspired by Aftotech’s Hard Drive Speakers page 4 . Basically the voice coil drive circuit was located on the hard drive controller board and disconnected by cutting a trace. The voice coil was metered and was found to be 10 ohms, this was within range to be driven directly from my stereo speaker output.

This is bad ass... What a great (but useless) idea... time to get the VOM and some torx bits out...

Hard Drive Laser Oscilloscope

You may be wondering if this tax rebate will affect your 2008 federal return next year.

Let us try to answer this question for you. The tax rebate is an advance credit for 2008 and will be calculated on your 2008 return. Now this is important: you are receiving a portion of your 2008 credit EARLY and if you receive it once, you won t receive it again when you file your 2008 return.

And, this is important too: if you re due a higher tax rebate, you ll get the remainder next year when you file. If you received a higher rebate than you should have, you DO NOT have to pay it back. So far, so good.

A tax rebate is not interest, it s not income, it s not a dividend. Pure and simple, and this is worth saying again, the tax rebate payment is an ADVANCE CREDIT for tax year 2008 and will be calculated on your 2008 return when you file in 2009.

So for now, all you have to do is think about whether you will save it, pay down bills or splurge on something you ve always wanted.

So I still get it in the whoo-haaa in 2008... How Grand!
Thanks Prez. Bush!

Tax Rebate Defined ...

In past discussions with a friend of mine the question was raised about geotagging photos. So today, I set-out to find a working solution for a group of people taking tornado damage photos from a small aircraft.

I was lucky enough to find a used GPS unit that was gutted out of an old fleet tracking device. The unit is nice, small, with a voltage regulator for 12volts, a long power cord, and the active ant. for $20 dollars. What a steal! I put that in a rat shack case and it works like a charm.

So with just 20 dollars invested I already had on hand a 20 amp auto switch and inline fuse link so I am set to go.

Here is a step-by-step journey into the world of Geocoding.... Sorry about the any errors... I was really sleepy ... ZZZZzzz

Geotagging on a Shoestring...

Robin McKelle’s “people” claim she’s inspired by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, which immediately made me skeptical only because that seems too cliché. Almost any artist with a big voice backed by bigger horns has dibs on comparing themselves to icons of the 1940s. However, I apologize because I was wrong to be so skeptical; it's actually an ideal claim. The Boston-based diva is currently touring her big band jazz through Europe but is all set for a US celebration of her sophomore effort, Modern Antique, this August.

With rich horns, James Bond soundtrack quality vocals and that Nellie McKay esque mix of genres, McKelle brings a spicy presentation to the over saturated pop table. All of this and she holds a degree from Berklee and includes a position with the Boston Pops on her resume, giving her room to stretch into just about any place she wants to go.

While viewing Elbows (http://www.elbo.ws) I ran across this lovely smoooth 40's voice lass. If you like big horns and even bigger vocals, 40s style, check it out! :)

MUSIC: Robin McKelle - Smoooth 1940s sound....

thank you adam finally someone actually pointing out the real reason for parents and mokey BS R-TARDS it parents responsibilty whether a child gets a game like GTA 4 and it not the games FAULT its tha parents fault BE A BETTER PARENT.......i mean for god,s sake there,a A rating system for a reason

the fact that the game has a M rateing say,s nothing to parents maybe some parents think that the rateing sytem is there to LOOK PRETTY ..well its not

it there for a actuall reason i mean GAMES THAT GET A M RATEING ARE FOR ADULTS NOT A FREKEN 8 YEAR OLD .....sexual content, blood violence ,partial nudity ,drugs and alchool ,strong langauge stuff like this for M rated games are on the back of the box FOR A GOD MOTHER FREAKEN REASON
and yet pepole like AssJack Thompson or parents who are aparently blind of the E.S.R.B RATEING SYSTEM STILL BLAME VIDEO GAMES BACAUSE THEY DONT WANT TO ADMIT THIER THE PROBLEM NOT THAT GAME,S IT,S THIER FAULT...simple as that

Adam really flips his wig of GTA and the way parents are not accepting responsiblioty for giving kids something that thay might not want them to have...

Watch the video.... I would like your views on the subject....

Sesslers Soapbox - Grand Theft Logic?

A video cut-up.

It s easier to prepare for Armageddon when you re stepping to that ragtime beat. According to Kofi Annan, the more that nuclear weapon states ...insist that nuclear weapons are essential for their national security, the more other states feel that they too must have them for their security . Despite this, the British goverment is pushing through plans for a new £25 billion trident missile. What would Gary Cooper say?

This original footage comes from the Protect and Survive series, commissioned by the UK government to show people how to prepare for nuclear war.

Protest and Survive...