Nosce te ipsum

Long story short - the sound byte from the article is that Apple is 'irrelevant' to business and I think I would basically agree with these folks. I'm a programmer, I live and breath IT. I'm someone who started out on an original Apple // way back in 1979 but as I entered the work force, the reality is that world is almost entirely Windows based. When I needed a new computer, laptop or desktop, (and I wanted the best machine, not just the cheapest thing available) - but Apple was not a part of my conscious thought process at the time. I never even thought to consider them outside of the usual suspects. It wasn't until I finally hit my own personal wall after dealing with years and years of Windows typical bullshit that I gave serious consideration to dumping the platform (in favor of Linux at the time). It was at that time that I heard those magic words that forever changed things: "Have you heard about OS X?" -- The next day I was standing in the Aspen Groove Colorado Apple store completely blown away by this beautiful, elegant and powerful operating system. I was equally amazed at this impeccably designed hardware that the OS was running on. One thought keep reverberating in my head - Why haven't I heard about this before! The rest as they say is history but I would imagine most of the people in his survey are in a similar boat. They live and breath Windows all day - they know its strengths and faults but it's what they know. If each of them spent 2 months with a modern Mac, I imagine we would hear some different answers.

Of course, Mac people being who we are, quickly responded the next day with a rebuttal article that has some juicy bits, including:

silicon.com reader Jeff Lebowski from the US said: "Senior managers don't choose the best products, they choose the 'safe' products. You'll never get fired or demoted for choosing Microsoft solutions regardless of how insecure, buggy and high maintenance they become."

On a more specific level, Randal Bahner, a small business convert from Microsoft to Apple, disagreed with the CIO Jury's assertions based on his switch two years ago.

"My introduction to Mac OS X was met with some scepticism but after over a year of working with Mac OS X Server, I would not say it is 'irrelevant' to businesses. I have enjoyed using their front-end interface and yet can still pop in to the Terminal and get 'greasy'. I don't know, may be its just me, but I find it much easier to administer and plan to dump my Windows stuff totally and replace it with OS X Server," he said.

London-based company director Timothy Barnes added that his consulting company now runs Macs.

"We have no problems integrating with the companies that are our clients, finding the right software or connecting to corporate networks. The overall cost of ownership is far lower given the low training requirements, better security and higher user productivity," he said.

HP to Region-code Cartridges

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 20, @06:02AM - From the outsourcing-ink-bad dept. prostoalex writes 'Looks like the printer cartridge manufacturers will be borrowing techniques from Hollywood. HP introduced region coding for some of the newest printers sold in Europe. HP's US location and US dollar sliding lead "

Beale Screamer has successfully cracked Microsoft's copy protection used in Windows Media digital right management software. The crack called Freeme strips off the piece from the WMA or WMV file that prevents copying the file.This is extremely bad news for Microsoft. Because they had some deals going with movie studios and recordlabels in order to get WM used as a standard in digital media distribution online.

Microsoft's has built DRM2 software in way that does allow copy-protection upgrades, so even that songs that are previously locked with WM technology can be unlocked, new songs can contain new copy-protections. But still these locks will be cracked as well. All copy protection methods are and will be cracked in the future.

A new security threat , "evil twin"...: "A new security threat, 'evil twin' wifi routers. Here's how it works. A criminal rides up and down in the elevator of an office building looking for unsecured wireless routers. When he finds one, he rents an office nearby for the sole purpose of installing a high-speed line, and a super-powerful wireless router. He names it the same as the open router he found. Now when people come into work their computers will discover the more powerful router, and the users, none the wiser, will do their unsecure transactions, entering passwords, account numbers, mother's maiden names, etc, non the wiser that a criminal is recording all this juicy data and selling it to identity thieves in Russia or Nigeria."

(Via Scripting News.)