Slashdot Mirror

ballpoint writes "Business Week is featuring a list of articles under the header 'The Linux Uprising' including topics like 'Red Flags for Red Hat' and 'A Bad, Sad Hollywood Ending?' touching everything dear to the Slashdot community. A good read to align yourself with what mainstream businesspeople are fed."

ballpoint writes "Business Week is featuring a list of articles under the header 'The Linux Uprising' including topics like 'Red Flags for Red Hat' and 'A Bad, Sad Hollywood Ending?' touching everything dear to the Slashdot community. A good read to align yourself with what mainstream businesspeople are fed."

kshkval writes "According to Business Week, Intel is marketing the Centrino, a 1.6 Ghz chip that is slower than previous laptop processors from Intel, but does more. Hey, isn't that what Apple and AMD have gotten so much guff about? The worm turns..."

serendigital writes "MacCentral reports that a BusinessWeek article entitled: 'A Rendezvous with Redmond?' has -- with Rendezvous -- created an actual threat to Microsoft. As reported by MacCentral, it's interesting to note that BusinesWeek's 'Byte of the Apple' columnist Charles Haddad is on temporary leave and this article was written by a substitute columnist."

scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on how the Slammer worm demonstrates just 'how vulnerable the Internet remains': MS's own DBs were affected, telephone/ATM/etc were knocked out, and if the worm had occurred only 48 hours later (preventing investor's trading, 911 calls, banking services), there could have been a 'virtual Net shutdown.' Vincent Weafer, director of the computer-security outfit Symantec's Anti-Virus Response Center (SARC), says that the likelihood that a Slammer-style worm will hit at a more vulnerable moment is high."

bsharma writes "The next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include basic research, chip design, engineering--even financial analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper? Who wins? Who loses?" News.com has a related story about outsourcing.

MadFarmAnimalz writes "BusinessWeek has coverage of Linuxworld up, and it makes interesting reading in places. Amongst things touched upon are the open-source business model, how vendors will be tempted into locking in customers into their offerings, and other things." I'll be out there tomorrow for the Golden Penguin Bowl, as well as judging exhibitors. Busy day.

scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on some of the challenges Google faces as it gains popularity. For a while, things were looking good: unobtrusive ads, a hardware search appliance, and the fact that 'google' has become a verb (like xerox, kleenex, hoover, etc.). Now, Yahoo! has dropped the 'exclusive' part of its contract, Overture won a series of key contracts, Verity has announced a deal to purchase Inktomi's assets, and Y! announced it was buying Inktomi's web-search business. And other engines such as WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST now mimic Google's 'popularity placement technology.'"

scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on some of the challenges Google faces as it gains popularity. For a while, things were looking good: unobtrusive ads, a hardware search appliance, and the fact that 'google' has become a verb (like xerox, kleenex, hoover, etc.). Now, Yahoo! has dropped the 'exclusive' part of its contract, Overture won a series of key contracts, Verity has announced a deal to purchase Inktomi's assets, and Y! announced it was buying Inktomi's web-search business. And other engines such as WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST now mimic Google's 'popularity placement technology.'"

chundo writes "CNN reports that the United States government has been secretly encouraging the defection of senior Iraqi officials via email. Iraq is responding by shutting down some of their internet gateways to prevent these emails from getting through, forcing the US to find alternate means to deliver the message. Maybe they should have enlisted this guy - emails from him keep showing up in my inbox no matter what I do." This story about the growing military network bandwidth crunch shows the U.S. military trying hard to get every soldier online, all the time.

Frank Buckheimer writes "The CES 2003 show in Las Vegas will give us some pretty nice introductions of some brand new products." Other submitters sent in news about a "Mini PC" the size of a paperback book, and a spiffy digital sound projector. mbstone writes "Bill Gates announced a line of MS wristwatches that receive email, stock quotes, sports scores, etc. by FM radio. Gates claims it's a 'whole new product concept that was completely incubated by Microsoft Research,' but it's really just a reprise of the Seiko MessageWatch -- mine became just a watch, sans atomic time, as of 12/31/99 when Seiko called it quits. Once bitten, twice shy. Has anybody proposed an open standard for such gadgets so that new wristwatch-data-service providers can enter the market when the old provider leaves?"

Ravi Swamy writes "Here's a followup article in Business Week to the Cable TV A La Carte story from last month. For those who actually read the story it was only A La Carte if you wanted to add HBO. Apparently cable companies don't know about the law or are going to reclassify HBO as a 'tier' instead of as a channel to get around the law."

Slashback tonight (is this number 200 already?) brings a few updates and amplifications on grid computing and AMD's plans vis a vis Intel. Also, it seems that some of the best features of Mozilla have finally infiltrated the world of Netscape. Read on the for the details.

And Campbell's puts glass marbles in their soup pictures. Roland Piquepaille writes "We saw several grid computing announcements in the last couple of days.Of course, Gateway stole the show. In 'Gateway makes store PCs work overtime,' you can read that 'Gateway's network of 8,000 PCs can deliver 14 teraflops.' This is plain wrong. You all know that this number of 14 teraflops is meaningless. It's just the addition of the peak speed of all the PCs -- never reached anyway on individual PCs. You need specialized software to work efficiently with a grid. And two companies are releasing new products to power grids. Avaki rolled out what it believes is the first Java-based data grid software for enterprise-class IT environments. Kontiki, for its part, on Monday released a grid server that brings its content delivery system into the server realm, whereas previously it was only available for PCs. Check this column for a summary, or this article for more details."

Why aren't those things called 'stick-up' ads, anyhow? Internet Ninja writes "Netscape today released version 7.01 of Netscape based on Mozilla 1.0.2. Back in is popup blocking which they got a lashing for in 7.0 as well as tabs as home pages just like Mozilla. Release notes here and there's a couple articles on Netscape devedge which may be of interest to developers."

And they will continue to have produced my Athlon, too. schnoz writes "And you thought AMD was quitting the PC chip market? Then check out this article on Business Week. Not only are they releasing new chips and plan to continue to do so, they're also still very active research wise, working on new transistor making techniques such as the double gate design as well as metal-rather-than-silicon design. Keep going at it AMD!!"

AuntieMisha writes "BusinessWeek has an article about a new California law passed that requires businesses to publicly disclose information about break-ins. The only loophole is if there is an ongoing investigation and if the disclosure would harm the investigation. IMHO Big companies will have the resources to set up investigations even when they know it is unlikely to get anywhere, and business will go on as usual for them. Small businesses that don't have the resources to maintain an investigation will have their reputations ruined. Also, the article doesn't mention the contingency where a break-in occurs because of a software/hardware issue for which there is no released technical solution (i.e. anyone else who has software X would be susceptible to the same type of break-in). This is not good."

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this BusinessWeek article you can now get your MTV a la carte. I having been waiting for years to buy my cable by the channel, and this article indicates that my cable company is now legally required to let me. I am going to call Time Warner tomorrow with my list just to see what they say. Anyone out there doing this now?"

gilgsn writes "According to reports in BusinessWeek, the US Department of Transportation has ruled that a new fuel cell developed by US company Polyfuel can be taken on airplanes. The announcement clears the way for the commercialisation of fuel cells as an alternative to batteries in notebook computers. The use of direct methanol fuel cells on aeroplanes has been questioned as they contain methanol, which is flammable. According to Jim Balcom, Polyfuel's CEO, the US DOT said that a fuel cell designed by his company could be taken into aircraft cabins when it goes on sale because it contains a relatively low concentration of methanol. Fuel cells are viewed as a promising power source in notebook comptuers as they are instantly refuellable (using fuel cartridges) and will power laptops two to three times longer than standard batteries. Full Story." This will be more exciting news when the fuel cells are actually available.

Sylver Dragon writes "Business week has a story about Eldred v. Ashcroft. Seems that Eldred wants to put some of Robert Frost's works on the web, but, sadly, those were copyrighted. What makes this more interesting, is that the works would have become public domain, had congress not extended the length of copyright after an artists death. So now, the Supreme court must decide if congress overstepped the bounds of the constutional provisions for copyright laws, when they made the last extension. With any luck, the Supreme Court will choose the "road less traveled."" The plaintiffs have a webpage with much information.

seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"

seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"

ealar dlanvuli writes "BuisnessWeek Online is reporting that AOL/TW and Lindows have decided to work together in bundling a version of Netscape 7 with future Lindows products. One wonders if they should instead be supporting OEone and making it scream."

gabec writes "'Initial rollout of what may eventually become the world's largest silicon repository of personal data could be less than 90 days away....The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States. The system will feed the results to an analysis application that mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats.' It will happen by the end of the year, if nothing is done to stop it: And here are some articles on this."

prostoalex writes: "Business Week draws attention to the growth of monitoring and surveillance systems in modern society. Only in Manhattan, as article claims, there are at least 10,000 cameras. Londoners, at the same time, are caught on tape 300 times per day. Is it a necessary measure of pre-caution, or, as Marge Simpson put it, "as long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done"?"

An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek looks at the The high hurdles facing Wi-Fi. Sure it's got promise but if overcrowded spectrum isn't destined to crimp its growth, it'll need better technology and regulatory help from the FCC."

prostoalex writes "An article starting with the words "Forget about Bill Gates, folks. The biggest enemy of free software may be Senator Ernest F. Hollings" historically had a little chance of being published in a recognized business publication. In this case, though, Business Week (no registration) runs a detailed but straightforward explanation of how the new copyright bills could threaten free software and open source movements."

satch89450 writes: "SecurityFocus had a column that I missed when it was first published a few days ago, titled 'Responsible Disclosure' Draft Could Have Legal Muscle, but I discovered it when researching an answer to a comment on the CYBERIA mailing list. In this article, Mark Rasch discusses how the Draft would set the rules for reporting security vunerabilities, and in particular define the boundaries of liability assumed by bug-disclosers. By adopting a "Best Practices" RFC, the IETF could help the reporters of security-related bugs do their job, and put the onus of fixing the bugs on the vendors who make the mistakes, where it belongs. (The RFC draft described in the article, 'Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure Process, is here at the ISI repository.) This is, of course, in direct opposition to the process that Microsoft's Scott Culp, Manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center, would like to see. As Microsoft is more part of the problem than part of the solution, I believe that the path to a formal process would better serve the entire community - and that community includes Microsoft's customers. I'm taking this seriously because the mainstream press is talking about the issue, and what it's going to take to fix it. Here is an example from BusinessWeek that scares me silly. I'm glad I'm looking to change careers from software development to something safe, like law."

Cally writes: "An interesting article appeared on the Info-Sec News list the other day about Guardent's new security appliance. Based on Snort, Nessus and IPTables, Guardent are taking the unusal step of trying to sell a product based on Free software into the highly resistant corporate security market. Although Free/Open security software is widely acknowledged to be better than commercial alternatives, it's rarely been trusted in the enterprise - the article points out that, although the NSA use Free software, the need for an expensive government audit prevents the government from saving money and improving security."

Soothsayer wrote to us about the recent BusinessWeek article that profiles Google, its rise to the top, despite no marketing dollars, and tries to explain...well...why Google rocks. Oh, and some small mention of an IPO. CT I also want to note that images.google.com is my favorite place in the universe to idly explore the wierdness of the net.

elliotj writes "This Business Week editorial is arguing that the HP purchase of Compaq could mean big things for Linux as the resulting monolith is forced to rationalize their multitude of operating systems. The most sensible solution may well be for them to abandon HPUX, Tru64 et al and embrace Linux as the one-and-only *nix OS. Interesting thing about the article is that it comes from Business Week...not exactly a traditional penguin cheerleader." Ah, but soon, thanks to Yet Another Corporate Merger, we'll have another defunt company icon in the topics field.

Microsoft has battled back to the top of the Internet heap, with more heavy-duty products coming to market this year than ever before, profits soaring again, and more research and development money in the bank than most of the world's nations can ever get their hands on, not to mention Microsoft's many out-maneuvered competitors. Microsoft, reports Business week in a thorough report in its June 4 issue, and discussed in on Slashdot two weeks ago, is drowning in cash: $30 billion, more than any other company in the Corporate Republic formerly known as America.

Microsoft is not, as the new administration has made abuntantly clear, about to be broken up. It has cashed in on its enormously profitable near-monopolies for desktop and server software. Analysts believe it will soon return to 20 percent revenue growth, up from 14 percent today, which already is nearly double last year's.

The company is also launching a mind-boggling series of sweeping and expensive new initiatives:

• .Net services, software that permits unrelated Web sites to talk with one another and with PC programs, without the user having to open new programs or visit new sities. This is the company's wedge into Web services.

• XBox. As we know, this is the company's huge leap into the $20 billion game console business, scheduled for launch on November 9. XBox is supposed to be three times more powerful than Sony's or Nintendo's boxes, and Microsoft says it plans to spend $500 million on advertising in the first 18 months alone.

• Small Business Software. For the first time, Microsoft will jump into the $19 billion small-business software arena, says Business Week, having bought accounting software specialist Great Plains Software for $1.l billion in April. The company says it then plans to offer customer-relationship, human-resources, and supply-chain software.

• Stinger, Microsoft's latest effort at software for cellphones, begins trials in Europe later this year.
• Ultimate TV. Described by industry analysts as a "set-top box on steroids." For less than $400, this box will allow people to surf the Web and interact with TV shows, and record progams on hard drives for storage and later viewing.

On top of that, Windows XP, the biggest update in more than five years, is scheduled for late October. The company is also breaking out of the low end of the server market with Windows 2000, which began shipping last year. Services running Win2000 claimed 41 per cent of the market, says Business Week, up from 38 per cent in l999.

There's much more. MSN is now one of the most heavily-trafficked sites on the Web, the msn.com portal ranking second in this country behind Yahoo. Hotmail is the world's most used free e-mail service, and MSN Internet Access second only to AOL as the most popular consumer route to the Web. This from a company much criticized for failing to perceive the Web's importance a few years ago.

The rise of MSN demonstrates just how difficult it is to compete with this company. Were it owned by anyone else, the long-struggling MSN would have gone belly-up long ago. But Microsoft can subsidize its products through good and bad times, creating an environment in which it's difficult, if not impossible, for competitors to survive. Microsoft now operates under its own notions of Darwinian business evolution. That is, the rich prey on potential competitors and hang on until they win.

Microsoft is also getting serious about the handheld devices market; its Pocket PC has begun eating into Palm's market share. According to Net market researcher IDC, Pocket PC should hold 19 percent of the market by year's end, up from 10 percent two years ago.

The market for Windows servers grew 32 percent this year, while sales of servers running Unix grew only 14 percent.

Furthermore, Microsoft will spend $4.2 billion on research and development this year, while unleashing the above cavalcade of significant new products and initiatives, starting this week with the launch of Office XP.

Waiting in the wings are Microsoft's "pipeline initiatives," under development or planned for later launch: the first table PC; natural-language processing (talking to computers the same way you talk to people); face mapping (using digital camers to scan a PC user's head into a 3D image so that software can add a full range of emotions for gamers); information agents (software agents that sift and sort through information for businesses and consumers).

It seems almost silly to argue that this is too much power for a single company to wield over something as central to the country's business, entertainment and cultural life as the Net and the Web. But Microsoft's power is barely mentioned in politics or the popular press, and seems of little concern outside of the open source and the boardrooms of some competitors. No company has ever dominated so enormous a part of the country's economy as Microsoft is about to do. The company is moving far beyond the ability of competitors to challenge it, and thus offer consumers any real choices. In fact, the company has grown much more monopolistic than when the government sued it.

Since almost everyone who goes online intersects with a Microsoft product, there are substantial privacy concerns. It follows that MS knows more about the Web habits of Americans than any other company. And should the company ever decide to impose political or cultural values on its users and properties, it could have an enormous impact on speech and the transmission of political ideas.

The return of Microsoft, and its ferocious onslaught on well-funded new initiatives and projects is re-writing both government and civic history. We now have the Unaccountable Company, bigger than the government of the nation in which it resides, beyond the reach of legislators, regulators, citizens, critics, victims, or more individualistic and entrepeneurial competitors. People who need the Net and the Web in their personal loves or workplaces will do business with Microsoft, or they won't do business.

That returns Gates to his pre-lawsuit position as the pre-eminent figure of the Internet, invincible as Frankenstein's monster, the creature that really can't be vanquished or driven off.

Note: Here's Part One of this piece, if you missed it.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this Business Week article Microsoft is stronger than ever. Considering this is typical of the kind of Microsoft Rump-Swabbery that Management often use to 'enlighte'" themselves, it's little wonder that so many are of the opinion that if you can't give Microsoft money for it, it must be no good." Of course, did anyone expect Microsoft to just roll over?

More below on improving OS X security, AOL GPL SNAFUs, Mandrake's reputed layoffs (short answer: No.), Big Daddy's control over gaming in Connecticut, and more. All below in tonight's episode of Slashback.

We are from France! And we're doing fine ... PovRayMan writes "Mandrakesoft has denied rumors of it's recent layoffs and management change due to "financial liquidity." The article mentions how the former CEO, Henri Poole, agreed on the management change. The article even goes out to say that their "prospects never looked so good" with the recent release of Mandrake 8. Either way, I'm downloading Mandrake 8 iso's right now and look forward to playing with it."

Like Alar for the other kind of apple. Lots of people were interested in the possible security flaws in OS X; thanks to Alex Salkever of BusinessWeek, we have word from Apple SE Manager Jeff Gagne, who writes: "We have just posted a Mac OS security web page for people looking for information concerning security updates, security notifications, etc. involving Mac OS X. Please visit the following url for more information: http://www.apple.com/support/security/security.html."

Follow the bouncing lawyers, with a mallet and a browser. Mike Haisley of AOL watchdog Observers.net writes with an update to yesterday's AOL And The GPL story: "It seems that America Online has their legal team working overtime on this one, site was pulled, and back up, and we were just given notice that it's going down again." Here is the Emergency Mirror.

Go forth and legislate no more. mikey573, pointing to a Hartford Courant Article, writes: "It's nice to see that Connecticut governor John Rowland is protecting gamers' rights by vetoing a bill that would have limited access to arcade point-and-shoot games: "Asserting that government should not act as 'Big Daddy,' Gov. John G. Rowland said Thursday that he will veto a bill barring children under 18 from playing 'point-and-shoot' video games in public places." I'm going to play Duck Hunt now in celebration! My only concern is the Connecticut legislature got as far as passing the bill in the first place." Well said.

Erratus, errata, erratum. Jamie would like to make several corrections to Monday's story about Macromedia being blackholed:

(1) I really shouldn't have singled out Above.net in the headline. They're just one backbone that uses the MAPS RBL to block non-mail traffic from their subscribers. In fact, Teleglobe.net was the backbone that blocked web access from one of our submittors.

And (B), Paul Vixie, the co-founder of MAPS, is no longer the CTO of Above.net.

A reader writes: "BusinessWeek is running an article about the new potential target for cracking - all those shiny new Mac OSXs, with their nice new Unix underbodies. Will crackers start to go after these machines too?" Well, to a certain extent, of course, yes. Anything that's easy - but will new tools be developed for these box? My only caveat is the use of the hack rather then crack - but that's a semantics thing.

LL writes "This article notes how non-compete job contracts allows indirect control of one's actions, even after leaving the direct employment of a company. Apart from the business ethics of using them as anti-competitive measures (a separate topic by itself), the question is what should be a fair compensation for removing yourself from the technology environment where skills suffer alarming bit-rot? Other sectors (e.g. banking) have 'gardening leave' where they basically pay you to remove yourself from the 'inner fraternity' before joining a competitor, but what should be a fair compensation for an enforced pause in your career? 6 months @ 150% base pay? 200% @ 3 months? Or are there standard clauses that IT workers have widely accepted as the norm?"

Winged Cat writes: "BusinessWeek has a story on plants that can transmit and react to radio signals, to act as remote sensors and actuators (say, to report degraded soil conditions and/or prepare for a cold snap). ObComments: if they could also do some computation, you could grow your own Beowulf cluster; and I wonder if you could enter this into Robot Wars?"

subbiecho writes: "Automotive related e-biz software company, The Cobalt Group, has spoken out against unions forming within their ranks, in this article. Cobalt Group CEO, John Holt sent an un-prompted e-mail to workers, alluding to Amazon.Com and other companies undergoing organizing drives, saying he preferred a "direct dialogue" with employees. This adds more fuel to the fire of pro-union supporters in their attempt to build a cohesive technology workers union."

There's an interesting story concerning the development of a circular based-motor. What's interesting about this motor is that it can spin to apply force in three dimensions -- some researchers at Johns Hopkins unveiled it recently. It looks pretty cool -- many magnets involved in it.

MasterOfDisaster writes: "Some nut is planning to make a global wireless network using apple's Power Macintosh G4 Cubes. Here's the story." We ran a story about this guy last year, but this one has a bit more detail and he's progressed further in his plans.

Mayor Quimby writes: "EETimes reports that LED guru Shuji Nakamura predicts White LEDs to overtake the light bulb Mr. Nakamura is an amazing guy who is given substantial credit in the development of blue and white LEDs. Other articles about him can be found here and here. He "works from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 355 days a year, and says he has never taken a vacation." Also, check out this circuit board found in an LED flashlight that uses a single AA battery. It'll be nice when low cost knockoffs start flooding in from the Far East." I can vouch for the life of white-LED flashlights -- the ones I purchased more than a year ago from Holly Solar are still on their first sets of AA batteries. Not as bright as incandescents, but plenty for lighting up a tent or to keep from stumbling on a trail.

A new survey in Business Week , of all places, finds that Americans are getting ticked off about corporate power. In fact, a whopping 72% of Americans feel that big businesses have gained too much control over many aspects of their lives.In a variety of ways, abuse of technology is the reason for their unease, the Net the vehicle by which they're expressing it.

This feeling, says the BW/Harris Poll survey, is amplified by the Net, "and the discontented who use it." It provides an early-warning system that approximates Paul Revere, says the magazine, a way to spread the word about the latest corporate outrage.

"With the Internet, information comes instantly," says Harvard University labor economist Richard B. Freeman, "so even if we don't have more people concerned about companies, those who can do more about it."

And we do have more people concerned about companies, it appears.

The Net seems awash in corporatist machinations. C-Net and other online news services read more like the National Law Journal every day, as the rise of Open Source programming and other trends -- copyright, privacy issues, a nascent movement for social responsibility -- pit the tech culture squarely against closed business practices and the runaway corporate growth that's accelerated dramatically since the 80s, then jumped dramatically again with the explosion of the Net and the Web.

The rushed, sometimes panicky entry of large corporations into a culture which is at heart architecturally open and markedly individualistic seems at times like a cultural civil war. Legal conflicts now seem to outstrip technological experimentation, advances and breakthroughs, lawyers getting as rich off the Net as they do in product liability or malpractice suits. Links are now a continuing legal battleground. Recently motion picture companies got a court order barring 2600 Enterprises from linking to sites containing DeCSS code, but that's just one item in a continuing litany of encroachment. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints asked for and received a court order prohibiting a church critic from linking to copyrighted handbooks. Mattel, which makes Cyberpatrol blocking software, took legal action after the cphack.exe program revealed Cyberpatrol's list of blocked Web sites.

Then of course there are the ongoing free-music and file-sharing fights, Amazon's efforts to copyright software and Microsoft's legal threats demanding the removal of links (on Slashdot, among other places) to its Kerberos code. Just wait till AOL and Time Warner link up. Thousands of Net-related actions are pending, and most are less about technology than corporate power. The Net evolved free of corporate and government control, but corporations and governments are racing to catch up.

In the Business Week survey, Americans gave business credit for the economic good times that have prevailed during the 90s. But the public is also becoming increasingly alarmed at corporate ethics, practices and power.

Nearly 40% of Americans surveyed said they thought profits were more important to corporations than making safe, reliable products. Only 6% said they thought large businesses treated their employees well, and just 8% said companies did a good job of educating consumers about health and safety issues related to their products.

74% said big companies have too much political influence, and more than 80% agreed that entertainment and popular culture are dominated by corporate money which seeks mass appeal over quality.

The Net is not only a prime battleground for the rising tensions between corporations and the public, it's also becoming the primary vehicle for anti-corporatist activists who have little voice in mainstream media.

Protests against Wal-Mart have erupted in more than 100 American cities, and issues ranging from the open distribution of technology to globalism to artistic control of culture to genetically altered food were cited in the survey. Without the news-spreading power of the Net, many of these efforts would probably have faltered.

The survey suggests that Americans are finally getting upset at their unchecked power and are coming to believe -- with amazing unanimity -- that large corporations need to be more responsible, ethical and regulated.

More than 95% of the survey's participants said they agreed with this statement:

"U.S. crporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities."

This noble sentiment fails to take into account the proprietary and predatory nature of the contemporary global corporation. These companies have only one purpose. They are run by coalitions of analysts, stockholders, investors and executives whose overriding mission is to mass-market products, dominate markets and -- in the end -- maximize profits. There isn't a single CEO of a major corporation who wouldn't get fired in a flash if he or she decided to forego profits in favor of workers or community.

This conflict between an individual, entrepeneurial spirit and surging corporatism is the single most significant political conflict on the Net. And if the Net is, in fact, fostering a political/social movement designed to protest, curb or transform corporatism, that could well be the most significant and unexpected contribution to public life that technology has made since e-mail.

Luminous writes "According to the Wall Street Journal and this article from MSNBC, the U.S. Patent office is reviewing a patent on all computer-to-computer international trade transactions. 'When and if Mr. Pool's patent becomes final, lawyers hired by his company, DE Technologies LLC, say anyone conducting computer-to-computer international trades over the Internet without the permission of DE Technology will infringe on the company's intellectual property.' " This submission has been coming in a lot - it's scary, but remember that this patent has not been passed yet - and hopefully with this negative attention, it won't be. The Patent Office has notified him that it will be issuing the patent, however.It should be noted that BusinessWeek had this story a a month ago.

TheLocustNMI writes "This is an interesting article at BusinessWeek about eWatch, a company that specializes in tracking the comments of, and garnering personal information about folks with a beef with a company. The service isn't cheap, upwards of $5,000 per "screenname". This was apparently used against Northwest Airlines sick-out employees last Christmas. The BusinessWeek article seems to hint that eWatch is used primarily to root out uncomplimentary messages on "rouge" web sites. So, should we be careful about what we post here, Usenet, or anywhere else? Especially if we post about our own companies? Interesting indeed..."

Halster writes: "Here's an interesting story on Newswire about censorware that detects excessive skintones in images, and implements blocking accordingly. What next?" What's next is (you'd hope) the realization that image-analysis heuristics are inherently limited, and not the best thing on which to pre-emptively base system-admin decisions. ( michael : That story is a company press release. For a much better evaluation of how this software works, see this Wired expose detailing the fraudulent nature of image-filtering "artificial intelligence," or an older review from Businessweek on Eyeguard.)

Is your company thinking of buying a firewall that comes bundled with blocking software? Think twice. SecurityFocus ran thisstory earlier this week: "Censorware gaffe turns 'World's Most Secure Firewall' into an open door." Turns out that bundling Cyber Patrol with Network Associates' Gauntlet meant creating a custom server that "contains a buffer overflow bug, and, further, mistakenly accepts connections from the outside world" - so intruders could get root on the firewall. Makes sense to me: firewall designers keep security uppermost in mind; censorware designers don't. Update 8:55 AM: BusinessWeek is calling it "The Breach That's Shocking the Firewall Industry."

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Have a look at this Businessweek article: a site was partly censored for 15 days because of a post uncomfortable to the Chinese government, and this Mercury Center article that proposes a more global view of the China/Taiwan issue. Surprisingly, both articles suggest that things are going better and better." Very topical; the U.S. vote on permanent normalized trade relations is scheduled for today.

Let's start this off with bio2's link to "the tube": an unrollable laptop:super crazy hardware. seizer sent us the most amusing firewall circumventer: a TCP/IP Email Tunnel. While on the subject of bizarre technology, John Petz sent us a webserver running on an Atari 800. Still not in shock? hool sent us a hack over at x42.com which uses the hostname as input to a calculator. tdunn linked us to a place that lists odd things found inside PC cases. It includes a *shudder* severed finger tip. For more wierd tech support, yeahbensteres submitted iamanidiot.com which has some tales that you may or may not believe. Pike sent us 94 Uses for Old Altoids Tins: Who eats 94 tins of altoids? Oh... wait. OwenF sent us linkage to the latest robotic pet craze. Look out AIBO, here comes Robotic Fish! Slashdot's own jamiemccarthy points us to TimeCube.com for all your wierd-science needs. You econ majors might be interested in Yhetti's link to the fortune-cookie market index. Bradley noted a story about a man who changed his name to 'Oxford University' to avoid domain squatting charges from Oxford University. If you have a mission:impossible scheduled next week, Dr. Manhattan sent us a link to a Swiss company that is developing self-destructing CDs. The CIA has some on back order. An anonymous reader pointed us to EarthKam, which has several really beautiful pictures of earth from space. Check out their top 10 ... if only they were bigger they'd make great background art. And finally for those of you who are sick of all the naughty language on TV, deepak saxena sent us a machine that claims it will filter all the damn swearing from TV and video. I'm waiting for a version that filters out Regis.

lactose_intolerant writes "Another "mainstream" look at LinuxOne by BusinessWeek. They too are suspicious. " Pretty icy review right there. Apparently the business world thinks as much of this company as we do. Still it will be interesting to see what happens with this.

Jesper Svennevid came in with the hook-up to yet another Amiga story (YAAS). It now appears that Gateway/Amiga has dropped plans to build a new computer, and are going to work on creating a "simplified Internet interface". The article also talks about Amiga wanting to go into "home-networking", competing with Sun and others.

ethereal writes, "Business Week Online has a really humorous article about how we're all going to end up running Win2K. There's a small pro-Linux wrap-up at the bottom, however. " The surprising thing about this article is that it was written by Sam Jaffe, who is a stock market writer, not a tech guy. I had one nit-pick with the story (that I'm sure many of you will pick up on), but it was minor. This was such a blatant Linux plug that I almost (but not quite) felt sorry for Microsoft after reading it.

A reader sent us a recent BusinessWeek article interviewing Red Hat's Bob Young. More indepth then most of them usually, I learned some of the odder tibits about Red Hat interesting, including the toliet in the first apartment and other such stories.

Mike_Miller writes "In a recent interview with ESR in BusinessWeek, ESR calculates that, in 5 years, there will be 750 million Linux users (a conservative estimate). Wouldn't that be great!?! " I think one of my favorite parts is the title: "I want to live in a world where software doesn't stink." But this number should be fairly easy to hit-my cloning project has been doing quite well.