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It may work with your PC. It seems some folks found that the BIOS could not detect it on bootup. At least, according to a discussion at usb.org and a few other places.

I did find a reference to an old key remapper. ZDNet actually made one a while ago called ZDKeyMap thet you can download at CNET. It says it only works with Windows 95 and on standard keys. You'd have to try it in Win98 and see if it still worked.

A better option may be JRkey. This project's goal is to create a generic, open-source, freeware multimedia keyboard driver for Windows 98. It looks promising, though it is still in Alpha.

Also, the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit has a utility called Reymapkey.exe which is supposed to let you remap scancodes.

1. Webvan: 25 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
2. Iomega: 5 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
3. 24/7 Media: 25 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
4. Egghead.com: Between 5 and 10 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
5. Quokka.com: 50 to 1 reverse stock split

What I want to know is why they don't have linux distros on CD at libraries. I don't know if anyone has seen this, but I think it would be a great way to get Linux out to people who want it. When I first got Linux I had a hell of a time getting a CD (56K, no linux friends, no money etc.) The library is like the open source branch of The System (or was), it should definitely be put to use.



---

Yes, compulsory licensing is already a fact. Interestingly enough, webcast licenses are just now coming up for negotiation. See JWZ's writeup for more good info on the issue.

Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus",

I too share your questions, but for completely different reasons. I wonder why Ximian is doing this, when work may have already begun on the Linux .NET port. Consider the investment that MS made in Corel. I had thought MS made an announcement several months back about Corel and .NET.

There may be a lot to .NET, but given that it's a nascent collection of tools, and that it has no foothold in the consumer market

As a MS developer, I've been working with .NET for six months now. Even in beta 2, it blows the doors off of the current development environment. Developers call the shots. Not admins, not hardware folks, not network people. Developers will flock to this like Linux guys to beer, and that's what will drive its adoption.

Read the report yourself because it is funny, but here is brief coverage in the Washington Post.

And for P2P pleasure...
Gnutella clients...
http://www.bearshare.com/
http://www.limewire.com/
Not based on Gnutella protocol...
http://www.aimster.com/
http://www.edonkey2000.com/
Or just go to CNET's downloads and select from many P2P flavors :)

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6690267.html? tag=mn_hd

hehe :)
--

Word of this actually came out yesterday - I submitted this link to /. last night - somehow it hasnt yet been accepted nor rejected. The article I cite is basically an overview of the complaint itself.

The above is not correct, and in fact, no one has been able to cite an example of a profitable open source software company. Cygnus was privately held and so it's hard to figure out if it was proftable or not, but it was definitely not "greatly profitable." However, it's easy to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on its $20M in annual revenues and 180 employees at the time of its acquisition. The cost of maintaining 180 employees in a technology company in the SF Bay Area is more than $18M annually, and there are other costs of doing business, so if the company was profitable at all, it was just squeaking through. (And $20M in annual revenues after ten years of existence is no one's idea of "greatly profitable.")

Red Hat has yet to turn a profit, though it keeps promising one real soon now.

Mandrake is losing money. According to its financial disclosure, as translated by BabelFish:

Since its creation in November 1998 the company recorded losses. The cumulated amount of the overdrawn turnover of the group accounts between September 30, 1999 and 31 March 2001 amounted to 13,7 MEuros is approximately three times the amount of the turnover over the period. In spite of a strong progression envisaged of its turnover, MANDRAKESOFT considers a benefit only at the end of the exercise closed at June 30 2003;

That is, it doesn't expect to become profitable for two years.

IBM is sinking a billion dollars into open source this year. That doesn't mean it will realize any profit from this investment. It certainly hasn't earned it back yet, and whether it ever will is purely speculative.

CollabNet is privately held, so it's hard to say how much money it's made back on that $35M investment. It's announced a few deals, but refuses to comment on their size: "It's our first true enterprise development network..." It's a significant deal for CollabNet, so much so that Mills refused to comment on the size of the contract or even whether it's the company's biggest win so far. (CollabNet is still privately held.) Mills did say that there are other deals now in the pilot stage with the potential to be as big as this one. I think it's a safe bet that the company is not yet profitable.

Many consultancy companies have done well. In fact, the consultancy companies do what can't be done in the Microsoft world - they can be profitable, equal players.

Consultancies are homesteading businesses, not software companies. As already pointed out, consultancies only scale linearly, not exponentially. In any case, they aren't doing so well either. I'm not going to mention the name of one company we're partnered with, but they make a great open source product, but they're in dire straits and they're going to have to start charging for it. I imagine there are probably a few small-business open source consultancies which are bringing in six-figure salaries for their principals, but that's not enough to sustain development efforts, and it's not enough to go public.

Tim

About a year ago, when they were last adding new TLDs, somebody tried to get .kids. Obviously, they did not like it then, so I see no reason it would be better now.

Maybe that's why Adobe wants the charges dropped. It's likely they wanted the decrypting software removed from the market, but didn't want to see him arrested for it. At least that's how I see it.

Last I checked, Adobe wanted Sklyarov freed. What good is punishing *them* going to do?

• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/guide/compariso n.asp
• http://home.cnet.com/software/0-429669-8-6526091-1 .html
  
• http://www.ntcompatible.com/article2.shtml
  

The senator isn't the only one seeking injunction .... this CNet article indicates that InterTrust is also seeking injunction in addition to their lawsuit against MS.

That this will put the kibosh on Wal-Mart's plans of outdoing Amazon, or suing them if they can't outcompete them...
--

The goal is to increase the power of the CPU while simultaneously reducing power consumption. The ARM technology is lean and mean and fits that bill perfectly. It's a very impressive technology; my little NetWinder flies. Who needs an old bloated, power hog like the x86 or clunky code morphing like the Crusoe?

With this move, Palm technology will get a big shot in the ARM. How long before Palm adopts ARM Linux as an API base? With an existing hardware platform and months head start the Agenda VR3 is looking sweet right now.

With palm I doubt it will be that bad. They've never shown any real intention from what makes plam so great. Even Motorola was EOL the old 68000 Dragonball, they really needed to move to a new platform eventually. They'll probably have an emulator to execute the old code (the new ARM is easily more powerful that the old chips, as referenced by the WinCE emulator discussed eariler today), but in the end I expect they'll stick with ARM. Probably even stick with the Dragonball processor, since the next version will have the AMR technology in it. Just because WinCE decided to take the brain dead move of making incopmatable and different versions of the same OS, doesn't mean Palm won't do the same thing .

They claimed to have released "thousands" of such CDs.

OK... anyone... name one. Just one. What record companies are using this?

And yes, part of the reason I'm asking this is because I want to see what I can do with one....

-S

According to this article, Palm is going to be madifying it's OS to run on ARM processors anyway, so this might all be moot.

Well, apparently there are people who think the Crusoe chip is adequate because a Fujitsu laptop with a Crusoe 533Mhz chip won "Best of Show" at PC Expo 2001.

The reason a lot of people haven't tried Transmeta powered machines, is because these computers aren't currently sold in the United States. However, you can check out a whole line of sleek, feature rich laptops at Dynamism. There are impressive laptops available that include built-in DVDs, bright screens and Transmeta chips that have extraordinary battery life. Don't count Transmeta out yet.

redking

Well, alright, MS won't ship XP with their proprietary VM based on Sun's Java.

Instead, they'll ship it with their proprietary VM inspired from Sun's Java.

Alright, I have to admit I'm not entirely fair here; the whole C#/.NET thing is a little more than a ripoff of Java, but still. :)

Anyway, maybe we're just seeing a turning point in the history of compilation... Who knows, maybe in the future, we won't compile stuff for a given architecture, but for a given VM. That's the way Python, among others, was already headed with its Java implementation. Now it's also supported in .NET. Yep, there's in .NET's CLR native support for a lot of languages, which proves at least that MS means business, for real.

The big question is, I guess, will we be able to choose the VM we prefer, like we can currently do for Java? Knowing MS, that's unlikely. I suspect that there's a catch, and that the key components will remain in MS' possession, so that they don't give a darn about what OEMs install or don't install. Could a more MS-informed reader provide more information?

... Geeze, was that off-topic... Oh, to hell with it, it's only karma.

-- B.

...each instance of the worm will attack the same computers in the same order, according to eEye's analysis. Maiffret said that while the addresses of the computers attacked by the worm seem to be random, because the worm uses the same starting point, or "seed," to generate the list, the "random" lists that any two worms generate are identical...

--Volrath50

Hrm, guess that means that every company that ships a newsreader or programs like this should be under investigation right now.
Trafficking a circumvention device, right?
Not to mention what they could do to C|Net for LINKING to these implements of mass destruction!

"This case has a long way to go yet," said attorney Daniel R. Harris, a patent expert and a partner at Brobeck Phleger and Harrison. "All the (federal court) did was look at the language of the (lower court's) finding and decide it was too narrow. They still have to figure out if the patent is valid and whether or not the defendants infringed on the patent."

CNet also lists those same prices.

And this is old news, here's when I first submitted it:
2001-05-15 14:01:23 Copy Protected CDs Arrive (articles,news) (rejected)

There have been numerous well known cases where MAPS created an entire netblock against "spam friendly" ISPs, in an attempt to put pressure on that ISP to change its policy and stop selling bandwidth or other services to spammers. This tactic has the effect of blocking all of that ISPs customers, spammers and legitimate businesses and users alike. Not long ago, slashdot ran a story about peacefire.org and others getting blocked by MAPS.

Your belief that everything listed by MAPS must be spammers is clearly false if examples can be shown where non-spammers have been blocked, and I believe that link above is just such an example.

Even without a hard example, it's a well known fact that MAPS uses large netblocks against entire ISPs who they consider "spam friendly", without any regard for the other innocent bystanders who just happen to be other (unsuspecting) customers of that ISP.

These services would not be worth squat if they did not work as advertised.

It is debatable how effective MAPS is. In this C/net article MAPS blocked very few spams and also blocked many non-spam messages. MAPS was the only spam blocking service among the ones tested that blocked non-spam messages. That C/net ran a test and found MAPS to block a significant number of non-spam messages further shows how naive it is to blindly trust MAPS.

I suspect that time will shortly prove that MAPS is in fact "not worth squat". Such questionable effectiveness coupled together with blocking legitimate emails isn't great from a free service, but when you're paying your expectations change.

Quick link to CNet, since I hadn't seen their story posted yet.

Let's be clear. Compaq's iPaq revenue was higher than Palm, but by no means does this mean that the iPaq is the sales leader. Here's a link to the sales numbers for May for instance:

Sales figures for May

I see one minor one doing a quick search on cnn.com. The only one I saw was from April, which involved power outages that caused users to experience problems over a two day period reaching buddy lists, etc... Here are two links with blurbs about it:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/04/05/aim.pr oblems/index.html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5465136.html

bbh

This Cnet Story talks about MS going to use Verisign for all Hailstorm and Passport Authentication as part of .Net I guess we would all be more trusting if it were Verisign and not MS.

What I found interesting was the following quote from the article:

Other constraints could hamper an open-source effort as well, Goodhew said. Creating software that implements the CLI standard will require Microsoft technology that will be released through ECMA, Goodhew said. And the license under which that software is released may not be compatible with the licenses that govern Mono and DotGNU, he said.

"Part of the ECMA (standardization process) provides a forum for us to license the intellectual property you will need to have to implement the standard," Goodhew said. "It's up to the implementers to make sure whatever license they choose to use is compatible with the ECMA licensing terms."

whoa... sorry... That came out wildly messy... I apologize. What I meant to get at was that Microsoft does infact dislike Open Source example 1, example 2. They dislike the GPL, and I'd imagine no matter how much you elitest shmucks like to disagree they dislike the BSD licences. The only license microsoft likes is its own... get that straight. This isn't a bad thing, hell Microsoft has always been more of a company than software maker.

Maybe with the Chapter 11 filing they can get out of that dumb contract and keep going without the lodestone around their neck?

"Not willing to pay" is not always true..

CNet's write-up on Ars Technica's pay service

Honestly, it depends largely on the audience you're talking about. Some groups are cheap, some aren't. Some are only here to troll, and others aren't, plain and simple.

Many of the dotcoms (I worked for one, and I speak of what I want through) felt all of the old business models were invalid. Well, the rules bent when new companies were flooded with what seemed to be an unending supply of capital, but when that bubble burst, a lot of folks got bit in the ass. Webvan raised $375million in it's IPO, only to crash 2 weeks later. And this was before the big bubble burst on Wall Street.

Groceries are a tough business. You get maybe a 4% margin on things. It's almost better to put your money in a passbook and draw 2% or 3% at zero risk.

from CNet:

Comcast makes bid for AT&T Broadband

You have quite a few things to consider in this.

First off, what are the reasons for changing systems? Are there particular features that you're missing, is it so that you can get a support contract, is it just a buzzword issue?

If it's just that the management's going for the latest buzzword, try to get the management one on one, and tell them what a mistake they're making. [For some reason, they don't like us techies telling 'em their plans are crap in meetings]

If it's a features issue, well, you'd have to look at each product, and see which ones supports what you're looking for.

For the support contract, I don't know about DB2 licensing, but Oracle's rather strange -- although the cost model for the server goes in 2/5/infinate year blocks, the support's the same either way. You may save in the long run by buying a larger contract.

Also, platform is important. I was in a class once where someone recommended not running Oracle on NT, and using MS-SQL server, just for the fact that the limitations of an Oracle/NT combination were on the NT side, so you might as well take the cheap way out.

Now, given that all of the above things are equal, you need to first look at maintenance issues -- how often do they recommend cold backups, hot backups, rolling the transaction logs, etc. You also need to look at how easy it's going to be to transition to the new server. [Do you have more than just tables -- views, indexes, constraints, etc, that are going to need to come over?]

Moving data of a significant size is a pain in the ass. If it's s speed issue that you have, unless something's completely built wrong on your current system, or there's some major feature that you need, you'll almost always be better fixing your current problem than moving to a new system. (eg, Oracle doesn't have an 'autonumber' field type. You'll need to set up a sequence, and then either make sure that all inserts read from the sequence, or take a (worthwhile) performance hit, and set up a trigger for inserts)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that your question is vague enough that either one may be the answer, or you may really want to stick with what you have. As I don't know your situation, I can't give any solid recommendations, other than to do your research, as this is something that you might have to live with for a long time.

If you need some stalling time to get all of the information you need, so you can get things done right, and not rush something through, give your management this article from C|Net:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-6375299-0.htm l?tag=arcv

Andy Hoiles, IBM's Linux business manager for the company's European Enterprise Systems Group, believes Microsoft's anti-open source, pro-.Net strategy is the arrogance of a company that has succeeded in conquering markets more often than it has failed.

"We had that arrogance a few years ago," he said. "Then we nearly went out of business. You learn from that."

Way to go, IBM.
--

The G4 cube casing was a problem that people continued to complain about. Around the rivets on the top of it people were finding what they thought were hair thin cracks. Apple said it was a normal part of manufacturing and not a defect but I think it bothered a lot of people getting the cube. There was also an issue with the power turning on and off. There wasn't an actual power on/off, and some people were having problems with the power touch detection working correctly. Heres a link from Sept 2000 about the cases:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2885165.html

Despite these small issues, it is sad to see it go. On the G4 Cube webpage there is now a heading about it being "put on ice" :(

http://www.apple.com/powermaccube/

bbh

Personally I feel that the thought of living in a "free world" was killed off long ago at the inception of government. Call me a loon conspiracy theorist if you will, but again let's look at the reality of tracking: Facial Recognition in Tampa, ease of tunnel toll devices to track speeding, Echelon, Digital Angel, and the countless others. So why does would anyone want a chip in government? My thoughts on this would be simple, they expect to catch tax cheats and criminals with it, however what's going to be done when we live in a society where we've become drones who can't think for ourselves?

Take a look at what the Secret Service did to Gold Age, a raid with no charges all because they cannot monitor what people do with their currency, which scares Big Brother since they don't have control of the situation at any given time.

Is monitoring currency good for you? No because of the abuse that could take place behind it. What happens to a business man say Bill Gates should he have an affair and pass some cash (which until now is untraceable, sure there's serial numbers but that wouldn't work) to say a call girl. Can you imagine the joy in someone's eye should they feel like blackmailing Bill because they tracked him. Sure it's not right to cheat but open your eyes and get an honest look at where things could go.

For those who want a lesson in politics and money I suggest reading "The End of Ordinary Money

With all this tracking going on (Facial recognition in Tampa Bay, EZ-Pass for speeding, etc.) companies with these so called "new and hi tech" gadgets are going to end up making criminals look to hi tech gadgets in the future. Something law enforcement will end up dreading more than radar detectors.

Or we'll all end up zombies who won't learn the difference between right and wrong, since tech will end up deciding for us, and law enforcement will end up becoming a large military since crime won't exist, so many will end up getting replaced by a gadget. I'm glad to see that politicians have started acting out against what's being done nowadays. There's a lot of room for abuse in tech too. (Echelon used to spy against Japan, Echelong used to spy on Airbus for Boeing [10.7], etc.)

Anyone ever watch the movie Patriot Games, when Harrison Ford is watching thermal imaging of an assassination taking place, or Enemy of the State? Last Saturday I was watching "Eyes in the Sky" on Discovery Channel about Satellite Communications, and the things they stated were scary.

So what's next for government? Implants to monitor your every move, heartbeat, body temp, all connected via GPS? Spoke too soon

Microsoft Breakup Decision Overturned by the Court of Appeals

Judge Jackson had compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers".

by Michael Jennings

(Thursday, June 28, 2001) Today the Court of Appeals handling the Microsoft anti-trust case overturned the lower court's decision to split Microsoft into two or more companies. The breakup would have placed the Microsoft Windows operating system in one company and created a second business for everything else.

This decision of the Court of Appeals has been widely recognized as fair because of the behaviour of the judge of the lower court, in which he had not given the required appearance of impartiality. Judge Jackson had, for example, compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers", and Bill Gates to Napoleon. (See page 111 of the Court's decision [PDF format]).

The Court of Appeals found that Judge Jackson's 206-page Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal conduct, was entirely acceptable. It was his conduct outside the courtroom that was a violation of the code of conduct for United States judges. (For more about this, see pages 111 to 115 of the decision.)

Earlier, many people had praised Judge Jackson's skill in handling the case inside the courtroom. Technically oriented observers considered the Findings of Fact to be very well informed.

However, the penalty that Judge Jackson recommended for Microsoft was voided because of his public misconduct. The Court of Appeals directed that a new district judge examine the case, using the Findings of Fact as a starting point.

The story is very widely reported. For examples, see: ABC, AP, BBC, Washington Post, Seattle Times, CNet, The Industry Standard, Reuters, Guardian, Motley Fool, and MSNBC. The NY Times article requires that you register. Registration is free.

Silicon Valley.com said "[Microsoft] can continue its brutal practices for a while longer..."

There were two parts to the anti-trust case, 1) the Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal activity, and 2) the remedy, which is what would happen as a result of the court finding illegal activity. Judge Jackson had ordered that Microsoft be broken into two companies. It is only this second part, the remedy, that has been voided (vacated) by the Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals wrote, "We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte [outside the court] contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality."

The Court of Appeals added, "Although we find no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process."

The ruling of the Court of Appeals was unanimous, by a 7-0 vote.

More links:

Open Secrets.org report on Microsoft soft money donations

Common Cause report on Microsoft political contributions

Antitrust Law and Economics Review

Older Articles:

Microsoft Unfazed by Threat of New Antitrust Suits (Thursday, June 21, 2001)

What, me worry? Microsoft's Ballmer stays cool, confident, composed. (PC World, June 17, 1998)

Michael Jennings
Futurepower®
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.

Tel: (503) 233-7820
Fax: (419) 781-4606
E-Mail: jennings_michael @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)

Futurepower is a registered trademark.
Copyright 2001

Are you kidding? With the right timing you can get 80 gigs of prime memory for $120 + shipping.
~

People fund the government, either directly (income taxes), or indirectly (higher price for consumer goods).

You are correct that software created with tax money should be as accessible as possible, which is why the government can not hold a copyright! Any tax-funded changes made to a GPL'ed product, are available for free. You just have to seperate out the government funded portions from the non-government funded portions.

The GPL certainly doesn't allow that, because companies aren't allowed to use code governed by it in their own projects (unless, of course, they open the source, which you can't force companies to do).

Indeed, congress can force companies to open their code. All it takes is a simple ammendment to title 17 of the United States Code. Congress would be well within their constitutional rights to do so. I just wanted to point that out. I'm not actually suggesting it.

So you want companies like Microsoft paying to fund software that only benefits you as a user? That's the definition of a pork barrel project.

Microsoft did not pay a penny in federal income tax last year!

You, Microsoft, and any one else can benefit from using GPL'ed software. As long as you don't modify the code, its use and copying are free and without restriction.

Many businesses can benefit from distributing GPL'ed software bundled with another product.

Software companies can sell support for GPL'ed software, and market themselves as actively improving the product.

Finally, as indicated above, the government-funded code has no copyright and any one can use it without restriction. Closed source companies can take the tax-funded code and incorporate it into their own products. Their only restriction, is that if they wish to close source non-government-funded code, they must get permission from the person(s) who dontated their time to the GPL'ed project.

In summary, upgrading GPL'ed code is far better than outsourcing software development to a closed source company. When outsourcing development, the contracting company, and whichever government agency funded development, are the only ones to benefit. That, AC, is the definition of a pork barrel project.

Not Microsoft
___

According to this story at news.com, this is to comply with RIAA-imposed filtering criteria. They aren't even going to allow older versions of their Napster client, so you know other peoples' are out the door.

Favorite quote: " This means songs that aren't on the record companies' list will have to trickle back into circulation a little at a time as Napster ascertains that they are or aren't on the must-block list." So essentially the RIAA has won the real war here - everything not from the RIAA has been removed and presumed guilty until proven innocent. Maybe Napster was a great exposure space for indie musicians before (personally, I doubt it) but it sure isn't now.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

While it would be cool to run broadband access over the already existing power lines, that's not what the article was about, nor does anyone suggest that's possible.

Uh, well, while I haven't heard anything about it for a while, there are definitely people suggesting that it is possible to have broadband access over existing power lines.

A consortium of about 90 high-profile technology companies will announce Tuesday that the group has finalized a new standard that will serve as a common way for connecting electronic devices to the Net through electrical outlets.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which includes Cisco Systems, Intel, RadioShack, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, among others, has spent the past year working on a standard for using homes' internal electrical network to link electronic devices. The new standard is based on technology created by little-known company Intellon.

etc....