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I loved this article from a couple years ago, wherein the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs tried to discourage the rampant overuse of PowerPoint. While Word and Excel have done wonders for office productivity, one could argue that PowerPoint has taken mismanagement to a whole new level...

What I'm getting at is: the Netflix idea is not one that's good enough to allow the "inventor" to compete with an established behemoth like Blockbuster. So? The "inventor" should go to Blockbuster and get hired, saying "look at this cool idea I had -- hire me and I'll think of more."

You can't be serious. The "inventor" should go get a job at Blockbuster for $50,000/year if he's lucky, and turn over his idea for the priviledge of an at-will emplyyment agreeement, meaning he can be fired at any time? You are aware that Netflix has been successful enough to raise over $80 million in their IPO? They're a publicly traded company. Sure, Blockbuster has 10x the customer base (last year's numbers, sorry), but look at their overhead. And I don't think they're renting online even now.

And Blockbuster wouldn't hire him anyhow - they'll just try to steal the idea like all the other uninspired, unoriginal followers.

Oh, and megabucks are also made with inside information, cooking the books, ripping off investors, or even once and a while by Cletus who can't afford shoes for his kids, but manages to come up with $40 a month than buy lotto tickets. Praise be.

No, it's not a cheap shot. It's the truth. Though I can agree with you about the world not wanting to standardize on proprietary web services, the standardization efforts behind web services have been an absolutely assinine circus.

The issue is evidenced here, and here, and here. (I think /. might have had a article on it too, but I can't find it...) Those are just the first articles I was able to find, and I recall reading many others. This has been a pretty widely-reported and well-known issue.

You can debate who's to blame, but the SOAP standard has taken a long time in coming. Version 1.2 was FINALLY released like a week ago, but the W3C has been running around like idiots with it for half of forever. I can tell you from personal experience that corporations want to use web services now but are really hesitant to start using web services to build enterprise apps without real standardization. What it comes down to, in my view, is that as a developer, I need these tools now, and I've been waiting for them for far too long because Tim Berners - Lee has been stroking his Semantic Web pipe dream for more than like 3 years.

What Mr. Helms had to say wasn't a cheap shot at open standards. It was a shot at some serious problems with the drafting of these specific standards, and he has a lot of well-documented history to back him up. IMHO, calling the web services standards "immature" was pretty gracious of Mr. Helms.

You should really read up on the topics you post about so you have some better knowledge of what you're saying before you start taking "cheap shots" at someone simply because of where they're employed.

(Mods: "Interesting"?!? Come ON...)

No, it's not a cheap shot. It's the truth. Though I can agree with you about the world not wanting to standardize on proprietary web services, the standardization efforts behind web services have been an absolutely assinine circus.

The issue is evidenced here, and here, and here. (I think /. might have had a article on it too, but I can't find it...) Those are just the first articles I was able to find, and I recall reading many others. This has been a pretty widely-reported and well-known issue.

You can debate who's to blame, but the SOAP standard has taken a long time in coming. Version 1.2 was FINALLY released like a week ago, but the W3C has been running around like idiots with it for half of forever. I can tell you from personal experience that corporations want to use web services now but are really hesitant to start using web services to build enterprise apps without real standardization. What it comes down to, in my view, is that as a developer, I need these tools now, and I've been waiting for them for far too long because Tim Berners - Lee has been stroking his Semantic Web pipe dream for more than like 3 years.

What Mr. Helms had to say wasn't a cheap shot at open standards. It was a shot at some serious problems with the drafting of these specific standards, and he has a lot of well-documented history to back him up. IMHO, calling the web services standards "immature" was pretty gracious of Mr. Helms.

You should really read up on the topics you post about so you have some better knowledge of what you're saying before you start taking "cheap shots" at someone simply because of where they're employed.

(Mods: "Interesting"?!? Come ON...)

No, it's not a cheap shot. It's the truth. Though I can agree with you about the world not wanting to standardize on proprietary web services, the standardization efforts behind web services have been an absolutely assinine circus.

The issue is evidenced here, and here, and here. (I think /. might have had a article on it too, but I can't find it...) Those are just the first articles I was able to find, and I recall reading many others. This has been a pretty widely-reported and well-known issue.

You can debate who's to blame, but the SOAP standard has taken a long time in coming. Version 1.2 was FINALLY released like a week ago, but the W3C has been running around like idiots with it for half of forever. I can tell you from personal experience that corporations want to use web services now but are really hesitant to start using web services to build enterprise apps without real standardization. What it comes down to, in my view, is that as a developer, I need these tools now, and I've been waiting for them for far too long because Tim Berners - Lee has been stroking his Semantic Web pipe dream for more than like 3 years.

What Mr. Helms had to say wasn't a cheap shot at open standards. It was a shot at some serious problems with the drafting of these specific standards, and he has a lot of well-documented history to back him up. IMHO, calling the web services standards "immature" was pretty gracious of Mr. Helms.

You should really read up on the topics you post about so you have some better knowledge of what you're saying before you start taking "cheap shots" at someone simply because of where they're employed.

(Mods: "Interesting"?!? Come ON...)

"I know what the capabilities of the RFID systems are these days and there's not currently anything that could do what the alarmists keep saying is possible"

According to this article the 500million tags that Gillette purchased "Alien Technology says its RFID tags can be read up to 15 feet away". And that is with the LEGAL readers the store is using. How far away can they be read with my illegal jiggawatt reader and directional antenna? How long will it take people to decode the 64-bit codes to determine which bits are brand/model/size/etc. and read the codes from great distances?

They do not plan on disabling the tags when you leave the store either since one of Wal-Mart's listed benefits for RFID tags is "hassle-free returns".

How long until I can point a directional antenna at your home and fire up my jiggawatt reader to determine if you have anything worth taking?

In principle, I understand what you are saying, but let us not forget Metallica. They were actively suing Napster and Universities, independently of the RIAA. Look here.

-V

This is exactly the situation that Claris was formed for. The company was spun out of Apple in the late 80's to market the AppleWorks office suite - since it was independent, 3rd party developers (like adobe) were competing on an even playing field, and not directly with the owner of the OS & HW. It was a good situation for the market, and I think good for the mac platform as a whole. But, that's all over since Apple reabsorbed claris back in '98. Oh well...

... First post?

Uh, who cares?

...since tomorrow is apparently Defacement Day.

• IPv6- The Next Generation Internet - About IPv6.
• IPv6 Forum
• IP Version 6 (IPv6) - IPv6 at Sun.
• No shortage of IP addresses - Cnet Asia
• Big players push IPv6, but masses resist.
• Ready for IPv6 - PC World
• Ready for IPv6, Part 2 - PC World
• Verio Brings IPv6 to North America
• NTT Com Expands IPv6 Coverage
• KDDI Labs Pilots IPv6 Network Between Japan and the US
• Foundry Does 10GigE for N+I
• Perspective: IPv6, the Net's next frontier

Understandably people are taking a closer look at the provisions under the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act now that the initial shock of 9/11 has worn off. The reaction to "do something" is not being governed by the climate of fear and the urgent feeling for a rapid response that followed the attacks, which also meant that many legislators didn't read or understand the entire bill. The fear of political opponents using a vote against a bill with the name "PATRIOT" didn't help.

Obviously many of those who are taking a sober second thought about the provisions don't like what they see, and this may be the start of a movement to let the sunset clause on the act take effect. It is set to expire at midnight (0h00) January 1, 2006.

Librarians are at the forefront of the movement and the American Library Association's USA PATRIOT Act campaign is one of many legislative and privacy issues that they address.

The July 4th weekend may be a good time to think about the USA PATRIOT act, argues the SJMC. Declan McCullagh offers his thoughts on the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 AKA PATRIOT Act II. You can also read EPIC's view of the DSEA 2003 and the original USA PATRIOT Act. They also have links to the text of the legislation and other info.

How often do you change your hardware, and how much do you do it? A quick search on Google pulled up articles like this one and this one. As you can see, initial experiences were so bad, Microsoft had to add in a bit of leeway for people. "In the event reactivation is needed, users will still have to dial a support line to receive a new code to restart Windows." Microsoft's own site even explains reactivation. "If the user completely overhauls the hardware making substantial hardware changes (even over long periods of time), reactivation may be required. In that case, users may need to contact to contact a Microsoft customer service representative by telephone to reactivate." Sounds like a hardware enthusiast to me.

Wow...you guys are really off the ball nowadays. Used to be this is the stuff the editors concentrated on, now we get massive amounts of anti-microsoft, government-is-out-to-get-you stories.

Sad.

The other day HP introduced their new DeskJet printers. Their prices start on something that would have been almost unbelievable a few years ago; *$39*. Isolated that's just freaking cheap for a printer capable of printing medium quality photos.

However the only reason they go so low in pricing is because they have managed to trick the public into almost exclusively buying HP-ink. Ink is a substance that's *pretty* generic. And still people still buy HP cartridges even if they could get ink elsewhere at 1/3 of the HP price-tag. That's beyond me.

AFAIK these printers don't contain chips that makes it impossible to use generic ink or third party cartridges.

I guess that the price on HP-ink feels right to many consumers as long as they are still willing to pay the price.

And BTW about the Champagne; the price on this former exclusive goods has been falling steadily after the Y2K buzz about the world running out of it. Basically the price curve on some brands like Dom Perignon looks like a stock chart for a dot-com.

> WTF are you on mate? Nanotubes are made of carbon, not of metal

I believe what he is referring to, quoted from the link he posted in that same comment:

"We have shown that there are ways of making single-walled nanotubes without the use of metals," Avouris said.
(Check the link, 2nd non-bold paragraph down)

Also, compare your reply (of carbon, not of metal)
It appears you just made that up.

The parents post says:
"And as far as commercial entities go, don't forget IBM's find back in September of 2002, which was making nanotubes with carbon instead of metal."

With.. Not of.. With metal.

The parent posters argument was correct.
Your 'correction' was flawed, even if correct.

Hopefully the moderators wont be as hard on you for being wrong as you were on the parent poster even though he was not wrong at all :)

And as far as commercial entities go, don't forget IBM's find back in September of 2002, which was making nanotubes with carbon instead of metal.

In an attempt to make this post vaguely on topic, it's funny how this article says "...the Java programming language, which was key to browser innovation.". When was Java ever key to web innovation?

This is total coincidence, but this morning on CNET News.com, there was a link to King of spam meets its maker, which appeared Today in Tech History back in 1997.

Is this a SpamTM conspiracy?

This is total coincidence, but this morning on CNET News.com, there was a link to King of spam meets its maker, which appeared Today in Tech History back in 1997.

Is this a SpamTM conspiracy?

Hormel has been sending out Cease and Desist letters pretaining to Spam at least as far back as 1997, and probably earlier. While Spam has long had negative connotations for some, it is also quite popular with others. Spam is very popular in Hawaii. The term has been appropriated by the public for use in an entierly different context, making this much different from trademark fights by Xerox, Kleenex, and Rollerblades to name a few. And, as the article states, "trademark lawyers were skeptical that Hormel could prevail."

Perhaps IE will finally suppor W3C standards and the language/DOM support will clean up as time goes on.

Good luck wishing for that... it's not going to happen on current Windows versions and it isn't going to happen on Macs.

So, either way, users wishing to have tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, and improved security will find it in the cross-platform browsers Mozilla and Opera.

The complaint accuses Amazon of vicarious infringement for allegedly allowing its "trusted retailers" to offer Corbis images through its site.

"Amazon has failed to effectively supervise and control the infringing conduct of the supplier defendants," the suit says.

The suit also alleges that the defendants are violating Seattle-based Corbis' copyrights by including images on Amazon's Web site to entice buyers to purchase the posters and other products.

Corbis attorney Dan Donlan said the company sued first because the "acts by Amazon were a little more blatant than what we would see in other circumstances."

But the news.com article says that "Corbis also accused the retailers of removing copy protection from the images in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

This could be an interesting test of the DMCA. It has stood up a lot but how well can it stand up against itself? Could the DMCA win again or could it finally fall down? One of them must lose, so will it be the DMCA, or instead could it be the DMCA? It really makes you think...

Here's a link to news.com. Give Google news a shot, the piece is being carried by just about everyone.

Specifically, the Games section is quite nice. It fits your desired description, has a great selection, and you can sort it by various things such as operating system, license, file size, popularity, user rating, etc.

Nor sure what the impact of this will be -- but I definitely know eBay does business in California (and is based there IIRC).

This may change things a bit.

Just read it and consider it. Draw your own conclusions.

There's a program that allows you do this, called JetLinks.Get it here.

SCO's legal costs are being paid under a contingency arrangement (about halfway down)

SB

BTW, if they aren't currently doing this, I claim prior art for any future attempts to do so and release the idea into the public domain.

The article is a "nice" introduction for those new to Linux, but I suspect that the author (and most that dabble with Linux) generally know their way around computers. For these people, IT mindshare & performance are important issues, and it probably is no bonus to Linux that much hay has been made that Windows is substantially faster than Linux for many important technical tasks. Microprocessor report editor Peter Glaskowsky was recently quoted as saying a company could get better results using a Dell machine with Microsoft compilers than with a Linux machine and GCC compiler, for example. These are the types of stories & tests that technical users considering trying out open source systems pay attention to, not "nice" pieces that are basically uninformative.

As always, only blog when you have something to say. I posted once every few days. This gave me time to see things and made sure I had some news worth posting.

Tell your readers about the places you've been to but also what you thought of the places. If you found something was worth checking out, or if you wasted your time seeing something that turned out to be dull, say so. But keep it concise, and make sure that you've said everything you want to say in a few paragraphs.

Don't bore your readers with accounts and descriptions of the people that you met/hung out with/got drunk with/kissed/whatever! No-one really cares about Eddie's Personal Soap Opera except Eddie. Just keep your blog focused on your travels.

Always include links for places or areas of interest so that people can get more info. A quick set of Google searches will make your blog much more interesting and accessible.

Make sure you use a cybercafe that allows you to pay after you've used the machines (i.e. not one where you have to buy 'credits' and where your time is being counted down on the screen all the time). It sucks to be pressured to write because you're running out of time.

Perhaps an obvious one, but use weblog software that won't break. You may not be able to telnet into your box to rework the config files when you're travelling, and it's so frustrating when you're not able to post that all-important account of your experiences. I use Blogger which is an online weblog service and is free for the basic version.

If you're in a city for a while (e.g. a few days), don't use mainstream cybercafes. They often have software that restricts your use of the machine. Spend some time searching for a facility that may be off the high street or smaller, but that offers the same deal without the restrictions. The best places I found were not cybercafes at all - they were travel shops that had a few internet-connected PCs. The advantage is that, in these places, the owners are less tech-savvy and you'll have a machine that you can install things on (e.g. software for processing and uploading photos - see below). Plus you won't be restricted because of firewalls etc. (e.g. for FTP).

Photos: I uploaded my photos once every few weeks. I regularly dumped them to CD in a photo store, made a selection, processed each image in Photoshop, created thumbnails and HTML files with Express Thumbnail Creator and uploaded them to my site with WS FTP LE. Photoshop is obviously not free, and I had to find cybercafes that had it pre-installed (wasn't always easy). Express Thumbnail Creator is shareware, and WS FTP LE is free. The best thing would obviously be to have all this stuff on CD before you sit down at the PC.

Be aware that some cybercafes will charge you for upload bandwidth (never very much though).

COMMENT all your photos! It takes time but it's worth it. Express Thumbnail Creator has this feature built in. Nobody really wants to go through pages and pages of unlabelled thumbnails of sunsets and mountains. Also, commenting your photos is a good test for yourself to ensure that you're only putting interesting photos up.

As soon as your photos are up, announce it in your blog and send out a mail to everyone in your address book who may be interested (mail to yourself, BCC everyone you're sending to).

M.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

Yeah Windows Users Have No Choices

Stop confusing lack of choices with lack of desire to find another choice. IE is a very good browser and there is very little reason for the average user to seek out an alternative, but that doesn't mean they don't have choice.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Virginia, claims Nextel obtained prototypes of Verizon cell phones to "obtain valuable, confidential, and proprietary business information," then share any negative news with industry analysts, according to an account of the suit in The Wall Street Journal.

Either Verizon has a gung-ho marketing department or they're taking a page from the creeps at RIAA (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981449.html). Either way, now we ALL know that Verizon's coming out with a walkie-talkie.

The dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 with Logic Platinum 6.1 can play 115 tracks, compared with a maximum of 35 tracks on the Dell Dimension 8300

Despite being pleased with the ESRB's rating system, the senator had some rather harsh words for the video game industry.

"I am, however, absolutely disgusted by the material our children are subjected to in some of these games. Not only the violence, gore, and sexuality, but also the realism or, more importantly, the blatant lack of realism depicted in these games. I mean, seriously, what kind of world is this if a fat Italian guy won't shoot a hooker?" Lieberman said.

MS sells Xboxes at a loss so they can gain an upper hand over the rest of the Videogame market.

Folks, ALL of the video game companies work this way. It's NOT just Micro$oft. ALL of the video game companies sell their consoles AT A LOSS, hoping to pick up the slack with software sales. That IS the business model for the video game industry. Sony initially used to lose at least $100 for every PlayStation 2 sold, due to the expense of the Emotion Engine chip, with an estimated manufacturing cost of about $130 alone. Here is an old article that discusses this at http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-500953.html?legacy=zd nn which estimates that the total cost of each PlayStation 2 is about $400, launch price was around $300 if I recall correctly. I also seem to remember after launch that it was revealed that Sony was losing $250 per console, but I can't find the article right now, or maybe my memory is screwed up.

Also, who's to say that there will be any connection between the id stored in the tag and your name?
there may not be a connection immediately. It may be made later (the same way HTML cookie information is collated). Like when you hand over your ticket and step on an airplane, or when your EZpass equipped car goes through a tollbooth. The data can be collected now, and the individual identified later. Like when the police come to your door to pick you up as a material witness.

Companies would have no reason to keep track, and they're the only ones who could get that information.
That's showing a distinct lack of imagination. Companies have a ton of incentive to keep track. For example, think of all the great marketing information you can gather. For example, maybe Gap sweatshirt buyers hang out at the mall food court. Good place to advertise specials. What brands of clothing show up at a baseball game, or a chick flick, or the tool dept. at Sears? This information is valuable, and as it becomes cheaper to collect, companies will want to.

Instead of spreading FUD, try promoting proper use and regulation of a new technology that could be very beneficial in a lot of areas.
I'd love to see your suggestions for regulations controlling the use of RFID information. And I'd love to see a bill about it introduced in Congress before it becomes a problem. But as we know from the spam situation, Congress usually waits for something to become a big problem before it's willing to limit the freedom of marketers.

I also think you should withdraw that comment about FUD. Everything I wrote follows from intentions or potential intentions announced by companies or other institutions and described in the original article.

That's the opposite of my experience, but that doesn't mean you're wrong. This would be a good Slashdot question: What do Hackers think of the various OSS licenses, and how does that limit the projects they'll contribute to?

This presumes that we are putting aside the whole copyright is evil rhetoric...if you truly believe that then of course the GPL is the obvious license, but most hackers do not believe that.

Unlimited copyright is evil; copyright with a reasonable limit makes good sense. I think we wouldn't have a need for some of these licenses if MS's source code (and everyone else's for that matter) became open after 14 or 28 years (the original copyright limits set in the US Constitution).

As for the reason the BSD's are behind Linux in terms of momentum: the AT&T lawsuit is one reason for the lag, but I don't believe it's the most significant reason. Of course, maybe SCO will nail Linux for a while, giving the BSD's time to catch up, which will prove me wrong. (I don't mind being wrong, but I'd rather not find out *that* way!)

In reference to the article, it's telling that the commericial Linux-based OS's are being jeered at, but I don't believe the same crowd would jeer at Debian (which runs two BSD kernels, albeit in development).

I've posted all the relevent information about this virus since 4pm on Tuesday, which beat out most of the major news outlets, except cnet. I've keep the info upto date with the list of virus vendors and latest virus news in the online media, and manual removal and automatic removal tools.

I would like to thank messagelabs, as they are always the first to notify about major virus outbreaks. Sophos is a close second and is good about notifying about everyday viruses. Mcafee's alerts are good, but usually alittle late, they only notify once it hits the news media. Symantec wants you to pay an outragous price for their virus alerts, and I doubt they give you only earlier warning than messagelabs or sophos which provide the service for FREE. Symantec is becoming the Microsoft of Virus vendors, they're trying to spread out everywhere now in the security field, buying up companies left and right. Their quality of product is going down because they don't use a google.com like motto "do one thing and do it well" which they use todo. But their automated virus removal tools are still pretty good. IMHO

If you would like to sign up to messagelabs's great early warning notification service go here.
If you want Sophos excellent everyday notification about all virus's go here.
If you would like to get McAfee's avertlabs notifications, go here.
or you can just checkout my virus posts on the security-forum.com, but I only post the major outbreaks because there are TOO MANY viruses out there to post every single one. ;)

According to C|NET the phone number will be 1-888-382-1222. My initial call to the number from my home line generated a "this will soon be available..." message and referred me to the website (which is not responding). :)

But I'm sure this won't be a popular service or anything....

I can on my Linux watch. :)

The BSD license is ananthema to any coder who wants to make sure his/her code remains open. Pure and simple. Assuming I were any good at coding, I'd only work on a BSD if the problem was extremely Interesting. In other words, my interest would have to outweigh my reservation about providing MS, et. al, with the chance to gobble up my code in return for... nothing.

In my experience, most hackers don't care about licensing at all, and just use the license that goes with the software they care about. I've hung around Python development for years and never heard anyone say: "I'd get involved but I'm afraid Microsoft may co-opt Python and distribute it in a proprietary way." Who cares? You make software because you like making software and you want people to use it. If Microsoft distributes in binary with the operating system, great, more people can use it. Why should I mind Microsoft free-riding? Hell, I'm a free-rider myself. I've used both Linux and BSD without contributing a line of code. So what? Who cares. Why is it in different if Microsoft free-rides on open source code?

This presumes that we are putting aside the whole copyright is evil rhetoric...if you truly believe that then of course the GPL is the obvious license, but most hackers do not believe that.

This article has more plausible reasons for Linux being more popular than BSD: "If not for the AT&T lawsuit at the worst moment.... Because of that, people said, 'I don't want to go with BSD now.' That was the time Linux was gaining functionality."

But you are wrong, because microsoft never did metaphorically own "all the roads". You yourself are reading slashdot, so you have to know about Linux, and Macs, and all of the other OS's out there. Microsoft does have competition. Microsoft makes a fairly decent product that most people find easy to use, so microsoft makes money. However, people are starting to see that there are alternatives, so microsoft is starting to lose market share (especially in the server end) here's a reference). And microsoft isn't losing because of the DOJ. (Name one major thing that the DOJ has done to help microsoft's competition. IE is still embedded into windows, Office is still a closed format, and now Java will still be crippled). Therefore, capitalism is working, on its own. Next time study some economics before you post here.