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The killer application is to insert a DVD and have it simplistically rip and encode it for personal viewing.

Yeah - I'm sure the MPAA is going to let that happen.

They sue you into oblivion just for making an unlicensed DVD player. Just imagine what they'd do to a company trying to distribute a packaged DVD ripping solution. If there were a "scrotal electrocution" clause in the DMCA, it'd be reserved for this.

News.com is running an article on a study that KPMG did... in which they state that the ??AA need to embrace downloadable music and videos and to stop/reduce using copy protections to thwart piracy.

To quote houseparty 2....

Wasnt the link in this Slashdot article essentially saying the same thing?

David Coursey wrote a column on this subject not so long ago: Intel inside a Mac? Just wait.

A Linux worm that started spreading a week ago has reached a plateau after infecting about 7,000 servers and turning the hosts into a peer-to-peer network that could be used to attack other computers.

Known as Linux.Slapper.Worm, Slapper and Apache/mod_ssl, the worm's spread has fallen far short of the biggest attackers in recent times. For example, Code Red infected 400,000 servers last summer. And according to the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, the Nimda virus compromised 86,000 systems last fall.

To all those who will no doubt post "see, CodeRed can happen to Linux, too" - here is some enlightenment:

There are currently an estimated 10,000 hosts infected with Slapper (any variant).

According to DShield's CodeRed history page, around 25,000 windos hosts are still estimated as CodeRed infected, one year after the event.
According to news.com, at the peak we had over 350,000 infected machines.

10,000 is about 2% of 350,000. No, Slapper is in not even comparable to CodeRed when it comes to spread, neither speed nor coverage.

It does, however, proof two things:

a) The Linux world is susceptible to the same generic diseases
b) For various reasons (more variety, better sysadmins, better security in general), it coped much better with an actual outbreak.

" ... this option [interoperability] could be part of a 1.1 specification ... "

kinda sounds like a w3c statement about a new standard protocol or language. amazing how ballmer & co. said this would "have little chance of mattering". gee, looks like it matters now. big banks, all the major credit companies, several of the web's biggest commerce fronts - i'd call that a strong base of interest and support for Liberty.

maybe they need a 3rd party to mediate so everyone plays nice for a while

The extra $80 is for the "Mac experience." It's just like the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator: the same vehicle, but the Lincoln costs thousands of dollars more for the "Lincoln experience."

We've bested Steve's Ballmer's spaniard and we've beaten his giant. Like we didn't see a battle of wits coming....

Compare and Contrast

Good post, but you missed something here.

Microsoft (and most of the other console vendors) actually sell their consoles at a loss. They make up the profit by getting a cut of every game sold. By hacking the box and running Linux on it, you are completely removing their profit potential for that unit. Effectively, they just paid you to have a new Linux box in your living room.

A: We have a constant problem with people who are trying to break our system for no other purpose than they have nothing better to do--like their bosses haven't assigned them enough to do at work today, or that their mom hasn't made them mow the lawn, in most cases!

Wasn't it pretty recent that Larry Ellison knocked OSS RDBMS's while praising Linux? Not mySQL in particular but OSS in general, he said that companies would never trust their enterprise data to open source.

Okay, now that I did the unbelievable by posting the second message which not only was not a troll, but also pinpointed the cause of this change in HP policy, there is a related story on ZDNET. To quote from the article:

"Our relationship has significantly improved," Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin told CNET News.com earlier this month.

Asked if the Compaq influence was the leading factor, Allchin said, "I suspect that's a large part of it."

So now you know why this happened.

ZDNet article

I read in this news story on cnet a while back that one Japanese label was going to just copy protect cretin tracks on their disks with midbar's "copy protection" scheme.

I wondered the same thing then as I do now with what creative is doing, why bother? Ignoring how easy it is to defeat, I want to know why are they just copy protecting select tracks. The only reason I can think is that the want to protect the parts that they feel are valuable, or at least create that impression by locking those tracks off.

Another thought more related to the creative incident is that this is a trap set up in order to get the user to enable and "support" DRM by having the user agree to the EULA's and what ever DRM software creative installs. I doubt the users who will try to access the tracks would agree to and install DRM if they knew what they where getting into.

I am not looking forward to more hardware component companies start announcing support for palladium. I would not be surprised to see creative announcing support, and having other sound card manufactures fallow their lead just like Intel and AMD.

To wit, from everyone's favorite echoing news site: link. They should have them in Boston, NY, and DC.

According to c|net, Amazon's system debuted some time after 2001, but PayPal dates back to 1999, so PayPal clearly has been around longer, and Amazon should not receive this patent.

Google searches for the news
ZDNet- 1hourago
Google unveiled on Monday an expanded test version of its search engine for current events and news, the latest step in the company's move into new markets.
Google Launches News ServicePCWorld
Google launches news search siteTelecomPaper(subscription)
CNET- and5related

Google searches for the news
ZDNet- 1hourago
Google unveiled on Monday an expanded test version of its search engine for current events and news, the latest step in the company's move into new markets.
Google Launches News ServicePCWorld
Google launches news search siteTelecomPaper(subscription)
CNET- and5related

Here's the story from CNET.

The news page is nice, but the big thing is that google now searches "4,000 publications around the world. Previously, the site had searched 150 publications every hour."

Maybe now, Google execs won't have to publicly admit that All the Web ha[d] a better news search. ;-)

here is the other bit of ebay/amazon patent news...
http://news.com.com/2100-1017-956638.html

He mises one crucial point, the backbone, this posting for instance isn't going to magically bounce from the middle of the UK to Exodus(?) by 802.11 alone, as illustrated by the recent crackdownby cableco's on publicly listed access points they're reluctant to support an essentially public network that runs contrary to their business model, and transcending the traditional backbone requires organisation and capital, something absent from P2P systems.

A concern is the finite amount of spectrum available in regards to the scalability of P2P wireless systems, as the number of users increases so does the baseload just to maintain the system, some clever managed routing will be required along with a wired backbone between nodes, if you use daisy chain style off-air repeating between nodes you quickly deplete spectrum and diminish the benefit of local frequency replication, basically the "everyone shouting in a crowded room" scenario.

"Distance decay" is a feature of the traditional phone network yet on the net people no longer communicate on the basis of geography, did that Wired article come from a server in Silicon Valley, New York, London? Does it matter, I don't particularly care, I'm just interested in the content. However the "lily pads and frogs" architecture is deeply tied to locality, it's easy to communicate with local nodes but it progressively gets more difficult the farther you go, again this leads us back to the backbone problem.

Another issue is misuse, free wireless reminds me of the net of yester year, you could for instance use SMTP servers all over the globe and the vast majority of users didn't abuse that facility, but obviously the small majority of spammers swiftly made that a thing of the past and continue to annoy us today, how would open wireless networks be any different? Control is needed, which leads back to structure and capital.

Call me a pessimist, but it's not quite as rosy as he makes out.

He mises one crucial point, the backbone, this posting for instance isn't going to magically bounce from the middle of the UK to Exodus(?) by 802.11 alone, as illustrated by the recent crackdownby cableco's on publicly listed access points they're reluctant to support an essentially public network that runs contrary to their business model, and transcending the traditional backbone requires organisation and capital, something absent from P2P systems.

A concern is the finite amount of spectrum available in regards to the scalability of P2P wireless systems, as the number of users increases so does the baseload just to maintain the system, some clever managed routing will be required along with a wired backbone between nodes, if you use daisy chain style off-air repeating between nodes you quickly deplete spectrum and diminish the benefit of local frequency replication, basically the "everyone shouting in a crowded room" scenario.

"Distance decay" is a feature of the traditional phone network yet on the net people no longer communicate on the basis of geography, did that Wired article come from a server in Silicon Valley, New York, London? Does it matter, I don't particularly care, I'm just interested in the content. However the "lily pads and frogs" architecture is deeply tied to locality, it's easy to communicate with local nodes but it progressively gets more difficult the farther you go, again this leads us back to the backbone problem.

Another issue is misuse, free wireless reminds me of the net of yester year, you could for instance use SMTP servers all over the globe and the vast majority of users didn't abuse that facility, but obviously the small majority of spammers swiftly made that a thing of the past and continue to annoy us today, how would open wireless networks be any different? Control is needed, which leads back to structure and capital.

Call me a pessimist, but it's not quite as rosy as he makes out.

I see they`ve taken alot from the Sony Clie`s design.
If I may quote the linked article: Yesterday's ZDnet article on this model mentioned that Palm had hired some designers from Sony to help design this model. Some people have misinterpreted this to mean that Sony officially helped Palm design the Tungsten T, which is not the case. A Sony spokesperson confirmed that his company had nothing to do with the design. Palm did hire some designers away from it but Sony wasn't cooperating in any way.
I guess, with yesterday's ZDnet article they meant this one.
On the linked page, there is one discussion around display (excellent on Sony models) vs battery life (where Palm is outstanding). My current Palm V gives me approximately 3 weeks. If I'd get one with crisp color display that has a battery life of at least 2 weeks at normal use, I'd be convinced and rush out to buy one...

I'm the editor of Linux Journal and vice-president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group.

# Why should we burn all GIFs?

The Internet is a good thing because you don't need the permission of any one entity to publish. If you choose a patented format, you are throwing away the advantage of publishing on the Internet in the first place.

Many commonly used image editing programs come with a GIF license. However, GIF licenses on shrink-wrap software do not apply to GIFs that you may generate on the fly -- every site that does a dynamic map or chart in GIF format has to get a separate license.

# How do you burn something that is not tangible?

You print it out, and if you're holding your event in a place that prohibits public fires, you draw flames on it with a marker. It's not the burning that's important, it's freeing yourself from needing a license to publish.

# Greplaw still uses GIFs. What should we do instead?

Use PNG or JPEG images, depending on which gives you the best quality and image size. Almost all browsers in use today support both.

# Software patentability is entering Europe and European strong author's rights are entering the US. Why is this is a problem?

I'm not familiar with the strong author's rights issue.

Software patents are a big problem, though.

Best to start from first principles, since people argue the same issue from different points of view and never get anywhere. I'm going to be US-centric and look at our Constitution, which I think soundly expresses the point of view that patents are not a property right or a natural right.

Copyrights and patents appear in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, along with other miscellaneous economic powers of Congress. They're right next to "Post offices and post roads".

If patents are not a natural right or a property right, what are they? As you might guess by the post office and road connection, they're a government program to promote economic growth. Patents are intended to do two things: promote R&D investment by the private sector; and encourage the private sector to publish inventions. The Constitution makes this explicit in its stated reason for copyrights and patents: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Patents reward these two economically desirable behaviors (doing research and publishing) with a temporary government-granted monopoly on a particular invention. Congress has full discretion on what kinds of content can get a patent and on how long a patent can last. (If patents were a "right" the Constitution would require them -- as it is, the Constitution only allows them.)

So, how should Congress decide which kinds of content get a patent and which don't? You have to strike a balance between, on one hand, the economic benefit of any R&D motivated by the prospect of a patent that would not have happened otherwise, and on the other hand, the transaction costs that are an inevitable result of the patent's existence.

You have to draw the line of what gets a patent and what doesn't somewhere. If you allow the patenting of rhyming words, sports plays, or musical notes, day-to-day life becomes an impossible mess of patent cross-licensing. And, as for these areas, there is no economic evidence that software patents help the economy or even encourage R&D. They may do the opposite -- see the Bessen and Maskin paper (PDF-format).

Software is a good thing because in software, a small investment can create and manage great complexity. When you impose the same transaction costs on software as on hardware, much useful software that could otherwise have been created does not exist. We are seeing this today in the field of video compression. The MPEG patent licensing mess is excluding everyone except for large, well-funded corporations from creating innovative new video-related software.

There may be increased R&D investment in a few areas, such as video compression, due to the prospect of a lucrative patent, but this economic gain is swamped by the loss of productive software later.

As a software patent opponent, I argue simply that patentability creep should be rolled back. The patent office should again exclude algorithms and business methods, as it already excludes ordinary mathematical theorems and their proofs. Forming a "GPL patent pool" might help to cut some of the transaction costs where GPL-covered software is concerned but cannot hope to ameliorate patents' harm to developers who use other licenses.

# Why should a lawyer be interested in Linux?

Why should a lawyer be interested in Cat 5 cable, or ATX power supplies, or USB keyboards? Linux is a generic, commodity item that does what you want it to do, as part of a larger system that you control.

# How will free software change society?

Free software won't so much change society as it will bring the computer business more in line with the rest of the economy. If you went shopping for any non-computer product, and got offered an End User License Agreement like those offered in the computer business, you'd laugh and walk out. Free software gives the customer the same rights of inspection and control that he or she has when buying non-computer products such as furniture (you can cut a hole for your cables in your desk) or cars (you can change your own oil.)

If you want to read a novel where software-like licensing is applied to a regular product with ludicrous results, read "Secrets of the Wholly Grill: A Novel about Cravings, Barbecue, and Software" by Lawrence G Townsend.

# Many countries consider public procurement policies where free software should be encouraged or even mandated. What is your take on a "Peru law"?

Governments have a responsibility to their citizens not to enter into unfair contracts. Most or all proprietary software licenses are unfair contracts, and subject the customer to lock-in and limit the customer's ability to fix problems.

Microsoft's lobbying against fair software purchase laws has been weak. They don't even put an End User License Agreement on their web site. If even the people who wrote it are ashamed of it, why should anyone else be willing to accept it?

# After September 11, 2001 you wrote an open letter to Michael Eisner, head of Disney, urging him not to go to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the SSSCA. Why did you do that?

I am on a mailing list based on a Linux server across the street from the World Trade Center. On September 11th, the traffic was about who's where, is everyone all right, which hospitals are open for blood donations, is a particular subway station open, what's going on. Stuff you can't get from TV. We can't let the media corporations seize control of hardware, lock out free software, and turn the net into a one-way medium like TV. Unless printing and postage get real cheap real fast, free speech in the USA needs the net.

# If major companies like IBM and Sun discontinue their support of free software, what will the effects be on the current movement?

Remember the question, "If the Linux startups fail, what will happen to free software?" There's enough customer pull that if customers can't get free software products and services from IBM and Sun, they'll get it someplace else.

# Declan McCullagh of News.com has stated: 'Trust me, a few--even a few thousand--peeved e-mail messages won't change vote totals that lopsided', hence geeks should focus on code, not on government. Do you agree?

Email spam was a "geek" issue until recently, and now, as it affects more and more people, the organizations that begain calling politicians' attention to it are involved in the mainstream political process. If you learn and understand the political process now, and begin making contacts, you will better be able to use the support you get as the anti-Net crackdown affects more and more people.

Declan is half-right in that focusing on code is good too. By all means, develop something that's questionable DMCA-wise but that everybody wants to use. You will motivate more people to be interested in DMCA reform.

# Finally - what is Pigdog and why?

Pigdog.org is the leading Internet news and content site. I am not an employee, just a satisfied reader.

Don Marti was interviewed by Mikael Pawlo.

I'm the editor of Linux Journal and vice-president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group.

# Why should we burn all GIFs?

The Internet is a good thing because you don't need the permission of any one entity to publish. If you choose a patented format, you are throwing away the advantage of publishing on the Internet in the first place.

Many commonly used image editing programs come with a GIF license. However, GIF licenses on shrink-wrap software do not apply to GIFs that you may generate on the fly -- every site that does a dynamic map or chart in GIF format has to get a separate license.

# How do you burn something that is not tangible?

You print it out, and if you're holding your event in a place that prohibits public fires, you draw flames on it with a marker. It's not the burning that's important, it's freeing yourself from needing a license to publish.

# Greplaw still uses GIFs. What should we do instead?

Use PNG or JPEG images, depending on which gives you the best quality and image size. Almost all browsers in use today support both.

# Software patentability is entering Europe and European strong author's rights are entering the US. Why is this is a problem?

I'm not familiar with the strong author's rights issue.

Software patents are a big problem, though.

Best to start from first principles, since people argue the same issue from different points of view and never get anywhere. I'm going to be US-centric and look at our Constitution, which I think soundly expresses the point of view that patents are not a property right or a natural right.

Copyrights and patents appear in the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, along with other miscellaneous economic powers of Congress. They're right next to "Post offices and post roads".

If patents are not a natural right or a property right, what are they? As you might guess by the post office and road connection, they're a government program to promote economic growth. Patents are intended to do two things: promote R&D investment by the private sector; and encourage the private sector to publish inventions. The Constitution makes this explicit in its stated reason for copyrights and patents: "to promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Patents reward these two economically desirable behaviors (doing research and publishing) with a temporary government-granted monopoly on a particular invention. Congress has full discretion on what kinds of content can get a patent and on how long a patent can last. (If patents were a "right" the Constitution would require them -- as it is, the Constitution only allows them.)

So, how should Congress decide which kinds of content get a patent and which don't? You have to strike a balance between, on one hand, the economic benefit of any R&D motivated by the prospect of a patent that would not have happened otherwise, and on the other hand, the transaction costs that are an inevitable result of the patent's existence.

You have to draw the line of what gets a patent and what doesn't somewhere. If you allow the patenting of rhyming words, sports plays, or musical notes, day-to-day life becomes an impossible mess of patent cross-licensing. And, as for these areas, there is no economic evidence that software patents help the economy or even encourage R&D. They may do the opposite -- see the Bessen and Maskin paper (PDF-format).

Software is a good thing because in software, a small investment can create and manage great complexity. When you impose the same transaction costs on software as on hardware, much useful software that could otherwise have been created does not exist. We are seeing this today in the field of video compression. The MPEG patent licensing mess is excluding everyone except for large, well-funded corporations from creating innovative new video-related software.

There may be increased R&D investment in a few areas, such as video compression, due to the prospect of a lucrative patent, but this economic gain is swamped by the loss of productive software later.

As a software patent opponent, I argue simply that patentability creep should be rolled back. The patent office should again exclude algorithms and business methods, as it already excludes ordinary mathematical theorems and their proofs. Forming a "GPL patent pool" might help to cut some of the transaction costs where GPL-covered software is concerned but cannot hope to ameliorate patents' harm to developers who use other licenses.

# Why should a lawyer be interested in Linux?

Why should a lawyer be interested in Cat 5 cable, or ATX power supplies, or USB keyboards? Linux is a generic, commodity item that does what you want it to do, as part of a larger system that you control.

# How will free software change society?

Free software won't so much change society as it will bring the computer business more in line with the rest of the economy. If you went shopping for any non-computer product, and got offered an End User License Agreement like those offered in the computer business, you'd laugh and walk out. Free software gives the customer the same rights of inspection and control that he or she has when buying non-computer products such as furniture (you can cut a hole for your cables in your desk) or cars (you can change your own oil.)

If you want to read a novel where software-like licensing is applied to a regular product with ludicrous results, read "Secrets of the Wholly Grill: A Novel about Cravings, Barbecue, and Software" by Lawrence G Townsend.

# Many countries consider public procurement policies where free software should be encouraged or even mandated. What is your take on a "Peru law"?

Governments have a responsibility to their citizens not to enter into unfair contracts. Most or all proprietary software licenses are unfair contracts, and subject the customer to lock-in and limit the customer's ability to fix problems.

Microsoft's lobbying against fair software purchase laws has been weak. They don't even put an End User License Agreement on their web site. If even the people who wrote it are ashamed of it, why should anyone else be willing to accept it?

# After September 11, 2001 you wrote an open letter to Michael Eisner, head of Disney, urging him not to go to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the SSSCA. Why did you do that?

I am on a mailing list based on a Linux server across the street from the World Trade Center. On September 11th, the traffic was about who's where, is everyone all right, which hospitals are open for blood donations, is a particular subway station open, what's going on. Stuff you can't get from TV. We can't let the media corporations seize control of hardware, lock out free software, and turn the net into a one-way medium like TV. Unless printing and postage get real cheap real fast, free speech in the USA needs the net.

# If major companies like IBM and Sun discontinue their support of free software, what will the effects be on the current movement?

Remember the question, "If the Linux startups fail, what will happen to free software?" There's enough customer pull that if customers can't get free software products and services from IBM and Sun, they'll get it someplace else.

# Declan McCullagh of News.com has stated: 'Trust me, a few--even a few thousand--peeved e-mail messages won't change vote totals that lopsided', hence geeks should focus on code, not on government. Do you agree?

Email spam was a "geek" issue until recently, and now, as it affects more and more people, the organizations that begain calling politicians' attention to it are involved in the mainstream political process. If you learn and understand the political process now, and begin making contacts, you will better be able to use the support you get as the anti-Net crackdown affects more and more people.

Declan is half-right in that focusing on code is good too. By all means, develop something that's questionable DMCA-wise but that everybody wants to use. You will motivate more people to be interested in DMCA reform.

# Finally - what is Pigdog and why?

Pigdog.org is the leading Internet news and content site. I am not an employee, just a satisfied reader.

Don Marti was interviewed by Mikael Pawlo.

You mean chip designers like these

Or this

Apple does do hardware, and they do have their own chip designers. They're just sensibly not interested in making their own CPU.

The jackbooted DMCA wielding thug bastards are on the ropes.

The Eliptic curve stuff was donated to OpenSSH team, not the OpenSSL group.

Blockquoth the News.com article

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based server seller donated the technology to the OpenSSL project, a programming group that makes an open-source version of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption system.

The obvious reason the Times said this today was the Sun announcement about Linux PCs.

As for all the people saying, "yes, Linux used to be unfriendly, but now it's just as good as Mac or Windows," that would have a lot more credibility if the same people hadn't been saying exactly the same thing for the last seven years or so. The fact is, it hadn't caught up then, and it hasn't caught up now.

NYLXS and NYFairUse! went down to Washington DC on July 17 to protest against the big hollywood and big media "roundtable" discussion on drm. The meeting being held at the Commerce Dept. was so lopsided it was a joke. At one reporter's count, it was about 22 big media/big entertainment/big tech against 1 consumer voice, and one half consumer/half tech rep voice, both of which kept their mouths shut for nearly the entire four hour discussion.

NYLXS and NYFairUse members came prepared. We had buttons that said DRM is theft, flyers, handouts, etc. We stood up, and made our voices heard at the meeting. Although the organizers at the Commerce Dept. attempted to shut us up, we persisted, and got the attention of others in the room. Some of the IT reps conceded on the record that more consumer voices needed to be heard on this issue.

As a fallout of NYLXS and NYFairUse actions, the Commerce Dept. was forced to schedule a meeting with consumer groups on the issue. They scheduled a private, off the record, meeting of two hours for 17 groups invited to attend. Do the math.

Thanks to the efforts both in the Commerce Committee hearing room, during the simultaneous demonstration held outside the Commerce Department headquarters, and at the NYLXS and NYFairUse impromptu news conference held outside the Commerce Committee headquarters after the meeting, enough publicity was generated that the Commerce Committee was forced to recognize that consumers are the real stakeholders on this issue.

Expect more action on this issue from NYLXS and NYFairUse.
The members of Congress cannot exclude the consumer when it comes to Fair Use rights, drm (is theft) restrictions, or anything else that restricts consumers from exercising their Fair Use rights. NYLXS and NYFairUse will be there to protect these important rights. From attacks on libraries and librarians (check out some of the notable quotables from Mr. Jack Valenti on the Fair Use web site), to expiring electronic books (also on the web site) for your higher education, to restrictive technologies like Palladium, drm firmware being silently placed in MPAA member hard drive manufacturers, and more, NYLXS and NYFairUse will be there to defend Fair Use, and the right to use your computer and other property that you paid for in any manner you like that helps society move forward, and not in a manner that restricts speech, allows ideas to be kept under lock and key or expire into oblivion, etc.

I'm making a list of legislator positions on Fair Use, and which side they choose, the public they represent or entertainment and media cartels, so that the public will have information to take to the polls with them this November. If NYFairUse accepts it, it will be up on the NYFairUse web site prior to the elections. If NYFairUse doesn't accept it, do a google search on the topic, with relevant key words, and you'll find it at another site.

The BBC and News.com reports. News.com in depth multi page thang.

This looks like it was compiled after extensive consultations with commercial inter^w^w leading experts. The
recommendations appear to boil down to "1. Use Symantec[tm] and Network Associates[tm] Products;
2. Encourage commercial software more secure, then sell it to *everyone*;
3. Train more experts". Am I too cynical, or are they missing
"4. Profit!" ? (Symantec and NAI are apparently doing product
releases to cash in?!) Where does Free software figure in these expert
recommendations? Oh, and privacy concerns have been quietly shelved.

Although... perhaps the news that BGP (the Internet's backbone routing
protocol) has vulnerabilities is news outside NANOG-l?

An in-depth article about the formats and the Sony drive is over at news.com.

"Where's the proof for that little gem? No links provided...hmmm. Let's see the proof and not 'the open source community' hot air."

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-950083.html

Microsoft vs. the NSA

SE Linux may be the NSA's last direct contribution to open-source security, however. Because of loud criticism, the NSA will have a far less direct role in the creation of more secure versions of open-source software.

"We didn't fully understand the consequences of releasing software under the GPL (General Public License)," said Dick Schafer, deputy director of the NSA. "We received a lot of loud complaints regarding our efforts with SE Linux."

Many complaints criticized the agency for providing the fruits of research to everyone, not just U.S. companies, and thus hurting American business.

While stressing that the agency received a loud chorus of support as well, the chagrined Schafer said that the issue was contentious enough that "we won't be doing anything like that again."

Sources familiar with events said that aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. [emphasis added] "Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software," said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified.

And what does Windows XP have to do with it? I'm talking about the cost for Dell or Sun to produce a linux box, in which case neither pays for XP.

If you've not been asleep for the last few years you will undoubtedly remember a certain amount of... friction, shall we say ... between Microsoft and the PC vendors? A little touch of pressure applied here and there by Microsoft, in the aim of promoting the idea that every new PC should come with Windows? I'm aware that Dell have done a little Linux work here and there (not nearly enough - try getting Linux/OS-less laptops from them, at least in the UK), but you don't seem to realise the point - which is that the cost for Dell to produce a Linux box is very little up-front compared to Sun, and a great deal later on, largely in other currencies (like incurring the displeasure of Microsoft?)

Agreed, if Dell produces a Linux box, they don't need to pay for XP; but think back to the days of BeOS and Hitachi. Microsoft, historically, have fought against being subjected to market forces in any way - and they also see each PC sold without their OS as a lost sale (they're a bit like the *AA, for that) - and therefore, the effective cost for Dell to make Linux desktops rises. Bear in mind that, as manufacturers of desktop PCs, most of their stock needs to be equipped with Windows - they're chained to Microsoft, because that's where the market is now. Sun aren't, so they can afford to piss MS off to their hearts' content.

Think of it as something like a gangster movie. It's late at night in the Dell offices; the employees are walking out the door, leaving a pile of neatly packed Linux desktops behind them. The head executive gets up to leave, too - then a shape detaches itself from the patch of shadow behind him. Large, calloused hands reach for his windpipe. A voice drawls, "You've been at the penguins again. We know. Mister Gates is very upset".

So in a way, it's not about cost; it's about market. Dell can't easily approach the Linux desktop side of things, at any price - Sun are free to do whatever the hell they want. Sure, Sun are probably going to charge more than most of us want to pay - but corporate IT budgets often have a different view on these things.

Now. this report from Sep. 21, 2001 reports 1.3 million infected NIMDA servers.

Help me out here.

Where is the comparison? I'm still wading through NIMDA/Code Red requests on my webservers, looking for any sign that those servers have been poked by slapper infected servers. No dice so far.

Slapper is generating panic because it's got a peer to peer network on the backend, not because it's actually been able to infect a lot of servers. can you imagine what would happen if someone wanted to start a p2p network on the NIMDA/Code Red infected servers that are still online now? to say NOTHING of the 1.3 million and up that were infected originally.

slapper is a silly excuse for some "Open Source Sucks" journalism, not a reason to head for the hills and unplug the router.

So here you go:
[chastise]
Oh, you lazy stupid 14,000 linux/apache admins! patch your servers!
[/chastise]
[screaming rant]
it's been a year! get that "guy who knows computers" who put that shiatty NT server on the net for you to get back in your office and put some patches on it! give him a beer for pete's sake!
[/screaming rant]

Thank you.
--mandi

Why?

Because the fewer than 14,000 servers infected with slapper are nothing compared to the infection of NIMDA and its derivatives.

duh.

It's a great option - if you've really got your heart set on doing this with your PS2. But I tend to agree witht the guy at the end of the article from DFC Intelligence that this is something that will probably be a stock feature of something like the Play Station 3 and other upcomming devices that will use IBM's embedded "Cell" distributed processor. That way, television sets, and desktop boxes, that also have the Cell processor embedded in them can assist in on-the-fly compression of real time video to a hard drive or some such similar storage device like we're already seeing in gaming consoles like MS's XBox.

It's a great option - if you've really got your heart set on doing this with your PS2. But I tend to agree witht the guy at the end of the article from DFC Intelligence that this is something that will probably be a stock feature of something like the Play Station 3 and other upcomming devices that will use IBM's embedded "Cell" distributed processor. That way, television sets, and desktop boxes, that also have the Cell processor embedded in them can assist in on-the-fly compression of real time video to a hard drive or some such similar storage device like we're already seeing in gaming consoles like MS's XBox.

Do you honestly think KaZaa is doing any real trading of your home movies, the music you recorded in your garage, or the (surely nonexistant) code you're writing as open source?

If any of it had value, you'd be selling it.

Will all content require DRM? No. Will all commercial content require DRM? No.

"Personal information such as medical and financial data; corporate information such as legal and business documents; and commercial content such as software, music and movies may all require DRM ," said a Microsoft spokeswoman, in Redmond, Wash.

DRM technology enables content creators, such as record companies, to encrypt content and define who can decrypt it and how they can use it.

Are companies (not just internet) in a hurry to flood the internet with content when they have no way to guarantee any sort of profit from it, besides the 'honor system'? No.

A: We have a constant problem with people who are trying to break our system for no other purpose than they have nothing better to do--like their bosses haven't assigned them enough to do at work today, or that their mom hasn't made them mow the lawn, in most cases!

There are no new lessons here. This is not the first worm for Linux. It is not the first DDoS architecture for Linux. Nor does CNET's estimation of 3,500 infected machines match its Code Red estimations that have floated from "...more than 15,000..." to "...more than 350,000...".

It would seem anybody who is finding something insightful in this story are either a Linux or Windows zealot, brand new to the argument, or very poor students of recent history. Granted - "recent" becomes is somewhat subjective. So let's take a brief look at past DDoS applications and Linux worms.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) architectures began hitting the Industry consciousness late 1999. At that time it was trin00 and TFN. Shortly afterward, new versions showed up in the wild including TFN2K and Stacheldraht. All can be run on Linux. Although they are not, themselves, worms.

Linux worms are not new... nor are they ancient history. There are some excellent examples from a little over a year ago. One of the first worms from 2001 was the Ramen Worm and was reported by CNET January 17, 2001. Of course, CNET's article didn't have impressive numbers to report but it did liken it to the infamous 1998 Morris Worm. The Ramen Worm was followed by a less-famous variation called Adore and it also garnered CNET coverage April 4, 2001. But it wasn't too interesting a worm. It had been overshadowed by a worm reported the previous month dubed Lion. The Lion worm also got its own CNET coverage.

In each case, the worm in question used well-known security flaws with existing patches.

If one wants to point out that any OS is vulnerable if it is not properly maintained, then this latest worm is simply one of a series of worms that have proved this point. And worms have made object lessons of Linux, Windows, and other popular OS variants such as Solaris (sadmind/IIS being my favorite as it propagates on Solaris machines and then attacks and defaces IIS web sites).

There are no new lessons here. This is not the first worm for Linux. It is not the first DDoS architecture for Linux. Nor does CNET's estimation of 3,500 infected machines match its Code Red estimations that have floated from "...more than 15,000..." to "...more than 350,000...".

It would seem anybody who is finding something insightful in this story are either a Linux or Windows zealot, brand new to the argument, or very poor students of recent history. Granted - "recent" becomes is somewhat subjective. So let's take a brief look at past DDoS applications and Linux worms.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) architectures began hitting the Industry consciousness late 1999. At that time it was trin00 and TFN. Shortly afterward, new versions showed up in the wild including TFN2K and Stacheldraht. All can be run on Linux. Although they are not, themselves, worms.

Linux worms are not new... nor are they ancient history. There are some excellent examples from a little over a year ago. One of the first worms from 2001 was the Ramen Worm and was reported by CNET January 17, 2001. Of course, CNET's article didn't have impressive numbers to report but it did liken it to the infamous 1998 Morris Worm. The Ramen Worm was followed by a less-famous variation called Adore and it also garnered CNET coverage April 4, 2001. But it wasn't too interesting a worm. It had been overshadowed by a worm reported the previous month dubed Lion. The Lion worm also got its own CNET coverage.

In each case, the worm in question used well-known security flaws with existing patches.

If one wants to point out that any OS is vulnerable if it is not properly maintained, then this latest worm is simply one of a series of worms that have proved this point. And worms have made object lessons of Linux, Windows, and other popular OS variants such as Solaris (sadmind/IIS being my favorite as it propagates on Solaris machines and then attacks and defaces IIS web sites).

There are no new lessons here. This is not the first worm for Linux. It is not the first DDoS architecture for Linux. Nor does CNET's estimation of 3,500 infected machines match its Code Red estimations that have floated from "...more than 15,000..." to "...more than 350,000...".

It would seem anybody who is finding something insightful in this story are either a Linux or Windows zealot, brand new to the argument, or very poor students of recent history. Granted - "recent" becomes is somewhat subjective. So let's take a brief look at past DDoS applications and Linux worms.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) architectures began hitting the Industry consciousness late 1999. At that time it was trin00 and TFN. Shortly afterward, new versions showed up in the wild including TFN2K and Stacheldraht. All can be run on Linux. Although they are not, themselves, worms.

Linux worms are not new... nor are they ancient history. There are some excellent examples from a little over a year ago. One of the first worms from 2001 was the Ramen Worm and was reported by CNET January 17, 2001. Of course, CNET's article didn't have impressive numbers to report but it did liken it to the infamous 1998 Morris Worm. The Ramen Worm was followed by a less-famous variation called Adore and it also garnered CNET coverage April 4, 2001. But it wasn't too interesting a worm. It had been overshadowed by a worm reported the previous month dubed Lion. The Lion worm also got its own CNET coverage.

In each case, the worm in question used well-known security flaws with existing patches.

If one wants to point out that any OS is vulnerable if it is not properly maintained, then this latest worm is simply one of a series of worms that have proved this point. And worms have made object lessons of Linux, Windows, and other popular OS variants such as Solaris (sadmind/IIS being my favorite as it propagates on Solaris machines and then attacks and defaces IIS web sites).

There are no new lessons here. This is not the first worm for Linux. It is not the first DDoS architecture for Linux. Nor does CNET's estimation of 3,500 infected machines match its Code Red estimations that have floated from "...more than 15,000..." to "...more than 350,000...".

It would seem anybody who is finding something insightful in this story are either a Linux or Windows zealot, brand new to the argument, or very poor students of recent history. Granted - "recent" becomes is somewhat subjective. So let's take a brief look at past DDoS applications and Linux worms.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) architectures began hitting the Industry consciousness late 1999. At that time it was trin00 and TFN. Shortly afterward, new versions showed up in the wild including TFN2K and Stacheldraht. All can be run on Linux. Although they are not, themselves, worms.

Linux worms are not new... nor are they ancient history. There are some excellent examples from a little over a year ago. One of the first worms from 2001 was the Ramen Worm and was reported by CNET January 17, 2001. Of course, CNET's article didn't have impressive numbers to report but it did liken it to the infamous 1998 Morris Worm. The Ramen Worm was followed by a less-famous variation called Adore and it also garnered CNET coverage April 4, 2001. But it wasn't too interesting a worm. It had been overshadowed by a worm reported the previous month dubed Lion. The Lion worm also got its own CNET coverage.

In each case, the worm in question used well-known security flaws with existing patches.

If one wants to point out that any OS is vulnerable if it is not properly maintained, then this latest worm is simply one of a series of worms that have proved this point. And worms have made object lessons of Linux, Windows, and other popular OS variants such as Solaris (sadmind/IIS being my favorite as it propagates on Solaris machines and then attacks and defaces IIS web sites).

There are no new lessons here. This is not the first worm for Linux. It is not the first DDoS architecture for Linux. Nor does CNET's estimation of 3,500 infected machines match its Code Red estimations that have floated from "...more than 15,000..." to "...more than 350,000...".

It would seem anybody who is finding something insightful in this story are either a Linux or Windows zealot, brand new to the argument, or very poor students of recent history. Granted - "recent" becomes is somewhat subjective. So let's take a brief look at past DDoS applications and Linux worms.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) architectures began hitting the Industry consciousness late 1999. At that time it was trin00 and TFN. Shortly afterward, new versions showed up in the wild including TFN2K and Stacheldraht. All can be run on Linux. Although they are not, themselves, worms.

Linux worms are not new... nor are they ancient history. There are some excellent examples from a little over a year ago. One of the first worms from 2001 was the Ramen Worm and was reported by CNET January 17, 2001. Of course, CNET's article didn't have impressive numbers to report but it did liken it to the infamous 1998 Morris Worm. The Ramen Worm was followed by a less-famous variation called Adore and it also garnered CNET coverage April 4, 2001. But it wasn't too interesting a worm. It had been overshadowed by a worm reported the previous month dubed Lion. The Lion worm also got its own CNET coverage.

In each case, the worm in question used well-known security flaws with existing patches.

If one wants to point out that any OS is vulnerable if it is not properly maintained, then this latest worm is simply one of a series of worms that have proved this point. And worms have made object lessons of Linux, Windows, and other popular OS variants such as Solaris (sadmind/IIS being my favorite as it propagates on Solaris machines and then attacks and defaces IIS web sites).

A: We have a constant problem with people who are trying to break our system for no other purpose than they have nothing better to do--like their bosses haven't assigned them enough to do at work today, or that their mom hasn't made them mow the lawn, in most cases!

The RIAA apparently has used p2p company emails, message board correspondences, and executive interviews to show that KaZaA and the rest of the FastTrack Network clients (ok, Morpheus isn't FastTrack anymore but that's beside the point) worked to 'embrace and extend' (*ack*) the Napster program, which has been shown to be illegal in court.

Morpheus also asked for summary judgement, but they wanted all of the charges dismissed. Their argument is that there are too many uses for the service for it to be shut down because of the illegal users. This was reported on Monday on news.com.

Just nevermind that M$ won't make money from just selling XBox consoles, for they are sold at a loss...