Slashdot Mirror

According to this article on news.com the Amazon email about the Segway was inaccurate:

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957746.html?tag=fd_t op

Apple is running a promotion that if someone buys a PowerMac G4, the person can get a free copy of Adobe InDesign 2.0 for free via mail. News.com has a blurb on this and that a Mac OS X-native version of Quark is still in the works.

ZDNET's David Coursey has a sneak peak at it in action.

Go to: http://news.com.com/2014-1089-0.html?tag=vid#

Click on Intel's got wireless in hand

About 2:15 seconds in.

According to this link April PC sales were down 22.5 percent from last year . Are we to believe that everyone is downloading new computers? Hello the US is in a recession.

Anti-spam laws could significantly help.

I live in Utah, with a pretty good anti spam statute.

However, though I could be in the process suing a few dozen people a day, I simply do not have the time or the desire to persue any of these. Not when Spamassain grabs about 90% of all spam, and sends it to my Spam folder, where I review the headers looking for false positives, and then they get deleted. Total time for me, 3 minutes.

Anti-spam statutes, while good for keeping honest merchants in check, will do nothing for the multitude of pr0n, Nigerian and penis enlarger spams I get every day.

What am I going to do, sue the entire nation of Nigeria? From what I hear, only one guy has all the money, and he is dead, or so it says in an e-mail I just got from Azabi Manzuna... :-)

Here's a link to the AMD info

Intel also announced FinFet CMOS at some point, because it's mentioned on the frontpage of that article.

I've found that artists listen to their fans. If we can come up with a better solution for the artist I bet it wouldn't be that difficult to get them to hop on.

Well, in Metallica's case, I reckon that's still true.

They just have to listen really hard now.

I'm not sure, but I think the organization that funds them starts with the letter "g" and ends with "overnment".

Microsoft's 'owning' of a patent to a DRM OS is under dispute.

Intertrust has had DRM OS patents for a while.

Palladium isn't yet a product, but Intertrust is suing many existing Microsoft products for patent infringement. Some detail

Thats right, the scum of the network are taking advantage of open wireless networks, whether they are chalked or grabbed off online maps such as net stumbler dot com. The rise of drive-by hacking is a natural by-product of the wardriving/chalking community, and it would be naive to considering this a surprising development. Highjacking an open wireless network is only the smart thing to do for hackers whether they are after data or just a spamming platform.

This puts the pressure on network administrators to secure their wireless networks. It is far easier to drive by a NAP and jack in, and the proliferation of wireless networks could obsolete physical intrusion techniques such as connecting a Dreamcast or iPAQ to an internal network. Tools for wardriving are readily available, such as THC-warDrive. A lazy or incompetant network administrator makes it easy for a kid with the parents car, a pringles can, and a laptop.

Ta add to you theory read this:

Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision protection

Thought this seemed familiar, I read it nearly three months ago in the print edition.

Still, he makes some very good points. Have a look at the news story below to read about the 5-year jailterm Champion Of The People Fritz 'they named an evil chip after me' Hollings and others are trying to get you if you dare to tinker. How do people who work against the interests of the people who elected them so continue to get elected?

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956811.html?tag=fd_t op

More significantly, though, it will allow computer manufacturers and consumers to switch off and conceal Microsoft's e-mail, Web browser, Internet audio-video player and other software programs. That gives computer vendors and users the option to select rival software -- instead of Microsoft applications -- as default programs.

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

Most western democracies have the governing power divided into three: the legislative power, the judicial power, and the executive power. This division is considered a good thing, since it prevents any part from gaining unconditional power, and we know that power corrupts.

Some people just can't stop trying to grap power.

Take the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules. The only purpose of these rules are to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. That is, it is the legislative power's attempt to act as executive power. Not surprisingly, the DMCA can be misused in innumerable ways.

Now consider Hardware Rights Control. Again it is an attempt by someone, this time entirely outside of the government, to grab executive power. The reason for using hardware is to prevent people from breaking the copyright law. Any other feature of DRM can be programmed in software as long as people are cooperative, so hardware is only needed *against* the users who are uncooperative (e.g., those who want to make use of their fair use rights). I will be surprised if there are not innumerable abuses of hardware DRM.

The unholy marriage of DMCA and DRM should remove the need for hardware DRM. After all, is the purpose of the DMCA not to prevent people from circumventing protections, so the digital rights are safe, right? But the legislative power of DMCA is not enough for the people who want to protect "content" from the users. They want another layer of protection to make it even harder to break the law.

When hardware DRM also fails, what will their next step be? My guess is surveilance of all media-capable devices (mandatory ofcourse).

Does that sound far fetched? they already did it! /RS

when Microsoft originally started shipping the xbox, they WISHED that that Linux would run on it as soon as possible. Why? They wanted a good excuse for entering the desktop/home PC market without being accused for using their monopoly power.

Now, because Linux has already soon changed the xbox from a game console to a nearly fullblown home PC - Microsoft can do it with windows as well. Want more proof, here. They are practising for this take over in many fronts. And it's not only PCs, they also bought a mobile phone plant in china. Oh yes, they will be selling the whole package SW+HW very soon.

Anyone find the story elsewhere?

"In perhaps slightly related news, Cnet reports sightings of one of Microsoft's all-new draconian EULAs in the Xbox Live beta kit."

Here's the story from news.com

Would you return your pda because it only displays 58000 colours instead of 65000? I mean, unless you are doing photo editing on it, it doesn't really matter. Besides, not having to display the extra 7000 colours saves energy.

The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.

In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.

Would you return your pda because it only displays 58000 colours instead of 65000? I mean, unless you are doing photo editing on it, it doesn't really matter. Besides, not having to display the extra 7000 colours saves energy.

The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.

In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.

If you remember way back in May when Apple introduced the Xserve, they also previewed a 2GB RAID solution. According to this relatively old c|net article:

Apple also previewed a future storage device, the Xserve RAID, a 5.25-inch thick cabinet that can contain 14 hard drives for a total capacity of 1.68 terabytes. The system has two 2-gigabit-per-second Fibre Channel connections, a high-speed connection technology for communicating with servers.

There have been some rumblings around the Mac rumor community that this will soon debut. Can I get a "booyah"?

However, I will raise a secondary point: if you are attempting to reach the widest audience possible, it would surely make sense to choose a non-proprietary format.

I've yet to see any evidence that the "proprietary-ness" of a format makes any difference to its market share. Real and Windows Media are by far the most popular formats according to that article.

this calc i found can do all kind sort of bit manipulation functions including bitshift, bitand, bitor etc.. and it can work in unconstrained bases from base 2 to base 69!

Dave has written a ton of stuff...some of it might be useful.

A day without programming?

Patents and the W3C

Killer Patents

Amazon's XML Interface

Patents, lawsuits plague the Net (Dave is quoted.)

Notes on competing

Dave has written a ton of stuff...some of it might be useful.

A day without programming?

Patents and the W3C

Killer Patents

Amazon's XML Interface

Patents, lawsuits plague the Net (Dave is quoted.)

Notes on competing

As has been pointed out in other replies to this story:

it's easy to sniff for data traffic and thus ignore the fake access points,

this is a useful DoS tool more than a way of securing networks.

Seems to me that as long as network admins, users or Jo-average-computer-at-home-user keeps thinking of 802.11 kit as a "alternative to wires", we'll be stuck with all the security problems. Wireless = broadcast. That will inevitably involve sending your data out to anyone who cares to set up an antenna and kit to recieve it. You trade the convenience of not having to run wires for the insecurity of broadcasting your bits to the world. Anyway, given that this unpleasantly insecure technology is spreading worldwide, it's interesting to see this article at CNet about small, cheap 802.11 chipsets destined for set-top boxes. I contentedly predict that in a couple of years there'll be scares about wardrivers sniffing what people are watching on their wireless TVs :) Anna B

Check this out: TI shrinks its Wi-Fi chipset, claims new design specifically fit for PDAs and cellphones.

There are a lot of artists that have come out against p2p, Not just Metallica either. The Courtney Love rant on Salon said that Napster should pay her, there was the "artists against piracy" who wanted control of their copyrights, their site is no longer up, but there is still an article about it on news.com

A Cnet article regarding the story explains that "The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines.", so since Greek authorities are too stupid to tell the difference between Teris and a Poker machine, no one gets to play anything?

The stupidity involved in this law is beyond comprehension.

Hollywood and the RIAA have the likes of Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen speaking before Congress all the time. Other than Representative Rick Boucher of Virginia, consumers have no voice there. Is there any way Janis Ian could speak before Congress on behalf of musicians and music consumers? I would hate for the likes of Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti to be the only voices they hear.

Blumenthal's suit was dropped and he had to pay
Drudge a settlement, yeah, Sidney paid Drudge.

From The Drudge Report
another source
and another

AOL was also sued by Blumenthal, but was dissmissed by a federal judge.
cnet

Drudge hasnt "slipped into obscurity". He has a radio show on Sunday nights, and over 4 million hits to his web site every day.

Endnotes: Zi Xiang Mao Dun

P2P geektivists could note a parallel decentralisation of resources in the Future Trends section, in Chapter One for more on innovation at the Edge of the network:

"Dissidents, Falungong practitioners, and other activists in the PRC and abroad may increasingly turn to emerging peer-to-peer technology to exchange information."

Accidental damage to wires and cables by backhoes or other equipment during street work remains one of the most common reasons for floods, power outages and communication disruptions to this day

You've obviously never had a Powerbook with a Lithium battery.

You obviously haven't, either (or are you saying you've had a PowerBook explode in your lap?). If you're referring to the widely-reported PowerBook 5300 battery recall, you're apparently unaware it stemmed from the ignition of two batteries in Apple's product testing; not one of them was ever reported to have exploded or ignited in actual use in the field (as opposed to at least one battery in a Dell laptop in 2000, for example).

You've obviously never had a Powerbook with a Lithium battery
or a Dell

Many reporters have highlighted Wan's work in raising awareness about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, - and also Gay & Lesbian rights in China. CPJ also highlight Wan's role as a webmaster - and as a leading critic of Beijing's neo-fascist Information enviroment, and cult-like Pledge of Self-Discipline Yahoo!

CPJ concerned about safety of Web publisher

Wan Yanhai is a courageous man - our thoughts are with him, Su Zhaosheng - his wife, and his family.

Read: The Great Firewall of China, by Xiao Qiang, Executive Director, HRIC - and CPJ's Asia Research Associate Sophie Beach, from the L.A. Times of August 25, 2002....

http://www.aizhi.org/ [aizhi.org]

Starting testing...

Stage one testing complete.
Stage two testing complete.

Testing complete for http://www.aizhi.org/.
Result:

Reported as accessible in China

Tested at request of Greg Walton,
China's Golden Shield, Corporate complicity in the development of surveillance technology in China Le bouclier d'or de la Chine

Open Source Intelligence

Http://go.openflows.org [openflows.org]

Related stories:

Where is Wan Yanhai?
China's most prominent AIDS activist has been "disappeared" - believed to have been detained by the police, relatives and human rights groups said yesterday.

China Net Spies

...there was recent evidence that state censors had removed the blocks on some banned Web sites to see who tried to access them. "The reverse-trace route monitoring we do on a regular basis shows a surprising number of interesting sites that were once blocked are now going through, but with anomalous traffic signatures, suggesting some systematic surveillance of sensitive sites. Perhaps the PSB [Public Security Bureau] is trying to learn more about surfing habits," he said.

The "Great Firewall" is failing
Beyond the Great Firewall - from censorship to surveillance
Gartner: China's Internet Strategy: Struggling to Maintain the "Great Firewall"
China, Nortel, and the Net

or Ethan Gutmann's Who Lost China's Internet?

if you're still interested.....Chapter Two of the private RAND study published Tuesday, "You've got dissent"offers an authoritative analysis of the evolving, multi-layered counter-netwar strategies deployed in the PRC -> increasingly redistributing the focus of the so-called "Great Firewall" from the International Gateways, through the ISPs and out to the cybercafes [;-)cracked versions of these filters available], the possibility of .cn ISPs setting policy on individuals' firewalls in offices and homes

Endnotes: Zi Xiang Mao Dun

P2P geektivists could note a parallel decentralisation of resources in the Future Trends section, in Chapter One for more on innovation at the Edge of the network:

"Dissidents, Falungong practitioners, and other activists in the PRC and abroad may increasingly turn to emerging peer-to-peer technology to exchange information."

All this augurs a mighty struggle deep indside China's networks in the coming years, but with China sending dissidents to mental hospitals a culture of self-censorship is probably the gravest challenge to free experssion.

Note to CowBoyNeal,language barrier: this installation has problems with Chinese charcters - there'd probably be people out there who have modified SLASHcode to handle Chinese UNICODE, and perhaps publish automatically to USENET, Freenet etc.

they'd probably also find time to translate this thread.

i'd like to go on, but some government employed s'kripty in Yunan's is busy thinking he can backdoor my network - its not an ethical thing - its the aesthetics i've got a problem with...so crude, juvenile. I'll leave you with a final link

Wasn't AOL supposed to be phasing out Internet Explorer in favor of Netscape?

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

According to news.com apple is using the dmca to make sure its itools software does not work with any other dvd player but there own internal ones. Apple does not care about the opensource community and like Enron care about profits above all else.

2002-08-29 21:36:13 RIAA Website Hacked, Content Altered (articles,news) (rejected)
Drawing yet more fire from file sharing enthusiest, the RIAA website was once again the target of rogue seperatist elements determined to deliver a message to the organization. Unlike the last DoS attack, this one seems to be limited to altering the website's content. Somehow, I just can't bring myself to pity them.

But why would we post this when we can post A Beginner's Guide to the Dance Dance Phenomena??? That's 12 of 12. Tards.

I mean seriously guys...this is some pretty funny shit. Here's a screenshot of thier site after it was hacked:

JPG of RIAA with pants around ankes

I particularly like the "Where can I find information on giant monkeys"

I think that any responible company would get this software to protect themselves from the Patrick Naughtons of this world.

http://download.com.com/3000-2099-857427.html?tag= lst-0-1

**** Dr. Bellows ****
Funk/Soul/Jazz
drbellows.net
for gigs, music & more

hey, if you didn't know, your post was quoted in a C|NET article.

I think that it'll pan out soon, despite the setbacks in legislation
US Government: Open for Business...

Here is a link from CNET, about Sasktel high speed access (News.com) that was available in 1996.

Here is another article stating that Sasktel was the first in Canada to offer high speed (Point-topic.com), and if I remember correctly it was the first place in North America as well.

In order for MS to have access to the records, they need access to the DB. If the DB is not on a system w/ an MS OS, they have no right to that machine. Period. Get it?

Yes, I get it. But you're wrong. (-:

The machine is not the problem, the data are the problem. One of the constellation of possible actions which you authorise Microsoft to take when you agree to the EULA on any Windows workstation in the LAN is to install a sniffer (call it `Microsoft Diagnostics for a Networked Medical Environment 6.0' to drive the point home). The data is no use to anyone if it stays on the server, but as soon as it leaves the server and wanders past a Windows box, Bill can glom it and shove it into the `My Data' folder.

BTW, you didn't think the `My' in `My Computer' and `My Documents' referred to the user, did you?

there's all kinds of things you can do to keep this theoretical problem under control.

Ah, that reminds me of l0pht's motto: `Making the theoretical practical since 1992'.

Piracy can be beneficial to the music industry

Adult Entertainment

Wynton Marsalis Brings videos to Young People

Inside RIAA with Eric Cartman

Money Matters

Where can I find information on giant monkeys?

When will you offer free movies?

Are there subscription music services up and running?

Didn't Palm already get in trouble with this with their "Simply pr0n^H^H^H^HPalm" campaign? (Obligatory parodies here :)

Isn't the interviewer the same guy who was saying that the DMCA isn't so bad? I remember some posts talking about how this guy just jumps on any bandwagon that furthers his career, but these articles are a week apart. Verizon (or at least Sarah Deutsch) may be a new ally in the fight against the DMCA, but I don't think Declan McCullagh is.