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Though the article is lean on details, this would fit suspiciously well into Microsoft's plan to have DVD players support Windows audio/video. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but I've got to admit that idea of downloading a 700 MB .wmv file, burning it to a CD and being able to play it back in my DVD player at DVD quality is quite enticing.

Why don't they just get Amazon.com to sue them for infringing on their copyright of one-click buying? Remember that big fiasco a few years ago? They could stop this crap right now if they wanted to...

The story is pretty interesting, but did anyone else notice that the link (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-845815.html) is zdnet.com.com? Cool! Check this out: http://com.com/!

CNet ran a story about this back in October ...

Ad slump spurs Slashdot to experiment

"News for Nerds" Web site Slashdot.org has joined the dark side, lining up with leagues of other Net publishers to start selling larger, more imposing advertisements and placing a premium on commercial-free pages.

There has been alot of commentary on this subject. The Gartner group put out this commentary about the "Tech Wreck" coming to the SF Bay area.

They claim that a city will do well if they install a broadband communications network that connects citizens, local businesses and the global marketplace.

I think that the obvious solution to this may be Telecomutting See this link for more info

Here are a few:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/technology/01DIG I.html?todaysheadlines

http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/press/107-159.html

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174828.html

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-847229.html

http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24195.html

Hope you weren't being sarcastic.

And, that is the $64,000 question. Will /.'s new ads end up being too distracting. If they're like this page, with the ad well sectioned off, I don't think they'll be a major problem. If they're like the ads you describe, well then /. will have violated the first rule of selling ads, Don't let your advertisers piss off your viewers enough to make them non-viewer. Of course, we haven't heard any details about the new ads, other than that they're coming, so who knows how annoying they'll be.

-sk

The problem here is that there were a bunch of people running Excite@home; at least after the merger with a vision of the internet as the next generation of television broadcasting. Commercially produced content from central servers was gonna rule. Combine multimedia formats + the bandwidth to transmit them clearly and become a media conglomerate (overnight, please)

Cable companies have their own vision of what they think the net should be, or, more precisely, the direction they wish to steer their subscribers contractually, and in marketing terms. This is still unfolding now, but enough has transpired since November to illustrate their desire for an AOL-type service of tight user control: overmanaged, overintrusive, restricted to the point of uselessness and treating their customers as a byproduct of their business goal of selling information about them and their preferences and interests to marketeers. How well is this working out? Going by the fact that there are so many millions of complaints they can't afford or maintain supervisory control over the staff to answer them all is an indication their surefire plan to become overnight billionaires isn't very likely to happen either.

Customers who use the net know what they want to use the net for, and in almost all cases it isn't television nor a substitution for a trip to a shopping mall. ISPs, and especially broadband ISPs who just get that point and provide a reliable affordable carrier will succeed in the long run - not become billionaires overnight (which is a flaky ambition anyway) but they'll be around 10 years from now.

Another good analytical article is posted here on C|net

The really ironic thing is that the architects of the original @home network got it so right. I used it here for 2 and a half years and recommended it because it was demonstrably competitive: Static IP, OS agnostic real and complete internet, and the service was reliable - not perfect, but reliable. That's competitive.

The replacement comcast.net service unfortunately isn't, but I'm fortunate to be within DSL range so was able with some effort to move everything of mine over to these guys and so for me at least for now, all is well.

@home got it right, but it got derailed by a societical bollock stew of venture capitalists, pundits, investors, cable companies, regulators (by doing nothing) and finally it reached baknruptcy court which did the best they could with the mess; leading to my question:

Is America failing?

Flaw weakens Linux security

Programmers have found a vulnerability in Linux (news - web sites) that could allow protective firewall software to grant malicious computer users access to protected networks.

The flaw, which affects versions 2.4.14 through 2.4.18-pre9 of the Linux kernel, is in a component of the Netfilter firewall software. The component is involved when two computer users chat directly with each other using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) system.

Information sent across the Internet is broken up into tiny "packets," each with "from" and "to" addresses, indicating who's sent the information and where it's intended to go. So-called firewall software transmits or screens out these packets based on the address of the sender.

Netfilter, among the new aspects of the 2.4 version of the Linux kernel, is software that runs within the kernel to filter out unwanted packets. But its IRC helper component configures firewall settings too broadly, potentially allowing communication from IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that should be blocked.

Programmers working on the Netfilter firewall software project reported the problem Monday.

Versions 7.1 and 7.2 of leading Linux seller Red Hat's product are vulnerable. The Durham, N.C.-based company issued a patch Thursday that corrects the problem. The flawed software isn't installed by default on the Red Hat versions, the company said, but some users may have added it.

Security is a nagging concern for the computer industry, which must juggle new features with the risk that they open up new problems. While the firewall problem the Netfilter programmers discovered is limited to a few versions of Linux, a more serious problem emerged earlier this month affecting numerous operating systems using standard network management software.

From the annals of the Troll Library .

Programmers have found a vulnerability in Linux (news - web sites) that could allow protective firewall software to grant malicious computer users access to protected networks.

The flaw, which affects versions 2.4.14 through 2.4.18-pre9 of the Linux kernel, is in a component of the Netfilter firewall software. The component is involved when two computer users chat directly with each other using the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) system.

Information sent across the Internet is broken up into tiny "packets," each with "from" and "to" addresses, indicating who's sent the information and where it's intended to go. So-called firewall software transmits or screens out these packets based on the address of the sender.

Netfilter, among the new aspects of the 2.4 version of the Linux kernel, is software that runs within the kernel to filter out unwanted packets. But its IRC helper component configures firewall settings too broadly, potentially allowing communication from IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that should be blocked.

Programmers working on the Netfilter firewall software project reported the problem Monday.

Versions 7.1 and 7.2 of leading Linux seller Red Hat's product are vulnerable. The Durham, N.C.-based company issued a patch Thursday that corrects the problem. The flawed software isn't installed by default on the Red Hat versions, the company said, but some users may have added it.

Security is a nagging concern for the computer industry, which must juggle new features with the risk that they open up new problems. While the firewall problem the Netfilter programmers discovered is limited to a few versions of Linux, a more serious problem emerged earlier this month affecting numerous operating systems using standard network management software.

In May 2001, Cisco wrote off about $2.5 Billion of excess inventory, in essence, saying that they never expected to sell that inventory for anything near what it is valued at. More recently they have been getting a nice little boost to their fiscal bottom line by bringing in "excess inventory benefits", that is they are discovering that they actually have been able to sell some of the inventory that had previously been written off.

But since Cisco has already taken the financial hit for a vast majority of their excess dot-com hardware, I doubt if that is a main reason why they are not implementing IPv6. It probably has more to do with a lack of demand. It's the catch-22 of supply and demand, most people don't do any demanding until there is a good supply (and hence a reasonable price), and most suppliers are hesitant to create a supply until they expect an impending demand, kind of a just-in-time delivery philosophy.

So until there is a argument for IPv6 that is more compelling to businesses than "it's better in the long run", most places will be slow to upgrade.

In May 2001, Cisco wrote off about $2.5 Billion of excess inventory, in essence, saying that they never expected to sell that inventory for anything near what it is valued at. More recently they have been getting a nice little boost to their fiscal bottom line by bringing in "excess inventory benefits", that is they are discovering that they actually have been able to sell some of the inventory that had previously been written off.

But since Cisco has already taken the financial hit for a vast majority of their excess dot-com hardware, I doubt if that is a main reason why they are not implementing IPv6. It probably has more to do with a lack of demand. It's the catch-22 of supply and demand, most people don't do any demanding until there is a good supply (and hence a reasonable price), and most suppliers are hesitant to create a supply until they expect an impending demand, kind of a just-in-time delivery philosophy.

So until there is a argument for IPv6 that is more compelling to businesses than "it's better in the long run", most places will be slow to upgrade.

a) Microsoft's budget for political lobbying during the 2000 election campaign was four times that of Enron,

b) During the antitrust trial from 1995 to 2000 political spending had increased from $16,000 to $6,100,000,

c) During the same period, M$ used the classic tactic of choking off air supply as they did with Netscape by increasing lobbyist retaining from one to almost all of them.

These lobbyists were assigned mundane work unrelated to M$'s interests to keep them unavailable. This is a pretty blatant harm to consumers; by retaining the lobbyists, the supply was cut off from M$ critics which made opposition to M$-friendly judicial and legislative action less effective. Justice is in danger of being tainted by the almighty buck.

I sincerely hope that is fresh in the judge's mind when she considers M$'s absurd argument of "constitutional issues".

What we really need for these articles isn't a 'blind justice' icon. It's more of a justice in a tight mini, fishnet stockings and high heels accepting a nice fat cash bribe from Borgified Bill. Recent slashdot postings referred to ZDnet which shows that Microsoft's contributions to the most recent elections made Enron's money look 'soft' indeed.

Lee

...Microsoft has bought and paid for their ability to avoid punishment. After years of staying out of the whole political fray and assuming they didn't need to play that game, Microsoft is getting down to business. If you thought they were bad when they didn't care, wait until you see what they can do with politicians in their pocket.

I'm the Bill you owe - Billingate

Google's biggest income source is the licensing of their search technology out as intranet solutions. Of late, there was a story about Google's new search-engine-in-box, a rack-mountable, scalable solution for companies looking to search-index all internal documents.

This is contrary to statements that have been made by Google executives and considering that they just launched their Google Search Appliance two weeks ago it highly unlikely that it is thier primary source of income.

Here's a link to the C|Net article which states that most of their revenue comes from ads

I believe a lot of people praise Apache for how secure it is (which is true [mostly, it now appears] ), how reliable it is (true too), and the ability to fix bugs yourself because you have the source. I guess not a lot of people whipped out the old source and fixed this one on their own, eh?

The funny points are how it doesn't affect PHP under IIS and that someone decided to comment, "It is not really easy to execute." Well, no kidding Sherlock....except you warezed a program that demonstrated the exploit. I guess executing a program is hard these days....

AMD has thrown its full weight behind Linux, according to "AMD Touts Linux Support for News Chips". Specifically, AMD supports efforts by SuSE to create updates of Linux for the x86-64.

Sun has taken a different approach of creating its own version of Linux for x86-64. This smells of hijacking (Linux).

Don't know about Lars but Carly has other fish to fry these days.

Does this mean that we can sue Apache? This article says that Apache and PHP have flaws. Come on guys, let's sue.

This is great!

You simply have no idea just how much I'm itching to try out WMP on my Linux box, especially after reading all of today's coverage, including this .

saw some more stories on this subject.

Tom's Hardware has a story about there visit to AMD and the demo they got. They even got to take pictures, but unfortunately were not allowed to reboot to view BIOS messages.

The Register has an article that covers the same basic turf as the c|net article mentioned at the top. maybe slightly more in depth.

and of course, everyone around here seems to love to loathe ZDnet these days.

in the pictures at tom's it looks like this thing has a pretty honkin' heat sink. i wonder how much the silicon-on-insulator process used to make these things reduces heat and power consumption.

The thought of what these beauties could do just makes me feel all warm inside. i hope they live up to my expectations.

The SSSCA, too, is a scam. It is the same scam, sold with the same line. The astounding thing is that people are falling for it again. What is wrong with these people?

It's like watching somebody play three card monty over and over, convinced that they can find the queen. The question is, who is the sucker, the congressman or the voter?

This makes me ill.

So there! (Yes, I'm aware the URL is weird, but it works)

Signed JerryMeander
5 years w/o an account

link

Webserver machines, Linux being second with 29% share: link

Domains hosted: Linux being number one with 35%/30%: link

Can you post any statistic where Linux is not second on servers?

Check out the article over at zdnet. It has a bit more content that the Rueters article...

Check out the article over at zdnet. It has a bit more content that the Rueters article...

...when Dell's plain Intel SMP box could run 2000 copies of Linux? Check this - http://news.com.com/2100-1001-843544.html.
It looks much more clever and efficient than VMware virtual machines, even if it "limits" you to one OS - Linux.

A couple of years ago there was a guy who had a painting he found in his garage for sale. Rumor started getting around that it might be a Richard Diebenkorn painting, and hence potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course, not only did the painting turn out not to be authentic, but the messages starting the rumor were planted by the seller, as were over half of the bids that drove the painting up to about $90,000 on speculation. The seller and his sidekick later pleaded guilty to fraud. It was subtle, though; the seller never claimed that the painting was authentic, they just planted the rumor externally.

There's an article here on cnet news that explains the whole thing. They don't want you to go after the much more powerful and robust linux system that IBM has and go for their version of Linux for smaller systems. The alarming thing is that they are producing their OWN version of Linux, not using Redhat or another company. And also IBM I understand is doing this too. This can't be a good thing for linux at all. Proprietary versions of linux? Or perhaps some people think it'd be okay if its just branded, I just don't think its a good idea at all.
I think they want to utilize the benefits of linux however they do not want to allow Linux to creep into the larger servers where Sun dominates. And IBM which has AIX 5L (AIX w/linux compatibility) and now a special Linux for the mainframe it directly challenges their most valuable property, solaris which is valuable because all that software is made for it which makes people buy sun systems.
You find the program you need to run and then look at the systems running it, and unless you're already running AIX or HP-UX your first choice is probably Sun (and sun is usually always a choice). Now Linux comes in, becomes this pervasive server software and Solaris doesn't really look as hot as it did anymore.

I submitted this story twice only to get it rejected. Over at News.com there's an article about Walmart stepping out ahead and offering PC's WITHOUT an OS! This will not only drop the cost of the PC but will alert consumers that yes, they ARE paying for the OS and yes, it DOES matter that linux is free.

'Cept I'm at the Karma Cap already, so KWh0ring won't do me a spot of good.

I posted this because I was unsure of the host's bandwidth capabilities and was under the impression that the story was new enough for Google not to have a cache of it.

As a side note, there's also a story on the settlement over at C|Net News.com.

Disclaimer: I do not work at, nor own, Wal-Mart stock. I just find this fascinating.

Each improvement in the Pentium processor is another nail in the coffin of the SPARC processor. A Pentium-based notebook running Linux costs $1500. An equivalent SPARC-based notebook costs $5000. Yes. Some dumb schmuck is selling a SPARC-based notebook. Read " PC maker ships Sun-based workstation"

When Sun Microsystems announced that it would Intel/AMD-based servers running Linux, Sun basically declared that the SPARC processor would be discontinued within 10 years.

Actually, as this article on ZDnet shows, the EU has gone a long way in making software more open. This is of course only a proposal but if any of it passes, the EU will be MUCH more liberal than the US.

Michael

Wouldn't it be great if it were true that no one took Be up on the offer. As I recall fujitsu did, and actually had the computers almost ready to ship setup in a dual boot configuration, but then Microsoft exercised it's muscle and said that the terms surrounding their license prohibited you from shipping a dual-boot system. The bootloader was disabled and customers got machines with a beos partition, just no way to boot to it.

Too bad nobody seems to be taking any open source based options for cell phones...

Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats)

You sure about this? You would be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't...)at the amount of underage sexual activity, including child porn, easily flowing on Yahoo Chat. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of spam occurred on Yahoo's servers. Yahoo seems to have little, if any, direct moderation of their online chats and, subsequently, probably has little monitoring going on.

Now don't get me wrong - 64-bit filesystems are great, and necessary - being limited to 2GB or 4GB files is terrible. But no 64-bit CPU is necessary for that kind of thing, the filesystem just has to be written as 64-bit (which is easier said than done, and could easily sacrifice backwards-compatibility with various API's, but I digress...).

That being said - Intel might very well be moving down the wrong path - the Itanium is a huge, expensive, hot, completely new chip. Even Intel is hedging its bets on whether or not Itanium will take off - and AMD is poised to eat Intel's lunch with their new Hammer design.

Who knows, perhaps all CPU's from now on will be compatible with x86 IA32, and innovation will be in the various processing units that sit behind the instruction-set decoder. Take a look at AMD or Transmeta for examples of that, already.

I'm pretty sure HP ships Mandrake, not Red Hat:

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-826283.html

"HP to support Mandrake Linux on desktops
By Matthew Broersma
ZDNet (UK)
January 30, 2002, 11:00 AM PT

France's MandrakeSoft has teamed up with Hewlett-Packard in the open source camp's latest foray into the desktop PC market. The agreement, announced on Tuesday ahead of the LinuxWorld Expo, will see HP build and promote Mandrake Linux-based desktop PCs for European and North American businesses.

Linux is based on an open source license that prevents any one company from owning the software, and competes against Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system, which is kept under tight proprietary control. So far, however, Linux has mainly succeeded in the server market, where ease-of-use is less important than reliability and performance.

The HP deal aims to address some of the problems that have prevented desktop users from adopting Linux, such as the lack of technical support.

Mandrake Linux will be certified on all of HP's business PCs, and will be offered in a premium package that includes telephone, on-site and remote support. MandrakeSoft is to provide technical support for HP's teams, according to the companies. The PCs will also be available without support.

"This alliance is a testament to HP's strong commitment in Linux market," said Eric Rueda, software marketing manager of HP Business Desktops division, in a statement.

Other companies have tried selling Linux on desktops in the past. Dell stopped offering Red Hat Linux on its desktop and notebook PCs last autumn, citing lack of demand, but says there is more potential for the software on servers and workstations."

Guess I can retire this topic icon ;)

I know you're kidding, but Corel is still doing interesting things in the Unix community that the Slashdot crowd will probably be very interested in, particularly the port of .NET to FreeBSD, which is a very big deal. Don't write Corel off just yet. ;)

DISCLAIMER: I work for Corel, but I do not speak on their behalf. My opinions are my own.

Thanks to the rather zealous readership you've attracted, I think we all have a good idea of who you're marrying, and what she looks like. Truly a beautiful woman, and a sharp mind, too. Congratulations are definitely in order!

You certainly had to expect this would generate a lot of traffic here, but who imagined the reaction from the press?!? I was amazed to see Wired cover it... and The Register, and MSNBC (posting the C-Net story), etc! Geez Rob, you're a public icon!

Now that things have settled a bit and your proposal "story" has risen to be well-seated in the Hall of Fame (currently #5, and close to being #4!)... allow me to review the coverage your proposal generated:

• Cupid's Bull's-Eye on Nerd Site
  The co-founder of the popular Slashdot website proposes to his girlfriend on Valentine's Day. One reader wonders if the marriage would be an open-source arrangement. By Michelle Delio.
• Slashdot editor proposes on front page
  "Valentine's Day special" 14 February 2002 4:22pm
• News for Nerds: Will you marry me? (Cnet) or the same thing on MSNBC
• Geek pops the question online (ZDnet)
• A Google search on "Kathleen Fent" turns up 77 hits -- The first two being your proposal and its' place in the Hall of Fame, and nearly all of the rest referring to your proposal!

Thanks to the rather zealous readership you've attracted, I think we all have a good idea of who you're marrying, and what she looks like. Truly a beautiful woman, and a sharp mind, too. Congratulations are definitely in order!

You certainly had to expect this would generate a lot of traffic here, but who imagined the reaction from the press?!? I was amazed to see Wired cover it... and The Register, and MSNBC (posting the C-Net story), etc! Geez Rob, you're a public icon!

Now that things have settled a bit and your proposal "story" has risen to be well-seated in the Hall of Fame (currently #5, and close to being #4!)... allow me to review the coverage your proposal generated:

• Cupid's Bull's-Eye on Nerd Site
  The co-founder of the popular Slashdot website proposes to his girlfriend on Valentine's Day. One reader wonders if the marriage would be an open-source arrangement. By Michelle Delio.
• Slashdot editor proposes on front page
  "Valentine's Day special" 14 February 2002 4:22pm
• News for Nerds: Will you marry me? (Cnet) or the same thing on MSNBC
• Geek pops the question online (ZDnet)
• A Google search on "Kathleen Fent" turns up 77 hits -- The first two being your proposal and its' place in the Hall of Fame, and nearly all of the rest referring to your proposal!

Of course they're related. What do you expect?

http://news.com.com/2100-1033-251314.html?legacy=c net

To add a bit more fuel to the fire, anybody who actually bothered to read the essay in Crypto-Gram would have noticed that not only did Bruce link to the original on Security Focus, he also linked to a couple of comments in the Slashdot thread. Should I even bother mentioning that the Trustworthy Computing essay was originally published on News.com on January 18?

Microsoft itself would now supposedly disagree with that point. As part of their new security effort, they are reviewing all parts of their code, including default configurations.

As part of the security initiative, every manager has to justify not only the group's programming decisions, but how the software is configured as a component of Windows.

Program managers are being asked, "Are 90 percent of your users using this feature? If not, then you better have a good reason for enabling that feature by default," Howard said.

The goal is to make an everyday user's computer secure by default, he said. "Not everyone needs IIS (Microsoft's Web server) by default," he said. "Not everyone uses Index Server by default. So today, those features are turned off by default."

Quoted from this article.

How is Apple helping me again?

Find the parallels between this (the BT case) and this patent lawsuit that SightSound is bringing against CDNow but potentally all music/video sellers. (SightSound claims they own the common methods of selling music and video over the Internet, and the judge has allowed the case to go to trial).