Slashdot Mirror

Congratulations!!! Making internet history . Not bad!

Must be a slow news day this is a story on news.com

Read the ZDNET article:
"We've attempted to resolve this with Sun for about three years, but the discussions with Sun have not led to a suitable licensing agreement," Kodak spokesman Anthony Sanzio said.

It looks more like Kodak is suing them because they couldn't work it out in another way.
Whether the patents are valid or not is a different issue...

The notion that dot-org means "non-profit" was abandoned several years ago, though it continues to be honored by the majority. Back when Slashdot.org was sold for a bunch of money to Andover.net (see http://news.com.com/2100-1001-227793.html), I was surprised that anyone would take the heat for acquiring a business that "appeared" to be a non-profit. Slashdot.org is now owned by OSDN.com (which is owned by VA Software Corporation). It is NOT a non-profit company, and doesn't pretend to be a non-profit company.

I haven't seen this mentioned here yet, but they actually released the dev stuff for .NET. Article here

Stephen King did have an ebook, "Riding the Bullet".

It got cracked and pirated, though. Turns out the security wasn't all that hot.

He may or may not be dead, also. I'm sure the trolls know.

Why don't y'all get in a huff when the money is going the other way around? It can't be morally offensive for MS to do it, and then just fine for the anybody else.

Why don't y'all get in a huff when the money is going the other way around? It can't be morally offensive for MS to do it, and then just fine for the anybody else.

The software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee (PAC) increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000, according to Edward Roeder, a self-styled expert on efforts to influence the U.S. government, and founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted to investigating money in politics.

Roeder's report was submitted to Judge Kollar-Kotelly at the end of January. Microsoft has been unable to comment.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly heard that total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions, compared to $1.55 million by Enron and its executives for the same period. Soft money is the term generally given to unregulated corporate and individual contributions that cannot go directly to candidates, but which typically goes to political parties.

The evidence came from a review commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Roeder said that although the research was commissioned by the CCIA--a known critic of Microsoft--the evidence was based on the "extraordinary public record of Microsoft's political activities during the timeframe of this trial."

Roeder said that his review of the available documents has led him to conclude that over the past five years, Microsoft has engaged in political influence peddling "in many ways unprecedented in modern political history."

The report was delivered in response to the deal unexpectedly reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice last year after Microsoft had been found guilty of violating antitrust laws.

"Microsoft's campaign contributions significantly surpassed those of Enron," said Roeder in his report. "It appears Microsoft may have successfully influenced the administration's antitrust policy, with major implications for legal antitrust pecedent." Microsoft insists it did not participate in any "backroom" deals.

Nevertheless, Roeder recommended that the court "undertake an immediate review of Microsoft's lobbying activities surrounding this settlement, with particular attention to meetings with the Justice Department of the White House by Microsoft or its agents."

What makes Microsoft's lobbying throughout the trial so unique is not necessarily the size of political contributions but the scope of its efforts and the speed at which Microsoft went from having almost no political presence in Washington to having one of the "largest and most sophisticated political operations."

In 1995, the company had just a single lobbyist based in Chevy Chase, Maryland; today, it has one of the largest PACs in U.S. corporate history, said Roeder. Microsoft has leapt to the top of the corporate contributor list in soft money contributions.

The size and speed of this leap was staggering. In the seven days preceding Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling against Microsoft, said Roeder, the company donated more soft money to the national political parties than it gave to federal candidates and political parties in the seven years spanning 1989 to 1996. And during the 1999-2000 election cycle, Microsoft and its executives accounted for some $2,298,551 in soft money contributions. Enron, by comparison, donated $1,546,055 during the same period.

Microsoft's direct lobbying has also grown out of all proportion, so that it now retains more lobbyists than the handful of companies with more than 300,000 employees. Microsoft has just 30,000 employees. Part of the reasoning for extensive use of retainers, says Roeder, citing a Business Week article, is to "suck all the oxygen out". In Washington State, Microsoft has hired many law firms with antitrust expertise to work in unrelated areas.

The strategy was extended to other key states, with the dual benefits of starving the opposition of experienced lobbyists, and achieving political results that have benefited the company's case.

In South Carolina, one of the states originally participating in the antitrust suit, Microsoft contributed $25,000 to attorney general Charles Condon shortly before his re-election in 1998. According to the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party this was the largest unsolicited donation ever received. Three weeks after Condon won the election, South Carolina withdrew from the antitrust case.

The analysis of donations by political party shows some surprising results. While Microsoft donations favored Republicans (who got 72 percent of the money from 1995 to 1998), its employees were more inclined to support the Democrats. Democratic PACs received $222,100 from the company's employees, compared to the $42,875 for Republican PACs.

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It's difficult to be impartial

Both sides now

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The software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee (PAC) increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000, according to Edward Roeder, a self-styled expert on efforts to influence the U.S. government, and founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted to investigating money in politics.

Roeder's report was submitted to Judge Kollar-Kotelly at the end of January. Microsoft has been unable to comment.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly heard that total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions, compared to $1.55 million by Enron and its executives for the same period. Soft money is the term generally given to unregulated corporate and individual contributions that cannot go directly to candidates, but which typically goes to political parties.

The evidence came from a review commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Roeder said that although the research was commissioned by the CCIA--a known critic of Microsoft--the evidence was based on the "extraordinary public record of Microsoft's political activities during the timeframe of this trial."

Roeder said that his review of the available documents has led him to conclude that over the past five years, Microsoft has engaged in political influence peddling "in many ways unprecedented in modern political history."

The report was delivered in response to the deal unexpectedly reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice last year after Microsoft had been found guilty of violating antitrust laws.

"Microsoft's campaign contributions significantly surpassed those of Enron," said Roeder in his report. "It appears Microsoft may have successfully influenced the administration's antitrust policy, with major implications for legal antitrust pecedent." Microsoft insists it did not participate in any "backroom" deals.

Nevertheless, Roeder recommended that the court "undertake an immediate review of Microsoft's lobbying activities surrounding this settlement, with particular attention to meetings with the Justice Department of the White House by Microsoft or its agents."

What makes Microsoft's lobbying throughout the trial so unique is not necessarily the size of political contributions but the scope of its efforts and the speed at which Microsoft went from having almost no political presence in Washington to having one of the "largest and most sophisticated political operations."

In 1995, the company had just a single lobbyist based in Chevy Chase, Maryland; today, it has one of the largest PACs in U.S. corporate history, said Roeder. Microsoft has leapt to the top of the corporate contributor list in soft money contributions.

The size and speed of this leap was staggering. In the seven days preceding Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling against Microsoft, said Roeder, the company donated more soft money to the national political parties than it gave to federal candidates and political parties in the seven years spanning 1989 to 1996. And during the 1999-2000 election cycle, Microsoft and its executives accounted for some $2,298,551 in soft money contributions. Enron, by comparison, donated $1,546,055 during the same period.

Microsoft's direct lobbying has also grown out of all proportion, so that it now retains more lobbyists than the handful of companies with more than 300,000 employees. Microsoft has just 30,000 employees. Part of the reasoning for extensive use of retainers, says Roeder, citing a Business Week article, is to "suck all the oxygen out". In Washington State, Microsoft has hired many law firms with antitrust expertise to work in unrelated areas.

The strategy was extended to other key states, with the dual benefits of starving the opposition of experienced lobbyists, and achieving political results that have benefited the company's case.

In South Carolina, one of the states originally participating in the antitrust suit, Microsoft contributed $25,000 to attorney general Charles Condon shortly before his re-election in 1998. According to the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party this was the largest unsolicited donation ever received. Three weeks after Condon won the election, South Carolina withdrew from the antitrust case.

The analysis of donations by political party shows some surprising results. While Microsoft donations favored Republicans (who got 72 percent of the money from 1995 to 1998), its employees were more inclined to support the Democrats. Democratic PACs received $222,100 from the company's employees, compared to the $42,875 for Republican PACs.

Letters

It's difficult to be impartial

Both sides now

Would you like to comment on this story? Send us a note and we'll publish the best.

Apple Press release

MPEG-4 licensing plan

Plan for fees

CNET's had a nice, objective article online since early this afternoon.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-835602.html

To mitigate this vulnerability OULU (the guys that found this a year ago) has some good links at http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/ouspg/protos/testin g/c06/snmpv1/

Securing SNMP on Solaris
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/howto/2000-10-04/
Securing SNMP in Windows
http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/incident/SNMP.htm
Securing your Cisco Router when using SNMP
http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/netdevices/router.h tm
SNMP - simple management tool for hackers?
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/1004sec1.h tml
Windows 2000, SNMP and Security
http://www.securityfocus.com/focus/microsoft/2k/sn mp.html

Personally, this is major droll material for me. I hope this technology comes to the consumer level by the time i'm ready to dish out money for another digital...
According to this article it says the first camera with this new sensor will be Sigma's SD9 SLR digital camera. No details on when, how much, what features. Anyone have more info on when this will be available? domo

Cameras have been sensing depth with infra-red for years. It's called auto-focus. All this camera has added is recording that data along with the rgb. There is a nifty little method of scanning film location for later 3D reconstruction using Lidar that has already been used in films for some time. Lidar is often also implemented for geographical surveys by folks such as NASA. The resolution of the ZCAM sounds very limited and will not be useful for truly realistic keying. Possibly guy-in-front-of-weathermap applications, but it doesn't look like it can handle fine hair, water, or other transparencies that most keying software can today. If you don't want to deal with a green/blue screen, there's also the option of a "difference key" that compares the shot without anyone in it to the shot when your person walks in. Some systems can now do real time insertions this way. The ZCAM still won't give convincing film quality compositing results. With the advances in photogrammetry and it's applications in movies, I don't think that ZCAM has much use potential

ZDNet also has the story.

As for personal reaction, I just wonder whether the option to search emails will be available to everyone, or just a select few. In either case, I don't think I like it very much.

It's a little more indepth than the India times article.

Well, you talk abou birds, but what about rain?
Water acts like a lens and would deform the signal if you ask me.
I still thing you have a more secure connection is you use fiber.
Fiber is harder to tab into. If you use a direct beam from one building to another you can tab into it by just using a few prisms.
Another problem I see is that buildings are moving with the wind. So you would loose connection in storms etc.
If you ask me you would be better off with a RFC-1149 connection between two buildings ;)

I didn't. These are the numbers from official submissions to the spec organization. (If they can't bother to submit results then they don't count.) I took the machine from with the HIGHEST Int performance - as I said in my post. The FP is the result for the same machine - as I said in my post.
There is a >700 SpecFP machine claimed by Dell but there is no corresponding SpecInt submission. I think Intel claimed nearly 800 Spec2000FP for the Itanium but no one else has been able to re-create those results. That's why non-submitted results don't count.

Don't write off an entire architecture because you didn't like how the experimental implementation came out.

But it wasn't supposed to be a proof of concept chip. It was supposed to be the future of computing.

An exec actually admitted this in 2000.

Which is at least 3 years after they knew it. Intel instead spread FUD around while refusing to talk performance numbers.

From Intel Press Release:
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 4, 1999 - Intel Corporation today announced it has selected Itanium(TM) as the new brand name for the first product in its IA-64 family of processors, formerly code-named Merced. The Itanium brand extends Intel's reach into the highest level of computing enabling powerful servers and high-performance workstations which will address the increasing demands that the Internet economy places on e-Businesses. "The Intel Itanium processor represents a new level of processor capability that will be the driving force for the Internet economy,"

Ummmm... okay. I see, by "highest level of computing" and "new level of processor capability" they meant "proof-of-concept place-holder chip". It's all clear to me now...
The full text is here on Intel's site since you seem to think I make this stuff up.

Now McKinley is supposed to be the next, big thing.

From an article about McKinley previously on /.
"Applications will be about one and a half to two times faster than what you get on a (current) Itanium," said John Crawford, an Intel fellow in the enterprise platforms group.

The additional bus and processor speed and 3 megs of on-chip on speed cache should deliver nearly a 50% boost all by itself. If the "new" features of the McKinley don't add much more beyond that then where are they going?

Forgive me if I appear skeptical...

=tkk

night_flyer noted an article running @ ZD talking about how 2001 was a record year for video games with doing 9.4B and PCs getting almost to 6B. Mentions Grand Theft Auto 3's huge sales, as well as The Sims. Also the X-Box, and Game Boy Advanced contributing to the big numbers.

night_flyer noted an article on ZDNet that claims 2001 was a record year for video games, with the industry topping US$9.4B, and the PC game market approaching US$6B. The article mentions Grand Theft Auto 3's huge sales, as well as those of The Sims. The X-Box and Game Boy Advance both contributed to the big numbers.

Studios race to choke DVD copying

Who cares. There's a reason Divx died.

CNET had an interesting article about the everquest economy a couple weeks back.

"Based on a review of thousands of completed auctions for "EverQuest" items and in-game currency, Castronova concluded that players earn an average wage of $3.42 for every hour they play the game and collectively produce annual gross "exports" of more than $5 million.

And if the "EverQuest" universe of Norrath were a country, its per-capita gross national product would be $2,266--comparable to the 77th richest country on Earth and ranking it between Russia and Bulgaria. Platinum pieces, the in-game currency known as pp, end up with an exchange rate of about a penny per pp, making "EverQuest" currency more valuable than the Japanese yen and the Spanish peseta. "

What is it that Microsoft has said/done to create this impression?

As I recall there was an article on news.com that quoted the President of ECMA as saying there were not and could not be licensing fees for ECMA standards, while Microsoft seemed to be saying there were elsewhere in the article. I couldn't find that exact article, but this one seems to cover most of the issues. Note that WinForms is absolutely not part of the ECMA standard. Also note that in this article Microsoft says clearly that there may be license issues between their software (even the ECMA standard) and Free Software licenses.

One especially pertinent snippet from the article:

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

I hope de Icaza has looked over the "ECMA licensing terms" very, very carefully. They don't cover the GUI functionality regardless.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

It actually has a bit more than the posting or the Yahoo article states. According to the IBM page and News.com, it has a Transmeta processor (for low power usage), an 8mb graphics chip, and "includes IBM's handwriting-recognition software and a soft keyboard, allowing users to input data with a pen or type it in on the screen."

According to news.com that's exactly what it is...

Actually it was Ars Technica sourcing News.com: IBM's Chameleon Computer

picture: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/en/2002/02/0205met apad.jpg

article: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-830173.html

picture: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/en/2002/02/0205met apad.jpg

article: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-830173.html

here is the right link. Sorry about that.

news.com has a story about this as well. There's says a little more about why it's different than a laptop. It's meant to convert from a laptop to a handheld to a desktop at will.

Microsoft has a computer pad called the Mira, its not really a PC, but uses winxp's built in terminal services to allow you to view video/audio and surf the web. Heres a link for the Mira

I think the kids could use a Aqua as a seperate computer, they could use it for IM, Email, Web, maybe attach a keyboard or some kind of docking station when they need to use it for more indepth work. If the prices where right, and could beat a 300-400 dollar computer system from pricewatch then I could see myself buying it. Unless its a geek impluse buy for myself. :)

Even thou people are working on portable hardware, the remote desktop control is either TightVNC or MS Remote Desktop. And M$ Remote desktop is much quicker, plays video, audio and games over a lan network. Not knocking tightvnc, I use it on my unix and solaris boxes. Good thing the Aquapad runs WinXP, that will secure some good sales in the non-linux markets.

-
If I had to sum up in one word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act. - Lee Iacocca

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to resell old software,but Microsoft cerainly has.

AOL and Gateway tried this but as far as I know it never went anywhere thanks to lousy marketing. Of course, the since-denied rumors that AOL/TW wants to buy RHAT might be an indication that they are still considering an AOL-on-linux play. I bet everyone's favorite media behemoth could wring some fancy concessions out of /.'s pet monopolist by threatening to mail out 10M CDs with linux as the foundation of a dedicated internet-appliance OS.

And yeah, I hate to keep that damn useless partition around, but it's a royal PITA to repartition a laptop harddrive, and it is handy to have a native win32 installation so I can run Mathematica under Wine on the rare occasion I need it. Someday I may spring for a UNIX version, but that costs money.

I'm sorry, but your post just isn't right. You can see NPD Techworld's numbers here (news.com.com/2100-1040-827272.html), which show that U.S. handheld sales reached 4.9 million units in 2001, which amounts to a growth of 36% over the previous year. That kind of growth isn't indicative of the market having been oversaturated.

I am not a patent lawyer, but what about Xerox's patent on the Graffiti technology? With all due respect to Palm for making a popular product, Xerox patented the technology that makes them the most popular. Plus, Palm sales are down 44%, and people are wanting to get the flashier HP PDA's these days. I remain skeptical over how much this can improve. Palms are pretty good for the amount of money they are (although Visors are better), but they really cannot compare to the HP-Jordana series and the Compaq iPaq, not to mention all these Linux PDAs that are coming out.

I know this have been talked a lot (here), but I really don't see Bluetooth as feasible. I know all the big companies are planning or building bluetooth-enabled devices (from notebooks to PDAs to cell phones) but you really can't just beat 802.11b, for a myriad of reasons, mostly open standards. 802.11b is here, now, ready, reliable, open and spreading everywhere. I just couldn't help myself. =)

184 square mm die size (prior to Athlon 800)

102 square mm die size (Athlon 800) ... source

Note that this article also states that: Intel has also incorporated a substantial amount of redundant circuitry in the processor, Krewell said. Chipmakers often use redundant circuitry to boost yields. Sometimes, circuits come out scrambled on a finished chip. If the manufacturer has put in two sets of the same circuits, the chip will function properly because it can use the second set.

You could have a dual Pentium machine and not even know it :)

I guess this redundancy is why the chip has gone up 10% in size in the last couple of months ... (see this article) which quotes: One of the reasons for McKinley's bigger price tag, Krewell said, is that it will cover nearly 440 square millimeters in area--or more than twice that of the Pentium 4.

Now that you mention AMD. It has been roumoured last week all over the net that intel has a backup plan, an P4 with 64bit extenstions

os.opinion article
news.com

by the way, the amd hammer is expected to 105 mmm^2 on 130 nanometer (.13).

the current amd MP (palomino) has a die size of 129mm on .18.

the original P4 has a die size of 217mm and is now at 150 mm^2.(with a bigger cache)

Note that the original article does mention the 424 size is on .18 and the next generation is on .13. note that this can make a differce of a factor 2 (13^2/18^2= 0.52)

This is the funniest thing Bill Gates has EVER said.

I nominate this, instead:

"I don't see any big uptick in this year. Japan certainly won't be, and the U.S. won't be."

Lifted from Gates sees no economic recovery in 2002.

I think what you're looking for is (was) called the Audrey from Compaq. It did a lot of those things.

Unfortunately, no one bought one. Why it died is hard to say: it seems like no one has yet hit that magical balance between price and features. I wouldn't be about to spend $3000 for something to help make me grocery lists; then again, I wouldn't want to spend even $500 for something that helps me organize my calendar.

I've been watching this industry to, because I would really like somethign that would call PeaPod automatically when I run low--but so far, I do just as well with an iBook and an 802.11 card. Cost more than the Audrey, but a LOT less than this device--and I can play Unreal on it and learn to program in Objective C. So we're still waiting.

• Zdnet (weird link, I know)
• ThisIsLondon

Eventually the RIAA will be nothing more than a Googlewhack.

Additional articles related to this topic:

SecurityFocus home news: Will Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Sell?
Gates: Security is top priority - Tech News - CNET.com
Earthweb IT Management: Security Guard: Is Bill Gates Sincere About Security?

I'm not buying it, but then I can read C. Those who cannot read C can trust in Red Hat and SuSE to keep tabs on the kernel hackers, but Red Hat and SuSE probably do not wish to spend their marketing dollars attacking such a target, and they cannot spend as much as Microsoft can. Plus Linux vendors cannot claim the "ground-up" ;-) stance that Microsoft claims it is using to ensure trustworthiness (not security.)

Wired has an overview of LinuxWorld, talking about how it's all business and the joy is gone

Too bad it can't be both ways. Often times, as mass popularity increases (in this case business adoption), enjoyment level decreases. Probably because you now have people involved who don't see things even close to the same way you do.

By the way, E*Trade moves to Linux servers

For RedHat, MandrakeSoft, Lycoris (Redmond Linux), Xandros and any other distro leader out they're to get involved to make Linux a better place for the average user. It would be nice to be able to click on a ONE link to download a program/driver off the net and not have search though this list. I'm sorry but it's time for a change... It's hard for every day people install programs and It's a pain for developers to repackage there binaries over for each distro. If you have time people check out Fiorina:
Linux not a threat to Microsoft on cnet. You'll it under January 30, 2002 but there Fiorina talks about how we are fighting Microsoft, but she saying what I been trying to tell my friends all this time.

We need to build a better desktop and stop bitching about Microsoft. We need to put our time into something better besides bitching about Microsoft because the only way we can beat them is to build something cleaner, faster, easier and better then what they have now. So MandrakeSoft, Lycoris and Xandros you want the to be the king of the desktop well you better to start looking that the LSB 1.1 because you are not going to get anywhere with your just putting the newest KDE, GNOME and X11 on a CD and calling it Linux 8.x. I can tell you one thing I had a friend that switch back to Windows because it was as hell to install programs and to get his hardware configure. I was helping him maintain his system, but when I got busy with doing work on the weekends trying to help my friend out on this website I couldn't be their to help him with his system. The sad thing is I'm very happy to see that he switch back to Windows, hell I been using Linux for 2 1/2 years( no duel booting for 1 1/2 year ) and been thinking about it myself. I been paying for games/software and supporting the companies out there but it's not doing any good if you got some open source bigots are going to warez sites or newgrounds for close source software for Linux that's not GPL or FREE. Flame or mod me down if you like, I'm just saying what's on my mind. I'm a programmer for a CBT company and I love programming, but I got bills to pay. In the end it's all about money and what's the next big thing.

I'm not sure MS' investment was the reason Corel dumped Linux. As I see it, it's more likely that both were caused by the same factor: Corel was in bad shape.

Dumping Linux was all about Corel "focusing on key areas", meaning as a business, they couldn't justify continuing development on it. I doubt Microsoft gave two shits about Corel doing development on Linux. I mean, they wanted them to do .NET for Linux! Check the old press releases!

And if anyone is curious about the (former) Corel distribution, check out Xandros

by betting the world a million dollars.

ZDnet has a story about a contest with the Google search engine. 'The game starts by typing two words into Google's search bar, with the goal of obtaining a single result. The ultimate goal of a Googlewhacker: seeing the words "Results 1-1 of 1" appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.'

-Metrollica