Slashdot Mirror

prostoalex writes "Brad Silverberg, former chief of Microsoft Windows division, who left the company in 1999, is being interviewed by the Milestone Group, on Microsoft specifically, and the software venture capital world in general (Silverberg is currently working as managing partner for Ignition Partners). He provides an interesting viewpoint on Microsoft's understanding of open source: 'I don't think they have figured that out yet, I think that is clear. They are struggling with not so much open source, per se, but rather they are no longer the low price solution. In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below. Now for the first time the tables are turned and it's Microsoft that's being attacked from below by a lower price solution. Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices. Another aspect to that, which is an area I think Microsoft is also struggling with, which is when you are as successful and dominant as they are, how do you continue to foster that ecosystem? What really propelled Microsoft Windows success was an ecosystem that they created that allowed other people to benefit from your success. Actually your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success.'"

ffejie writes "C|NET News.com is reporting that Verizon has announced its pricing on Fiber-to-the-Premises - it 'will cost $35 a month if purchased along with Verizon's local and long-distance telephone service', and more if bought on its own. The high speed internet service, dubbed Verizon Fios, brings speeds up to 30 Mbps to the home. FTTP could lead to a sweeping change, especially in the television industry. According to News.com: 'Verizon is considered the furthest along with its fiber plans. It reiterated on Monday its goal of reaching 1 million homes and offices by the end of the year...' It looks as if FTTP is coming to the masses."

to_kallon writes "Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has unleashed two new mobile microprocessors today. One processor belongs to the company's 64-bit Mobile Athlon64 line while the other one comes from the 32-bit Athlon XP-M product line. According to CNET News: 'Like other Athlon 64 chips, and Intel's Prescott, the new Athlon 64 3400+ will block many security threats automatically in conjunction with Windows XP Service Pack 2. The delayed SP2 is slated to come out in August. The Athlon 64 3400+ will also run a 64-bit version of Windows, due now at the end of the year.It runs at 2.2GHz and comes with 1MB of cache. Gamer-PC maker Alienware will insert the chip in a notebook later in the month. Meanwhile, the Athlon XP-M 2200+ comes from the company's older line of chips. It runs at 1.6GHz and is built around an older processor core and comes with a 512KB cache. Averatec, a small computer manufacturer, has put the chip into a notebook that can convert into a tablet PC, marking the first time AMD's chips have been used in a tablet'."

An anonymous reader writes "According to an official press release hosted over at Yahoo, Microsoft and Lindows have settled their trademark case, and have announced: 'Over the next few months Lindows will cease using the term Lindows and transition to Linspire globally as our company name and primary identifier for our operating system product.' Although it's claimed: 'Terms of the settlement are confidential', ZDNet has an article filling in more details, including the fact: 'Microsoft will pay upstart Linux seller Lindows $20 million... [so that Lindows] will give up the Lindows name and assign related Web domains to Microsoft.'" We've previously covered the Microsoft and Lindows conflict in some detail.

87C751 writes "C|Net is carrying a very FUDdy story on the downside of VoIP telephony. Alongside the reasonable point of 911 dialing being unavailable during service and power outages, the writeup mentions broadband over power lines as a possible solution to the power failure problem. (talk about your cognitive dissonance!) It also notes that VoIP customers may not be listed in the local phone book, causing problems with "major fast food companies" (do they mean pizza deliveries?), and that Tivo requires a POTS line for initial setup (which sounds like Tivo's problem, not VoIP's)."

87C751 writes "C|Net is carrying a very FUDdy story on the downside of VoIP telephony. Alongside the reasonable point of 911 dialing being unavailable during service and power outages, the writeup mentions broadband over power lines as a possible solution to the power failure problem. (talk about your cognitive dissonance!) It also notes that VoIP customers may not be listed in the local phone book, causing problems with "major fast food companies" (do they mean pizza deliveries?), and that Tivo requires a POTS line for initial setup (which sounds like Tivo's problem, not VoIP's)."

sempf writes "The Liberty Alliance, a Sun-backed open-specification alternative to the Microsoft platform's Passport system, has added two very powerful members, Oracle and Intel. Now over 150 members, one wonders at the future of a world where we have two single sign-on systems. With the three big IM platforms joining forces, is the identity standard of the world going to be Microsoft, or Sun? Is this going to be the next Browser War?"

Dinglenuts writes "ICANN has just released what I'm sure is a completely neutral and unbiased report, condemning Verisign's Sitefinder service for running afoul of 'community standards and caus[ing] harm to individual users and enterprises.' Seeing as how ICANN is currently being sued by Verisign for making them take down Sitefinder, this opinion can be considered less than revolutionary."

prostoalex writes "CacheLogic attempted to measure the peer-to-peer network traffic by installing their network monitoring tools in data centers of large ISPs. The results are in, and Bram Cohen's BitTorrent overtook Kazaa's FastTrack network. BitTorrent traffic amounted to 53% of all peer-to-peer traffic, according to CacheLogic. It's worth noting, though, that Kazaa traffic is highly seasonal, as a lot of high-schoolers and college students are simply on vacation this time of year."

oostevo writes "CNET has reported that Japanese schoolchildren in the city of Osaka will be tagged with RFID tags. Apparently this is in addition to the trial program in Tabe that The Register reported earlier, where parents can track their children on their way to school."

Rinisari writes "DesignTechnica, among some others , explains that Microsoft has once again delayed its release of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, though only until August. Microsoft has declined to comment on the reason for the delay. Windows Update v5, however, is online and operational (and works with Service Pack 1!), although not officially so. I know many smaller education institutions are chomping at the bit with the looming release, as they are worried about compatibility with some of the new features in Service Pack 2."

Mark Handley writes "XORP is the eXtensible Open Router Platform - an open-source router software stack for FreeBSD and Linux. It's designed from scratch to be extensible, so you can write your own router applications that play nicely with the existing routing protocols. We just released XORP 1.0! There's also a Live CD if you want to try it out without reinstalling your machine. More details in this CNET article."

yootje writes "ZDNet is running an article about ARM, a chip-maker who controls more than 80% of the cell phone market and 40% of the digital camera market. ARM shipped 780,000,000 processors last year. ZDNet finds it strange that no one seems to have anything against this company. And maybe it is strange: according to the article many would say ARM is a monopolist, but you never hear anyone say 'ARM sucks!'. But then again, why would they?"

I_am_Rambi writes "According to an article on News.com.com, ICANN is having to rework their budget. 'ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., is facing a tight deadline to revise its record $15.8 million budget to placate a growing number of rebellious registrars united in opposition to a new fee structure....Fearful that the combined fees could top $19,000 and put them out of business, 75 smaller registrars have banded together to protest the budget.'"

L1TH10N writes "CNET News is reporting that software manufacturers have doubled their losses to $29 billion dollars, according to a BSA survey, which is blaming P2P networks for their misfortune. Seems a little too far-fetched to me - a P2P network would be the last place where I would download software, just too much chance that you are downloading a trojan onto your computer. Me thinks the Business Software Alliance are jumping on the bandwagon and vilifying P2P networks just as the Senate is taking aim at P2P providers."

yootje writes "ZDnet is running a story about a professor who made his own Cisco networking textbook, with 800 pages: "Computing instructor Matt Basham's suggestions for improving Cisco Systems' official training manuals fell on deaf ears for years. But he appears to have the networking giant's attention now." The professor made his book available for free on his website."

Mz6 writes "Dell unveiled an offer that grants music player customers a $100 rebate on a 15GB Digital Jukebox when they send in an Apple iPod music player to be recycled. 'We want to help drive further awareness of the products we have available and...the plusses we have to offer,' said Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn. Thus the iPod offer 'is a way to call out what separates us from the understood leader in this particular market.' Dell is also offering free shipping, free software, and 25 free songs through MusicMatch and brings the overall cost for the DJ down to $99." Helpful tip: If you have a dead iPod, do the rebate offer, and sell the Jukebox on eBay.

WindBourne writes "It appears to be that the U.S. house of Reps. want to classify Pentium 4 and above CPUs as weapons. This would mean that all these will require export licenses. Apparently, they have not heard about that the far east has developed large CPUs as well that are used in beowulf clusters." According to the article, this clause is unlikely to appear in the final version -- but stranger things have happened.

Dozix007 writes "Ars Technica reports that: 'After Comcast finally owned up to the massive amounts of spam coming from their network, they decided to identify spammers and zombie relays on their network and block port 25 traffic from those IP addresses. Comcast's efforts are starting to pay off. They announced the amount of spam from their network has dropped 35 percent since they began port blocking and traffic estimates from SenderBase seem to confirm the claims. Spam coming from Comcast subscribers who were formerly on AT&T networks also seems to have decreased'."

briant97 asks: "Microsoft is sitting back making all this money by charging for desktop and server operating systems. If you go for a server, they also add additional charges through client access licenses. Well, now that they've charged you all this money they leave their software open to viruses and exploits beyond belief, which will cost your company even more money. When will it stop? When will Microsoft become liable for their actions? I mean they are making billions while costing other companies billions. Ford, Chevy, and all other car manufactures get held liable if they make a defective product, why not Microsoft?" One can argue that you sign away your right to seek damages from Microsoft, by agreeing to the EULA, however there is still this issue as to the strength of a EULA since they've never been tested in court. How do you feel about this subject? Should software owners be allowed to "sign" away their basic rights via click-thru licensing, or should software manufacturers be liable for the critical defects that show up in their software?

hidden_fire asks: "I recently got a job as a Web Programmer at a web company that hosts many sites. The company had many badly firewalled Windows and Linux servers without any security patches, and a shared administrator password. I warned them that they needed to improve their security, but was ignored until a hacker kindly emailed them proof that their credit-card server was compromised, and the Sasser Worm took us offline. Now, I've been allowed to rebuild the compromised box and tighten our firewalling, but our other servers show many signs of possibly being compromised including unexplained outgoing traffic, a Linux kernel lockup, strange ports being open, and performance issues. I think we are possibly providing hosting for undetectable spammers but the boss thinks I'm paranoid, and says that I need to be working on paying work, not security. Has anybody else been in this situation? How can I detect these guys if their tools don't show in virus scans?"

lunarscape writes "ZDNet is running an article about the 'absentee' rate of PCs in various UK workplaces. According to the article, while the average employee was out sick seven days a year, the average PC was inoperable due to a virus nine days a year. The article also discusses junk e-mail's impact on productivity, with one business reporting that 99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam."

uncadonna writes "ZDNet is reporting that corporate web servers are infecting visitors' PCs. The combination of two unpatched IE security holes and hacked corporate websites is apparently distributing malware via several high-credibility sites. ZDNet says users have 'few options' other than alternative browsers or platforms." Update: 06/25 14:50 GMT by J : A reader points out Microsoft's What You Should Know page. Here's the short version for avoiding this Critical severity attack: you must install add-on software, and change multiple settings in multiple programs, thus causing "some Web sites to work improperly." By changing more settings, you can regain functionality for a particular site if "you trust that it is safe to use," which you have no way of knowing. Or try Firefox. Update: 06/25 19:30 GMT by J : Reuters reports the attack installs a keysniffer which can steal credit card numbers, passwords, and so on. The story offers safety tips, but fails to mention that, after patching the hole, many users will be infected without their knowledge. Shouldn't the "fix" include ceasing to type anything important into your computer until you purchase software which can detect and remove the Trojan? And will you be downloading that software with Mastercard or Visa?

Ruds writes "Best Buy will market a music service co-branded with Napster. Napster will give Best Buy stock valued up to $10 million, and they'll share marketing costs. From the story: 'The retail chain will feature Napster products in its brick-and-mortar stores and demonstrate the service through interactive kiosks throughout the nation. Napster will also support Best Buy's artist promotions.'"

Slashback this evening brings you a dose of updates and clarifications to previous stories about Yahoo!'s block on third-party messaging products, the Ruby-based Linux distro called Rubyx, and a few notes of caution on "unlimited" wireless internet service.

Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"

(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)

That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."

Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."

Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"

Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.

Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."

I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"

Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."

(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)

His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:

' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.

For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.

The future is free.'"

By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.

Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."

However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."

Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."

Slashback this evening brings you a dose of updates and clarifications to previous stories about Yahoo!'s block on third-party messaging products, the Ruby-based Linux distro called Rubyx, and a few notes of caution on "unlimited" wireless internet service.

Do they have the original Coneheads novels? seattlenerd writes "Largely lost in the TV coverage and media hype surrounding Friday's opening of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle is the fact that SFM celebrates books as much as TV/film SF, according to at least one review. Lots of first editions and several manuscripts are on display as the font of SF ideas. Also not covered much: There's no fantasy or horror. It's all science fiction, with no apologies. And ain't it cool that someone has acknowledged that there are actual writers behind some of the best science-fiction depictions? And that some of these writers are on SFM's advisory board?"

(Reader Comte offered a sneak peek at the museum last week.)

That's why it's called software. An anonymous reader writes "News.com.au is reporting an Australian company has released "The Worlds First" anti-virus software for mobile phones to fix the recent 'Caribe' virus and attempts to prevent future exploits."

Simon Crean of Mobile security company Jamanda wrote to say that his company is also has "just delivered a comprehensive fix to the widely publicised mobile virus Cabir and made this fix available to the public via its website at www.jamanda.com. As a gesture of goodwill and to maintain market confidence, concerned mobile users can currently download and install this fix at no charge."

Speaking of quick fixes, baudilus writes "The good folks at Cerulean Studios have already released a patch for Trillian, addressing the block attempt by Yahoo!. In half a day they've outdone Yahoo!'s latest scheme. How's that for support?"

Click two ISOs together, go /home. awalrond writes "Rubyx is a source-based Linux distro which achieved far too much interest a couple of months back after a mention on Slashdot. The author had to pull the plug due to the massive bandwidth costs of users downloading all the sources. Well now it's back, fully converted to use the new White Water bandwidth-sharing download utility. A line has been drawn in the sand, and this e-gauntlet thrown back at Slashdot.

Rubyx can be downloaded, built and installed with a single command to the small rubyx script (written in the ruby language) The same script handles all subsequent package management, and can even create a bootable ISO image of the distro."

I want to see the floating candy instead. Mike Taht writes "Bruce Damer, curator of the Digibarn, got some stunning pictures and movies of the historic SpaceShipOne launch event on Monday. Check it out!"

Also in civilian space news, Walkiry writes "The Russian Space Comittee has rejected Gregory Olsen, who was set to become the third space tourist, due to health reasons. This comes as a bit of a surprise, given that Olsen himself seemed quite condfident about his performance during the physical training and claimed that the hardest part was actually learning Russian. A real shame."

(The linked story is less clear about whether Olsen will eventually be able to make the trip; in it, a spokesman for Space Adventures denies that this rejection precludes Olsen's flight.)

His meaning is clear. Matheus Villela writes "Sergio Amadeu, Brazilian president of ITI, the third authority in Brazilian government being below only of Brazilian president and the minister of civil house and recently sued by Microsoft have released an official note to Brazilian and international press; here's a translation of what he said:

' In atention to the demands of national and international press, which seens solidary with Brazilian Govern at this moment with no precedences in the history, when a controller of an important public institucion of this country personally suffers the action from those interested in mantain a hegeomonic model, i come, after hear my federal lawyers and solicitors, say that the judicial provocation moved against my person is, by itself, so insultant and improper, that does not deserve reply.

For other hand, i would like to register that the act of contract software preserving the values freedom and opening is, for the Brazilian Government, a question of indissolvable form to the democratic principle.
And because a long and painful way was covered to arrive at the current period of stage of development of the democracy in this Country, we will not stop in our fight. If democracy is a value replect of ideology, is not never an insignificant value. If democracy is a dream, is a dream of which this Country never will wake up again.

The future is free.'"

By reading this far, you irrevocably agree to all the text that follows. emtboy9 writes "If you happen to live in the Raleigh-Durham area, Nextel is now officially offering wireless Broadband via its cell towers. With all the discussion about BPL as of late, its refreshing to finally see someone in my local area doing wireless which is a much better mechanism for broadband access.

Nextel's coverage area looks to be about the same as the trial area they had been running, but if this takes off, it shouldn't be too much longer until they are offering this coast to coast, especially with coming pressure from Cingular Wireless."

However, be choosy about wireless internet service, which can come with some hidden snags: HEXAN writes "With all the recent hubub over wireless access at broadband speeds, I decided to check out Verizon's plan. Although the price is a bit steep, it seemed ok until I got to the "Terms and Conditions."

Here's a sampling of what you cannot do with Verizon's "unlimited" Internet Access: "...cannot be used for" "uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games" [Ugg], "Web camera posts or broadcasts" [No camgirls], "telemetry applications" [No GPS], "substitute or backup for private lines" [No VOIP]. If I cannot use the service to play games, video conference, make calls, download movies or MP3's, what exactly am I paying for? More importantly, how badly will they impinge on my privacy to enforce this agreement? P.s. You cannot reach that special agreement until you go beyond the "front door". The gotcha clauses are not mentioned in the standard, consumer friendly, litigation-approved agreement."

NaDrew writes "ZDNet reports that Yahoo is once again blocking connections from Trillian (the alternative multi-protocol client). Yahoo tried this a few times last year and it looks like they're trying again. Cerulean, maker of Trillian, employs some excellent protocol engineers, who I have no doubt will quickly figure out Yahoo's latest obfuscation and release a patch. A quick fix discovered late this evening: Change your Y!IM host from scs.msg.yahoo.com to scs.yahoo.com, port 5050, and it should work. This is on Trillian 0.74H, not Pro."

BobPaul writes "Following behind Yahoo Mail's recent upgrade to 100MB of free storage, and trailing behind GMail's 1GB (last mentioned here), ZDNet reports that Hotmail will soon boost email storage as well. 'The upgrade will increase Hotmail's free e-mail storage limits from 2 megabytes to 250MB and its paid e-mail service, which costs $19.95 a year, from 10MB to 2 gigabytes. The changes will begin in early July.' Another interesting tidbit from the article: 'Ask Jeeves also plans to grant its e-mail subscribers more storage room... According to an e-mail sent to iWon users, Ask Jeeves plans to give each of the sites' e-mail subscribers 125MB of free storage.'"

Stephen Shankland writes "Comdex is canceled -- at least for 2004. The once-imposing tech event lost out to trade shows for specialized niches and consumer electronics, but the Comdex organizers want to bring it back in 2005, according to an executive quoted in our story at CNET News.com."

Mz6 writes "Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus. Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices. In its filing, Microsoft cites the proliferation of wearable electronic devices, such as wristwatches, pagers, PDAs (worn on people's belts) and small displays that can now be mounted on headgear. "As a result of carrying multiple portable electronic devices, there is often a significant amount of redundancy in terms of input/output devices included in the portable devices used by a single person," says the filing. "For example, a watch, pager, PDA and radio may all include a speaker." To reduce the redundancy of input/output devices, Microsoft's patent proposes a personal area network that allows a single data input or output device to be used by multiple portable devices." (What about DoCoMo's research in this area?)

TheFarmerInTheDell writes "According to CNet News, a judge in Utah has granted an injunction to WhenU.com to temporarily halt the state's new anti-spyware law from going into effect. WhenU filed suit in April asking for an injunction, and this judge has decided that their claim of abridging their First Amendment Rights has enough merit to issue the injunction. What about our rights not to have to deal with this scumware?" (This previous post mentions Ben Edelman's research on WhenU and other spyware makers' activities.)

ArbiterOne writes "ZDNet has the story: Cingular is moving ahead with its plans to offer wireless high-speed Internet access to consumers. Lucent Technologies has agreed to provide the technology, and Cingular has agreed to buy out AT&T Wireless, and become the number-one cell carrier in the US."

ArbiterOne writes "ZDNet has the story: Cingular is moving ahead with its plans to offer wireless high-speed Internet access to consumers. Lucent Technologies has agreed to provide the technology, and Cingular has agreed to buy out AT&T Wireless, and become the number-one cell carrier in the US."

ArbiterOne writes "ZDNet has the story: Cingular is moving ahead with its plans to offer wireless high-speed Internet access to consumers. Lucent Technologies has agreed to provide the technology, and Cingular has agreed to buy out AT&T Wireless, and become the number-one cell carrier in the US."

goldragon writes "TechRepublic is reporting that "Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to improve security. So much so, in fact, that it will cause many problems because SP2 will de-emphasize backward compatibility with legacy systems and code for the sake of security." One small step forward for Microsoft, one giant leap backwards for mankind?"

Landaras writes "News.com is reporting that a newly-formed alliance called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition is throwing their support and lobbying efforts behind Rep. Rick Boucher's (D-Va) Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. Members of the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition include Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth. The EFF and the American Library Association are also in support."

Tarantolato writes "The Eclipse Foundation has released version 3.0 of its open-source Java-based IDE. Eclipse backers like IBM say the program offers not only increased productivity and ease of use, but also a plugin-based architecture for creating 'rich client' applications with the networking capabilities of web-based apps and the persistence and native widgets of desktop applications. The Lotus Workplace platform is already Eclipse-based. Some in the Java community, however, are concerned with Eclipse's use of SWT rather than the standard Swing widget set, and some analysts think that project is part of a 'broader challenge to Microsoft's entire .Net development framework' from IBM. Meanwhile, Eclipse executives are attempting to woo Microsoft into joining the foundation."

olePigeon (Wik) writes "MacCentral has an interesting article on a new computer cluster. From the article: 'Apple Computer Inc. will announce on Monday the sale of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers to COLSA Corp., which will be used to build what is expected to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The US$5.8 million cluster will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the U.S. Army.'" alset_tech was one of the many readers to point to CNET's version of the story.

amaiman writes "Recently, broadband Internet access has been increasing around the country. These broadband signals, while providing Internet access to remote communities that would normally not be able to receive broadband, are causing enormous interference to the radio spectrum. This article details some of the problems, and a video available on the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL) site shows exactly how much interference the broadband power lines can cause. Detailed information is also available on the ARRL site."

The Importance of writes "C|Net News is reporting that a new copyright bill, to be introduced next week by Sen. Orrin Hatch, will likely overturn the Betamax decision (which held that VCRs were legal) and threaten all sorts of innovation. EFF broke the story and Copyfight has been all over it. Don't miss the comments of law professor Susan Crawford who says, 'This is amazing. Now we're waaaaaay beyond contributory and vicarious theories of liability, which are court-created and pretty darn broad on their own.' Text of the bill here and PDF."

Joey Patterson writes "CNET is reporting that Velvet Revolver's new album, 'Contraband', which is protected with SunnComm's anti-copying technology, has topped the U.S. album charts. The SunnComm and BMG execs quoted in the article say that they're pleased with the apparent consumer acceptance of the anti-piracy technology, but they have been hearing questions about how people can get the copy-blocked songs from the CD onto an iPod."

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Remember the Best Buy commercial where a puppet asks a woman for a laptop computer, and upon hearing that it's a 'wireless' laptop, starts imagining his life free of strings and limitations? That guy doesn't know it yet, but soon the harsh reality will kick in, ironically kicking him off the wireless network periodically if he uses Microsoft Windows Wireless Zero Configuration or if he wants to run Linux on a laptop with WiFi card that doesn't support Linux. This book, however, is not just about getting your Linux laptop onto the wireless network. Granted, WiFi plays a big role in today's business and personal networks, and three chapters are dedicated to exactly that purpose, but behind that wireless adjective we have a variety of technologies." Read on for the rest of Alex's review of Linux Unwired, from O'Reilly. Linux Unwired: A Complete Guide to Wireless Configuration author Roger Weeks, Edd Dumbill, Brian Jepson pages 300 publisher OReilly rating 8 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0596005830 summary Complete guide to wireless configuration on Linux

Infrared, Bluetooth, 802.11 (in current a, b and g offerings, 802.11i is also being discussed), wireless access points friendly to Linux, United States commercial cellular networks and GPS systems are all covered in a single title that surprisingly fits all of this information into 284 pages. All the chapters can be subdivided into two large parts - familiarizing yourself with the technology (the primer on GPS is pretty good) and running Linux on it (with code and shell command samples and lots of URLs).

Introduction

The authors start up with introduction to wireless, intended for Linux geeks who are not quite up to speed on radio technologies. The concepts of waves, spectrum and radio wave behavior are explained, so later the reader can explain what a retracted radio wave is. Then the first chapter moves on to explain antenna behavior, wireless infrastructure modes and some common problem, like a hidden node in ad-hoc infrastructure. The chapter is well-written, and you're not expected to have an advanced radio degree or ARRL membership to understand the terms.

WiFi cards

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with connecting a Linux desktop or notebook to a wireless 802.11 network. The first issue is that of chipsets used in the wireless card, and even though enough research has been done already, authors discuss different quirks relevant to Intersil Prism, Lucent WavelLan/Orinoco, Aironet/Cisco, Symbol, Atmel, Atheros and Broadcom chipsets. We need to discuss chipsets instead of discussing the actual wireless cards, since some hardware may be shipped under the same brand name with different internals. "A good case in point: the D-Link DWL-650. This radio card initially shipped with a Prism II chipset and was very popular, because it worked on a Linux box. However, D-Link changed chipsets when it released the DWL-650 Version 2, choosing the ADMtek chipset. It is very difficult to tell from the packaging which version of the DWL-650 you are purchasing".

The chapters are done in traditional walk-through mode. They are not HOWTOs or compendia of reference information, available from the manufacturer's Web sites. The authors made an effort to ensure the reader is capable of starting up a wireless connection on Linux box, knowing nothing about it while learning important technology in the process. Certain wireless drivers need to be compiled into Linux kernel, so the task is not for the meek, but with detailed explanation, plenty of URLs and nice fonts and paragraph formatting O'Reilly Publishing uses to differentiate between the text, commands entered at the shell, and URLs, the book is easy to read.

Chapter 3 (available in PDF) teaches the reader how to connect to existing wireless network once the wireless card has been recognized by the system and proven functional. By the time the book hit the stores it was already a bit out of date, since the very first hotspot operator, Cometa Networks, shut down in May 2004. Chapter 4 discusses wireless security, touching WEP settings, a $20 Linuxant utility allowing the user to implement WiFi Protected Access, as well as authentication utilities wpa_supplicant and XSupplicant.

WiFi access points

The issue of WiFi access points is not trivial either, as many vendors out there will ship the product with a Windows app being the only way to set it up. However, for the access point setups that are Web-based, a browser in Linux will do the job. The most Linux-friendly access point include Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Cisco, SMC, EnGenius, Belkin, US Robotics, Microsoft and ActionTec. Again, harsh reality kicked in between the time the book was written and went to press, and it's sad to see yet another Linux-friendly access point vendor quitting the market.

Not satisfied with commercial offerings out there? Chapter 6 takes the reader into the task of building your own access point. Don't forget that an access point doesn't need to be a compact portable - your old 486 with Linux on it and a wireless card connected to it might serve the purpose. Unfortunately, after all the hardware is bought and assembled, the final product might still cost you the quadruple (in case you go with smaller form-factor motherboards and CompactFlash cards for software storage), so consider this more as a geek project, not a viable solution. The authors use LinuxAP distribution for this task.

16 pages are dedicated to hacking Linksys WRT54G access point with Sveasoft, described as disruptive technology by Robert X. Cringely. The authors also take a brief look at Wifi-box and OpenWRT.

Other wireless technologies

Bluetooth, Infrared, cellular and GPS chapters follow the same chapter plan - first the basics of the technology and simple use case scenarios of what you might use it for, then the hardware needed to implement the wireless technology, available Linux software to do the jobs, accompanied with the list of shell commands to successfully talk to a wireless product, and after that typical applications of the working link.

The authors tested various wireless data plans in the United States, although this data, once again, is constantly changing as the operators buy one another and introduce new data plans. The winner of the quality and the fastest download tests, by the way, was a Motorola v120e phone on Verizon Wireless network. In upload speed tests a Merlin C201 PCMCIA card on Sprint PCS network won. T-Mobile also offers a PCMCIA card for its GPRS network, so the authors install and run it under Linux in Chapter 9.

The last chapter discusses using Linux computers with GPS devices and open-source GPSdrive project for reading GPS data.

The book

For those just venturing into the wireless world, the book would be useful. All the information provided on WiFi connectivity can perhaps be googled and found in various HOWTOs. With wireless operators, GPS systems and Infrared connection one would have to rely on enthusiast sites and newsgroups. Having such informative title that covers all of the technologies would be very useful to a Linux enthusiast.

With that, the book can be quite overwhelming, although it's probably not intended to be read from page 1 to the end. There's usually more than one correct way to do things in Linux, and for each successful project another competitor appears on SourceForge the next day. I like the authors' approach of dedicating most of the chapter space to one, leading, Linux package that seems to be dominant in the field, and then briefly mentioning the others. A notable omission is Intel's Centrino drivers for Linux, as the company is bound to become a leader in the chipset marketplace with 42% of notebooks shipped in 2003 running Centrino chipsets.

But overall the book proved to have a high informational and educational value, not only you follow the steps on setting up wireless technologies on Linux, but you also learn the internals of the technology and why certain things are done that way, but not another.

You can purchase Linux Unwired from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

dritan writes "News.com is reporting that a judge has tossed out a privacy lawsuit against Northwest airlines. The plaintiffs claimed that their privacy was violated when Northwest gave their information to the government. From the judge: 'Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information. Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low.' Do you always read the privacy policy?" If you haven't read a particular EULA, does that mean it doesn't apply either? Here is the Judge's order (PDF).

An anonymous reader writes "I came upon a news story about Texas Instruments developing a new DSL technology which will allow ISP's to boost their bandwidth to 200mbps (Yes, mega bits per second). The UDSL service, as it is dubbed, is backwards compatible with current DSL technologies such as VDSL and ADSL. This should get many cable internet users, like myself, a second look at DSL." Update: 06/15 01:26 GMT by T : "mps" and "mbs" both de-mangled.

BladesP9 writes "A group of Myth fanatics have made good on their pledge to create a cross platform tool for the Myth III RTS game engine. FlyingFlip Studios has completed its first stage in the creation of a tool for the Mac/PC game Myth III. The tool, named Ballistic, is based on the old Vengeance code which was released to the public by the game's original publisher back in 2003. The update is native to Macintosh OS X, yet works well on Classic Mac OS, and there's also a version for Windows - many will remember the Myth III game shipped with a very basic tool that was Windows only. This same group is making updates to the Myth III game as well and plan an update to be released shortly."

WeakGeek writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Comcast, the nation's largest broadband ISP, has started blocking port 25 to reduce Spam. Jeanne Russo said Comcast is not blocking port 25 for all its users because it does not want to remove the option for legitimate customers who process their own e-mail. So the company is monitoring traffic and picking out machines that look suspicious. By blocking port 25, they say they cut Spam by 20% last week." ZDnet has another article, with a nice statistic: Comcast generates 800 million email messages/day, but only about 100 million of those are sent through Comcast's SMTP servers.

Mz6 writes "Microsoft has launched its 'Get the Facts' road show -- the tech equivalent of a political battle bus -- to tour the country and convince the wavering that Redmond is as at least cheap and as secure as its open-source rival and to spread the word that Windows is better than Linux. Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy, described the campaign as 'a reality check we're bringing out', aiming to tackle the 'myths' surrounding Linux. Microsoft's road show will be in Edinburgh on June 17, Manchester on June 29 and Newport on July 7."

Slashback brings you updates this evening on a handful of previous and ongoing Slashdot stories: read on below for more on how to manipulate Google rankings, what's wrong with Sun's Java Desktop, Claria's plucky response to L.L. Bean's suit, and a fly in the infinite-twin-primes theory.

How to not make friends and influence rankings. Ben Michel contributes an update to the search-engine optimization (SEO) contest mentioned last month, the object of which was for contestants to create a site ranked highest by google for a nonsense phrase, "nigritude ultramarine."

Michel writes "The first phase of the competition ended last Monday, and the winner was the owner of a forum called nigritude ultramarine--previously known as Merkey.net. According to Brandon Suit, the owner of this forum, the key to his winning strategy was "getting high PR backlinks"--having other websites with high Page Ranks link to him and vice versa.

What impact does this have on SEO, and indeed for the rapidly growing search industry in general? The viability of certain underhanded methods in the pursuit of SEO has been clearly reinforced by many of the results of the contest--both Suit and his closest competitor, Philipp Lenssen, posted links in Wiki Sandboxes in order to better their standing. According to Suit, "If you want to manipulate [Google], you can." While search engines certainly have come a long ways from relevance-based searching, it seems that they still have significant changes to make before they can more accurately order results for any given query. The search engines' creators themselves must make countless revisions in their own, perhaps quixotic, quests to create the perfect tools to retrieve relevant data in the vast, ever-expanding realm of the internet."

However, not everyone is as matter-of-fact about this method of increasing search-engine visibility; May Kasahara is one of the webmasters and wiki users who isn't.

Kasahara writes: "The Search Engine Optimization contest previously mentioned on Slashdot has had a detrimental effect on wiki users and admins (including myself) lately , as the words 'Nigritude Ultramarine' have been showing up in wiki sandboxes across the web. A search on UseModWiki's homepage brought me to this informative entry, which in turn led me to Nigritude Ultramarine and the Wiki Sandbox Effect [note -- mentioned last week on Slashdot] and to these accompanying comments, mostly from very annoyed wiki users."

OK, so maybe "infinite" was a strong word. Prof.Phreak writes "Quoting wikipedia: On May 26, 2004, Richard Arenstorf of Vanderbilt University submitted a 38-page proof that there are, in fact, infinitely many twin primes. On June 3, Michel Balazard of Bordeaux reported that Lemma 8 on page 35 is false.[1] As is typical in mathematical proofs, the defect may be correctable or a substitute method may repair or replace the defect. Arenstorf withdrew his proof on June 8, noting "A serious error has been found in the paper, specifically, Lemma 8 is incorrect"."

What are these dashed lines all over your sacred cow? reifman writes "Slashdot's link to my article in the Seattle Weekly helped generate 175,000 page views and numerous letters and comments. The article seemed to touch a nerve in the Mac and Linux communities. I've posted a follow up responding to people's letters."

Updates from the Academic Affairs Division. zenrandom writes "As Case Western has just recently been reported, we may as well mention the initiative that will be connecting many schools in Ohio. Oarnet, a part of the Ohio Supercomputer Center and The Ohio State University is building a statewide academic and research fiber optic network. Composed of multiple metro-rings and over 1600 miles of fiber."

In unrelated college news, Mirell writes "After the FBI previously investigated an open records request filed for the tunnel blueprints at UT, students decide instead to enter via brute force. Hooligans - 1, War Against Terror - 0."

The problem with opening Pandora's Box. WC writes "The previous review on JDS2 ended with no successful installation so it wasn't very helpful on what to expect from the Sun distro. This new review has got a working installation but with a slew of new problems: more installation woes, unusable networking, buggy Nautilus and Mozilla window resizing artifacts among others. The author concludes that JDS2 is --effectively-- nothing but JDS 1.1 with the added Sun server software on top, but the desktop part has the same (and more) issues like JDS1 had."

Looking innocent is not their strong suit. tbase writes "As reported on News.com.com, Claria, formerly known as Gator, has sued L.L. Bean, charging the retailer with filing a frivolous lawsuit against its advertisers. As covered in a previous Slashdot story, L.L. Bean has filed suit against current and former Claria advertisers for advertising via pop ups over L.L. Bean's site."

Slashback brings you updates this evening on a handful of previous and ongoing Slashdot stories: read on below for more on how to manipulate Google rankings, what's wrong with Sun's Java Desktop, Claria's plucky response to L.L. Bean's suit, and a fly in the infinite-twin-primes theory.

How to not make friends and influence rankings. Ben Michel contributes an update to the search-engine optimization (SEO) contest mentioned last month, the object of which was for contestants to create a site ranked highest by google for a nonsense phrase, "nigritude ultramarine."

Michel writes "The first phase of the competition ended last Monday, and the winner was the owner of a forum called nigritude ultramarine--previously known as Merkey.net. According to Brandon Suit, the owner of this forum, the key to his winning strategy was "getting high PR backlinks"--having other websites with high Page Ranks link to him and vice versa.

What impact does this have on SEO, and indeed for the rapidly growing search industry in general? The viability of certain underhanded methods in the pursuit of SEO has been clearly reinforced by many of the results of the contest--both Suit and his closest competitor, Philipp Lenssen, posted links in Wiki Sandboxes in order to better their standing. According to Suit, "If you want to manipulate [Google], you can." While search engines certainly have come a long ways from relevance-based searching, it seems that they still have significant changes to make before they can more accurately order results for any given query. The search engines' creators themselves must make countless revisions in their own, perhaps quixotic, quests to create the perfect tools to retrieve relevant data in the vast, ever-expanding realm of the internet."

However, not everyone is as matter-of-fact about this method of increasing search-engine visibility; May Kasahara is one of the webmasters and wiki users who isn't.

Kasahara writes: "The Search Engine Optimization contest previously mentioned on Slashdot has had a detrimental effect on wiki users and admins (including myself) lately , as the words 'Nigritude Ultramarine' have been showing up in wiki sandboxes across the web. A search on UseModWiki's homepage brought me to this informative entry, which in turn led me to Nigritude Ultramarine and the Wiki Sandbox Effect [note -- mentioned last week on Slashdot] and to these accompanying comments, mostly from very annoyed wiki users."

OK, so maybe "infinite" was a strong word. Prof.Phreak writes "Quoting wikipedia: On May 26, 2004, Richard Arenstorf of Vanderbilt University submitted a 38-page proof that there are, in fact, infinitely many twin primes. On June 3, Michel Balazard of Bordeaux reported that Lemma 8 on page 35 is false.[1] As is typical in mathematical proofs, the defect may be correctable or a substitute method may repair or replace the defect. Arenstorf withdrew his proof on June 8, noting "A serious error has been found in the paper, specifically, Lemma 8 is incorrect"."

What are these dashed lines all over your sacred cow? reifman writes "Slashdot's link to my article in the Seattle Weekly helped generate 175,000 page views and numerous letters and comments. The article seemed to touch a nerve in the Mac and Linux communities. I've posted a follow up responding to people's letters."

Updates from the Academic Affairs Division. zenrandom writes "As Case Western has just recently been reported, we may as well mention the initiative that will be connecting many schools in Ohio. Oarnet, a part of the Ohio Supercomputer Center and The Ohio State University is building a statewide academic and research fiber optic network. Composed of multiple metro-rings and over 1600 miles of fiber."

In unrelated college news, Mirell writes "After the FBI previously investigated an open records request filed for the tunnel blueprints at UT, students decide instead to enter via brute force. Hooligans - 1, War Against Terror - 0."

The problem with opening Pandora's Box. WC writes "The previous review on JDS2 ended with no successful installation so it wasn't very helpful on what to expect from the Sun distro. This new review has got a working installation but with a slew of new problems: more installation woes, unusable networking, buggy Nautilus and Mozilla window resizing artifacts among others. The author concludes that JDS2 is --effectively-- nothing but JDS 1.1 with the added Sun server software on top, but the desktop part has the same (and more) issues like JDS1 had."

Looking innocent is not their strong suit. tbase writes "As reported on News.com.com, Claria, formerly known as Gator, has sued L.L. Bean, charging the retailer with filing a frivolous lawsuit against its advertisers. As covered in a previous Slashdot story, L.L. Bean has filed suit against current and former Claria advertisers for advertising via pop ups over L.L. Bean's site."

declan writes "My News.com colleague Evan Hansen just got his hands on an internal email thread revealing that Google is planning to embrace RSS. Evan's co-authored News.com article quotes from the email (sent to Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt) confirming that Google is rethinking only supporting Atom. Slashdot covered Google's purchase of Pyra Labs and Blogger.com/Blogspot.com last year that made it a fan of the Atom standard. Does this news mean that RSS is now viewed as out of Dave Winer's control? Will RSS and Atom finally converge?"