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enforce what patents? Microsoft is helping to make C# a standard.

Open Source IS what you want to sell. Start with the proprietary licenses, you'll be amazed what you find if you're actually able to read what it is that you've bought (a license). Example: One of the arguments you'll hear against OSS is lack of warranty, yet most proprietary licenses exclude warranty of merchantability.

Include the story of Ernie Ball, a great example of one of the risks of proprietary software.

Get a few copies of Revolution OS to pass around. Those who can't sit still long enough to read may be able to be captivated by TV.

Open protocols are more important than open source. Avoid vendor lock-in. If your information is in a proprietary protocol, who really owns it?

"Borland released the InterBase program as open-source software in July, meaning that anyone may scrutinize the software, modify it and redistribute it. [...] Programmer Frank Schlottman-Godde from the open-source Firebird project discovered the vulnerability Dec. 18..." (- ZDNet)

Sounds like a pretty strong argument for open source to me.

"The 203MB file expands to just under 660MB, he said, noting that the final code size almost perfectly matches the capacity of a typical CD-ROM. The entire source code, he said, is believed to be about 40GB, meaning that the file circulating Thursday is only a fraction of the full code base." Security consultant Dragos Ruiu, as quoted at zdnet.

Can this be true? Can the Windows 2000 source code really be forty gig? What is he counting as source code?

My Linux 2.6.0 kernel source tree is 348M. Of course, Windows will have the GUI as part of their kernel source, but for X, that's just another 279M. Yeah, okay, so toss in the source for the MS equivalent of window managers, and perhaps some other utilities, but still...

Is 40 gig a reasonable estimate? Really?

One interesting addendum to the above: SUSE Linux to receive international EAL2 rating. Since SUSE is owned by Novell now, it also has the backing of a company that had, at least some time ago, the most popular network suite in corporations. Still in use a lot of places, actually.

For once I agree with something MS did. There are already too many mediocre MMORPGs floundering around in the marketplace. It's only a matter of time before some of them are forced to close their doors. As I understand it, there are a bunch of them (like Anarchy Online) that are caught between having too few subscribers to make a significant profit, but too many to pull the plug without facing a significant backlash. Aside from pure financial considerations, though, I wonder how much Mythic's lawsuit played into the decision (that's Mythic, developer of Dark Age of Camelot, as opposed to the just-cancelled project Mythica).

"The rumor regarding the availability of Windows source code is based on the speculation of an individual who saw a small section of un-identified code and thought it looked like Windows code. Microsoft is looking into this as a matter of due diligence," a company spokesman said. "If a small section of Windows source code were to be available, it would be a matter of intellectual property rights rather than security." - from Eweek.

Also see ZDNet, InternetNews and Google News

as an example: Borland InterBase backdoor detected

and in related news, this ZDNet article gives the FCC's ruling on VoIP.

I'm guessing from his use of "computadora" rather than "ordenador" that he is Latin American. Some of the 550 million or so people on the American continent other than US citizens are also 'Americans' and hence like to use a different term for you lot. I'd never really noticed this in Canada, where (in my experience) they happily refer to you as 'Americans' and themselves self-deprecatingly as 'Canucks'; it seems to more of a Latin American thing. 'Yankee,' you must agree, would be horribly insensitive to apply to anyone from the southern United States.

Back on-topic, there's an interesting article on ZDNet on how English tech terms are seeping into Spanish. Oh, and I'm neither 'American' nor 'USian' myself, I'm an EUian, e.g. part of Greater Germany ;-)

Yes. Mr. Jones needs to read up on why governments actually prefer open source.

No, that's different scumware.

~Philly

I think AMD's naming makes a lot of clueful people a bit uncomfortable, but seems justifiable in a market dominated by a world-class bullshit artist like Intel.

Actually, AMD is as much to blame for the "megahertz myth" as anyone else is.

Remember that it was AMD that was so eager to engage in the great clock speed race. When AMD was the one who had the faster clock speeds, it was their PR that went on and on about the so-called "gigahertz era".

And since this was before the days of the P4, Intel's x86 CPUs
had more processing power clock-for-clock than AMD's.

If the "megahertz myth" is indeed damaging AMD in the marketplace, then it is largely due to their own shortsighted PR department.

And finally, note that Intel as least has been consistent in the naming of their consumer products. A 1.6 GHz Pentium-M is more capable than a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4. But Intel does not play fancy numerical name games. They tell you the architecture brand name, the clock speed, and the FSB speed of the chip. And those are the distinguishing characteristics. When I see a 2400+ Athlon on sale at Fry's, it's much obvious to a casual consumer like myself where it stands in the AMD family tree.

I believe this is the article he is refering to.

Here's a link to an article about the Feds wanting more time before the FCC rules on VoIP so they can figure out how to tap into VoIP calls.

What has firefox got that's not coming in the next service pack for IE?

To quote Brian Countryman, IE program manager:

... there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation ...

I could no longer live with the serious and unpatched security flaws in IE. I thought the URL spoofing flaw was terrible. Then it was followed up with a file extension spoofing flaw. This basically meant that I couldn't trust IE to correctly show me what site I was visiting or what kind of file I was opening!

Yes, a patch was finally issued for the URL flaw, but the fix was criticized by people like Russ Cooper for not going far enough.

I am finding Firefox on Windows XP to be excellent so far. It was a minor pain to reinstall support for Macromedia Flash, Shockwave, etc. but my QuickTime and Acrobat plugins just continued to work. What pleases me most is that web pages are loading noticeably faster in Firefox. I have heard this claim made my many new browsers over the years but this is the first time I have ever actually perceived a difference.

I also like that downloads seem to start immediately in the background as soon as a link is clicked on. With IE, when I click on a download nothing starts transferring until I browse to a location to save the file, choose a filename (perhaps) and then click OK. In Firefox, I am sometimes surprised to find that my download is completed by the time I have finished choosing a location for the file!

It is not advisable to completely abandon IE on Windows, however. Firefox won't work for grabbing updates from windowsupdate.com.

>No, we only have the market cornered on GOOD product design.

Cool. Then why the cracks? Shit Yugos and Ladas didn't even get those, and they cost a lot less than most high end Apple products.

Really, he doesn't earn much money and probably would be earning more money had he gone to college and gotten a decent job (at least 50k) and I'm sure he's capable.

According to this article, he took home over $100K in prize money in 2001 alone... :-O

Here, at the bottom.

Soko

Why was this moded down? IBM was once at the walking in line with the filth of humanity prior to WWII. In fact, there are some ties between (old) IBM and the Holocaust, none of which present the company or Watson in a good light. For example, look at this article . Though I don't think that the IBM of today would repeat such mistakes, there is precedence for inexcusable business tactics.

link from parent

yes that picture is pretty damning, it was taken in 1937 though. Its kind of like someone being taken with bush now. if by some strange turn of events he starts up more concentration camps or something in the future that is. I rememebr reading somewhere that alot of people in the good ole USA were against going to war with germany until pearl harbour. I seem to remember that the mjority of americans had no problem with him being "cruel" to the jews. Anti semitisim was rampent at that time.

Newsfactor

News.Com

Oh, BTW, if you think I am just talking out of my ass, here is some proof of concept, so to speak.
Dell brings some support back to the US.

See, customers weren't happy with Dell's outsorced support to India, so Dell adjusted. They didn't just say "Hah, screw you customer. Take a dive off a bridge!" Dell did exactly what it should. It tried a new system to maximize profits (minimize costs, whatever), but in this case it didn't work too well. Oh well. Live, learn, correct the problems and try new ideas. But in the end they still want to make their support work for the customer, because the customer IS profit.

You are out by a factor of 10.

1 Euro may be optimistic, but 2 Euro seems accurate.

They hired a spamhaus but they were sending the message to their own mailing list of folk who subscribed on the web page.

If that were true then, I agree, it wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, that is not true. Where they got the names cannot be verified without the Dean campaign's cooperation, but people got it who had not subscribed for it on the webpage.

A news article about it.

Ah, this clears it up. They bought a list, making the all-too-common mistake of thinking that permission can be sold. Such naivete from a campaign that touts itself as an internet grassroots breakthrough is disappointing. I had nothing against Dean, and stood a good chance of voting for him due to his "I'm internet savy" PR blitz, but this ignorance destroyed all possibility of that.

A victim's account of what happened.

Jobs versus Eisner & Gates. Hmmm. Eisner is under attack by the Disney family (having kicked the Son off the board, effectively) and has had a high profile contract loss (Pixar itself). Gates is reviled and ridiculed by roughly the same people since Greenspun made his Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock; this hasn't hurt him much at all. Jobs is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma (without the genocide). Pixar had a disappointing earnings report

Will Time Warner choose sides?

Speaking of which, will this Internet/Media marriage have as much impact as TimeWarner/AOL? if so, this is non-news.

Proof:

Google "Itanium" "100,000" and "Otellini"
And you'll see dozen's of links to Intel pres Paul Otellini's announcement back in Nov 2003 that Intel would ship over 100,000 Itanium processors in 2003.

It would be pretty hard to lie about that, Pan, esp if your assumption that they shipped less than they did in 2002 was true.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

"On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very little money," Dean said.

Source. Scary... the man is looking to displace Bush, and he's more Orwellian in thought. Read the article.

--
Evan

almost 3 years ago. I guess we now know what happened to Hailstorm.

I seem to recall not so long ago Microsoft claiming it was impossible to remove components or offer any sort of modular form of Windows? Wasn't this one of the prime arguments that MS used in the antitrust trial? "No, your honor, we can't remove Internet Explorer. It just doesn't work that way." I really wish the defense witness had been allowed to demonstrate just how modular XP embedded is...

I seem to recall not so long ago Microsoft claiming it was impossible to remove components or offer any sort of modular form of Windows? Wasn't this one of the prime arguments that MS used in the antitrust trial? "No, your honor, we can't remove Internet Explorer. It just doesn't work that way." I really wish the defense witness had been allowed to demonstrate just how modular XP embedded is...

Want to beat Bush in November?

Replacing Bush with a man who thinks I should have to present a national ID card to log into my computer is not progress.

"With the amendment, the suit also includes new allegations that IBM violated its SCO contract by improperly exporting Unix software to India and countries subject to federal export controls, including Iran, North Korea and Cuba, echoing recent comments by SCO CEO Darl McBride that characterized the spread of Linux as a threat to national security."
-ZDNet

They've posted another story that states that SCO's claims have reached 5 billion (yes, this really is a news.com link).

This will surely give them enough funding from high-risk investors that don't mind losing a few hundred k's for a chance of a big payout.

Yeah, it could never happen.

Rockin' On Without Microsoft

Oh, and please read this article about the Safari improvements going into KDE 3.2 :)

Or billionaires with SCO IP for that matter ;)

2 words for all of you "Ernie Ball". As a musician, I use Ernie Ball Stainless steel strings exclusively for any of my electric git fiddles. From the 5 6 strings, 3 7 strings, and the 12 string.

I don't know if any of you recall reading about this, but

slashdot

dot com dot com dot com dot com

Ernie Ball makes some of the finest guitars, and related equipment you can find. If he can do it, so can ANYONE else. They weren't a "geek" shop like most readers here. Granted, I wouldn't take chances on finances with "untested" software, but damnit, it's obvious it can be done. He has to buy everything, manufacture it (guitars made by hand I might add), then sell it. I'd say he has finances he has to worry about. I mean, employees, parts, tools, then when I plop my $1800+ down for a high quality axe or strings.

bugger off those that say it can't be done.

You mean like Howard Dean suggested? Talk about a big brother state...

while to them your computing skills ammount at best to some mild entertainment on a slow evening.

Mild is an overstatement.

I'm not suggesting that everyone be IT professionals. I realize that some people aren't interested. But I liken it unto this: In order to drive a car, you must pass certain tests, most importantly a driving exam. I'm not going to pretend that computers are as dangerous as cars. I would never suggest that not knowing how to use a computer could end in potential disaster.

Let's keep this car metaphore going. Let's say I am going to purchase a car. Should I blindly walk into any dealership and purchase the first thing the salesman attempts to sell to me? I might end up with a Kia or a BMW. Further, I might not know what is IN the car. Maybe OnStar is spying on you. Maybe your car will break down because it is poorly constructed.

No one is going to walk into any purchase completly blind. Why would someone put something on their computer that they don't know what it is? If there is a possibility of danger (or at least mild irritation), it seems like a good idea to take a look at the product and ask questions.

Would you, without internet access (to get you as much out of your element as they are on the 'net) even know where to _start_ looking for information on what can be hidden in yours?

If you don't have Internet, most of the spyware programs would be obsolete. I'll pretend that had nothing to do with spyware and was an attack on my line of thinking. So, yes, I would know where to start. I would probably go first to a library, the Google of the real world, and check, perhaps, the card cataloge or a computer based search system (if they indeed have one). I would, next, consult local watch peddlers. Finally, I would talk to people about it. Get their verbal reviews. That seems like a good course of action that wouldn't require me to know EVERYTHING about something, as I don't know everything about every software I use (e.g. if it runs UDP or TCP or even uses the internet at all), but still gain enough knowledge to make a good decision. We can only do as well as we are equiped (But I am arguing that, with spyware, we are all pretty well equiped to find answers).

Your well being and even your _life_ depend every day on people whose field of expertise _isn't_ computing science

There is no denying this. However, computers are really prying their way into most fields. If people don't know how to use them, they may not be protecting my life and/or well being to the best of their ability.

Would you prefer that the next time you need surgery, you're in the hands of people with l33t h4x0r skillz, or in the hands of _surgeons_?

That depends on if the 133t h4x0r people know anything about surgury. I would suspect they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't know how, esp. seening as to become a liscenced surgeon, you must pass all kinds of tests and pretty much know what you are doing. So, I'd rather have the person who knows the most about what they are doing.

Now, funny how we are back to passing tests. When you are dealing with something that is potentially dangerous (or at least midly irritating), you should know what you are dealing with. Like I said. I'm not suggesting that computers are the most dangerous things, but sometimes bad things happen. Further, I'm not asking that everyone be experts. I only ask that people know how to drive before they get in the car to drive on the open roads, and that people know enough to ask questions when purchasing a car.

I thought he had some interesting things to say at first...but, this type thing kills my support for just about anyone...

that they would always have toplay catch up, with no big company to support them

Portals are not secret.

And a very entertaining NYT article that is in the process of expiring.

Here's the faux-expired article without the crap.

If you could sit back with Zen-like detachment and observe the dross piling up in your electronic mailbox, the spam wars might come to seem like a fascinating electronic game.

Like creatures running through a maze with constantly shifting walls, spammers dart and weave to sneak their solicitations past ever wilier junk mail filters. They are organisms, or maybe genomes, grinding out one random mutation after another, desperately trying to elude the Grim Reaper.

Viagra becomes "vi@gra" or "v-i-@-g-r-a." Then, as the filters adapt, "v1@gr@" and even "\/l@gr@." Currently, the Internet is swarming with mutants like this: "Cheap Val?(u)m, Viagr@, X(a)n@x, Som@ Di3t Pills Many M3ds RIZfURqgHr77B," the final string of gibberish hanging like an appendage of junk DNA.

Taking a different approach, a come-on for barnyard pornography devolves into "faurm galz bing e rottic." Another pitch promises to reveal "Seakrets of ((eks-eks-eks)) stars."

Dispiriting as it is to start the morning with a hundred of these orthographic monsters crouching in your inbox, there is reason to take heart. Measured in bits and bytes, the sheer volume of spam may not have diminished. But advanced filtering software, which learns to recognize the mercurial traits of junk e-mail, is having an effect. The spammers' messages are becoming harder and harder to decipher. Sense is inevitably degenerating into nonsense, like a pileup of random mutations in an endangered species gasping its last breaths.

Earlier this month, when Internet experts met in Cambridge, Mass., for the 2004 Spam Conference (available as a Web broadcast at Spamconference.org), they showed just how far the science of spam fighting has come. For all the recent talk of suing spammers and compiling a national do-not-spam list, most speakers were putting their hopes in technological, not legal solutions. The federal government's new junk e-mail law, the Can Spam Act, barely rated a mention.

Terry Sullivan, a spam researcher with a doctorate in information science, described how he used a "handy 10-dimensional high-fidelity model of historical spam space" to analyze how junk e-mail changes over time. Long stretches of stability are suddenly interrupted by brief bursts of innovation, a pattern he compared to what some evolutionary biologists call punctuated equilibrium. The encouraging news is that there is enough stability--an enduring core of "spamminess"--for the invaders to be quickly identified and destroyed.

Another presentation, called "Cockroaches Hate the Light," considered how to authenticate senders so that spammers can't easily fake their identities. Other speakers proposed eco-electronic solutions such as digital postage stamps that would put a price on sending e-mail--trivial for an individual user but making hit-or-miss barrages prohibitively expensive.

Like epidemiologists discussing how to predict and control a biological outbreak, conferencegoers compared the merits of various filtering techniques. Which is better: first-order Bayesian, token grab bag, sparse binary polynomial hash or markovian weighting? The meaning of the terms may be opaque to outsiders, but the underlying message comes through: the spammers are up against some increasingly advanced cybernetic artillery.

Many experts believe that solving the spam problem will require a combination of approaches. But laws take forever to pass and amend. Technological fixes like sender authentication and electronic stamps would also take time to carry out, but filtering is already here--and it is reducing the spammers' messages to feeble signals swamped by a roar of alphanumeric noise.

The turning point came

A previous story talked about the noise level of spam increasing.

And a very entertaining NYT article that is in the process of expiring.

The upshot is that spam is being forced to look more and more like line noise. It will probably become less and less effective as the message has to submerge to the point where people can't recognize it.

Concern: Privacy.

According to Reuters or, if you prefer, CNN, that moment was not only the most viewed and re-viewed slice of airtime for the Superbowl time slot, but for ALL time slots since they've been monitoring their customers' viewing habits. Now, I'm no member of the tinfoil hat club, but I think someone even suggesting that they should be able to or should attempt to analyze what I watch (via broadcast TV no less!) with OR without my permission is just a little creepy. Wal-Mart's taking it on the chin for proposing a tracking system for products they sell, but at least they've got a plausible business-related reason for it (not to mention the tech's "out there in the future" somewhere so we'll supposedly have a chance to develop societal guards against it's misuse. Mmm hmm. And I wonder how many geeks added a "kill switch" to their OnStar box last week just to make sure those "private moments" remained private...)

Solution: Do-It-Yourself

Story also posted on C-Net (no account required, yada yada).

What hapened to Yahoo's (as yet unveiled) scheme-to-end-all-schemes for authenticating mail? IMHO, I think that SPF:Sender will make great strides towards combatting spam, combined with new laws that make spoofing illegal. And AOL is backing it, so I think there is a good chance for success, as they are both one of the largest sources of e-mail as well as one of the most commonly spoofed domains.

Ok, I get this comment in M2, and I'm thinking "troll, and not a very good one, either." But I'm curious, so I check out the com.com.com.com source for the blog entry:

Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time--making the Internet safer and more secure."

The presidential hopeful offered few details about his radical proposal. "On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very little money," Dean said.

I'm sure glad I didn't make the contribution to Dean that I'd been planning. I guess it's back to my original choice.