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The federal government already auctions off spectrum in some cases-it used to just give it away. I see no reason why my taxes or yours should be higher so some fatcat can get cheap spectrum. Likewise, I see no reason why companies shouldn't pay the fair market value for the guest worker visas they want(and assume whatever risks are associated with having those workers in the US).

Secondly, there are no subsidies involved.

I suggest you take that up with Nobel prize winner economist Milton Friedman. Who told you it wasn't a subsidy?

According to the Labor Department, a company hiring an H1B is required to 1) determine the prevailing wage for the position, based on collective bargaining agreeements, government statistics, independent audit, etc; 2) determine the actual wage for the position, based on what the company pays people in the same or similar capacities with similar qualifications and experience; and 3) pay the H1B the higher of the two rates.

If you believe those regulations are enforcable-and that H-1b presence hasn't affected labor markets in the US, you are an absolute fool.

These foreign workers are already putting more tax money into the system than they're taking out.

Actually, recent immigration is associated with long term
economic deterioration.

As for your last point, H1Bs are not immigrants -- they are temporary workers.

The big reason for obtaining the H-1b visa is that it confers a 50% chance at a green card. If it weren't for that, the pool of workers interested in these programs would be much different-and smaller-and they would require fundamentally different compensation.

Once here they can pursue immigration, but that is not a given. Even if they do immigrate, we are talking about people who are highly educated, highly skilled, gainfully employed, productive and law-abiding members of our society -- exactly what every country in the world would like its citizens to be.

When I was at HP, a coworker that was attempting to get funding for a project was told by someone purporting to represent upper management that he could get him funding for his project on the condition that he agree only to hire H-1b workers from India. That simply isn't an example of "law abiding" citizens with whom I want to share a country.

I don't think
that "dilutes the value" of anyone's citizenship. Quite the contrary, I think it enriches our culture and makes all of us a little better off.

If you highly value local diversity, you may be better off. However, over 82 percent of the American public opposed expansion of that program. It took hundreds of missions of corporate donations to buy congress and override popular will. You are welcome to identify with that kind of process if you wish-but you should be aware of what you are doing here. I _can_ believe that 18% of the American public do have a value system by which they benefited here-but I'm clearly not in the 18%.

I noticed the article didn't link to any images of the USB Razor, but I seem to have found one, rather low res...
here's the link

Also, I found a decent image of the USB Security camera

If the story that Oracle had planned to buy PeopleSoft in order to discontinue their products really is a myth, journalists and analysts can't take all the blame. Craig Conway of PeopleSoft also did his part to encourage people to believe that was Ellison's goal.

Er, "Windows"??? We've been all over this before with Lindows. Google should have known better.

Don't take my word for it ... http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/win dows/story/0,10801,94634,00.html

Or is this link biased because I got it by googling the following: 'lindows name change microsoft paid'?

Still, until Steve Jobs starts knocking on doors looking to sell Apple, it's just silly to talk about stuff like this- it's just not going to happen unless it's Steve's idea...

There are now over 12 million Mac OS X systems in use (source: 23:40 of WWDC keynote). According to Apple, this eclipses shipments by all other UNIX/UNIX-like system vendors. Apple is the single largest vendor of "UNIX-based"[1] systems in the world. (Probably over 13 million now, according to sales since then.)

"With the release of Mac OS X, Apple became the largest vendor of Unix in the world"

More...

[1] Please, whether or not Mac OS X is or isn't "UNIX" or "Unix" or "UN*X" or "UNIX-based" or "UNIX-like" or "not UNIX", etc., etc., etc., is the subject of another discussion, and really derails the essential, widely accepted concept (by normal, sane people, anyway) that Mac OS X is "UNIX"-based.

1. stop taking off-hours support calls, or at least limit them, if they're making it at all difficult for you to be a 9 to 5 person at a company that cares about this horses**t. And know that there are companies that respect what you're doing. Mine would.
2. show up 5 minutes early.
3. leave at 5:01, or whenever is 'normal'.
4. Learn seven polite and politically-defensible ways to say no. Better yet, learn the japanese trick of saying 'yes' in a way that means 'no'. Theirs is sort of a very-polite 'yeah, right!', although the literal translation is 'That's Fine.' Use these whenever you're asked to overextend yourself. The best is to simply not pick up the phone and drop the pager/cell into some ice tea (acidic saturation is hell on circuit boards).
5. Move on as soon as you can. It's always better to quit than be fired.
6. Once you're out the door, recognize that your team lead also just (indirectly) told you that (s)he is unwilling or incapable of standing up for you. That, not the thought of getting canned, is why you need to get out now.
7. It might be possible to look up the org chart and find someone that will champion you where your lead won't. If so, ask for their mentorship and help, but be graceful. If it helps, offer to give them VERY BRIEF summaries on the stuff you're doing after hours, to show why you're concerned both for your job and the company's best interests.
8. Take to reading the daily shark. It's therapeutic. Even now, 4 years away from my last job-from-hell, I occasionally grate my teeth at the idiotic s**t people submit there. I'm still not over the damage they did... that's how bad that long-gone job was.
9. Oh, and once you're out the door, take to submitting to the shark. Even more therapeutic. Be careful about specifics, since coworkers at that job-from-hell put 2 and 2 together, showed it to the boss, and now she hates me. C'est la vie.

One last comment: having been around the field for quite a while, I suspect that we're still shedding non-geeks from the DotBomb years. The extra pressure and strain is a good thing in that respect: it gets rid of people that don't do this out of love. A few more years and we should be back to where demand exceeds supply just enough to give us more options.

Yeah, I know that flies in the face of outsourcing/etc, but a guy can dream. Everything I see still points toward no end to the problem of expanding complexity and increased I/T security risks. That, for me, means plenty of work to be done.

Disclaimer: I'm an OOo advocate, as you can see from this Computerworld article (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/softw are/apps/story/0,10801,92195,00.html?SKC=software- 92195) that I published last Spring.

I used OOo since the days of StarOffice. I managed to write two books, many presentations, spreadsheets, and countless business documents in it. OOo is probably one of the best office applications and it's cross-platform.

I had quasi undying loyalty to OOo until I decided to go to OS X. While the feature set is almost identical to other versions of OOo, the GUI is one of the ugliest. OOo also lacks compatibility with Exchange servers, which I'm forced to use for work (yuck!). For these two reasons, I had to cave in and return to Office:Mac.

The efforts to tightly couple OOo with KDE or Gnome are important and interesting but far from the marketing win that OOo needs. An OOo version that supports the native OS X look and feel would probably win lots of support from Apple's user base because it would be, in most cases, a drop-in, free replacement for Office:Mac.

I interact now with quite a few Mac users on regular basis; most, if not all, would love to ditch Office:Mac in favour of OOo if the GUI and other system integration issues were resolved. I believe that an OS X/Aqua version of OOo is more strategically important than one for Gnome or KDE because it would generate instant press outside the early-adopter, Linux world.

A strategic marketing win could result in additional funding/participation/donations to OOo to carry on with other projects that, although important, lack the visibility that the Mac has or could bring to OOo.

Cheers,

Security by Obscurity, no matter who does it, it is still bad. Just because the WHOLE WORLD didn't know about it, doesn't mean some virus writer didn't; it just meant everyone continued to use un-patched Java installs in blissfull ignorance of the risk.

You're saying that vulnerability details should be announced before patches are completed? I'm afraid I disagree. There's a fair bit of evidence (see stories here and here) that black hats are using vulnerability announcements and patches to find exploits rather than finding them themselves. If that's the case, keeping vulnerabilities quiet until the software company's had a chance to patch them is a good idea, even if security through obscurity is in general a bad idea.

One crucial event is that the EU judge will hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss the possiblity of suspending sactions against MS. This would be a mistake on par with allowing software, literature, or algorithms to be patented in the EU. While technical work continues on codecs like dirac and theora, more political and legal work needs to be done. Failing to impose sanctions until illegal behavior is stopped would be very harmful to Europe in general and to the European software industry in general.

It's also interesting to see the lawsuits that Microsoft has filed:

Microsoft sues controversial system assembler

Microsoft Sues Lindows.com Over Name

Microsoft takes on teen's site MikeRoweSoft.com

Microsoft sues Lucent in old dispute

Microsoft sues Brazilian magazine, IT official for defamation

Microsoft files lawsuit against five Md. firms

Of course, since they usually either buy out the company, develop and market a competing product, they don't need to resort to lawsuits for those type of situations.

No Life on Mars, But Many Bugs

Three Minutes With Mike Deliman

Out-of-memory problem caused Mars rover's glitch

MarsNews.com :: NewsWire :: Mars Exploration Rovers :: Archives

Red Rover's master coder

Article Here

Sun's license is one of several it has signed since 1994 with the various owners of the Unix System V source code, of which SCO is the latest, said John Loiacono, the vice president of Sun's Operating Platforms group. The most recent license, signed in February, "licensed several hundred drivers to connect, essentially, peripheral devices to the operating system," he said....

... Because Sun purchased strong intellectual property (IP) rights with this and the various other Unix System V licenses it has signed with SCO over the past decade, it can now indemnify users of its Solaris x86 against lawsuits, Loiacono said. "I have a different license than what IBM purchased. I wanted complete ownership of my IP, so I bought IP rights outright," he said.

Time for another Sun press release to quash the "Solaris as open-source" concept. Based on past events, I predict that SCO will keep acting like they own Unix, and Sun will pretend to believe it.

I wonder if Sun's licensing deal with SCO creates obligations that could have been avoided. This puts Sun in the interesting position of waiting for some combination of IBM, Novell, and Red Hat to finish off SCO.

* They've made decent-quality products in the past
* They currently own SUSE, which is a very nice Linux distribution, and they've been doing interesting things with it since taking over. Meanwhile they've actively been doing good things for the open source community. So whoever's side they were on before, they're certainly on our side now.

But they've already said they're not going to indemnify Linux users, so thats pretty much a moot point.

Your key mistake here is your use of the word "needs". The data I've seen indicates that the G5 draws an equivalent amount of power as comparable Intel and AMD systems. Also, the G5's in the x-servs are air cooled. I think they mostly liquid cool the dual 2.5 Ghz G5 just to keep the noise down.

According to an official statement, Stone has left "to pursue other opportunities". It is rather more likely however that he has become a victim of his own political manoeuvering.

He returned again though when Eric Schmidt stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Jack Messman.

Messman appears to be just as keen to retain his CEO role as Schmidt was however.

Cornett wrote that the $2 million severance package, plus health care, given to Stone "suggests that Mr. Stone was asked to resign." The severance details were unveiled in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sorry, but as long as something like 90% of all the 'reports' about Linux being more secure and 'mythbusting' reports are writen by Linux supporters or have some business in seeing Linux succeed, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt.

But you'll swallow Microsoft's claim that Windows is more secure than Linux hook, line, and sinker because MS doesn't have a vested interest? Who do you expect to write a report that exposes Microsoft's claims for the cherry-picking they are? A Microsoft fan?

If this guy was an ex-Windows programmer I'd be more understanding, but "former lives include editorial director of LinuxWorld"?

Petreley didn't grow up in a vacuum. He knows about Windows. He was also a long-time columnist for Infoworld and Computerworld, hardly opponents of Microsoft. It's not surprising he no longer works for Computerworld. Their new editor is cluelessly anti-Linux. He thinks non-business Linux users are cult members. Coverage of Linux has gone from 6 or 8 articles per issue under the previous editor to one offhand reference in the latest.

Linux NetworxTM EvolocityTM cluster supercomputer to study smallpox genomics in light of the threat of possible bioterror attacks here

The Linux open-source operating system powers a new government supercomputer that will help meteorologists forecast the weather more accurately. here

New SGI supercomputer to scale Linux to 1,024 CPUs
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications will use it for research here

And the list goes on and on.

Indeed, throughout my career I have noticed that projects usually have failed for reasons *other* than the methodology/approach being used.

This strikes me as a sign that the methodology in question is incomplete.

That's not to say that a methodology should be completely idiot-proof. But it should be possible for humans to do. It shouldn't solve all their problems, but the methodology should make the problems obvious as soon as possible, and give a good framework for thinking about solving them.

For me these days, the essential ingredient of any method for building software is tight feedback loops. If a method allows you four years between making guesses and finding out whether they're right, it's a method I'm content to let others try.

Total shipments were 48.4 million for 2004q4. So, Apple's share of that is 1.7%. HP, in contrast, shipped 7.5 million PCs in the same time frame, a 15.5% share.

Where do you expect Apple to be 5-10 years from now with their platform in terms of market share given those numbers? Where do you expect them to be technologically? What is the motivation of software developers to develop for that platform? Please explain.

Farmshore Future

Opinion by Frank Hayes

OCTOBER 04, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Kathy Brittain White has a dream. She figures if U.S. CIOs will ship programming jobs to India to save money, maybe they'll ship them to rural Arkansas instead. So White's company, Rural Sourcing, is setting up outsourcing centers in places in the U.S. where the cost of living is low -- not as low as in Bangalore, but low enough to compete with the total cost of offshoring. White also plans to get her programmers up to a high process-maturity level like those offshore programming shops (see story).
Low costs, high quality -- and it's onshore. For CIOs thinking about offshoring, this really does sound like a dream. For programmers worrying about their jobs, welcome to your new nightmare.

By transplanting the offshoring model to the U.S. boonies, White is wiping out most of the emotional and political arguments against IT outsourcing -- the ones anti-offshoring groups have pinned their hopes on. These U.S. jobs aren't being shipped overseas -- they're being shipped to the U.S. The income tax revenue from these jobs doesn't disappear -- it just comes from a different state.

Meanwhile, on the business end, White's approach hits the competition where it ain't, resolving the thorniest offshoring troubles. And as a former corporate CIO herself, White knows where all the pain points are.

Cross-cultural confusion? Transnational legal questions? Lack of direct communication? Time-zone differences? Those issues are pretty much unavoidable when programming work goes out of the country. When the work goes out to the country, those issues are pretty much nonexistent.

These problems have spurred some CIOs to bring IT jobs back from overseas. They're not just annoyances; they jack up the cost of offshoring and reduce the chances of success for an offshored software project. So if White's plan works, it will be a real alternative to offshoring -- an alternative that actually gets rid of some of the grief offshoring generates.

Wait, it gets better, at least if you're a CIO. If White's Rural Sourcing is successful, it will expand and spawn imitators. This new "farmshoring" crowd will start to soak up the outsourcing business that companies in India, Russia, China and elsewhere were expecting to grab.

The offshore companies won't take that lying down. They'll beef up their offerings, improve their quality and expand their services, working to make offshoring worth the trouble.

That, in turn, will push the farmshorers to improve their offerings. And the cycle will continue, with the ante raised each time. That's exactly what competition is supposed to create: more choice, better deals, a buyer's market. And it's a beautiful thing if you're a customer.

Of course, it's not so beautiful if you're a programmer whose job is already at risk of being outsourced. If Rural Sourcing succeeds, your fate is sealed. Even if farmshoring doesn't make sending your job away attractive enough, it will start a race that will eventually make your situation impossible. Keeping most pure programming jobs in-house just won't make economic sense.

So now the clock is ticking for you to make a choice. You can start working to shift away from pure programming to an IT job that's a lot harder to outsource -- for example, one that involves lots of hands-on work or face time with users.

Or you can move up the stack to a job that involves more business analysis, so you're writing the specifications those farmshorers will be turning into code.

Or you can get out of IT.

Or, just maybe, you can head for the country and look for your next programming job there.

That may not be what you've always dreamed of. But it's a lot more feasible than following your job to Bangalore.

Frank Hayes, Computerworld's senior news columnist, has covered IT for more than 20 years. Contact him at frank_hayes@computerworld.com.

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No it hasn't. You just lack reading comprehension.

What you just said is not that "open source" is harmed (it provably is not) but that US commercial interests are harmed.

No, I said that Open Source is harmed. Open Source is harmed when developers have to spend time scanning their code for patented algorithms and stripping them out of the codebase (like what OpenSSH has had to do). Some of these algorithms may be necessary for interoperability with other software. If the interoperability is not allowed, that hurts Open Source. But I guess that someone that hates Open Source as much as you can't understand that.

With the U.S. and Europe forcing their IP laws on other countries through the UN, it will no longer be possible for any open source project to implement any patented algorithm. But, I guess that's just fine with you, since you want to see Open Source die a painful death.

The OSS projects go right along, all that is impaired is the opportunity (in the US, germany and a few other backward nations) to profit from these projects on an individual basis.

It's got nothing to do with profit. It's illegal even when you are giving it away for free. That's probably hard for you to understand, since you insist on saying that Open Source means "for profit".

There is nothing at all to prevent me or you or anyone else from contributing to open source projects - encrypted or otherwise.

Yes there is - it's called the LAW. I don't know why you don't understand that - oh, that's right, you think you are above the law. You know, if you live in a country where possession of strong encryption is illegal, you cannot write open source software to do strong encryption.

I myself have contributed to encyption projects (and even written a newbie "howto encrypt your linux system to protect your privacy") and I've seen no MIB.

Really, I'm happy for you. Really, I am. You seem to live a charmed life driving drunk with no regard at all for any country's laws. Others, have not been so lucky.

I've also submitted quite a lot of code to an open source project that is widely employed in those "ez 123" dvd rippers, and I've seen no hollywood process servers.

Oh, really? Which project is it? What code did you write? Give me a list. I doubt you can, because I bet you haven't written anything.

but gpg and other projects still continue to evolve... and will, even without (shudder) US funding.

That doesn't even have anything to do with this discussion. You just don't have any argument at all so you throw in anything. You know you're done. You might as well just give up right now.

I really can't believe you're tryuing to make such a provably toothless argument. Even projects like asfrecorder linger long after their useful life has ended - not because they were "closed down" or "unprofitable" but simply because they no longer need to exist - they're obsolete.

So stuff lingers, big fucking deal! You think there's no IP in obsolete software?

Anyone who uses mandrake and has directed their computer to zarb.org can attest to the stupidity of your argument. Decss, gif tools, strong encryption - all that "unprofitable" and/or "illegal" stuff is available from servers located all over the world.

Yeah, if you like to surf the illegal warez boards. Why do hate Open Source so much that you want to link it to pirates?

Even (your example) bnetd is easily obtained from the very first link found under a google search.

No it isn't. Bnetd is the third link, and there's no active development on it. It's a fucking archive of the last official versi

So it is amoral and shortsighted to invest in developing local technology so that local industry thrive and help catch a pie of the multi-billion dollar satellite launch market by proving their capabilities, so they get foreign business, creating thousands of jobs in the process, and bringing in billions of foreign capital to grow their economy?

So it is amoral and shortsighted to invest in communications systems to help boost education levels in poor rural areas?

A space program isn't a pissing contest - all countries depend on space technology in one way or another. For a country with more than a sixth of the worlds population it would be lunacy to depend on other countries for things like military surveillance, communications, weather monitoring, etc. It would also be lunacy to let other nations cement their technical superiority and hold onto their grip on a market that is growing extremely rapidly, and will be a vital revenue source in a few decades.

1024 processors from SGI.

Elton John helps raise money for Gore
Flamboyant rock star Elton John, making his first foray into American politics after three decades of performing in the United States, endorsed Vice President Al Gore at a ritzy Silicon Valley fund-raiser... The fund-raiser, at the home of Novell Corp. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, raised $3.25 million for the Democratic National Committee.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/20/ campaign.gore.john.reut/

Buddhist Nuns Admit Destroying Documents
Two Buddhist nuns who helped coordinate an April 1996 temple fund-raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore admitted today they destroyed a list of donors and other documents because they thought the information would embarrass the temple... Gore's appearance at the fund-raiser has proven a major embarrassment for the vice president, but he also faces new Justice Department scrutiny on another front: his 46 fund-raising calls from the White House.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/09/04/thompson /hearings.main/

Buddhist nuns indicted for failure to testify in trial of Democratic fund-raiser
Two Buddhist nuns were indicted Wednesday on contempt of court charges for failing to appear as witnesses in the trial of Maria Hsia, who was convicted in March of campaign law violations in connection with a 1996 Democratic fund-raising event at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/04/05/ nuns.cnn/

Hsia Convicted in Campaign Finance Scandal
The jury convicted Hsia, a friend and political supporter of Vice President Al Gore, for arranging more than $100,000 in illegal donations during the 1996 presidential campaign.
http://www.asianweek.com/2000_03_09/news_hsia_fina nce.html

Clinton's greatest peril isn't Monica
James Riady and his Lippo Group latched on to a young Bill Clinton and constructed a web of Asian influence that funneled millions of dollars into various Clinton campaigns and causes (such as silencing Webster Hubbell). For this, Riady enjoyed not only access to Clinton, but Riady's chief stooge, John Huang, got top-secret security clearance and continued to see classified information even after he became a big fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee...

"Three remarkable women,'' as the authors describe them -- Democratic Party activist Maria Hsia, Pauline Kanchanalak of Thailand and Hong Kong billionaire Nina Wang -- all have money ties to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and all have connections to Chinese intelligence or the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

"Beijing did not hesitate to exploit this connection, even face-to-face with Bill Clinton,'' the authors say. Hsia is a known agent for the Chinese government who has been indicted for immigration and campaign-fund-raising scams and, say the authors, probably helped Chinese spies enter the United States.

Kanchanalak, who has been indicted on charges of violating election laws, brought leaders of a Thai conglomerate that is in business with Middle East terrorists and with China's biggest arms smugglers to t

Elton John helps raise money for Gore
Flamboyant rock star Elton John, making his first foray into American politics after three decades of performing in the United States, endorsed Vice President Al Gore at a ritzy Silicon Valley fund-raiser... The fund-raiser, at the home of Novell Corp. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, raised $3.25 million for the Democratic National Committee.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/20/ campaign.gore.john.reut/

Buddhist Nuns Admit Destroying Documents
Two Buddhist nuns who helped coordinate an April 1996 temple fund-raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore admitted today they destroyed a list of donors and other documents because they thought the information would embarrass the temple... Gore's appearance at the fund-raiser has proven a major embarrassment for the vice president, but he also faces new Justice Department scrutiny on another front: his 46 fund-raising calls from the White House.
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/09/04/thompson /hearings.main/

Buddhist nuns indicted for failure to testify in trial of Democratic fund-raiser
Two Buddhist nuns were indicted Wednesday on contempt of court charges for failing to appear as witnesses in the trial of Maria Hsia, who was convicted in March of campaign law violations in connection with a 1996 Democratic fund-raising event at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in California
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/04/05/ nuns.cnn/

Hsia Convicted in Campaign Finance Scandal
The jury convicted Hsia, a friend and political supporter of Vice President Al Gore, for arranging more than $100,000 in illegal donations during the 1996 presidential campaign.
http://www.asianweek.com/2000_03_09/news_hsia_fina nce.html

Clinton's greatest peril isn't Monica
James Riady and his Lippo Group latched on to a young Bill Clinton and constructed a web of Asian influence that funneled millions of dollars into various Clinton campaigns and causes (such as silencing Webster Hubbell). For this, Riady enjoyed not only access to Clinton, but Riady's chief stooge, John Huang, got top-secret security clearance and continued to see classified information even after he became a big fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee...

"Three remarkable women,'' as the authors describe them -- Democratic Party activist Maria Hsia, Pauline Kanchanalak of Thailand and Hong Kong billionaire Nina Wang -- all have money ties to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and all have connections to Chinese intelligence or the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

"Beijing did not hesitate to exploit this connection, even face-to-face with Bill Clinton,'' the authors say. Hsia is a known agent for the Chinese government who has been indicted for immigration and campaign-fund-raising scams and, say the authors, probably helped Chinese spies enter the United States.

Kanchanalak, who has been indicted on charges of violating election laws, brought leaders of a Thai conglomerate that is in business with Middle East terrorists and with China's biggest arms smugglers to t

Since they gave him the boot while licking Microsoft's arse cheeks...

On the other hand, if you want real scalability, try Linux

ifconfig -a

Then try this ruling specifically regarding wireless network equipment.

The university is in the wrong here. They're trying to regulate something they have no jurisdiction on. Trying to ban the equipment itself is an end-run around the intent of the FCC's ruling and won't stand up to scruitiny.

FCC ruled that Logan International Airport couldn't restrict the airlines from installing their own wireless network instead of being forced to use the airport's network.

I'd like to see a cite on your assertion that my dorm room isn't a leased property and that I don't get the same protections as tenants to any other landlord.

You're looking at the wrong ruling. The OTARD rules cover TV services and fixed wireless internet.

There's other cases where the FCC has said landlords do not have the right to restrict use of unlicensed radio equipment on their property by their tennants. There's similar case law dating back further that say the same thing about HAM operation.

The OTARD rules simply illustrate their jurisdiction.

They've ruled on other occasions property owners can't prohibit tennants from installing their own WiFi network instead of requiring them to use the property owner's service.

No, they can't. Because the FCC has said they control the spectrum, and the property owner can't restrict it.

For the same reason if I'm renting apartments I can't say "Well, the FCC says I have to allow you to use DirecTV if you want, but I'm not going to allow you to bring a reciever on the property. Put the dish up all you want, but you can't use a set top box." It's a dodge around the issue, and the FCC won't let it stand.

I jumped in here with the same attitude until I noticed someone who made reference to a ruling in a federal court specifically GRANTING the use of ISM band devices in situations where private, local, or other non-federal regulation exists (such as in a lease contract). While the dorms/apartments might be owned by the university, they can certainly not regulate the use of the devices unless it's plugged into their own network. So unless you plug it into a campus-provided ethernet outlet, they don't have any say.

The last point of whether or not they can regulate the equipment attached to their network is also debatable. This could be likened to your ISP preventing NAT-based routers from being attached to their network; but at any rate, this is a seperate debate altogether.

There are certain things the government has decreed are not legal, even if you put them in a contract.

A contract that says I'll work for you for less than the legal minimum wage is unenforceable.
A lease that says I can't install a DBS dish under any circumstances is unenforceable.
A lease that says I can't use a HAM radio on the property is unenforceable.
A property deed that says I can never resell the property to someone with a different skin color than mine is unenforceable.

And in this case,
A lease that says I can't install a wireless access point in unlicensed spectrum is unenforceable.

Except in this case, the Federal Government, through the FCC has ruled that your right to use unlicenced radio equipment trumps any lease restriction. There's no similar ruling that says I have a right to a couch on the front porch of my frat house, but there is a federal ruling that I have a right to run a 2.4 GHz access point, and the only person I have to answer to is the FCC.

The FCC has ruled their restrictions are illegal and not enforceable.

The university can control what you connect to their network. But they can't regulate the airwaves, that's the exclusive jurisdiction of the FCC. If you're not connecting your AP to their network, they don't have the right to restrict you.

The FCC has ruled repeatedly with regards to HAM Radio antennas, DBS dishes and OTA TV antennas that landlords cannot unduly restrict tenants from installing them. They've also ruled the same regarding anything in the 2.4 GHz band.

So:
a) University banning connection of WAP to their network: OK
b) University banning WAP anywhere on their property if it's not connected to their network: Not OK

Best Buy and Home Depot didn't even bother encrypting theirs some time ago. I imagine nowadays store managers aren't so technically inept to allow that to happen now, but then, we are talking about Walmart...

I'd love it if proprietary vendors allowed us the capability to evaluate the risks ourselves. I'll believe the story about proprietary being safer only after Microsoft lets customers audit their source to let me verify that their closed-source stuff doesn't infringe on patents I may be worried about. Note that they let important customers audit their source for security reasons. Losing mission critical infrastructor because a vendor didn't have the rights to it could be even more harmful to my business than a security hole (which I presume would be easily patched).

If my company depends on a closed-source application, and that application infringes on someone elses patent, I wouldn't want that software yanked out from under me. At least in an open source environment I can understand that the offending parts could be coded around. With closed source, it's more likely the vendor will have to stop providing the software. Also, in the open source case, there's a better likelyhood that people have scoured the source code looking for infringing patents.

So far most of the big vendors, MSFT included, have a pretty weak concept of indemnification - they'll cover purchases prices, and the like. Heck even Gentoo.org'll probably indemnify you the cost of the purchase price. Unless they start offering far better indemnification (cover the costs of migrating off their infringing software to an alternative), I'm better off with open source.

Slow news day or infatuated with Mozilla? Heck, I like Mozilla and use it at home and work, but I don't drop everything to see what's happened with their website in the last day. Gee willikers.

Here's some other fine articles which could probably have been posted:

Philadelphia Considering Free or Low Cost Wireless For All

Microsoft to Exploit Japan's Post Offices to deliver SP2 (their word, not mine!)

The Road Ahead, According to Steve Ballmer

X-Rays Reveal Mummy Faces (Low Cancer Risk to Mummy)

Owls Use Poop to Lure Beetles

Well except for this one

There was confusion as to whether or not it would replace NTFS, so thank you for clarifying that point, asshole.

Um, he's not exactly a genius with the video idea... it's already being done!

As far as VOIP:
Info from 2002.
Info from today.

"Optware plans to commercialize the technology in the first quarter of 2006". "Much less expensive consumer versions could be on the market as soon as 2007" "The company is initially planning to use the technology for enterprise applications. Drives for this market will cost about $20,000 and will initially use 200GB HVDs, with a target cost of about $100 per disc." "Drives for home users will cost about $2,700, about the same as commercially available Blu-ray Disc players cost now." "Future developments of the technology could take its capacity up to 1TB of data on 12-centimeter discs the company said."