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JPawloski asks: "When I bought this computer, it came with 6 months of AOL for free. Being notoriously frugal, I have used AOL and will continue to until my free time expires; however, the one disadvantage is it does not have a NNTP server. I find using Deja by Google cumbersome and have a number of problems (updating every 9 or so hours is one of them). I started a search of public NNTP servers on the Internet, and tried literally 50 of them, but none of them work. I even looked a directories of public news servers and fared no better. Are public news servers a thing of the past now that most ISPs offer it standard? Does anyone else out there still use a public news server, and, if so, how does it work compared to the alternatives (deja.com, etc.). Any other recommendations?"

keen writes "Deja.com is back to its old self again, after trying its luck with the annoying 'percision buying service' for far too long. Finally, no need to click through to usenet search." The buying advice section was snapped up by half.com, who will roll it out early next year. Their Usenet search is typically the second place I go when I see cryptic Linux error messages; someone else has always had the same problem and about half the time they got a decent response. (Here's the first place.)

keen writes "Deja.com is back to its old self again, after trying its luck with the annoying 'percision buying service' for far too long. Finally, no need to click through to usenet search." The buying advice section was snapped up by half.com, who will roll it out early next year. Their Usenet search is typically the second place I go when I see cryptic Linux error messages; someone else has always had the same problem and about half the time they got a decent response. (Here's the first place.)

snottrue writes "This just in from comp.lang.python - the PythonLabs team is moving to Digital Creations (the Zope people)." Van Rossum's message is informative.

JohnFred asks: "Recently I was in the North East of England for a quick visit. When the time came for me to depart Londonwards I needed to look up a train timetable so wandered in to my local library for a quick lookup on the net. The AUP document I was required to sign was so authoritarian as to be unbelievable. As well as the usual clauses about porn and virii it forbade the use of chatrooms and - get this: EMAIL. To add to this, they had set up the machines so that the only app that could be run was Internet Explorer. They also had blocking software that blocked evil, depraved sites like oh, Deja.Com. I think this is not acceptable in a service that is funded out of (partly) taxpayers pockets is so over-regulated as to be utterly useless. Are other libraries in the UK taking a similar line? Does anyone else know more about this, or is this just an individual council going overboard?" A few libraries in the US are moving to this kind of system as well. It's a tricky situation, and it was inevitable that we were going to have this kind of conflict when accessing the Internet through publicly funded outlets. Are there better ways to handle this situation?

delfstrom asks: "Retention time for online reference material is decreasing. First it was Deja moving archives offline. Now try to find the AP story you saw on Yahoo from earlier this year about a judge's order against a CyberPatrol decryption tool. You can't, because anything older than 30 days is canned from news.yahoo.com. Likewise, certain online newspapers (not to mention any names) are removing content after a mere 7 days, though for $25 per retrieved article you can go back to 1977. This certainly goes against the philosophy of not breaking links. What responsibility do information providers have in maintaining articles that they post? In this era of electronic publishing, academic papers are beginning to contain URLs in the references. To what extent can we keep copies of such information and provide it to others?"

Flitz writes "It looks like the inevitable is happening: someone is mass-posting copies of the DeCSS source code to Usenet. It showed up today in the comp.os.linux groups, with a little checking, it looks like it was posted to all of the comp* groups. Will MPAA be suing Deja now? Here is a link to the spam sighting report." I'm really amused by the various things that have been released with the DeCSS code embedded. Song lyrics in free MP3s, encoded into MIDI files, poetry, pictures of the statue of liberty. I just wish this whole lawsuit thing would get dropped so I could start playing DVDs on my laptop's DVD drive under Linux. I've bought tons of movies: its so unfair that I can't play them on the plane without rebooting. Having to keep a whole operating system around just to watch movies is pretty harsh.

Anonymous Employee writes: "I was asked for a feasibility analysis to provide high-quality searching in a large Usenet archive (all expect binary/porn groups and several years worth of archives). This is similar to what Dejanews wanted to provide before they re-branded to Deja last year. Do you think there is a need for this or is high-quality Web searching + Usenet browsing meeting your everyday needs in terms of information retrieval? If not, do the existing Usenet search interfaces suffice (Deja, one year worth of archives, not-so-good search interface - Remarq, three months worth of archives, okay search interface)? ...and also, is real-time indexing (i.e., you can search for an article 'very soon' after it has been posted) important?" In light of Deja's recent faux pas, I think this question is rather timely, and I have to admit, I wouldn't mind the ability to search Usenet posts older than one year.

skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from Usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.

---begin deja's reponse-----

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.

We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products

We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.

*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.

We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.

If you wish to remove older posts:

Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.

This form can be found at

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.

Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.

If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.

*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:

x-no-archive: yes

in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type

x-no-archive: yes

as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.

In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.

Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!

************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.

Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport

***************************************************************

-------end deja's response--------

skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from Usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.

---begin deja's reponse-----

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.

We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products

We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.

*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.

We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.

If you wish to remove older posts:

Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.

This form can be found at

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.

Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.

If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.

*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:

x-no-archive: yes

in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type

x-no-archive: yes

as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.

In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.

Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!

************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.

Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport

***************************************************************

-------end deja's response--------

skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from Usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.

---begin deja's reponse-----

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.

We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products

We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.

*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.

We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.

If you wish to remove older posts:

Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.

This form can be found at

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.

Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.

If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.

*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:

x-no-archive: yes

in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type

x-no-archive: yes

as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.

In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.

Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!

************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.

Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport

***************************************************************

-------end deja's response--------

skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from Usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.

---begin deja's reponse-----

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.

We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products

We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.

*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.

We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.

If you wish to remove older posts:

Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.

This form can be found at

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.

Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.

If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.

*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:

x-no-archive: yes

in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type

x-no-archive: yes

as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.

In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.

Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!

************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.

Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport

***************************************************************

-------end deja's response--------

skinfaxi noted that Deja has begun insert advertisements within the bodies of messages collected from Usenet. Here's an example where the word 'Modem' was linked to (surprise) ads for modems! Skinfaxi attached Deja's response to her complaint below as well.

---begin deja's reponse-----

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.

We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products

We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.

*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.

We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.

If you wish to remove older posts:

Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.

This form can be found at

http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml

Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.

Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.

If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.

*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:

x-no-archive: yes

in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type

x-no-archive: yes

as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.

In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.

Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!

************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.

Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport

***************************************************************

-------end deja's response--------

bigstripes sent us a couple of websites that game chairs: The RocknRide and the Simcraft for people for whom strapping a subwoofer to your chest just isn't enough. Curious what the MST3k guys are doing? bill notes that most of the guys are working on a website Timmy Bighands, although Joel is doing his own thing. QuasEye sent us a link to a review of The Matrix: The Musical. I need footage of this, but it sounds frightening beyond measure. Frank Martini pointed us to a VinylVideo who are hawking a kit that lets your old record player play video. Sun Tzu pointed us to a list of milestones in a programmers life, while jamesoutlaw sent in a site that caricatures common discussion group personalities in Usenet ... and surprisingly enough Many of the stereotypes apply just as well to Slashdot. Schmam notes that Stevie Case, one of the designers for Quake II, now working with Ion Storm, famous for being Romero's GF, and for beating him at Quake, as well as being hot ... well she's in playboy, but you're only allowed to read the article or else I'm telling your mom. Hey, its nice to note that Slashdot took 2 People's Voice Webby Awards one in the Print & Zines and the other in Community. I'm not exactly sure what it proves tho (besides the fact that you guys like us enough to fill out a form) but thanks to those who voted us. May peace and prosperity follow you (and may the Webbies not sell your e-mail address to people bent on selling you toner). And now for the strang(er) part of the quickies, HelLfiRe leads us towards The Stinkymeat Project which is, well, a photo documentary of a plate of rotting meat. Read only on a settled stomach. Richard Stevens sent us an Amazingly Strange cartoon strip: This guy draws inane pictures based on the idiotic titles people send him. If you want something slightly better drawn, mkoscica sent us plif which is really twisted, but funny.

Dan Langille, creator and maintainer of the FreeBSD Diary, has just unleashed FreshPorts on the world. In a nutshell, this is a changing list of new and updated ports in the FreeBSD ports tree, making it easy to keep bang up to date with new software as it's ported. It's a natural companion to Wolfram Schneider's fortnightly port update messages.

wtfcca asks: "deja.com decided to revamp again. What are the chances it will drop its Usenet archive/search section in the future? Are there alternatives to Deja.com for searching/archiving Usenet? What would it take to set up a Usenet archive/searching site? Besides the obvious hardware requirements, anybody know if deja.com's Usenet searching software is available? I'd consider donating time/equipment to archive a subset of Usenet if so (since I happen to like Deja's power user interface). Some time ago Deja News said it would acquire old article archives, dating back to the mid-80s or some such. Did that ever happen? Every once in a while I see an old articles, but not consistently to lead me to believe that it did."

Minix is now Free Software! Andrew Tanenbaum posted to the comp.os.minix newsgroup yesterday announcing: "Better late than never. I finally got permission from Prentice Hall to change the MINIX license to the BSD license. The lawyers sort of sat on this for two years." You can read the full posting on deja, as well.

Chacham asks: "There's a lot of scanners out there, and I'd like to buy one. I first checked the Ask Slashdot archives and found this, but at over a year old I thought it might be good for an update. I'm looking for a SCSI, Linux supported, color scanner. Although price will eventually play a role in which I purchase (probably up to US $500), I would like to hear comments with emphasis on quality. Speed is nice, but unless it's super slow, I'll go for quality. Deja lists scanners in a poll but it doesn't look like there are enough submissions for a real comparison. I was looking at SANE supported scanners. Many are listed as alpha or beta, and only a few as stable. I've been hearing good things about HP scanners, but with alpha support under SANE, I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Although, I guess I don't need to use SANE; are there other good packages out there? "

Chacham asks: "There's a lot of scanners out there, and I'd like to buy one. I first checked the Ask Slashdot archives and found this, but at over a year old I thought it might be good for an update. I'm looking for a SCSI, Linux supported, color scanner. Although price will eventually play a role in which I purchase (probably up to US $500), I would like to hear comments with emphasis on quality. Speed is nice, but unless it's super slow, I'll go for quality. Deja lists scanners in a poll but it doesn't look like there are enough submissions for a real comparison. I was looking at SANE supported scanners. Many are listed as alpha or beta, and only a few as stable. I've been hearing good things about HP scanners, but with alpha support under SANE, I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Although, I guess I don't need to use SANE; are there other good packages out there? "

AC wrote in to say, "It seems that Informix are considering a port to FreeBSD. Cindy Munns at Informix has written to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc asking for people interested in a port to e-mail her with your name, your company, the number of users, and so on." I've seen this message, but it doesn't seem to have hit Deja yet. However, I've tracked down a variant from Cindy in comp.databases.informix. Informix for Linux already works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI, but it's great that they're considering a native version. And remember, there's no point mailing them if you're not genuinely interested...

A reader wrote to us with the news that an UDP has been declared on @Home in news.admin.announce. You can read it on Deja.com for the full post. Interesting - let's see how long it takes @Home to respond to the UDP. Usually, this gets people attention pretty quickly, and I'll welcome any sort of respite from the spam flood of the last couple months. The penalty is due to begin 17:00 PST, Jan. 18, 2000.

Kwikymart writes "A poll on Deja News of network operating system rates Linux dead last in all catagories. Funny thing is it rates the same number (1.7) in all the catagories (Scalability, Reliability, Administration and Cost). Looks like somebody that doesn't like Linux sure likes to write perl scripts!" That "somebody" also seems to like GNU Hurd a whole bunch; it was the top-rated network OS. ;-)

An anonymous reader wrote it to say " This is not your average `we went out there, we repaired it, oh, we are so good' article, but just a happy note after the continous `HST remains in ZGSP... No activity' messages on sci.astro.hubble: finally, after SM3A, new data has been collected. Peharps a little tidbit regarding a new 486 running up there is more interesting for this community... and if you are interesting in those pretty pictures that make good desktop backgrounds, there's always the Space Telescope Science Institute. "M/I>

An anonymous reader wrote it to say " This is not your average `we went out there, we repaired it, oh, we are so good' article, but just a happy note after the continous `HST remains in ZGSP... No activity' messages on sci.astro.hubble: finally, after SM3A, new data has been collected. Peharps a little tidbit regarding a new 486 running up there is more interesting for this community... and if you are interesting in those pretty pictures that make good desktop backgrounds, there's always the Space Telescope Science Institute. "M/I>

An anonymous reader wrote it to say " This is not your average `we went out there, we repaired it, oh, we are so good' article, but just a happy note after the continous `HST remains in ZGSP... No activity' messages on sci.astro.hubble: finally, after SM3A, new data has been collected. Peharps a little tidbit regarding a new 486 running up there is more interesting for this community... and if you are interesting in those pretty pictures that make good desktop backgrounds, there's always the Space Telescope Science Institute. "M/I>

An anonymous reader pointed us to a usenet article where an "Insider" claims to have juice on Red Hat and Corel. The CFO has resigned, and it supposedly has something to do with a Red Hat/Corel connection. The post is from a hotmail address so it take it with a grain of salt the size of yugo, but these rumors have been flying for weeks, so ya gotta wonder.

There have been a spate of reports about the usefulness of FreeBSD's Linux ABI recently. First off, Daeron wrote in with the news that VMWare now runs on FreeBSD, thanks to the efforts of Vladimir Silyaev. Vladimir has a page up with instructions and caveats. Secondly, Jacob Hart has confirmed that the Unreal Tournament Demo works flawlessly. Finally, Mark van Woerkom has created FreeBSD ports skeletons for Linux Quake 3 Test.

There have been a spate of reports about the usefulness of FreeBSD's Linux ABI recently. First off, Daeron wrote in with the news that VMWare now runs on FreeBSD, thanks to the efforts of Vladimir Silyaev. Vladimir has a page up with instructions and caveats. Secondly, Jacob Hart has confirmed that the Unreal Tournament Demo works flawlessly. Finally, Mark van Woerkom has created FreeBSD ports skeletons for Linux Quake 3 Test.

TRUSTe, the steward of the most visible symbol on the internet, is making a tough decision today. Today, it reveals what it intends to do about its client Real Networks. At stake is whatever's left of its credibility. (Update: 11/08 02:55: Real got off on a technicality: "because the transmission of user data ... did not involve collection of data on the RealNetworks Web site, the privacy incident was outside of the scope of TRUSTe's current privacy seal program.")

Unquestionably TRUSTe is the leader in third-party privacy assurance. Its only alternative is BBBOnline, which can boast only 100 members to TRUSTe's 750. But it's having a hard time living up to its motto, "Building a web you can believe in": sometimes it's hard to know what to believe.

TRUSTe's original idea was to allow a website to display one of three icons, indicating whether its privacy policy was good, ok, or bad. There turned out to be problems with this - strangely enough, no site wanted to post an icon saying that their privacy sucked - and the icons looked too similar anyway. So they went with one icon, a "badge" that every member site posts.

All the badge means is that the site has a privacy policy, and that, as far as TRUSTe knows, they haven't violated it.

If you think this is a questionable basis for a consumer advocacy group, you're right. But the real question is how it plays out in practice. Let's take a look at TRUSTe's track record.

Round I: TRUSTe and GeoCities. In June 1998, the FTC announced - to everyone's surprise - that it and GeoCities had come to a settlement regarding violations of consumer privacy.

Everyone was surprised because this was the first anyone had heard of it. Where was TRUSTe?

Caught flat-footed, TRUSTe scrambled for a few days, then made its own announcement. It pointed out that GeoCities had begun the alleged privacy violations before applying to become a member (in April) and being accepted (in May). Therefore, TRUSTe claimed, the violations were technically not under the scope of their investigation.

But turn that around and put it another way - it was able to become a TRUSTe member even while under investigation by the FTC, and TRUSTe said nothing.

It gets worse. The FTC and GeoCities issued conflicting releases about what the settlement actually meant. The FTC said that GeoCities had "misrepresented the purposes for which it was collecting personal identifying information" (including children's). GeoCities denied the charges.

So who was right? We still don't know. Despite this being precisely the issue that TRUSTe was set up to resolve, TRUSTe refused to confirm or deny the FTC's allegations.

In a 1998 open letter, I asked whether TRUSTe's initial review of GeoCities had included any really tough questions such as "are you currently under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission?" No answer. In fact, mention of the GeoCities incident seems to have been removed from TRUSTe's website.

The organization that wanted to make the FTC obsolete was not off to a good start.

Round II: TRUSTe and Microsoft. March 1999. This was the "Global User ID" case. It turned out Microsoft had been embedding a user ID into every document you created with their software. Since they put that ID on file when you registered their software, they have been capable for years of tracking authorship of even supposedly-anonymous documents.

And don't think it's just a theoretical concern. Just weeks later, the Melissa macro virus was unleashed, and its author was tracked down using this same ID. Any technology that can lead the cops to your door is potentially dangerous technology.

TRUSTe announced that this "compromises consumer trust and privacy" (duh), but said that since the Global User ID does not, strictly speaking, involve the Microsoft.com website, it had no jurisdiction. Their conclusion: "TRUSTe has determined that Microsoft.com was in compliance with all TRUSTe principles."

In reality, Microsoft's privacy page (prominently labeled with the TRUSTe seal) also discusses online registration of software products, and notes that the "personal profile" from their software registration appears on the website and is editable from the website. And that page claims that registration is covered by the TRUSTe guidelines. For TRUSTe to claim it's not requires some Clintonesque redefinitions.

CNET's headline was exactly right: "TRUSTe Clears Microsoft on Technicality."

Round III: TRUSTe and Deja News. April 1999. Again TRUSTe is taken by surprise when a computer sleuth discovers that Deja News has been collecting data on email sent by its users. When a reader clicked on an email link in a discussion posting, the destination email address was recorded, along with the presumable topic of discussion, the sender's IP number, and if registered, the sender's personal data.

This is not what one expects when sending private email! And this clearly involved Deja's website, so there was no question of another technicality.

TRUSTe's analysis of this situation was only two paragraphs long; here's all that happened:

"TRUSTe specified certain clarifying language to be included in the privacy statement. Deja News, independent of TRUSTe, then decided to discontinue the practice of tracking IP addresses in conjunction with the mail-to feature."

In fact, the situation was resolved long before TRUSTe even bothered to issue that statement. TRUSTe's suggestion of "clarifying language" had been obviated long before by Deja's indepedent action. See ZDNet's story of May 4th, which hopes that TRUSTe "will likely issue some sort of statement...this week." But TRUSTe stayed silent for four weeks.

Round IV: TRUSTe and Microsoft (again). A wide-open security hole in Microsoft's Hotmail is breached, and for a few hours everyone's inboxes are public domain. (If you don't think this is a serious privacy violation, read the stunning anonymous tale of cracking into an enemy's email, published on Salon.com the next day.)

TRUSTe's response is to call in an independent accounting firm to talk with Hotmail's programmers and security people, look over the source code, and generally try to make sure such a problem won't happen again. This isn't a bad idea - it just wasn't much of anything that Microsoft wouldn't have done on its own. Locking the barn door after the horse is gone doesn't help the people whose privacy has been lost. Microsoft is out of pocket a few bucks for the audit, and gets more than its money's worth by being able to say that TRUSTe still gives them a clean bill of health.

How can all these incidents have passed by without punishment of any kind? It's because of what TRUSTe is actually guaranteeing. Not that any company will actually keep its data private - but that the company is not lying in its privacy assurance.

That's right. You know those privacy promises you never read, the ones that are different on every website and all seem ten pages long? What TRUSTe does is promise you that, if you had read them, you'd know your rights.

If it wanted, a company could have its lawyers dress up "we will spam your email every day and sell your name and address to anyone who asks for them" in legalese, and get a TRUSTe badge on their homepage. Would you know you were being screwed? Not unless you speak fluent lawyer.

Is the FTC such a bogeyman that we really need to sell our privacy so cheap?

When Ralph Nader was pressing the government to impose strict safety standards on the auto industry, Henry Ford II complained that they were "unreasonable, arbitrary and technically unfeasible." After the laws were enacted anyway, a decade later he conceded: "We wouldn't have [these] kinds of safety ... unless there had been a federal law."

Imagine if our only automotive safety regulations were that Detroit must abide by its lawyers' fine print!

The usual argument is that requiring an actual guarantee of privacy would stifle business. The purpose in forming TRUSTe was to keep the internet corporation-friendly, by keeping the government out. TRUSTe was well-intentioned, no question. It was a noble experiment.

But, according to some influential people and groups, it has failed.

Forrester Research studies topics related to the internet and made privacy its concern in its September 1999 report, "Privacy Wake-Up Call." Its conclusions should not be surprising:

"Most privacy policies are a joke." Forrester says corporate privacy policies are legalese set up mostly to protect the corporations.

"Few companies meet key privacy protection principles." About 10%.

"Third-party programs show little traction." Hundreds of TRUSTe licensees don't amount to much on the billion-page net.

And, "third-party privacy firms...like TRUSTe...become more of a privacy advocate for industry rather than for consumers."

(Slashdot has more on this study.)

Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after years of straddling the fence on the issue, has finally recognized that self-policing just doesn't work. The EFF is not just the best-recognized internet rights advocacy group; it created TRUSTe.

Yet, in an October letter to the FTC, the EFF laid down its cards:

"Creation of TRUSTe and its seal program was one such early innovation of EFF. TRUSTe was successful in several areas. ... We now must move out of this awareness-raising mode and into an action mode where real protection can be achieved. Legislation is needed in order to achieve that goal. ... we think it is time to move away from a strict self-regulation approach to protecting privacy online."

The latest nail in the coffin came on November 1, when EFF Program Director Stanton McCandlish laid out the facts on the fight-censorship mailing list:

"Our stance has basically been that industry self-reg would be worth trying, but might or might not be enough. We did the 'proof of concept' ourselves, by launching and spinning off TRUSTe. But TRUSTe was intended to be and is a separate, independent entity, and was created as an experiment. The experiment is in many ways a failure..."

(McCandlish's personal opinion is even more scathing. Follow the link to read it.)

You wouldn't know this if you read the TRUSTe website. Their homepage proudly tells you about the six-month-old Georgetown study, but makes no mention of the Forrester Research report. It tells you that the FTC supports self-regulation (based on Georgetown), but won't tell you that its own parent, the EFF, thinks the ride is over.

If TRUSTe is a consumer rights and advocacy group, why are they only feeding us the feel-good stories? Aren't consumer groups supposed to be the ones that dig up dirt and tell us about potential problems?

The money trail leads to the answer. TRUSTe isn't a consumer advocacy group. TRUSTe doesn't get its money from consumers. Its money comes from corporate sponsors, and nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them. Besides, those corporations want the message to be one of constant calm. Concerned customers are not good for sales.

Remember the GeoCities FTC findings that TRUSTe wouldn't comment on? GeoCities had just done an IPO and millions of dollars were at stake. GeoCities' sister corporation Engage Technologies (they are both subsidiaries of CMG Industries) was a Contributing Corporate Sponsor of TRUSTe. That conflict of interest was never mentioned.

(GeoCities has since been purchased by Yahoo.)

Remember the Microsoft incidents that TRUSTe waffled on? Microsoft is not just a member, but also a Premier Corporate Sponsor of TRUSTe. That conflict of interest totals $100,000 per year.

Round V. By now you've guessed that this is leading up to the current furor over Real Networks. Real is a TRUSTe member. Do I need to mention that it's also a Contributing Corporate Sponsor?

TRUSTe said that it would render judgement on Real Networks by the end of last week. Now it's saying today.

And it's making noises like they're actually going to do something this time:

"We could take the company to court for breach of contract, since they do have an agreement with us. Or, we can forward the case to the FTC... I guarantee that the damage to the reputation of the first company that we do that to will be big."

For its own sake, it had better. We're talking about a company whose product is a Trojan Horse that secretly scans your hard drive for valuable personal data. If TRUSTe doesn't unload with both barrels, its credibility will be negative zero.

Anything TRUSTe does may have a negligable effect in any case. Corporations only understand the bottom line, and RealNetworks stock shot up 25% in the five days following the privacy debacle. With the company's market cap $1.9 billion higher than it was a week ago, how much are they really going to care about some nonprofit gnat?

We can hope. Real.com today unveiled its new website, a music portal, which investors will be watching carefully. Also happening today is a conference held by the FTC and Commerce Department for data-profilers to announce what they're going to do to protect privacy. So if TRUSTe were trying to maximize the effect of their announcement, today would be the day they'd pick. It could be that the gnat will have a nasty bite that surprises everyone.

Still - you can dress an organization up in not-for-profit clothes, but that doesn't change that it's beholden to its revenue stream. TRUSTe says we can trust them to be objective, on the theory that their revenue stream will dry up if they don't do right by consumers. So far, there doesn't seem to be much truth to that. They haven't been doing us right, but their number of contributors and members just keeps growing.

I enjoy reading about the future envisioned by people like Gibson and Stephenson, where the net is totally unregulated and a "right to privacy" is a dim memory, or a joke. That doesn't mean I want to live in that future. Europe has consumer protection laws that are, from an American perspective, astonishingly strong. Maybe we should take a look at other countries' solutions, to see if there's something we could learn.

So far, all we've learned is what fails.

- Jamie McCarthy

Tybstar writes "Looks like W. Richard Stevens has passed on, according to this Deja article. The poster of that article is listed in the credits of UNIX Network Programming, and the book mentions his place of work. " Thanks to mpearce, we have a link to an obituary. It's weird to think that just yesterday I almost bought one of his books...

Alec Muffett writes " On Thursday, a small team of people (including myself) announced the world's first factorisation of a 512-bit RSA encryption key (aka: RSA-155) - considerably bigger than the RSA-129 challenge of several years ago, and this time performed by a small cabal of numbercrunchers, just to see if it could be done in secret. There are press releases and announcements available, as well as considerable discussion in sci.crypt. " Read on for what Alec has to say on the matter. This is a significant advance because such 512-bit length keys are routinely used in (possibly ill-advised?) transaction protocols for some important financial institutions (read: some serious $$$$$$$ may be at risk in the near future) - and moreover, as a factoring contributor, I can state that I personally have now been offered the use of additional hardware which could take the 6 or 7 months spent sieving for results, and reduce the time by a factor of some 40% to 60%.

An anonymous Demon Customer writes "Demon Internet (a UK ISP) are blocking customers' ability to post to USENET through their news servers if a customer posts a message containing a URL to a defamatory article on a website (in this case Dejanews). They claim that the act of posting the URL is equivalent to posting the defamatory article itself. It doesn't end there. If another customer follows- up the original article and has the same URL in the quoted text, they also get their access pulled. Where does it stop? Do message ID's of messages containing the URL count (eg. in the `references' header)? This also opens a whole can of worms for the UK's defamation laws, with regards to the internet. Here is the post from a Demon representative which states their position."

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us an article from Deja News discussing the fact that German Usenet Admins have declared AOL Rogue, and are discussing banning the ISP to cut down trolls and spam. The RFD ist auf Deutsch, so you might wanna hit up Babelfish for your usual amusingly broken translation.

Johannes Schritz wrote in to tell us that deja news is now deja.com. Here is the announcement. Its also been overhauled quite a bit.

Johannes Schritz wrote in to tell us that deja news is now deja.com. Here is the announcement. Its also been overhauled quite a bit.