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The original story was about Hailstorm as well:

Hailstorm: Changing Society's Privacy Infrastructure

And refeances an article from this past April from the Seattle times

"Boiling Frogs": A perfect example of plagerism and copyright violation with no credit to the original author.

Since this was in a discussion about Microsoft, so it does not win extra brownie points for irony in a discussion about the RIAA.

(Now to important matters)

Could Microsoft use copyright issues for getting control over the personal information of people?

Already we have seen the CDDB, built from the distributed contributions of individuals, turn ed around and taken private. What is to stop MS from placing their own copyright on this huge database of personal info and renting it to the highest bidder?

One Idea I have is for everyone to register their MS software codes via a generic public user profile. Suddenly Microsoft ends up with a couple hundred thousand users registering via a single name, address, phone number. Something like John Smith. This would impact on the reliability of their database, certainly.

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While it is nice to know that the site got hacked, aren't we rewarding the hacked by posting all to info in a public forum?

Sort of between a rock and a hard place here. we need to inform the affected users, but we do not want to reward the hacker with the notoriety they crave.

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this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here. - God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so.

In fact I found the original comment here:

http://slashdot.org/yro/01/04/09/007213.shtml

It is about halfway down the page, Message number 74

And it is called "Boiling Frogs"

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[Hrumph!]

this comment is strangely similar to the comment someone else posted here

God and Commander Taco help me find it in the archives, but I DO recognize the writing from sometime in the past six months or so. (I don't think the archives go back quite that far.)

That said, Hailstorm is going in the direction of a Microsoft Planet.

This is what they want. They envision a service oriented Internet where they are the toll takers.

And they will take a toll. But they will not nickel and dime us to death. more like a buck fifty, and more.

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I suppose that someonem in Non US government should contact someone in the democratic side of the senate to conduct an investigationinto the conduct of ICANN.

After all, in a weird way it is trying to impose US sovereignity over other nations. I am sure that someone can make a big stink over this.

I am sure that these concerns should at least be looked at and sorted out by international treaty, instead of ad hoc for the benefit of the members.

Consider the panic if Bill Gates were a member of the ICANN board. or one of his underlings. Obviously Gates would never personally belong to such a low level organization, but you get the idea.

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Thanks for that.....I always wondered how to do a search.

Actually, some folks never figure that out, y'know.

just look at some of the run of the mill comments in almost any story

;-)

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Just in case you want to check out an earlier take on the issue, we had these stories here on slash

Keyboards For One Handed Typing & Chording?
Not A Bat, Nor A Plane, But A Vertical Keyboard
Novelty/Unusual Cases, Keyboards, Rodents, Etc?
Very Cool, Very Vaporous 1-Handed Keyboard
Keyless Keyboard

In fact there is a whole bunch of stories available via this simply search

have fun!

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I look at this story, and think about who would care about this beyond a technical or professional interest.

This is important in case this technology becomes usable by the RIAA or similar agencies. Otherwise I take a look at this and see several reactions that become occasionally troublesome.

Most consumers will not care too much as long as the games don't cost too much.

Some will get not care, as long as their parents buy them the game.

Certain folks will take joy at a new toy to crack.

Some will be outraged that they actually have to pay money for a game since they will not be able to copy the game.

and then there are those that will figure out some way to apply this to their favorite hot button issue whether it applies to the situation or not, be it civil rights, crime in the inner city, or the massive Australian-American trade imbalance problem [joke]

(sigh) somehow I do not think of this as being very important by itself.

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What are the odds of UK on this action?

We need someone fromt he UK to clue us in on if they have something similar to civil rights legislation and anti monopoly regulations that can be enforced.

This kind of nonsense is expected in a totalitarian system, say China, or Iran (insert your favorite country to hate here)

Heck, in the US, I am sure there would be calls to the congressmen, investigations, etc.

Welcome to Microsoft Planet. God help us when the system crashes.

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Corporate domination of the real world no longer seems possible unless companies like Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner bring the virtual one under control.

Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets, that being king or president or prime minister is not where it is at. For one thing, you have all of those pesky people demanding something from you. There is no rest for the wicked in the world of politics.

so they stay out of politics, and enter it only to protect themselves. Then they get to have their fancy cars and jets and boats, and minions groveling at their feet. This only works well for the really big companies, but for them that is Good Enough(tm)

You worry about you favorite pet peeve, distro war, or whatever.

While all around you the age of the puppet kings is approaching. Some say it is here already.

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To cut to the chase:

The point is, for that level of service, most people would gladly reveal their personal preferences, as long as they feel certain the information won't be misused. On the Internet, even more than in other areas of our lives, trust is the real currency. Squander what you have and you'll find out how hard it can be to get more.

I know that I have real privacy issues with many companies. That is why I use things like webmail and dummy browser proflies. If nothing else, if they scam the email address from the browser, they spam someone I don't like [joke!]

if you took a random poll, you would likely find that the list of companies that people trust is a bit shorter than the list of compnaies theat they do not trust.

Companies do not realize how precious the commodity of trust is. Squander it, and you will have people painting you as the devil decades later.

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There is a good alternate translation tool at http://www.worldlanguage.com/Translation.htm

Here is the original web page as auto-translated to English

On another note, there are these stories previously seen on Slash

• Superconducting Power Cable in Detroit by michael on Sunday May 20, @08:21PM EST 221
• Nitrogen Semiconductors by timothy on Thursday May 10, @01:23PM EST 14
• High-Temperature Metal Superconductor Beckons by timothy on Monday February 26, @03:21PM EST 179

I note that the Detroit Story was just a week or two ago, but it is nice to see europeans getting a jump on the US.

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On certain sites Netscape will break, especially if you have cookie eaters, and block access in a proxy to the ad/spam servers. IE doesn't break as badly.

as a feature request, I would like a javascript on/off toggle button, just for those sites with obnoxious javascript.

of course, if I turn off the cookie eaters and other security, it tends to work better.

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I can remember a situation with someone I know where a number of different programmers at different companies were in a race to develop widget X. What this guy did was to have it announced that they had already figured out how to do widget X. Of course, the competition said, "well they got it developed" and scaled back their own efforts.

Now Compaq has some nice designs, some of them almost Applesque.

But some of their marketing strikes me as being similar to the above, sort of trying intimidate the competition. This will probably work to some degree, although most folks here probably won't fall for it.

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Well since many/most folks here do not access Usenet via Google . . .

Each post made outside of Google should have a signature file specifically prohibiting use by Google, specifying costs to be assessed for licensing by google, etc. (say $500 per incident) and in general prohibiting any "license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display the communication alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed", and prohibiting any effort to "sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees" without prior agreement of the original poster or their heirs.

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To my mind the author is quite expert is seeing hidden meanings. It is obvious that he is also expert is seeing something that was not there.

In some literary situations, this is useful. There are times when it goes way to far, in that it sees and puts something there that was never there in the first place. It becomes a literary hallucination when the analyst insists on it even when there is solid evidence in the first place.

In technology circles, it is damning for someone to say that they never consulted the facts before issuing an opinion.

Now there is an artistic technique which deliberately puts in factors which are slightly incomplete and which allow an analyst to play connect the dots as the analyst sees fits.

It is accomplisdhed by putting in a rich enough texture at different levels that it becomes something of an Ink blot test for the analyst. The artist in this case does not have to say anything, but sets something up that suckers the analyst in. You can select elements that go together well for the effect of an artistic pun, etc. and let the analyst loose the forest for all the trees. You can sit back and watch the analyst go off into a maze of their own making with all of the little symbolisms that they bring into the situation.

It is a wonderful little technique that allows the artist a certain smile.

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(Acually.. marketing people are fine as long as they are kept in there cage and feed twice a day!) =)

I think you may have put your finger on something. I have heard rumors that MS keeps their marketing people in a cage, and only feeds them once a day. This not only keeps them hungry but reduces the time devoted to independent thought.

I would probably take MS spokesmen more seriously if it didn't seem like you had to put on hip boots every time you got close to them.

I don't mind giving a company a second chance, but they used up theirs a long time ago. They are going to have to make a lot of changes before I give them a chance again.

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There is a good set of pages covering the fact and fiction of the QWERTY keyboard here

The QWERTY keyboard, believe it or not, was present on the very first modern typewriter... the Sholes & Glidden, made by E. Remington & Sons (best known for their guns) beginning in 1874. Data from the 1878 patent can be seen here, as well as other historical data.

(Of course there were many other designs going back more than 100 years before. but they didn't go anyplace)

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funny enough, I have heard that the management of the company has changed substantially since those days. Alot of folks didn't want to follow that system for whatever reason, and there have been power plays in the company to force it to more traditional practices.

I guess more traditional practices include customer ripoffs.

I note, for example, this 23 May 2001 Press Release, where Earthlink announced

"EARTHLINK NAMES COCA-COLA EXECUTIVE TO HEAD ITS MARKETING EFFORTS
New executive vice president of marketing brings a wealth of experience to EarthLink"

The LA Times had this story about the ouster of one of the founders, under controversial circumstances.

I figure it is bloody in there.

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The main purpose of corporations, as I under stand it (IANAL) is to be able to have enterprises where individuals can be protected from some of the personal liabilities. This has plusses nad minuses.

The problem is that corporations seem to be handfled mostly under civil law, and not under criminal law. I think that Corporations could be subject to similar legal penalties as individuals. How, where, and why is another issue. Penalties certainly are the easy and sexy thing to discuss about this.You could have, for example:

• Freezing of all assets for a set number of years. (Imagine this for someone like MS. Unable to do business for 5 years, all funds frozen)
• Prohibited from conducting business (selling and distributing product) for a certain number of years
• Fines
• Split ups. such as in the MS case.

Crimes that could be contemplated or considered include

• all normal crimes already on the books, including fraud, murder, etc.
• crimes against other companies, including corporate rape, murder, assault, etc. of another company. or for example, a country or nation. The current rape of the rain forests come to mind here. along with various incidents of genocide, etc given the many examples from WWII

This is an area that requires a lot more thought.

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Aside from pirated copies of windows, the favorite OS in China, endorsed by the government is Linux (see these other stories on Slash).

This brings us to the vision of AOL for Linux.

It also probably becomes the basis for the AOL Desktop and Office Suite for Linux, all in Chinese.

AOL could wind up being the biggest provider of systems and software on the planet.

If the Chinese do not declare war on the US over the insidious infiltration of the MS into chinese culture in the first place.

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I find this all encouraging

Although I am not quite knowledgable enough to know what to make of this comment:

Are you worried about GNOME?

No. We're way ahead of them. When GTK 2.0 is released sometime this year, they'll reach where we were, at version 1.4. QT 3 is going to come out later this year and that will take us even further.

Would anyone care to help fill in the details?

(just to clarify, I am not a partisan one way vs the other as far as KDE vs Gnome. I am encouraged just by the increasingly viable alternatives to the Big Bad Software Corp.)

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I recall seeing pictures, etc of direct emmersion of running electronics in things like freon. Things like TVs, etc

If you want a very technical discussion the article here covers it nicely.

Simply put, full immersion would handle the problem because the fungus would not grow under those conditions. Of course, other factors may make this inconvenient.

OverClockers would likely find the magazine where the article comes from, Electronics Cooling, interesting to read as well.

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The parent site for the puzzle is Unite and Resist, home page of the Anti Robot Militia.

This is fascinating. Looks like a promo site for the movie

I anticipate that something like this may very well happen, but likely in the next 100 years or so, not the next 200.

Technology tends to advance faster than the ability of humans to predict, and the social sciences do not advance at all.

Depending on how things go, Society might end up being ruled by robots. but it is hard to say from here.

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Here is a page that gives many (not all) of the key documents involved in the history of the space program from the 1950s to the present.

Wonderful stuff to pick through.

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I can see this

They get Aol 6 incorporated into XP.

Then the AOL 6.1 upgrade option has "Do you want to upgrade to browser to the superior performance of the Latest Browser?" with the options:

"yes I want to upgrade"
"No thanks, I'm happy with inferior performance"

In other words, borrow a page from the MS upgrade language handbook.

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That a system for intercepting communications exists, operating by means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is no longer in doubt. It has been established that this system is operated on the basis of the UK/USA Agreement. That its name is in fact ECHELON seems likely in view of the evidence, but this is a relatively minor detail. What is important is that its purpose is to intercept private and commercial communications, and not military communications. Analysis has revealed that the system cannot be nearly as extensive as some sections of the media have assumed.

So we can come to the conclusion that we only need to be a little paranoid when it comes to the US government?

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I can the MD corporate types going batty over this.

"Ackk! We've been infected! get those nasty Linux germs out of here! AcKK!"

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Of course you know, we need someone to ask the obligatory question as far as what does Linus think about this.

Some days, it must be a pain for Transmeta to have such a famous employee.

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Probably they are looking to make as much money as they can over the next few years.

Also, just to dispel any doubts, they are removing any mistaken appearance of democracy by pulling the plug on dissenting opinions.

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I am not sure.

For all I know it was a bournoulli drive, or something like that.

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FAT32 file systems are widely used for copyright violation too

Actually, since MS makes most of the systems used to do the actual copying, why don't they do something sensible and sue Microsoft?

Or is it easier to sue somebody who doesn't have a lot of money?

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The typical use in this case is taking art work down to the service bureau for professional printing, things like over sized posters.

I know one guy that has a devoted client list, 8O+ years old, expert only in Corel Draw - doing very well thank you. typically takes his work to a service bureau. Accessing anything over a network results in data overload and brain lockup for the guy.

Obviously, he is not a geek. Of course, a lot of small businesses are just like this.

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Probably the best idea is to line your room with copper and ground it so that you make an inside out Faraday Cage. Barring that, you could line the room with aluminum foil.

The only problem is if it becomes a giant lightning rod. Especially if you are in the top floor of a tall apartment building.

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There is going to be a lag on the obsolesence because of the lag in people getting high speed acess. In the cities high speed access is relatively common, but go further out, and you are back to zip drives, etc. for transfering large files. This is still a substantial bit of change, even if it is not something you find useful right now.

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Computers and the internet do not have to make a child more intelligent. The situation is much larger than seen at first glance.

What it does do is change the quantity, quality, and content of the education. Quantity because they see more from around the world. Quality because of the diversity, although the quality of that diversity can be argued. And of course, the actual content is greatly expanded.

Now this is interesting because it tends to cut across the social agendas of the powers that be. Obvious examples include China, Iran, France, and the US. Different powers have different agendas, and tend to push their agendas by various means.

All want to maintain control of their bit of the monopoly on the public mind, and none have found a completely effective form of mind control. There is a whole other aspect to this as far as how the opponents of mind control are portrayed. It is a stretch, but some could argue you could see this in the debate of MS vs Linux and GPL. After All, MS has a large mindshare in the market.

Anything which pushes freedom of thought, of observation, of knowledge will tend to unsettle the folks who want to sell you on their product for their profit.

The ultimate irony is when people push freedom of thought, etc. get pursue and punished by fud as proponents of mind and culture crimes in the first place. Have you committed a thought crime today?

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Looks like the old effort had to do with Electro- Magnetic cables, phone lines, etc when it was during the Regan era.

But the modern effort has to do with fiber.

Aside with sheer volume of data, they also have this issue:

Dust or seawater in the submerged chamber could ruin an exposed fiber. Making a surreptitious tap of a live cable would also require circumventing the electrical charge--usually around 10,000 volts--which is used to power the devices that keep the speeding light beams strong.

This is know a "technical difficulties"

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We snuck into harbors off of Siberia and put pods on their underwater cables to gather intelligence.

just be be precise, this was done inthe Artic ocean.

NOVA had a show (Submarines, Secrets, and Spies) on it back in Jabuary 1999. See the transcript here

Maybe things have changed, but according to the special it was maybe halfway there when something went wrong:

It was the highest priority and the biggest budget item in the intelligence budget in the late Reagan administration. They spent about a billion dollars on it, and then it all went away, because of one guy, Pelton.

NARRATOR: Ronald Pelton was analyst working for the National Security Agency who was convicted of spying for the KGB. The on-line tap was one of the operations he compromised.

So this looks like old news, and it might not even be accurate.

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now we can slash dot more servers more easily and more quickly.

;-)

And tie up more band width.

Although I acknowledge that this is the opposite of what is intended by the system.

maybe they ought to have a few distros on the system so we can help them test it out.

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Physicists sound like they are starting to become mystics, rather than say there was a cause. They sometimes fall into linguistic traps of their own making.

For example, by definiton, the universe is all that there is, and so how could there be anything else? The problem there is the definition, since maybe all that we see and extrapolate is NOT all there is.

It would be a scary universe where it is populated by explosions that we experience as the big bang, but where the "big bang"is a mundane routine event, and is as common as stars and galaxies are here.

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yeh, I can see this.

what I was looking at was that as more people get access to space, that tensions drop down because of things like verification. You can look and see what the other guy is doing. That being said, certain political institutions small or large, that are hung up on territory issues or have control issues would make anyone nervous.

I see the opportunity for the globalization of space to slowly deflate these things, although alot has to be sorted out. This may take a while.

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The big question for some folks, is if this device is RIAA friendly or not.

Given the presence of thing like the new MS system that lets business autolock you out of different files, you got to wonder if RIAA got their claws into the hardware maker.

although I do note:

Input/output interfaces -- the device provides analog and optical audio output ports, an analog input port, a video output port, three USB ports, and one Ethernet port. The USB ports cab be used to connect a modem, MP3 player, and other supported peripherals (additional storage units, keyboard, etc.). The Ethernet port connects the Hi-Muse to either a PC or a local network. The video output port provides optional connection to a TV, resulting in the display of album covers, pictures of the artist, or access to the artist's website. . . available (or planned) add-ons for the Hi-Muse include a CD writer module (secured audio format

Well, it seems like there shound be some options to mess around with it there. But the front door may be locked.

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It is nice to see that Space programs are falling away from being the province of one or two countries. While I would be nervous to some degree about an Iraqi space program (due to the politics of the region), in general I support the idea of more governments and businesses going into space.

I think that having some sort of active frontier is valuable for the huminity in general, as it is something that we have had for most of our existance as a species on this planet.

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I've been adding to my os collection, and now I see I'm getting addicted.

This is not a good sign.

I'm doomed

;-)

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Reminds me how the meatpacking industry overlooks the contribution that cattle make. Well It seems like it is time to hold some feet to the fire.

Although I wonder if this could play into the hands of Microsoft in their arguement against the GPL?

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Not that I have some brilliant idea in mind, of course, but in addition to the dozens of productivity-oriented app projects that are out to mimick what everyone in the Windows world already has on their computers, there are forward-looking projects like video editing (ie, Broadcast2000) that are aiming for markets that haven't been commoditized already.

Well I don't know. It does not seems that the market for a killer video app is similar in size to that of a word processor. It is more of a niche application. I type email, and docs everyday. I view video maybe several times a month, and and have had the desire to edit a movie maybe once or twice.

So I wonder if there is a market for this stuff.

The next real killer app I see way down the road would be a true AI intelligent assistant, a man or girl friday thing. Answers the phone, handles the spam, takes care of the routine items I delegate to it. Of course, there would be a fantasy element that alot of folks would find enticing. But I digress...

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What this means to me is that, in order for Linux to succeed on the desktop, there has to be the equivalent and appropriate amount of effort put into an Office slash productivity suite. Think of all of the man hours put into Linux. Now imagine an equivalent amount of time put into a linux productivity suite. (regardless of if it is KDE Office, Star Office, or whatever.)

This is what is really needed. Unfortunately, the open source community has been diversified and splintered about this. And so this equivalent amount of effort, enough to match the results of something like a MS, has not taken place. This is observable even in projects that have a large amount of community support, such as Mozilla. The raw number of people has been one half or one third it could have been to really get it out in a "timely" manner, resulting in Netscape 6 being beta-ware in fact if not in name.

I happen to think that Linux can make it to the desktop, but that the core applications need to get there too. Otherwise it remains a developers tool set.

The amount of effort that has gone into the OS has to go into the productivity suite.

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Well part of this is the sheer growth of the web, even if one percent of one percent of all sites were whacked, this would certainly increase to an alarming degree with the expansion of the web.

The other aspect to this is that the scripty kiddies out there take it as a badge of honor to get a defaced site listed in a mirror. To a certain degree, while we want to document the carnage, maintaining a mirror becomes a reward system for the script kiddies. It acts like fertilizer, which is not exactly what we want in the first place. So it might be a good thing to stop rewarding the skript kiddies with the public acknowledgement of their vandalism.

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The fee to use all of the capabilities is 25 cents per minute, with a four-minute minimum

That's 15 usian dollars and hour. Pricey for checking quicky email. but I'm sure some sales geek will bill it to the company.

The unit accepts credit cards or cash

Time for the company credit card.

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I'm trying to figure out the political implications of this. Not so much vs macromedia, but imagining various countires getting into the act.

for example the bit about Yahoo and the nazi memorabilia vs France last year. What if they said the the material would only be available via certain IP numbers, and French ISPs could be require to block those numbers?

Insert those groups that small vocal groups love to hate. Stir well.

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