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See this eWeek article which says IE is too dangerous to keep using. Strong stuff from a mainstream publication - the bit about people potentially losing online banking and stock trading passwords is probably teh most effective at getting people to switch.

This eweek article has the story, the current iMacs are being replaced by a new model.

I also subscribe to PC Magazine which certainly has its faults, but now that CPU Magazine exists, I doubt I'll be renewing. I also get eWeek on paper weekly as well which is pretty well done, and the price is sure right.

All in all, it sure is a lot of stuff to read on the crapper.

More:

The bottom line is that for all practical purposes for today, open-source browsers are inherently more secure than Internet Explorer, and I still have half a dozen more workstations to switch over to Firefox. Go ahead, stick with Internet Explorer for everyday use. It's your funeral. -- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, eweek

How ironic... this gets posted just as finished reading Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols article on dumping IE after seeing a link to it on NewsForge.

Well, not an API but a data structure, there apparently is for FAT, but it is under review.

...with all the details, and nothing about "recalls" and "recalling all the affected products". Numbers of chipsets affected, what the problem is, etc., are all here. And four links to the same story in the same post?! arg.

The Linux Show had an interesting feature this week about SCO and the Linux editor, Steve Vaughan from Eweek presented his view of Darl McBride after having met him multiple times since the whole SCO issue started. According to him, Darl McBride is an achiever, and if you can, for a second, believe in what he's doing, like he does, you will make amazed at his dedication. According to him, McBride will not give up until the last vestiges of SCO are thrown out of court. He will accept anything other than a defeat in the court. It is an interesting show to listen to, give it a shot

True, but the idea is to provide more options that make things safer - after all there is no absolute security. Plus, the idea is that each 'trusted' site would get it's own set of privileges, so if Javascript is turned off for a site because it doesn't normally need it a rogue Javascript attack would fail. That at least improves the situation somewhat...

I do hope that Mozilla never has an image-based vulnerability though... ;-)

There's apparently a newly discovered exploit in IE that can compromise an IE user's machine THROUGH AN IMAGE ON A WEB PAGE.

So any server that allows posting of graphics (eBay, many discussion forums, etc) can be "infected". Even those running Linux. The only solution is to stop using IE and pray that Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. exploits are few and far between. Article on graphics exploit here.

That and the ability to customize your sender e-mail address (not just the 'Reply-To' address). This would eliminate the need to change your existing e-mail address, like Yahoo's paid customers can do right now.

As Sergey Brin said back in April, there are a lot of features planned for GMail including POP3 and IMAP access. I have no doubt they'll include customized sender addresses before it's released to the public.

Fairly recently, there was a worm ("Witty") exploiting a hole in BlackIce Defender (a server-grade firewall and intrusion detection system). A damn nasty specimen, too -- it randomly wrote bogus data to random sectors of the hard drives, slowly destroying the server (and immediately rendering it untrustable).

One article on the worm can be found here; I'm sure the usual gang has advisories out for Witty as well.

This article indicates that the dual-core cpus will carry the P4 name. I remember seeing some roadmaps for this somewhere, but I can't find them at the moment. As to whether or not the dual-core cpus will carry Dothan cores or cores based on its successor, I do not precisely know. I only know that they will likely be cores based on whatever is the current Pentium-M at the time of release.

We're moving forward and shifting our development attention to Firebird and Thunderbird, (but) we're not going to abandon the suite," Decrem said.

In fact, Mozilla has found that many enterprises and larger organizations considering Mozilla want a full application suite, Decrem said.

That Anonymous Coward guy posts a lot of stuff!

That Anonymous Coward guy posts a lot of stuff!

I was interested in the SCO Should Win, eWeek.com article, as to what kind of drugs (or payoff) the author was on. However it seems to have disspaeared.

Hmm, not wanting to be associated with a sinking ship do we, eWeek?

As anyone who has looked into this issue can tell you, there is not in most cases a one-to-one correlation between an American losing their job, and the job going offshore.

For instance, Microsoft is shutting down a major facility in the US. They are also hiring in India. Will the Microsoft jobs lost in the US be counted as jobs lost to outsourcing? Probably not. That is why the new buzz words are "global sourcing" and "insourcing".

Also, how many jobs are being lost to "American" companys like Cognizant, who do not hire permanant US residents or citizens to work for them, only people on H-1B visas? 30% of Cognizant's 9K headcount work in the US (per the June 7th issue of Newsweek), and according to the Dept of Labor's LCA database the company has 2719 immigrants here on H1-B visas (you do the math).

This issue is not simply them bad us good. American IT workers are getting shut out of the IT labor market, even in our own country. This is not good for anyone. We are wasting our own intellectual capital, which we should be sharing with other countries so IT can be used to bridge cultural and economic divides. People should not have to pretend to be from another country as part of their job requirement. People should not be brought here on temporary visas and be paid less and worked harder than the Americans that work in the next cubicle.

This black and white thinking about this issue is pitting the workers on both sides against each other. The only people who win in that situation are the big guys making millions and millions of dollars to come up with these schemes. We (all IT workers worldwide) created these technologies, and historically we have openly shared and taught everyone so that the technology would thrive. That cooperative spirit needs to come through when thinking about this issue.

www.displacedtechies.com

Dear lord, what's next? A bad review of his beloved Ferrari Laptiop? SCO may loose in court?

My reality is crumbling ... dear god make this madness stop!

EE Times

eWeek

Slashdot

Ummm. This isn't about Apple, it's about the semiconductor industry. As a matter of fact, Intel started saying the same thing a few months ago, and AMD has been making similar claims for years.

A more logical reason behind their continuing with the FTP method over the ISO method might be bandwidth. If you have looked at what bandwidth costs, and when you think that most Linux users will never use all of the programs included in a Linux distribution, and most won't use even half, it makes sense to go the FTP rout. The software may be free, but the bandwidth to distribute that software is not even close to free, not to mention the time that companies like Novell/SuSE, Mandrake and yes even Redhat take to compile all those programs into a distrobution than from a business stand point distributing Linux in an FTP installation format make great business sense. Now I agree that not having the CD's is a real pain-in-the-butt, I go to my CD's/DVD almost daily, but if that is your only gripe with SuSE that why not take the time you spent typing out a complaint on /. and write Novell/SuSE a formal letter explaining to them the reasons why putting ISO's up for download would be a better option to the FTP method they have opted to use, if not than go back to your Fedora core and stop waisting your time and /.'s resources complaining about something that has no affect on you.

marklar.apple.com

• Microsoft Corrects: No XP SP2 for Pirated Copies
  By Larry Seltzer
  May 11, 2004
  Despite reports indicating that Microsoft Corp. was planning to allow users with pirated copies of Windows XP to install Service Pack 2, the company has confirmed to eWEEK.com that this will not be the case...
  

Just shows the guy knows nothing about the subject matter, he is just creating some fictional story in his own little world:

Is it likely that a student (Linus Torvalds) with no operating systems experience, a non-Unix licensee, without any use of Minix or Unix source code, could build a functioning kernel in six months -- whereas it took you (Tanenbaum) three years to build Minix?

I think he already replied to that by saying "yes." Since Minix was worked only part-time during those 3 years. And creating a simple kernel for limited hardware and limited functionality is not that hard of a task as it's made out to be in this case.

Another problem with Tanenbaum's logic is that he only presents examples of people that were Unix licensees ...

Tanenbaum was not a Unix licensee and he told you the task was possible to accomplish in few months if he had devoted more time to it.

Yet Tanenbaum vehemently insists that Torvalds wrote Linux from scratch, which means from a blank computer screen to most people. No books, no resources, no notes -- certainly not a line of source code to borrow from, or to be tempted to borrow from.

Making stuff up eh? When you have no logical argument to make, just use your creativity. I am assuming Linus had programming books, knowledge and education, a compiler, and other tools, including an existing OS - Minix. Not to say that he copied code from Minix, as Tanenbaum already showed.

The GNU team contributed their GCC compiler, a complicated product with over 110,000 lines of code to the Linux project. Without the compiler, it is very likely that the Linux project would not have succeeded. The GNU team only asked that the product be called GNU/Linux, a very simple request for helping to make him famous. But Torvalds silently, but deliberately let the naming idea die.

Eh? Where do you begin? "Contributed" to who - Linus? Kernel called GNU/Linux? I don't recall reading anywhere anyone insisting the kernel should be called GNU/Linux. Surely, the guy knows nothing about the subject matter he is trying so hard to talk about.

How much 'inspiration' did Linus get from Minix? AdTI argues clearly enough to credit the Prentice Hall product. Not in conversation either, but within the copyright and/or the credits files of the kernel. Quite noticeably, however, there is not one acknowledgement of Minix anywhere in the Linux kernel.

Because Linus didn't copy any code from Minix. How many times does this guy have to be told, and by how many people? Or maybe he wants to come in and specify files and line numbers like SCO did? Oh wait a minute...

I also found quotes taken out of context quite amusing:

Tanenbaum insists that we are wrong to bring any of this up, but ironically, he comments on his site, "but Linus' sloppiness about attribution is no reason to assert that Linus didn't write Linux(8)."

Linus decided he was not the inventor of Linux commenting in a ZDNet story, "I'd agree that 'inventor' is not necessarily the right word(9)"

And finally, a reply to:

Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector.

Err... replace "Linux" with "competition" - because competition in general is also very bad - it has a deleterious effect and is depreciating the value of the products and services that our patriotic abusive monopolists provide to masses, right? Idiot! Why don't we ask HP (a Unix licensee, ironically) how "deleterious" Linux has been for them last year. Or maybe you want to try IBM, another Unix licensee?

Schwartz from eweek interview: We took a license from AT&T initially for $100 million as we didn't own the IP. The license we took also made clear that we had rights equivalent to ownership.

and the Register: "Sun has taken delight in watching this IP battle play out. Scott McNealy, CEO at Sun, said the company paid $100 million to use Unix "free and clear".

In its spyware-fighting tool released in beta last week, Yahoo Inc. left out for automatic detection a category of often-unwanted software for which its paid search division has a financial stake. Yahoo's Anti-Spy beta for its browser toolbar doesn't include adware by default when it scans users' systems for unwanted programs.

[ ... ]

Among the programs the Sunnyvale, Calif., company classifies as adware are controversial ones from Claria Corp. (formerly The Gator Corp.) and WhenU.com Inc., two common targets of spyware critics who say the companies trick users into accepting unwanted downloads and flood machines with pop-up ads.

With Claria, best known for its Gator eWallet application, Yahoo is also a business partner. Claria, based in Redwood City, Calif., delivers pop-up and other forms of advertising from its GAIN ad network through software downloaded onto users' machines.

NetBeans 3.6 IDE is Much Improved

-Steve

If there's enough momentum (if the app is any good) you should see a fork that will continue development under the GPL.

= 9J =

I know everything MS does is looked down upon by the /. majority but this really should be seen as "a good thing".

Like the donkey said "I have a dragon and I'm not afraid to use it." Microsoft is in a monopoly position and they're not afraid to (ab)use it.

Since Microsoft has realised they can't make neither cheaper nor technically superior products, they fight dirty.
The policy was for a long time to not add any new service without trying to make it a Microsoft-only service. (MSN, Kerberos and DNS to name a few).

And in addition Microsoft now tries (sucsessfully) to patent the thing that makes it Microsoft-only, to prevent similar functionality being implemented in competing products (and thereby all interopability).

Microsoft is not a "fair player", not even remotely, and with the money and political friends they have, having them anywere doing anything else than decomposing, is not "a good thing"

Agreed. Fedora is free, but it doesn't mean that it is free of responsibility.

There's even less excuse for SuSE and Mandrake since *they* also have the bug in their *commercial* products which should be held to at least as high a standard.
Mandrake Bug
SuSe Bug
Read This Page for more details.

Finally half way down the thread someone admits It's not just a Fedora issue. SuSe 9.1 also has the problem
Mandrake Bug
SuSe Bug
Read This Page If you want to find out whats responsible.

There are those who would see this as a vindication of the current system. What's the harm in issuing bad patents when they are inevitably invalidated? I do not share this veiw. Palm has obviously been damaged by Xerox's patent aggression: the cost to license Jot, the R&D and marketing to incorporate it into the product, and the consumer confusion, to say nothing of the effort to actually invalidate the patent.

Until its incentive structure changes, the patent office will continue to hand out patents like leis at a luau. A recent Slashdot article notes that Microsoft is applying for ten a day. That's called working the system (or, as those who have already worked the system say, catching up). I'm willing to believe that a few tens of thousands of the world's highest paid engineers can come up with a few novel ideas, but I also believe that Edison was too liberal in his assessment that genius is only 99% perspiration.

Rather than mod me down, please instead POST and clue me in on how good Microsoft is at playing well with open standards. Maybe take a gander at this first however.

There's a notable drop in reports on 28 april 2004. The exact day two US-spammers were arrested. (see eweek.com)

A handful other spammers in jail, and the spam-rate will drop to below 5% of todays volume.

:-)

"December 3, 2003" (Their patent on licensing the FAT file system)

I recently had the pleasant opportunity to debate with the local technical manager of Microsoft, about legislation mandating open standards use by governements. Their argument was that they now publish their xml specs for office documents.

While this is true, often-used features (by companies) like macro's aren't 'open', and they have applied for patents on xml documents. This makes it legally dangerous to implement import and export filters.
Luckily software is not yet patentable in Europe, but Microsoft and the BSA are lobbying very hard to make this possible.

Two of his arguments made me laugh in his face (while he was a nice guy, it's hard to stay friendly and serious when he blatantly lies in your face):

* 'We are not litigious'. My response: Lindows will be glad to hear this. His response: silence
* 'We are only patenting this things out of self defense, to avoid Eolas-like situations.' My response: then why don't you define a patent policy like Redhat, then why do you state you want to get more revenue from your patents?. Without a patent policy like Redhat's, I think it's irresponsible for governements to rely on proprietary formats as long as this software patents are hanging like a cloud above our heads.

(just my 0,02 off course)

Nope its still bad.

I can understand why though, without their GUI to set them apart what do they really have to offer? With Linux making some slight headway into the desktop market, and appearing to be ready to take up Microsoft slack if and when it appears, Apple will be hard pressed over the next few years to solidify their stance on such issues as much as possible.

Not to mention that Microsoft will patent everything if Apple doesn't. Are they competeing with software or patent portfolios... or is there a difference these days?

How many people remember this AMD Dual Core K8 Architecture slide? AMD has been planning this for a long time.

They introduced the k8 on a .13micron process and it was 192mm with 1024k L2 cache. Moving to .09micron it will shrink to 114mm and a dual core version, with 1024k L2 per core, may come in at ~215mm, not much bigger than the current Athlon64!

AMD will claim the market is ready for dual core processors when they move to .09microns sometime next year. We've all read this quote from AMD chairman and CEO (Hector Ruiz), right: "One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price."

Paul DeMone had a great article about the 64bit processors we'll see in 2005 and the k8 is looking pretty good!

AMD's response is clanking hollow.

"AMD today offered the possibility that it will take future Opteron server and workstation chips down the multi-core route espoused by Intel last week, and already well-trodden by IBM.

Speaking at the launch of the Athlon 64 and Athlon FX processors, AMD chairman Jerry Sanders said: "With coherent HyperTransport, it's inevitable that we'll have multiple cores on a single chip. This is a tremendous opportunity because with our architecture the scaling is far superior to anything else that's out there."

In fact, Athlon 64 has been architected with dual-core systems in mind. The chip's North Bridge components have been designed to support two cores, which share the processor's System Request Queue controller. This sits between the core(s) and the HT link, so HyperTransport isn't necessary for dual-core operation - though it would be if AMD wanted to go to four-core packages using the current architecture."

"We have roadmap that when you look 12 months out, it's pretty firm. You look 12 to 24 months, and it's almost firm. And then you look beyond that, and it's always subject to modifications of the market. When we look out to, say, the end of 2005, we are enabling customers to really create a tremendous breadth of product lines.

One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible.

I mostly agree, only AMD already announced their dual-core CPU strategy even before Intel. In words of Mr. Ruiz:

"One of the most powerful things next year is going to be our dual-core product. To me, that's going to really shock the hell out of everyone, because it's going to be hardware-compatible, infrastructure-compatible, pin-compatible. I mean, people that have a 2-P system can slap in a dual-core product and end up with a 4-P system for the price of a 2-P. That's been the biggest drawback, everyone tells me. What keeps them from going from a 2-P to a 4-P system? It's price"

Yeah. Maybe there have been one or two searches for opteron servers on Dell's search page :). Anyone looking for an Opteron version of the Poweredge 1600SC?

But their hands are probably tied. Rumour is that Dell has committed to buying USD5 billion of Intel stuff. I suppose that's how Dell gets real cheap Intel stuff? Now I'm wondering if Dell has a "get out" clause (they should if they are sane) somewhere, and if it does, what it is and whether it is close to applying... Watch Intel and Dell closely to see who is squirming the most, and perhaps you might figure more out.

It's worth supporting AMD just to watch the Intel and Dell show. Bwahahaha.

Still I'm sure Intel will manage to turn things around. Sure looks like they've the stomach to make the hard decisions based on technical stuff when it comes down to the crunch (plus plenty of reserve belly fat). Of course it took them a while (judging from the recent presentation by the ex-Intel chap) but there's plenty of inertia/momentum involved when making chips esp when you've been doing things well the past X years. Intel can afford to make a mistake or two every now and then, as long as it corrects them eventually.

Not sure about the Itanic though - my guess is it'll remain one of the fringe chips. If Intel doesn't make a good server class "Pentium M 64", then AMD is going to take that market (and Dell is in for a rough ride). If Intel does make a good AMD64 chip, I don't see that many people flocking to the Itanic. Heh.

If Intel screwed up/miscalculated[1] and can only launch a decent competitor in 2005+, Dell's competitors can take significant market share IF they play the Opteron card well. But which x86 server maker wants to piss Intel off by playing the Opteron card and which can actually pull it off? Sun? IBM? HP??

[1] Looks like Intel's 64bit extensions aren't 100% AMD64 compatible. That might be intentional, and not a problem in itself. The problem is if Microsoft insists on some things that Intel has left out (e.g. the NX stuff). Chips take some time to be fixed, tested etc ...

Enderle is the one who called Linux users "terrorists" and who thinks that SCO should win its case...

So, ummm, why would anyone listen to that guy, again? I mean, he decides to fling allegations of "terrorism" when he gets hatemail for being an idiot online, and (worse!) tend to discredit or disbelieve his oh-so-insightful analysis.

The man may be oft-quoted, but he's not exactly the brightest I've ever met... Seems to be one of the "contrarian" archetypes--that is, those who think that anything widely believed must be wrong. That includes, of course, both popular misconceptions and utter nonsense...

Robert Enderle

Of all items of clothing, said Rob Enderle, a principal analyst for the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif., the shoe is a logical one to be a focus of wearable technology

SCO owns Unix

for our common good, SCO must prevail.

I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists

Of all items of clothing, said Rob Enderle, a principal analyst for the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif., the shoe is a logical one to be a focus of wearable technology

SCO owns Unix

for our common good, SCO must prevail.

I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists

* Sync with MS Outlook (go ahead, flame me)

WHY the fuck would you want to sync with a closed-source product from M$oft? Don't you know that Outlook is just a breeding-ground for viruses, you brain-dead jerk? There are dozens of perfectly-good replacements for Outlook, as you'd know if were capable of clicking a mouse button and reading.

If you're so stupid that you feel no software is worth using unless you have to pay for it, try this.
Get Mommy to read it to you.

This is Palladium, and it has not been "dropped", only shelved because it was too ambitious.

You probably read it here.

It gets interesting now, though. This guy at eWeek has a theory that MS is putting all it has onto Longhorn to steamroll Linux.

If that's the case, then projects like Mono (or anything that consolidates and professionalises Linux) takes a larger sense of importance and urgency (well, kind of: MS won't release Longhorn for another decade or so...)

You probably read it here.

It gets interesting now, though. This guy at eWeek has a theory that MS is putting all it has onto Longhorn to steamroll Linux.

If that's the case, then projects like Mono (or anything that consolidates and professionalises Linux) takes a larger sense of importance and urgency (well, kind of: MS won't release Longhorn for another decade or so...)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1583320,00.as p

-Steve