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This web mail thing is not-uncommon. I absolutely hate it.

I once wrote to Joe Lieberman, my Senator, via e-mail. Now, while he did reply, eventually, as part of the reply I was told that in order to get better attention I should use the web form on his web site. When I tried that, the web site refused to accept my brower, IE only. I still get hot over that.

It seems to me that if you can now file your mortgage and other documents (see ESIGN, First Online Refi and probably others) that the President's office should be able to accept comments, and letters via regular e-mail.

Why is regular (read "real") e-mail important? If I am fired up enough to write the President, it is likely that I'll want to include my congressman, senator or the OP-Ed of a newspaper, along with a copy back to myself. Not possible with this "tool." Beside's, websites are vulnerable to the Slashdot effect. E-mail may not be perfect, but I don't have to sit and wait for the compose window to render.

Technically, I'm not sure if PGP or GPG meet any necessary standards, and the technique is far too obscure to casual e-mail users. I submit that all e-mail software should be delivered with a signing tool. That should go for web-mail too. I do not know of any that are. (Check that, Mozilla does, although I cannot see how to use it, yet.) Maybe that would be a start in the right direction.

Some Spammers=Some Hackers

Today's court ruling in favor of the ISP Earthlink vs Spam Ring Leader Howard Carmack got me to thinking.

Are ALL Spammers doing it for a profit? I find that many to most SPAM emails I receive in my inbox have unresolved links. Meaning; you can't "take advantage of the DEALS you are getting". (not that you'd necessarily want to) What would be the purpose of sending out emails such as this in great quantity, and using the man hours, hardware, etc to do it?

I think it may have to do partially with "the hacker mentality" Not all hackers do things for the common mythical reasons we like to think they do. (Revenge on the corporate world, profit, fame) - they do it because they can and a lot do it because they are mentally obsessed with it.

This was the attitude of a former colleague of mine that was hacker. He came from a rich family, was very well known in the community, and had a 1000 easier ways to get what he was wanting accomplished. He was obsessed first of all with hacking, second doing it with a Macintosh, and 3rd just because he could.

I'm not alluding to hackers having a mental problem, nor really comparing hackers to spammers.

This ruling, just made me think of motivation. Maybe if we can tap the motivation for Spammers, then maybe we can come up with the solution.

SCO approached IBM with its concerns back in December but they were unable to resolve their differences amicably. That's when they filed the lawsuit.

See this article.

She's still with them through the end of the year.

The operating system is officially released on the 23rd. However there have been several models of handhelds out for a little while that come with 2003. I've got a Toshiba like you that I got 3 days ago that came with it. It's an e355.

guardian story
announcement of a lawsuit
bbc story
Thomas J. Watson even recived a medal from Hitler for his role in global economic relations
in the bbc story says In 1941 the US parent company distanced itself from the German subsidiary
i think this should prove my claim
i don't know if it is true that the american head of the coporation even knew about the holocaust their machines supported
or if they like the lawyer claimes delivered machines after the USA took part in the war
but if it was the case it will be very hard to prove because ibm could have destroyed any documents shortly after the war has been over

Oh, and use clickable links, its not that hard.

• http://www.idg.net/english/crd_gates_888634.html
• http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/2003summary/html/atr.htm

McBunkum has admitted to exactly this in the IBM-buy-us-out article:

The open-source community, however, won't be be given an opportunity to remove any offending code and replace it with new material, he [McBunkum] said. Instead, damages will continue to be sought.

Is there any doubt left that the judge needs to smack this guy down like the liar and FUDster that he is?

• official site
• a Mobile Burn article on the phone including pictures
• an IDG article on the phone.

Unfortunately, very few details about the features of the phone.

Mouse Systems was one of the original makers of optical mice, since back in the early 1980s, and made a nice simple & solid three-button optical mouse. Unfortunately they got bought out recently and the new owners, KYE International, are making the same two-button/scroll mice as everyone else.

Here's a picture of the actual three-button optical mouse.

CDMA-the-signaling-scheme rocks, yes. In fact, it rocks so hard that *all* 3G systems use it in one form or another.

That includes 3G GSM systems- which result in royalty payments to Qualcomm- and China's new standard, which attempts to avoid paying same.

Confused? "GSM" is a standard for creating cellphone networks (think the top layers of the OSI stack). Old GSM networks used a link-layer/physical-layer scheme called TDMA, which kinda sucks compared to CDMA, in the sense that CDMA can cram many more bits into the same volume of aether. (Whether you use those bits for more voice calls- dig up oldschool GSM's max-callers-per-cell sometime, and you'll see it's ludicrously small for urban areas- or for high speed data is up to you.)

Now, Qualcomm, being the original CDMA pimps, have their own proprietary network standards, which, when implemented, generally leave out the features people do like about GSM- "features" being SIM cards, a useful aspect of telecoms regulation in Europe. They call these standards things like "CDMA2000" and "CDMA1X," hence the confusion.

So, I just ask that everyone realize how many independent variables exist:

0. Spectrum allocation - How many 'slots' will be reserved for competing telecom providers, if any?

1. Modulation (physical/link-layer techniques) - as noted, these mostly boil down to flavors of CDMA, if current-model hardware is used. An old TDMA network could probably be built entirely out of cheap surplus hardware, of course.

2. Network standard - How your cells coordinate with eachother; how your phones authenticate to your cells; etc etc etc. Basically, "stuff that goes in software." This is where the "CDMA vs. GSM" debate lies... but then we have:

3. Regulation/deregulation - GSM was raised in an environment regulating competition, meaning that a lot of thought has been given to allowing a choice of provider. In America, we never mandated a physical/link-layer standard, thus allowing Omnipoint to show up with GSM, Sprint with CDMA, and Verizon with their tri?-mode analog/TDMA/CDMA? network. As such, it's now technologically "impossible" (read: difficult; you'd need tri-mode multiband phones, *and* a shared billing/authentication standard) to allow the European ease of provider-switching, but we do get the benefit of being able to argue CDMA vs. GSM while holding A's Sprint phone up against B's Cingular. ;) [I'll readily agree that the consumer gets screwed in the current US situation. A lot could be remedied simply by making phones legally transferrable; as it is, if I buy your old Cingular phone and you buy my Sprint one, we both face hell in trying to get them reactivated.] ...But getting back on track, a *different* aspect of regulation is that, in the US, we've mandated that the cellular providers must strive to provide GPS-accurate location info from callers requesting emergency services (and hopefully, not under other circumstances, barring a warrant at least). The first Google hit referencing the system. In practical terms, this means that pretty much every CDMA-network phone being built has the GPS chipset integrated (being destined mostly for the American market, with some penetration in Korea and Japan, IIRC), but a lot of GSM phones are being built for a market without the requirement. (Yes, GSM phones/hardware sold in the US are required to meet the same standard; at this point, it's a question of 'but if it's easy for the Evil Baddies to order a bunch of locator-free phones from France, we're back to triangulation...')*

So, those are the issues at hand, and they're mostly independent of eachother- you could mandate GPS-enabled GSM, you could build a 3G network on TDMA links (but that'd be an exercise in futility), you could demand Qualcomm add SIM-card equivalents to allow consumer choice among providers (who would, then, all still be Qualcomm customers, of course) if Qualcomm tech was decl

...Ignoring all the anti-american bullshit in your message...

OK...!!?? I think there is a misunderstood here and your attack really pissed me off..

This wasn't anti-american but simply stating the fact that the American army is the most technological advance fighting force in human history. Take a look at The Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW) for yourself and tell me that this is not the weapon of "The Predator" (from the 1987 movie of the same name). ;)

If you think that I was referring to the fact that the Predator in the movie is a cold blooded barbarian assassin then I want state that even if I think that the real marines are technologically closer to the alien in the movie Predator, Sadam and is troops are the cold blooded barbarian assassins.

For the parallel with OGC in counter-strike just look the results of the battle of Najaf. Iraqis dead 1000, Alliance troops dead 0. I think it is obvious that the Iraqis are doomed and can't win. Like if you play a game in counter-strike against a team that use OGC it is obvious that you are doomed and can't win.

So now that this is clear do someone else want to report me to John Poindexter at the Information Awareness Office or why not just call me a terrorist because I use P2P?

"everyone likes to put down microsoft, but this isn't something you see them doing. and somehow they still manage to compete." Microsoft is jumping on the India bandwagon like everyone else. They have a development center there. The development of JUMP isn't taking place in the U.S. Bill is very concerned about programmers learning other products than MS stuff. In addition to exporting work to India he has been going over there and donating large sums of money, etc.

that Yahoo has improved its SpamGuard?

Overall I've been pretty satisfied with Yahoo's filtering. It would be nice if you could block email from certain domains though.

Looking further at the troubles with the e-gov-os conference and after reviewing the opinions of Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, David Sugar, Jay Sulzburger, David Wheeler, Stanley Klein, Chalu Kim, Claus Srensen, Jason Faulkner, Russell McOrmond, Louis Suarez-Potts, David A. Hammond and others, comments which have expanded over 10 mailing lists, and which have generated a few hundred private emails to me in my private email box, I'm forced to draw several conclusions.

First, as President of NYLXS and President of New Yorkers for Fair Use, my primary concern is two fold:

First, in my role as President of NYLXS, my primary goal is to cater to the needs of the membership, and the extended constituency of the organization, the Free Software development community and users in the New York City area. In truth, all organizations have a primary responsibility to their constituencies. It is time for others to look at their constituency and see how they are serving them. An organization which doesn't serve a constituency is an organization in name only.

Secondly, as an individual citizen and active member of the Free Software movement, I'm concerned with broad policy decisions of others in regards to individual rights with in our digitalized communications network. I'm focused on practical activities which protect the freedom of individuals and empower individuals and communities in education, government and business.

These are the only two prisms in which I can view the planned events of EgovOS conference.

I tend to be very thorough and deliberate in my conclusions. When I work through the process of developing activities and actions, or when I write in regard to issues of importance in a proper fashion for publication, or when I give a formal opinion piece representing any of our organizations journals, radio shows, public speeches, or other formalized media outlets, I bring to bear on that presentation, not only thorough research of the issue and much consultation, but also my 30 years of political and practical experience in affecting positive political and social outcomes.

I bring this same effort to this current letter, which I am opening up to the public and which will be published on http://fairuse.nylxs.com and which will be included in the coming NYLXS Journal.

First, let's look at the stated goals of the sponsored event. As listed on htttp://www.egovos.org/, the goals of this conference is:

Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU

Goals:

1. the presentation of best practices

2. raising awareness

3. sharing of experiences among policy makers, donors, users/consumers, universities, and industry specialists in Open Source, e-Government and related fields.

NYLXS has, for a couple of years, worked to sell Free Software on both the local, New York City Level and in the Federal Government. We'll had a variety of experiences in this regard, many of them very negative. As such, this conference seems to be important to the economic and political health of the NYLXS membership, including The Free Software Chamber of Commerce, our Public Educational initiative in New York City Public Schools, and New Yorkers for Fair Use. Our direct prosperity as a community is tied to the stated goals of the conference, and in fact, members of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce had prepared to make presentations at the conference. It was the concerns of members of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce which brought the problems which have enveloped the conference to my attention.

The main problem is the participation of Microsoft as a speaker and presenter at the conference. In a previous email, I have already listed the problems that Microsoft presents. But for the sake of making this a complete document, I will reiterate them and expand upon the Microsoft issue.

First of all, Microsoft is a reckless company which operates above the law. It has recently been convicted twice for antitrust activities, and has been guilty of numerous other illegal competitive practices which have gone without prosecution. http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm is a rundown of the current conviction of Microsoft for antitrust actions which is still going through the courts. Microsoft was not only determined have acted illegally in regard to browser technology, but they have also had their CEO, Bill Gates, lie under oath. The testimony can be searched here:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/video/gates/

http://www.broadcast.com/news/billgates/

investigation of his perjury is here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24990.html

http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=A rticle&cid=FT3MLEDHF0D&live=true&useoverridetempla te=ZZZUGORQ00C&tagid=ZZZNSJCX70C&subheading=global

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/msdo j991107.html

They even doctored their prepared testimony which got much press:

http://www.idg.net/crd_microsoft_67162.html and to quote:

Chase's testimony last week struck a note similar to the previous week's fiasco over a Microsoft videotaped demonstration. Government attorney David Boies had scored by pointing out inconsistent details in a videotape, submitted by Microsoft as evidence, that showed that Microsoft had used multiple PCs to film a demo the company first implied was a seamless segment filmed on one computer. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said he did not believe that the Microsoft witness who had testified to the truthfulness of the tape lied about it, but trial observers said the incident undermined the defense's credibility.

Further discussion of the Gate's Perjury includes http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Bill+Gates+testi mony+Perjury&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=nobody-060200 2327560001%40adsl-209-233-20-69.dsl.snfc21.pacbell .net&rnum=5

In fact, this reprint of the original Ziff Davis Net article with a John Hall interview is in my private archive of resources. The article quotes Mad Dog Hall as properly urging the government to jail Bill Gates for his illegal activities:

http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/johnhall-ms.h tml

Microsoft has competed unfairly with Borland, FoxPro, Netscape, Sun, Apple among others. They have actively pursued a business plan designed to strip individuals and organization from the fruits of their efforts by tweaking the desktop making others products function worse than Microsoft's products. They have repeatedly hindered the empowerment of people and prevented the empowerment of individuals, especially negatively impacting disenfranchised communities, such as those that NYLXS represents in Brooklyn, and the City of New York. 60 minutes even broadcast a show which showed to fear that developers have of Microsoft and the expectations of these developers to be damaged by their 'Partner'

Of the many corporations in the global economy, Microsoft alone has distinguished itself as a proactive opponent to Free Software.

Things began to heat up with the Halloween Papers.

http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

Microsoft then made a frontal attack on the Free Software Foundations GPL, the most potent tool which protects the community from hostile activities by businesses and individuals who wish to destroy our ability to collaborate.

This article by The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25891.html

looks at how DRM (trusted computing) attacks the GPL.

This certification scheme will rip the guts out of the GPL. That is, the minute I begin tinkering with my software, my ability to interface with the Great PKI in the Sky will be broken. I'll have a Linux box with a GPL, all right; but if I exercise the license in any meaningful way I'll render my system 'unauthorized for Palladium' and lose business. So instead, I imagine I'll be turning to my vendor for support, updates, modifications and patches. And I'll be dependent on them for support services at whatever price they can wheedle out of me because I dare not lose my Palladium authorization. I wonder if the cost of ownership of an open-source system will actually be lower than the cost of a proprietary system under such circumstances.

Prior to this, Microsoft's Craig Mundie made several false statements against the GPL at New York University.

Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution.

Microsoft had mailed to every IT director in the US brochures which vilified the GPL, the Free Software movement, and by extension, the Open Source advocates. These mailings contained blatant lies about the contribution of Free Software to the economy and threatened IT directors and developers with unfounded negative consequences if they deploy or use Free Software. The recent GPL FAQ, for example, has the following excerpt:

1. Have your lawyers read the GPL (and the LGPL)? Because the GPL is so frequently misunderstood and because it attempts, under certain circumstances, to impose significant obligations on licensees and their intellectual property rights, no responsible business should use GPL software without ensuring that its lawyers have read the license and explained the business rights and obligations. They should also review and explain the Lesser General Public License, or LGPL, a related license that is sometimes used with open source libraries.

Businesses every day uses Microsoft Software and the software of others which contain intrusive and abusive licensing which is directly in conflict with logical business practices. They would never be accepted by legal teams if the process was open to genuine contract negotiation. The contracts with Microsoft foists on businesses through its abusive monopoly powers constrains segments which allow the disabling of the software and intrudes on the private ownership of data and systems by businesses which purchase Microsoft products today. This is in addition to the clauses which waves them from any responsibility for damages done to business through security violations or the failure of products to perform according to their expectations. And then they sponsored UCITA to make sure that downloaded software from Free Software vendors can not get the same level of protection in a blatant effort to damage efforts of distributors of Free Software to comply with the GPL.

Microsoft has been such an aggressive enemy of Free Software, and the general public that they have used the BSA to do witch hunts against users and business.

They have threatened lawsuits against those who have reversed engineered their document formats They moved their free font access because users downloaded them for Free Software systems. They have proposed a DRM system designed to circumvent the freedom of Free Software development. They have fixed benchmarking studies versus Free Software systems. They have obstructed the legally required refund for operating systems which are forced on consumers with preinstalled systems. They built spyware into their multimedia players, twisted the Java programming language to be incompatible with the implementation on other platforms, refused to release products on Free Software platforms, which includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, introduced in NT4 service pack 3 changes to the SMB protocols to make it break with the Free Software SAMBA product, built back doors into in it's CryptoAPI, deliberately broke the Opera Web Browser when used with the MSN network, have brought down the internet through viruses TWICE in the last year, supported DRM in concert with Record Labels

( http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-983017.html?type=pt&p art=rss&tag=feed&subj=news ),

broke basic TCP/IP protocols with IE5 and IIS

( http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658 ), advertised recently for advanced Free Software administrators to work for Microsoft in order to create a strategy to force businesses off of Free Software, and more.

Overall, Microsoft alone as a corporation has distinguished itself as an entity which, as a core business policy, is set to enslave Free Software and the general population. Their mission is to dehumanize and embarrass our membership, and to impoverish our community.

This body of evidence would be enough to reject out of hand the entry of Microsoft to the conference. But NYLXS and NY Fair Use has a growing new concern which is pushing it to action. In the face of the growing threat by the Microsoft Corporation to the well-being of Free Software developers, a threat that can be seen by Microsoft hiring GNU/Linux experts in the effort to undermine the business efforts of our community through lies and falsehoods, as well as technically breaking the beneficial integration of mixed environments, and which can be further seen by the 'shared source' media campaign which lies about the foundation of a free society and the stake of businesses in the promotion of both Open Sourced and Free Software legal foundation, there is an increasing knee jerk reaction by organizations supposedly representing the communities interests to give Microsoft a platform and a business advantage at conferences and shows which are designed to promote the community's effort in establishing digital rights and economic development. This started at 'Linux World Expo' in San Fransico and has moved into the New York 'Linux World Expo', where it directly damaged the well being of my membership through the winning of an award which rewarded them for creating a program only could properly write if you have the Windows code base, and it is now making its way to the egov-os conference.

The inclusion of Microsoft at this event directly threatens the health of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce in New York City. There are places for an academic style debate for Free Software versus Sun's community license and Microsoft's Share Source' . A conference whose stated goals is to raise awareness of Free Software and Open Software benefits, to present the best practices for government, and to share experiences about the benefits of using Free Software in government, is not such a venue. This venue is about selling Free Software and the community's efforts to the government. It is hoped to and create a much needed stable economic pipeline for free software vendors with government, based on its technical and political merits. Microsoft's goals are in direct conflict with the stated agenda of the conferences. Allowing them to participate, based on the sole attribute that they are Microsoft and feel that they have something to say, is not enough reason to allow them a platform which will be used to hurt members of the community.

• Microsoft has never contributed any code to the community.

• Microsoft has never advocated any benefits of the use of Free Software or Open Source Software

• Microsoft has never financially contributed to any Free Software development or promoted the education of people about Free Software

• Microsoft has not, in any way, befriended the community.

• Microsoft has positioned itself as an enemy of the community and has threatened it on numerous occasions. In fact, Microsoft has singled out the Free Software and Open Source community for abuse.

Because of the growing misconduct of those who are presenting Free Software and Open Sourced Software to the public, first IDG and now egovos, NYLXS and New Yorkers for Fair Use is now contemplating action, not so much directed against Microsoft, but those wolves in sheep closing who are more directly hurting my membership and the community at large.

In considering actions to take, we are looking at a number of possibilities.

First, it is the opinion of Jay Sulzburger that we can use a hour of time to counter the arguments of Microsoft. My experience is that this will not work. On July 17th, I lead NY Fair Use to Washington to argue against the inclusion of DRM. Despite the fact that our presence was the most important part of the conference, to the point where we engaged productively from the audience both Jack Valenti and Philip Bond, we got no mainstream press. This was despite the presence of the New York Time's Amy Harmon and others. But our action was famous on Capital Hill. When we went back for the Peer to Peer/Berman Bill hearing two months later, several congressional staff members sought me out to ask what we did and to give us compliments. Simply, in regard to Jay's suggestion, nobody will attend such a session outside of the choir, and it will receive no press. On the other hand, Microsoft will get much press.

It has been suggested that egov-os is better to concede a place for Microsoft to allow an open debate. This will not be affective, and the alternative of being tongue whipped by Microsoft in the press is far better since they simply don't qualify for a placement at the conference, and it will allow us to present to the government administrators without interference. It is not NY Fairuse's policy to play 'whack the mole' with DRM issues. Instead, we focus on specific actions which will have broad affect and undermine the ability of our political foes to bring endless action again and again through the governments entire alphabet soup of bureaucracy and congressional committees. If Microsoft objects to being excluded, NY Fair Use (http://fairuse.nylxs.com) would be all to happy to provide a forum for both Microsoft and Richard Stallman, and others, for the benefit of academic debate. It would be a good fund raiser for the Free Software Institute in the coming months. My guess is that Bill Gates has no interest in such a real debate. His company is only interested in marketing and damaging the community. Therefore, participation by any Free Software advocates, or Open Source advocates, in this egov-os conference is highly damaging to the community if it includes Microsoft. And we are therefor calling on a boycott for this event.

It has been said that nobody is stupid enough to believe that Microsoft's 'shared source' promotes Open Source software. Unfortunately, this is very wrong. On the Open Office.org website, every day people ask if they can use and distribute the products. While I wouldn't say people are as dumb as rocks, I will say that they've been so conditioned to think out software as a super-restricted, crash inducing, virus ridden products, that they often have trouble thinking straight about what they should expect from business and software providers.

NY Fair Use is now looking to organize a protest of the event in Washington. A protest will at least give those genuinely from the community an uninhibited outlet. However, NY Fair Use, in general, dislikes protests as a vehicle of change, as we feel they mostly are ignored by a public besieged by 'the protest of the day'.

As a result, we are looking at a more organized campaign against this convention and those who would put events like this one together without considering the moral imperative of not harming the community by giving those who wish to destroy use a platform such as this. Egov-os supposedly advocates Free Software usage in business and government. It should do so without constraint and without apologies.

We are calling for an investigation of the egov-os organizers for misconduct. I've spoken with Tony Stanco many times and it's not possible that he doesn't grasp the basics of the issues outlined here, or how including Microsoft will negatively affect our community. Therefor, the invitation of Microsoft to this conference must be either a direct payoff, or self promotion. Since they are moral equivalents, they are both both equally condemnable.

We insist that Microsoft should not be given any platform at this event, because it is their purpose to undermine the community and its efforts. Since this is not being promoted as an academic debate, but instead is a marketing tool for Open Source and Free Software, we reject any arguments which are based on the concept that we should open the floor to them in order to dispel Microsoft corporate lies. This venue does not have the most basic format to handle this problem.

If, for contractual reasons, it is impossible to remove them from the conference, we ask the organizers to give NYLXS's subcommittee, New Yorkers for Fair Use, both the keynote and the Microsoft slot in the speaking arraignments. David Sugar will represent NYLXS, and I will represent NY Fair Use.

Finally, the website for the event needs to have on the front page a clear statement that it has determined that Microsoft's 'shared' code' program to be directly in opposition to both Free Software and the Open Source ideals, in that it does not promote the empowerment of the community through the freedom of innovation and digital systems ownership by individuals, the government or businesses.

I do not expect that these suggestions will be taken by Bruce Perens, or the other organizers of the egov-os events. So I expect that we will have to work to oppose the event.

Ruben Safir

President New Yorkers for Fair Use

http://fairuse.nylxs.com

Looking further at the troubles with the e-gov-os conference and after reviewing the opinions of Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, David Sugar, Jay Sulzburger, David Wheeler, Stanley Klein, Chalu Kim, Claus Srensen, Jason Faulkner, Russell McOrmond, Louis Suarez-Potts, David A. Hammond and others, comments which have expanded over 10 mailing lists, and which have generated a few hundred private emails to me in my private email box, I'm forced to draw several conclusions.

First, as President of NYLXS and President of New Yorkers for Fair Use, my primary concern is two fold:

First, in my role as President of NYLXS, my primary goal is to cater to the needs of the membership, and the extended constituency of the organization, the Free Software development community and users in the New York City area. In truth, all organizations have a primary responsibility to their constituencies. It is time for others to look at their constituency and see how they are serving them. An organization which doesn't serve a constituency is an organization in name only.

Secondly, as an individual citizen and active member of the Free Software movement, I'm concerned with broad policy decisions of others in regards to individual rights with in our digitalized communications network. I'm focused on practical activities which protect the freedom of individuals and empower individuals and communities in education, government and business.

These are the only two prisms in which I can view the planned events of EgovOS conference.

I tend to be very thorough and deliberate in my conclusions. When I work through the process of developing activities and actions, or when I write in regard to issues of importance in a proper fashion for publication, or when I give a formal opinion piece representing any of our organizations journals, radio shows, public speeches, or other formalized media outlets, I bring to bear on that presentation, not only thorough research of the issue and much consultation, but also my 30 years of political and practical experience in affecting positive political and social outcomes.

I bring this same effort to this current letter, which I am opening up to the public and which will be published on http://fairuse.nylxs.com and which will be included in the coming NYLXS Journal.

First, let's look at the stated goals of the sponsored event. As listed on htttp://www.egovos.org/, the goals of this conference is:

Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU

Goals:

1. the presentation of best practices

2. raising awareness

3. sharing of experiences among policy makers, donors, users/consumers, universities, and industry specialists in Open Source, e-Government and related fields.

NYLXS has, for a couple of years, worked to sell Free Software on both the local, New York City Level and in the Federal Government. We'll had a variety of experiences in this regard, many of them very negative. As such, this conference seems to be important to the economic and political health of the NYLXS membership, including The Free Software Chamber of Commerce, our Public Educational initiative in New York City Public Schools, and New Yorkers for Fair Use. Our direct prosperity as a community is tied to the stated goals of the conference, and in fact, members of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce had prepared to make presentations at the conference. It was the concerns of members of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce which brought the problems which have enveloped the conference to my attention.

The main problem is the participation of Microsoft as a speaker and presenter at the conference. In a previous email, I have already listed the problems that Microsoft presents. But for the sake of making this a complete document, I will reiterate them and expand upon the Microsoft issue.

First of all, Microsoft is a reckless company which operates above the law. It has recently been convicted twice for antitrust activities, and has been guilty of numerous other illegal competitive practices which have gone without prosecution. http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_index.htm is a rundown of the current conviction of Microsoft for antitrust actions which is still going through the courts. Microsoft was not only determined have acted illegally in regard to browser technology, but they have also had their CEO, Bill Gates, lie under oath. The testimony can be searched here:

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/video/gates/

http://www.broadcast.com/news/billgates/

investigation of his perjury is here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24990.html

http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=A rticle&cid=FT3MLEDHF0D&live=true&useoverridetempla te=ZZZUGORQ00C&tagid=ZZZNSJCX70C&subheading=global

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/msdo j991107.html

They even doctored their prepared testimony which got much press:

http://www.idg.net/crd_microsoft_67162.html and to quote:

Chase's testimony last week struck a note similar to the previous week's fiasco over a Microsoft videotaped demonstration. Government attorney David Boies had scored by pointing out inconsistent details in a videotape, submitted by Microsoft as evidence, that showed that Microsoft had used multiple PCs to film a demo the company first implied was a seamless segment filmed on one computer. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said he did not believe that the Microsoft witness who had testified to the truthfulness of the tape lied about it, but trial observers said the incident undermined the defense's credibility.

Further discussion of the Gate's Perjury includes http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Bill+Gates+testi mony+Perjury&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=nobody-060200 2327560001%40adsl-209-233-20-69.dsl.snfc21.pacbell .net&rnum=5

In fact, this reprint of the original Ziff Davis Net article with a John Hall interview is in my private archive of resources. The article quotes Mad Dog Hall as properly urging the government to jail Bill Gates for his illegal activities:

http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources/johnhall-ms.h tml

Microsoft has competed unfairly with Borland, FoxPro, Netscape, Sun, Apple among others. They have actively pursued a business plan designed to strip individuals and organization from the fruits of their efforts by tweaking the desktop making others products function worse than Microsoft's products. They have repeatedly hindered the empowerment of people and prevented the empowerment of individuals, especially negatively impacting disenfranchised communities, such as those that NYLXS represents in Brooklyn, and the City of New York. 60 minutes even broadcast a show which showed to fear that developers have of Microsoft and the expectations of these developers to be damaged by their 'Partner'

Of the many corporations in the global economy, Microsoft alone has distinguished itself as a proactive opponent to Free Software.

Things began to heat up with the Halloween Papers.

http://www.opensource.org/halloween/

Microsoft then made a frontal attack on the Free Software Foundations GPL, the most potent tool which protects the community from hostile activities by businesses and individuals who wish to destroy our ability to collaborate.

This article by The Register at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25891.html

looks at how DRM (trusted computing) attacks the GPL.

This certification scheme will rip the guts out of the GPL. That is, the minute I begin tinkering with my software, my ability to interface with the Great PKI in the Sky will be broken. I'll have a Linux box with a GPL, all right; but if I exercise the license in any meaningful way I'll render my system 'unauthorized for Palladium' and lose business. So instead, I imagine I'll be turning to my vendor for support, updates, modifications and patches. And I'll be dependent on them for support services at whatever price they can wheedle out of me because I dare not lose my Palladium authorization. I wonder if the cost of ownership of an open-source system will actually be lower than the cost of a proprietary system under such circumstances.

Prior to this, Microsoft's Craig Mundie made several false statements against the GPL at New York University.

Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution.

Microsoft had mailed to every IT director in the US brochures which vilified the GPL, the Free Software movement, and by extension, the Open Source advocates. These mailings contained blatant lies about the contribution of Free Software to the economy and threatened IT directors and developers with unfounded negative consequences if they deploy or use Free Software. The recent GPL FAQ, for example, has the following excerpt:

1. Have your lawyers read the GPL (and the LGPL)? Because the GPL is so frequently misunderstood and because it attempts, under certain circumstances, to impose significant obligations on licensees and their intellectual property rights, no responsible business should use GPL software without ensuring that its lawyers have read the license and explained the business rights and obligations. They should also review and explain the Lesser General Public License, or LGPL, a related license that is sometimes used with open source libraries.

Businesses every day uses Microsoft Software and the software of others which contain intrusive and abusive licensing which is directly in conflict with logical business practices. They would never be accepted by legal teams if the process was open to genuine contract negotiation. The contracts with Microsoft foists on businesses through its abusive monopoly powers constrains segments which allow the disabling of the software and intrudes on the private ownership of data and systems by businesses which purchase Microsoft products today. This is in addition to the clauses which waves them from any responsibility for damages done to business through security violations or the failure of products to perform according to their expectations. And then they sponsored UCITA to make sure that downloaded software from Free Software vendors can not get the same level of protection in a blatant effort to damage efforts of distributors of Free Software to comply with the GPL.

Microsoft has been such an aggressive enemy of Free Software, and the general public that they have used the BSA to do witch hunts against users and business.

They have threatened lawsuits against those who have reversed engineered their document formats They moved their free font access because users downloaded them for Free Software systems. They have proposed a DRM system designed to circumvent the freedom of Free Software development. They have fixed benchmarking studies versus Free Software systems. They have obstructed the legally required refund for operating systems which are forced on consumers with preinstalled systems. They built spyware into their multimedia players, twisted the Java programming language to be incompatible with the implementation on other platforms, refused to release products on Free Software platforms, which includes Microsoft Internet Explorer, introduced in NT4 service pack 3 changes to the SMB protocols to make it break with the Free Software SAMBA product, built back doors into in it's CryptoAPI, deliberately broke the Opera Web Browser when used with the MSN network, have brought down the internet through viruses TWICE in the last year, supported DRM in concert with Record Labels

( http://rss.com.com/2100-1023-983017.html?type=pt&p art=rss&tag=feed&subj=news ),

broke basic TCP/IP protocols with IE5 and IIS

( http://grotto11.com/blog/slash.html?+1039831658 ), advertised recently for advanced Free Software administrators to work for Microsoft in order to create a strategy to force businesses off of Free Software, and more.

Overall, Microsoft alone as a corporation has distinguished itself as an entity which, as a core business policy, is set to enslave Free Software and the general population. Their mission is to dehumanize and embarrass our membership, and to impoverish our community.

This body of evidence would be enough to reject out of hand the entry of Microsoft to the conference. But NYLXS and NY Fair Use has a growing new concern which is pushing it to action. In the face of the growing threat by the Microsoft Corporation to the well-being of Free Software developers, a threat that can be seen by Microsoft hiring GNU/Linux experts in the effort to undermine the business efforts of our community through lies and falsehoods, as well as technically breaking the beneficial integration of mixed environments, and which can be further seen by the 'shared source' media campaign which lies about the foundation of a free society and the stake of businesses in the promotion of both Open Sourced and Free Software legal foundation, there is an increasing knee jerk reaction by organizations supposedly representing the communities interests to give Microsoft a platform and a business advantage at conferences and shows which are designed to promote the community's effort in establishing digital rights and economic development. This started at 'Linux World Expo' in San Fransico and has moved into the New York 'Linux World Expo', where it directly damaged the well being of my membership through the winning of an award which rewarded them for creating a program only could properly write if you have the Windows code base, and it is now making its way to the egov-os conference.

The inclusion of Microsoft at this event directly threatens the health of the Free Software Chamber of Commerce in New York City. There are places for an academic style debate for Free Software versus Sun's community license and Microsoft's Share Source' . A conference whose stated goals is to raise awareness of Free Software and Open Software benefits, to present the best practices for government, and to share experiences about the benefits of using Free Software in government, is not such a venue. This venue is about selling Free Software and the community's efforts to the government. It is hoped to and create a much needed stable economic pipeline for free software vendors with government, based on its technical and political merits. Microsoft's goals are in direct conflict with the stated agenda of the conferences. Allowing them to participate, based on the sole attribute that they are Microsoft and feel that they have something to say, is not enough reason to allow them a platform which will be used to hurt members of the community.

• Microsoft has never contributed any code to the community.

• Microsoft has never advocated any benefits of the use of Free Software or Open Source Software

• Microsoft has never financially contributed to any Free Software development or promoted the education of people about Free Software

• Microsoft has not, in any way, befriended the community.

• Microsoft has positioned itself as an enemy of the community and has threatened it on numerous occasions. In fact, Microsoft has singled out the Free Software and Open Source community for abuse.

Because of the growing misconduct of those who are presenting Free Software and Open Sourced Software to the public, first IDG and now egovos, NYLXS and New Yorkers for Fair Use is now contemplating action, not so much directed against Microsoft, but those wolves in sheep closing who are more directly hurting my membership and the community at large.

In considering actions to take, we are looking at a number of possibilities.

First, it is the opinion of Jay Sulzburger that we can use a hour of time to counter the arguments of Microsoft. My experience is that this will not work. On July 17th, I lead NY Fair Use to Washington to argue against the inclusion of DRM. Despite the fact that our presence was the most important part of the conference, to the point where we engaged productively from the audience both Jack Valenti and Philip Bond, we got no mainstream press. This was despite the presence of the New York Time's Amy Harmon and others. But our action was famous on Capital Hill. When we went back for the Peer to Peer/Berman Bill hearing two months later, several congressional staff members sought me out to ask what we did and to give us compliments. Simply, in regard to Jay's suggestion, nobody will attend such a session outside of the choir, and it will receive no press. On the other hand, Microsoft will get much press.

It has been suggested that egov-os is better to concede a place for Microsoft to allow an open debate. This will not be affective, and the alternative of being tongue whipped by Microsoft in the press is far better since they simply don't qualify for a placement at the conference, and it will allow us to present to the government administrators without interference. It is not NY Fairuse's policy to play 'whack the mole' with DRM issues. Instead, we focus on specific actions which will have broad affect and undermine the ability of our political foes to bring endless action again and again through the governments entire alphabet soup of bureaucracy and congressional committees. If Microsoft objects to being excluded, NY Fair Use (http://fairuse.nylxs.com) would be all to happy to provide a forum for both Microsoft and Richard Stallman, and others, for the benefit of academic debate. It would be a good fund raiser for the Free Software Institute in the coming months. My guess is that Bill Gates has no interest in such a real debate. His company is only interested in marketing and damaging the community. Therefore, participation by any Free Software advocates, or Open Source advocates, in this egov-os conference is highly damaging to the community if it includes Microsoft. And we are therefor calling on a boycott for this event.

It has been said that nobody is stupid enough to believe that Microsoft's 'shared source' promotes Open Source software. Unfortunately, this is very wrong. On the Open Office.org website, every day people ask if they can use and distribute the products. While I wouldn't say people are as dumb as rocks, I will say that they've been so conditioned to think out software as a super-restricted, crash inducing, virus ridden products, that they often have trouble thinking straight about what they should expect from business and software providers.

NY Fair Use is now looking to organize a protest of the event in Washington. A protest will at least give those genuinely from the community an uninhibited outlet. However, NY Fair Use, in general, dislikes protests as a vehicle of change, as we feel they mostly are ignored by a public besieged by 'the protest of the day'.

As a result, we are looking at a more organized campaign against this convention and those who would put events like this one together without considering the moral imperative of not harming the community by giving those who wish to destroy use a platform such as this. Egov-os supposedly advocates Free Software usage in business and government. It should do so without constraint and without apologies.

We are calling for an investigation of the egov-os organizers for misconduct. I've spoken with Tony Stanco many times and it's not possible that he doesn't grasp the basics of the issues outlined here, or how including Microsoft will negatively affect our community. Therefor, the invitation of Microsoft to this conference must be either a direct payoff, or self promotion. Since they are moral equivalents, they are both both equally condemnable.

We insist that Microsoft should not be given any platform at this event, because it is their purpose to undermine the community and its efforts. Since this is not being promoted as an academic debate, but instead is a marketing tool for Open Source and Free Software, we reject any arguments which are based on the concept that we should open the floor to them in order to dispel Microsoft corporate lies. This venue does not have the most basic format to handle this problem.

If, for contractual reasons, it is impossible to remove them from the conference, we ask the organizers to give NYLXS's subcommittee, New Yorkers for Fair Use, both the keynote and the Microsoft slot in the speaking arraignments. David Sugar will represent NYLXS, and I will represent NY Fair Use.

Finally, the website for the event needs to have on the front page a clear statement that it has determined that Microsoft's 'shared' code' program to be directly in opposition to both Free Software and the Open Source ideals, in that it does not promote the empowerment of the community through the freedom of innovation and digital systems ownership by individuals, the government or businesses.

I do not expect that these suggestions will be taken by Bruce Perens, or the other organizers of the egov-os events. So I expect that we will have to work to oppose the event.

Ruben Safir

President New Yorkers for Fair Use

http://fairuse.nylxs.com

I would like to know why O'Connor acted. Perhaps she wanted some research done, or perhaps she floated the case by other Justices without getting a bite. It takes four Justices to grant certiorari and hear the full case.

To label personal jurisdiction a procedural question is misleading. Things like filing dates for briefs are classically procedural. But personal jurisdiction goes to constitutional due process and the very life or death of entire classes of cases. PJ over Web disputes will prove to be as critical issue as the free speech question at the heart of this DMCA case. What good is free speech in the U.S. if you can be charged in some country antagonistic to the concept (Singapore, China, others).

Here, PJ appears decides the case for now. PJ is not a question of the rights of the CA court, but its power, and fundamental fairness to the defendant ("traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice"). If the party has not had or consented to contact with the forum, it is a violation of substantive due process to impose jurisidiction. You don't have to visit the state to get into trouble there. Yet it is important also to consider fairness to the plaintiff, who may have been injured by something really foul done by the defendant -- they're not all as sympathetic as Pavlovich.

Already, the U.S. is already indirectly disagreeing with Australia over this point, a recent Fourth Circuit case. Note the heavy hitters who participated in that appeal --- NYT, WP, DJ, and others. It's not just little website operators who are worried.

The questions can become quite difficult and are the sort of stuff law professors use to torture their students now that thumbscrews are banned. How much "contact" is enough? Is passing over California in the Space Shuttle or ISS enough for them to nail you court? (Don't laugh, I bet this will comes up some day: picture astronaut Francine is on break sitting at his console typing away decryption codes while zipping over dozens of states and countries... for that matter, who has jurisdiction and whose laws apply the first time two pieces of space stuff whack into each other? The first fender bender will be messy.)

Anyway, I'm skeptical whether California got PJ right here -- in an analytical sense that will carry the day for eventual federal standards -- but for all intents it appears the CA aspect of the litigation is dead. Sooner or later, this jurisdictional question will land squarely in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Just thinking out loud... :)

Redhat Press idg.net has an article about SuSE Linux

Seen on IDG.net: "IDC's findings, published Monday in a study commissioned by Microsoft Corp....."
'Nuff said.

I saw it in IDG.net. It's pretty funny...

Well for nearly 11 years I have been in the fileserver world. I touched lots of file servers. From old ancient LANtastic and Netware 2.15, going through most Novell flavours up to 5.0. For 11 years I worked with, administered, tweaked and crunched so many different file servers that I don't remember all of them. Lots of Novell flavours, OS/2, NFS on Solaris and Linux. I worked also with Windows "solutions", from WfW up to Windows2000 Server. From all these I sincerly prefer Netware. Netware is far better and manageable than any other file server system. Naturally as Novell did it specially for file servers. However there is a problem with Novell. Its prices are prohibitive for many customers. But, if your work highly depends in file server services, surely the TCO is far lower than everyone else.

Among all the systems I used, the most crappy, cumbersome, crash-proned, time consuming and nervestraining was M$ crap. It came up into hanging a whole local network, just because M$ thought it could play at will with TCP/IP stack. But there are tons of stories about the crap. Let's just pick the most recent.

In April this year, I met a medium-sized Compaq server in one highly important organisation. Compaq's dealer sweeted a lot to have that lovely machine there. And sweeted even more to have it working. The thing worked, naturally, on Windows2000 Server. I was asked to tweak the crap so that several problems were gone. And the problems were: workstations loosing connection with the server, Apps frequently hanging up, file transfer working slowly (in a 100mbits network it looked much like 10mbits), and a episodic events with the machine crashing.

After some administration we came up to the conclusion that the machine was going into sure doom. The DNS was crashing every day, WINS and SMB were giving wrong packets into the network, the file system was getting wrong data, user accounts were not freed, CPU never lowered behind 30% and lots of many other problems. Besides we found that, everyday, 30 minutes of workday was lost on backing up data (it was a damn important server) as no one could work while backup was going on.

Well, we created a backup server, curiously on Linux, but with the objective to reinstall Windows2000 on the main server. We lost ONE week trying to do it. As we discovered, the original installer had also huge problems with that machine. The machine was simply unable to work stable with Windows2000.

Considering the pros and cons I decided to use my old weapon The Penguin Dancing Samba, against the huge oposition of many people. However the situation was Hell in Flames and there should be a fast solution. So the bosses agreed the change.

Well I had a whole day of headaches to install it on Compaq's RAID. Also I had lots of trouble creating a secure, stable and automatised environment. In the whole, it took me 2-3 weeks to do all the work.

Today, nearly half-year later, the admin approaches the server 1-2 times in the week. Most work is log checking and some rare tweaks in the configuration (mostly adding users), the machine carries several early warning scripts in case something goes wrong. Backup is completely automatic. With the exception of one single user (some mystic problem), everyone works without hangups, crashes or lost connections. The system lives perfectly in its 100mbps network and the problem of slow connections is forgotten. Besides, the average load of this machine is just 3% and it now carries also a MySQL server that is frequently used and which, in the future, may substitute many file server tasks.

Is this the the higher TCO they talk about?

I mean, sure it looks cool, but, wouldn't it be a lot better to use a blade server system.

They have. The Green Destiny machine uses 240 transmeta server blades.

With every X-Box purchase, MS helpfully provides chips containing both the encryption keys and the instructions for using them.

Use as much encryption as you want, it won't help much when you are giving the key to the attacker.

ATI seems to be making a habit of this... In July 2000 they issued press releases a couple of days before MacWorld giving information on yet-to-be announced mac systems, and got themselves into an uncomfortable situation with Apple. See http://www.idg.net/idgns/2000/07/24/ATITakesBlameF orAppleLeak.shtml for a summary.

Ok, I must have missed the story about the IBM San-Fran chalking faisco, but someone posted the relevant links. The real IDG story, and the exclusive coverage of the IDG story, at the Register.

The short story is that IBM got caught spraypainting / chalking Tux and the caption "Peace, Love, and Linux" on the sidewalks of numerous street corners all over the city. They claimed it was "biodegradable", if not "easily water soluble" chalk, and were banking on it disappearing the next time it rained. It didn't. The article doesn't mention whether it eventually did wash off, after several rains (think back to college days - did that chalk only last one rainfall?), or whether they had to break down and have it removed first.

I have a picture of one of the MSN butterflies applied to the 7th Avenue Station sign, but I don't know where to post it. You'd say it was quite tasteful if you saw it. It looks like part of the sign. I hear a lot of arguments about why MS's campaign is evil, whereas IBM's was just and righteous. I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a minute here, since no one else seems to want to.

I don't want to hear anyone in this country say that the reason MS's campaign is evil is because they create waste. I'm not saying they don't, but is that the reason that you think fast-food, snail-mail solicitations from charitable organizations, and buying soda is evil? Let's be honest about how much waste we all generate, whether or not we're tacking up little butterflies to subway stations...

And the rollerbladers are evil, not because they are generating waste, but because they're a "distraction". A pedestrian might walk into an open manhole because they were too distracted by the butterfly men. Uh huh. MS has pretty deep pockets. Let the frivolous lawsuits begin. If you can squeeze any money out of their lawyers, you've earned it.

What's that leave? Evil because they're advertising for MSN 8, instead of a righteous cause such as Linux, therefore anything they do, regardless of eco-friendliness and distractive potential is Evil? I don't think a rational argument can be made for or against that, so I don't want to debate it.

MS is evil, because IBM did it first. Hate to disappoint, but IBM did not invent the concept of publicity stunt. I have no idea how far back it goes, but in modern times I've got a reference here for 1917 before the original release of the first Tarzan movie. Harry Reichenbach was hired to promote it, so he anonymously let loose an oranguatan dressed in a tuxedo inside a fancy hotel filled with New York elite. The newspapers had a field day, and a few days later, Reichenbach called to let them know that it had been a stunt for Tarzan, so they covered it again, this time letting everyone know it had been for the movie. Tarzan made a killing at the box-office.

As far as I'm concerned, every publicity stunt since then has been Evil. Evil! (whoops, I think I lost my serious edge. Anyway, my source on the Tarzan story is Uncle John's Biggest Ever Bathroom Reader, from the scholarly "Bathroom Reader's Institute", which is an absolute crack-pipe for trivia junkies like myself.)

You may now resume the one-sided witchhunt. =)

Your wish is my command.

Do you feel used by the management team of WorldCom? Do you feel that bold, crowd-pleasing projections like this helped blow up a big tech bubble and bamboozle the gullible, non-tech-educated public? Are scientists just puppets of the businessmen, or do scientists have some obligation to avoid aligning themselves with fraudulent enterprises? Can scientists do anything to avoid having their inventions turned into tools for fraud?

Only one: Microsoft! :-)

• Bill Gates donates $100 million to AIDS research
  
• Bill Gates donates $25M for AIDS vaccine
  
• Bill Gates Donates $37 Million to Combat Hepatitis B in China
  
• Gates Donates Millions to Schools
  
• BILL GATES DONATES $2.2 BILLION TO POPULATION CONTROL
  

This is because when it matters, Microsoft's security is tough as nails.

Care to explain this then? Microsoft fails to use own security product

Here's another article that mentions him.

well, I meant no offense. I actually, read an article on that Navy Intranet/EDS project just the other day and how it's becoming a bit of a fiasco. Ah, I found it. here it is off of IDG.net, which is a cool IT "consolidator" site, to COmputerworld. Looks like you're not the only one who is concerned about this project.

Seems it's too late at least for Dell

My friend has a touchstream keyboard which he used full-time for a couple weeks. His emails constantly looked like the parent post. He attributed this to lack of tactile or auditory feedback.

On the other hand, I use a small two-way alphanumeric pager (size comparison, closeup). You end up typing on it preying-mantis like, holding the front with your thumbs nad the back with your pinkies, and typing with your two pointer fingers. Typing is definitely slower, but you don't end up making constant mistakes like with the other keyboards mentioned.

May point is... as far as I know, mini keyboards are the best solution so far, there are worse solutions available.

It seems that due to this retarded proposal all the the EU is not only banning certain usefull substances in the manufacture of electronics, they are also requiring manufactures to help facilitate the disposal of any waste due to their products :/

It sure may be better for the environment but its like a tax on electronics which are where most of (imho and circumstances) the commercial innovations lay. I doubt itll really make much difference in the grand scheme of things as it will just infiltrate its added price into the component industry.

Although imho the fact that the American market is going to cost more aswell is a complete pisstake, as the Americans wont have to pay any extra.. just us Euro's.. this is just the corperations exploiting this to make a fast buck out of you yanks, which will (seeing as you out number us) probably easily gain back any costs the encounter due to this new Euro legislation!

Disgracefull :/

The name you are looking for is Future Shop. That chain is one of Canada's largest electronic retailers, and had been making inroads into Best Buy's territory in the USA. The details of the buy-out are here. Last I heard, the deal was still pending approval of the Canadian government's competition bureau and/or SEC blessing.

Ermm...I guess you didn't hear about Sega bringing the Xbox hardware to the arcades.

IGN also has a writeup: http://xbox.ign.com/articles/099/099035p1.html

Here's an article from InfoWorld magazine on the same subject.

http://www.idg.net/ic_846015_4394_1-3921.html

It does add some more information and comments, but mostly it's a rehash of the original press release. Interesting to see is that this article mentions Verisign as a third partner, which makes quite a difference I think.

Oh.. and it's got the words "web services", "security" and "privacy" linked a gazillion times.

• I would love to see what Dell has to say about the OEM agreements with MS. After all they did support Linux for a little while. Now that seems to have gone by the waist-side.

Dell stopped support for Linux? I wonder why?

I won't make you go digging (quoting from the above article):

The states intend to introduce a series of documents detailing discussions Microsoft had with Dell Computer Corp. with the goal of giving Dell a "hard time" about selling Linux desktops. Dell last year pulled its desktop Linux line.

Dev/Null on a Unix system is where you put files you never want to see again. Something of a black hole.

They simply tell a fib to get you to click on over to their site, which upon being rendered throws a half-dozen pop-up windows on the desktop. Let's aim higher rather than just taking out the con artists alone.

The FTC has gone after "trap" sites -- sites with extremely high numbers of pop-ups, or "hydra" ads. In that case, the domain names were misspellings of other popular domains, but I don't think it's a huge leap from misspelled domain names to misleading spam with forged headers.

I'd also like to see the FTC sue advertisers on both porn and non-porn sites that make their banner ads look like browser dialogs windows.

MS trying to quell petition against closed source in Germany

Yeah, cause good ol' Bill isn't philanthropic enough...

This review should give you a few hints.

"The MPlayer gang seems to relish nothing more than belittling their users and reminding them of just how little they know about Linux and computing in general. I don't know about the rest of you, but I suffer enough of that on my own. I do not need any outside assistance to reinforce that point of view.

Naturally, I was drawn to the project like a moth to a flame. Bring it on, I thought. Whatever it takes, I'll get it installed. I won't be asking that infantile band of RTFM-spewing bozos who maintain it for help, either. My own hardheadedness is probably the only reason I sit here today with MPlayer installed, with a custom GUI skin enabled no less, barely more than a full day after I started."

http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=620307

GATT.org HAD TO copy the look and feel of site - IT IS NECESSARY FOR PARODY.

Parody: (1)A literary composition imitating the characteristic style of some other work or writer, but treating a serious subject in a nonsensical manner in an attempt at humor or ridicule.

They use the copyright EXCUSE and also try to take it on another EXCUSE - the name GATT.org 'confuses' visitors.

From article at IDG.net.

Quote:

While the WTO encourages criticism of its role, there are limits to the forms this should take, said Carrier.

The WTO is powerless to stop the hoax until a new procedure for domain name arbitration is introduced by the World Intellectual
Property Organization allowing it to take control of the domain gatt.org, Carrier said.

End Quote.

They wish to muffle peoples voice, by taking gatt.org - saying it 'confuses' visitors to the site.

They know the solution to avoid 'consumer confusion'.

But they want this as an EXCUSE to steal peoples domains - so people can not use it.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk to see the simple solution the authorities have been hiding from you.

Maybe they're talking job security, since even Mundie, in an uncustomary and uncommon bit of truthfulness, admitted today at their "Trusted Computing Conference that they found it impossible to secure their own products...then he lapsed into his normal lying self, and commited another foot-bullet by comparing script-kiddiez to the Takfir wal Hajiri and the al Quaeda...

Here is the story of how a Chinese grad student developed the ARM7. this looks like yet another case of the Chinese government meatheads forcibly repressing free speech and damaging the natural development of Chinese culture.

remind me why the US still deals with the People's Republic?

You mean something like this?

I've seen it in action at CeBit. It kind of looks like a shrunken phaser and it takes pictures and scans text
which then is transferred via Bluetooth.
You could even feed live video wireless to a PC, though the framrate sucked.
I'm not sure about the resolution though.

Apparently it's only a concept product as of yet.

and I find it hilarious that IBM says on their product page that cnet praises their new 75gig drive, and then when you go to cnet, 50% of the readers have given it a thumbs down! nice work IBM..

http://www.idg.net/ic_683987_1794_9-10000.html