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Enough whith Coverity allready. It's like the 50th slashdot article that talks about this.
FYI, it costs about 50.000 $ for a medium sized project (500.000 lines), and is no more than a lint on steroids. Here is a somewhat cheaper competitor.
None of this tools is a mach for a manual audit performed by a professional.

"Jonathan Schwartz is making the same mistakes that got McNealy and Sun into trouble. Instead of concentrating on creating new avant-garde technologies"

You mean like Java. What got Sun into trouble was Microsoft sabotaging Java on the desktop. Remember when they brought out an incompatible Microsoft Jave version. Wilfully breaking the write once run anywhere option. The one thing Java was supposed to do well. "McNealy launched a Microsoft and Linux-bashing propaganda campaign."

When someone launches a campaign to destroy your company and you comment on it how is that propaganda. His biggest mistake was in settling the long running court case.

a memo .. September 1995 .. recommending Microsoft "jump on the Java bandwagon and take control" of its class libraries and run times"

Now we see Schwartz using the same hype tactics. It's a shame because I liked the old Sun. I really did. Will it return? I am not so sure anymore.

Are you seriously sugesting that Suns decline had nothing to do with Microsofts tactics.

You looked Alan Ralsky up in jail?

It's a good thing you're only his brother.

Otherwise, "Alan Ralsky" might find a name change to "Betty Sue" and become someone's prison beeyitch. (it might still happen)

I wonder if he'll have to mortgage "The House That Spam Built"[1] to pay his lawyer to plea bargin to stay out of prison? What will he do for a job to pay the mortgage? (any assets, including money he might have stashed away and could use to pay the mortgage back off could, and likely would, be confiscated, just as his "toys" were in October, '5.

The DOJ has him in the can and his records are sealed for seventy-two hours.

I'm surprised the story hasn't appeared yet.

There's a story at news.google.com:

Hackers quaking over reported Spam King's arrest

My suggestion on SPAM-L was to use this opportunity to put the DMA on hold this time (they wrote CAN-SPAM and a VP said opt-in wasn't a viable economic model so they wouldn't use it) and have any number of the CongressCritters who later admitted rubber-stamping CAN-SPAM was ineffective at best, get something put into their hands which "Prevents the possibility of another Alan Ralsky" (but I also have said, "...we know there are others, but it makes for a good buzzphrase for them to use as a sales pitch to their peers, not to mention good press for them to toot their own horn. If that'll produce better legislation, such as fighting Ronnie "You Can't Legislate Me Out Of Business" Skelson, I'll let them toot all they want....").

____________________________________

[1]
Here's the original Slashdot story, but the Detroit Free Press link it points to produces a 404. Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has many copies, such as this one.

(I'm dragging this out for those who don't know about the Wayback Machine)

If anyone wants additional info about Alan Ralsky there's plenty there about him.

Any Slashdot readers willing to run for public office on the newly made-up 'Open Source Party' ticket?

"The Green Party in the European Parliament has invited Hartmut Pilch, head of the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure, and Richard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation to speak at a hearing at the European Parliament entitled: "Is software patentability necessary?" The Greens hold only around 10 percent of the seats in the Parliament, but they can still influence the debate and propose amendments to the draft law." - Green Party to hear open source line on patents

"The Green Party [of the USA] opposes patenting or copyrighting lifeforms, algorithms, DNA, colors or commonly-used words and phrases. We support broad interpretation and ultimate expansion of the Fair Use of copyrighted works. We support open source and copyleft models in order to promote the public interest and the spirit of copyright." - http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/economics.html

The Greens' core principles may be incompatible with most voting slashdotters tho.

Looks like it would make a decent little headless server, for http/imap/ftp/etc. The Godson-3 (successor to this Godson-2) chip plans look even more interesting. basically take a 4-pipeline 64-bit superscalar MIPS chip (Godson-2) and put 4 cores on a chip.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/01/HNgodson 2_1.html

Assuming, though, that legal and patent issues don't prevent it being sourced in US-bound computers and components...

Just my opinion, but I would hold off on buying the third-party virtualization solution by Parallels (or any other company charging money) on the basis of a free open-source solution for now (the Q project based on QEMU) and the likelihood of a free commercial solution in the near future (VMware competing with Microsoft).

One person's experience with Q/QEMU on the Intel-based Macintosh computer.

I warned her that VZ has a public relations problem but she was too clueless to understand.

Perhaps she was too jaded from hearing customers complain that Verizon has a PR problem.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."

From what I've heard (and what I experienced from having their service in the second half of 2000), this is nothing new for Verizon. They're only interested in the money-making aspects of the telecom business, and drag their feet on everything else. The setup of this aggressive new spam filter was probably one of those "money-making" items, since it means far less spam traffic and decreased accusations of hosting spam bots. Of course, when customers start complaining that they can't send email to specific addresses, they have to deal with Verizon's understaffed, undercapable customer service departments, who will most likely be faced with fierce opposition from the suits in opposing the "grand money-saving, liability-reducing spam filter".

Also, keep in mind that when Verizon acquired MCI, they acquired UUNet, a tier-1 ISP with some serious spam problems of their own. I wouldn't be surprised if taking on UUNet's elephant-on-their-back was part of the rationale behind the new spam filtering policies.

In my case it was Neil McAllister who penned the writeup for InfoWorld. For Neil's take on the subject, you can read it here.

Never let it be said that providing folks with recent information was ever a strong suit of this site. Unless you're counting the dupes.

The first was a lawsuit over not being able to get your money back when you don't agree with the EULA. That's not about EULAs being legally binding at all. And that case is over with the result that the companies settled and made the EULAs readable online.

As for the EFF article, you missed some crucial sentences:

Although there has been some controversy over whether these agreements are enforceable, several courts have upheld their legitimacy.

That means that at least some EULAs are legally binding. Match that with quotes like:

They [consumers] also click away their right to customize or even repair their devices

That goes along with the claim that some terms of some EULAs (at least) are binding. One of the few bits that match your interpretation is:

There are countless terms written into EULAs that could potentially harm consumers, or that may be downright unlawful.

That doesn't mean EULAs are not legally enforceable, it means some parts of some EULAs may be unenforcable. That's true of any legally binding contract. Let's end with this quote:

Many people treat EULAs with the same reverence they do the tags on mattresses that say, "Do not remove this tag under penalty of law." They scoff at the idea that anyone could enforce such a bizarre rule. Increasingly, however, we are seeing consumers and software developers threatened with lawsuits for engaging in the digital equivalent of ripping tags off a mattress.

This product of Sun's is definitely an enterprise-level competitor (and really hits the sweet spot when used with their thin-client products).

Yes, this story was never accepted by the editors and it appears in my journal. Sue me.

As of last week: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/03/23/76503_13 TCmessage_1.html

Good comparison between the two leading options. We're thinking about this ourselves for our small business.

is at this story, so you can see it's not just the EWeek posting.

Which means it's not a dupe, it's a second bug.

No, according to InfoWorld, there are two bugs, so it's not a dupe, it's a second bug.

But, good catch!

A few years ago Turbo Tax came out with a version of their software with some nasty DRM/activation scheme, and was 'usable' on one machine only (you couldn't file or print out your taxes from both your desktop and laptop), and had a few other major gotcha's. I boycotted Turbo Tax after that and started using Tax Cut instead.

The thing is the iMac, with monitor, only consumes about 95 watts at peak. It's hard to get close to that when as you note your LCD alone consumes 60 (though the one in the article was 30) - it's hardly reasonable to expect most other systems to consume only 20-60 watts, even if you build it very carefully.

An ebook reader should have:

• internal storage capacity to hold ebooks
• an expansion slot (like the GameBoy) to upload new ebooks and play otherwise interactive (inter-ractive? ;)) media
• A screen optimized for reading (flickerfree, highcontrast)
• Long battery time
• Reasonably cheap
• Light in weight
• Wireless (802.11 and/or GPRM) connection
• Reconfigurable software
• No DRM

The device is far from perfect -- I've criticized it a lot elsewhere. But for reading e-books I've had no complaints with it. The one strike against it, based on your list, is the battery life -- which sucks. They don't seem to have gotten the low-power mode right, and if you don't make a habit of regularly charging it (like a cell phone) you're liable to lift it off the nightstand one morning and find that the battery has suddenly gone completely dead. But at least the battery is replaceable and is a standard Nokia part.

As the AC said, back a little while ago, when IBM was last making noises about dumping Windows, they either created or had created for them, a customized version of RHEL. I believe it was called the "IBM Linux Client for e-business" or something like that.

Here's an old article that references it (this is from when they called off their previous internal 'switch' campaign):
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/25/HNibmsil ent_1.html

So it sounds like they're dragging this out of the closet and are thinking of actually going ahead with the existing plan, at least in Germany.

I wonder if this means that they're actually going to port Lotus Notes to Linux, or if they're just going to have everybody run it under WINE.

Could you provide a reference to the particular law and section? It is my understanding that reverse engineering is not only legal in most cases, it is even protected. It's only a few rare exceptions that are illegal such as (potentially) EULA restrictions and creating software that bypasses copyrightprotections, thanks to the DMCA.

Unless this guys is violating his EULA, I'm not sure where the violation is. Still, it is good to check with a lawyer.

Perhaps you can't truly "buy" the code to the project itself (although, in some cases it would be possible to buy the original copyright). However, if the community ends up forking the (commercialized) code, they lose the brand name of the original project and (most likely) the original developers of the project. Forking code is (relatively) easy. So is rewriting an entire project from scratch. What's really tough is maintaining the energy and enthusiasm to to ensure the new project succeeds in the long term. That's not going to be easy if you have high developer turnover.

I think a lot of people underestimate the value of a project's core developers. If you lose them, the dynamics of the project can change dramatically.

Dave Rosenberg wrote up a response the the BW article yesterday. I responded with some comments and he posted them at the URL below. If you're interested in my take on things as the lead developer of Nagios, check it out:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/ 2006/03/ethan_galstad_o.html

-- Ethan Galstad, Nagios Developer

There has been many articles and studies lately for/against having cell phones on planes. The real drawback I can see is that they require special phones to be able to do this, and how is a flight attendant going to be able to tell if you have the proper phone/service or not?

... is the cost of Windows so much that it trumps the pains of introducing a student population of 25,000 or so to a completely foreign computer system?

Hate to break it to you but the kids will be mastering in matter of hours whatever you put on the machines be it KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox, OS X or whatever. It makes no difference to them, so why not use something that's less expensive to acquire, support, install and operate?

KDE, Gnome or what ever windowing manager the kids will be interacting with are so easy now that to them it's just a computer. Ask a kid using a 'linux' computer and he/she won't know what you are talking about. To them it's a computer. It's got icons and you click on the icons and the programs run. If they notice any difference it'll usually be that they'll point away from the legacy machines running XP towards the Linux boxes and say, "those over there are faster, we're waiting for them to finish."

Even for users already familiar with one of the MS-Windows variants, KDE is as easy to use as MS Windows XP. Or hard, if you want to look at it that way instead.

The "piracy" bit is a red herring anyway.

Given the bizarre license tracking requirements and very unusual methods of providing proof of valid licenses, it is darn near impossible to be in full compliance. How about at your site, assuming you still have a few legacy systems with MS? Where are all the hologrammed license certificates? Did they get filed in the fire safe with the receipts or did they fade away into the 'IT' deptartment, never to be seen again, because the bean counters figure a CD jacket is a CD jacket. In short, if you're running MS, you're running the risk of a BSA / FAST raid.

Save your money and get a few more years out of the old hardware at the same time by running LTSP or one of the Linux or BSD distros.

Not to defend the submitter and his Mickey Mouse operation, but Fortify's pricing isn't really too much of a secret.

Oracle is trying to kill MySQL because SAP wanted to use MySQL as an option for their systems to prevent customers from buying an Oracle database.

• Oracle can't "kill" MySQL so long as it's open source.
• It would be a waste of time, money, and energy to kill MySQL when PostgreSQL, Ingres, and Firebird all still exist.
• There will always be customers who want to use open source because it costs nothing and it's pointless for a company that wants people to pay for software to pursue those customers.

Besides, why would Oracle want to kill MySQL so it can be the de facto back end for SAP? Not only would it not work (as mentioned above) but Oracle isn't really interested in being the back end for SAP. In the long run, Oracle wants to be SAP.

Read my other comments on this topic here and here.

Oracle is trying to kill MySQL because SAP wanted to use MySQL as an option for their systems to prevent customers from buying an Oracle database.

• Oracle can't "kill" MySQL so long as it's open source.
• It would be a waste of time, money, and energy to kill MySQL when PostgreSQL, Ingres, and Firebird all still exist.
• There will always be customers who want to use open source because it costs nothing and it's pointless for a company that wants people to pay for software to pursue those customers.

Besides, why would Oracle want to kill MySQL so it can be the de facto back end for SAP? Not only would it not work (as mentioned above) but Oracle isn't really interested in being the back end for SAP. In the long run, Oracle wants to be SAP.

Read my other comments on this topic here and here.

Koders does that for some times now.

InfoWorld had coverage of this a few days ago. The company and product were unveiled at the recent DEMO conference, which is a show where start-ups get to pitch their idea in front of a bunch of investors and venture capitalists. They envision two potential models: using advertising to sponsor the site, and also potentially selling their software to companies that do a lot of in-house development for use behind their own firewalls.

I say that because this is the first incident ever being reported where an SSL cert was obtained illegitimately.

Um, no.

There are plenty of other more-neutral studies that say basically the same thing.

Late in 2004 some studies were done that were pretty thorough. I know it's kind of old now but I can't imagine things have gotten any better.

A study was done by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance. Some of their findings:

6% of users thought they had a virus currently on their computer. A scan revealed that actually 19% of all the users had viruses.

71% of those with antivirus software thought that it updated weekly or daily. However, a scan revealed that only 33% of all the users had actually updated their antivirus within the last week.

53% thought they had spyware on their computer. A scan revealed that in truth, 80% of all the users had spyware.

References:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/10/25/HNaolsur vey_1.html
http://www.staysafeonline.info/pdf/NCSA-AOLIn-Home StudyRelease.pdf
http://www.staysafeonline.info/pdf/safety_study_v0 4.pdf

Another study by Dell estimated that nearly 90% of all desktop computers are infected somehow, with 1 out of 5 calls to Dell tech-support being virus/spyware related. Most people aren't even aware that their computers have been compromised:

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php? content_id=71662
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-4 5-20041015DellsSpywareSurvey.html

Hey, I've heard of that before...isn't it called AOL?

I love google though. The average googler is smarter .

-TLAY

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/13/73792_03 OPcringley_1.html
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel .3.299903.10

Personally, I wouldn't.

I'm sorry you took my comment so close to heart, but--- if your going to post something inflammatory, expect to be flamed.

The EU can't find it in their hearts to switch to Linux, but feel that OSS is the right way to go. The solution, force MS to publish their source.

What a victory for... capitalism? No, if they were letting capitalism work, they'd switch products. Open Source? The FSF must be thrilled that they can now license to peek at MS source... not so much. Ahh, Linux... no, the EU hates Linux so much, that they can't bear the thought of departing from Windows.

Whoever you are, whatever you've accomplished, uhmm, congratulations or... something.

Perhaps the EU would like to switch to Linux, but interoperability with Windows systems is a requirement. Perhaps the EU would like to switch portions of their infrastructure to alternative systems, but these alternative suppliers have not been able to develop comprehensive interoperable protocols, because extensive reverse engineering is expensive.

Both EU and U.S. courts have found Microsoft to be a monopoly. As a monopoly, Microsoft represents a market failure. I'd argue that in many ways Microsoft got into its position via illegal acts. Microsoft has been known to play dirty for a long, long time. Look what they did to Stacker, OS/2, and a wide variety of companies that tried to work with them.

Look at the bullshit they pulled in their antitrust trial. Look at the video they doctored for the trial.

What about Microsoft's funding of the SCO madness, to the tune of nearly $65 million?

Pardon my french, pardon my bad attitude about the matter, but these fuckers play ugly. Really ugly. As someone who's business was once badly damaged in a Microsoft play, without the cash to pursue it legally (like Stacker, who was shut down by Microsoft, and eventually forced Microsoft to settle with them, once their business (stackers) was already beyond repair), I take the notion of "illegitimate barriers to market entry" more seriously than most.

Capitalism only works when people play by the rules. Once you switch to clearly illegal acts, once you start breaking agreements with your supposed allies, and start stabbing them in the back; once you start destroying competitors not throught competition, but through fraud--- you're a monopoly, and an evil one at that.

Capitalism doesn't work when someone doesn't play nice; that's why we have government, to make sure people play nice. I'm a libertarian, but even objectivists will recognize that the government has some role in protecting against fraud.

You come off as downright derogative towards the EU, yet have absolutely no grasp of the issues at hand. You're right; I overreacted in my response. However, lines like "Whoever you are, whatever you've accomplished, uhmm, congratulations or... something." come off very, very badly to me. I've personal experience the wrong end of the Microsoft stick (in a small way). People have been fighting the fradulent activities of this company for _decades_. This company has literally held the entire computing sector in an iron grip for over a decade.

The EU attempts to force MS to produce documentation, to facilitate interoperability, in an attempt to directly address the most obvious form of market barrier that Microsoft has established. This isn't a huge fine; this isn't breaking the company. I cannot, in fact, think of a better, more capitalist, more lenient solution.

Capitalism doesn't mean that the government never intervenes. Even Objectivists view Fraud as a violation of their Non-Aggression principle, permitting government intervention.

I shouldn't have been as hot headed as I was, but don't attempt to make a glibe insult in a discussion about which you are not fully aware of the major facts.

MS has a longterm history of misleading "s

Jon Udell's recent article, Stanford, meet the lightnet. Apple, get a clue agrees that this is interesting, but too constrained by iTunes. They really need to open things up before this will be a killer app.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/01/15.html# a1371

The G5 was a decent chip, IBM just didn't have a mobile chip to sell Apple and was too distracted by Xbox 2 and PS3 to care.

For Yonah, it's 25 to 49 watts (maximum usage).

So, there's definitely the difference between typical for the G5 and maximum for Yonah. I do not know what the relation between the two is (i.e., whether it's possible to guestimate one based on the other). Then, there's possibly also the issues of support chipset.

But all in all, at first sight it does not seem to me that there's that big a power consumption gap between Yonah and the dual core G5.

Also, the dual-core Yonah uses something like 1/4 to 1/2 the power of the single-core G5. Pretty nice!

A dual core G5 at 1.6GHz consumes 16 watts (typical usage). Given that power consumption goes up quadratically in relation to the frequency, this comes to about 23 watts for 2.0 GHz (typically, max consumption can be (much) higher). It seems to me rather that the G5 consumes 1/2 to 1/4 of Yonah, instead of the other way round.

Don't ask me why Steve kept saying the G5 requires so much power, I don't know... Maybe it's one of the G5's chipsets that requires so much power (I do notice that the U3 chipset gets a lot hotter than either of my first generation 18 GHz G5's -- but afaik that's an Apple and not an IBM design).

No, at best that demonstrated that each Yonah core is speed-competitive with the G5. Since the G5 has one core, and Yonah has two, that makes Yonah...twice as "fast". (Really only twice as fast on perfectly parallel code, but hey...)

I'm looking forward to getting a Macbook Pro as soon as possible.

I agree, it seems like it would be logical for a company with a vested interest in Linux on the desktop to either start manufacturing/rubberstamping hardware under a brand name ... and the fact that we don't see that I think is indicative of the fact that there really isn't any company with a big interest in seeing Linux on the desktop. At least not that has the resources to do something like that. (Except perhaps Novell/SuSE, but they're pretty occupied with their merger right now.)

You're right, the US based companies won't touch Linux except as an afterthought for fear of provoking Microsoft and effectively being driven out of business if they had their discounts terminated. Plus, I'm not sure there's really demand in the States for Linux desktops yet; it's probably ready as an OS for corporate-desktop use (limited number of applications, tech people on call) but companies are afraid of being un-interoperable, and it's perceived as being too complicated and "different" by most home users.

I think the biggest possibility is Lenovo -- they have strong ties to IBM, a big Linux proponent (I recall IBM at one point was going to dump Windows for Linux, but then backed away from it) and are Chinese, where they could potentially get a lot of government support for a solution that doesn't pay a tithe to Redmond. If some Chinese corporation came to them and said it wanted to equip itself with new Lenovo laptops running RedHat, it would be pretty easy for them to put it together -- since a RedHat based IBM Linux distro already exists for ThinkPads. (I don't know what its Chinese language support is like, but I'd bet it's probably pretty good.) From there, they could put together a whole line of Linux-compatible hardware and accessories to support their customers with. It just depends on whether there's any demand/interest in a non-Windows corporate/governmental solution for the desktop.

It always has disappointed me that IBM didn't carry through on their threat (or proposal, whatever you want to call it) to dump Windows as their desktop client and switch to RedHat. They came really close, as close as any large US organization has come (that I've seen), but they stepped back. If they had, it would have been huge -- 300,000+ employees, many client-facing, each running "IBM Desktop Linux" (or whatever it was called)? The increased demand for Linux-supported hardware alone would have been huge, not to mention the exposure to a lot of powerful people.

According to this inforworld article http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives /2006/01/the_mac_perform.html Apple chose to use benchmarks optimized for dual core CPUs and then compared the new Mac's results against single core G5 Macs... seems kind a fishy to me.

If Apple was smart, they would license Dell as their sole and only re-distributor, or heck, license the Mac OS to Dell. Dell has mass production, customer service and tech support **down** and is years ahead of apple in these catregories. Dell says, "Sure I'd sell Mac OS X on a Dell", Apple says, "No friggin way": http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/16/HNmacdel l_1.html

Hotmail can no longer be used with Outlook because Microsoft admits it's easier to block everyone and charge for access rather than cancel the accounts of spammers.

This will soon make cell phones obsolete. Serves the greedy marketing-driven cell companies right. If only the Netgear-Skype wifi phone would play mp3's too. No greedy cell phone companies to stop them from adding that feature... http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/05/73605_HN netgearskypephone_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www .infoworld.com/article/06/01/05/73605_HNnetgearsky pephone_1.html

Here's another thing, too. Nokia has gone out of its way to explain to everybody that this is a brand-new product category. But it isn't really. We've seen plenty of products like this one before. We call them PDAs. Nokia trounced every PDA to date by including a noticeably far superior screen, but it left out the PDA software. With that big omission, we're all left wondering what exactly we're supposed to use it for.

Me personally, I can't find much use for it so far other than some light Web browsing (because "serious" Web browsing will crash it) and FBReader, the open source ebook software that was ported to it by a third party. The included e-mail program is awful. The PDF reader is totally unusable unless you turn off images. The RSS reader is interesting, but not really my cup of tea. The Opera browser mostly works, but is crippled by lack of memory and lack of ad-blocking features.

After all that, I'm still fascinated by the device. It's just too bad that this first generation is still more concept than reality.

IBM is getting into the whole software as a service thing http://news.com.com/IBM+doubles+down+on+software+s ervices/2100-1014_3-5553386.html or http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/26/HNibmsof twareasservice_1.html which walks on Microsofts turf. IBM isnt all about open source and big mainframes anymore ... stuff like this squares them off as a direct competitor to where Microsoft wants to be in the near future.

This article http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/09/26/ibm-so ftware-investments-cz_qh_0926ibm.html states "In effect, giant IBM hopes this loosely allied swarm will overwhelm application offerings from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. "This is about building out an ecosystem of partners to compete" ... IBM also figures watching the little guys is a good way to spot future trends early, he said..."

-everphilski-

in this column:

"I predict the Internet, which only just recently got this section here in InfoWorld, will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."

"Without efficient micropayments, there will be little Internet commerce, except, maybe, but probably not, some advertising."

"Even if, as Nielsen just reported, 37 million North Americans tried the Internet in the last three months, we'll discover in 1996 that the vast majority surfed for several hours and then went back to watching TV."

"[T]he Internet's naive flat-rate business model is incapable of financing the new capacity it would need to serve continued growth, if there were any, but there won't be, so no problem."

"So, in 1996, CD-ROMs through Federal Express will emerge as the information superhighway. Instead of an Internet brimming with Web pages under construction, too few of us will haunt ghost pages."

this would be the creator of Ethernet, for those who didn't know who Bob Metcalfe is

This would also be one of the people childish enough to popularise the term Open Sores Software. Sure, he developed Ethernet, but what has he done in the last thirty years, except devolve into a troll?

That is ridiculous, and does not follow.
Actually it is pretty simple.

As far as most of us know, cracking RSA (and DES, and all the 'good' encryption) can be done, but it can only be done via brute force (ie, trying different keys until one is found that works.) There is a little more to it than that, but lets just say it is incredibly time and processor intensive. Just like SETI.

One of three things has happened at the NSA, you can pretty well bet :
1. Every year computers get twice as fast, for free.
2. The can add more machines without removing the old ones, (thing Beowulf.)
3. They came up with an algorythm that is faster than brute force, but haven't let on.

That third one is the most scary - it is like when the Enigma was cracked. No longer did it take brute force ... they just applied their 'crack' and cranked out the answers. Even if it hasn't happened, the combination of 1 and 2 mean that anything that takes brute force doesn't necessarily take a lot of time. Heck, my home Beowulf can outrun the $5.5M Cray mainframe AND the $150,000 IBM cluster that matched it back in 1999, on the same benchmark (skyvase.pov)

RSA / DES keeps the honest people honest, and it keeps the first level bad people honest - but the days of keeping the hardcore bad guys honest are pretty much over.

And yes, I mean the gvmt.

Okay, maybe the customer didn't see the indication, but it doesn't seem like TigerDirect was purposelly trying to hide it in order to make him think he had to give the information. Or maybe the customer tried to send the form without filling those fields and got an error (I've had similar problems), but in this case this would be a very different issue and should have been mentioned in his story.

I understand the point the Infoworld writer is trying to make: I frequently feel that I'm being asked too many questions when filling forms (both on- and offline). But this was not an appropriate example.

Joe Dogooder is not a criminal, in fact Joe is your average, well do-gooder. Pays his taxes, supports his family, visits his community church, where mind you, he's visited since his days as an altar boy. Normally Joe wakes up around 5:00am in hopes of making some decaffeinated coffee, followed by a quick glimpse at the New York Times Online, while his television is tuned to the news. Today however, Joe woke up at 5:30am - and although he won't be late, he decided not to watch television. Instead he is going to work early in order to catch up with some work.

After his shower, getting dressed, kissing his family goodbye he grabs his trusted cellphone, and heads for his car. "Welcome to OnStar" flares for a quick second before he turns the service off. He'd know his way to work driving blindfolded, he's been there plenty of times. After stopping for some coffee and paying with his credit card at the local 7Eleven at 6:15am, he makes a right on Main Street leading to the turnpike. Joe always has money on his EZ-Pass, and although it has been hacked in the past, his information is now safe. He continues to work and breezes right through the toll-booths it is now 6:21am and he's right on time.

Getting off at the Broadway exit, Joe is running pretty early, 6:41am. Pulling into the Shell gas station at 6:45am, he fills up his car and swipes his credit card again through the machine so he doesn't have to walk an extra 20 feet to pay the cashier. Stops at the local Megasupershopper store and buys some chewing gum, a soda, and some shaving cream. Back in his car, he finally pulls into the corporate garage at 7:00am, swipes his identification card, and continues on his way. This is pretty much a daily routine for Joe, and millions like him.

So who is this average Joe and why should you care? Joe is noone really important, what's important is that you understand how Joe's movements were tracked and how dangerous can be at some point. TiVo recently shoved their foot in their mouths when they announced that Janet Jackson's breast of mass destruction was the most rewound video capture. Meaning? Watch a TiVo, they'll know it, what time, what it was, and who did it - you do after all have your information attached to it.

Joe also decided to check the news via the New York Times, and he had to sign into his account in order to do so, meaning his information was gathered there too. What time he logged in, and from where. Sure he could have registered with false information, after all it's free, but unless he decided to manually change his IP address somehow - whether via proxy or other means - the New York Times has his information. This is not to say in any way the New York Times is selling your information or using it against you, I don't know their policies, I'm simply trying to make you aware of the signs of the 'Times'

We can also average out a time where Joe starts his car every single day for as long as we'd like using his OnStar information, we can determine a definitive pattern of his daily life with ease. What about the chewing gum?, simple, RFID tags gave us that info. Now this may not be a big deal considering Joe Dogooder is an upstanding citizen so he would have nothing to hide. John Cheatman is an altogether different story.

John has been having an affair on his wife of 30 years, and he happens to be a millionaire. Wonder what he'd do if someone threw together a video portrait of his weekly (T

You know, the ones Joe saw in his hotel room one morning?

http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?9 90111.eifirmage.htm

Harvesting the innovation of others via open source is hardly beneficial innovative. This does not distinguish a company from anyone else. By the very definition of open source, everyone gets to benefit from this sort of "innovation", including my competitors. Where is the value added?

Bruce Perens, are you reading this topic? Help me out here.