Slashdot Mirror

...probably the one targeting the most knowledgable audience of system administrators and 'IT professionals.'

I guess the person who submitted this has never seen a copy of SysAdmin magazine.

Seriously, from everything I've always heard about this magazine, I was expecting something more along the lines of SysAdmin... it turns out a better comparison would be InfoWorld, a wonderful magazine, but a considerably different market.

SysAmin is targeted at the hardcore system administrator and system architects, where InforWorld (and possibly iX) appear to be more suited for IT managers _as_well_as_ system administrators and system architects.

Either way you look at it, I applaud their willingness to finally produce an english language version... I'm sure it will be very popular!
I, for one, will be reading it.

because (unfortunately for the consumer) it works!

Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.

In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.

Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering

U.S. voters calling in to a toll-free number had reported more than 1,100 separate incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other voting technologies by late Tuesday during the nationwide election.

[. . .] In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate

---Full Story here

-FL

Probably old news by now, but what the hell, editors can dupe stuff, why shouldn't i?!
(found on dailyrotten.com)

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/ 10083861.htm
http://www.wnct.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WNC T/MGArticle/NCT_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=10317 78939157&path=
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/02/HNevoteg litch_1.html
http://www.nbc4i.com/politics/3894867/detail.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epa per/2004/11/05/a29a_BROWVOTE_1105.html

The deeper you dig the more dirt piles up.

Mandate
this
lying
cheating
sinners.

No they didn't see that one coming did they?

Don't read what Ballmer wrote since (IMHO) the focus is NOT on lower TCO...instead read in to what Ballmer meant. This is a public salvo thrown out that clearly signals their intention: they're coming after Linux and open source hard.

Read in to what Ballmer meant when he said, "Given the growing concern among customers about intellectual property indemnification, what's the best way to minimize risk?" Read this and then think about it.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/05/ 020905hnmssecure.html

and here it is, in all it's wonderful glory

Big of him to keep it up there. He has a couple of good points I think, but was basically just voicing what most old journos thought about the net when it came along: "What will become of us when anyone can publish an article and anyone can read it?" There was an amazing amount of bile thrown at the Internet by people like him at the time as I recall.

More articles, for the more article inclined.

About noon EDT, InfoWorld got report via Secunia, of a MSWord vulnerability that can crash a MSIE browser or any Office app that tries to load a properly poisoned word doc file . It is categorized as a potential DOS attack though it seems more a nuisance than a nightmare. My employer, a large and very security conscious federally funded laboratory used to discourage the use of MSIE and promote Mozilla. Today I find they have completely disabled all older or unpatched MSIE versons for browsing outside the lab firewalls.

...like I'm going to listen to eWeek.

I've got "MyYahoo" set as my homepage and their tech news stories are particularly disgusting. There was an exploit tool that was to be released under the GPL so the headline was " Open-Source Exploit Tool: 'Point, Click, Root' ". Mind you the tool attacks Windows and OSX machines, not Linux. But since it was released under the GPL, Open Source==Bad!

FUD! Just like when IDG reported the "double-free" CVS flaw in a story titled: "Search finds new holes in open source tool" (Notice, they reported this in July of 2004). After a little looking around I noticed that CERT released an advisory Feb. 2003!

didn't they just come out with the 4th gen ipod, oh, 3 or 4 months ago?

By Laura Berrill, Techworld.com October 07, 2004

A highly critical and unpatched security hole in Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) Corp.'s ubiquitous Word software could be used to launch a denial of service attack and give system access.

Discovered by HexView, the hole affects Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Word 2000 and Microsoft Word 2002. It was discovered Thursday and is currently unpatched. [snip]

I must admit I have never heard of simple, but a quick search (terms: Jabber SIMPLE) reveals that there is a gateway in development: see article.

No more PA-Risc.
No more Alpha.
No more Itanium Workstations
No more open source (except for lip service)
No more Bluestone software (based on open source.
No more HPUX.
No altavista when they bought CPQ.
No more Vision
No more Hewlett Packard name
No more Walter Hewlett or Packard involved.

Seems to me that last one triggered when it all started falling apart.

Hewlett and Packard built one of the greatest companies in the history of Silicon Valley; and Carly managed to tank the thing in a couple years trying to pretend she can be a Michael Dell commodity-vendor.

I wish they'd just change the name to Carly&Co to stop trashing the inintials of two of the greatest heros of silicon valley.

If you want to save the thing, people should really bring back Walter Hewlett to the board and make him Chairman. At least he understood what his father's company stood for.

why on earth should anyone care that there's something that's almost Java, only without anywhere near as much industry support, and many years less maturity?

C# is better than Java in almost every way:

• C# has function pointers (delegates) and closures (this is the biggest draw for me).
• The CLR's generics implementation is more efficient. Java's ArrayList<Integer> is painfully inefficient.
• The CLR's generics implementation is more complete because it retains runtime information about type parameters. Java's generics has some limitations ons what a type parameter can be.
• C# has better virtual method annotation syntax; non-virtual by default, explicit override, explicit shadowing.
• C# has a simple way of making sure you dispose resources.
• "unsafe" mode. Now you can stay in C# for many tasks that you used to have to write C code for. Unsafe code is platform independent.
• This is more of a CLR thing but Java really needs an AppDomain-like isolation facility. They're working on it, but it's a little late now.

You may hear about these "features" from pro-CLR people:

• Value types. These are bad. They just fragment the type system. A good compiler can figure out how to speed things up requiring that you mess up the type system.
• Language agnostic. This is not true. How are you going to call overloaded functions from C? What about dynamic dispatch on parameters? The API is very C++/Java-centric and will have to stay that way. The CLR does have slightly better interoperability, though.

The only advantages the Java language has (that I can think of) are:

• Flexible variant typing.
• More powerful enums.

It's true that C# is mostly copied from Java. They didn't add any novel ideas. They just improved it incrementally (and screwed up a little too). But after everything is accounted for, it's clearly a better language. You can talk about "maturity" and "industry support" all you want, but some people are just happy to be using a superior language.

BTW, both "maturity" and "industry support" wont be problems for C#. It's not hard to design a mature language and set of class libraries when you have a working example to learn from. Also, Microsoft has mature designers working on the CLR and that counts for something too. As for "industry support", you have got to be joking. When they make the CLR come pre-installed on Longhorn, it will instantly become an industry standard. Even now it's available directly through Windows Update. The whole XAML/Avalon thing is not even ready yet but Amazon.com has already used it to build a prototype. It's depresing, but true: anything that comes out of Microsoft will have a completely unfair advantage over any competing products. Macromedia is next.

man those screenshots are HOT. Hello 1994.

Of course, anyone who questions the quality of an OSS project must be "making it up", as we all know OSS projects are above reproach!

Well how 'bout http://archive.infoworld.com/article/03/11/14/45FE spam_1.html?s=feature for instance? Apparently they require reg now, anonymous/anonymous seems to work. I've seen similar reviews in other (printed) IT pubs, but I haven't been able to find any of them on-line yet.

The latest info I can find dates from around May, but Infineon is one of the DRAM makers facing a patent-infringement lawsuit from Rambus, and if that doesn't go well for them (Rambus had an initial setback but has been getting favourable rulings since; anyone who wants to cry "submarine patent!" better read up on the history, it's nowhere near that cut-and-dry) they could very well go under. I think they will lose it, and get hit with willful infringment for triple damages, which will easily run the damages into the billions. I doubt Infineon could absorb that.

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago.

Oh, thats right. They never posted it. Nice astroturfing! See this article from just 4 days ago.

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago.

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago...

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago.

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago.

Before you get too high and mighty, check this article from just 4 days ago.

We're falling behind - how many of you work with teachers wannabe highly paid IT people! There's something fundamentally wrong with our industry and these articles should be a wake up call. Where do I get these research jobs - where are the Microsoft institutes for research in the US?

(hint: they're actually innovating)

Man, that is sad. I feel better about running Linux every day... This stuff never happens to Open-Source software. Thanks Bill!

A new critical flaw found in Windows allows hacker to root your system if you simply *VIEW* a corrupted image in the browser. Man, that is sad. I feel better about running Linux every day... This stuff never happens to Open-Source software. Thanks Bill!

Okay, now what were you saying again?

A new critical flaw found in Windows allows hacker to root your system if you simply *VIEW* a corrupted image in the browser. Man, that is sad. I feel better about running Linux every day... This stuff never happens to Open-Source software. Thanks Bill!

Wow, check this out guys... new critical security flaw found in Windows allows hacker to root you if you *VIEW A CORRUPT IMAGE* in the browser!! Man, that is sad!! Windows is SO f'ing lame. Wow, Bill Gates is the devil!! This is so funnyy... EVERYBODY is gonna switch to Linux now. Man, Windows sucks so bad. NO way this could happen in Open-Source software!! Score one for the good guys! YAY!!

These people have The Will To Stupid, and cannot be stopped!

Funny, considering most spam comes from the US.

InfoWorld says the chassis and management module aren't open. So people can buy cheap blades... and still have to buy from IBM the box where to plug them.

My bet, Sun's strategy is that with their SCO license, they're the only legal unixlikeos vendor; and with their MSFT partnership they're the only legal linux that can interoperate with MSFT APIs (networking, and office formats).

My reading of their X86 strategy was that they gave up trying to be a computer hardware company and are focused on software IP.

Putting two Opterons next to each other with their hypertransports talking to each other is so easy that I suspect AMD's first silicon worked.

Note that Intel has shown a wafer of dual-core Itanics but has not yet shown a working one. Surely they would rather have shown a working one if they could.

In only a couple of months' time, you'll be able to put 8 Opteron cores (4 dual core CPUs) in a desktop-size case - and this is a rather reliable information. It is also very likely that similarly sized boxes with 8 CPU sockets (and thus possibly 16 cores) will appear next year: infoworld.com article.

But Opteron doesn't really compete with Itanium on the high end.

The server can be equipped with up to 64GB of DDR (Double Data Rate) memory, two CD-ROM drives and eight Serial ATA hard-disk drives, according to Iwill.

"This is a very cost-effective way of building a high-performance server," Lin said, adding that Iwill expects to see the eight-way Opteron server be competitive against more expensive servers based on Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium 2 processor.

Potential customers can obtain samples of the eight-way server now, and the server will be in volume production at the end of the year, Lin said.

go read this Infoworld review. They don't list any real figures that I could track -- do other reviews replicate their results?

Though Xeon-Nocona has been available for more than a month it seems there there are no substantial reports on 64-bit performance of Nocona. Is there anyone here who can report anything about the 64-bit performance of Nocona?

InfoWorld is running a special report on desktop Linux this week. The gist of the author's opinion is that Linux is ready for the desktop -- for a limited set of applications. What makes it less attractive to companies is the lack of good centralized managament tools and the perennial question: Yeah, but why would you switch?

I see a few people here already using Mozilla as an example of why Linux is superior to Windows, but I can install Mozilla on my existing Windows desktops way more easily than I can wipe them and install Linux. Ditto OpenOffice. We all know that the vast majority of PC hardware shipped to enterprises came with Windows pre-installed. Companies are going to need a really compelling reason to replace that with Linux, and "I can run Mozilla" isn't it.

That InfoWorld special report also includes a review of four desktop Linux distros, BTW. Red Hat scores favorably, but Sun Java Desktop comes in second.

No... it's what you get if someone indemnifies you. You can license software to people with a license that indemnifies your customers against copyright or patent risks. Or (like most vendors, I believe) you can license your software without such clauses. The Timeline/Cognos/Microsoft case mentioned earlier is a good example where Microsoft didn't even have the right to offer Timeline's patented technology to Cognos; despite Cognos paying for it.

Conversely, you can get such indemnification for Open-Source software through groups like HP, or Open Source Risk Mangaement or other open source insurancne vendors.

People are getting more voracious for news these days. To satisfy the online news appetitie there are several sites scuh as Google News, Yahoo News, Newstrove, Moreover News Services , Topix.net and now MSN with their News Bot. Microsoft has just launched the beta test of Newsbot, a customized search-driven news . MSN News Bot offers personalization by searching on topics, and the service suggests stories based on what visitors have previously read.

But I find Google News more usefriendly and systematic, why doesn't Microsoft employ some good usability expert who can enlighten them on inetrface designing.

I compared MSN and Google News by searching for India on both MSN Newsbot & Google News and found that on Newsbot results obtained were containing mostly yesterdays Criket Match headlines, whereas the google had identified them to be same and related, And arranged the other related news links below the the first result itself instead of showing different criket headlines.

Right now I cannot see the advantage of a search history on MSN but I do see the advantage of finding the related stories covered by different news sources. Is history really so useful ? , 'cos mostly people will be using one or two words to make the searches and not some complex string and may be they would be using the same search words daily. But on the other side the collections of history links would be a sure advantage for some people who might be drilling for something more specfic or 'hard to find info / not so populated topic' and trying different combinations.

The the advantage of MSN Newsbot over Google News is that Newsbot has more sections and topics in the navigation and makes use of Java Scripts so that you can navigate the respective sections > subsections > and related headlines just over the roll of your mouse.

One thing leaves me confusing , what does Microsoft wants to become, it is confused about its own identity or doing some sourch searching.
- Is there a need for Microsoft to become the next google ?
- Is Microsoft really seeing a great opportunity in News and Search Engines market ?
- Or simply it doesn't have anything else to do ? Microsoft has started a online mag slate and is now thinking of wiping it off. Why it doesn't concentrate on Browser Wars and try to give some peace to the exisitng users of Internet Explorer who are under constant threat. Microsoft seems to be concentrating on Mass or larger share of consumer market, even its patents are also very pathetic. With the kind of cash it has, it should now support real technological inventions or innovations.

And last but not the least I hate both of them for not providing the syndication feature through RSS.

Also posted on my blog http://sanspeak.blogspot.com/2004/07/msn-news-bot- google-news-comparison.html

Actually it is all static XML that we generate and server up with Apache. We just have tons of RSS subscribers, and most RSS clients do their checks at xx:00 instead of spreading the checks out. All it would take is for it to do a full refresh on startup, and then once an hour (or whatever your preference is) after that.

I fixed two of minor issues today... I removed .xml from bring processed for ServerSideIncludes which allowed Apache to send ETags again, and I also added Expires info as well. Those will help with caching and some of the RSS aggregators, but won't fix the dumb client designs. =)

As Chad explained in his column and again in his blog, this is not a bandwidth problem. mod_gzip won't make a difference.

http://kevin.railsback.com/blog

Apple (and MS) are both being sued over 6 patents held by BTG, which their pnline updating systems allegedly violate.

Link here.

Looks like fun and games ahead for Apples lawyers.

According to InfoWorld in Jul 2003, Longhorn was to be released in 2005. Sometime after that, I think in the 4th Quarter of 2003, they stated Longhorn would release in the first half of 2006, and I believe the latest date is second half of 2006. There's also widely publicized data on feature reductions in Longhorn, to enable them to maybe make the 2006 date. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the 2006 date may be a bit too agressive (or maybe it does). I personally wouldn't be surprised to see Longhorn ship in 2Q or 3Q of 2007, if not later. Security is, after all, job 1 at MS now, and they have such a stellar record with it... take, for example. XP SP2, delayed yet again.... Yep, MS will surely ship Longhorn in 2006. They said so in early 2004!

There's also the issue of MS release schedules. MS does not do a release more often than every 2 years. Since I believe they're still planning on the "new" XP release, that implies that Longhorn would be no earlier than the end of 2006. Granted, this is conjecture, but has held true so far.

What you're talking about...the absurd specs of 4 GHz, terabyte of hard drive, etc

That was a dual-core 4Ghz CPU btw, and probably necessary to be able to do anything with the original WinFS busily collating and searching all that data. Hardware requirements will be directly affected by the reduced feature set that will actually ship with Longhorn, and I don't wonder that some of the feature clipping will be purely to reduce hardware requirements.

Take WinFS with network share information, somehow that just screams large amounts of RAM and disk space to me. Remove it, and that requirement is seriously reduced, as likely happened within MS once they realized what that actually meant. I'm not surprised that was moved to the vapor BlackComb, which is actually the new, true Longhorn, while Longhorn becomes more like XP. The further this progresses, the more I'm reminded of the never achieved Cairo....

Anymore FUD you wish to discuss/disprove?