Slashdot Mirror

Gates claims today Microsoft's efforts to open its APIs and protocols to developers, so they can develop programs that interoperate with Windows, are enough.

Then the nine states should question Gates over the recently publicized CIFS license incident, asking him why are GPL developers excluded?

Well, I am not sold on 802.11b anyway. There was a recent article in InfoWorld that talked about how polluted the 2.4GHz band is. There are things like fusion lighting (so cool!), microwave ovens, cordless phones, not to mention Bluetooth using the same frequency.

Is increasing the range/bandwidth of 802.11b really a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to develop 802.11a (which uses 5.5GHz)?

Well, I am not sold on 802.11b anyway. There was a recent article in InfoWorld that talked about how polluted the 2.4GHz band is. There are things like fusion lighting (so cool!), microwave ovens, cordless phones, not to mention Bluetooth using the same frequency.

Is increasing the range/bandwidth of 802.11b really a good idea? Wouldn't it be better to develop 802.11a (which uses 5.5GHz)?

Yet another attempt to whitewash online reality by eliminating not only websites but also their very mention (especialloy in search engines). Somewhat reminiscent of Scientology's heavy-handed attempts at search engine censorship employing the DMCA?

From the Infoworld article: "Even if the pages no longer exist on XS4ALL sites, we want the search engines to remove the link because it still advertises a handbook for destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere and we don't want that."

If you do a search for Deutsche Bahn on Google, the first two links are now to this news story. Precisely the opposite effect?

Think about it: just for one example, what if someone sat down one evening and seriously made Outlook Express secure? BILLIONS of dollars in repair costs saved worldwide.

Slashdot:
Eight new security holes in IIS

Any Site with Journalistic integrity:
Microsoft fixes Eight new security holes in IIS

http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2002apr/gee200204110 11151.htm
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/04/10/ 020410hnflaws.xml

Ofcourse it's dead. Microsoft has released DDoS (aka WinXP).

Please note that this Robert X. Cringely is not this Robert X. Cringely.

Linux' so-called freedom

Mandrake Linux came under fire last week for trying to redefine "free," as in free software, by charging corporate users a sizable support fee before permitting them to download its distribution of the open source Linux software. One of my spies gave them a chance nonetheless and ordered the professional edition of Linux, but to little avail. The thing is, Mandrake's system accepted and charged my spy's American Express instantaneously, but never sent the software. What's more, Mandrake's sales and support cannot track the order, leaving my spy without the software and the money.

My mistake. It's Iowa

Many other organization baulk at GPL.
Intel and HP for example had problems with the GPLed Mono project.

Microsoft seems to be OK with the BSD license. The don't seem to be against open source either
considering that the Microsoft Shared source code licence is pretty liberal.

Although, according to an InfoWorld article, Sun's actually considering using some optimizations Apple included in its JVM... "mapping [shared system libraries] into memory at run time" to "boost loading speed and reduce memory consumption."

Actually a Linux only Zseries is now available for under $400,000 and it comes with a 3 year hardware maintanence agreement. See here . Not bad considering it can host a couple hundred virtual machines. And since it is intended for VM use I doubt there is any additional cost associated with the VM liscense.

The nasty details here.

Additionally, if sales are flat, or even declining, it really does not at all mean the PC is dying. I have an Athlon 1333 MHz with 512 MB RAM and a 40 Gig hard drive. I have no reason to buy a new computer for any of the applications I run -- Browser, Email, Quake (125 fps), Counter Strike, ssh, AIM. I doubt sales of refrigerators, for example, have been increasing recently, but that doesn't mean the refrigerator or its market is dying. It is a sign that the PC is at the point where people don't need new ones anymore.

Recent data shows that cell phone handset sales are down significantly. Does this mean that cell phones were just a fad and now they're dying? No: every person I know, except for my mother and grandmother, has a cell phone. I bought mine in 2000 - a Startac. I still have it. Why? Because no other phone has a feature compelling enough to force me to upgrade. If the Handspring Treo had a better price point and worked with Verizon I might actually be persuaded, but that's another story.

Anyhow, using PC sales figures to predict the death of the PC is a stupid move. All such figures prove is that Dell will no longer be a stock market darling as the PC market is pretty well saturated.

I guess this should have been in reply to HanzoSan instead of RN, but oh well.

Sun, AOL Time Warner end iPlanet pact

Other links for further information:

Cnet

SATA and ISCSI

Intel Dev paper

Maxtor Whitepaper

that they should post this infoworld article this morning. and I quote
Just for some balance, Linux also has its problems. If you actually compare them, the amount of vulnerabilities found in Windows and all Linux flavors combined are almost the same on a yearly basis. So just choose the best OS platform for the application and PRACTICE SECURE COMPUTING.

Oh the irony.

Fujitsu's press release just said the chip was "high-performance", and after some digging I turned up this article which tells us that the Intel PXA250 can run at speeds as high as 400MHz. An excerpt:

Designed for advanced PDAs, the PXA250 is available at speeds of 200MHz, 300MHz, and 400MHz. While designed for low power, the PXA250 offers a Turbo Mode for application acceleration and multimedia acceleration with Intel Media Processing technology. USB, 920Kbps Bluetooth wireless, and a 1.84MHz baseband interface are offered as communication interfaces, and an enhanced memory support 2.5 volt or 3.3 volt 16-bit or 32-bit memory.

I feel so Dirty.

Experts are once again issuing a warning the newly released MS SettlemeNT contains a security flaw which could allow malicious coders to take over your Intellectual Property, delete files on your computer and gain control of your finances. MS denies these allegations though insiders say Microsoft is working on a patch. Back to you Neil.

Water cooled laptops are nothing new at all. Check out these water cooling laptop articles, produced from a quick google search:

Toshiba

IBM

I know there are others, but I can't seem to find them at the moment. It's certainly my underestanding that there have been water cooled laptops in production for quite a while.

Anyway, they are using it to try to force Sony to agree to a new licence in which Sony would waive some rights (I don't know exactly which rights) to sue MS over patent infringement. As far as I can tell, besides being generally good for MS (the more people you can get to agree not to sue you, the better), it looks like a scam to try to rip off some PlayStation related IP.

Here's an article which summarizes Sony's complaint.

BTW, why is this offtopic?

The DCMA does not directly prevent criticism, but it makes the shrink-wrapped licenses that gag you enforceable. So it's a difference of no significance.

I got mod points otherwise I wouldnt post Anonymously. But it's the UCITA that gives a shrink wrap license it's teeth. Not the DMCA.

Fatal0E

The DMCA (or "H.R. 2281, WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act" is coming EVERYWHERE(!)

See here.

the DMCA is not the simple invention of plutocratic Americans - it has been snuck into more than 30 countries.

Also see: here

Actually, I don't think the BSA counts hard drives per se, but their method for estimating piracy (as of May 2001) was (essentially) to count the number of PC's shipped, then compare the number of applications they *think* will be installed per PC to the (number shipped pre-installed + number bought in stores). (See especially pages 8-9 in the PDF file.) People have been complaining about this for a while, but it's the BSA's stated position not to back down (since that would lead to lower piracy figures and less public outcry).

The BSA claims to have "softened" since the 1997 article, but I doubt it, considering that a year ago they were still sending out anti-piracy letters threatening clandestine raids, etc. Microsoft was helping them, and people were complaining about it. They basically pick random companies, threaten to sue them out of existence, and simultaneously try to get employees to turn them in. I doubt much has changed since then.

Anyway, I've strayed off topic from your off topic post. :-) Back to the original question, they count PC sales (and probably motherboards, etc. too) so yes all our Linux/FreeBSD/whatever home built computers are counted in the piracy figures. Also, I know MS OEM license agreements won't let companies that sell Windows sell blank computers because "they're sure to pirate Windows." MS has recently started charging for Visual Studio along with MSDN because "everyone who buys MSDN will use Visual Studio, so we might as well charge them for it." Etc.

I'd like to thank my good friend google for helping me along with this post. :-)

http://staging.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/02 /14/020214hnwifispec.xml?Template=/storypages/prin tfriendly.html

you are correct. thanks!

for the record, here is a link.

A Java implementation of the CLR has already been built by Halcyon Software. Check it out here. It not only allows you to run your .NET apps on any machine with a Java VM, it turns your .NET web services into native J2EE objects which can be hosted by BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Sun iPlanet, and Oracle 9i Application Server.

I personally think this implementation is far more interesting, subversive, and controversial than Mono, but it seems that they just haven't been able to make headlines yet. My favorite quote of the Halcyon CEO from this article: "Microsoft has said it wants .Net to work in other operating systems, but I think it's hard for Microsoft to digest the fact that we're using Java to accomplish this."

#9. Slashdot is a plot by Microsoft to destroy the
productivity of Linux users.

I have friends who were once tremendously productive
programmers, until they started reading Slashdot. Then, the
endless stream of links, updated a dozen times a day no less (so
you don't go once a day to get your fix; instead, you keep a
window open and hit reload every twenty minutes or so), steadily
seduced them, until they eventually became babbling idiots,
dribbling saliva from the corners of their mouths, ranting on
the forums about the relative merits of Karma Whores and
Anonymous Cowards. Can there be any doubt that this website is
anything other than a nefarious ploy to destroy Linux by
undermining the productivity of its developers? And is there
any organization that would like to destroy Linux more than
Microsoft? (Well, maybe the Santa
Cruz Operation...) Is it any coincidence that just as the
Feds were working out Microsoft's sentence, Microsoft sued
Slashdot, resulting in a firestorm of geek ire that totally
overshadowed the monopoly ruling?

#8. Screaming 14-year-old boys attempting to prove to
each other that they are more 3133t than j00.

Need I say more?

#7. Technical opinions refereed by popular vote means
lousy technical opinions.

Before the Internet, a certain breed of deconstructionists
had a lot of fun telling everybody that "privileging of dominant
paradigms" was wrecking the world. The Internet has taught us
that privileging certain views is absolutely crucial to avoid
drowning in the ravings of idiots. On Slashdot, many articles
discuss technical issues---but comments are refereed by popular
vote, and even though the populace of Slashdot readers knows
somewhat more than your average set of people off the street,
they still tend to promote (as in "moderate up") a lot of
technical nonsense. Reading Slashdot can therefore often be
worse than useless, especially to young and budding programmers:
it can give you exactly the wrong idea about the
technical issues it raises.

The pre-Internet publishing world had magazines, newspapers, and
journals with editors. Respectable publications hired
qualified editors. Those qualified editors were educated
enough to make intelligent decisions about the quality of
content. The Slashdot model removes the editors and substitutes
popular vote, and the result (unfortunately) is that the quality
level becomes incredibly inconsistent. It was an interesting
experiment; it didn't work, not for Slashdot (though it might
work in some other population of users). Too bad. Now, it's
time to quit.

#6. Community myth that Linux is technically superior to
any other operating system in the known
universe.

People who do operating
systems research, of course, think this is a joke. Dissent
from this view in Slashdot, however, and you'd better be wearing
your asbestos fatigues.

#5. Butt-ugly visual design.

Of course, this one's a matter of taste. However, in my
analysis, the visual elements of the Slashdot site are basically
hopelessly confused and wrong. From the cryptic links in the
left margin, to the drop-shadowed graphics (hello, digital
design cliche circa 1994?), to the offensively lousy color
scheme (let's use circuit board green, because it's "News for
Nerds", right?) I can't find much to like about the design of
Slashdot.

#4. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
any and all articles that vaguely criticize Linux in any
way.

Blowhards (like the flock of irresponsible columnists over
at the Windows-boosterism rag InfoWorld) have had tons of
fun taking advantage of this tendency to drive hits to their
site. On any given day, Slashdot readers are treated to another
link to another column by another self-proclaimed pundit
declaring that Linux is (pick one) unreliable, not scalable, not
user-friendly, doomed, piracy-inducing, foul-smelling, or
un-American. And irony was that the editors of Slashdot are
falling right into the pundits' trap: inciting the Slashdot
community is the one surefire way to drive up your hit count and
hence your revenue from ad banners. Did the Slashdot editors
ever wise up? Not that I ever saw. Given how tiresome the
endless pro-Linux jihad had become by the time I quit, I have
very little desire to go back and find out whether that's
changed.

#3. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
bogus pseudoscience articles by crackpots.

At the time I quit, the editors were posting links to
theories of alternate consciousness, unified theories of the
universe made up by people in their garages, and the like at a
rate of two or three a week. And the number was only
increasing. If I want to read articles that promote totally
bogus pseudoscience, I'll open up the Village
Voice. We don't need another webzine filling that
role.

#2. Editorial/comment system pretends to be democratic
but in reality most content remains firmly in the iron clasp of
the editors.

The above problems with editorial could be solved if stories
could be moderated as well as comments, or if editors paid
attention to negative feedback about the posting of certain
articles. However, the editorial staff, while pretending to be
ideology-free selectors of any "interesting" content, in fact
exert tremendous power over the content of the site, because
they are the only ones who can select top-level links. They
have furthermore demonstrated, for all the reasons above, that
they cannot use this power wisely.

In fact, if you think about it, the links on Slashdot are easily
an order of magnitude less interesting, on average, than those
of Suck, Hotwired, or FEED---all of which are run by
smart editors with good taste (and two of which are dead---thus
proving that only the good die young). If you've read any of
these webzines, you'll probably agree. Rob and Hemos simply
don't compare, as editors, to Stephen Johnson or Joey
Anuff.

So, really, it's time to ask yourself: why should I read
Slashdot? Because it targets my demographic? That's a silly
reason. So why not quit today?

#1. Two words: Jon Katz.

Every community has its resident gasbag. The difference
between Slashdot and other communities is that they have the
means to kick their village idiot off his soapbox, but they lack
the will. If Jon Katz is not the single worst writer for any
webzine, anywhere on the planet, alive today, then I am a
penguin. His writing manages to be endlessly meandering and
verbose, and simultaneously utterly content-free.

Notice, by the way, that I have not said a word about his
technical acumen. It's not necessary to. Katz (who, like all
opportunists, likes to paint himself as an innocent victim
whenever he's criticized) makes a big deal about how there are
"technical snobs" in the Linux user population who blast him for
not being a technical genius. To tell the truth, Katz's
inability to install even recent Linux distributions (which are
arguably as easy to install as MacOS or Windows) on a
run-of-the-mill x86 PC does testify to his general cluelessness.
However, Katz is not a programmer or sysadmin; he's a writer.
He must stand or fall based on the quality of his writing. And
his writing is totally the pits. He would never have gotten
published anywhere but Slashdot; even WIRED, cheerleaders of all
things "digital" and "decentralized", finally got tired of his
babbling and let him go. The cheesiest, most blatantly
pandering "Hookers Who Read Proust" article on Salon.com displays more literary
skill than the finest Katz screed ever to see the light of
day.

To make things worse, Katz is also a shameless opportunist who
regularly uses Slashdot to promote his books. And the Slashdot
admins go right along with it. You can't criticize someone for
their taste in friends, but you can criticize them for
continuing in a relentless and blind nepotism that destroys the
quality of the site.

No single factor wase more pivotal in driving me away from
Slashdot than Jon Katz. Even when I registered for an account
and filtered Katz out, still he made it into news items not
labeled Jon Katz---presumably to promote sales of his book.
What other webzine displays such a blatant disrespect for its
readers?

But then again, Katz's pandering, one-note "Ich bin ein Geek"
spiel may be exactly what the Slashdot audience
deserves.

Simply put, it's time to quit Slashdot, once and for
all.

#9. Slashdot is a plot by Microsoft to destroy the
productivity of Linux users.

I have friends who were once tremendously productive
programmers, until they started reading Slashdot. Then, the
endless stream of links, updated a dozen times a day no less (so
you don't go once a day to get your fix; instead, you keep a
window open and hit reload every twenty minutes or so), steadily
seduced them, until they eventually became babbling idiots,
dribbling saliva from the corners of their mouths, ranting on
the forums about the relative merits of Karma Whores and
Anonymous Cowards. Can there be any doubt that this website is
anything other than a nefarious ploy to destroy Linux by
undermining the productivity of its developers? And is there
any organization that would like to destroy Linux more than
Microsoft? (Well, maybe the Santa
Cruz Operation...) Is it any coincidence that just as the
Feds were working out Microsoft's sentence, Microsoft sued
Slashdot, resulting in a firestorm of geek ire that totally
overshadowed the monopoly ruling?

#8. Screaming 14-year-old boys attempting to prove to
each other that they are more 3133t than j00.

Need I say more?

#7. Technical opinions refereed by popular vote means
lousy technical opinions.

Before the Internet, a certain breed of deconstructionists
had a lot of fun telling everybody that "privileging of dominant
paradigms" was wrecking the world. The Internet has taught us
that privileging certain views is absolutely crucial to avoid
drowning in the ravings of idiots. On Slashdot, many articles
discuss technical issues---but comments are refereed by popular
vote, and even though the populace of Slashdot readers knows
somewhat more than your average set of people off the street,
they still tend to promote (as in "moderate up") a lot of
technical nonsense. Reading Slashdot can therefore often be
worse than useless, especially to young and budding programmers:
it can give you exactly the wrong idea about the
technical issues it raises.

The pre-Internet publishing world had magazines, newspapers, and
journals with editors. Respectable publications hired
qualified editors. Those qualified editors were educated
enough to make intelligent decisions about the quality of
content. The Slashdot model removes the editors and substitutes
popular vote, and the result (unfortunately) is that the quality
level becomes incredibly inconsistent. It was an interesting
experiment; it didn't work, not for Slashdot (though it might
work in some other population of users). Too bad. Now, it's
time to quit.

#6. Community myth that Linux is technically superior to
any other operating system in the known
universe.

People who do operating
systems research, of course, think this is a joke. Dissent
from this view in Slashdot, however, and you'd better be wearing
your asbestos fatigues.

#5. Butt-ugly visual design.

Of course, this one's a matter of taste. However, in my
analysis, the visual elements of the Slashdot site are basically
hopelessly confused and wrong. From the cryptic links in the
left margin, to the drop-shadowed graphics (hello, digital
design cliche circa 1994?), to the offensively lousy color
scheme (let's use circuit board green, because it's "News for
Nerds", right?) I can't find much to like about the design of
Slashdot.

#4. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
any and all articles that vaguely criticize Linux in any
way.

Blowhards (like the flock of irresponsible columnists over
at the Windows-boosterism rag InfoWorld) have had tons of
fun taking advantage of this tendency to drive hits to their
site. On any given day, Slashdot readers are treated to another
link to another column by another self-proclaimed pundit
declaring that Linux is (pick one) unreliable, not scalable, not
user-friendly, doomed, piracy-inducing, foul-smelling, or
un-American. And irony was that the editors of Slashdot are
falling right into the pundits' trap: inciting the Slashdot
community is the one surefire way to drive up your hit count and
hence your revenue from ad banners. Did the Slashdot editors
ever wise up? Not that I ever saw. Given how tiresome the
endless pro-Linux jihad had become by the time I quit, I have
very little desire to go back and find out whether that's
changed.

#3. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
bogus pseudoscience articles by crackpots.

At the time I quit, the editors were posting links to
theories of alternate consciousness, unified theories of the
universe made up by people in their garages, and the like at a
rate of two or three a week. And the number was only
increasing. If I want to read articles that promote totally
bogus pseudoscience, I'll open up the Village
Voice. We don't need another webzine filling that
role.

#2. Editorial/comment system pretends to be democratic
but in reality most content remains firmly in the iron clasp of
the editors.

The above problems with editorial could be solved if stories
could be moderated as well as comments, or if editors paid
attention to negative feedback about the posting of certain
articles. However, the editorial staff, while pretending to be
ideology-free selectors of any "interesting" content, in fact
exert tremendous power over the content of the site, because
they are the only ones who can select top-level links. They
have furthermore demonstrated, for all the reasons above, that
they cannot use this power wisely.

In fact, if you think about it, the links on Slashdot are easily
an order of magnitude less interesting, on average, than those
of Suck, Hotwired, or FEED---all of which are run by
smart editors with good taste (and two of which are dead---thus
proving that only the good die young). If you've read any of
these webzines, you'll probably agree. Rob and Hemos simply
don't compare, as editors, to Stephen Johnson or Joey
Anuff.

So, really, it's time to ask yourself: why should I read
Slashdot? Because it targets my demographic? That's a silly
reason. So why not quit today?

#1. Two words: Jon Katz.

Every community has its resident gasbag. The difference
between Slashdot and other communities is that they have the
means to kick their village idiot off his soapbox, but they lack
the will. If Jon Katz is not the single worst writer for any
webzine, anywhere on the planet, alive today, then I am a
penguin. His writing manages to be endlessly meandering and
verbose, and simultaneously utterly content-free.

Notice, by the way, that I have not said a word about his
technical acumen. It's not necessary to. Katz (who, like all
opportunists, likes to paint himself as an innocent victim
whenever he's criticized) makes a big deal about how there are
"technical snobs" in the Linux user population who blast him for
not being a technical genius. To tell the truth, Katz's
inability to install even recent Linux distributions (which are
arguably as easy to install as MacOS or Windows) on a
run-of-the-mill x86 PC does testify to his general cluelessness.
However, Katz is not a programmer or sysadmin; he's a writer.
He must stand or fall based on the quality of his writing. And
his writing is totally the pits. He would never have gotten
published anywhere but Slashdot; even WIRED, cheerleaders of all
things "digital" and "decentralized", finally got tired of his
babbling and let him go. The cheesiest, most blatantly
pandering "Hookers Who Read Proust" article on Salon.com displays more literary
skill than the finest Katz screed ever to see the light of
day.

To make things worse, Katz is also a shameless opportunist who
regularly uses Slashdot to promote his books. And the Slashdot
admins go right along with it. You can't criticize someone for
their taste in friends, but you can criticize them for
continuing in a relentless and blind nepotism that destroys the
quality of the site.

No single factor wase more pivotal in driving me away from
Slashdot than Jon Katz. Even when I registered for an account
and filtered Katz out, still he made it into news items not
labeled Jon Katz---presumably to promote sales of his book.
What other webzine displays such a blatant disrespect for its
readers?

But then again, Katz's pandering, one-note "Ich bin ein Geek"
spiel may be exactly what the Slashdot audience
deserves.

Simply put, it's time to quit Slashdot, once and for
all.

From the article:

This seal, which will appear in the top corner of the body of the message, will contain an encrypted digital signature along with information on the valid sender and recipient and the date and time. An appliance installed at the commercial emailer's location generates the digital signature. When the consumer clicks on the seal, they are connected to the Trusted Sender computer, which verifies the digital signature.

So it would appear that the desired chain of events circa 2006 goes something like this:

opens inbox
Hmmm...1,422 new messages today...time to get to work on those...

opens message #1
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...
clicks on ePrivacy seal
Wow, that ePrivacy seal links to www.weight-loss-and-hot-teen-sluts.com, I guess it's a fake...
deletes message

opens message #2
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...
clicks on ePrivacy seal
digital signature verified
Hey, this one's real! It's an ad for www.weight-loss-and-hot-teen-sluts.com! That's one to bookmark!

opens message #3
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...

It's called 'bundling'. Here's an article on it at this link

Check these:

Group blasts Internet Explorer 5.5 for lack of Web standards

Review of Netscape6... see paragraph 2 damning IE W3C compliance

IE 5.5 criticized for lack of Web standards

Microsoft claims conformance to CSS level 1 and DOM level 1 in IE6, so maybe they have done an about face on this issue (much like suddenly deciding security is more important than idiot-friendliness). Unfortunately, 95% of the current Windows user base is using IE5 because it comes with the OS (through Win2K at least).

As a developer who has to provide web interfaces from time to time, I can promise you that it is a lot of work to make a site compatible with both IE and Netscape. Each one drops the ball when it comes to W3C conformance. I guess it's encouraging that MS is attempting to implement standards compliance into one of their products.

I agree.

But those stories serve as Marketing campaings. I mean, AFAIK, there's no http://marketing-Linux.sourceforge.net project nor you can go and provide a CD with marketing-Linux-kit-101.tar.gz to magazines, on-line sites and such.

Those news serve the purpose of a "GPL/comunnity-style" advertising.

Some corporations form the Northwest of the USA and other locations spend millions on advertisement and silly desktop backgrouds to appeal CIOs buying agenda.

The Community should appeal to them with "Yet Another Linux is Ready for the Desktop" group of news. This way, it can make its way to zdnet, Infoworld, ComputerWorld, CIO Magazine and the likes.

firstly, i wanna go off on a rant, saying that i hate HATE packet kiddies... it's just sad and pathetic how call yourselves "1337 (anyone who types like that should be shot)".. there's more i'd like to add... but i'll hold off on it :-)

secondly, i came upon an interesting article that talks about a reverse firewall. Though unfortunately, it's not effective as we wish it to be, because it just stops DoS's from the source. And who knows how many sys admins will bother to install a device like this

Ah, but they're not planning to solve this by changing the software. They're planning to solve this by changing the dump trucks. read about it ;-)

InfoWorld

And there is this old item from a security mailing list:

The reason trusted systems are not being used right is because the way they are written they are UNUSABLE. Only someone who is forced to use them would even consider touching them!

(seen at: http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/90/1995/7/0/4 18940/ )

Granted, it is old, but is the point still valid?

Presumably you've read this nice article on car tyres and the DMCA?

Am I the only one to notice that the Infoworld article is dated December 1, 2000 4:24 pm PT?

It appears that the articles have not been read carefully. After comparing the the three, there are two Flash virii being spread around.

Virus 1 (Conrad's submission) - SWF/LFM.926
The virus, dubbed SWF/LFM.926...must be downloaded manually and cannot spread...over e-mail. (Yahoo)
...and after being run, infects other Flash movies while displaying the message "Loading Flash-Movie...". The virus exploits the scriptability of Macromedia Flash to generate a file V.COM, which gets executed afterwards without confirmation. (German trans. - thanks entrox!!)

Virus 2 (bdavenport's infoworld submission) - Creative.exe
The virus...arrives in an e-mail bearing the subject line, "A great shockwave flash movie."
The worm, which first appeared Thursday, is delivered to users in the form of an e-mail attachment that appears to be a Shockwave Media Player. When a user tries to view the movie attachment, the worm sends a copy of itself to all people in the address book of the user's Microsoft Outlook e-mail program, potentially clogging e-mail networks.
One reason the Creative.exe virus may be spreading so quickly is that it uses the Shockwave Flash movie icon. (Infoworld)
...but if you check the date of the Infoworld article, it's December 1, 2000.

From Symantec:
Discovered on: November 30, 2000
Due to a recent decrease in world-wide infections of this worm, SARC has decreased the threat level of this worm to 3 and removed it from the Top Threats list.

W32.Prolin.Worm uses Microsoft Outlook to email a copy of itself to everyone in the Outlook address book. The worm moves all .mp3, .jpg, and .zip files to the root folder. It renames each of these files and appends the following text to the extension of each file:

change atleast now to LINUX

Also Known As: TROJ_SHOCKWAVE.A, CREATIVE, TROJ_PROLIN.A

So...Creative.exe is NOT a flash virus, and is old news, unrelated to SWF/LFM-926.

You're in luck -- soon you'll be able to get a wireless monitor.

(1) http://www.infoworld.com By Jessica Hall

IBM Research has some more info about this direction in pervasive devices. The article above links to the WatchPad, aka Linux on a watch. There's also some info on the IBM Almaden Research Center's CS homepage and a link to an Infoworld article about IBM's Digital Jewelry.

Personally, i wonder if those Disk-on-Key(chain) devices count as jewelry... Either way i'm more than happy to see computing power leave the desktop/laptop-bag and migrate into more people-compatible interfaces.

In both cases, permission to use either information-collecting method has to be authorized first by a court-order.

True, in a better world than this. But...

"The FBI in congressional testimony last year stressed that it intercepts communications traveling over the Internet only when it has court orders permitting it to do so. FBI representatives added that there are rare 'emergency' cases where the system was used without such orders."

- from an InfoWorld article (emphasis added)

This is news because the patent was granted.

The patent should not stand, though, since we already have prior art from the NSA. The Microsoft patent seems to be a subset of the development work done by the NSA. It focuses mainly on digital rights management whereas the NSA secure OS project would apply to all applications and data types, not just DRM.

BBC latest news on technology issue? Come on Michael....

Slashdotors want technical details!

iBot

And for the cautious ones:

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/99/11/22/ 991122opmetcalfe.xml

Sorry the page is in xml format, not sure if your browser will do it, worked fine in the evil IE6. It describes what I said in my first post about the medicine ball and such. Sorry no video link as far as I know =(.

Zeno

Oh, you mean like here and here and here and here and here and here and ...

Now I can fire up FrontPage and make sport of Microsoft! Ha! Ants do have rights!