Slashdot Mirror

Comments are owned by the poster, so the posters then collectively share responsibility, through answers and moderation, for making sure that meaningful viewpoints are aired and responded to. This works exceedingly well at Slashdot, not so well in other online forums.

It was Dr. Edward Felten who demonstrated for the courts that IE could in fact be removed from Windows 98, and that clear benefits to the consumer resulted from doing so. It was his evidence that Microsoft attempted to discredit with a video that later turned out to be faked.

See http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/microsoft/t rial/breaking/docs/mstrial121198.htm , http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2196 350,00.html.

The stupid Slashdot line breaking algorithm means that you may have to deal with spaces it introduces. Since it seems you can hide spaces in tags, it should be fairly straightforward for trolls to introduce overlong lines this way - I hope Taco fixes it...
--

At least the digitaldiva! story. Here is another case just like etoy vs. etoys, where two parties are doing an entirely different thing, and one of them can't stand it and sues over trademark.

Of course it was an evil frivolous lawsuit back when a "performance art" group was being threatened but if it's someone in the employ of the evil empire I guess it's a different story, regardless of how usefulupset that Stacy doesn't present herself as a know-it all and that's what this really is all about.


Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

I agree with a lot of your points but would quibble on one point... I think the mouse may have been conceived and (later) invented by Doug Englebart in '68... or thereabouts.

There is an interesting article about him [1] and also a slashdot discussion[2] on this that I dug up while verifying my info. Just wanted to say that the mouse (and especially the keyboard) have been with us for a long time. I don't expect we'll see joystick-controlled cars anytime soon, nor will these input devices we use
be going anywhere fast...

1. http://www.mer curycenter.com/svtech/news/special/engelbart/part1 .htm
   
   
2. http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /02/23/1110257.shtml
   

U.S. scientists have collaborated to describe why it is that the net is resilient to random failures but highly vulnerable to deliberate attacks. As the net has sprawled in many directions, its growth path has not led to a random or exponential network. Rather, the pattern that has taken shape resembles the ordered hierarchy of a tree whereby a few nodes are highly connected and lead to scores of less connected nodes. While this design allows the net to chug its way through random hiccups, it makes an attack on one of the key nodes particularly damaging.

The link to the news article about the missle shield program didn't work. Here it is.
missle shield

Of course, people actually downloading the whole human genome probable wouldn't worry about this, but couldn't they use a better compression format than .zip? I bet using bzip2 or rar would shave a couple of hundred MBs off of that 753MB file. Also, the differences in compression techniques would be interesting to see on a large group of files mainly consisting of G, A, C, and T. -- demiurge You find a file that appears important and obliterate it from memory!!! Score one for the downtrodden hacker!

• G -- 00
• A -- 01
• T -- 10
• C -- 11

This would only work for the .fa files, but .fa files can contain "N"s also. If you just want to browse the Genome, look through the pieces directory. .

I've got one of those Intellimouse Explorers (the huge silver ones with the superfluous tail light and like three extra buttons; well, what the hell, here's a http://www.microsoft.com/Mouse/explorer.htm link) and sites that won't let you back out are an incredible annoyance. See, two of the buttons on there serve as Forward/Back (respectively) while browsing the web, and after about 20 minutes of using them, I was hooked. You wouldn't believe how simple (and remarkably intuitive) to navigate with your thumb. Now if I could just find a good use for those buttons in Half-Life... I mean, sure, it's easy enough to hold down the back button and select the page before the offending site, but that would require moving my cursor over six or so linear inches of desktop space. Isn't that just a little bit unreasonable? No? Ah well.

>One thing I can honestly say is - why the fuck would we want to put Genesis on this thing, in 300 languages???

Although the article mentions 1,000 languages, I agree with your sentiment entirely.

Few documents in the history of mankind are as overvalued and under-read as that collection of myth and history we call the "Bible." What an embarrassing legacy to leave to our descendants. I imagine they will say: "How quaint. We'd nearly forgotten that our ancestors had their beginnings in such superstition and silliness."

Dan Gillmor has been addressing the question of trust in his weblog over the past couple of days. Of what I have read there, one thing in particular seems to ring true. When information is disseminated by or on behalf of a corporation, it seems to go through a corporate amorality filter. After it has been through this process, it will only contain that aspect of the overall picture which the corporation wishes to present. In the case of this particular complaint, the filter may have judged, "this kind of thing is not newsworthy in its own right, and it does not promote our own ends: therefore it is rejected." Is it too cynical to suppose that self-interest plays a part in the filtering process of an amoral corporation?

In many cases, the truthfulness of the filtered information is not a big issue. Indeed, the corporate amorality filter does not really have a clear concept of true and false, but of spin. Everything is phrased so that it has the right spin. Certainly the filter shies clear of stuff that might get them embroiled in litigation for slander, libel, or defamation (etc), but the simplistic concepts of true and false don't really factor into the equation. When Microsoft claims that its innovation is good for the industry and consumers, there's nothing in that statement which they can get into legal trouble over, and hence no reason not to make the statement, given that it is the view they wish to present. Whether or not it is true by any measure is not the issue: the point is that it's a legally allowable statement that they wish to be perceived as true.

So what do you do? You get cynical, but not too cynical. You have to assume that all the information you get has gone through some kind of filter. Even when Slashdot wasn't a corporate entity, all the information still went through the Taco Filter. You have to make allowances for where the information is coming from. In a very few cases, you will find people that have a dedication to frank and open honesty -- people who do have a notion of true and false instead of just spin, and these are valuable. You still have to take the filter into account, but to a substantially smaller degree.

So where can the Linux community get its news from? The simple answer is that we always need more than one source, simply so we can average out the effect of the various filters. Slashdot, for example, gives me a fairly rich range of stories to pick from, but I know for sure (based on the submissions that I've had rejected) that its filter is not ideal to my needs. And Slashdot does seem to have the advantage of an open comment system that, although noisy, doesn't seem to have been abused by thems that could do so if they wanted to.

Short version: the price of reliable news is eternal vigilance.

Company like Akami does contents caching business where contents provider provides heavy bandwidth multimedia contents through distributed servers where servers are selected by the proximation to the client's IP address.

It is strategically sound business to place those cache servers closer to large number of high bandwidth customer == cable modem/DSL providers.

It is just placement of caching servers and nothing to do with routing, so I find the /. translation of title sensationalistic.

Also, comment by chrisd saying The article in essence says that excite expects to make a lot of money from content providers for giving them "special" access to their networks is misrepresenting the article. Excite is making deal with those caching company != contents provider.

I know this is borderline OT, but here's something nifty I just came across:

This looks like an interesting way to test Napster's convictions. The Offspring - supporters of Napster/MP3 in principle, are looking at making a profit off of Napster by selling Napster merchandise on their own site. Now we'll see if it (Napster) is about the customers or about the profits - won't we?

Taken from Good Morning Silicon Valley

You said Napster. Heh, heh-heh.. SoCal punk outfit The Offspring (http://www.offspring.com/) have begun selling unauthorized Napster merchandise on the band's Web site, for which they will keep 100 percent of the profits. Napster does not produce or market merchandise of its own. A source close to the band explained the maneuver, saying "It isn't about making money. In typical Offspring fashion, they think it's funny to f--- with people. They think Napster's cool and want to see how cool they [really] are."

Aparently, they aren't interested. This Reute rs story quotes MS spokesman Jim Cullinan as saying:

'There is no truth to the reports of any intent to move the company,'

Why not? Because, he says:

'Microsoft believes we will win this (antitrust) case in the court of appeals and we are very happy here in Seattle. We believe we're going to win this case here in the U.S. court system.'

I think the real reason is that Bill only just completed building his multimillion dollar estate, and it would be a real pain to have to helicopter back and forth to Vancouver every day.

They're reviving their AT&T PocketNet plan, only this time it looks more like the Sprint offering. It has WAP-only options, or you can go full-bore for $15/month to access any web site.

They have a $100 Ericsson and $200 Mitsubishi phone (the Mits is pretty nice, with the bigger display), but you do have to sign up for AT&T wireless voice service.

See AT&T's Web site on the topic. There's also a story over at the SJ Mercury.

Newsmaker: Thomas Penfield Jackson
http://w ww.internetworld.com/print/1998/10/12/news/1998101 2-newsmaker.html

Jurist in Microsoft case opinionated, tardy in decisions
http://www.mercurycent er.com/business/microsoft/trial/judge/

The second article has more about Judge Jackson's life before becoming a judge.

-- Chris Goldman

The last time I wrote a cross-platform Java applet, fully 20% of the code was conditional on platform, browser, VM version, etc. It isn't write once run anywhere.

You indicated that your product will run on Windows. You'll already have enough headaches making it run on Windows NT 4.0, NT 2000, 95 (and 95 OSR2) and the two releases of Win98! Don't add Java into the mix and double or triple the number of possible combinations.

Use Microsoft tools. However, if you're careful to separate your code from the Microsoft application classes, you may be able to develop the core functionality on Linux, and then integrate these classes into a Windows application.

--- Speaking only for myself,

Furthermore, the implications are incredible! What would happen to national security? People would be able to carry every secret of an entire country in something smaller than a wallet! I'd like to see the ECHELON monitor that! This stuff is way more serious than mp3s and huge programs... it would revolutionize the computer age! Fiber optics would only be good for real time data. Anyone who *really* wanted to transfer a lot of data would send a square inch hard drive by snail mail for 33 cents! This is way cool stuff!

Iridium is/was developed about 50 feet from me at work. There is no savior. Motorola/Iridium held out hope that the Pentagon would buy it, but they refused. The last day anyone could purchase it was Wednesday. It's too late.

No one is developing for it anymore; and the general sentiment among the engineers is "it's about time".

I suggest this story instead.

The thing about the Iridium is that it was such a huge and obvious mistake. They wanted to allow international buisness travelers to have a phone that they could take with them around the world. Instead of just making dualband and triband phones, they spent 7 billion dollars to launch satelites and to market $5000 phones, $3000 pagers, and phone calls at the low-low price of $40/minute. PLEASE!

And once it became obvious that it was crashing hardcore, Motorola (the largest investor in Iridium LLC) kept throwing money at it.

Now here's the best part. Motorola wasn't the only one to throw billions at a DOA idea. There were no less than 4 other direct competitors to Iridium. All of which have either already met, or are currently meeting, a bitter end.

On the upside, I should be able to get one of those phones for ultra-cheap!

--
Anonymous for Obvious Reasons

Enough already.

• PC Flowers & Gifts (Oct. 1994)
  
• AutoWeb (1995)
  
• "A good number of programs--including CDNow..." (pre June 1997)
• EdSoft and more (1995)

(The first three came from Daniel Gray, who looks like an expert on affiliate programs. The last came from Cuesta Technologies, which has been building affiliate programs for their clients since 1995. The letters are on Feb 28 and Feb 26 of the ejournal.)

link

I interpret this as: we will license the technology to other companies so other companies can develop or enhance this tecnhology but our patent will hopefully prevent ethical arguments from blowing out of proportion.

Dan Gillmor has a pretty good piece on the merger today. One of the best point he makes is that AOL is even less enthusiastic about supporting open protocols, file formats, etc. than Microsoft. Remember the Instant Messenger nightmare of last year? Also, I think AOL has created their own wierd proprietary format (.ART) for web graphics.

Anyone care to take a pool on how many dozens of jokes are going to be made about communist Linux

Is it really a joke? Like Windows NT? Not There? Not Tested? Not Today? Never Trusted? Nice Try?

Bring on the jokes. Let's see if you can make some funny ones. Unlike the joke NT is, Linux does not need weekly reboots. Make fun of a weakness in Linux, its likely to pump gcc on some big iron and become stronger. Go ahead, kick the sand. It builds character.

Kick it in Gates' face and he's likely to cut off your air supply.

There's a followup article on MercuryCenter describing the mayhem at the Best Buy in Milpitas, and reaffirming Microsoft's position.

The Mercury News did an excellent series on how Silicon Valley farms out assembly work to Asian immigrants and their families.

Please read the the original linked article. It says that the Compuserve deal was not structured as a loan, so the OR/CA exception for bundling loans with purchases doesn't apply.

Funny in a way as MS is finally taking a financial hit because they are not allowed to bundle their Internet service with new PCs.

Check out http://www.mer curycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/best010500 .htm for more info about this.

"We are just using an entirely new way to represent the date that isn't more human readable, or more machine friendly, that just happens to look exactly like the standard 2 digit year format until the year 2000 occurs, at which point it still works exactly as planned."

It's clearly documented. Always has been. You were just guessing how localtime(3) behaved instead of looking it up and reading the precise behaviour. A library API is a contract. If you sign up to using that library without reading the fine print, then you cannot complain when that fine print bites you in the ass. Stop guessing, and read!

You are incorrect in your assumption that this is somehow peculiar to Perl. Whether it's peculiar in general is another question entirely. :-) I wrote about this in a letter to Dan Gillmor. Essentially, you need to understand a struct tm. Apparently the situation is even worse in Java Script, where it appears that different implementations behave differently.

If you're on the cutting edge of Perl technology, please pay special attention to the new -DPERL_Y2KWARN configuration option. It produces an effect like this:

% perl -we 'printf "Year is 19%d\n", (localtime)[5]'
Possible Y2K bug: %d format string following '19' at -e line 1.
Year is 19100

The following information about Perl and the year 2000 is a modified version of the information that can be found in the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) documents.

Does Perl have a year 2000 problem? Is Perl Y2K compliant?

Short answer: No, Perl does not have a year 2000 problem. Yes, Perl is Y2K compliant (whatever that means). The programmers you've hired to use it, however, probably are not. If you want perl to complain when your programmers create programs with certain types of possible year 2000 problems, a build option allows you to turn on warnings.

Long answer: The question belies a true understanding of the issue. Perl is just as Y2K compliant as your pencil --no more, and no less. Can you use your pencil to write a non-Y2K-compliant memo? Of course you can. Is that the pencil's fault? Of course it isn't.

The date and time functions supplied with perl (gmtime and localtime) supply adequate information to determine the year well beyond 2000 (2038 is when trouble strikes for 32-bit machines). The year returned by these functions when used in an array context is the year minus 1900. For years between 1910 and 1999 this happens to be a 2-digit decimal number. To avoid the year 2000 problem simply do not treat the year as a 2-digit number. It isn't. When gmtime() and localtime() are used in scalar context they return a timestamp string that contains a fully- expanded year. For example, $timestamp = gmtime(1005613200) sets $timestamp to "Tue Nov 13 01:00:00 2001". There's no year 2000 problem here.

That doesn't mean that Perl can't be used to create non- Y2K compliant programs. It can. But so can your pencil. It's the fault of the user, not the language. At the risk of inflaming the NRA: ``Perl doesn't break Y2K, people do.'' See http://language.perl.com/news/y2k.html for a longer exposition.

If you want perl to warn you when it sees a program which catenates a number with the string "19" -- a common indication of a year 2000 problem -- build perl using the Configure option "-Accflags=-DPERL_Y2KWARN". (See the file INSTALL for more information about building perl.)

"Betting $5 on a 100-to-1 underdog can be fun. Betting $50,000 would be foolish. Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars."

Exactly _how many_ Jesse Bersts are out there?

here's the link...

San Jose Mercury News article

I used to think the SJMerc was rabidly anti-MS, then I started reading Slashdot...

"I've always been at the
intersection of computers and
whatever they can revolutionize."
(Business Week)

"Our job is to make sure our
service, in every dimension, is better
than everybody else's."
(Nation's Business)

"Brand names are more important
online than they are in the physical
world."
(Inc.)

"We aren't interested in anyone's
trade secrets. But we are very
interested in hiring talented people."
(The San Francisco Chronicle)

(Editors note: this last one is laughable, considering the 'one click' pattent fiasco)

"Work hard, have fun, make
history."
(USA Today)

_____________________________________

"I've always been at the
intersection of computers and
whatever they can revolutionize."
(Business Week)

"Our job is to make sure our
service, in every dimension, is better
than everybody else's."
(Nation's Business)

"Brand names are more important
online than they are in the physical
world."
(Inc.)

"We aren't interested in anyone's
trade secrets. But we are very
interested in hiring talented people."
(The San Francisco Chronicle)

(Editors note: this last one is laughable, considering the 'one click' pattent fiasco)

"Work hard, have fun, make
history."
(USA Today)

_____________________________________

The president, Jamie Rosen, said he was quite surprised with all the fuss since no user information was solicited.

In the beginning, there was Douglas Engelbart, and from him came the mouse, the windowed graphic user interface, hyperlinks, email, and videoconferencing -- in the 1950s and '60s, years before the Apple Lisa, Sun workstations, and other projects incited by visits to XEROX PARC in the 1970s. What most people don't know is that much considered to have happened at PARC was actually brought there by researchers from Engelbart's labs at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Diehards can repeat Engelbart's opening line from memory:

"If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive, how much value could you derive from that?"

Then, on a gigantic movie screen, he brought this new world alive. TV cameras switched from shots of Engelbart's hands working new contraptions called a mouse and a chord keyset, in conjunction with a standard keyboard, to shots of the computer screen where Engelbart was effortlessly adding, deleting and reorganizing a grocery shopping list. Like magic, the cursor moved words and thoughts.

The world premiere of video conferencing was a show-stopper: Talking into a director's-style headset, Engelbart punched up his colleague at SRI, 30 miles away. "Hi, Bill," said Engelbart as Bill's head filled the left corner of the screen, surrounded by text. "Now we're connected . . . let's do some collaborating." The two proceeded to work jointly on a piece of text, passing the cursor and computer controls back and forth. Engelbart and his team had invented what's now called "groupware"; 30 years later it's hard to find software that allows you to do what they did in the demo - share control of a computer screen for sophisticated collaboration.

Read the full article .

According to the Merc article just put up here .

• New this fall is Sun's MAJC
• Patriot shBoom (a 1996 relabelling of Chuck Moore's 32 bit FORTH chip)
• IBM's Java Chip - 1997 - apparently some extra logic hung off a PPC logic set
• Sun Scrapped their initial Java Chip
• UC Berkeley students designed one for a CS course
• Rockwell had one...

None of these have really gone anywhere in terms of influencing Java deployment.

The only way they would have been important is if:

• Network Computers had taken off, but they didn't.
• Java was getting deployed heavily in embedded systems. That factor is not evident.

This is a big case, with at least the potential for some rather interesting techie tectonic shifting :)

Anyway, The San Jose Merc also has a story on this. Interesting take on the gov't interference angle, tho:

"Forcing the breakup of a company is a tactic that has fallen out of favor with the courts in recent years because of a reluctance to disturb free market forces. But the Justice Department is prepared to argue that a structural remedy is actually less intrusive than a conduct remedy, sources say.

The Justice Department wants Jackson to consider alternatives to reconfiguring the market that do not require constant government oversight -- or intrusive interference -- in the free-wheeling high technology sector."

Kind neat pre-emptive strike there re. ms and supporters claming unfair gov't intrusion into a highly volatile market.

Yes, this is old news. The only thing I can find at the moment is on Wired but I remember Judge White saying (on techweb or cnet, probably) he would use it. Read the link: ATT used it, and it would get around those Appeals judges.
I keep hearing everyone say stuff about this case that's just wrong. Another thing is "What's the worst that can happen? Break them up?" NO. Answer: All of the above. Break up the company AND impose behavioral remedies. Joel Klein said "Let me make clear, we are not looking for any financial penalties. We're concerned with competition. This is not a penal action, and we're not going to seek monies.'' So a fine is out of the question. They probably will not send Bill Gates to jail, either. :-( But Microsoft will be subject to lawsuits from other companies, like the one currently filed by Caldera for potenially vast sums of money. And what about the Penal part - you can't let lawbreakers go unpenalized. Maybe another DOJ case?

John

Jackson ruling sends powerful message

• BBC Online
• Press Association
• Wired News
• Silicon Valley News
• Microsoft( hilarious)
• news.com
• ZDNetwork News
• The Industry Standard

  
  --

this link is an article from mercury news about how slashdotted they are.

What it says is very basic. Don't try the usual corporate bullshit with smart people. They won't buy it, thanks to the 80s and their endless downsizings.

Here is another interesting article about "new" trends in human management, published a few days ago in SV.COM (i.e. the San Jose Mercury News).

The resurgance of Apple and the Linux explosion has no bearing on the case whatsoever. These developments are inadmissable as evidence for two reasons. First, the evidentiary period is over. Secondly, the government did not have an opportunity to rebut this statement. However, this hasn't stopped Microsft from trying to do just that, by asking Judge Jackson to take "judicary note" of these recent developments. Frankly I think it's a blatent ploy to cloud the issue that Micorsoft violated the Consent Decree.

As a previous post said, the government could argue that the only reason why linux is starting to get support from OEMs is because Lord Bill has to watch himself right now. As soon as the trial is over, Lord Bill's Army of Darkness will return en masse. But the government doesn't have to, afterall a trial intrinsically deals with the past, not the present.

FYI: The iMac was introduced LONG after the trial started.

I follow the San Jose Mercury News's coverage of the trial. So should each and every one of you!

Yes, there are more gays and lesbians in the Silicon Valley than in other parts of the US, but not nearly as many as in San Francisco where they outnumber the straight. The majority of men in Silicon Valley are straight men.

I think when you live in an environment that's as fast-paced as Silicon Valley, it makes it pretty hard for a straight couple to raise a family. The cost of living is very high and it's not easy for a couple to make it if both are not working. Check this Mercury News report at http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/special/w ealth/ to see how tough it can be . For instance I am the sole breadwinner in my household and my boyfriend is still studying. My pay is enough for a decent house for us, but if we ever wanted to adopt and raise children, it would be a stretch. Straight couples get extra tax breaks that we don't, but even then, they can have a hard time raising a family on single-income. For all we know all those single men probably wouldn't have the time to deal with a family. Unless they left Silicon Valley.

...please. It does mention they were African penguins.

There's a good editorial on the San Jose Mercury News about the hypocrisy of both sides in this situation...you can read it here.

Basically, it points out that AOL is rabidly in favor of "open access" on cable networks, but refuses to allow an open system for others to communicate with AOL members (Prodigy, Yahoo, MS get screwed here, so do consumers). MS, on the other hand, wants standards for instant messaging but not in the areas where it already has a dominant position.

also in the SJ Mercury article is this little gem:

``And it's still not clear that our customers want to have or want others to have the ability to modify our source code,'' he added. ``Our customers value stability.''

...derF\lieN

This is a really good piece from the Merc about the whole thing. It includes some suggestions about what Al should do instead to actually gain support from tech-heads like us, instead of just using buzzwords he clearly knows next to nothing about.
~Luge

This article at the SJ Mecury site gives a little more insight into Microsoft's thinking on the licensing issue, in short, licensing and royalty payments are being considered. Methinks BP and ESR should fire up their text editors and get busy firing off some preemptive letters warning about the use of the term "Open Source."

From the article:
`There would be all kinds of issues that we would need to address first,'' noted David Cole, vice president of Microsoft's Web Client and Consumer Experience Division. ``We would have to find out how willing companies would be to give us the code they developed, how we would incorporate that code into our products, and what the licensing and royalty payments might be.''