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Before Google was started it was assumed that internet search was either "a solved problem or not very interesting". Google proved them wrong; why is it inconceivable that another company could beat out Google now?

You don't need a bubble to keep you afloat if you've got a useful product and a good business plan. The fact that the .com bubble has burst doesn't mean that everyone should stop exploring viable online business opportunities.

-j

Great to hear this! So this means that this photo is still unencumbered by patents?

What people don't seem to notice, Saudi Arabia sponsors attacks against the U.S. Doesn't it bother anyone that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis? Wouldn't it be logical to attack Saudi Arabia then?

Gee, why do you think he has so many recruits... you don't think American foreign policy would have anything to do with it, do you?

If you're worried about OBL and his "army" of terrorists, you might want to check out the US Government's School of the Americas.

We practically made him the horror that he is now, anyway.

A third party processor could be, for example, Authorize.net, Verisign, Card Service Intl, or any of the other Payment Gateways, I believe.

I know it sucks that we can't find out which third party processor it is, so we can all stop using them, but I'll take the unpopular position that it's a good idea to not have that information disclosed to the public.

The bad publicity from a mess like this could put a struggling company out of business when everyone stops using them. Do they deserve to go out of business? Sure, but that's not the point.

If a company discovers someone has hacked into one of their servers with access to a database full of credit card numbers, and they know that notifying Visa, MasterCard, and the FBI is going to put them out of business with bad publicity, how many companies are going to report it?

They could rationalize that while there is evidence the server was cracked, there is no proof that someone actually downloaded credit card numbers from the server. Maybe it was a worm that just infected the server and tried to find more vulnerable servers, and did nothing more. Or maybe they were just setting up an ftp server for their mp3 collection.

Is it worth publicly releasing this information that right now only 3 people in the company know about, and all but guarantee they will go out of business? Or should they just rebuild the server, fix the problem, and hope that no credit card numbers were stolen, and if they were, that they don't get traced back to you if they are used fraudulently?

Personally, I was in that situation two years ago, and we opted to just rebuild the server and hope that the 10,000 credit card numbers sitting on the cracked server were never found. Was it the right thing to do? No. Was it illegal? Hard to say. But the negative impact to the company could have been devastating, so we decided to report nothing. We never heard about any of the credit cards being used fraudulently, which wasn't surprising, and we went out of business a year later anyway, which also wasn't surprising.

So my point is, if companies that get cracked can report it without having to go public, Visa and MasterCard would probably be able to stop a lot more fraud before it happens. I would guess the vast majority of known server compromises go unreported now because companies are afraid to come forward and tarnish their name.

What is this ?

Run by North Koreans. (note: not a Troll! It is well known that most Pachinko parlors in Japan are run by North Korean families (think: mafia), for the purpose of exporting cash to North Korea.

That sounds like an urban legend intended to get Japanese to stop playing Pachinko.

Whatever, try doing some research before next post, ok?

I have a question about some conflicting results with the search engine google. I did a search for "pictures of mountains" and got exactly 1 million results.

Steven? Is that you? Dude - you're smoking too much pot!

Anger over broadband limits

Why's my cell phone melting?

NCTA Weighs In on IP Telephony

FBI Seeks Hacker of eBay Users' Info

Labels battle to hold onto DMCA win

Western Digital to Launch 10,000rpm Desktop HDD 11th Feb

On the trail of a stolen Tablet PC

Game on for cable

Mail-order drug suppliers under gun

Two panels to monitor Pentagon's spy project

In Europe, Microsoft faces tough sell

Intel to discuss Manitoba and GPS efforts at IDF

More unrest seen among tech workers

IRAQ supports terrorists and is trying to build nukes

Hmm, well, here's a defector who worked on the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission for 30 years, and says that the nuclear program is ancient history.

I might add that if Donald Rumsfeld didn't like the gassing of the Kurds and the other atrocities, maybe he should have raised the issue after he shook hands with Saddam Hussein during a 1983 meeting, instead of inviting the Butcher of Baghdad to expand his military and business ties with the United States.

Give me one example of a time when Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction without the support of Ronald Reagan (esp. note 33), and I'll reconsider the idea that Iraq is an imminent threat to America.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A213 40-2003Feb3.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A167 19-2003Feb2.html
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/oped/Rebuild ing_the_dream_of_space_exploration+.shtml
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/17 63385
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68231. htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-564534 ,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/opinion/03ALDR.h tml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867640.asp?0cv=KB10
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sctone. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A134 74-2003Feb2.html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 5086944.htm
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/bev02 022003.htm

Yes, I realize that my numbers on XBoxes losses are somewhat fuzzy, but it still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is losing a lot more per XBox than their competitors. Even worse this is likely to remain the case for the life of the XBox. For more details read this article from MSNBC.

Here's the critical paragraph:

One problem for Microsoft is that it projects that its costs for the Xbox will decline slowly. The cost of the box may come down over five years from $325 to $225, according to the source. By contrast, Sony and Nintendo are expected to bring their costs down more steeply over time, largely because their machines don't have an expensive hard drive.

That's the real crux of Microsoft's problem. While Sony and Nintendo are hard at work integrating the chips they use and cutting the price that it costs to manufacture their consoles, Microsoft is stuck with a pile of commodity parts that can't be integrated (try getting NVidia and their competitors at Intel to work together :). Microsoft's parts were already very near their rock bottom price when Microsoft picked them. So yes, my example doesn't take into account medium or long term average pricing, but I think it is quite likely that Sony and Nintendo will keep the heat on Microsoft price-wise until they come out with new consoles in 2005.

So far they have lost nearly a billion dollars on the XBox, their losses are accelerating, and they have only sold 8 million XBoxes! I have yet to see a single scenario that doesn't include significant losses well into 2004, and in 2005 the game is over for the current generation of the XBox. When Sony and Nintendo come out with their new consoles Microsoft is going to have no choice but to go back into the hardware business. By 2005 the vaunted XBox hardware is going to look ridiculous when compared with anything (including sub $200 PCs).

Realistically speaking when is Microsoft going to start turning a profit?

The reality is that the "smart folks" at Microsoft aren't concerned about turning a profit on the XBox. They can lose billions on the XBox and hardly notice. They know that their price/earnings ratio is still ridiculously high, and that if they don't at least pretend that the XBox is poised to make billions that the folks on Wall Street will start wondering how Microsoft is going to come up with the growth that would justify their high stock price. Continuing with the XBox simply loses Microsoft money (and it has a pile). Giving up on the XBox hurts Microsoft's stock price, and the folks working on the XBox have piles of stock options. They don't care if the XBox is a good business. As long as the XBox appears to be a good business then they can get rid of their options while they are still worth something.

After we grieve, we have to search for answers. One of the things that I saw, going over the crew bios, was that this wasn't one of the more experienced crews. This was the pilot's first flight. It was only the mission commander's second flight.

I absolutely am not putting this at their feet. However, it obviously will be one of the questions raised during the search for answers.

MSNBC has the crew profiles embedded in their story.

http://www.space.com/shuttlemissions/
http://www.msnbc.com/news/857733.asp?0cv=CA00

And apple has already changed their homepage.. How long till our President blames this on a certian Middle Eastern country? My thoughts go to NASA and the families of the crew.

The U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia, flying STS 107 apparently dissentegrated over north Texas during re-entry according to CNN, CBS, and NBC TV reports. Columbia launched on January 16 for that orbiter's 28th journey. Communication was lost at 8:00 Central Time (14:00 GMT), 16 minutes prior to the scheduled landing, at an altitude of 200,000 feet (61km) and velocity of 12,000 miles per hour (19,000 km/h). NASA advises people to report and avoid debris in the area because it may inlude toxic propellants.

If my local 911 was drastically slowed down like this, and a family member died because info didn't get to the right people fast enough, i'd be pretty ticked. Especially if it was because of yet another bug in a supposedly "commercial grade" database.

Specifically, the patent claims as Ameritech's original idea the concept of having elements on a web page that don't change, yet apply directly to other parts of the page that do change.

Yeah, Individualism and free markets win because "incentives matter!" (I repeat that phrase in my head all the time). There's not much incentive to be productive for no reward, just as there's not much of a disincentive for everyone not to shit in the river.

However, individual greed can get excessive, to the overall detriment of everyone, and the gap between the haves and have-nots widens... no thanks to a government like the U.S. which is tilting its wealth redistribution (tax) in favor of the rich with obscene corporate welfare and by eliminating fair progressive taxes like the estate tax (not a "death tax"), dividend tax, etc.

Greed is good, but socially responsible greed is better. So yeah, I'm one of those whackos who thinks that maybe billions of dollars in concentrated personal wealth is just a *tad* much, and that to redistribute the extra gravy at high rates isn't much of a disinsentive at all. "Oh no, I can't make 2 billion as fast as 1 billion. Guess I'll go eat some worms instead."

Not that any of this will matter as much in a few more decades when the means of production (and destruction) is democratized with molecular nanotechnology, just as digital production was democratized. The poorest of the poor will have the cheap and easy means to live like the old robber barrons without any of the robbing, not to mention the means to "print opensource food" from freely available component molecules and sunlight.

And what's the incentive to produce in a world of material abundance? Social brownie points I'd guess... tradable for things which are still scarce like celebrity time and beachfront property. Somehow I don't think the new social contract will allow for disproportionate wealth though. (Hmm... I seem to have rambled offtopic. Oh well.)

From http://www.msnbc.com/news/864184.asp

Within a few hours, 25,000 back-end database servers had been infected, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager with Symantec Corp.'s security response team.

If they where truly 'backend', they wouldnt of been infected. This is because of all those open and live MS SQL servers.

I just heard about the worm on television on MSNBC. The report was painfully opaque: The worm was said to attack "servers" or "the Internet". No mention of the fact that it was specifically Microsoft software at risk.

The report on the MSNBC web site is more forthcoming. Still, I can't help but feel that the omission in the broadcast report shows editorial influence at work from MSNBC's parent company.

Sounds like this.

Should we expect you to be running for the Republican party in 2004?

Once Congress bows to Shrub's will (how can they resist after his decisive victory in Iraq when he sends wave after wave of his own men at Saddam?), all you whiny /. pukes will be the first in line to get CHIPPED!

While the congress is hardly at work, they should also consider age limits on purchasing Fast Food. It would be inline with the current trend of suing food vendors and blaming them for their child's "weight problems" [wtopnews.com], which supposedly kills alot more people over time.

• Me!
• Brigitte Boisselier (info)
• Arnold Schwartzenegar (pic)
• Lance Bass (info)
• Sally Ride (pic)
• Team Gates (pic)
• Mike Meyers (pic)
• Space Coyboy Neal

Curious about the story? But too lazy to fill in bogus information in NYT's lengthy form? Then just click here!

Who wants his brain fondled by a MS product? Not me. Nor any other organ.

Though we joke about how lousy MS is (I know, I have to use it constantly), using an OS system for something this vital really should be the open option. Programmers need direct access to the code, and one wants to keep things updated as much as possible - which the OS community provides.

There's also been a breakthrough with an amazing robotic heart surgeon. (http://www.msnbc.com/news/837416.asp), and I expect more in the future.

Which brings up the point about what software and OSes such important devices will run . . .

Every time corruption is exposed in the media

Ah yes, but will this aspect be reported on by our huge consolidated media conglomerates, all of which are interested in holding copyrights on their products until the end of time? I find it most doubtful.

MSNBC certainly didn't -- they reported no negative sides to the ruling in their report.

Just use this new gimmick!

Unfortunately, we've got at least 73 years to wait for the PS9.

By then, I'll be 103. Maybe by then they'll have figured out a way to extend our lives while keeping our faculties.

And maybe by then, I'll be able to afford a nice 1000HP V16 Cadillac.

Interesting that you call it that.

Kamen actually has created an upright wheelchair. Once it's in mass-production, it should do amazing things for the disabled.

For those of us who can walk ... I don't really get the Segway either.

Seconded - you make some very valid points.

As I'm in China working for an online entertainment company, I see every day the sort of long term thinking and planning that they use here (e.g. look at the latest maglev trial run - 8 minutes for 18 miles from city centre to airport). It might be connected to their respect for older and wiser people.

China has one of (if not the) highest growth rates in the world. And it's doing this against a background of a poor global economy - imagine what it could do with a good one. For a good analysis, read this .

Given the West's incredibly short term view (IMHO badly wrong), I expect their growth rate to continue. Their internal market is so large they can afford to look at the long term.

Bush's energy cronies got him to loosen it, because their precious profits were suffering.

Really? He's got Cronies?

So what cronie told him to toughen diesel standards? Specially since it'll be costing the cronies money?

And what exactly is wrong with growing meat? it'll cut down on Gaseous emissions from cows, return grazing lands to natural states, eliminate swine farm water table problems, aid in building back up the fish reserves, change over farmland from growing feed for animals and make room for more human foods that can be exported, give areas that can't raise cattle easily a new food source.
The ramifications of a grown meat are staggering when it comes to helping man and the environment.

And I feel that the complete lack of strategy (long or short term) taken by Bush Jr. with regard to North Korea has been an utter and complete failure.

North Korea is one of only two cold war Marxists states still maintaining their independence and the only one of real strategic importance. North Korea has managed to keep Russia, China and the U.S. from controlling them for close to 50 years by playing the fear and greed of each against the other.

Do the Palestinians think the Israelies lack will? Again, just because their goals seem ridiculous to us doesn't mean that they are simply acting with no underlying plan.

Wasn't it the U.S. that organized the sanctions against North Korea that cause the suffering in the country and now causes them to attempt to become a nuclear threat in order to get some respect from the western world?

And by the way, I am American. And by the way, apart from his weakness for women, Clinton was (along with Carter) the most sensible U.S. president in recent history.

There should be more education on abstinence, especially in todays culture of blatant sexuality. In my sex education classes, abstinence was barely covered. Most of the teaching was on safe sex.
This culture of sex is oppressive and distorts the beauty of sex in a healthy marriage. It is very hard to live in abstinence.

I dont understand why people complain when abstinence is taken seriously by educators. Some people want to wait until they are married!!
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/841604.asp?cp1=1
Provide the education to help these people to exercise their free will.

In high school, I believed I was not healthy because I did not have sex, so I tried it and regret it. The sex was empty and left a void in me.
I am currently in a relationship where we decided to abstain from sex until marriage. It really has been worth it. We are focusing on connecting emotionally and spiritually. Abstinence is helping us to build a foundation for a strong relationship. We are closer and more honest since we focus solely on our friendship and relationship, rather than sex. We are equipping ourselves to make a good decision on marriage. Most importantly, abstinence has made our relationship joyful.

MSNBC is carrying the same article without the registration requirement.

Well, here on Slashdot, we're heading for hemorrhoids or diarrhea instead. Don't look, it may damage your eyes forever!

except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit.

Given what the powers that be are doing now and plan to do in the future, this isn't far from the truth.

"Or maybe the real message is, on a slow news day we have nothing better to post."

I read 2 or 3 days ago that AOL got a patent on instant messaging (despite Unix finger and talk being clear prior art), via ICQ, and it has yet to appear on Slashdot. There are certainly better things to talk about.

To read more about these official moderation criticism rule, click here, especially if you're a moderator.

Thanks, and have a nice day.

all's i'm sayin' is, (crack) is somebody's been smokin' SUMTHIN'....

Don't forget the auditors.

Wow I remember when Slashdot had cool nerds on it. Now It seems to be filled with nothing but Dale Gribble wannabes.

Holded up in their basements, bragging about how they cannot be tracked. How all of their packets cannot be tracked. While ironically their ISP logs every single request they make from behind there triple redundant firewalls. How when they go to Radio Shack they give a fake name.

This Bandlink thing is a non issue. But how about this. This is not some roving monster that sniffs out ever packet sent out by your CD player... (Since CD players can't send packets that would seem obvious)

This is not a Carnivore reaping all of the public's email.

If you want to install it do it. If not don't. But if you do it's nothing more threatening than a marketing survey. Since it only tracks what happens with Bandlink CDs and in the Bandlink Player, there are tons of ways to remain "hidden" from this "terror".

I find it sad really that so many people are trying to avoid marketers but feel free to place ads for "the best" firewall solution. I wonder how many of those posts come from zone alarm reps.

Anyway the site is really clear about how the software works, but if you don't wanna use it they tell you how to use your own player.

I've seen bigger issues such as, well, I don't know
AOL patents instant messaging

Where were all of the slashdot watchdogs on this one??? I guess to catch something this HUGE you would have to do some research and not just fire off a flaming post.

Get over yourselves. Get back to the big stuff. More posts about nextgen tech.

thanks.

Actually, I included the link to the article (I assumed NOT including it would mean immediate rejection). For whatever reason, the link didn't get published.

As others have pointed out, the article is here

Who saved the Slashdot editors time by not even posting a link to the article! Brilliant!

For those who actually want to RTFA:
Fake escrow site scam widens

Hint: Google News is our friend

Being that the editors didn't provide one... I don't know if this is the same article, as it's dated July 3, but it's from MSNBC and relevant.

Link

Fake escrow site scam widens

The most interesting part of this story was the link at the bottom, IE has a flaw where you can be owned by viewing a PNG. Curious that this wasn't reported on slashdot so far, I sense a 'Submit Story' link calling my name...

NASA Considers Abandoning ISS
Posted by michael on Thursday November 28, @12:13AM
from the okay-who-took-my-parachute dept. mbstone writes "MSNBC is reporting that NASA is threatening to mothball the International Space Station unless Russia coughs up its share of the money for maintenance and support missions. NASA is now making "contingency plans" to leave the station unoccupied for as long as a year. What I want to know is, why a contingency plan? Didn't NASA already have a plan in place? Are U.S. taxpayers going to pay millions extra to develop new mothballing equipment and procedures that could have been designed-in at far less cost?? Also, I would be glad to house-sit, I use very little oxygen."

A curmudgeon's critique:

(1) Against those silly people who spend $$$ on silly movies;

(2) Against those silly people who pirate silly movies while insisting how silly they are.

At least group 1 is honest about what they like and how they acquire it.

And if the franchise is making "too much money," and deserves to be knocked down a notch by piracy, then let's not forget those productions that make "too little money," who deserve our subsidies. That seems symmetrical, and thus queerly moral, though few of us are going to send checks to money-losing moviemakers.

At least we could help people who can't afford these movies to see them. the folks complaining that the studios are making too much money or that the products are too exapensive are often those who can afford them. Either way, science fiction isn't really a nutritional need up there with the four food groups. If I was going to steal something, it would be food first. If you just have to have a Picard figurine and insist on stealing it, well you have issues..... most of use scrape by without a Picard figurine, or personal copies of the movies for that matter.

Outside of the US, esp. the developing world, the DVD prices must seem outrageous. (I have no ideas as to the foreign prices of figurines, lunchboxes, "fake" phasers, and so on.) Perhaps the industry will work out a multitier price scheme as do the drug companies. That was the whole point of regional DVD's?

Of course most of these arguments are just a bit silly, as are all of the rationalizations for Robin Hood piracy of this fluff. Sobriety first.

The Star Trek series would have ended earlier if its profits has been just a bit thinner. Ok, maybe it should have ended earlier, but I like many see value in some of the later work -- and we pay our way. True, the grosses are grosser than many realize! But are they out of proportion to the success and likability of the series? Hell, they hit the jackpot over and over (every other film maybe) and deserve it, it's not coming out of anyone else's pocket who didn't ask to see it.

On Trek -- I love the bald slant in MSNBC Nemesis review subtitle: "It's good enough for Trekkers but not for rest of us." What are Trekkers, a brainwashed subspecies? (well, maybe.) Should I trust a review by someone who confesses bias as "the rest of us"? (Just an editorial thing.)

I really really really want to see a bold successor to Trek that develops a whole 'nuther universe without cheats like transporters and phasers and Spock. I thought I was seeing that emerge in the bio-universe of Farscape, one of the first non-derivative space operas in a long time. Oh well, I may have to wait for Farscape: The Next Generation.