Slashdot Mirror

Crippler writes "MSNBC, of all places, broke this story about some deliberately hidden code in Microsoft source that explicitly cripples Dr. DOS-equipped systems." Ummm, ouch?

Dr.Claw wrote in with a story that is quite fitting his nick. This story is about a Scottsman that received the world's first fully bionic arm. It has shoulder, wrist, and elbow joints, and replaces the arm he had amputated 16 years ago.

Jon C. was the first to send in a link to an msnbc story about WIPO, and the fact that it now has passed in the house. Cross your fingers and hope the senate is smarter.

XBS writes " AT&T and British Telecom are set to announce an international joint venture that would give AT&T access to the market in the U.K. and BT similar access in the U.S. " You can read more at MSNBC or News.com

Evan Zacks writes "John Romero, who left ID to form his own company ION Storm, is nearly finished with a new game, Daikatana. The review sounds promising. " Nice looking screenshot.

Curtis sent us a link to an MSNBC Article on Linux. Seriously. And it's even positive! The article goes as far as saying that Linux 5.1 is ready for Prime Time. Related: Does it disturb anyone else that we use television terminology to describe software? Maybe it's just me.

A story on MSNBC discusses a recently discovered bug in the Windows NT Virtual Private Network services. From the article: "We were able to sniff passwords, eavesdrop on the networks, and passively do traffic analysis," said Bruce Schneier, president of Counterpane Systems Inc., of Minneapolis, Minn. "Any Microsoft NT server on the Internet is insecure."

Bruce goes on to state that this is a perfect example of why all security related protocols should be developed publicly. What do you think?

Robert Owens pointed out this MSNBC link story. Here's the deal- MSNBC ran a poll and among the questions, was "Do you think MS Should be Broken Up" and (surprise) the majority voted yes. This is an article saying that polls are for entertainment and the results of the poll are worthless. Complete with links to other (older) but apparently more valid polls (guess the results). I find this hilarious- of course these polls are unscientific. Polls inherantly are- but when your parent company has egg on its face, you need to post an explanation. I don't claim to be impartial- I'm biased as heck, but no matter how many ways you angle it, 20,000 people voted that MS should be broken up. At MSNBC. I hope that raises eyebrows somewhere.

Adrian Likins sent us a link to an article where artists complain about "geek" culture. It's an interesting piece about about the geek "free" mentality. My favorite quote is "Geeks wanting creative property for free ... they are embarrassingly out of line and uneducated in the creative arts. Who are these cultural illiterates kidding?"

I always thought Artists were the idealistic ones, but now we see geeks are. Any web site worth visiting probably has images worth stealing. Many people take my stuff without asking (at least as many ask permission) and all I ask is a link back. Its not all that different from an Art Gallary (they show a bunch of paintings with the artists name next to them on a tiny card) If an artist aims to communicate, then this certainly is advancing their goal. If an artist aims for fame and fortune, well, they probably should think about a different career.

Ilya Haykinson sent us this link about a collection of attorney generals and attempting to block shipment of Win98. On one hand, it is nice egg on MSs face, but on the other hand, preventing a product from shipping isn't something I like seeing the govt do. Then again, MS has the industry in enough of a headlock that this may be the only way to break free.

Aaron Campos wrote in with this link which I hereby declare the pointy haired article of the day. Basically the author believes that opening the Netscape Source will spell 'the end of for the ease of the lowest common denominator'. In all honesty, that end has been here for years- from the CENTER tag to ActiveX. It doesn't really surprise me that MSNBC would find this sort of spin- especially when open source standards built the internet, and only now are closed source standards ripping it apart at the seams.

Eddis Jefferson wrote in to tell us that it looks as if Intel might sue Apple over the recent (extremely funny) commercials that have been aired. You can read more here. Personally I thought the ads were great- the G3 hardware is great. To bad it has MacOS8 on it reducing it to a snails pace. Rhapsody, Be or Linux will make that machine killer.

Thane Walkup sent us this story which (gasp) was posted on MSNBC. The article is a quite scathing editorial on Microsoft's UI design. Guess this is the monthly "see we're not biased" token article *grin*. Anyway its an excellent article- a lot of truth there. I'm not as hard on Win95's interface as this article, but it is right on about the browser integration stuff.

Thane Walkup sent us this story which (gasp) was posted on MSNBC. The article is a quite scathing editorial on Microsoft's UI design. Guess this is the monthly "see we're not biased" token article *grin*. Anyway its an excellent article- a lot of truth there. I'm not as hard on Win95's interface as this article, but it is right on about the browser integration stuff.

Several people sent this in, but James Snow was the first. Apparently the $100 DNS Registration fee we have all been blindly paying for the last few years may have some sticky legal issues. Check out this story over at (ahem) msnbc.com for more details.

Wow. An MSNC article on Linux. Everyone should go and read that, just for the sheer juxtaposition of interests. Thanks to Christopher Carlson for this one.