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Maybe someone should tell the military about @Stake and save taxpayers millions of dollars? After all, why should Uncle Sam feed, clothe and pay hackers, if they can just sub-contract them like they do everything that doesn't require dying?

Then again, do we really want our firewalls to be made by the lowest bidder?

I think you're absolutely right - USB, Firewire & Bluetooth all show the advantages of a PNP serial interface that fast and easy to connect (with Bluetooth of course being much easier to connect than it is fast). Already two companies, Ericsson & Idei have announced (links go to articles) a desire to develop Bluetooth enabled Flash RAM for storage. Great for PDAs, digital cameras and MP3 players, once they support Bluetooth. While the Bluetooth implimentations are not the worlds most rapid anything, the logical structure is very attractive - need some more {whatever - storage, CPU time, interfaces}, just add it to the piconet.

Hey, I just thought - has anyone commented on the power requirements/em? of a Serial I/O BUS v's a Parallel one of similar throughput? Are they more, less or about the same?

Y2K World Dispatches

Y2K Security Tracker

One of my favorites from the World Dispatches was:

LONDON, Jan. 1 -- One of the few Y2K alerts in England was a boy who cut the cables to his PC because he thought bugs were trying to crawl in.

Y2K World Dispatches

Y2K Security Tracker

One of my favorites from the World Dispatches was:

LONDON, Jan. 1 -- One of the few Y2K alerts in England was a boy who cut the cables to his PC because he thought bugs were trying to crawl in.

There is something very wrong with a company who's key trademark is "Where great ideas come to you" that dictates what ideas can appear on what web sites. The acts of eToys are such a front to the open nature of the Internet, the web and art. The only great idea that comes to me is holy fucken shit these guys hop online in November of 1997 and already are pushing the sites registered backed in October 1995 around? If they wheren't willing to accept the activities of a domain with the singular use of their name then why did they choose a company name where the singular was already in use for over 2 years?! I personally have gotten sick of emailing etoys and getting no responce. They don't seem to care two-cents about their image. What continues to bother me now is at what point will their actions no longer be simply a "Wired" worthy news item and make it onto ABC News, CBS News and NBC news? It sure seems time to stop talking to eToys directly and begin yelling at them indirectly. The acts of eToys should be reviewed by the watchful eyes of popular media. And if their acts aren't horrorific by themselves to gain notice by popular media then maybe it is time we start talking to the popular media to make them more aware. The Internet should be flexiable enough that we can add commericalism to it without loosing the accomplishment of having created a network of free flowing expression. If there is only room enough for one or the other then why even bother with migrating to IPv6? In only two years of being on the net, eToys has decided to become a bull of the pre-existing sites. How pathentic can a distributor of "fun" be? Death to what eToys wants to turn the Net into. May we always remember these actions of these monsters up until the day eToys takes it's very last order. eToys must be stopped. Their "great idea" of what the Internet should be has unfortantly been stolden directly from the pages of 1984.

Here the link to that article.

Norton Antivirus has a security hole. Details at msnbc . What do you think about such cases? Should the software liscensors be sued (since they are refusing to fix the hole)?

(I know this is a bit late in the thread, but...)
The old processors were 386's with .5 MB RAM a piece. The new 486's have 2 MB RAM a piece. Also, I think the new processors were all together in one assembly because a MSNBC article says there were approx 1000 pins in the unit they had to connect.

Check out the top ten! Hooray for Slashdot!

I found this story on MSNBC rather interesting... It was a bit of a chuckle... It mentions Slashdot, too, so its worth a peek.

The Cyberette sounds like a digital hallucinogen that leaves the user completely functional, except for certain parts of certain senses are replaced to the users specifications.

I know of one co-worker that I'de like to 'dial-out' of my day. It would make me a lot more productive.

Now only if we could teach 'Cheech and Chong' to hack a bit ;)

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR LINUS TORVALDS FOR MAN OF THE MILLENIUM

So what's the moral of the story? Find yourself a medium that you control, don't depend on renting space from other companies. How you do that is up to you.

So what do you do when all mediums are controlled by large corporations?

You see, people always think that government is the sole threat to free speech on the Internet, and it is a threat, but it's not the only one. Industry could, conceivably and very possibly, create a barrier-to-entry so high (the reason the internet is so free and inspiring is that the barrier to entry is so low) that the few who can afford to run a website are the ones who control the majority opinion.

You've already seen that happen with television, radio, and newspapers. They're all controlled by conglomerates who create economic barriers to competition. And since it's usually an oligopoly, and not a monopoly, and since it's not technically holding people back (by force of law) from free press, people claim that this is still a free country.

I say, stop bothering to get up and arms when the government claims it can censor or control the internet. They can't, they don't know how. But industry does, because they've been censoring and controlling mediums for years. It's nothing new to them. It's not oppression, they say, it's economics. But whatever they call it, the end result is the same.

So how do we combat this? We need to do all we can to keep the cost of the Internet down. At times like this, Free Beer can equal Free Speech. Linux, and the cooperative in San Francisco which sells T1 lines at cost is a fantastic example, and I wish I could see more situations like this crop up. It would also be nice to see the computer industry unionise but that's a whole different post.

In the end, if you don't want to see the Internet get gobbled up into the stomachs of the bloated plutocrats, it is up to you to make sure it doesn't happen. Keep the internet cheap and open to anybody, and you'll insure that the internet will be cheap and open for your own needs.

Michael Chisari

"I don't think it's very appropriate for you to be calling Judge Jackson a flake. Let the Second Circuit do that, as they're the ones qualified to do so. Besides, coming from them, it holds more weight."

I'm not calling Judge Jackson a "flake." I'm repeating an assertion I have seen several places, including this article on ZDNN, repeated on MSNBC:

The D.C. Court of Appeals is rumored to have a low opinion of Judge Jackson and has shown sympathy for Microsoft's position in earlier rulings. Many trial watchers say they expect the Court of Appeals to be looking for ways to give Microsoft an out.

Now, in general I do have a pretty low opinion of lawyers, but that's beside the point. The Second Circuit themselves, according to news reports, thinks Jackson isn't that bright. That raises the possibility that human factors, other than the abstract law, could become an issue in this case. (Bob Woodward alleged in his book on the Supreme Court that such personality issues happen all the time.) Since this is such a crucial case, I think it would be interesting to hear what the antitrust experts have to say on the question.

Currently, in the medical world, there are biotech firms that are discovering gene sequences that would help determine a predisposition to various diseases. What is sad is that many of these firms are allowed to "patent the genes" I may be wrong, it may be the processes that they use to discover the pertinent gene sequences that they are allowed to patent. But in any case, this is horrifying. http://www.msnbc.com/news/302971.asp

Bad URL.

Try this: http://www.msnbc.com/news/207645.asp

I don't promise much excitement though. In Netscape, for some mysterious reason (snort!) I can not get to the voting--it's always, "The people have spoken". In Lynx, I was able to get to the voting page for the first question, even though I declined their cookie which wanted a GUID. But then, for some mysterious reason (snerk!), the USEMAP isn't really a USEMAP, and I "could not connect to host". Hmm. In Microsoft Internet Explorer, when I refused the damn cookies with the GUID, even though I accepted the others, the page will not load.

So what this poll says is that people who use Microsoft exclusively for their OS and browser, and who don't mind being tracked, and who trust Microsoft as their source of news, about 2/3 of them agree that the DOJ is a big meanyhead.

For the most part, the content of hard news is of little concern--most people are intelligent enough to notice if there were discrepancies between an MSNBC article and a similar article on the New York Times. The problem is the articles that they do print. Look at the MSNBC Slashdot response article. As was pointed out in an earlier news post on here, they took a few relatively meaningless quotes off of Slashdot and represented them as the ideas of an average Slashdot user. The result? Someone that reads the article thinks that the Slashdot community is a pretty inarticulate bunch--the average 'net user won't take the time to hunt through /. to find the article in question.

This, of course, can be applied to any subject. A version of Netscape has a security flaw? You can bet they'll slap an article up. The fact that MSNBC posts a relatively harsh article on MS when every other site on the net is doing the same? Not surprising.

~=Keelor

The MSNBC voting is at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/207645.asp?cp 1=1

I thought this was pretty funny. I found the results of the MSNBC and CNN polls on the DoJ case.... Heh.

The CNN poll: vot e or just the results

The MSNBC poll: click here to give MS some advertising dollars and see their poll for yourself, or take my word for it (results as of a yesterday):

Who should prevail in the Microsoft case?
* 23036 responses
The government. Microsoft has abused its market power.
24%
Microsoft. The government is trying to block innovation.
63%
Split the difference. Each side can win certain points.
11%
I can't figure out who's right.
2%

How's that for objective reporting? :) No ballot stuffing there...

I thought this was pretty funny. I found the results of the MSNBC and CNN polls on the DoJ case.... Heh.

The CNN poll: vot e or just the results

The MSNBC poll: click here to give MS some advertising dollars and see their poll for yourself, or take my word for it (results as of a yesterday):

Who should prevail in the Microsoft case?
* 23036 responses
The government. Microsoft has abused its market power.
24%
Microsoft. The government is trying to block innovation.
63%
Split the difference. Each side can win certain points.
11%
I can't figure out who's right.
2%

How's that for objective reporting? :) No ballot stuffing there...

The poll should be here!!! The page is accessible with Lynx. Right now, the results are totally even, 33% thinks MS are evil sh*theads, 33% thinks MS is a monopoly but not malicious and noone has ben harmed, and 33% thinks MS is NOT a monopoly!?

Other people have mentioned the poll at http://www.msnbc.com/news/329416.asp#survey. However, I went to take a loot. If you're using both Netscape and MacOS, you can't vote in it (IE on MacOS seems to work fine).

What other combinations of browsers and OS can't see the poll, I wonder?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/329416.asp

MSNBS has a survey here:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/329416.asp#su rvey

Either it hasn't succumbed to the Slashdot effect yet, or there are many out there that do not realize how much control MS does have over the PC industry. To me, the results are frightening.
--

Here are some more stories about the case:

There's one in The NY Times, one in Wired, one on MSNBC, one on CNN and probably one on every other news site under the sun, but I just feel like giving a few more articles. It's always nice to get some more points of view.

--
Reject

If I understand this correctly, Yahoo is removing illegal content and is basically now forced to censor inflammatory content. I think its brave that /. will allow users to publish items of questionable legality (e.g., a large number of posts for dummies), but there are situations where there's no easy way out. Here's an example.

Post 1. User A knocks sombody else's race.
Post 2. User B says knock it off that's rude - I am that race and I don't like that.
Post 3. User C says to kill User B. He lives at 12345 A street, Anywhere, USA.


The service removes post no. 3 because its illegal, but is now forced to remove post no. 1 as well, otherwise User B could now sue the service.

It's censorship plain and simple, but I don't think Yahoo has a choice, and to be honest, I admire the fact that they allowed free speech to begin with. Other companies have not had such great track records. AOL, for example, caused quite a stir a while back when they wouldn't let users access certain websites, and more recently, they may be in trouble for selectively banning certain words from user profiles.

Yahoo (from what I can tell)seems to have done a better job at allowing personal freedom than most services would dream of - remember, they either go to jail, get sued, or remove certain posts. I don't like the fact that they have to do this, but I think I can understand that they don't have a choice. Hopefully, Yahoo will simply draw the line at those comments that leave them open to litigation...

Actually, those were facts. I don't see how your posting is even relevant to the original article which started this thread. The article was referring to banner adds and the use of cookies to collect statistics, not sites like the New York Times where you are required to divulge personal information in order to read their stories.

As an aside the New York Times has every right to ask this information, you have every right to refuse or falsify it. You've got every right to go elsewhere for news as well. I'd much prefer being educated on the impacts of the internet on personal privacy than having a privacy gestapo like you seem to prefer regulating what can and can not be done.

As for the New York Times being the only news site which collects information on its users you are pretty close to 100% inaccurate. ABC News, CNN, CBS news and NBC News all make use of banner adds. The issue the article was dealing with. I can't connect to the BBC News and it looks like it may be the one news site that doesn't use banner adds.

Whether or not the Dreamcast was actually connected to the internet or not was not the issue. It turns out that it isn't. The issue was that the owner of an allegedly popular Dreamcast news site felt it was his perogative to run nmap against his users which indicated just how much privacy you really have.

• Discovery of Alzheimer protease

• Discovery of Alzheimer protease!

You can download the video of them pulling it out and all that at Msnbc.com, fairly interesting. http://www.msnbc.com/news/292726.asp

MSNBC also has a similar story about the project http://www.msnbc.com/news/322736.asp

A more detailed obituary is available on MSNBC ...no @#$$!@# login needed either.

According to this article: "Morita [told] engineers to make Walkmans despite the lack of market research. "We don't believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any," he said.

How many great products never make it to the world because of some idiot in the marketing department who thinks his or her opinion is all that counts? It's not like marketing departments are ALWAYS right...or there wouldn't have been New Coke...Edsel...Iridium...Windows CE...

I really think someone who has guts to stand behind an idea is someone who will be sorely missed in this technology-based world.

And Beta was better, anyway...it's still the standard for broadcasting. Sony just didn't have the media clout back then to get high volumes of popular movies in that format...

My opinion...maybe true...probably not...just true enough to me.

- JoeShmoe

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Try http://www.msnbc.com/news/317609.as p?cp1=1#BODY instead.

KV

MSNBC has a good article on Criticality. Doesn't quite explain how it differs from a total meltdown or fision blast, but it does explain how it happens and gives a little history.

-"Zow"

The jist is that the aggregate auction sites continuously spider the 2.8 million items on ebay's site multiple times each day. Given their current scaling problems I can see why ebay would like to go it alone.

Obviously, if they can't solve the scaling problems and the public chooses auction portals over the single ebay site then ebay may have problems. For now they certainly have name recognition to get 'em through the short term.

Andy

Check it out

"Even without this kind of posturing, some resellers say they find the notion of a religious operating system to be offensive. To quote one anonymous reseller, 'Yup. Linux is officially a religion now. What's next, crucifixion of NT users?'"

Liquid deposits beneath the surface of Europa have been posited for a considerable number of years. Easily since I was in middle school. The Christian Science Monitor is not exactly breaking scientific ground here.

Here is a link to a 1996 conference on this subject.

A similar story is running in Scientific American. You can see the table of contents for this month's issue here.

Points to Remember:
*it may not be water. Long-chain hydrocarbons have also been proposed. It could be from mineral oils to salt water, really.
*the only "new news" here is the theory proposed by these guys from the U. of Arizona that the cracks are consistent with tidal patterns. This is cool, but it is only confirming evidence for what people believed in the first place.
*Europa has strong volcanic activity, similar to its lava-covered sibling Io. This is due to Jupiter's insane gravitational pull. But Europa is colder than Io, because it's further out and has no atmosphere, so it has an icy crust. The idea is that (if it really is H20 ice) the volcanic activity has melted some of the ice. But, again, lots of stuff besides water freezes. All we know is that spectrogr aphically there is some kind of salt there.

I hope it does prove to be water, but let's not get carried away just yet.


-konstant

There is an article today on MSNBC about just this kind of thing: http://www.msnbc.com/news/305543.asp I for one hope that such things become possible as I am quite lazy (but I do vote in most elections).

Meanwhile, it's fun hitting the news sites every few minutes to see the pecking order of how the story propagates.

As expected, msnbc denies the association with the NSA. Looks like this article was carefully prepared by the PR chefs to me.

Here's another story about the HP guys that talk a little more about making the actual transistors.

I submitted this the other day, but I guess it wasn't impo'tant nuff. Basically lets HTML code run ActiveX and do, well, pretty much anything.

For information on almost everything regarding hacking, read The Jargon File by Eric Steven Raymond. Oh, by the way, also MSNBC has a Linus-bashing article. They're really after him this time...



Moo(__)
\oo)
|_/\

YATCHCLS. (Yet Another Technically Challenged Historically Clueless Linux Sheep)

"If you are going to post about proMS stuff, check you references, MS is NOT #1 in those websites. If you are going to get something wrong, at least get it right."
I did get it right. You didn't.
http://carpoint.msn.com/press/features/mm

http://www.microsof t.com/PressPass/press/1999/Aug99/augexpr.htm (look for "Ranked No. 1 by Media Metrix" in the text)

http://www.msnbc.com/ad_benefits.asp (Again, look for Metrix)

So, sir - perhaps you should check YOU (sic) references...

Expedia: Considering Travelocity wasn't founded until 1997, and Expedia was out in 1996, which would be the first? Check the NIC records.

MSNBC: Do you really have ANY idea what goes on there? Didn't think so. #1 news site for over a year. BTW, it isn't "purchased content", which you seem to be alluding to - MSNBC is a joint venture - read MSNBC, and you'd know that.

Slate: You've obviously never read that either, or you'd realize that it's content is very different than MSNBC (opinions = news in your world???)

Carpoint: Carpoint isn't a car dealer. But if you read it, you'd know that. http://carpoint.msn.com/press/features/mm It was also online LONG before most car dealers had a clue what the internet WAS...

New York Times. (Free login req.)
MSNBC
CNet

Eschew Obfuscation

NY Times. (Requires free login!)
MSNBC
CNet

Eschew obfuscation.

MSNBC has a good reply to the whole Kansas debacle:
Robert Pennock on Kansas
(http://www.msnbc.com/news/302429.asp).

Also, his book's a good read--good comparisons and use of evolutionary programming & design.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298088.asp