Slashdot Mirror

That's debatable. (In fact, it's so uncertain that lawyers do debate it in front of judges and juries). When the GPL was written, it explicitly said that you didn't need to accept it in order to use software. Stallman's philosophy was that you don't need a license to read a book or listen to music, so you shouldn't need it to run a program. Copyright law covers copying, not use.

Unfortunately, lawyers for companies like Microsoft diagreed with the FSF, and EULAs have become common. Even without UCITA, the software companies have been quite succesful in court, leading a lot of Free software to treat the GPL as a EULA and ask people to click through it during installation. (This is mostly because of the "no warranty" clause.) The next version of the GPL might officially be a EULA, because (like the Afero license) it wants to ensure that code is available to every client who accesses a Web server.

Even if NAC does not currently use Trusted Computing:
Cisco Systems and Broadcom are already developing switches that will use the TPM for authentication and more

recent move by members of the Trusted Computing Group to create an open standards NAC alternative

and While Cisco presents NAC as an industry-standard approach, at this point, it's a Cisco approach, which apparently Cisco is hoping will become a de facto standard. Elsewhere, there's the Trusted Network Connect standard that's being put together under the auspices of the TCG (Trusted Computing Group), which is intended to accomplish the same thing.

So one way or another the Trusted network admission system *is* a genuine project and genuine threat. Plus the governent call for ordinary ISPs to impose exactly this sort of system on the public as part of their Terms of service. That government plan used to be documented at this BSA address, unfortunately they have taken the PDF down and I cannot find another copy anywhere. I did save some quotes from the President's Cyber Security Advisor's keynote speech:

I think we need to decide that from now on IT security functionality will be built in to what we do, to the products that we bring to market.
-
TCPA, the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, is an example of bringing hardware and software manufacturers together. But TCPA is not enough.
-
It is not beyond the wit of this industry to figure out a way of forcing down patches.
-
ISPs and carriers can insist that when cable modems and DSL hookups are made, firewalls are installed. It is not enough for an ISP or carrier to say, oh, and by the way, you might want to think about a firewall.

-

Even if NAC does not currently use Trusted Computing:
Cisco Systems and Broadcom are already developing switches that will use the TPM for authentication and more

recent move by members of the Trusted Computing Group to create an open standards NAC alternative

and While Cisco presents NAC as an industry-standard approach, at this point, it's a Cisco approach, which apparently Cisco is hoping will become a de facto standard. Elsewhere, there's the Trusted Network Connect standard that's being put together under the auspices of the TCG (Trusted Computing Group), which is intended to accomplish the same thing.

So one way or another the Trusted network admission system *is* a genuine project and genuine threat. Plus the governent call for ordinary ISPs to impose exactly this sort of system on the public as part of their Terms of service. That government plan used to be documented at this BSA address, unfortunately they have taken the PDF down and I cannot find another copy anywhere.

-

It's actually easier to wiretap a regular phone than a VoIP phone.

Phreak Yeah! That's a good point, although, typically to do a simple wiretap you have to have physical access to the wiring at the house or office. The process is pretty straightforward though I guess. I think the concern w/ VOIP is that someone with malicious intent could probably craft a pretty decent trojan/virus that woudl just look for weak nodes, drop itself in, and start monitoring calls. These could actually be pretty funny... the virus could randomly play a WAV of the toilet flushing or a string of profanity when you're on the call. There are some other thoughts on this (the security of Voip, not viruses that play random sounds on your calls) here

And on a completely different note... for the good ole' skill phreaks
Fun reading about the Phone Phreak!

In comparison, electric waves or signals in commonly used copper wire travel at speeds between 55 percent and 80 percent of c.

Clicky click.

You could be right. But the motivation for DRM in hardware is pretty clear: The copyright cartels want to make sure that no-one is running a screen capture or audio recorder utility, or perhaps even make sure they're not connecting non-DRM speakers (the "analog hole").

Software DRM can't do this, even at the OS level. When Windows includes DRM, it will needs a hardware component (Palladium, LaGrande, TCPA, etc.) to ensure that it isn't running on a VM or emulator within a non-DRM OS.

• Linux users are threatened by SCO. Probably an empty threat.
  
• Windows users are threatened by the BSA. Usually an empty threat, but not always.
  
• Almost everyone with a Web site is threatened by SBC. Definitely not an empty threat, even if SBC ultimately loses in court (as it should).
  
• The RIAA is suing ISPs to get users' private information, and the MPAA wants to hack into every computer to check for copyrighted material. The most serious threat of all, as their lobbyists mean they'll probably win.
  

Last I heard, Unix, Linux, and Sun based servers are on top of the market....most of which is cheaper and, again, runs circles around Apple and offers greater scalability and compatility with Windows clients. You do know that Windows rules the corporate desktop, right?? What good is an Apple server on a network of nothing but Windows clients? Hmm...beats me!

First of all, an Apple server IS a Unix server-- It's got a nice GUI for management and configuration, but that GUI just asks you for the settings for Sendmail and Apache.

An Apple server on a network of all Windows clients is great, especially for smaller companies that don't want to be extorted for the high licensing costs just to do filesharing and e-mail. Also, smaller companies that don't have a lot of money to spend on IT support people find Xserves and Mac OS X Server to be a Godsend-- especially when you don't have to worry about when the next Nimda or Code Red (which are still around in large numbers, according to my firewall logs) hits.

And as for compatibility, you must be on crack. Out of the box, workstation Macs have been able to read and write DOS/Windows files and read and write to DOS/Windows disks/volumes for over a decade, for one thing. Why would their servers reverse a 10+ year trend of being good network citizens? Apple makes the most standards-compliant stuff around. Really standards-compliant, not "we took the standard and added our own proprietary shit to it to dissuade you from using non-Windows clients." If you care to dispute that Microsoft does that, I've got one word for you: Java.

But don't take my word for it. Mac OS X Server was just named the Server OS of the Year by Network Magazine.

~Philly

Not anymore. The evil CSEA makes it a felony to listen in to cell phone frequencies. (It's already a misdemeanor, as the guy that taped Newt Gingrich a few years ago found out.)

I have not studied the final 802.16a yet, but from looking at 802.16 about a year ago, I got the impression that 802.16 is to 802.11 as 802.12 VG-AnyLAN was to 802.3 Fast (100Mbps) Ethernet.

802.3 100bT Fast Ethernet and 802.12 VG-AnyLan were considered competitors in 1994 with VG-AnyLan offering "advanced QoS features making it more suitable for Enterprise applications"

The claims even sound similar:

The 802.12 standard for 100 VG-AnyLAN allows for a backbone supporting both the 802.3 frames and the 802.5 frames. This means that an existing enterprise network with both token ring, ethernet, and some central backbone can easily migrate to the 100 VG-AnyLAN environment. This is due to the diverse media architecture this new technology can utilize: Cat. 3,4,&5 four pair UTP, Cat. 2 two pair STP, and single/multimode optical fiber. Meaning that if there is an existing FDDI, token ring, or 10baseT backbone in place all that need be done is simply replace the endpoints (router or HUB blades), connect the 100 VG-AnyLAN repeaters together, and voila a network structure based on a high speed new technology.

Highlights
# Support for those applications demanding a not only high bandwidth, but that are also time sensitive (this is due to the media access method called demand priority)
# Adapt legacy ethernet and tokenring networks to a high speed backbone with great ease because nodes with 100 VG adapters can be configured to transmit either tokenring or ethernet
# Extremely expandable when compared to tokenring, and all forms of ethernet
# Maximum network diameter 8000 meters
# Cascading up to five levels


Here's an obituary from a 100VG AnyLan FAQ

Hi! Welcome to V1.2 of Richard's Unofficial 100VG AnyLan Web FAQ! This substance of this FAQ was last updated on Sunday, January 28, 1997.

January, 2001: At one time, 100VG AnyLan was a very promising technology. However, due to market forces (Fast Ethernet slaughtered it in the market), VG is a dead technology. To my knowledge, there no currently no VG products for sale.

Remote OS detection via TCP/IP StackF ingerPrinting

TCP/IP Stack Fingerprinting Principles

Graphing Randomness in TCP Initial Sequence Numbers

Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite

System Fingerprinting With Nmap

Remote OS detection via TCP/IP Stack FingerPrinting

Actually, no joke. There've already been studies which show that this kind of crap is actually more dangerous than talking on a cell phone while driving (itself as dangerous as drunk driving), because a voice interface to a Web page is so awkward.

Interesting article about it here:

Just Say No to Voice Portals

I remember back in 1992 the University of Michigan's College of Engineering had a couple wireless computer labs (both for classroom use) set up for testing. One used Motorola's Altair 18GHz radio product, another an infrared product.

In fact, here's a Network Magazine article from almost 10 years ago exactly on the topic:

http://www.networkmagazine.com/article/NMG20000724 S0062

I remember the Altair presenting an interesting problem because its data packets were slightly smaller than AppleTalk packets; the AppleTalk packets had to be split up and performance was severely degraded.

um... UMTS (not UTMS) is more like CDMA because it IS CDMA.

GSM is a TDMA (time division multiplex) protocol and UMTS is a CDMA (code division multiple access) protocol.

More information on cdma and UMTS and on GSM and TDMA.

link link link

This article is interesting. The ideal interface might use speech for input (though that is still a long way off) and visual output, because we can speak faster than we type and read faster than we listen. But today's primitve speech recognition systems simply don't work. Everyone hates IVR.

So, what are they supposed to use, a really big passwd file? OpenLDAP? Novell NDS? A big Oracle database? Why should we even care what the technology is, as long as it works?

Maybe because it doesn't work.

ever thought of that?

Unfortunately, all the Microsoft-hating government pawns around here seem to have missed the real point of the article.

This isn't just "Microsoft-Hating"
These are valid concerns...

They should do the same thing with China...

Cat5e will "only" get you up to 1000baseT. For 10000baseT you need Cat7 aka class F. Sadly, I didn't find a real price comparison of copper and fiber but I did find this quote: "Class F will probably cost twice as much as Cat 5-an even higher price than fiber cable!" here. Makes me think the fiber itself will be cheap to put in, but the price tag to be able to use it might make you gag later. :-)

The US gives a lot of spectrum to TV (and the military, but that's another story). So, Americans are behind in cell phone technology, but get to watch more TV channels (even without cable).Network Magazine has an interesting article about this.

In the UK, they do exactly that: Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, every ISP or even operator of a private network (like a corporate LAN or a cybercafe) has to help the police by scanning their traffic for potential terrorist content. If they don't, it's five years in the slammer.

South Carolina has a similar law regarding child pornography.

Of course, if you're opposed to these laws, you must be a terrorist or a child molestor...

The bee in Gibson's bonnet (and therefore Cringely's, cuz we know where he gets his material) is IP source address spoofing. He thinks that Windows XP will somehow make this much easier.

He's right.

But it doesn't matter.

There are already several easy technical fixes to prevent source spoofing, and if Gibson and Cringely's phantasy comes true, they will all be deployed in various Internet routers in a matter of weeks. Some of them already are implemented in Cisco routers, but are not enabled by default. Long before things can come to sufficient head to justify Microsoft's appearance as an off-white knight to ostensibly save the day.

See also this article from Network Magazine.

There are some more date-related problems set to start in the next few days/years. It's because of the way that days are written using two digits for each field, such as "01/03/01" (this Wednesday, to most Americans). As from 2001, the year can be confused with the day and/or month.

This article from Network Magazine has more info.

The November issue had a good overview of current wireless 11Mbps products and their limitations. Available at networkmagazine

Available at http://www.networkmagazi ne. com/article/NMG20001106S0004.

• VMS has been around a little while and has quite an assortment of abilities.
• Bridges' OS list