Slashdot Mirror

A few weeks back, there was a story at News.com about a ballot initiative in Washington State that is doing online petitions. You still have to print them out and sign on the dotted line, but even those had controversy surrounding them.

The major benefit of online ballot initiative drives is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. The downside is that it makes the process easier and cheaper. It will open the initiative process up to real grassroots organizations who don't necessarily have a few hundred grand to spend. But for the people that are already spending millions on such initiatives, why not do three or four of them since it's so cheap now.

I submitted this article last week, but it didn't make it through. Since it's an ICANN subject, I'll just attach it here.

News.com had an article last week about the "Sunrise + 20" proposal from ICANN's Working Group B. It would allow trademark owners to register their mark and up to 20 variations on that mark in the new TLDs that ICANN is proposing -- before the general public has a chance to register a single domain. With over 1 million trademarks registered in the United States alone, the math works out to a possible 20+ million domains being registered before Joe Average gets a shot. (There are 17.5 million .com, .net, and .org total right now.)

The Working Group B comments regarding the proposal were overwhelmingly supportive -- not too suprising considering it's comprised of mostly trademark lawyers representing folks like Time Warner, Dow Jones & Co., Kodak, Bell Atlantic, Major League Baseball, Intel, 3M, the Motion Picture Association, Viacom, etc.

I submitted this article last week, but it didn't make it through. Since it's an ICANN subject, I'll just attach it here.

News.com had an article last week about the "Sunrise + 20" proposal from ICANN's Working Group B. It would allow trademark owners to register their mark and up to 20 variations on that mark in the new TLDs that ICANN is proposing -- before the general public has a chance to register a single domain. With over 1 million trademarks registered in the United States alone, the math works out to a possible 20+ million domains being registered before Joe Average gets a shot. (There are 17.5 million .com, .net, and .org total right now.)

The Working Group B comments regarding the proposal were overwhelmingly supportive -- not too suprising considering it's comprised of mostly trademark lawyers representing folks like Time Warner, Dow Jones & Co., Kodak, Bell Atlantic, Major League Baseball, Intel, 3M, the Motion Picture Association, Viacom, etc.

Looks like it's on cNet, according to this story here.

Anyone seen it on CNN in Tech, or NY Times, or Washington Post yet? How about Seattle Times or Seattle Post-Intelligencer or Seattle Weekly or The Stranger?

For the past few months, I've been keeping up with Slashdot's reports on Internet filtering, especially in public libraries. This C|Net article shows what many of us may have seen all along... censorware (AOL's in particular) has a conservative bias.

Even though C|Net only published this article yesterday, many of us had known it for quite a while. In fact, some of the groups that had promoted censorware included conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, as well as the Christian Coalition. However, this is not to say that all conservatives support censorship. Look at the Libertarians, for example. They don't want government in ANY part of their lives. I used to be a conservative, and I didn't support censorship (as a progressive, I am still adamantly against it). I don't think my father, a Republican, would promote it. So don't go blaming every conservative for advocating censorship, because some of them are fighting it zealously.

As well, we must worry about liberal bias in filterware. Some of the same people who rail against right-wing censorship also want to silence Dr. Laura Schlesinger and get rid of Web sites they find to be non-PC (politically correct). There may be some liberal companies developing censorware and putting on their blacklists sites that promote views that conflict with theirs. People using those programs may be unable to access the RNC and NRA Web sites, like those who use AOL may not be able to access the DNC and the ACLU sites.

My point: Censorship is bad, no matter who does it. It's not all coming from one particular group. Liberals are just as guilty as conservatives. Information should be free and open to all people.

It's an interesting idea for people who can't use other technologies because of their location, but I doubt it'll have any wide consumer market, when there are so many other established (and more reliable) technologies.

See this related article: Science-fiction staple new entry in high-speed Net (C|Net News.com, 22 Mar 00)

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.

I cannot help but think that, at some point along the way, Microsoft Windows crashed on the wrong person at the wrong time, and this is their punishment. Now that the bottom's come out, we will watch the stocks tumble, I imagine. It all just seems so preordained ...

Unfortunately, if you live in the U.S., you'll most likely miss the entire show. They will bring the satellites down over the ocean, most likely the Pacific if they can. The last thing they want to do is risk causing damage to something. As unlikely as the possibility of damaging something may be, there are 66 of those things, and 66 chances to screw up.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw the article, prolly Cnet News.com or Wired, but an article concerning the pending shutdown of Iridium stated that the satellites would be brought down over the ocean.

• news.com
• spaceviews
• EETimes
• FiringSquad
• Ace's Hardware
• The Register

And if that post is worth Score:2 what is this post worth? Anyway, if this WAS a big story like the TPC stuff someone mentioned above that would be a newsworthy item (or a 2.4preXX release for that matter), but this isn't! This is another X-Box hype like trash! Why don't you post stuff about the Glaze3D Hemos if you really want vapourware and not-yet-maybe-never-out trash?

An Article on news.com -"Spurred by this week's widespread Web attack, President Clinton has rounded up experts, government officials and high-tech business leaders for an emergency Web security summit."

Of course, these attacks are useless, and serve as much purpose as banging your head against the wall. I'm not going to get into why people do these useless types of attacks, but it is in one way or another to get attention, or recieve recognition. Either way, whoevers doing this is could screw the rest of us over. Maybe the president, in his ultimate wisdom, along with his other attempts to gain political favor before he leaves the white house, will propose to instate IPv6. People who hear about these attacks on the news think that Yahoo (et al) were really hacked, and due to this the general public might approve. Well, these lame DoS kiddies would have really fscked us over(that is depending on your view of IPv6).

Because I care:

GUID

Win98 profiling

Professor Spokesman

Astroturf

Ads as news

Video

• X86.ORG
  
• Tom's Hardware
  

However, the thing does indeed look funny. It could be the possible love-child of a HP 712/60 and a component CD player .

It looks like Intel already beat you to it...

Isn't that just soooo easy.

What happened Intel? You already had a board with firewire on it? Remember?

Maybe intel couldn't figure out how to make it work? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that happened...

But I forgot, if it isn't free or open, it must suck...like those nice open and bug free PIII chips...yes sir, free and open.

Please don't forget the Patent Pool formed by Apple, Compaq, Matsushita (Panasonic), Philips, Sony and Toshiba

... is here.

Nothing more than a gloss-over news alert at this point, but at least another source is looking at this.

Maybe we can determine whether this is for real or not with a 3rd party verification.

1. This will end up becoming classic Microsoft vaporware.
2. They will shove pieces of Office into ActiveX controls in Microsoft's usual, contorted manner and claim that it is a web based office system despite the fact that it's bloated to the point of being useless for internet use and that it only runs on Windows.

Is it a coincidence that today the share price of Sun Microsystems went up while Applix and Corel went down? News.Com noticed stock price changes on opened-source Star day.

Is it a coincidence that today the share price of Sun Microsystems went up while Applix and Corel went down? News.Com noticed stock price changes on opened-source Star day.

Is it a coincidence that today the share price of Sun Microsystems went up while Applix and Corel went down? News.Com noticed stock price changes on opened-source Star day.

Is it a coincidence that today the share price of Sun Microsystems went up while Applix and Corel went down? News.Com noticed stock price changes on opened-source Star day.

Looks like the Voodoo 4 (or whatever they end up calling it) wi ll support the G4 Macs out of the
box.

Wired and ZD Net also have stories up that debunk Microsoft pretty well. I just haven't seen any stories that get it right in "mainstream" press yet, like Reuters, AP, CNN, or NYT. Any links? I would think that this is a story that has some legs still...

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,41 069,00.html

Hrm.. "advanced Web development languages".. URLs that map to backdoors.. uh.. OK. Hey.. I know HTML.. does that mean I'm super advanced? Maybe I can apply to Mickeysoft and get a nice job... fixing those highly advanced URL type of problems.

Sheesh.. they can't even come up with good spin. C'mon, I'm thinking alien attacks, Bill gone mad, Linux/BSD users invade Redmond and take over the place... ANYTHING but this sort of crap.
--

According to c|net's story, the original exploit web page claims to have been was written in June 1998!!!

There's also a great spin quote from Microsoft:

"Once we were notified we began investigating," the spokesperson said. "We found it was possible for a malicious hacker to gain access to the Hotmail servers through specific knowledge of advanced Web development languages. We turned off the servers in the interest of security and user privacy.

Define "lately." :-)

I had to look up this story at CNet to know what on earth you were talking about. Gotta love MAPS. They sure deserve my $35/year more than NSI does.

Hmmm, interesting... part of it says: "[Jonathan] Emery [NSI's general counsel] added that far from being spam, NSI's emails were 'vital catalysts to free and open commerce,' and that customers have the ability to get off the marketing list."

Someone tell me where the opt-out page on NSI's Web site is, please, I beg you!

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

Eschew Obfuscation

NY Times. (Requires free login!)
MSNBC
CNet

Eschew obfuscation.

Not at all. The previous flap wasn't over whether AOL was secure or not, but rather over the fact that Micorsoft got caught astroturfing again.

And the hilarious thing, the poetic justice if you will, is that while Microsoft was clumsily trying to call the kettle black without anyone knowing who the pot was, the pot itself was found to be dirty with respect to messaging software security. (As if MS's security problems are actually news anymore.)

Packet Storm was "alleged" by JP to have "a page with his 17-year-old sister's photo, name, and address", quoting from news.com's story on it. That's quite different from actually having posted that information, although Ken Williams did admit to a picture of JP's younger sister appearing on the site next to one of JP himself.

I'd like to talk to someone who actually *did* see the pic of a semen-covered nun.

MCI will still be around when this is over, but will a lot of "mom and pop" ISPs?
There's a story on C/NET "ISPs say MCI outage could kill
businesses" that's more than a little bit scary. Does MCI have their own ISP business? One that would just as soon see the little guys dry up and blow away? Do they have any corporate buddies that do?

Justin, fix your link. It's busted up.
Here's C|NET's version.

Here's the 3Com press release on BW and here's C/Net's interpretation.

Can someone please tell me how the people who recieved The Letter were choosen? AFAIK, it looks like it was just Friends and Family of people working for Red Hat that got the chance to buy stock first... "800,000 IPO shares for "directors, officers, employees and friends of Red Hat," the filing said." (Hmm... Isn't this close to "insider trading?" Well... Sure wish I would have got "The Letter" ;-)

Can someone please tell me how the people who recieved The Letter were choosen? AFAIK, it looks like it was just Friends and Family of people working for Red Hat that got the chance to buy stock first... "800,000 IPO shares for "directors, officers, employees and friends of Red Hat," the filing said." (Hmm... Isn't this close to "insider trading?" Well... Sure wish I would have got "The Letter" ;-)

Register article
news.com article
AP Business article on Yahoo

An act of God beat both hackers and beta testers to the punch this week when lightning crashed a Microsoft test site. - CNET News

Cool. God wins the contest! The greatest hacker of them all. Nobody ever taught me about this trick in kiddie hacker school.

Unless this is considered a DoS attack. Whoops. Guess He's disqualified.

"It's been up for most of the day today," he added.

Now that's comedy.

Ivan.

Don't forget Samba, too.
SGI has been dipping it's toes in open software for more than a year now - not including the times open software has been incorporated into IRIX in the past (ie tcsh and top). Learning open software development practices has been an ongoing process at SGI - IRIX 6.5's maintenance process has a remarkable resemblance to those of several open source projects. They're also doing quite a bit to establish SGI as a valued member of the community by making contributions to the open source base. SGI is one of the few vendors who have realized that open source projects are community efforts and success depends on having the recognition and support of the existing community.

Note that effort to have Linux running well on the visual workstations have been redoubled, it looks like Fahrenheit was canned, and the new
Intel based low-end server is being pushed with more emphasis on Linux than on NT. Maybe a unix vendor found it hard to work with folks from Seattle. What a shocker!

Unlike the other major vendors that are hopping onto the open source train, SGI still has some remainder of the freewheeling, motivated by coolness factor and pride in achievement (that has to be flagrantly displayed) corporate culture that made them a leader in the first half of the decade. The same motivations that drive open source. The 'g' stands for geeks, maybe?

Another interesting thought is that while IRIX is certainly one of the most advanced OS's around, the only reason it exists is that SGI wants to sell hardware, but needs to have an OS that will actually take advantage of it. All that really takes is being able to contribute a few key pieces. They are bound to IRIX until another OS has it's capabilities but don't feel like waiting for a potential option to catch up - especially when they might make money supporting it now.

Check out this C|Net article for more information

It describes how SGI is laying off and transferring a bunch of the Advanced System Division engineers. ASD is the heart and soul of SGI, and has been for a decade. It will be interesting to see what they say next Tuesday, but their actions are pretty revealing. Many engineers are being transfered to NVidia...recall that SGI reached some sort of deal with NVidia in the last couple of weeks about intellectual property.

The article says that the changes are designed to help their more profitable Intel workstations instead of their older Mips-based machines. Now, this of course flies in the face of reality, that the Intel machines lost a ton of money, but the Mips machines made enough that the entire company turned a profit. Of course, reality is a crutch for those who are not cut out to be Marketing Managers.

The article also confirms that the Fahrenheit initiative is being cut back. This is tremendously good news. Fahrenheit was supposed to be a follow-on to OpenGL, Inventor, and Performer -- it is a joint venture with Microsoft. I cannot imagine any input that Microsoft could have on OpenGL to make it better; even without the wretched example of Direct3D. If Fahrenheit was just a bone thrown to Microsoft to distract them from attacking OpenGL -- as it appears to me -- then I give SGI a lot of credit.

In articles a month or so ago, the announcement of the reorganization was going to happen today, the 5th, instead of the 10th. Their stockholder meeting, which used to be in August when I worked there, is now Oct. 27th.

Read the above article mentioned C|Net article, it's chock full of good information.

the suit and the appeal were both denied. more info at News.com

- coug

There are more articles (that don't require annoying registrations) at The Register, News.com and Techweb.

Solaris Central will also be covering additional news and updates to the processor. It should be interesting to see what unfolds...

Of course this sets no precedent in the US ... but you may never know when you're pointing to a site that happens to be situated in Holland and find yourself under their juristiction (where's the /. server for example - anyone know or care? maybe we would if one state in the US created such a precedent in a state court).

For more information on the (now very long running ) Scientology vs. the Net free-speech fight check out www.xenu.net [hint: it gets wonderfully funny at times such as when their lawyers are trying to determine the real identity of "Major Domo" so they can supoena him ... and when they discover that their opponents know of an FTP site that has all their secret files (ftp://127.0.0.1)]

Here's a link over at news.com talking about the same thing.

Microsoft has been working on MSNM for a year now. It was announced in July of last year and was supposed to be working (in beta form) that August. There was also a report from the same time that said that Microsoft was part of a group working on a standard messenging protocol. (I can't find it again, but you'll forgive me because it was a year ago.) Microsoft did not stick to their schedule and gave this reason: "We went down a technology path that didn't work as well as we thought, so we retrenched."

I don't have any inside info on the MSNM project, but I do know that references to it started appearing in other applications (beta versions of Outlook Express, etc) in October of 1998. For those of you who think Microsoft has been slow to release such a project, you are correct, but they have been working on one for a while.

This is *my* current view on what Microsoft is doing, I have nothing to substanciate it other than observation. Be warned, I don't think MS is evil and what I have to say reflects that view.

In an attempt to make the life of every user easier, and make open communication more possible Microsoft wanted a standard for messenging. That way the user wouldn't have to learn how to (or be forced to) install/run/configure/use a handful of programs. Instead they could just use one vendor independent program and communicate with everyone. Failing to reach any common ground with other companies, Microsoft decided to do the next best thing. With MSNM one program currently does the work of two. And it appears if other protocols will be added later.

Is this better then a unified standard? No. Is this better then running serveral apps that do the same thing? I think so.

With Yahoo! also supporting AIM I would have though that AOL would be cheering, because in order to chat with anyone on AOL you have to first sign-up through AIM. This is going to create more traffic for AOL. As we all know on the net traffic=money.

But, let's get back to Microsoft. Is MS going to be happy with implimenting everyones protocols in their product and only have partial cross protocol capability? (eg the ICQ protocol has many more features then the AIM one) I don't think so. I think MS wants to create a true standard. Does MSNM reflect this? Let's take a look.

Another disclaimer first. I have no knowledge of the internal working of MSNM, but here is possible scenerio based on what appears to be happening.

In order to use MSNM you have to have an account with Hotmail. Now a lot of people are going to say that this is because MS wants more people to use Hotmail. This may be true, but couldn't it also be the case that the e-mail address is used as the unique identifier and MS can therefore only verify the owners of people who use Hotmail. If this were a standard that would mean that the users e-mail domain would be responsible for verifying that user before allowing them to be online. Each partisipating domain would then have it's own messenging server software that communicates with the others. This would mean the server could not be controled by one group, and that clients could be available from multiple vendors.

Also, what is the feature set of MSNM currently? Well, it sucks. There isn't much to it. For features it's certainly not a threat to ICQ. But, wait. MS has been working on this for a year, and all it does is let you send messages and give yourself different status'. What's with that? Well, if they do want a standard, wouldn't it be nice to get input from other people before you impliment everything?

In short, I think MS wants to do the Right Thing for users (any hey, that might also be the Right Thing for the company)and is causing a stir to get some media attention (and geek attention) on the subject.

I think I'll stop now.

Microsoft has been working on MSNM for a year now. It was announced in July of last year and was supposed to be working (in beta form) that August. There was also a report from the same time that said that Microsoft was part of a group working on a standard messenging protocol. (I can't find it again, but you'll forgive me because it was a year ago.) Microsoft did not stick to their schedule and gave this reason: "We went down a technology path that didn't work as well as we thought, so we retrenched."

I don't have any inside info on the MSNM project, but I do know that references to it started appearing in other applications (beta versions of Outlook Express, etc) in October of 1998. For those of you who think Microsoft has been slow to release such a project, you are correct, but they have been working on one for a while.

This is *my* current view on what Microsoft is doing, I have nothing to substanciate it other than observation. Be warned, I don't think MS is evil and what I have to say reflects that view.

In an attempt to make the life of every user easier, and make open communication more possible Microsoft wanted a standard for messenging. That way the user wouldn't have to learn how to (or be forced to) install/run/configure/use a handful of programs. Instead they could just use one vendor independent program and communicate with everyone. Failing to reach any common ground with other companies, Microsoft decided to do the next best thing. With MSNM one program currently does the work of two. And it appears if other protocols will be added later.

Is this better then a unified standard? No. Is this better then running serveral apps that do the same thing? I think so.

With Yahoo! also supporting AIM I would have though that AOL would be cheering, because in order to chat with anyone on AOL you have to first sign-up through AIM. This is going to create more traffic for AOL. As we all know on the net traffic=money.

But, let's get back to Microsoft. Is MS going to be happy with implimenting everyones protocols in their product and only have partial cross protocol capability? (eg the ICQ protocol has many more features then the AIM one) I don't think so. I think MS wants to create a true standard. Does MSNM reflect this? Let's take a look.

Another disclaimer first. I have no knowledge of the internal working of MSNM, but here is possible scenerio based on what appears to be happening.

In order to use MSNM you have to have an account with Hotmail. Now a lot of people are going to say that this is because MS wants more people to use Hotmail. This may be true, but couldn't it also be the case that the e-mail address is used as the unique identifier and MS can therefore only verify the owners of people who use Hotmail. If this were a standard that would mean that the users e-mail domain would be responsible for verifying that user before allowing them to be online. Each partisipating domain would then have it's own messenging server software that communicates with the others. This would mean the server could not be controled by one group, and that clients could be available from multiple vendors.

Also, what is the feature set of MSNM currently? Well, it sucks. There isn't much to it. For features it's certainly not a threat to ICQ. But, wait. MS has been working on this for a year, and all it does is let you send messages and give yourself different status'. What's with that? Well, if they do want a standard, wouldn't it be nice to get input from other people before you impliment everything?

In short, I think MS wants to do the Right Thing for users (any hey, that might also be the Right Thing for the company)and is causing a stir to get some media attention (and geek attention) on the subject.

I think I'll stop now.

My gripe for the day about them is their "Media Player"/"Netshow" product. I have some *.asf files that I want to play and only have Linux and Solaris machines. I remembered they had a player in beta a long time ago and came up with this link here... of course it's a broken link when you actually go to download it. :( After much digging, it seems that the Unix clients are no more. (Which, if any of you still have it for Linux, I'd be interested...) They don't standardize the format and keep it proprietary which is what creates problems for folks like myself. Of course if this format were an open standard, I'd just have to snarf the latest xanim bits and play away. Apple seems also to be making the same mistakes here.

I got a laugh about this when I saw this story a month ago where a MS drone pushes Open Standards versus none other than a SUN product... seemed a bit ironic to me... :)

Quick...get those slashdot blinders on.

Yahoo, Prodigy? Anyone, Anyone? I guess it's okay to screw over anyone, as long as MS is in the group too.

btw...Microsoft already worked around AOL's block

Slashdot should change it's motto to:

If you don't have anything mean to say about Microsoft, don't say anything at all.

Also, geeknews.net has been keeping up pretty well on this.

Here's a news.com article, too:

• "
• Net Messaging Standards War Brewing"

Another interesting thing is that MS released a "fixed" build, which AOL then broke again. Round and round we go.