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It has become clear, though, that the question of foreign citizens has been the most problematic in efforts to keep the city's count accurate. Over the last several days, the city's list of the missing became inflated by what officials said were missing persons reports from consulates and embassies for countries including India and Israel.

But interviews with many consulate officials yesterday suggested that the lists of people they were collecting varied widely in their usefulness. For example, the city had somehow received reports of many Israelis feared missing at the site, and President Bush in his address to the country on Thursday night mentioned that about 130 Israelis had died in the attacks.

But today, Alon Pinkas, Israel's consul general here, said that lists of the missing included reports from people who had called in because, for instance, relatives in New York had not returned their phone calls from Israel. There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead: two on the planes and another who had been visiting the towers on business and who was identified and buried.

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Broadband in Japan and Canada is much cheaper - how can they do it?

Unbundling has not played a major part in Canadian broadband. BCE (Bell Canada and others) are a near monopoly on the telco side, but got into DSL early because of competition from cable companies. Cable modems came out in Canada in 1996. During 2000, service problems with cable modems then lead to a growth in DSL access in Canada. There are about 2.6 million broadband users in Canada at end-of-year 2001.

Meanwhile, ISPs have accused Bell Canada of anti-competitive DSL pricing. I can believe this, because Verizon played a similar game versus the CLECs (and I got cheap DSL...)

But recently "Industry Minister Allan Rock Bell Canada shot an arrow at the heart of the Internet, levying a $3-5 toll on a streaming movie and a $2.50 surcharge on a regular radio listener. They raised their basic rates 13 percent, and tacked on a surcharge of $7.90 (Canadian) a gig after 5 gigabyte."

In addition, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) charges 4.5% of Canadian telco revenues for a fund to subsidize service in high-cost areas (i.e. rural ones).

Check out the Canadian Broadband Task Force that wants to spend over CA$4 billion on broadband.

Other countries have it easier because of population concentration. Korea has 15% of its population (7.5 million people) connected to broadband. This is because 70% of Koreans live in 7 largest cities, and 40% of urban apartments are served by DSL. I know average local loop lengths are smaller in Europe due to its smaller area and higher urbanization, and I believe Japan has the same situation as well.

The Korean government has also financed a 22,000 km intercity backbone, is distributing satellite receivers in rural areas, and provides low-interest loans to providers.

What slashdot fails to mention is that the law is ONLY for spam which is selling financial services.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170700.html

This should have been posted as a joke more than a legitimate law.

What will happen is that ISPs in that country will be forced to block access to the offending web site. This has already happened in some minor venues, such as Saudi Arabia. There have also been failed attempts in France.

By the way, are there any coffee shops within WiFi range of your new office? They wouldn't mind if I hung out, drank coffee, and read slashdot would they?

additional links:

washington post

newsbytes

Yes, but there is a pretty important legal link

From the NewsBytes article:

Attorneys for the DVD CCA declined to comment on today's filing. When the group filed its appeal two months ago, it said a November 2001 ruling in New York supports its assertion that the First Amendment was not intended to block courts from preventing the illegal distribution of a program that improperly uses DVD CCA's trade secrets.

IANAL but it seems to me that this courts eventual ruling will have important implications for any further action the 2600 crew decide to take.

Shouldn't someone file an injunction to prevent you from linking to the article? I'm completely serious... just think how the publicity (ie. getting laughed out of court) would help 2600

Info for readers to learn more of what was really their greatest sin: the retroactive selling of customer's emails and phone numbers from the whois database.

The details:
-A complete copy of all the personal information in the whois database was sold.
-Each copy was sold for $10,000--made payable to the company.
-The list was retroactive, selling the info of all the existing customers, not just the new ones signing up after the sell announcement was made.

It doesn't seem to have been archived by many of the usual news outlets. Here is a coverage of it from the Washington Post at the time (about half way down is the mention of them selling the customer contact data to anyone wanting it):

Washington Post article

But this link is the real kicker: the VeriSign tagline motto, considering these types of shady dealings with their customers: The service-marked VeriSign tagline

Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?

No, that was March 25, 2002.

FWIW, it was wnad.exe that was bundled with "Yo Mama"

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171646.html

I've been told this on several occasions by people who -are- well up on card security. The PIN is certainly stored on the card in some applications.

The PIN is obviously -not- stored plaintext, but as a DES encrypted number somehow. This may not be true for all systems but if you look halfway down here or here
You will get the general idea.

On the other hand, other sites tell you differently.

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...

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...

... Stephen King's experiment, where he allowed free download of his book and asked for a tiny donation in return. Very few of the people who downloaded the book paid for it and the project was scrapped.

Saying that this experience proves that ebooks don't work is adding insult to injury.

Do you believe in death after life?

Yes, but Bash, Netscape etc. doesn't trasmit that dat back to an 800lb gorrila, my friend.

Preach on, brother! Erm, oh wait...

Newsbytes: Netscape Navigator Browser Snoops On Web Searches

"According to a network traffic analysis performed by Newsbytes, Netscape is capturing Navigator 6 users' search terms, along with their Internet protocol (IP) address, the date Navigator was installed and a unique identification number."

Hmmm, a unique identification number, eh? So forget logging your IP address with your search (which Microsoft and the other search engines claim not to do), forget gathering demographic data (which the XP Search Assistant also doesn't do), but Netscape is actually using a unique ID numbers to tie searches to specific individual users.

Wanna try again? ;)

Designers/manufactures of clothing, like those of consumer electronics have a built-in mechanism to avoid cornering themselves into this kind of thing: marketing for those industries is primarily centered on "the latest and greatest" (either style or technology or both). They won't have to complain they're not getting their cut of old clothes, because today's kids will be whining to their parents in the millions to buy them the best new thing since shoes with LEDs in them.

Readers have attention spans slightly longer than those of gnats, so they're less susceptable to this kind of consumer manipulation. The scary thing will be when the "mo' money" media mastadons catch on and get in bed with the technology companies to develop purchased media formats that deteriorate after a few uses (oh wait, this is already starting to happen...).

It's kind of funny...until now, I used to think that writers were among the few who still appreciated art for art's sake. I thought was the publishers that were the money mongers. I don't think Voltaire had compensation from paperback sales in mind when he created Candide. If you don't like people buying used books, then don't write one.

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
--Ayn Rand

This is in response to the general state of paranoia that has ensued since 9/11, with 'cybersecurity' as a high priority.

Long before September 11 and last year's virus-like attacks over the Internet, the United States government announced plans to train an elite corps of computer security experts to guard against cyberterrorism.

And that includes the US Government. It might go especially for the US Government where "security" is usually dealt with a Cold War mentality. One that has little to do with the current state of information security. Instead, government agencies tend to rely heavily on prosecution (which kicks in well after the damage has been done). Change to this mindset is hampered by limited budgets which make hiring experts (or retaining anyone with the appropriate skillset) difficult. A couple years ago, the FBI even complained to congress that they could not attract experts in the field due to their uncompetative pay.

So to wrap it all up. Government computer systems tend to make suprisingly easy targets. This program is part of the awakening and catch-up the government is undergoing on this issue. It has very little to do with terrorism and 9/11. And even the very article referred to states that.

While it appears clear that Google caved in to PR pressure (site author Andreas has stated he didn't counternotify the DMCA notification), the victory seems to only pertain to the home page and not to the dozens of other urls cult lawyer Ava Paquette cited in her original complaint - which of course leaves the material on those pages unsearchable. Google probably made an 'executive decision' to allow the home page, since there isn't a single thing that could deemed a copyright violation on that page.

However, Google is still allowing Paquette to exploit a contradictory flaw in the DMCA by honoring the rest of the complaint. (I tried searching about 15 other links directly on Google, and all came up dead - so I can't say unilaterally that Google is blocking all of the urls, but they're at least blocking all 15 of a random sampling.)

The key contradiction within the Act itself appears to be the vastly different indemnity offered to ISPs versus that provided for search engines, or as the Act refers to them, "information retrieval tools." Under the DMCA, once notified of links to infringing content, a search engine is required to disable access to the material in question pending a counternotification from the accused infringer - which was what was demanded of the xenu.net site author despite the fact that such a counternotification would have required a citizen of Norway to submit to the jurisdiction of a US federal court.

However, in a recent ruling dealing with the liability of AOL, a court found just the opposite: as an ISP, it was protected from liability for providing "transitory digital network connections" to allegedly infringing material, and not obliged to remove such links even if explicitly informed of their existence. Ironically, ISPs, who are arguably more directly in control, as it were, of third party material hosted on their servers, are granted more protection for "transitory" access to infringing material than search engines, whose very raison d'etre is to provide such links which are inherently ephemeral, and hence transitory, by nature, as they are the result of specific queries, and do not exist on a permanenty accessible single page.

This basic contradiction within the DMCA puts the onus on search engines to maintain by hand the results of their automated search process, and respond to any and all DMCA complaints, regardless of the location or even continued existence of the page to which the link directs the user.

It's clear that this loophole presents rapacious copyright owners with a new tool with which to combat any and all use of their material, but as seen in the case of xenu.net, it can also be used as an alternative to launching a suit by copyright owners whose goal is not the protection of their property, but the silencing of critics.

Google's DMCA disclaimer page says " Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights." Is Google prepared to sue the Church of Scientology? After all, misrepresention is most certainly what has occured, and only after Google suffered a major league PR asswhomping did they, upon further reflection, decide that the home page was not a copyright violation.

So while Scientology lost the major battle (their intention was and has been for some time the removal of all critical content from Google, and especially xenu.net from the top ten), they still managed to win lots of minor skirmishes - forcing the xenu.net site author to respond to dozens of specific complaints, nearly all of them barratrous (which I believe I can opine, being familar with the specific content on those pages, each of which adheres to the bounds of fair use). And because Scientology's newfound weapon found limited success, we can be sure we're going to see it again and again. This is far fom over and unless Google takes a stand, they will be abused badly.

Yep, the original article at Newsbytes confirms the software is bpboh.dll by Wurld Media

My removal was successfull, just make sure to completely reboot (instead of relogging on)

An older article from the Washington Post (back when he fired his first lawyer) doesn't show his dad in the most intelligent of lights either.

I think it's more of a case of hid dad having a blind belief that Heckenkamp didn't do it, and everything that comes out of the mouth relates to that...

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/175108.html

Why does this story sound familiar?

Fair Domain-Dispute Arbitration Firm Quits the Business (Slashdot 12/05)

Here's the story the /. article links to:

Arbitration Firm Quits Domain-Dispute Business

I think it's nice to see a study validate the anecdotal evidence given by the arbitration firm mentioned in the /. story. What's odd to me is that in this system of arbitration, the parties, in essence, get to choose the judges. It makes me think of the whole wrong-headed style of journalism that's pervasive today that assumes that to do a fair story, you interview people at the extremes of an issue, and decide that the truth is somewhere in the middle, without ever considering that one or both sides are simply wrong.

Isn't this precisely why judges (int he US) are assigned to cases based on a lottery system?

Several hours later it was discovered that the software used by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had a slight flaw, and the corrected simulations show that the nuclear explosions were in fact beige.

In a related story, the updated software was found to contain massive amounts of spyware.

Various analysts have all predicted i-mode is doomed to fail in europe. The business model as it stands in Japan just doesn't work. One of the main reasons for i-mode's success in Japan was the lack of text messaging. Europe has had this for some time, phone's and networks are nearly at the i-mode level and given 3G investment from other networks, seems unlikely to succeed. Jon (Doing WAP development!)

Off had I would suspect chaos agents of the music industry, who have been doing things the wrong way for a long time.

But this is just idle, unfounded speculation

Right.

Since it appears that the attack on your computers came from the closed proprietary FastTrack-Kazaa software, we have opted not to continue with this p2p kernel.

Which is just as well. I do note this article in newsbytes, and wonder if someone got an inside edge to fasttrack someplace.

cloak and dagger operations indeed.

Here are a few:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/01/technology/01DIG I.html?todaysheadlines

http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/press/107-159.html

http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/174828.html

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-847229.html

http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24195.html

Hope you weren't being sarcastic.

It looks like the FCC has got it completely backwards. Instead of regulating a separation between data transport and applications, it has reclassified data transport as a service, and thus removed open access requirements.
This is the exact opposite of the collective wisdom of the networking industry, as I collected here.
Powell today reiterated his opinion that all broadband platforms - cable, wireless, satellite and DSL - should be considered when crafting broadband policy.

"It's important to conceptualize broadband broadly," Powell told reporters following today's meeting.

It is indeed - but rather than prop up a series of monopoly rights, providing an opportunity for Howard Jonas to acheive his stated aim:
"Sure I want to be the biggest telecom company in the world, but it's just a commodity. I want to be able to form opinion. By controlling the pipe, you can eventually get control of the content."

Powell should be considering how to enable maximum flexibility by separating the commodity business of transferring packets from the open applications that define what the packets mean. This is how to maximise the value of the net for everyone, not for a few local monopolists - a fine job for a regulator.

You're forgetting I-Worm.LogoLogic.A. This, and the fact that this language controls actual hardware makes it very dangerous!! Well, Ok, just about as dangerous as pen-wielding, tone-generating, light-blinking robot can get.

"People can rant and rave on the Internet all they want, but when they cross the line of calling people to action to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States, they have a problem," said McLaughlin.
...
The defacements contain white and red text on a black background, with the title "Hacked by the UCA - Underground Confidential Association" and a verbose screed about overthrowing the government and building a "New World Order."

Flamebait Disclaimer: I am trying to be insightful, if i come through as flamebait, eh, oops.

Trillian is a better AIM client. It has so much AIM doesnt, for example Secure IM (128kbit encryption on both ends), and those things that it does (direct connect aka IM Images). You can make Trillian look nice. You can give your friends aliases so screen names have meaning. You can use AIM, IRC, ICQ, Y! and MSN. There are no advertisements. It is free.

As of November 2001, AOL had more than 32 million subscribers. Each pays $21.95 a month for full service. (Yes, i know there are cheaper plans, but the majority of the people are stuck using AOL dialup). Thats an estimated 704 million dollars a month ($22*32000000), just from AOL /subscribers/ alone(remember, it is AOL/Time Warner.) These people make an obscene amount of cash every month!

An even better point: AOL owns ICQ. I can still log into ICQ via Trillian. Why do they let it go with ICQ? Why does AOL let people send mail outside of their network? It's the same principle, and a sad one at that

//pcable

From the article:

Following the Sept.11 attacks on America, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, which expand the ability of law enforcement to hunt for terrorists.

"People can rant and rave on the Internet all they want, but when they cross the line of calling people to action to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States, they have a problem," said McLaughlin.

Doesn't anyone else see this as, ironically, un-American? The U.S. forefathers may have intended the U.S. Constitution to be the law of the land, but they also believed that it was the duty of patriots to overthrow oppressive or tyranical government. Jefferson is quoted as saying that revolution is, in fact, needed every 20 years or so.

Perhaps the government has yet to reach a state of being overly oppressive or tyranical, but it seems that we Americans are becoming much too averse to risk and fearful of social change.

Used to be Slashdot folks were on top of things.

While the Linux community does not seem concerned with money
Personally, I think that's one of the main reasons Linux is doing so well. There are no stockholders pusing for a new release so they can charge $100+ for an upgrade. Instead, code is released when its READY to be released, instead of finding out about HUGE security holes in its most secure version of Windows ever

Linux is directly dependent on the failures/success of Microsoft
Care to back that up with anything at all?

You might get better service from Microsoft, but I never have. I've asked the open source community for help with several problems over the years by posting to various newsgroups or forums, and always gotten detailed helpful information. When we had a problem with an NT4 server crashing, they asked me to resize the pagefile, which didn't change anything. That was their only advice.

Microsoft has never released any software that is as unusable as Linux
Go try Microsoft BOB, or the first version of MS FrontPage. The new installs of RedHat (the distro I use) is far simpler than either of the above mentioned products.

Linux is not yet ready to compete with Windows
Linux IS competing with windows. Check out web server statistics, or the infamous Halloween Papers. If Linux was not competeing, Microsoft wouldn't be worried about it.

Nobody can predict whether it[Linux] will be ready in six months or five years
Yet you can say that Linux will not survive. I can't follow that logic.

I would describe the Linux community as naive, unrealistic, and disorganized. So far they have been giving us inferior service and inferior software
And that's fair, you can describe it any way you like, but the fact remains that Linux is still growing faster in the server market that MS is. Who knows if that trend will continue.

Once in a while the gov does something right.

CmdrTaco: "Hmm, I need a story to whip up the /. crowd...lets see..."
Taco opens Konqueror and heads over to google. He begins to enter search terms.

Taco: "'Bill Gates and Goats'...heehee thats great! What!? No results?!? Hmm, Ok...'RMS eats baby'....shit, nothing."

This continues for awhile as Taco and the gang struggle to find something to really get the /. crowd into a feeding frenzy. It's not hard, but last weeks MSIE "exploit" was damn well near a Pulitzer for Michael. "Whatever we do," says Taco, "it needs to be from a third party, outlandish, unsubstantiated, and hopefullly, as short on detail as possible, the less the better. Ambiguity is what drives those page views, boys."

Suddenly, Taco has a brilliant thought, and races back to his hacked DreamCast. He furiously types in the phrase "Osama bin Laden hiding in Bill and Melinda Gates' guesthouse". To his joy and surprise, he nearly falls over when he sees this fine work of journalism.

Taco posts it to the front page and watches the pirana gather for the frenzy. Looks like /. is going to live to see another day.

You've written a lot about the sad state of copyrights, but what about the other government-granted monopoly: patents? Now that the MPEG folks are suing Compaq, it seems likely that cease-and-desist lawsuits against the developers or distributors of the variety of free MPEG software can't be too far away. The GPL and software/algorithm patents would seem to be completely incompatible. How do you see the proliferation of such patents affecting software and the Internet?

No, they didn't agree to that. That's the point.

e.g. see this or this

Yes, it would be more useful to read the actual court ruling or a more detailed news report than the Yahoo/CNet story.

The heart of the case was not whether a court - any court - can usurp ICANN's UDRP, but whether attempts to earn a declaratory judgment in the U.S. can be started under U.S. anticybersquatting law without the trademark holder making an ACPA threat.

This case could apply whether the trademark holder is outside the U.S. or not.

Jursidiction from a geographical standpoint is pretty much decided at the get-go in UDRP cases.

If it worked both ways. If I owned, say microsoft.org, it would get taken from me even though MS is clearly not a non-profit. The fact is, the original definitions of what TLDs meant is lost in the current system.

See the dispute over WWF.com. The World Wildlife Fund sues the World Wrestling Federation for the domain wwf.com. Now, since the World Wildlife Fund is a non-profit, and already owns wwf.org, and the World Wrestling Federation is clearly for-profit, where's the dispute? Under RFC 1591 each party has the correct domain.

Of course, the WWF (wrestling) has abused the UDRP themselves in the past, but the my point is that actually following the traditional definition of the TLDs is not something the arbitrars care about at all.

So far the U.S. Government isn't doing so good with Linux and Apache. Here's an article about some recent hacks on US Gov sites using this software. hack
If you look at the posts here you will see alot critisizm and jokes but no real ideas, solutions, or answers. It's easy to sit in the backseat and knock everyone and everything but if anyone here thinks they can do a better job then why don't you all send in your resumes or volunteer time.

The point is that an _automated_ system is not subject to the same rules as a _manual_ system.

In an _automated_ system, you are a carrier of information and you have no control over it. Because you have no control over the content I believe that you are not liable for it.

In a system where you start editing/deleting/censoring posts, you essentailly endorse the ones that remain and are, therefore, liable for the content.

According to this, there is now precident for a "public forum" rule.

Under the DMCA section 512,

"'' 512. Limitations on liability relating to material online
''(a) TRANSITORY DIGITAL NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS.--A service
provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided
in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement
of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting,
routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or
network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by
reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in
the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections,
if--
20
''(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at
the direction of a person other than the service provider;
''(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or
storage is carried out through an automatic technical process
without selection of the material by the service provider;
''(3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the
material except as an automatic response to the request of another
person;
''(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in
the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained
on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible
to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such
copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily
accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period
than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing,
or provision of connections; and
''(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network
without modification of its content."

In other words: as long as you don't modify, censor, alter, redirect, or otherwise tamper with the content you are a public forum and are safe from lawsuits (well, they can sue, but you'll have a legal defense).

Simply: Speech on a message board is worthless and not legally binding. If you want freedom of speech, yell out your window - and you're more likely to get in trouble for that.

This was on Tomalak's Realm a few days ago.

Newsbytes: California Appeals Court Upholds Message Board Speech.

The appellate court found that postings on an Internet message board constituted a "public forum," as defined in the anti-SLAPP statute. The court further ruled the defendants posted opinions as shareholders of ComputerXpress, not competitors, and the matter was therefore "an issue of public interest.

Also another link: SJ Mercury: From November 28, 1999; `Cybersmear' lawsuits raise privacy concern.

PS, please read the articles and understand them. I know it is a very hard thing to do, but I've even made them hyperlinks.

I don't know where Gates gets his figures, but Google [google.com] tells me that Canada is up there with South Korea with penetrations of around 40-50%. This neat page of summary stats [internet.com] shows Denmark and Sweden at around 14% and I suspect many Scandinavian and other European countries are on par with the US's 11% broadband penetration rate. Sounds to me like the US is fighting for fifth at best.

A (PDF) OECD report on "The Development of Broadband Access in OECD Countries" has, on page 8, a graph of "Broadband penetration in OECD countries, June 2001", showing the US in fourth place, behind Korea (way ahead of everybody else, with 14 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants), Canada (6/100), and Sweden (~4.3/100). The Netherlands appears to be epsilon below the US, and following it are Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, Germany, Japan, and various others (see the graph for the full list).

Presumably the 40-50% figures are something other than percentages of the inhabitants, for example percentages of Internet users.

Google can tell you lots of things, depending on what page you found; you didn't indicate which page it found, nor did you indicate what you searched for. A search for "broadband penetration" found a Newsbytes article from October 4, 2001, saying that South Korea has 95% of home Internet users connected with broadband, Hong Kong with 53%, Taiwan with 35%, and Singapore with 24%, but only 5% in Australia and 4% in New Zealand. It says that a separate study shows 17.5% in the US.

An older report by the Strategis Group referred to in this CNN article names Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Singapore, and Sweden as likely to lead broadband penetration.

To be precise, it says

The report, "International High-Speed Access: The Residential Marketplace 1999," said that less than 1 percent of the world's households use broadband Internet access. It predicts that combined DSL and cable modem penetration of total households will reach 10 to 30 percent by 2003 in several markets, including Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, and the US.

They are already being sued

I think you spoke too soon...

QUESTION: Hi. You talked about broadband and that it was at about 10 percent of households, and that brings to mind streaming media, and I would appreciate it if one of you could address the various aspects of streaming media with regard to where Microsoft is right now compared to its competitor, and where it's expected to be with respect to its competitor in, say, nine months, and then how streaming media plays out in terms of the lawsuit, what kinds of ramifications might be expected.

MR. GATES: ...The second area, the video area, is the tougher of the two, because that really does require this high speed connection. And most people at work have high speed connections. So you can take a little news clip or video conference, and use that quite easily. In the U.S., as I mentioned, only 10 percent of homes have broadband. Actually, in Korea it's 40 percent of homes, but the U.S. is close to being second among broadband penetration. We'd like to see that go up. Of course, the key element of that is that the price has to come down somewhat from the $50 a month in order to see the wider spread usage.

http://www.atlargestudy.org/final_report.shtml

If you don't have time reading the report, read the Wired summary of the report:

"On Monday, a committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said it wants to adopt a proposal allowing directors to be elected by members of the public who own Internet domains."

Newsbytes take on the report:

"It's a mistake to push these issues entirely down to Ghana," Bildt said, referring to ICANN's next scheduled meeting, which is set to take place in Ghana, Africa next March."

Regards

Mikael

Newsbytes is reporting that the individual states have refused to sign on. And it just may be a 'good thing' in the long run for it to pan out this way. MS will continue it's monopolistic practices, as demonstated by it's XP licensing requirements (what if I don't have an internet connection?), and just maybe will get smacked harder in the future. In the short term , it becomes even more imperative to suppport alternatives, including open source AND Apple (I know, they'd do the same given half a chance...), and do what you can to either
1) steer friends/relatives/employers to these alternatives or
2) convince said friends/relatives/employers to stick with what they have (which shouldn't be too difficult given the current financial conditions.)

Remember, BUY AMERICAN!... except for MS

(tig)

If your Canadian, there is info about the effort to bring DMCA-style fascism to Canada, read here:http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167203.html

and .gc.ca info here