Slashdot Mirror

I'll back it up.
It is the explicit (and logical) intention of AV comapanies not to name rogues in the fashion the author desires.

Symantec's Policy is as folloes
Virus names consist of a Prefix, a Name, and often a Suffix.

* The Prefix denotes the platform on which the virus replicates or the type of virus. A DOS virus usually does not contain a Prefix.
* The Name is the family name of the virus.
* The Suffix may not always exist. Suffixes distinguish among variants of the same family and are usually numbers denoting the size of the virus or letters.

The Code Red virus got its name from an eEye Digital Security researcher's beverage of choice -- the cola variety of Mountain Dew soft drink -- the night they picked through the corruptive code.

Symantec Security Response senior director Vincent Weafer, who referred to Code Red's caffeine-based name, told NewsFactor that there are some things researchers do not use when naming worms:

"We don't use the name of the virus writer because we don't want to give name recognition for something that's done for publicity, and we don't use the date because there are so many trigger dates and it's such an easy thing to change that it wouldn't make any sense," Weafer said.

"After that, it comes down to the researcher and what they find unique about a particular virus," Weafer added.

Quotes above from :
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vnam einfo.html/
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/15662.html#st ory-start/
http://users.tcworks.net/virus/naming.htm/

Are there any slashdotters willing to join my class action suit? We'll sue becuase Microsoft Admits XP Media Player Spies on Users.

I've been following the story about the joint venture between Toshiba and Canon on SED TV's for some time. Apparently it has become somewhat more real, as shown in this article.

Apparently things are going well enough with the new factory that Toshiba is stopping plasma-panel production, and staking its future on SED TV's.

SEDs are like CRTs, in that they use electron guns to shoot electrons across a vacuum at a phosphor scren to generate light. The difference is that SEDs have a semiconductor-based electron emitter at each pixel. This allows the screen to be flat, shallow (a few centimeters) and relatively lightweight, while preserving the fast response, brightness, and wide viewing-angle of regular CRTs. Also, somewhat surprisingly, SEDs are significantly less power-hungry than plasma panels or even big LED screens.

Toshiba and Canon have built a factory to start building these TVs, and apparently they are going to be trickling into the market toward the end of 2005. I can't wait!

Thad Beier

• Sony PSP (Playstation Portable): It's only the most anticipated handheld gaming device ever -- a portable wonder that packs all the power of the original PlayStation in one palm-size package. And it doesn't just play games: according to Sony, it'll also deliver music and MPEG-4 video, display photos and offer 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity for wireless gaming and messaging. It's going on sale in Japan this weekend. The United States, however, doesn't get it until March 2005 at the earliest.

While Lycos was on unsteady legal footing in terms of their targets (i.e. it's often tough to connect a web site to the spam sender) the MPAA and RIAA can easily prove that a particular user or BitTorrent link site is sharing/hosting/providing copyrighted material. It may be just a matter of time before earlier efforts to legalize RIAA and MPAA DDOS attacks are resurrected.

didja get rid of spyware trojans and viruses first? or bother to read the readme? No, you were too busy recompiling the kernel and whining about Microsoft to RTFM.

Wow, you really don't have a clue, do you?
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=263 44

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+lists+SP2+conflicts/ 2100-1016_3-5311280.html?tag=nl

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+tackles+AMD+conflict +in+SP2/2100-1016_3-5326707.html
From this article: Microsoft had advised AMD users to remove SP2 altogether.

There are pleanty of others.
And lets not forget problems with legacy applications. (Which many people need.)

Suse shows no signs of moving toward a Gnome desktop. About the best gnome users can hope for at this point is more support for open desktop - which might, in itself, be a very good thing.

Suse might have it in the corporate world, but for my own personal use (and most of my friends) I've still found nothing better than Mandrake. After using 10.1 for a few weeks, I'm now more convinced of this than ever.

The Agence France-Presse says otherwise, sadly.

It is true that seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok predicted a quake around this magnitude for this year. This quake missed his six-month timeframe by just over three weeks. And it is notably further south.

That would still be a little too close for coincedence for me, except the day before the deadline for the earthquake to occur Dr. Keilis-Borok announced the prediction was based on false data.

So was he covering his tail and reputation back then at the expense of being a little too north and a little too early?

We'll have to wait to see what he says, I guess.

justen

Verizon is launching a DSL service that is twice as fast as its current DSL offering, with downloads of up to 3 Mbps. story here

Especially because of this, the broadband wars should become interesting.

Many people say you cannot run ASP.NET forms on Apache, yes you can. I do it and many people do it. I found a short little tutorial for you guys. here Here is the announcement from the Apache team that they would be supporting ASP.NET on Apache here OMG, Microsoft actually helped Covalent and the Apache teams get ASP.NET working on Apache 2. Read it This is more Oracle anti-MS rhetoric to get more money in their pockets.

Kazaa died 2-3 years ago lol return of the fedi.

There are a whole bunch of other p2p services available which are much harder to shut down, most prominently because the servers are outside the US. Soon there will be encrypted networks to replace the current crop of kazaa replacements.

Any commercial p2p effort is going to involve (in addition to the aforementioned encryption) significant non-infringing uses first and then add p2p later. Work is already underway lol hint.

The real reason software is losing money:
Because software companies with mature products keep adding useless features to drive the upgrade cycle, not realizing that improved support for virus propogation is not a feature most people want in Word.

Honestly, Windows and Office were mature products somewhere back in the 97-2000 stretch. The past 4-7 years have seen most of microsoft's products develop lots of useless bells and whistles and lots of security holes and bugs. Why pay the MSFT tax when linux and staroffice are free and provide most of the features you really need. Shit, Firefox rocks just because it does simple browing really well and DOESNT run ActiveX controls or allow popups. Zing, like 100 security holes and annoyances removed in an instant.

This is why microsoft is:
-releasing a stripped down version of XP at a lower cost to compete with Linux (read, lower our prices because people dont find our new products any more compelling than our old ones that they already have)
tech.veolzie.com (off google)
-reducing costs (read- laying off thousands of their programmers and sticking to bug fixing and maintenance of their existing stuff)
www.newsfactor.com (off google)

This is the same company that at one time hosted many Arab or Muslim web sites, including:

• Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)
• Islamic Society of North America
• Islamic Association for Palestine
• Holy Land Foundation
• Al-Jazeera television channel
• Al-Sharq newspaper
• Al-Islam.com

And other sites too.

Just before September 11, 2001, the FBI confiscated the servers that hosted all those sites, causing them to go offline for days. This was covered on Slashdot at the time, finding the link is left as an exercise to the reader :-) Later, the servers were returned, but most of the above customers have already switched to other hosting firms to host their web sites. Al Jazeera was one of those.

Then, Ashcroft caused the Holy Land Fund assets to be frozen, claiming they are funding terrorism. A court battle wass underway to challenge that decision. Don't know what the status is right now.

Then the owners of Infocom (all of Palestinian origin, all Muslims) were personally charged for shipping computer parts to countries under embargo, so they are put out of business

This is the background that leads to, and keeps, the .iq TLD in limbo.

Here are some articles:

• From an article dated Sept 2001
• FBI denies raid was Anti-Arab
• An article at NewsFactor
• An article at BBC
• An article at IAP

To quote from this article:

"The speed of fiber make advanced broadband offerings -- especially high definition TV -- possible, SBC says, because the technology allows download speeds as high as 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of as much as 3 Mbps. Television services will be based on Microsoft's Internet protocol TV platform, which has been tested by telecoms in India, Canada and Europe.

"IPTV uses the newest Windows Media Series 9 video-compression technology, but some experts question whether it will work efficiently over wires where customers connect to nodes from existing infrastructure. Microsoft says the compression technology will work."

Hmm. Dunno. I have to admit that I'm surprised that SBC is working with MS on this, but then again they are both pretty evil, so I guess not.

Singapore Airlines already offers in-flight SMS.

If I delete something, I want it GONE. It's not as good as an idle-time thread that 11-pass nukes unallocated sectors at random, but it'll do for a start.

Totally agree - Windows has had a similar feature for weeks now. It's about time the OpenSource community finally catches up!

MS "Witty" Disk Security

;) (for the humor-impaired)

> "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and technically superior."

RDRAM was "technically superior" in theory, but as far as I remember the supposed performance benefits didn't have a significant enough impact on total system performance with the then-current chipsets to justify the huge price difference.

RDRAM looked promising at first, with Intel as the primary backer, but Rambus and Intel thourougly screwed up its introduction. This is how I remember it:

1. RDRAM was hideously expensive
2. Rambus used a "submarine patent" and got the whole DRAM industry up in arms about that
3. Price/performance ratio was bad
4. Chipsets with RDRAM support were expensive and only Intel jumped on the bandwagon initially (and with rather buggy chipsets to boot)
5. As a result, DDR-SDRAM was quickly announced, and RDRAM was history

I suppose the next steps would be:

6. Realize that your product is deader than a doornail
7. Sue the hell out of every major player in the industry
8. PROFIT???

To me, this looks more like the rest of the industry protecting themselves against Rambus' predatory practices and general ineptitude to bring a promising product to market. Perhaps suing Infineon and others wasn't the most brilliant move if they wanted to make RDRAM a success?

Can-Spam Law Meets Its First Test

After doing a little digging for Quandt on the web, I came across this article which paraphrases Quandt at the top like so :

"Users who are technically self-supporting and don't want to pay Red Hat for service and support could deploy Debian", says Open Source Development Lab analyst Stacey Quandt, "and it would lead to greater return on investment."

Perhaps advocacy such as this got her in trouble at OSDL whose members of course include Red Hat.

This is not a troll, but the truth

Actually its mostly braindead rubbish.

(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.

Its not that its "unkind", its that its semantically wrong, and only someone with a bad education (or immoral intent) would use it to twist the meaning, possibly with the intent to deceive. Piracy is robbery on the high seas, and that is not some 17th century nonsense with Johnny Depp, this is a fact - happening TODAY not only can things be really stolen, but sailors can loose their lives (and have). These widows probably don't take kindly to the term piracy being used for something as irrelevant as downloading of music from the internet. Especially since a study from Harward business school proves that it doesn't really harm sales.

Downloading music from the internet is (if you don't have a license) copyright INFRINGEMENT, it is not stealing. Stealing requires (by law) that someone is deprived of something physical. If someone downloads a track with Madonna, some of her dollars doesn't suddenly go missing - nor do they return if said mp3 is deleted. That is why it is infringement, not theft. If you take someones car they have lost the car and can't use it. Nothing needs be lost by the download of a song (still currently illegal though)

(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft,"...

Well I do. They clearly do that to try and manipulate the politicians and people who are not burdened with intelligence.

(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.

Piracy is robbery on the seas, downloading music is called copyright infringement.
They are vastly overpriced, presumably to finance a basically corrupt and immoral business model, and that may motivate some. Though the was majority of people use download like they use the radio, they listen to something which is good enough to pass the time but which really isn't good enough to buy (though as the study shows if something of quality comes along people do go out and buy it)

(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even though most pirated works are recent releases.

Piracy is robbery on the seas, downloading music is called copyright infringement. The copyright duration is of course vastly too long , not only should it only last for a few years, but it shouldn't be transferable and certainly not last beyond someones lifetime, however it is very doubtful this has any influence on the copyright infringement as whole, though some few may do it for political reasons, which is silly since it has no demonstrable effect.

(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free advertising".

Well, that's what intelligent people believe, especially after the study from Business Hardward School proved has no effect.

I don't buy any of the music I download, of course --but lots of other people probably do.

I don't download music. However studies show that others do, infact they are making millions from it.

And now I've already spent and hour writing this, time I'll never get back, and i doubt you'll wish to enlighten yourself, especially considering the nonsense in most of the rest of the post, i shall end it here then.

This is not a troll, but the truth

Actually its mostly braindead rubbish.

(1) I don't personally believe in copying CDs illegally-- but I think we should avoid using unkind words like "piracy" to describe those that do -- instead, we should describe it as an "infringement", much like a parking infringement.

Its not that its "unkind", its that its semantically wrong, and only someone with a bad education (or immoral intent) would use it to twist the meaning, possibly with the intent to deceive. Piracy is robbery on the high seas, and that is not some 17th century nonsense with Johnny Depp, this is a fact - happening TODAY not only can things be really stolen, but sailors can loose their lives (and have). These widows probably don't take kindly to the term piracy being used for something as irrelevant as downloading of music from the internet. Especially since a study from Harward business school proves that it doesn't really harm sales.

Downloading music from the internet is (if you don't have a license) copyright INFRINGEMENT, it is not stealing. Stealing requires (by law) that someone is deprived of something physical. If someone downloads a track with Madonna, some of her dollars doesn't suddenly go missing - nor do they return if said mp3 is deleted. That is why it is infringement, not theft. If you take someones car they have lost the car and can't use it. Nothing needs be lost by the download of a song (still currently illegal though)

(2) I don't believe in the record companies emotively abusing the word "theft,"...

Well I do. They clearly do that to try and manipulate the politicians and people who are not burdened with intelligence.

(3) I believe that piracy is driven by "overpriced CDs" even though CDs have dropped in price over the years.

Piracy is robbery on the seas, downloading music is called copyright infringement.
They are vastly overpriced, presumably to finance a basically corrupt and immoral business model, and that may motivate some. Though the was majority of people use download like they use the radio, they listen to something which is good enough to pass the time but which really isn't good enough to buy (though as the study shows if something of quality comes along people do go out and buy it)

(4) I believe that piracy is driven by overly long copyright duration, even though most pirated works are recent releases.

Piracy is robbery on the seas, downloading music is called copyright infringement. The copyright duration is of course vastly too long , not only should it only last for a few years, but it shouldn't be transferable and certainly not last beyond someones lifetime, however it is very doubtful this has any influence on the copyright infringement as whole, though some few may do it for political reasons, which is silly since it has no demonstrable effect.

(5) I believe that illegitimately downloading music is giving the author "free advertising".

Well, that's what intelligent people believe, especially after the study from Business Hardward School proved has no effect.

I don't buy any of the music I download, of course --but lots of other people probably do.

I don't download music. However studies show that others do, infact they are making millions from it.

And now I've already spent and hour writing this, time I'll never get back, and i doubt you'll wish to enlighten yourself, especially considering the nonsense in most of the rest of the post, i shall end it here then.

Then there is the OPML and OML duo which provides nice and flexible documents and their outlines.

You could even consider GNML which is a wacky markup language which uses non-letter chars as tags. It tries stay out of your way as much as possible.

I personaly would make a markup language which suited my style using XML and DTD

For god's sake! THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL. Ditto may be an expert in chaos theory, but the content of the article makes no sense whatsoever to any trained scientist. The whole blood-sucking thing is hilarious (and an attempt to help the reader understand that this is an April's fool).

Once again, people who have nothing better to do than to trick their friends with April Fool's jokes refuse to accept anything printed, published, posted, or spoken on the 1st day in April as truth.

Hate to pop your bubble, but there is nothing April Fool's about the article. It is genuine. What may suprise you is that these news items have been around for much longer. This is really very old news, but we saw it because it was a slow news day at the Economist on Monday.

BBC News: Biologial Computer Born (June 2, 1999)
TechExtreme.com: Chaotic Computing (March 23, 2001)

Or perhaps you're just trolling, and I fell for it...

Does it? The shelf space reserved for Linux hardware and software at Computer City doesn't seem to be growing any.

I think they actually meant: "to remotely destroy the user of any computer who has been involved in copyright infringement"

Heh. But it's not just a clever April 1st joke. The technology to do this has been prototyped in the Middle East. We've probably all read about the assassination of Yahya Ayyah by the Israeli government by installing a bomblet in his cell phone while it was being repaired, then calling him and transmitting the trigger signal.

Less well-known is the growing use of cell phones as remote-control triggers by the Palestinian radicals to set off larger bombs. That's probably a lot easier, since all you have to do is cut the wires to the speaker and attach them to the bomb mechanism, then call the phone. The cell-phone bomb couldn't have been too powerful, so you'd want to talk to the person and verify that they're holding the phone next to their head before transmitting the trigger signal.

In any case, the technology to remotely trigger a real bomb in your computer isn't all that different from what's done with a cell phone.

If they're running Windows and Outlook, the trigger command could even be sent via email, and would thus be run only when someone is sitting there using the mouse.

And we should note that the RIAA has tried to get Congress to pass laws that would legalize remote sabotage of computers.

So this April 1st RFC is based on reality.

But consider this situation now. MS has hired the IBM patent guru, the guy who drove IBM's Intellectual Property licensing from zero to $2 billion a year in a short time. Obviously, MS intends to patent everything they can.

In 2003, largely in the absence of Marshall Phelps, IBM was granted 3,415 patents. The others of the top 10 patent leaders were: Canon, Hitachi, Matsushita, HP, Micron, Intel, Philips, Samsung, and Sony.

IBM's piece of that was 18.8% of the patents granted to all of these companies in 2003. They do indeed patent "everything they can", and are very agressive about encouraging patent applications from all employees. Their commitment to developing their IP portfolio will not diminish in the absence of Marshall Phelps.

In short, Microsoft has a LONG way to go before it becomes as dominant in patents as it is in software.

In this situation, I don't see how Samba can be made compatible with Longhorn without infringing IP or patent laws. If you reimplement a patented technology, you are infringing the patent, even if you have never seen it.

Longhorn is currently vaporware. It is not yet a problem. Interaction with it is currently a non-issue. In the longer term, Samba may become unable to interact with new versions of Windows. Big deal. Companies will be aware that if they buy software from Microsoft that can't interoperate, they are locking themselves in to a single vendor.

Feel free to reassure me. Please.

Microsoft's fight to retain it's current level of dominance has become an uphill battle. GNU/Linux and BSD now present a level of functionality and reliability that Microsoft simply can not match at the current price of its software products.

For example, the base distribution of Debian GNU/Linux, available for the price of the media, provides functionality that would cost literally thousands of dollars on Microsoft's current operating systems.

Really, this is probably the most painful (to Microsoft) part of the EU punishment. The issue is largely related to bundling and exclusive arrangements. BSD or GNU/Linux distributions can and do bundle quantities of high-quality free software. This makes Microsoft cringe, because not only are they are being punished for bundling their own software, but because they cannot legally bundle much of the same free software due to licensing restrictions.

How to fix this? Install mozilla!
Anyway, according to this article here,
"Bagle exploits a flaw in Outlook, revealed in October of 2003, that allows a hacker to upload and execute a file on a user's PC without that user opening the file. Microsoft has issued a patch for the flaw in October, but users who have not updated their systems with this patch are at risk."
If you run an MS machine, and don't know that you have to update regularly, you need your head checked. Besides, updating an MS machine really is easy.

Heh... note the email address Annalee Newitz is using here... she evidentally creates a new mail alias for every column: sugarpill@techsploitation.com

Ah, slash ids pushing a billion and whining about what a sewer it's become...

I didn't realize BEA was a player in the applications market. I thought they sold tools and infrastructure, not ERP applications. (Newegg might use BEA to run their web server, but wouldn't go to BEA for, say, warehouse and order management software.)

Regarding why the DoJ didn't have a problem with PeopleSoft buying JD Edwards, perhaps its because that merger was arguably beneficial to the customers. PeopleSoft is weakest in areas like hard core distribution and direct sales (like what newegg does), and that's where JD Edwards really shines. JD Edwards, on the other hand, is weaker in some areas where PeopleSoft is stronger, such as with their technology infrastructure (PeopleSoft is all web based) and their HR package.

Another aspect of this is that maybe the DoJ could see this was perhaps Justice was legitimately conviced that this deal was bad for competition. More information available here, and here (Is Oracle the New Neighborhood Bully).

that was darpa that stopped the funding on openbsd. a nice summary is available here

Very interesting for them to say that when they are the same fuck tards financing SCO.

We haven't forgotten, Simon.

Newsfactor

News.Com

A really good troll makes every word in his sentence a link so that his point seems valid.

You don't even have to visit the sites, just google something like "linux vs windows", grab relevent links and include then in your post. No one will read them anyways, and believe you because you provided plenty of background Info and reputable sources (computing.net included!). They will have to believe your Pro-Windows rant.

Linux isn't a Toy OS. it's used by google. Who provided you this Informative post :)

I usually enjoy Cringley's columns, but this one annoyed me to the point of posting a response to each of his "predictions". For the most part, they're so incredibly vague as to be worthless.

1) It will happen late in the year, but Microsoft will make a bold run for video game leadership...

Didn't Microsoft already do this, with the XBox? And let's just say MS decides to -announce- the next console - can we have some predicted specs? No? Then all this prediction says is "Microsoft will announce their next console." Fine, this one actually has a bit of substance, actually puts Cringley in the position of being distinctly right or wrong. Of course, the XBox is now almost 2 years old (launched in Nov of 2001), so it's not unreasonable to assume the announcement of a new console, particularly given how early the XBox itself was announced.

2) We still won't see a big example of cyber-terrorism simply because nobody has figured out how to actually kill people that way...

This seems like fluff to me. Did anyone ever predict "cyber-terrorism"? I know it's not something I'm worried about. If al qaeda (or whoever) stop my email for a week, hey, that's less work for me. It doesn't inspire terror. In fact, little that could be done online has the potential to cause terror, save for the goatse.cx man, and possibly this.

To paraphrase, "I was right last year, so let me try again this year." Watch, I can do it too, with a high probability of success - "We again won't see the launch of nuclear weapons". And hey, if I'm wrong, you probably won't be able to hold me to it anyway.

3) Despite new anti-spam laws, we'll still be plagued with unsolicited commercial messages, especially using Internet Messaging protocols.

Oh my god, what a bold prediction! Surely this Cringley is possessed of a preternatural ability for soothsaying. Spam will still be a problem! Perhaps I can pay this man for tomorrow's lottery numbers, or for a Super Bowl pick. Then it's off to the bookie...

Sorry, my sarcasm got the best of me. To be fair, he does predict possible new email protocols, but he doesn't address whether they will be accepted, or even considered.

4) Continuing the security theme, look for lots of software companies to abandon support for old products and platforms.

Microsoft JUST announced they were dropping Windows 98 support. And companies do this all the time. Is he predicting a rise in this type of decision?

"Companies will abandon old products to get you to upgrade." Once again I am shocked!

5) The SCO debacle has created a crisis within the Linux community. They pretend that it hasn't, but it has.

This one has everyone here talking, but what does it really say? Linux will either continue to grow or start to die in 2004. Well, I mean, yeah. Obviously. Linux has BEEN growing for years now, so if it continues to grow, well look, he was right. Oh, and if in 5, 10 years, it's dead? Well, look, he was probably right, it probably started in 2004, or at least it may have. This is a non-prediction. Something will happen, or it won't. All this rules out is Linux stagnating, and who can judge that? What are the odds that every flavor of Linux will stop making major updates, but continue to make minor updates (and thus, not grow, but not die?).

6) As for SCO, they'll continue to make noise until the middle of the year, at which point the legal case will implode and the company will give up...

SCO will finally crumble under the weight of their legal lies, you say? I'm sure I speak for much of the Slashdot community, and Cringely's largely geek audience in general, when I say "Yes, we know".

7) 2004 will be a crucial year for streaming media... At first, this doesn't sound like much of a prediction. Then, he says MS will settle, which

OK, how come nobody has mentioned SCO?

First, let me say that I like Solaris a lot. In general, I prefer the SYSV approach to the BSD approach.

But there's no way I would deploy Solaris anywhere right now, because it seems as though Sun's right to support it is dependent on the crackheads at SCO. Sun gave in to SCO, which suggests to me that Sun themselves believe they must license SCO's IP to be legal. SCO have already shown that they'll gladly try to yank the license from anyone they don't like, so it seems to me you'd have to be crazy to bet the farm on Solaris right now.

Imagine--SCO need more cash. They say to Sun "Well, sorry, but you need to stop supporting Solaris by shipping code that's our property, unless you pay us... ooh, One BILLION Dollars! Mwahahaha..." Suddenly Sun is fighting a huge lawsuit. Maybe an injunction is granted to stop them shipping SCO code, and suddenly you're looking at migrating your entire Solaris infrastructure to something else, or running it without support.

Sure, once SCO are out of business, things will be peachy again. But right now?

It turns out that Allchin lied and yes, someone should be in jail.

Let's compare Microsoft to September 11th. September 11th cost the US economy $100 billion. Microsoft born worms have cost the US many billions as well. Code Red alone cost $2 billion. Sobig cost one billion. If we were to add up the costs of every dinky Microsoft worm all the way back to 1984, I'm sure we could arrive at $100 billion in documented costs. The documented costs, of course, pale by compairson with the undocumented costs of lost work. Those costs further pale when you consider the intentional waste of the upgrade cycle which forces users to ditch their hardware every three years. I just love walking into a 8 year old set up of Unix on PCs and see it working just as well as the day it was made without any adminisrtation. I hate walking into the typical Microsoft nightmare, which has not been "rebuilt" for a few years.

Is this killing anyone? Yes, it is. People in hospitals, cars and subways died in the big blackout a few months ago. It all points back to software that failed in the midwest, and I'm 95% sure that was a Microsoft failure. If we were to look at all the deaths caused by software failure, attributable to a mistaken use of Micfosoft software, I'm sure we could find more than 3,000 people and exceed the 9/11 toll.

Call me a zealot if you like. It does not change the truth.

Keep using that Microsoft junk. Just don't come whining to me when it cost you time, money and heartache. Especially stay away from me if you want to use it in a power plant or to operate traffic lights or some other place it does not belong. Someone will sue you for such negligence.

At first, it seems that the solution portrayed in the article would make the deployment of GSM networks easier and cheaper. This would not only be a solution for developing countries, but also for rural areas in western countries. An illustration of this last point is readily made by comparing the GSM coverage of a densely populated country like The Netherlands (former state provider KPN) to that of a much more sparsely populated country like the US (AT&T wireless).

However, GSM is not the only cell-phone standard there is. Another standard which is often used in rural areas is CDMA. It seems this standard features larger cells, and fewer base stations (for, of course, a less densely populated cell). Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA: see here.

Does anybody have altual experience with deploying CDMA networks? (obviously, given the coverage map for GSM, I don't need that experience in Holland ;)

here

P.S. Nice try on the sig. Those are for APPLICATIONS not Linux you dolt. Here is my new sig

31 Unpatched IE security holes
Server attacks stump Microsoft
Credit card theft feared in Windows flaw
Microsoft issues patch for "serious" XP hole
Windows flaw threatens PC services
Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Why I hate Microsoft
bsod_videowall
bsod_airport
License to plunder
Microsoft Media Player logs users' DVD picks
MS wanted to 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition
Microsoft Palladium
Control with fine print
Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
Microsoft software "riddled with vulnerabilities", trade body claims
Microsoft Issues Five New Security Warnings
Why Open Source Software / Free Software

The linux kernel has a history of people who've stolen code.

In 2.0.36, part of the TCP/IP code was taken from FreeBSD and the headder notes it came from FreeBSD, then put the GPL copyright in place of the BSD copyright.
There was the ATA code as noted here on slashdot.

Now the Open Source Development Lab director Tim Witham admits how many of the people who go the misnamed Open Source (should be called Linux Development Lab if all they do is work on Linux) Development Lab are also IP thiefs. From the interview at Newsfactor Mr. Witham says "run into people all the time who say, 'we took the BSD off in 1995". For him to 'run into people all the time' these people would have to visit the OSDL. Taking the BSD license off is the kind of IP theft SCO is claiming.

Could you provide links to substantiate your claims of increased music sales linked to P2P piracy? Thanks.

Here's a start

More on the Ipso-Reid study covered here. The original study isn't available through their website, unless you look a lot harder than I did.

Here's more on the Jupiter study

Still more

Liebowitz writes about it, but his only purpose was to conclude that filesharing doesn't hurt the music business.

ZDNet reports on what is probably the same Jupiter study

This article sits right in the middle of the issue, but certainly hints at an Odyssey study supporting my point.

Here's a study about studies

This came out during the height of the Metallica fight against Napster

You can google for more if you're not satisfied with these. :)

Since at least August, SCO have been floating the idea of sending invoices to Linux users. It's even been reported, seemingly incorrectly, back in August, that SCO was beginning to send invoices. The invoice story has been taken up with a vengence in the last few days, for example, here, here and here.

SCO Australia says the invoicing plan doesn't "ring true" and contradicts very recent strategy discussions. Unfortunately, SCO USA's Blake Stowell, doesn't seem to have yet responded to SCO Australia's request for clarification. SCO Australia also says that they're unsure about the question of invoices being sent in the US even though there are reports on the web [examples: here, here and here] about just such a thing being planned.

Since at least August, SCO have been floating the idea of sending invoices to Linux users. It's even been reported, seemingly incorrectly, back in August, that SCO was beginning to send invoices. The invoice story has been taken up with a vengence in the last few days, for example, here, here and here.

SCO Australia says the invoicing plan doesn't "ring true" and contradicts very recent strategy discussions. Unfortunately, SCO USA's Blake Stowell, doesn't seem to have yet responded to SCO Australia's request for clarification. SCO Australia also says that they're unsure about the question of invoices being sent in the US even though there are reports on the web [examples: here, here and here] about just such a thing being planned.

Since at least August, SCO have been floating the idea of sending invoices to Linux users. It's even been reported, seemingly incorrectly, back in August, that SCO was beginning to send invoices. The invoice story has been taken up with a vengence in the last few days, for example, here, here and here.

SCO Australia says the invoicing plan doesn't "ring true" and contradicts very recent strategy discussions. Unfortunately, SCO USA's Blake Stowell, doesn't seem to have yet responded to SCO Australia's request for clarification. SCO Australia also says that they're unsure about the question of invoices being sent in the US even though there are reports on the web [examples: here, here and here] about just such a thing being planned.

Since at least August, SCO have been floating the idea of sending invoices to Linux users. It's even been reported, seemingly incorrectly, back in August, that SCO was beginning to send invoices. The invoice story has been taken up with a vengence in the last few days, for example, here, here and here.

SCO Australia says the invoicing plan doesn't "ring true" and contradicts very recent strategy discussions. Unfortunately, SCO USA's Blake Stowell, doesn't seem to have yet responded to SCO Australia's request for clarification. SCO Australia also says that they're unsure about the question of invoices being sent in the US even though there are reports on the web [examples: here, here and here] about just such a thing being planned.

It will probably be based on SQL Server

Oh great! Next time a user calls and asks where's his excel sheet he saved yesterday, instead of teaching him to use 'Find' over phone I can just tell him: "It's not lost, it's just invisible." :)

It's about time that other folks picked up on the lock-in strategy. I was writing about this back in March.

Microsoft is using Linux for Microsoft.com!

P.S. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16555.html. Nothing is completely secure, even Linux.

Yes. Let's put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA/2FMPAA -- sharing of copyrighted material is not illegal if it is done in a way the copyright holder condones and even then there is a fair amount of flexibility depending on which country, but even in the U.S. and other countries subscribing to the Berne convention there is some flexibility.

The real bite is that client-server file sharing, the kind you do with a file server, is getting neglected. If even half of the offices around the world actually used their Netware/Samba/AFS servers, there would be no need to do anything other than filter to /dev/null those $%^&* mail attachments aka MS-Outlook worms.

If these folks don't get the message and soon, you may find yourself asking for permission to write anything on your machine that moves bits around.