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Yes. Let's put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA -- 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.

As for Office, I guess you can uninstall portions, but you're still paying for them. Microsoft only unbundles in extreme circumstances, like when they think people have other options:

In June, the Munich city government said it will migrate 14,000 Windows desktops to Linux beginning in early 2004. The city decided Linux would be less expensive over time, even though Microsoft's bid was nearly $12 million less than those from IBM and SuSE Latest News about SuSE Linux, which is based in Germany.

Microsoft's bid, which Ballmer delivered personally, started at $36.6 million and was slashed to $23.7 million at the 11th-hour, including an unusual offer to unbundle Word from Microsoft Office.

Mind? Some of us feel that it was Sun that bought the first UNIX license from SCO.

And some of us are about a month behind: Sun Revealed as SCO's Secret Licensee.

Where can you access this music service?

Why else is MS involved?

In SCO's regulatory filings in July, they list the total value of the Sun and Microsoft deals at $13.2 million. If Sun purchases up to 210,000 shares of SCO stock at $1.83 per share (the price at the time of the signing of the deal), the value of the deals would rise further.

"Taylor says he plans to focus on (and fund) studies that 'will highlight Microsoft's advantages in areas such as security, feature-completeness and total cost of ownership.'"

You mean like this one, this one, or this one How about this one?

Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code.

How so? Sun has been in bed with SCO for months. They paid some portion of many millions of dollars for the right to the Unix code. To me it looks like Sun is playing both ends of the game, and in the middle is Solaris. I certainly wouldn't construe this as a friendly move -- just another move for Sun.

There is an article at newsfactor.com about yesterday's teleconference. I think the following sentence, which is a direct quote from the article, is just lovely:

Since the controversy arose, SCO has been contacted by about 40 to 50 companies asking what SCO wants from them, DiDio said. She compared the proposed licenses to an insurance policy for businesses running Linux that want protection should the courts rule in SCO's favor.

An "insurance policy" for users who "want protection". Vinny the Enforcer couldn't have put it better.

And Linux is any better?

"microsoft and security - -- the oxymoron of the millenia.."

Linux security sucks too. Get a clue

At least they didn't choose Linux. Linux security is worse. Stop modding up MS trolls as funny or insightful.

What do you propose, using Linux? Linux security is worse than MS security. See here. The fact that your fact-devoid rant got modded up just shows how clueless the /. community is when it comes to these types of issues.

Keeping your brain focused and in gear is the real problem with cell phones and other gadgets.

"It's not just the physical distraction of holding the handset -- there's the intellectual distraction of holding the conversation."

"...cell phone conversations using "hands-free" devices are just as likely to cause dangerous distractions as those conducted on hand held phones."

"There is a very substantial decrease in the amount of brain activity, the amount of neural activity allocated to driving, while you are simultaneously listening,"

Hang up and drive.

Neat-o, but the entities (Microsoft, SCO, etc.) that are attacking the GPL as liberal/socialist/communist are in the US, and **THEY**, not me, **THEY** are doing so in that context. I didn't make up the words, so if you have a gripe about semantics, talk to somebody else. I was trying to head off this argument because It - appears - to - be - an - issue, and it shouldn't be.

I am sorry I failed.

Not to mention the income the German division of IBM received from the Nazi Pary to help it through the tailing edge of the depression.

Hopefully nothing, because they are not in the EU.

American courts will probably not collect taxes for a foreign country, absent some sort of treaty.

Consider a small "etailer," which has no presence in the EU, except that its website is accessible from anywhere on the planet, and if asked, it will ship to anywhere on the planet.

Would that be enough for the EU to regulate the etailer? Remember, because they have no physical presence in europe, the EU would have to get an American court to enforce the regulation. And American courts prefer to enforce American law.

Remember when some French groups tried to go after Yahoo in the American courts over nazi memorabilia on its American website? It was accessible in France but not targetted to the French. They got a lesson on the First Amendment.

I believe this is more of an issue for companies that have a presence in the EU. Physical servers, offices, etc. Otherwise they would not be able to enforce it unless they had a treaty with the United States.

As a famous cybersecurity researcher, I have access to news articles that are impeccably fresh.

Understanding the Micro$haft-SCO connection
SCO Group drops old Caldera name - .com.com: isn't that a funny domain name?
German Linux association may drop SCO as member
Thousands say 'SCO Sue Me'

As a famous cybersecurity researcher, you should believe what I tell you.

I think "the next big thing" in advertising could be plain old hypertext links within writings. If an online magazine has an article about C++, wherever it says "C++ compiler" in the article it could be a link to a compiler vendor. Newsfactor does this to some extent in their articles, plus with descriptive icons so you know you're going to an ad. It would seem much more successful and useful to the user to go this route.

Now, I would certainly agree that Linux hasn't achieved Total World Domination. However, no one that's paying any attention at all to the server market can pretend that Linux isn't making a serious impact. You may not like that fact, but saying that it isn't so is just ridiculous.

I don't understand what the big deal is. If the Chinese want to use Google, they will. If they want to use the new Government organized search engine, they will. The one that acquires most users wins. Open competition at its best. You should cheer competition in the marketplace.

Unless, of course, the Chinese governments artificially changes the odds by blocking Google or Google's Chinese partner. That may or may not happen. To my knowledge they are not blocking Google at the moment.

I didn't see any previous comment explaining how using a scripting lanaguage causes one to "run into the wall when doing big projects."

This is an old wive's tale, that scripting langauges just don't scale. It's nonsense; while some languages (perhaps PHP) are not well-designed for large projects, others, such as Ruby, do quite nicely.

Ruby has a a far better OO model than PHP (or Java, for that matter); that one can label it as a scripting lanagauge does not diminish its beauty or power. Give it a shot before dismissing whole categories of tools. Check out these articles

The argument that open source is better for reliability just because alot have access to the source is not really true. No one had source to Unix but it was reliable. Also Doesn't BSD have a better uptime than linux?

That's really a pretty ignorant point of view, probably based on Code Red's "hacked by Chinese!!!" callsign.

I don't think anybody knows anymore where the virus/worm first originated. When Melissa (a worm written in scripting language, imagine that) burnt the net, they hunted the guy who wrote it and tracked him down to New Jersey. Same deal with ILOVEYOU. But now there's a handful of these worms running loose and eating up resources on the net, and no one is getting chased or prosecuted, including Microsoft. Fucked up, huh?

The only thing you can blame the Chinese (and a lot of sysadmins in Asia) is their ignorance in setting up and maintaining a secure system that would survive the worm attacks (the latest MySQL worm hit Korea hard), being Asian myself I know a lot of people don't even read the manual (which is in English) and just click-click-click-"it runs okay let's forget about it".. heh actually that's not just Asians, most of the world does that.

http://sci.newsfactor.com

From what i have read about reconfigurable chips at Sci American and other websites is that while they can do wonder for certain applications they still can't match the wiring of a 'vector processor' . Vector chips are very efficient. I have always wondered why they industry has turned it's back on them. The linux/intel solution is not as efficient as everyone thinks. Too much heat and networking the chips has it's difficulties. The japanese nec vector supercomputer is way ahead now of USa. If you don't believe me then go here and learn what top US scientists say , good article. Go down 3 articles . NewsFactor Portal

ARGH!!! This is such bullshit, I get hired of hearing it. I am not an anti-Mac zealot (in fact, I used to use a Mac, and would consider buying one again if I weren't so disappointed with what Apple did to the macOS X interface), but it's so annoying to hear Mac fans claim that Macs have some large installed marketshare that no one recognizes.

First of all, Apple does not get 5% of all computer sales each year. It gets less than 5%. Secondly, were Macs staying in use longer than PCs, you'd expect Macs to show up as a larger percentage of web site hits. But they don't.

References:

CNet article on Mac market share in 2001
News Factor Network story about Mac market share in 2002
Business Week article about Mac market share

If you read these articles, you find that Mac market share is about 3%.

Now, what do the web stats say about Apple's market share?

Google's web stats
W3Schools web stats

These suggest the Mac has between 2-4% market share.

People need to stop fooling themselves. Just because the Mac has only 3% market share, doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. But stop pretending it has larger market share, when it doesn't!

from http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/9921.html:
CAAST -- a nonprofit industry alliance group that counts among its members Adobe Systems, Apple Canada, Microsoft Canada, and Symantec -- said that one in every three business software applications in the country was pirated in 2000.

On a positive note, the report showed a four-year decline in the software piracy rate, dipping to 38 percent last year from 41 percent in 1999 and 40 percent in 1998.

"Although the piracy rate has decreased, software piracy continues to signify lost jobs, wages and tax revenues in Canada," said CAAST president Allan Steel. "Organizations need to realize the importance of implementing policies and procedures in order to achieve and maintain compliance."

The rest of the world, on the other hand, is not quite as obedient :
The BSA and CAAST studies, which were conducted by the independent International Planning & Research Corporation (IPR), also found that for the first time in six years, the world piracy rate increased, edging up to 37 percent in 2000.

...who want to give privacy a close shave. check out Gillette

Good lord man...Are you fresh off a class warfare rally or just a lonely crusader for the downtrodden?

"More than half of the U.S. population, or 104 million adults, was online last year, the study found, compared with 88 million earlier in the year. Three-quarters of those between the ages of 18 and 29 have Internet access, with teenagers close behind, at 73 percent."

Report: Digital Divide Continues To Shrink

But there are a variety of reasons for choosing a machine and platform, speed is not necessarily only the thing that comes into play.

How about low price? No, I guess not. How about the ability to run Quark XPress natively? Oh, is that not important?

How about a non-crippled DDR implementation? Is that not important, either?

Damn. Well, at least you have instant friends if you buy a mac.

From the article:
The plastic ultimately stabilized in 1.6 dimensions at a temperature of minus 269 degrees Celsius (minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit).

I'd be happy if my girlfriend would stabilize in three dimensions at room temperature.

How long do you think it'll take for them to figure that one out?

From the article
The plastic ultimately stabilized in 1.6 dimensions at a temperature of minus 269 degrees Celsius (minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit).

It would be nice if someone came up with a chart that plotted the correlation between the temperature necessary in the lab and the temperature necessary to bring the item to market for a significant number of products. Because I'm willing to bet that -249 C is pretty close to the Don't Hold Your Breath mark.

Story at NewsFactor

The CD is a "dead" media, it's not something that magically comes to life and starts transmitting information.

You know, that's just what I used to tell people about email. Remember the Good Times "virus"? I don't know how many emails I sent to people in the mid-nineties explaining to them that emails were just text and weren't "executed" in any way and thus were incapable of harming your computer. Just like (as my example went at the time) no audio CD, no matter how malicious, could contain instructions that could break your CD player.

Well, guess what? Now everyone* uses an email client that defaults to executing, without notification, code embedded in received emails. By changing the rules, they made a liar out of me in less than six years (the "Good Times" hoax first appeared in December of 1994; the "Love Letter" email worm appeared in May of 2000).

And in five or ten years, who knows? Maybe everyone* will be running CD player applications that default to "facilitating said information gathering and transmission".

You and I know better, and this doesn't personally affect us. But that doesn't change the fact that the estimated economic impact of the Love Bug was over $8 billion. Mind you, this is from something I thought was patently impossible a few years earlier.

Never say never.

* not everyone

While you also ignore a few facts of your own...

1. Animal experiments are very expensive. If there is really a way to do an experiment without animals, it will be done. With animals, you have to keep them comfortable, fed, watered, and pay staff to care for them.
2. All animal experiments have to have special approval. You cannot proceed without it.
3. There are very tight regulations related to the treatment of animals in experiments. Pretty much any procedure more invasive than a simple injection requires anesthesia.
4. No one does these experiments to be cruel or evil. Experiments are done with the intention of learning something important. This is not the laboratory equivalent of a 7 year-old pulling the wings off flies.

Neurological experiments absolutely cannot be performed on anything other than a living biological organism. The idea here isn't just to create remote controlled rats, but to discover how we can advance new technologies related to the brain. Modern probes that can monitor the firing patterns of 4 individual neurons simultaneously? The idea that we can now partially enable the blind to see? Do you think that the experiments required to pull this off were performed on neurons in a petri dish? Of course not, and it wouldn't even be possible. Perhaps one day in the future if, heaven forbid!, you are ever tragically paralyzed in an accident, you will perhaps thank the researchers who come up with remote control technology. I know if it were to happen to me, I'd be very glad to have a way to communicate with my family, or take care of myself instead of being a complete burden.

Especially since there's no critical look at whether full-fledged robots could be developed to perform these functions.

Many researchers devote their time to developing small-scale robotics, but nothing is close to being anywhere near as agile as a biological organism. But again, the research isn't just about controlling rats; it's also a way to figure out how to interface with the brain. Given the paralysis scenario, what good would a robotic "supplemental" body be if you couldn't control the damn thing? When that kind of technology comes about for general use, you'll have researchers, rats, and monkeys to thank for it.

The sad thing is that I'm probably going to be modded down for raising these concerns.

Well, I've got one point left, but I chose to reply instead. Besides, I don't mod down. ;)

The same thing was happening on Earth. Earth gets smacked, life gets crushed, picks itself up, and tries again. Thankfully, life has yet to crush itself.

you linux geeks (this means you, slashdot "editors"), take every opportunity to crow about Windows security holes, but conveniently fail to mention the number and frequency of patches issued for linux, which is at least as many as for Windows.

Microsoft has admitted that it has a poor security track record. The frequency (& ease of update) is evidence that Microsoft is making good on its promise of taking security seriously.

Compare ease of patching Windows with that of Linux, please.

In reality, such certifications cost a lot of money and small companies like RedHat simply can't affort it (They don't make enough money of release X.Y during it's market-life, to justify such a operation)

No, Linux would fail evaluation because it does not meet many of the important security requirements. In particular there is no system security guide that describes how to securely configure the O/S in a single place.

Documentation is a large part of the C2 criteria. Linux simply fails that test. You cannot get certification for a third party guide for good reason, the document has not been reviewed by the engineers who wrote the code.

It is interesting to note how the Fox News style bias of slashdot on the security topic gets more hysterical by the month. Could it be because analyst firms like Aberdeen are predicting that Linux will become the poster chid for security, and no they don't think it is more secure.

So Microsoft get a security evaluation, the slashdot response is to publish the story three times to date, each time claiming that it is further proof that Microsoft's products are insecure. At what point do people ask whether the Slashdot editorial style has more to do with the commercial interests of their employer than an interest in honest journalism?

This should be taken with a grain of salt, but Linux has had more security holes than Windows in 2002.

Fact is, if you want the most security, you have to go OpenBSD AND know how to configure it. Then again, knowing how to configure any of those operating systems properly might help.

The #2 in CPU's is slashing 2,000 jobs worldwide, from the Americas to Asia, in all roles and levels. The article is here at News Factor.

``Converts the energy ... directly into mechanical motion''? I guess this would be sort of like the little solar engines, that have paddles which are shiny on one side and black on the other and spin in sunlight?

You fool! Any 3rd year Physics minor knows that you can harness the limitless power of the Sun using a Stirling Engine for limitless power!

Microsoft can't have their software being used by competitors now, can they?

He gave interviews during the trial. Actually the trial is ongoing, so even if he gave a interview today he would be giving an interview during the trial. What he did was even worse, Jackson gave an interview while he was still hearing the case - that is the reason his impartiality is suspect.

Microsoft Appeal Panel Blasts Judge Jackson

In speeches and interviews with reporters after his historic ruling, Jackson made a number of remarks directed at Gates and Microsoft, but the interviews he granted during the trial left government lawyers scrambling to counteract the charge that Jackson was biased against the company and over-eager to punish it.

The interviews Jackson gave during the trial were embargoed, meaning they were not to be published until the trial's conclusion.

"The system would be a sham if all judges went around doing this," Edwards said. "The public has something at stake, it's the integrity of the system."

You:
I just wonder what would China have to gain by saying all their computers are 0w3d?

Reuters:
Computer viruses are small programs often sent via e-mail or hidden in other software. Once inside a computer, they can do malicious tasks like erase data or reproduce and send copies to other machines over the Internet.

You + Reuters = The Great Firewall

You + Reuters = Software Piracy

Blumenthal's suit was dropped and he had to pay
Drudge a settlement, yeah, Sidney paid Drudge.

From The Drudge Report
another source
and another

AOL was also sued by Blumenthal, but was dissmissed by a federal judge.
cnet

Drudge hasnt "slipped into obscurity". He has a radio show on Sunday nights, and over 4 million hits to his web site every day.

Something similar was reported in Sci-Tech in August 2001 and at newsfactorin march 2001.

That is one hell of a logical leap there my friend, or did you forget about the way that Media Player shipped for XP ?

I agree that there are other more imaginative ways to get people to turn off their cellphones in the movie theater. But nobody seems to have come up with one, do they?

Imagine the scenario - you walk into the theater, see the sign "All cell use blocked in this esablishment," then rush outside to join your fellow phone addicts, smokers, and phone-addict smokers for a quick "fix" before the show starts!

A simple layer of copper screening applied to the interior of the theater, (under the wallpaper or behind the wallboard,) would solve the problem in a passive, legal, inexpensive, and foolproof way. Here's a link to an article that mentions it, look all the way at the end. You can bring your phone in, it just won't ring.