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Have you heard IBM are going to "map" notes object store onto DB2? Looks like they are taking a similar approach.

Intelligent citizens, industry professionals and academics will read, understand, and probably agree with this article.

This is also the sort of writing that could really color the public debate if average Joe Citizen had any reason to value the opinion of Bruce Perens over Craig Mundie.

But why should they?

What does the average person know about Perens? What do they know about the Open Source Initiative? Correct me if I'm wrong, but probably very little. What does the average person know about MicroSoft? That they build the software that runs on every computer that they sit behind every day.

There's a bit of a credibility gap.

Craig Mundie could conceivably be any employee with the MicroSoft backing, and he would get press and general public recognition that Perens doesn't.

Pro-Open Source writers are often honest and, while not unbiased or impartial, are at least driven more by a cooperative and edifying spirit than a monopolistic one. If the general public had more reason to trust them, the articles they write would more effectively influence public opinion.

Think about how can this community help people like Perens while he's busy trying to help us.

Apple did have that little iTunes installer script fiasco, but even that was corrected later the same day. I'd just like to give the OS X team at Apple kudos for releasing updates on a regular basis, and showing themselves to be committed to improving OS X. If nothing else, it's fun to be the hamster pressing on the Software Update button and getting rewarded with food pellets every so often.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-835602.html

To mitigate this vulnerability OULU (the guys that found this a year ago) has some good links at http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/ouspg/protos/testin g/c06/snmpv1/

Securing SNMP on Solaris
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/security/howto/2000-10-04/
Securing SNMP in Windows
http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/incident/SNMP.htm
Securing your Cisco Router when using SNMP
http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/netdevices/router.h tm
SNMP - simple management tool for hackers?
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/1004sec1.h tml
Windows 2000, SNMP and Security
http://www.securityfocus.com/focus/microsoft/2k/sn mp.html

With a Pringles can and some 802.11b equipment, you could throw the signals about 10 miles line of sight. It'd be kind of funny to see a washing machine mounted on a telephone pole with 50 pringles cans attached to it though.

I thought palm was a completely seaparate spun-off company by now?

Or do they just have their own tracking stock?

No, this leads me to beleive they are totally separate now.

3Com's revenues don't benefit Palm much, I would guess.

Except it misses the most important point of all. With an Open Source License, the code is more accessible to the end users. If the company goes under, you are not left high and dry. For some, it goes beyond that. To not be cobbled by a companies whims with regards to the source code. Example

Found here. But is this good, encouraging the curious to move to free OSes when exploring beyond Windows, or bad, removing a great way of finding out about an OS that is easier to convince your boss to have installed?

• http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-8409777.html? tag=mn_hd
• http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/0108sunintel.htm l?nw

I think the original statement, that NDS is the only enterprise class directory, is true.

While I don't doubt that iPlanet is superior to AD, it doesn't even come close to having the reliability and scalability of NDS. Read this article, which mentions some of the well-known problems with iPlanet replication. iPlanet may be fine when you've got it on a single server, but once you distribute the directory, NDS is superior. I wouldn't bet my enterprise on iPlanet's replication.

NDS is also available on a lot more platforms than iPlanet, including Linux.

Hats off to Cisco's engineers for putting this into hardware - with the emerging IEEE standard, hopefully there will be others.

Quick Google search results:

I would expect they'll use some sort of user or MAC-based authentication, with a VPN client if they're smart.

Starbucks' MobileStar network didn't take hold for well enough for me to see any 2600-style articles about the service, but I'm assuming everything was fed through a proxy server, which would likely mean no encryption.

Using an encrypted VPN wouldn't be so hard for each of these clients, but you run into the problems of clueless users and serious computational muscle needed at the aggregation point for all these VPNs.

RSA security has released a scheme for introducing floating keys to WEP's encryption, something which would strengthen the security quite a bit. They're saying it can be implemented through firmware upgrades in the access points and driver upgrades for most cards.

-carl

An interesting article here about running gigabit ethernet over Cat5 wire. It sounds like planning ahead now will leave the possibility open a few years out.

The article is pretty clear that going beyond gigabit on those wires is not likely, but it seems that buying good cable and setting it up correctly now will pay off without adding a lot of up-front expense with Cat6 or Cat7 or whatever else might be coming along.

http://a957.g.akamai.net/7/957/3680/v0001/standard s.ieee.org/reading/ieee/std/lanman/802.1D-1998.pdf

For background reading, you might consider some of these articles:

Source Routing and the Spanning-Tree Protocol
http://developer.novell.com/research/appnotes/1991 /august/01/apv.htm

Understanding Spanning-Tree Protocol
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/rt rmgmt/sw_ntman/cwsimain/cwsi2/cwsiug2/vlan2/stpapp .htm

Understanding Spanning Tree Protocol -- the Fundamental Bridging Algorithm
http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a//network/2001/03/3 0/net_2nd_lang.html

Metro vendors question Spanning Tree standard
http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/2001/123588_08-06- 2001.html

802.11c

802.11d

802.11e

802.11f

802.11h is already under development!

Disclaimer: I really don't know what any of this stuff is, I just searched on google.

>>What is the killer application for these technologies?

Think clusters. See this link for an example: http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/1029fujlin.html

What about Google?

Google has huge databases (caching the web). It is run on tons of linux boxes. Their entire business depends on speed and accurate information.

an article about Google

The frequency is also far less cluttered with only some military systems currently operating in it. And the 5.4GHz space has more available bandwidth; 300MHz as opposed to the 80MHz band centred on 2.4GHz.

In my opinion the real problem with 802.11a, now that bandwidth and interference is no longer an issue, is range. But perhaps this could be solved by using a microwave amplifier. The shorter wavelength of 5.4 GHz means that transmissions in this band have more trouble traveling through walls, floors, furniture and other obstructions, according to Cisco's Ron Seide.

You're close, it's designed after the Teletubbies. Geeze, first they copy the Mac and now this.

My troll-sense tells me you're making stuff up, but whatever. He doesn't have carpal tunnel syndrome. He has hand problems but does not disclose here wether they are directly related to typing or not:

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/0111stallman.html

"I never had carpal tunnel syndrome. I had hand problems."

How goes the rip CD's from XP thing, or has this been dropped? It looked like a pure publicity exercise to me, it'd be weird to see 'rip with windows' or something on a CD sticker. MS'd have to pay a shedload of money for the privilege I guess, not that they don't have it.

It will be fun to see how the worm-writing people will use XP. It could be the decline of m$ in the business market.

Interesting also to see how the ISPs will react to DOS attacks.

"Windows XP runs EVERYTHING at root, which means every program (and even the trojans hidden within that program) has full access to all Windows services, including more advanced network services than ever before. Where Windows ME is generally limited to UDP- and ICMP-flooding, for example, Windows XP can jump straight to the main event -- http flooding aat port 80. "Cringely

"If Windows ME is a gun, Windows XP is a loaded gun.", Cringely

The French don't trust their citizens and for years banned all encryption (except some businesses, with them having to hand over keys). They may have, as you allege, used the intelligence in an underhand way. However, I think your reason for 'relaxing' their stance on encryption is mistaken, or only part of the reason. Upon discovering all about Echelon, and the extent to which the USA have been gathering intelligence on French business (and allegedly lost billions due to NSA handing key data for US businesses), it brought about the greatest 180 degree turn in crypto politics seen to date. From a complete ban to full support of strong encryption, with the encouragement of open-source software. To think things had steadily been improving since this article 2 years ago. It would be a blow to the memories of those lost if their sacrifice failed to make the world a better place.

Phillip.

It concludes that Bluetooth has the edge currently, but it's still way too early in the ballgame to know for sure.

It concludes that Bluetooth has the edge currently, but it's still way too early in the ballgame to know for sure.

Really? In what market does Microsoft hold a monopoly? Operating systems? Browsers? Evil? Hardly. If someone is a monopoly that means that it has no competitors in the market in question; that is, if you have a product belonging to that market, you must have obtained it from the monopoly........Given the definition, does Microsoft hold a monopoly in any market? No. To disprove this, I need only examine my network ...

You must have not been alive when DOS was the only operating systerm. Microsoft was enough of monopoly to snuff out caldera's DRDOS. Evidently they felt guilty enough to pay 150 million for what they did This antitrust case is DejaVu all over again, They did this by introducing an incompatibility in DOS according to Undocumented DOS that had no technical reason whatsoever other than to break DRDOS compatibility with Windows 3.1/DOS. DRDOS had a real chance for market penetration - it's just that MS would not allow it to be installed by OEMs. More detail here

The proof is simple and direct. The conclusion is the only one possible. Microsoft holds no monopoly in any market.

The proof is simple and direct. You are wrong. Pull your head out of the sand. The world doesn't revolve around you and your 6 pc mini-network.

VA Linux IPO soars almost 700%

The idg link actually goes via ad.doubleclick.net, which some of you may have filtered out.

Here's a more direct link:
http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/columnists/2001/0416e dge2.html

On the contrary, the early adopters are saying "We got ours, the rest of you can fuck off."

(tongue planted firmly in cheek)

Stanford recently did the right thing, and gave back an entire Class A netblock, renumbering into the remaining Class B blocks they retained (36.0.0.0/8 was the block they returned to ARIN, in case you're wondering).

Other parties mentioned in that NWFusion article seem to think they have a God-given right to hoard address space they will never use.

According to the NWFusion article, it is estimated that only 69 million IP addresses are actually in use, out of the 160 million to 1 billion that are practicably useable given the limitations of IPv4 routing protocols.

Consider this, and this. Businesses not only must wade through enormously complex licensing from Microsoft, but they run the very real risk of being audited - with the price of running an unlicensed copy at $150,000 per instance ! Massive effort is required to maintain software licensing compliance, with no real guarantee that the auditors couldn't find something - anything - if they tried hard enough.

It begins to feel like anyone choosing to run Microsoft software does so at grave risk to their businesses, which at any moment may be invaded by the software licensing gestapo, and be fined as much as the SPA figures they can pay.

Microsoft, faced with declining revenues, is going hard against businesses running their software to ensure software license compliance. Even a good faith effort doesn't provide enough protection.

My company has begun using Open Source /Free Software everywhere it can to reduce our software license liability. I expect that as Microsoft muscles in on more and more businesses, we won't be the last.

Cringely got his facts all screwed up. As you can see in our story, Tolly Research looked at Gigabit Ethernet performance on NT and Win 2000.

Adam Gaffin
Network World Fusion

Highlights:

A recent study by Tolly Research, the independent testing arm of the Tolly Group, found that Windows NT delivers Gigabit Ethernet throughput equal to or better than Win 2000. Tolly's finding contrasts Microsoft's testing that found Win 2000 optimized to deliver gains in Gigabit Ethernet throughput.

Microsoft officials say Tolly's conclusions are not a fair comparison, citing variables such as client operating system, network adapters, LAN design, traffic-generating tools and methodologies.

Tolly says Microsoft's throughput numbers may be inflated by the NTttcp packet-blasting tool it used and by testing on a highly segmented LAN. Microsoft officials admitted their LAN had two clients per segment.

--
Evan

The closest artcile I can find is this one, and it compares the throughput of Gigabit Ethernet on NT vs W2K??

It kind of match Cringely's story:

• is on Network World (www.nwfusion.com) and titled "Microsoft disputes research about Win 2000"
• is about NT vs 2000
• an independent testing lab is involved: Tolly Research
• is about a NIC
• and about a week old...

Further proof that /. will print anything?

====

Seriously, it looks like w2k has got a bad case of software bloat. But we should make sure that everyone knows what MS is doing. Just so that people get the appropriate warm and fuzzy feeling.

After all, it is NOT a bug. it is a feature.

For those interested, here is a link to the original benkmarks

Cringe says the information is back on line. I poked around for quite a bit and did a bunch of searches on NetworkWorld Fusion. There's no link from the InfoWorld article.

If this is the right site (IDG publication), they certainly aren't making this easy to get to.

Why did I spend 20 minutes on this?

---
In a hundred-mile march,

I live in the UK. My both my home phone lines and mobiles have 11 digit phone numbers. When I call someone, I select their name from the list on my phone and press the "call" button. I couldn't care less how many digits are in the number since the only time I see it is when entering it into the phone book.
What I'd really like to see is phones (obviously digital cellular phones or VoIP (voice over IP) phones) having the ability to automagically change their internal phone book numbers when the telco they're connected through is aware of changes in phone numbers (like the one in this article). That way nobody would care at all when they change since they wouldn't have to update all their phone book entries.

FYI: Caldera was built out of a division that Novell sold off in 1996. Novell also used to own UnixWare until it was sold to SCO, but then SCO sold a bunch of its business Caldera.

Caldera and Novell are based in the same city and already cooperate on a number of Novell-related Linux initiatives. So look to Caldera to do what you suggested.

The company's recent announcement of a partnership with Red Hat Software on further development of eDirectory for Linux and Red Hat's commitment to using eDirectory on its forthcoming Red Hat Network is an interesting development. At the press conference I asked Schmidt whether any merger or acquisition discussions were ongoing between Novell and Red Hat and was told (per Securities and Exchange Commission rules), "I can't talk about that, either to say yes or no." After a short pause, Schmidt added, "We like them a lot."

If each of the devices was wireless IPv6 enabled then you get the added benefits of security (so your neighbors couldn't track your password & credit card numbers when you typed them in, or read your outgoing email) and portability, since complying to a Universal standard should let you use the devices on any IPv6 enabled appliance, such as your digital 'VCR', Game Station, DVD player, MP3 player, Cell Phone, etc. all of which seem to be planning to incorporate the standard.

• Gimme a break. p2p is *old* technology, not new. It's using p2p in a large, distributed fashion that is new.

For example, if I have a dynamic pulldown menu, it will _NOT_ display right AT ALL on Netscape 3 to the point where one has to force the user to an upgrade screen because the user experience would be more damaging then not.

You are not going to FORCE me to do anything. I define MY own user experience, and if your HTML will not work on my browser, relief is just a click away. If you can't be bothered to write something that works without crap like Javascript and Flash then you obviously don't want me at your site!

For many webpages I have to had to save the source and hack the file into submission. At home, with Junkbuster and Javascript off I would get a blank page on the Linux: Renegade or ally? link posted earlier today. I had to open a text editor and delete HTML until I finally could see the article. And don't get me started on the barely-legible tiny fonts that web developers using CSS are so fond of using!

To bring this back on topic, my bank uses Javascript so I can't access my account when I turn Javascript off, but at least they offer exporting of account data in CSV format...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!

Shapiro is a regular writer for them and it looks no more intellegent than the article we're reading now

The following links are some that i've come across. They are rather interesting at times:

A how-to for stealing someone's domain name, which was a ddresed in the article. Furthermore, the specs for these protocols and implementations can be found here and here. There was also a critical interview calling for the implementation of these more secure systems in order to prevent the holes in the current system..

A new company, United Devices, is try to make a profit (ugh!) off distributed computing. To get people to people to participate, the company will probably offer cash, frequent flyer miles and other giveaways.
For more:
Network World article on the company
United Devices Web site

From the article:

Two other security technologies, OpenSSH and OpenSSL, which were formerly available separately because of U.S. export laws on encryption, will be included in Linux 7.0.

RedHat 7 will include OpenSSH by default, according to this article that I found linked from deadly.org

No, quite honestly I'd prefer for the RIAA to go away, die completely, and let the actual content producers (read: "artists") take control of their own product back.

The content producers who own their own copyrights have spoken loud and clear about how they feel about sharing music.

I have no idea where the mistaken assumption comes from that artists are OK with their music being pirated. it's just one of those slashdot myths I guess.

hmmm - i'm assuming you've never used a telephone if you're making comments like that. Telephone service is one of the most reliable things in the US (excuse my ethnocentricity - i've never been outside the US). Ethernet, and networks in general goes down quite a bit more

In fact, several companies (running a google search right now...) have said they were working on getting a "IP Dial Tone" - ie that you know you'll always be online or able to get a connection, like the phone line whose uptime is like 99.999 something percent.

Some links to prove are..

• F5 Labs: Making the Internet as reliable as the telephone network
• Keeping Current on 1998 predictions
  9. IP dial tone will remain IP busy signal through the end of '97. Yes, it is a great idea. Yes, I think it will happen. Just not in 1998. No applications, no infrastructure, too many firms trying to make a "standard" at this point. Much more likely for 1998 will be the explosion of service-level agreements (SLA). However, although these will be misunderstood by users. They are likely to be confused by mixed marketing messages, SLAs that fail to specify true goals, and a lack of metrics for judging SLAs.
• Follow-up to 98 predictions
  Fred Said: "IP dial tone will remain IP busy signal through the end of '97."
  Scoreboard ... Direct Hit. Don't confuse the use of IP for voice services (which has happened) with IP dial tone (which hasn't happened just yet). The ability to plug into the IP network and call away still has a long way to go. Too many technology issues, too many standard bearers and not enough market demand have temporarily derailed this scheme. But, just like computer-telephone integration, it has still got legs for 1999.