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Microsoft completey denies those statements were ever made.

here

Funny that reuters and slashdot just posted opposite stories.
-Rich

Just thought I'd pass on a perm link for the NY Times article mentioned at the bottom of your article. Your link will expire at the end of the day

New York Times - free registration required DoubleClick Moves to Quell Privacy Debate.

http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/

(free reg. req'd) Evidence Suggests Web Attacks Were Work of More Than One Group By MATT RICHTEL WITH JOEL BRINKLEY FROM FRIDAY'S TIMES As attacks against prominent Web sites appeared to be tapering off, law enforcement and computer security experts said evidence now suggested that the digital assaults had been the work of more than one person or group.
RELATED ARTICLE: Web Attacks Have Government Revisiting Laws and Security

(free reg. req'd) Evidence Suggests Web Attacks Were Work of More Than One Group By MATT RICHTEL WITH JOEL BRINKLEY FROM FRIDAY'S TIMES As attacks against prominent Web sites appeared to be tapering off, law enforcement and computer security experts said evidence now suggested that the digital assaults had been the work of more than one person or group.
RELATED ARTICLE: Web Attacks Have Government Revisiting Laws and Security

It looks like the attack on Yahoo! is not an isolated incident. Several major websites suffered similiar attacks today. Among them were ebay, buy.com, amazon.com, and cnn.com. The NY Times story can be found here. This is particularly interesting, as Buy.com had their IPO today. Furthermore, it appears that the FBI is becoming involved. Thoughts?

The NYTimes has an article on the dsitributed attack on eBay today here.

There was an article on the front page of the Science Times of the New York Times a few weeks ago. The link can be found here. The robot is very cool. And what is really cool is that they allow undergrads to help work on it too.

• NY Times

According to a Reuters story in the New York Times the system was down approximately 72 hours. But in order to fix it, they spent thousands of man hours and $1.5 million! That's quite a problem... not simply reinstalling the OS on some workstation somewhere, I mean, how do you spend $1.5 million on repairs within 72 hours? Did they have to buy themselves a new Cray?

Because if it wasn't incriminating then his lawyer wouldn't be pleading the fifth. Read the article, you jackass.

--

Some of us aren't the best writers. And some of us don't have the facts.

I don't want to lie about our position, and I want to get the facts straight. Can somebody post a letter that has correct facts, but is forceful?

Somebody help those of us who know this is really, really bad, but not much else...

I've collected these emails: (it's a start, at least)

mailto:newsonline@bbc.co.uk mailto:TechNews@MSNBC.com mailto:World@MSNBC.com mailto:letters@msnbc.com mailto:Internight@MSNBC.com mailto:opinion@msnbc.com mailto:comments@foxnews.com mailto:feedback@nytimes.com

and the following webpages:

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/ http://abc.go.com/email_abc/mail_home.html http://www.cbs.com/now/eframeset/1,1616,311,00.htm l?URL=%2Fnow%2Ffeedback%2F1%2C1611%2C311 %2C00%2Ehtml

Novices Offer Up Dreams on Game Demos.

It sounds exactly like what you are talking about. Heh, you know another important"indie" game scene? Games for Texas Instruments graphing calculators, they are pretty popular at my college.

At the beginning of the article R.I.P mentions the dearth of great writing on video games; I'd like to place here a plug for J.C. Herz's Joystick Nation : How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds, and even more so Herz's New York Times Column Game Theory. Reading Game Theory is the highlight of my Thursday.

mahlen

When a team of marketing minions from Sears paid a visit to the company's production facilities, Bushnell made a lasting impression by riding around the factory floor on a conveyor belt, in a box. Elsewhere in the organization, happy employees tried to drive an executive mad by gradually adding lead weights to his telephone receiver.
--ATARI, 1974

This is the second post I've seen like this today. I realize everyone and there Mom wanted Slashdot to put the submitted stories up so that everyone could *vote* on them, but this is ridiculous. If you don't want to read Slashdot for your news, go somewhere else. If Hemos and CmdrTco no longer do it for you, go to ZDNet or the NY Times. Post relevant shit if you're going to spend the time to post at all, not news I could give a flying fsck about. That's why God gave you a "Back" button...

The New York Times Circuts section carried an article on this very matter as well. It would surprise some people what length advertisers go to in order to make sure their message is being heard. There was once a man interviewed on ABC News whose job is to count up every single ad visible in every second of NASCAR televised racing, along with the duration of visible time. He then punches this in a spreadsheet and uses calculations to both valuate and evaluate the money worth of each ad spot.

Now advertisers will be pissed because there is no more garuntee that they will be seen on television. Technically the networks have a right to broadcast what they want, but it perturbs me to realize that networks will go to lenghts to block competitor's advertisements, but still interrupt broadcasts with sensational journalism, like the OJ "getaway" and planes landing on freeways.

For an example of a clueless reporter, check out this article in today's NY Times.

I don't know if the reporters are dumb, or the write for dumbies, or both.

there's also a ny times article on it. apparently, the Fluent software can be used in the "aerospace, chemical, electronics and automotive" industries as well. that and to predict the ever important turbulence inside beer/wine fermenters...

You said:

That's the joy of controlling the market, the consumer CAN'T go someplace else. Don't like CNN, try Headline News, oops same company, how about MSNBC, doh!, how about FoxNews, hmmm, new bikinis.

I say:

Don't like those -- try the BBC or the Washington Post or the New York Times or just hit Yahoo or Google and find any of thousands of other sources.

I don't see the problem...

Tadas

1. DB/2 for Linux.
2. MQSeries and ADSM clients for Linux
3. 24x7 support for Linux on Netfinity Servers through the IBM Helpcenters
4. GPL'd device driver for out ServeRAID PCI RAID Adapters (and onboard versions on Netfinitys)
5. Domino Server
6. A fast JDK for Linux
7. Jikes Java debugger
8. Code released to get it to run on an S/390
9. Websphere for Linux
10. VisualAge for Java now runs on Linux
11. IBM HTTP Server for Linux (part of Websphere)

Personally, I'm not sure I really see the significance of this. Big blue likes linux. Okay, fine. They'll sell servers running linux. Neat. But what are they going to do to develop linux? Are they going to contribute to the community, or are they just going to make a quick buck on everyone else's work without having to worry about NT licencing fee. Don't get me wrong; it's great to see more linux servers and workstations in the world, and any exposure is good exposure, but if anyone has the means to help development, it's IBM.

Too many corporations are looking at linux as a finished product, rather than a work in progress. It's not.

http://www.nyti mes.com/library/politics/camp/010700wh-gop-bush.ht ml

This would be a great theory, except that it's wrong.

If you check historical newspapers, you will find that the New York Times, for example, ushered in the new century on their front page on January 1, 1901. There has never been widespread confusion about the starting day of a new century until now.

Stephen J. Gould gives this a good treatment in his book Questioning the Millennium, which is a pretty good read.

Speaking of Gartnet, just saw this article over at nytimes.com... My favorite quote is:

"Shareholders will want to hear convincing reasons for spending on this
scale. Lawyers will be urging action for companies to seek compensation if
huge sums were judged to have been spent unnecessarily."

Gee, and I wonder how they're going to prove that... Maybe they'll bring in some "expert " witness and ask her to stare into her crystal ball...

Just wondering if anyone has checked to see if Microsoft may be helping the DVD CCA though direct or indirect funding? Where they have DVD's playing in their environment it may be they would like to stop Linux from having it available.

Amusing thought. The DVD CCA's case is really founded on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (WIPO treaty), which is supposed to stop digital piracy. And in the other lawsuit that today got news (free registration required), RealNetworks is suing Streambox, Inc., for violating the DMCA.

Streambox's defense is that all they were doing was allowing consumers choice by providing a way for customers to convert content they legally obtained in Real format, to Windows Media Audio format. Guess who benefits from that reformatting? Guess who has a technology licensing agreement with that other company in Redmond, Real or Streambox?

And Microsoft of course is on the other side too. The news story says, "The complaint also contends that the Streambox Ferret, a plug-in search engine designed to work with RealPlayer, violates RealNetworks' copyright by changing the appearance of RealPlayer on the screen and interferes with a contract between RealNetworks and Snap.com under which Snap's search service is built in to RealPlayer. Snap.com is an Internet portal site owned jointly by Cnet and NBC."

Guess who owns part of this NBC company?

It's tough being a Goliath these days--it hurts when you step on your own toes, doesn't it?

Still, maybe the Microsoft lawyers would like to come to the aid of those who claim it is entirely legal to decrypt content you legally own, in order to make it run on a platform that was deliberately not supported by the other manufacturer? Doesn't that sound rather familiar here?

A proposed solution: get rid of the DMCA and the incompetent DVD CCA. Make the development of the next generation of DVD software and drivers completely open source. (By now the DVD CCA should realize they made some very bad mistakes in encryption that might have been averted if they had listened to the open source advocates.) Allow anybody to create software to allow players on any platform, and grant free licenses for that use. DVD use would increase dramatically, and everybody win. Why not?

The Capital Dispatch, part of the New York Times' Cybertimes division reports that the FEC is looking for about 30 volunteers to sit on an advisory committee. The committee will consider proposals to give individuals access to the information that companies obtain from them.

1. What personal and political qualities do we want in a representative?
2. How will the representative communicate with the community? Perhaps they could be given their own slashdot section.
3. Should they represent non-American slashdotters? (This is a US committee focusing on a domestic issue)

"The purpose of the Advisory Committee is to provide advice and recommendations to the Commission regarding implementation of certain fair information practices by domestic commercial Web sites. In particular, the Advisory Committee will address providing online consumers reasonable access to personal information collected from and about them and maintaining adequate security for that information."

• 
  The New York Times' Story written by Jeri Clausing.
  She may be a good contact on the issue.
• 
  The FEC site- includes a link to an acrobat file describing the committee and the nominating process.

The Capital Dispatch, part of the New York Times' Cybertimes division reports that the FEC is looking for about 30 volunteers to sit on an advisory committee. The committee will consider proposals to give individuals access to the information that companies obtain from them.

1. What personal and political qualities do we want in a representative?
2. How will the representative communicate with the community? Perhaps they could be given their own slashdot section.
3. Should they represent non-American slashdotters? (This is a US committee focusing on a domestic issue)

"The purpose of the Advisory Committee is to provide advice and recommendations to the Commission regarding implementation of certain fair information practices by domestic commercial Web sites. In particular, the Advisory Committee will address providing online consumers reasonable access to personal information collected from and about them and maintaining adequate security for that information."

• 
  The New York Times' Story written by Jeri Clausing.
  She may be a good contact on the issue.
• 
  The FEC site- includes a link to an acrobat file describing the committee and the nominating process.

The Capital Dispatch, part of the New York Times' Cybertimes division reports that the FEC is looking for about 30 volunteers to sit on an advisory committee. The committee will consider proposals to give individuals access to the information that companies obtain from them.

1. What personal and political qualities do we want in a representative?
2. How will the representative communicate with the community? Perhaps they could be given their own slashdot section.
3. Should they represent non-American slashdotters? (This is a US committee focusing on a domestic issue)

"The purpose of the Advisory Committee is to provide advice and recommendations to the Commission regarding implementation of certain fair information practices by domestic commercial Web sites. In particular, the Advisory Committee will address providing online consumers reasonable access to personal information collected from and about them and maintaining adequate security for that information."

• 
  The New York Times' Story written by Jeri Clausing.
  She may be a good contact on the issue.
• 
  The FEC site- includes a link to an acrobat file describing the committee and the nominating process.

Got this in my mailbox this morning from the Ditherati mailing list:

PICK IT, BOX IT ... UM, WE FORGOT WHAT COMES NEXT

"We sat down yesterday and felt that there were some orders that we were not able to ship for Christmas."

Toysrus.com CEO John Barbour, on the lack of fulfillment felt by his company's warehouse workers during the holiday rush, The New York Times, 23 December 1999

My most humple apologies; thi s is the correct link.

Well, according to esteemed New York Mayor Giuliani, the Marxists never left the US and are still a menace today.

The version of the story on the NY Times says that the son thought that the unit was a gift from a friend AT microsoft. Not a retail purchase.

(Don't mod me up for finding this story. RedX posted it way above)

The article cited in the /. summary does a horrible job of telling the story. Check out this article at the NY Times for a better recap. Seems the NYPD unit involved was the Computer Investigative Unit, which is certainly appropriate due to the fact that this was suspected industrial espionage. At the time, it was suspected that the shipping labels may have been intentionally switched in order to steal the device. In hindsight, the police did overreact since this turned out to be a mistake rather than industrial espionage. To be fair, they didn't know if they were knocking on the door of a pregnant wife (they were) or a corporate spy. Also, the device was in the hand's of the banker's father, who is an attorney. Regardless of our opinions of MS, a prototype of one of their more popular products that is more than a year from market probably is worth $1 million to them or their competitors, and when something like this ends up in NY rather than Seattle, you can bet there will be some pretty beefy law enforcement involved. I'm sure a similar case with a big company like GM, Ford, IBM, Apple, etc. would result in similar police response.

Bob Park's WN page at the American Physical Society (suggested keywords: eos earth observing space station) to see how often the budget of the EOS has been threatened, and occasionally gutted to make up for overruns in the International Space Station account. The launching of Terra (assuming it has lifted off) is bittersweet, though definitely a step in the right direction. I only wish solid science was regarded with even half the importance as good PR in congress. Maybe we would be farther along in understanding global warming and other serious concerns.

Adding a sense of urgency to these missions, the NY Times has an

article today claiming 1999 will join 1998 as the one of the two hottest years on record.

Unless the stock market comes to its senses in the next few months, I rather suspect they'll get a little more than $100 million (given absurdly high IPOs we've been seeing)!

I believe that $100 million figure is just for the 20% of the company that will be sold to the public. According to this New York Times article, the figure is actually a bit under 20%. That said, they're shooting for something closer to a $500 million market cap, though I'd say that still leaves plenty of room for the share price to jump to insanely wild heights in the first few days of trading.

If you break a story on a major security hole that most people don't know about on a weekend, most people are still not going to know about it.

I realize that this is not your intent, but, keep in mind that this is one of the oldest tricks in the book at newspapers like the New York Times. When there's an unfavorable story about the Clinton Administration, quite often the Times waits until Saturday, when no one is reading the paper, to break it.

You got 150 posts on this topic, but, I suggest you would have gotten a lot more on Monday. More importantly, lots more people would have assessed their exposure to the potential risks.
--

Dave Aiello

Raising the price without raising the profit is something I would think that people interested in "trade" would be clearly against

Maybe in the first world. If you are a delegate from the third world you may be interested in tarrifs. Since you can't tax your own people enough to support your government you may have to rely on taxing imports to generate revenue.

On a similar note, we in the first world had to experience the unfair labor laws, child exploitation, and unsanitary and downright lifethreatening work environments as we navigated the industrial revolution. Now that we find ourselves navigating the information revolution we (President Clinton, the Seattle protesters, silent first-world citizens nodding in affirmation) believe that we can impose labor standards on these developing countries despite their cost of implemenation. Why would we think another country must implement our standards and not have to go through the same growing pains we had to in order to get to where we are?

Finally...

you've got to be pretty evil to get a super-apathetic American public so pissed off as to go into the streets and protest in those numbers.

It's not an apathetic public that is protesting. You have a very organized protest that has been in the making for months. They annouced their objectives months ago, and Seattle has no one to blame except themselves for the crisis. They could have planned better. Still, the AFL-CIO is helping to organize the protesters, and why not? Labor standards (read socialism) is their goal. If they can export their beliefs perhaps they can have a voice in the rule of government which adopt those beliefs.(NY Times) include the Sierra Club, United Steelworkers of America, and various smaller groups.

They are definitely a well-organized group with a self-serving message to be heard.

Interestingly there was an artic le in today's New York Times Science section that bears some relevance. (Actually there was another related article in last Saturday's (?) Times, but I can't find a link to it. Oh well).

The article more or less says that there is mounting evidence that the Universe is expanding at an increasing rate. If this is true, then it seems to indicate that there won't be a Big Crunch. The source of the increasing speed of expansion is presumably some unknown repulsive force. There is speculation that this is the result of elementary particles popping into and out of existence (compliments of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, if memory serves).

Correction and/or additional insights from those with a better grasp of astrophyics?

It seems obvious that Mosaic will not prevent violence in schools. These indescrimant killings are copy cat crimes sanctioned by various historical traditions (family fueds, Bolshivic propaganda, fire bombing, etc.) but largely enabled and encouraged by the mass media. Still they are so rare as to be imposible to collect statistics useful enough to even narow down the pool of potential suspects. Even if the pool was narowed down, random events, by definition, can not be predicted. As pointed out above, the more violent and oppresive are ignored by Mosaic so that the victims can be further persecuted.

The New York Times has an article running with erie similarities to this conversational thread. It shows where such Left leaning thoughts can lead, and tells why. Check out:

The Stasi

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/1129 99germany-stasi.html

Ten years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the inner workings of the East German police state are mostly visible. Eight times the size of Hitler's SS per capita, the Stasi's primary tool was profiling. Knowledge is the conerstone of coersion. Police states are most distrustful of those who can have ability and these are the people Mosaic is designed to watch. No one is too small to be ignored.

Satire is protected speech. I don't think that asking for a contribution makes gwbush.com a political action site any more than the Times is for asking you to buy a subscription to their newspaper, which openly endorses candidates.

Nevertheless, Bush's team will make every effort to wear Exley down using every questionable--but still legal--tactic available.

That's the real terror: that all you need to do to get your way against a not-as-rich-as-you person is to sic lawyers on them to the point that they must either capitulate or become bankrupt. I think he'll soon find some soft money in the form of pro bono legal representation against Exley. Maybe Exley's payme-link should point to his legal defense fund.

--

A good friend of mine designs workstations for large companies and can see that this is not going to do anyone much good. They've been spending a ton of money on this already, throwing out pefectly good funiture for new more "ergonomic" stuff. Mostly, it's been going to overwheight whiners who would be better off if they simply exercised and tried to keep healthy. A thousand dollar chair won't solve their problems. Data entry people and others who could really benifit won't.

On the blue colar front, the low threshold will waste more than it fixes. As a former RPS PM loader, I can assure everyone that manual labor will wear you out regardless of back protectors, converyor belts, bells, whistles, or a federally mandated desk jockey! No amount of coaching can prevent accidents, and people who lift 50lb boxes all day will eventually suffer back problems.

Hot Russian Brides Available

I'm sure that these people can tell you stories about the effective uses of resources.

NYT now has a newer article with more info, including Posner "has no authority to force the parties to reach a settlement, or to impose one" and the 7th Circuit mediation rules (for non-judge mediators, I'd bet), rules which won't apply formally, but might be influential, state that "the mediator does not tell the district court judge trying the case what occurred during the talks. That way, if the talks fail because of one party or another, it will not prejudice the judge as he prepares his verdict."

The New York times reports that both sides agreed to the Posner appointment in chambers. That means they can't object later. The Washington Post also reports the interesting fact that Judge Jackson has appointed Harvard Prof. Larry Lessig, briefly a special master in the case, to "advise" him.

Alas, neither report tell us what kind of mediation it will be. Presumably, though, not the sort where parties have to accept the mediator's decision. Apparently the order will be published on Monday.

Having sitting judges accept appointments as mediators or arbitrators is common in the UK. It is very rare in the US, and probably would be unacceptable if the appointing authority were anyone other than another judge. It's certainly unorthodox.

As for Posner, while something of a sceptic about regulation, his jurisprudential writing is strong on the obligation of judges to follow Congressional intent. Indeed, he even suggested (playfully?) in one writing that maybe judges should interpret statutes like the securities and anti-trust laws more expansively, because the Congresses that passed them [controlled by Democrats!] desired expansive constructions, but that laws passed by more recent Congresses [controlled by Republicans!] might be read narrowly due to the different tenor of modern Congresses...

In person, Posner is very different from what you would expect from his energetic writing style. Quiet, almost sweet, very interesting, could be someone's favorite uncle or maybe grandfather. Lots of fun to have lunch with.

The NY Times story on the Playboy suit explains it nicely, but the summary is: She really had been a Playboy playmate, so it was legal for her to say so on her web site. (Imagine if she lost. People could get sued for posting résumés that contained copyrighted words.)

I've never looked at xenu.net, but I suspect the Playboy v. Terri Welles case is at least partially relevant: If Playboy can't prevent ex-playmates from saying they were Playboy, Scientology shouldn't be able to prevent ex-Scientologists from saying they were in the Church of Scientology, and so forth.

The real problem here is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA encourages the yanking of web sites based on accusations, not legal findings of fact. The Act's authors put far too much faith in corporations' ability to act responsibly.

I'm feeling simple-minded today. Suppose I claim that I detected some spectacular message in the data I downloaded. How does the "ruin the entire project for everyone?" Does my message just get forwarded direct to a headline in the New York Times? If so, I think their protocol could use a little work....

NYT link didn't work for me - try http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb ?getdoc+site+site+79513+1+wAAA+DTV. Curse these dumb CGIs!

Good luck to Sinclair, I say. Given that we've already got working stuff in Europe, goodness knows why the US needs another standard at all. I'd like to have a telly I can use anywhere in the world.

Today's NY Times article says that releasing the finding of fact ahead of the verdict is unusual and clever move by Judge Jackson. It also says that an appeals process will occur after the next election, when the new president can appoint a new head of the Justice Department's antitrust division. So, which canidate is in Microsoft's corner? Do you think soft money will make the findings of fact irrelevant?

Here are some more stories about the case:

There's one in The NY Times, one in Wired, one on MSNBC, one on CNN and probably one on every other news site under the sun, but I just feel like giving a few more articles. It's always nice to get some more points of view.

--
Reject

My roommate had this mentioned in his electrical computing class at Rice today.
The prof printed out copies for everyone.
You can find YOUR copy at:

http://www.nyt imes.com/library/tech/99/11/biztech/articles/01nan o.html

Usual free registration/login for nytimes.

Coercion is a problem that is shared by most remote authentication techniques. It is impossible (almost!) to coerce a voter when he/she is required to show up at the poll booth as opposed to letting him/her vote remotely. Similarly, it is difficult to coerce someone to withdraw huge sums of money at a bank as opposed to the ease with which you can hold someone at gunpoint at an automated teller machine.

Now, don't argue that ATMs have security cameras and such. You wouldn't want those cameras installed in the privacy of your home (where you will be voting remotely from), would you? But note that I said "most" remote authentication techniques suffer from this problem, not all. I suppose authentication that is based on biometrics that vary depending on stress levels could work remotely. If it can be argued that a person's voice pattern differs noticeably when he/she is being threatened, and if such a threatening situation can be identified and recorded, then it would work. But using biometrics has risks too.

So, before jumping onto the online voting bandwagon, politicians and states need to consider the possibility of voter coercion adequately.

Sreeram.