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Better still, have it replace Windows when nobody's looking

What's even funnier is imaging the thousands of Microtemps caring about their jobs enough to make better software than open source software.

http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm?ter m=die

"I want tech-news, esp. from the fs/os area!"

Like martyn s, you also have the power!

I've been reading about this for years now, but for one reason or another companies have not been able to make this technology work outside the lab. If they could, the potential bandwidth would be measured in the giga or terabit per second, rather than the meager megabits DSL and Cable can provide.

He's some history on this subject as told by the media:
Here's an article from 3.5 years ago claiming, "U.S. Gets Ready For Internet Over Power Lines."
Here's another only 2+ year old suggesting, "Internet access over power lines nears reality."
Another only 1 year old saying,"Internet access via power lines reborn in Europe."

I'll start making plans for it when a get a piece of Junk mail from CP&L (my power company) offering 1 month free access to their new ISP service. Until then I'll remain very sceptical

we could borrow it from the Netline Technologies - an Israeli firm. Here is the article

Well, you could always search google, or for general tech acronym descriptions this site is often helpful. from the techweb site:
(Private Branch eXchange) An inhouse telephone switching system that interconnects telephone extensions to each other as well as to the outside telephone network (PSTN). A PBX enables a single-line telephone set to gain access to one of a group of pooled (shared) trunks by dialing an 8 or 9 prefix. PBXs also include functions such as least cost routing for outside calls, call forwarding, conference calling and call accounting. Modern PBXs use all-digital methods for switching, but may support both analog and digital telephones and telephone lines. See IP PBX and WPBX.

Some friends and I were just discussing something similar to this at lunch.

There is a major college right near by that has a campus-wide wireless network that's completely open to anyone with a WiFi card. We were thinking about equipping a small PC with an 802.11b card and hiding it somewhere on campus to use as a server.

During the discussion I remembered this story on techweb last year about a network server that went missing for a few years after it was walled in.

So the ultimate idea is to find someplace with a WiFi network that's doing some remodeling and hide the box behind some drywall. With no wires to trace, the odds of someone finding it are very slim.

While audio and video are at the core of the MPEG-4 specification, MPEG-4 can also support 3D objects, sprites, text and other media types.

Sound familiar? It should. You've been able to mix media with Apple's QuickTime technology for over a decade, storing each new type in a separate track. With this kind of extensibility, it's no surprise that the ISO chose the QuickTime file format as the foundation for the new MPEG-4 standard.

The QuickTime file format will be used to store digital video and audio content displayed using the MPEG-4 video standard being developed by the ISO. Six companies co-authored the QuickTime format.

The six -- Apple, IBM, Netscape, Oracle, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Microsystems -- said in a joint statement they "look forward to collaborating with other companies and industry bodies to further refine the specification and QuickTime file format -- ensuring that MPEG-4 quickly gains market acceptance."

While the power of LINUX is well known as a power-full OS, adequate for most jobs. There are some jobs that require the flair and power of UNIX to do the job right.
I must cite the extensive use of SUN Systems used in many other movies, like Jurrasic Park and Terminator 2, and wonder what would prompt ILM to pick LINUX above an obviously proven set of tools?

Currently, LED lights are fairly directed (ie, they are not as good for filling a room).
So they won't necessarily replace the light bulb yet.
However, they are excellent replacements for flashlights, traffic lights, car lamps -- ie, any kind of directed light.

They are brighter, more efficient, and last longer than regular incandescent or fluorescent bulbs.
They do cost more though, but that might change with economies of scale.

Some links:
EETimes Article: White LEDs to overtake the light bulb, keynoter says
TechWEB Article: LED: The End Of the Light Bulb As We Know It?

This was my final year project thesis. Just remember the golden rule unstructured 2 structured == convert 2 XML I wrote a [very bad] program in C++/Perl/tcsh IPC=pipes to add XML tags to English, and then index them into a search engine which would use the lingual data stored in the XML tags to help the search.

NIST does a MASSIVE competition on this annually. I don't want to be an XML-buzzword whore <Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> (XML commando eats Green berets, C++, Java, Perl, COBOL for breakfast)</Arnold Schwarzenegger accent> but you can't beat XML for easily converting anything that you can make sense out of into computer readable format. Real h3cKoRs use SGML, but us underlings have to stick with things we can understand like XML. As for expandability, if we want to encode something else into the document, then just tag-it-and-go

It took me 200 hours to fish out all these links (before the Google days), I don't want anyone to have to waste as much time as I did feeding the search engines exotic foods. It's a year old so pardon me for the odd broken link, armed with these you could probably turn jello into XML ;-)

My favourite bookmarx
PROJect[21 links]
Beginners' Guide[13 links]
Berkeley Linguistics Dept. Course Summaries, general stuffzzzzzzzzzzzzzzCryptic IR Vocabulary defined
Explanations of weird words like hypernym zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHow do we produce and understand speech
How Inverted Files are Created - Univeristy of Berkeley zzzzzzzzzzzzzzNLP Univ. of Indiana, very good basics e.g. word sense d
Simple langauge - useful.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWhat is Natural Language Processing, links
What is POS tagging........ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguation defined
Word Sense Disambiguation in detail, scroll down far zzzzzzzzzzzzzzWord Sense Disambiguator - LOLITA (tested at MUC-7 and SENSEVAL competition as best)
XML for the absolute beginner

HTML, XML stuff + parsers[19 links]
Apache plug-in that uhhh does stuff with XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzConvert COM to XML
convert XML, HTML to Unix pipeable formats zzzzzzzzzzzzzzconverters to and from HTML
expat XML parser zzzzzzzzzzzzzzHTML Tidy - converts HTML 2 XML + source code!!
Parse DB (RDBMS, whatever) to XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPerl-XML Module List
PHP Manual XML parser functions - what the hell are they talking about, PHP Virtual M... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPublic SGML-XML Software
Pyxie - XML Processor for Python, Perl, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSGML+XML tools.org
The XML Resource Centre - massive number of links zzzzzzzzzzzzzzW4F wrapper - wrapper converts XML to HTML
XFlat - convert flat file into XML zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML Parsers and other XML stuff
XML.com - Parsers, etc. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzXML-Data Catalog System - uhhhh looks close
XTAL's general converter - convert anything 2 XML

other Background[8 links]
Is Linux ready for the Enterprise, scalable... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzLinux reliability
Linux Versus Windows NT, Mark(sysinternals bloke) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzPC reliability (pcworld)
SPEC - Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzSystems benchmarks
TPC - Transaction Processing Performance Council zzzzzzzzzzzzzzUnix Beats Back NT In EDA Workstation Arena
Proper TREC(-8) QA systems[2 links]

pg. 387 LIMSI-CNRS pretty deep parsing[2 links]
More links....
NLP, IR links - lots to corpii, etc.

pg. 575 U. of Ottawa and NRL (shit system, got 0%)[1 links]
LAKE Lab
pg. 607! University of Sheffield (crap system, but OPEN SOURCE!)[2 links]
GATE - FREE IE app w`source code
LaSIE - ER, coreference, template (cv)

pg. 617 Univ of Surrey (inconclusive matches)[2 links]
System Quirk - Or is this their search system..... Hmmmmmm
Univ of Surrey - pointers (hopefully this is their WILDER search system...)

SMU - Pg. 65[1 links]
Natural Language Processing Laboratory at SMU

Textract[2 links]
Cymfony - Technology
Textract - State of the Art Information Extraction

Xerox uhhhhh maybe[1 links]
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
(OVERVIEW) 1999 TREC-8 Q&A Track Home Page
NLP bloke, Univ Sussex


Tcl-Tk[4 links] Tcl tutorial
Tcl-Tk Contributed Programs Index
Tcl-Tk Resources, sources
TclXML - manipulating XML using Tcl-Tk
Artificial Natural Language - Is this what I'm trying to parse into...
Comparison of Indexers - Prise vs. Inquery vs. MG, etc.
Eagles - Language Engineering Standards
Language Technology Group - lots of modules!
LDC - Linguistic Data Consortium, lots of corpora
Lexical Resources
Links 2 resources, indexers.....
Lots of IR stuff, University of uhhh
Managing Gigabytes Indexer
Managing Gigabytes Manuals and stuff
Htdig search system
NLP & IR (NLPIR, NIST) Group
OVERVIEW OF MUC-7-MET-2
Perl XML Indexing - XML search engine type thing
Phrasys Language Processing Software Components (money)
QA HCI bullshit
SIGIR - TREC-type thing, resources
SMART indexer system documentation
Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) Home Page
The Natural Language Software Registry
Thunderstone IE and IR products
WordNet - FREE DOWNLOADABLE lexical English database

Page created with URL+, nice utility for working with internet shortcuts

Aren't you forgetting the previous consent agreement? Did they comply with that?

It's modded (+3, funny) as I type, but it really is true ...

See http://www.vnunet.com/News/105831 and http://content.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981009S 0021 for details.

Don't you see even more PocketPC devices langusihing?

No. There aren't enough PocketPCs to meet the demand, actually. Of course, this is mainly a result of Compaq's iPaq being the only high-selling PocketPC. Now, though, several other makers are coming on the market offering PocketPC 2002 and we should probably see a slackening of the supply/demand ratio.

Judging from others around me at my company, I don't see any upswing in PocketPC market share.

Though I don't doubt your experience, please keep in mind that it is only your experience. The numbers just don't bear out your experience.

(Yes, the news is almost a year old, but other information to be had was only available at PocketPC-oriented websites, so I didn't want to taint the numbers)

surprised that no-one has mentioned knuth's suggestion yet

i've mirrored knuth's discussion and suggestion for a solution below - link can be found here, on his news for 1999 page.

~~~~~~~mirrored text of donald knuth~~~~~~~~

Many people (and many online dictionaries) claim that a kilobyte (kB or KB) is 2^10 bytes, and that a megabyte (MB) is 2^10 kilobytes, etc.

I'm a big fan of binary numbers, but I have to admit that this convention flouts the widely accepted international standards for scientific prefixes.

Therefore I propose a simple way to resolve the dilemma and the ambiguity: Let us agree to say that

2^10 bytes is a large kilobyte, abbreviated KKB;

2^20 bytes is a large megabyte, abbreviated MMB;

and so on up the line: Large giga-, tera-, peta-, exa-, zetta-, and yottabytes are GGB, TTB, PPB, EEB, ZZB, and YYB, taking us up to 2^80. (Notice that doubling the letter connotes both binary-ness and large-ness.)

These proposals were motivated by the suggestions in 1995 of IUPAC-IDCNS (the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols), which were extended by IEC TC 25 (Technical Committee 25 of the International Electrotechnical Commission), chaired by Anders J. Thor. According to those committees, 2^20 bytes should be called a "mebibyte" and abbreviated MiB; 2^40 bytes should be called a "tebibyte" and abbreviated TiB; etc. The members of those committees deserve credit for raising an important issue, but when I heard their proposal it seemed dead on arrival --- who would voluntarily want to use MiB for a maybe-byte?! So I came up with the suggestion above, and mentioned it on page 94 of my Introduction to MMIX. Now to my astonishment, I learn that the committee proposals have actually become an international standard. Still, I am extremely reluctant to adopt such funny-sounding terms; Jeffrey Harrow says "we're going to have to learn to love (and pronounce)" the new coinages, but he seems to assume that standards are automatically adopted just because they are there. Surely a huge number of standards for other computer things, like networking protocols, have been replaced by better ideas when they came along. Thus I hope it still isn't too late to propose what I believe is a significantly better alternative, and I still think it unlikely that people will automatically warm to "mebibytes". Indeed, the last time I looked (June 28), names like "mebibyte.com" were being offered for sale but with no takers! I might, however, want to buy into a name like mmegabyte.com... And even in the unlikely event that mebibytes do catch on, MMB surely wins over MiB as their abbreviation. [See also the discussion by Kevin Walsh.]

Yeppers. here is a short blurb about that :)

Direct3D? You mean that horribly inefficient, overly complex, counterintutive API wrapper? Spend a day learning OpenGL, and a day learning Direct3D. By the end of the first day, you'll be creating whirling, swirling explosions of color and light with OpenGL, and you'll still be trying to figure out how to get Direct3D to display in 8-bit color. Not to mention, OpenGL makes much more efficient use of your processor. Go here for more information about this. OpenGL is THE API wrapper of choice if you want ease of use, power, flexibility, and compatibility. Try a game in Direct3D and a game in OpenGL on a GeForce-based card (all the other cards have crap OpenGL drivers, IMHO). OpenGL will not only run faster, but look smoother as well. Direct3D, while having been improved over the years, is still utter trash. Go here for a good source of information and history over the D3D vs. OpenGL debate.

The URL given (at least at this time of writing) is http://content.techweb.com/voices/harrow/harrow.ht ml which, at least as of this date, is talking about USB. And will probably be talking about something completely different, come the end of August, when this story is set to be published.

This early advance warning about this article being in the system was provided courtesy of Banjo!

Here is the link.

I'm sure you were half kidding, but you're about a year too late. We've only seen the beginning of virus (virii?) now that everything is going to be interconnected in some way.

MIPS owns the trademark to MIPS, and owns a lot of the intellectual property. The MIPS design work within SGI is conducted seperately from MIPS though. It's not a matter of buying an ASIC core and slapping some additional logic on it, these processors are designed from the ground up at SGI. It's more of a derivative work I suppose if you consider software design terminology. Sort of like FreeBSD v.s. OpenBSD etc. They share common ancestors but they're more than just enhancements of somebodies intellectual property.

I can't really post more compelling information, I work for SGI and need to be somewhat careful. Essentially when MIPS was spun off SGI retained key intellectual property (R10K and above).

Actually, 4000 was last year, they've since doubled that: http://content.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010427S 0011

I'm really still incredibly confused by what's going on in the wierd little apple-ibm-motorola triumverate that is the PPC platform, but nearest i can gather Apple has been mostly having Motorola manufacture its chips exclusively for some reason, possibly (but probably not) that IBM doesn't like altivec and apple really needs altivec (because if you are going to be rendering the entire screen in PDF then having a powerful SIMD vector processing unit becomes really really helpful..). And according to some rather shady sources, Motorola has been having horrible problems with manufacturing-- which, if these shady sources are to be believed, can explain why the Mhz levels of the chips Apple has been using have stayed constant for a really long time now, and why there aren't enough 733 Mhz chips around to make dual 733 machines possible. So apple and motorola are just kind of wandering off to the side and getting lost while IBM sits alone in the corner and does really cool things with the POWER4 chips.

But, umm, this is just my interpretation of things based on the scant material i have read. I wish i knew how accurate i was.

Umm, but anyway, My question is this: What happens in the little PPC world from here? Does IBM just kind of keep doing its thing with the POWER line and toss Apple/Motorola some patent liscenses from time to time while Apple/Motorola stay alone and try to get their shit together, or are IBM's new metal technologies going to convince apple to start moving toward them? Or.. umm.. i don't even know what i'm saying anymore. OK, just, either way, will we be seeing improvements in apple's PPC line anytime soon, and does this new IBM announcement mean anything to apple customers? Or is this all irrelivant, because this is just one of these things where the technology not ready to move outside the lab, and implementation of this technology in production chips is five years away at best or something?

Oh dear.. Uhhh.. i'm pretty sure just about everything i've said in this incoherent post has been wrong, but i'm posting it anyway in hopes that someone who is actually informed could step in and explain what is happening. That would be really cool :)

All i know is, i drool at IBM's chip technologies.. all of them, pretty much.

I'm not sure what the sources for the BBC article were but as I recall, Google has a 4000 node Linux cluster running it, not "three large servers" as the BBC article satates.

It's nice to see a good company with an excelant reputation braving the Equity Markets. Good luck to them.

--CTH

---

• Queen of (insert subject here)
• Cruise Director
• Editrix
• Webtyrant
• Webmistress
• Master of Information
• Maesto of Design
• Turnaround Titan

Well, essentially your first idea is another iteration of trying to construct a Dewey decimal system for content; lots of people have been working on taxonomy stuff for a while, but I don't think you'll see much success - look how fragmented Yahoo, for example. Any working taxonomy is at the very least going to have to allow a concept like "aliases" or keywords in the tree, for things which map to multiple locations -- just like a pizza house appearing under "take away food" and "restaurants" (yummy).

As you point out, RealNames was a sadly proprietary first attempt at a directory-cum-search engine, but if you want to build a non-commercial version of anything like this, you need to look at SOAP, UDDI and WSDL. The corporate interests are forging ahead on this one.

For example, check out this web services toolkit on alphaWorks.

There's been talk about a UDDI registry run "at first" by IBM and its partners... sadly I don't have a link better than this rather lame news item. Anyone care to oblige? Perhaps thats an 'upcoming' interesting registry that we ought to be keeping an eye on...?

On a side note: Does anyone know whether Solaris is named Solaris because of the name of it's producing company or has anyone thought of Stanislaw Lem's great novel Solaris where the planet of Solaris is inhabited by an immense monocellular living intelligent ocean that is too large and too complex to understand?

Yeah, if RedHat and VALinux went under we'd be left with obscure little companies with nowhere near the same resources.

What suprises me is that we hold products that include hardware to such high standards, but don't demand (or are prepared to pay for) quality in software-only products.

Last year Toshiba confounded the industry by settling a class action law suit for over a billion. That was $210 to $433 in cash to owners of 5,000,000 Toshiba laptop or notebook computers as well as hundreds of dollars in coupons for more Toshiba products. I myself received $398.70 in cash, plus a coupon for $225 as well as a software patch for a notebook computer that was only bought for a $1,299.99 retail price.

And this was all over a theoretical floppy disk controller microcode bug that was never claimed to have been seen in normal use, and never now since floppys are obsolete. Even if Toshiba acted improperly in the handling of such a bug (it still denies this) I think this payout to be extremely unreasonable and leaves other hardware manufacturers having to insure against such litigation.

On the other hand when a software company puts out a product that will fail in 5 years due to a millenium bug, leaves the default security settings open to a virus or crashes unexpectedly, the best you could expect is a software patch (sometimes an upgrade at your cost), but never compensation.

I know software would be more expensive and slower to come out if it had fewer bugs. And I know those as is license agreements that effectively mean use at your own risk. But couldn't we all benefit os much from more quality in software or conversely less litigation over hardware?

BTW, don't feel bad if you didn't make your claim from Toshiba (it's too late now). Any uncollected money is meant to go to charity.

...try this article

sorry to reply to myself but...

consider the sheer NUMBER of starbucks outlets in, for example NYC. Last time I was there there was a Starbucks (or two) on every block.

If they don't implement some sort of time or data limits, as mentioned here, Starbucks would effectively be providing free wireless internet access for the entire area... something to think about...

read more in this article posted to slashdot in january.

cheers, swgn

It's already started...

heaps more to read over on google.

cheers, swgn

You're not imagining the DiVX site.

• http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981220S0001
• http://slashdot.org/articles/98/12/21/090206_F.sht ml

An 18 month old Phoenix press release

talks about 'Audio Visual Intellectual Property technology'

AVIP looks dusty and looks as though would require wide industry support from hardware manufacturers and it doesn't yet have that...

While trawling through Phoenix's site, do be sure to check out the link to inSilicon %^/

.vortex

Vice President Al Gore urged Congress on Monday to pass legislation that would require schools and libraries using federal subsidies for Internet access to block inappropriate material from children. "As we connect every school and classroom to the Internet, we must protect our children from the red-light districts of cyberspace," Gore said. http://www.techweb.com/news/story/TWB19980323S0011

And it passed: http://techlawjournal.com/censor/19990624.htm and allowed to stand by the Supreme Court. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/00/149865.html. So for many rural and urban school districts, they don't have any choice. Censorship is required by law -- either that or back to a single dialup connection. :)

Of course, the school may not receive e-rate funding, in which case, they may be required by other local/state laws to filter access.

This old article seems to be exactly the same thing.

I'm not counting my checkens yet. 'Stupid portalness' seems to be a disease that comes with age. AltaVista used to be pure, then went the portal route. The same goes for Lycos, Inktomi , and Infoseek.

I don't think your concerns are warranted. Google and Inktomi unlike the others you mentioned are primarily search engine technology companies. http://www.google.com is simply a way for Google to demonstrate and test their search engine technology. The website is not a major factor in their revenue model, licensing their technology is .

Secondly, portals are dead and have been so for a while. Besides AOL, Yahoo and MSN, nobody else is really successful as a portal. It would be extremely stupid of Google to jump on the portal bandwagon when so many people are jumping off.

Grabel's Law

1) Microsoft president Steve Balmer claims that the biggest threat to his company is an alternative operating system that is given away for free, and which (due to the nature of its copyright) will always be given away for free.

2) the majority of web servers on the internet run on Apache web servers, which are given away for free. For an example, point out that her organization's web site is running Apache

3) the email you send to her probably goes through a sendmail box on the way to her, and sendmail is opensource

4) 90% of the internet's DNS servers run on BIND

The entire internet is dependant upon software that technology people are giving away for free, and that has been true since the 70's. The internet never would have been able to grow to become what it is today if technologists didn't give software away for free.

I have read a lot of material from Microsoft that is directed at Linux. Various Microsoft employees have said to the effect, Linux is not ready for the enterprise, it doesnt scale, major players don't support it, It's not really free, etc... Well, I did some research and while I see some of Microsofts points, the majority of their rhetoric is either pure FUD or libelous marketing because that's the only thing Microsoft can do now. Microsoft can't buy Linux, can't "embrace and extend", can't buy a company and put it out of business, and basically can't do anything. I will now list a series of excerpts from various articles suggesting that linux is ready for prime time. I have also put in the links if you want to read the whole article. Here are some strong backers of Linux and various contributions and/or excerpts:


IDC
has predicted that Linux will hold 38 percent of the market by 2004. Interestingly enough, Microsofts group products manager, Doug Miller, claimed that recently released numbers from IDC System Software Research show that "Linux growth in server OS share has been flat for two quarters, and Unix and Novell continue to fall." Even more interesting is that IDC manager, Al Gillen, would not confirm Miller's analysis. Wired News

IBM
Big Blue committed to spending $300 million on Linux services over the next three years. IBM has already committed to investing $1 billion in Linux over the next 12 months. President and COO, Sam Palmisano, said "IBM has made our choice....we put a significant amount of IBM's future prosperity behind Linux. We don't invest a billion dollars casually. Lou [Gerstner] and I don't write those checks without, shall I say, some engaging meetings." Big Blue also unveiled Linux-based network processor software development tools and services for ISPs and networking equipment vendors, including:

Domino Workflow on Linux -- software which enables customers to build, modify and improve business processes like employee hiring and CRM by streamlining and automating interactions

Plans to expand Linux support for Tivoli Systems management software

IBM Director for advanced systems management software available on Linux for the IBM eServer xSeries product line, including a "self healing" feature to predict server failures

Availability of the NetVista Thin Client, the N22001, running Linux

Linux-certified IntelliStation Z Pro workstations based on Intel's new 64-bit Itanium processor.

Citing such real-world Linux customers as Weather.com, Shell Oil, and National Center For Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Palmisano said people who doubt that the operating system can scale to the biggest of applications are just wrong. Weather.com, one of the Web's most popular sites, supports anywhere from 5 million to 27.5 million page views per day running Linux and can scale even higher to 40 million per day, according to the company's CTO Mark Ryan. Techweb or eltoday

Oracle
Has ported Oracle 8i already to Linux. They recently released "Oracle Internet File System" and "Oracle Parallel Server" for Linux. If this isnt a major move by a major company then I don't know what is. Databases need to scale and thus if Linux can scale then Microsoft is full of it... Read on. "Oracle Parallel Server is the most mature and trusted high-availability database technology available for the Linux platform. It provides sub-minute failover capability, allowing Linux environments to achieve significantly improved levels of application and data availability. Oracle Parallel Server allows applications running on any server in a cluster instant access to all data in a database, and will support up to a 4-node, 8-way cluster." Hello Microsoft do you see this?

"Oracle has announced all of its major Internet Platform software products on Linux, including Oracle8i(TM) Release 3, the latest version of its database; Oracle9i(TM) Application Server; and Oracle JDeveloper with Business Components for Java and Oracle Forms, two popular Oracle application development tools. In August 2000, Oracle announced an industry first with the shipment of the first enterprise-edition application server on Linux. Oracle adds to its firsts with Linux with the addition of Oracle Parallel Server and Oracle Internet File System." So much for the myth of no vendor backing. eltoday

SGI
Is looking at linux as the future. Much of SGI's work is underground and less advertised. Much of it is kernel level enhancements, such as scalability, NUMA, big memory support, etc... SGI has released several of it's graphical products for linux such as, Open Inventor, Open GL Performer, and many other high end development tools. In the filesystem arena, XFS is in stable beta and is very promising for mass storage management and reliability. Open Source at SGI

Dell
"Dell Computer and Oracle agreed Wednesday to establish a Linux center in Austin, Texas... Dell will use the facility, which is scheduled to open in the spring, to test and tune Oracle databases running on Intel-based systems running Linux. Oracle also agreed to use Dell's servers and storage products for building the Oracle 9i database on Linux, the companies said." CNet News

Not enough corporate backers? Think again. Here are some other companies who have started partnerships with linux companies, cooperated, released specs, or released products for linux: Informix
Compaq
HP
Sun
Cisco
AMD
Intel
IDG
Adaptec
O'reilly and Associates
Nokia
Tivo
NeTraverse Inc.
3dfx
Nvidia
Creative
this list goes on and on......

Wow, this article beats them all.

Right in the 2nd paragraph:

The 31-year-old Torvalds [...] is the inventor and guardian of an operating system kernel [...] whose rapid rise is unnerving executives at Microsoft Corp.

Why does the Linux kernel and the Linux community always gets defined as "unnerving executives at Microsoft Corp?" As if that's the only thing we care about.

Yet some solution providers, vendors, and industry observers are beginning to question how long one man can steer the evolution of Linux, and whether Torvalds' sole oversight of the kernel, now at version 2.4, is slowing its corporate adoption.

Well, it certainly hasn't stopped corporate adoptions so far. Oh yeah, and I like the terms "solution providers", "vendors", and "industry observers" ...

While he's not driven by profit motive, the engineer has significant power over the kernel: Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds himself.

I don't see the point. Having power over something implies a profit motive? I don't get it.

Windows, in contrast, is the trademark of Microsoft.

Which, of course, changes everything.

They note Torvalds lacks formal accountability for Linux and, as a full-time engineer at chip maker Transmeta Corp. (stock: TMTA), has considerable professional obligations outside his open-source activities.

Ah, yes, the old mare of not having someone who I can sue if stuff goes wrong. Boring.

What's more, industry titans such as IBM Corp. (stock: IBM); Compaq Computer Corp. (stock: CPQ); Intel Corp. (stock: INTC); Hewlett-Packard Corp. (stock: HWP); and Oracle Corp. (stock: ORCL) are pouring billions of dollars into developing Linux products and want to exert more influence on the direction of the kernel, based on customer feedback.

I like those stock quotes. Seriously, if they want to exert more influence, they can always hire some kernel hacker or write the code themselves. If it's good, it get's accepted.

"We need a full-time leader and a nonprofit organization that can be funded by IBM, Compaq, and Dell and the [Linux] distributors," said Hal Davison, owner and president of Davison Consulting, Sarasota, Fla

Who is we?

Some Linux solution providers view the constantly evolving process of the posting of Linux libraries, patches, and updates to the Internet as inefficient and cumbersome, Davison said.

Well, it's efficient enough to have patches for newly found holes and bugs faster than most other operating systems. Especially these commercial ones (see above). Sounds good to me.

"VARs are reluctant because they don't see a clear channel. They don't see a Microsoft or strong corporate company saying, 'We're going to be here forever,'" he said.

Well, if they are waiting for Microsoft to embrace Linux, they should not be holding their breath.

Torvalds opposes the notion of corporate interests controlling the destiny of the Linux kernel.

Says who? Where are the snappy quotes?

IBM's recent pledge to spend $1 billion to advance Linux commercially in 2001 comes with a no-strings-attached promise today, but observers say that won't last if Linux doesn't pick up steam in the form of revenue and profits.

Is IBM (stock: IBM) not a strong company, or are $1 billion in one year not enough to be classified as "We're going to be here forever?" Take your pick.

Also, I don't think that anybody is ever going to make money out of the Linux kernel, but on the products and services based on that kernel. And the last years show, that this is a huge market.

Oh, yeah, and one final piece ...

I don't believe open source works well for commercial companies because they can't control schedules," said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management who sits on the board of solution provider NetNumina Solutions. "Software companies try to have regular development cycles. That's how you build a rhythm for a company.

If only commercial companies would try harder and actually develop a rhythm. Granted, 2.4 was late almost a year (It's not that I mind, though.), but take a look for example at KDE 2.0. Only one week late of schedule, which was set in stone months in advance. Talk about being on time. I don't see this anywhere in the commercial world.

Okay, enough of a rant. This was way too easy to debunk.

read more about it here the readme for netshow is here and all the files are up one here

The "Lerach" bill

Year 2000 suits

And on Red Herring

When they got sued and lost

Get it? Like Torvalds couldn't come up with a good OS, so he's reduced to using C# on Win2K. Since Linux has failed and Microsoft has won and all...

What a weenie.

-B

The proposal to enhance the ATA-spec with copy protection extensions is an enhancement of CPRM.
CPRM itself is just one of several technologies which are part of the so-called "Content Protection System Architecture" (CPSA).

[http://www.4centity.com/4centity/data/tech/cpsa /c psa081.pdf]

Enter CPSA, servants, attendants.

CPSA is an attempt to define a technological framework in order to fulfill the entertainment industry's (RIAA, MPAA etc.) demand for complete control of distribution and copies of audio/video content. The idea is to create a secure end-to-end chain from cable-station/satellite-receiver/settopbox/DVD etc. to the enduser's speaker/digital-display etc.

CPSA is supposed to include the following content protection technologies among others:

Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM)
- protected exchange of audio/video on DVD, FlashMedia, (ATA-hdds planned)
- encrypted storage of content
- protected storage of content management information (CMI)
- system renewability
- methods to prevent playback of bit-by-bit copies

developed by: 4C (IBM, Intel, Matsushita (MEI), Toshiba) http://www.4centity.com

Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM)
- robust protection of DVD-Audio content on DVD-ROM media
- encrypted storage of content
- protected storage of content management information (CMI)
- system renewability
- methods to prevent playback of bit-by-bit copies

developed by: 4C (IBM, Intel, Matsushita (MEI), Toshiba) http://www.4centity.com

Content Scrambling System (CSS)
- protecting DVD-Video cotent via authentication and content scrambling

developed by: DVD Copy Control Association (CCA) http://www.dvdcca.org

Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP)
- robust encryption of content passing between digital devices in the home e.g. IEEE 1394, USB
- copy control information
- authentication and key exchange
- digital encryption [sic!]
- system renewability

developed by: 5C (Hitachi, Intel, Matsuhita (MEI), Sony, Toshiba) http://www.dtcp.com

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)
- encryption on high-bandwith interfaces to digital displays e.g. DVI

developed by: Intel http://www.digital-CP.com

4C/Verance Watermark
- technology for creating/reading watermarks (Content Management Information - CMI) in audio content

developed by: Verance Corporation http://www.4centity.com

Finally, a video watermarking scheme (to be selected by the DVD CCA)

An interesting tidbit on HDCP can be found in an article at maximumpc.com:
http://www.maximumpc.com/reprint/intel_revamps/

a quote from that article:

(...) Intel has proposed the High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection encryption spec. Using hardware on both the videocard and the monitor, HDCP will encrypt data on the PC before sending it to the display device, where it will be decrypted. The rub is that only new DVI-equipment will have the feature, which creates a slight risk of obsolescence for those who invest in DVI early on.

Intel officials have downplayed that issue. They claim that any DVI monitor will be able to display protected content, because the HDCP-equipped DVI card will simply sense that an older DVI monitor lacks HDCP features and will lower the image quality to keep the content protected. Of course, no one has accounted for consumer acceptance. Will people embrace a standard that reduces image quality on their older equipment? Intel officials say the loss won't be enough to irk people.

how about this one:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000218S0008

"HDCP uses a 56-bit key, with individual keys distributed to the various vendors. A violated key could be tracked down and revoked over a satellite broadcast network, for example."

Apart from the documents obtained from the specification websites referenced above a search on the manufacturer's websites (Panasonic, Sony, etc.) for keywords like DTCP, CPRM etc. yields further information such as press-releases and other documents.

A couple of devices that already make use of these technologies have already been announced and/or gone into production such as:
Matsushita (Panasonic) DVD-RAM recorder DMR-E10
Panasonic D-VHS VCR PV-HD1000
Silicon Image SiI 168 PanelLink transmitter chip for DVI hardware
Silicon Image SiI 861 PanelLink controller chip for DVI hardware chip

Are you stupid?

MS support what makes them money. NT on Alpha wasn't profitable so it got dropped. Incredibly they have chosen to support what is by far the most popular chip architecture. Amazing!

Got a cite for the MMX bit? It sounds like bullshit. Using M$ rather than MS doesn't do any favors for your credibility.

Slow on 1Gz? Worthless anecdotal opinion, but a few possible options to explain it none-the-less: 1. You don't have a clue what you are doing with W2K. Probably fucked something up trying to 'tweak' it. 2. You are running loads of services and programs in the background. 3. You're confusing 'is running slow' with 'menus take a while to appear'. 400ms is the default delay. Search the registry and tweak (oooh) the delay. 4. You have 64Mb or less RAM. It's cheap, buy some more.

Postage due on junk e-mail -- Spam costs Internet millions every month.
http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?INW199805 04S0003

Some interesting info... For example:

- Uunet Technologies Inc., Fairfax, Va.: Uunet has a full-time staff of six doing what it calls "abuse investigations" of mass mail and spam complaints, according to Harris Schwartz, team leader for Internet abuse investigation at Uunet. The cost of employing the abuse investiagtors, plus several security investigators, amounts to $1 million a year. While this figure is large, it is relatively small in context, Mr. Schwartz said. An ISP as large as Uunet spends that much per day on network upgrades, he said.

- EarthLink Network Inc., Pasadena, Calif.: Spam accounts for about 3 percent of Earthlink's overall e-mail, a spokesman for this large ISP said. The figure is down significantly, he said, thanks to various spam-fighting measures. EarthLink has three people on staff who do nothing but handle spam. "The cost is pretty high," the spokesman said. An indication of how high is EarthLink's recent $2 million settlement in a lawsuit against Cyber Promotions Inc., Philadelphia. The basis for that amount was the damage done to EarthLink's profitability by the extra load and traffic caused by Cyber Promotions' spam.

Granted, I may have been overly optimistic about the cost saving... So, let's say they save only $20/machine on licensing, and $280/machine on hardware... That's still $10M/yr...

This is probably an error. A slightly older story on the same site quotes final quarter of 2001 for first samples with production in the first quarter 2002. The AMD 64 bit FAQ agrees.

1. The 'low cost motherboard' route is for the Linux enthusiast, which is fine. I've done the same. It's not for the "domain expert/casual computer user" who sees the computer as a means to an end, not an end unto itself. What's fine for you and me in this catagory is not even worth considering for a quite large (and important) group of people.
   
2. What version of Debian? If it's based on versions from 12 months ago, I went through two distributions, Debian and Corel, trying to install it on a Gateway PentiumIII 450 (E5500, I believe). Once again, the installed Windows NT 4 worked just fine. Once again, I had problems with the video card and the network card.
   

Info world and

all net devices

Uses transmetta processor , is basically a web pad.