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SAN FRANCISCO -- For the past couple of years, Mac users have been burdened with a shameful secret few would admit, even to themselves. Their machines were slower than Windows PCs.

Now the mantle of shame can be thrown off.

Sort of amusing, isn't it? And this was from news.google.com with a tag of "45 minutes ago"

Why? The patents don't appear to be of the obvious "one-click shopping" type and the holders are initiating the action (rather than some company that bought the rights, a la PanIP). Clearly the work took a lot of research and specialized knowlegde, and the researchers were granted a patent for their work.

Are you anti-patent in general or were you just exhibiting a typical slashdot knee-jerk response?

I think you're partially misinformed. XHTML will work in pretty much everything in existance. CSS, OTOH, is another story.

Are we talking about content or design here?

Because a number of sites (like this very popular one, Wired.com) use XHTML quite effectively with all known browsers. Sure, some browsers like Netscape Navigator will not render the design but all of the content is still accessible. Hell, I can even browse the thing in Lynx!

So, I think the better question is: can the browsers display the content? And the answer is yes. Can they display all the new wiz-bang CSS layout stuff? The answer is probably. (Given that about 98% of the market is browsers that can.) Remember, it's far more important that your content is logically structured and accessible (which is what XHTML does) than it is that it looks classy (CSS).

We are very serious about exploring the open-source route," said Alan Baratz, president of Sun's Java software division, in an interview with Wired News in 1998 !!!!


Also, an Open Source Java Project:
Ant: The Open Source Java Project

Ant: work in progress

If you'll recall, in the past Microsoft has acted this way in reponse to Pro-Linux protestors as well.

Basically it's a not so subtle way of saying, "You're protest is meaningless. It does not matter as it accomplishes nothing more than making you feel better about yourself. Enjoy the discussion on Slashdot, but until then have some milk and cookies on us."

I know that's harsh, but it's the truth of the matter. This protest will not result in any meaningful public outcry, nor will it effect the upcoming legal case in any way. SCO may lose, SCO may win, but this protest won't figure into it, therefore they have nothing to lose by being nice and essentially treating it as a joke.

Linux Users Shut Their Windows

Microsoft officials served refreshments to the demonstrators on the upper deck of their parking lot under an 8 foot banner that read: "Microsoft Welcomes the Linux Community."

Bruce Sterling talked about the India/China space race in his May 2003 Wired column. Some extracts:

"Nobody in the Western press takes much notice of India's space aspirations, because by Yankee standards it doesn't make sense for India to have any. Yet India launched its first missile in 1963 and its first cosmonaut in 1984. Nobody in the West thought the country would ever go nuclear, either. That was a blunder in judgment. [...]

"Why is Gandhi's homeland trying to reach the moon when people sleep on the streets in Calcutta and AIDS gnaws the country's flesh? For the same reason the US sloughed off poverty programs to fund Apollo in the 1960s: global prestige.

"India doesn't need long-range missiles to nuke neighbor and archrival Pakistan. For a war that intimate, bullock carts would do. The Agni III is aimed straight at world public opinion. The India-Pakistan PR skirmish is already almost over, and India is clearly winning. Every great power sweats bullets over Pakistan's bomb, but India's somehow makes that country worthy of consideration for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. [...]

"Since India demonstrated its bomb in 1998, the Chinese have been increasingly uneasy. China reacted to the detonation with angry demands that the international community keep India contained. When that got nowhere, China helped Pakistan go nuclear. In retrospect, that was a scary, destabilizing misstep. But now India and China are poised to continue their rivalry on safer high ground - beyond Earth's atmosphere.

"Nuclear India versus nuclear China is Kennedy versus Kruschev, and Reagan versus Gorbachev, all over again. Now, as then, a space race is a sexy alternative to nuclear annihilation. [...]

"Who will become top dog in South Asia? That's an open question, and there aren't many good ways to answer short of a useless massacre. A space race offers a good solution. It's a symbolic tournament that tests competing political and economic systems to their limit.

"A decade after the end of the Cold War, good old-fashioned space programs still matter. Not for exploration's sake, but to settle new cold wars. If you doubt it, imagine this scenario: It's 2029, and a lunar mission lands at Tranquillity Base. A crew of heroic young Indians - or Chinese - quietly folds and puts away America's 60-year-old flag. If the world saw that on television, wouldn't the gesture be worth tens of billions of rupees or yuan? Of course it would."

It probably comes down to the publics perception of who's doing the reporting and what's being reported. Just like the NY Times and Wired News weren't sued for posting a link to DeCSS in their past articles, the Washington Post won't be either.

Was that when some twit wrote a story about breaking into a Los Alamos outhouse

..for Vivendi to go after OSS which's in competition with some of their products... story here

Even if in the case of Freecraft, it doesn't seem as they were chalenging Blizzard's market or something...

I think you have misread his statement.

From Wired's article:
"Hatch said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights," the Associated Press reported. He then suggested the technology would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

I'm not saying I agree with this (ridiculous) proposal of Senator Hatch. I just think that the accusations of piracy are no longer an issue since Hatch remedied the situation by getting licensed quickly after the issue was publicized.

The best idea I've seen in YEARS was to have people start using a specific, original poem as their signatures. Then, the author granted license to anyone who WASN'T sending spam. Therefore, they could sue any spammer for copyright infringement if they used it, and you could train your mail filter to look for the signature. Once spamassassin took it up, it pretty much snowballed. See story here

What's next, nictonie free tobacco

Funny you should mention that

Here's an interview with her from 2000... she almost sounds downright reasonable at times. I wouldn't be surprised if she was more ready to embrace new technologies than the member companies, and was forced in the other direction.

-j

Same as the first

And that's not a good thing.

I saw a bit about Mary Bono wanting the job a few days ago. Here's a link to the wired story This can't be a good thing considernig the 1998 copyright extension bill bares her late husbands name.

The Pirate?

Fat chance, considering who wants to replace her!

Ok, heres some supporting evidence. You can follow my sources of research.

Source1

source3
source4
source5
source6 Warning Warnings

"Methylphenidate should not be used in children under 6 years of age, since safety and efficacy in this age group have not been established.

Although a causal relationship has not been established, suppression of growth (i.e. weight gain and/or height) has been reported with the long-term use of stimulants in children. Therefore, patients requiring long-term therapy should be carefully monitored. In addition, the use of "Drug Holidays" is recommended, that is, withholding the drug on weekends and during school holidays in as much as the clinical situation permits.

Methylphenidate should not be used for severe depression of either exogenous or endogenous origin. Clinical experience suggests that in psychotic children, administration of methylphenidate may exacerbate symptoms of behavior disturbance and thought disorder.

Methylphenidate should not be used for the prevention or treatment of normal fatigue states.
There is some clinical evidence that methylphenidate may lower the convulsive threshold in patients with prior history of seizures, with prior EEG abnormalities in absence of seizures and, very rarely, in patients with no prior EEG evidence nor history of seizures. Safe concomitant use of anticonvulsants and methylphenidate has not been established. In the presence of seizures, the drug should be discontinued. Use cautiously in patients with hypertension. Blood pressure should be monitored at appropriate intervals in all patients taking methylphenidate, especially those with hypertension."
source7a
source7b
source8

source9 Yet, "since the late 1990s, a spate of scientific research has begun to establish that adults do generate new brain cells in some regions of the brain, well into old age.

And now, for the first time, scientists have seen that new neurons become functional members of the brain, forging new connections and firing "action potentials" like any other neuron.

Although this latest discovery has only been observed in the brains of mice, the analogy to humans suggests that the rules of the card game have indeed changed. It also points toward new directions in potential therapies for neurological disorders or brain injuries."

Source10
"biologists at Princeton University have found that thousands of freshly born neurons arrive each day in the cerebral cortex, the outer rind of the brain where higher intellectual functions and personality are centered."

Witness the recent Taco IRC interview where his response to "when will Slashdot validate at the W3c" was "Whatever. Next."

The only reason to use tabular layout (like Slashdot does) is to make things look good in Internet Explorer.
Switching to pure CSS (as the W3C recommends) saves bandwidth (as all of the formatting and layout information can be stored in a separate, cacheable file), gives you the freedom to create far more interesting and visually powerful designs, and makes the page accessible.

Slashdot should take a hint from Wired's excellent example and move into the new millenium.

Hatch has normally been on the good side of technology. A few years back, he even led a judiciary hearing on Microsoft's evil tactics.

That's why I was so surprised to read his computer-destroying comments. They are completely out of character for a normally decent guy who doesn't like government intrusion. Hmm...maybe the comments were a fluke, or maybe he is really losing it.

Consider for a moment that Wired article on the downfall of SUN Microsystems. One recurring theme in the personality of McNealy, SUN's CEO, is his inability to cooperate with the competition and instead his insistence on turning competitors into enemies and market competition into war.

If MS does this (and they may indeed), this is merely business as usual among many of these corporations. Corporate America is not a day-care facility; companies can and do play hardball. The question is not "does MS want to help or hurt the competition" but rather "did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.

Wal-Mart destroyed the competition. And, yes, some say Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?

The piece mentioning Barry Diller, Howard Schmidt, and Linus can be found online here. It's the intorduction to their letters to the editior section.

I submitted this a few hours ago (always a bridesmaid, *snif*), along with two links not in the story above. One was to the NY Times story about it. The other was to this story which just came out at Wired . . .a brief interview with Linus about his efforts to stand apart from political issues surrounding Open Source, which refers to the discussion here on Slashdot about his opinions on incorporating DRM into the Linux kernel (among other things).

FYI: The SCO/IBM matter is all about Unix/Linux on x86. Perhaps you can enlighten all of us by explaining which Unix vendor is "...kicking the pants off Linux and Windows" in the x86 market. Which Unix company is growing? Is there one? Surely, all of this "pants kicking" would be fueling measurable growth, right? Last time I checked, the entire IT industry was doing poorly, except for Microsoft's one-shot revenue growth, largely the result of smoke-and-mirrors licensing ploys.

SCO's "pants kicking" x86 Unix product is nothing to cheer about. Is there some other platform where SCO reigns supreme? I must have missed it.

Sun's "pants kicking" x86 Solaris was discontinued, only to be revived later. Are you so naive as to claim that Sun is a major player in the x86 OS market? Are you aware of the Sun buyout rumours? How about Sun's recent not-exactly-pants-kicking financial performance?

Along with other platforms, I have SPARC/Solaris boxes. They work well, reliability is very good, ditto for Sun's customer support. Unfortunately, the price/performance ratio is not so great, and Intel/Linux is certainly on the table as an upgrade option. I'm not exactly thrilled about that, but Linux is as much a threat to Unix as offshore outsourcing is a threat to the average IT worker. It's competition; deal with it.

HPQ is alive in the Unix middle and high-end space. Let's see what happens when Intel & AMD infringe on that space with lowball 64-bit processors, just as they have already pillaged & plundered the 32-bit world. For a long time, Intel's 64-bit efforts were a joke, but one of these days the laughter will stop. Not so long (1 yr?) ago, I predicted that Linux would eventually become OS of choice on Alpha, only to be confronted by a Tru64 Unix fan who insisted that Compaq (yes, Compaq) was committed to supporting Alpha & Tru64 for some vast period of time. Alpha was (almost immediately) sold to Intel, Compaq was bought by HP, and the Tru64 "roadmap" runs out in 2006. Does it matter? To be fair, HPQ has other cards to play in the OS game, and they won't fold completely. But their long-term outlook is no better than Sun's (possibly worse if you consider the combined debt of Digital+Compaq+HP).

It will take a while before commodity CPUs and operating systems threaten the high-end server market. But the threat has already materialized in the low-end, and is coming soon to the midrange market. It's time to wake up and smell the espresso.

I miss my VMS cluster. It had awesome reliability & performance, and some of the features were years ahead of Unix (and decades ahead of Windoze). Unfortunately, cost issues, decentralization, and commodity hardware changed the IT landscape forever. I sometimes wonder if I am keeping up with the latest trends. Have I become so entrenched that I will get blindsided by the next wave of cheaper/faster technology? Every once in a while I see a post that reassures me: I have little to fear from those who never got past Y2K.

It has been a longstanding axiom in the computer security industry that "There is no such thing as absolute anonymity, in real life, or on the web." If you think that at any time you are actually anonymous, you're a fool.

The only caveat to this axiom is if you're accessing the internet from someone else's unsecured wireless network, which is why the Department of Homeland Security is threatening to crack down on the use of unsecured wireless networks.

All IPv6 addresses are DYNAMICALLY assignable, and there is no NATing of addresses in IPv6. NATing (Disguising the original IP) was created in order to extend the lifetime of IPv4.

You can have a statically assigned IP address that carries with the device from network to network, ala truly Mobile IP but most devices will not need functionality.

Essentially, your IP address information will be no more identifying than it already is because devices that require static IP's will still have static IP's, the rest will still have dynamic.

There's also a write up of this over at wired news.

No, he didn't say that. You are uninformed, ignorant, and probably ugly too. What he said, EXACTLY was "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

If that sounds like he was taking credit for technical invention to you, then you can add stupid to that list.

And I saw the "potatoe" video clip. Quayle, whose (lack of) intellectual abilities are indefensible, clearly was correcting an elementary school kid. Now if you are gonna blame the "vast left wing conspiracy" for that, provide some proof, you stupid fucking dittohead asswipe.

Nothing personal.

Cause the jealous GOD didn't want the Sun to look too good in the article.

Sun's future looked brighter when everyone declared mainframes dead and WinTel boxes couldn't handle the workload. Sun was going to take over those markets. Actually, mainframes are staging a comeback and Windows has gotten better.

Unix boxes are losing to Linux because of cost. A Sun will beat out x86 most of the time on performance, but with every generation of Linux and Pentiums (and Opterons) the gap narrows. And if you can get 2 or 3 Linux boxes for every Sun, their market looks smaller.

For the most part, IBM is ruling the mainframe market and no one is coming close to them. The only real competition to AIX on mainframe is Linux on mainframe which is being developed by IBM.

I wouldn't count Sun out yet. They need to focus on their strengths and keep pushing innovation.

It looks like the bounty is a measly $50,000.


I might be crazy, but I'm not crazy enough to get in a gun fight with Mexican police for a chance at $50,000.

Although they didn't say much more about it...

Wired blurb

Oddly enough this was discussed in this months wired

Check out number 18 & 13 for the reference. prescient comment but I am sure blockbuster and walmart haven't hid the fact that they are interested in doing this.

Judging by their past experiences. Perhaps it would be in Wal-Mart's interest to strike up a deal with Clearplay or any of the other companies who get to decided what we should and should not see.

Mike

Judging by their past experiences. Perhaps it would be in Wal-Mart's interest to strike up a deal with Clearplay or any of the other companies who get to decided what we should and should not see.

Mike

It's been shown that monkeys and typewriters are not a good combination for creating anything.

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,14656,00 .html

The real innovator at Quark was Tim Gill who created the original QuarkXPress, actually cared about his employees, and gives generously to AIDS charities.

Finally he got tired of Fred Ebrahimi's idiocy and cashed out. "Quark India" is the brainchild of Fred Ebrahimi, who is one cheap bastard.

Linux causes exothermic chemical reactions of a violent nature.

well yeah, unlike Linux, another certain OS has gone out of its way to a device of war.

It's here.

...that my design documents aren't the only ones that look like this.

Storm Again Delays Mars Rocket

Storms mysteriously show up on the day of the launch and ruin everything?! Must be a software bug in Mother Nature application.

Anyone got ideas for what to do with an old GBA?

riaa.org
riaa.com

Disclaimer for you pinko riaa lawyers: this is a cynical joke. In no way do I recommend using the Slashdot effect on purpose. We only use that for sites we care about. :)

The US military has been investing in force field technology. Their apparent application is to serve as a sort of protection against explosives. It also seems to me that a plasma field would serve as protection to objects that are normally weakened when passing through pressure differences - assuming that the pressure within a plasma force field is consistent.

If it's anything like his columns for Wired, it will be filled with bitterness over the 2000 elections spilling over into everything he writes about.

Can't believe I'm taking time to refute this silly and groundless statement. Sterling's first column for Wired, issue 10.12 (December 2002), covered Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index -- no mention of the 2000 elections. Subsequent issues to date:

• 11.01 (Jan 2003): "The Cybersecurity Industrial Complex" -- upbeat overview of various government bureaus
• 11.02: "Dumb Mobs" -- protests in Florence against globalism; mentions "The New Imperial Order" in passing, but basically about European protest movements
• 11.03: "Silent But Deadly" -- parallels between Enron and the old Lockheed aerospace skunkworks
• 11.04: "The Secret War Machine" -- about the Iran-Contra scandal, and how the same spirit motivates the current War on Terror; maybe you could wilfully distort this into "bitterness about the election," if you didn't mind sounding like a complete nutcase
• 11.05: Space race between China and India
• 11.06: "There's Something About Rummy" -- this is the only column that meets the "bitterness" test. Jeez, pretty sensitive, aren't you?

If it's anything like his columns for Wired, it will be filled with bitterness over the 2000 elections spilling over into everything he writes about.

Can't believe I'm taking time to refute this silly and groundless statement. Sterling's first column for Wired, issue 10.12 (December 2002), covered Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index -- no mention of the 2000 elections. Subsequent issues to date:

• 11.01 (Jan 2003): "The Cybersecurity Industrial Complex" -- upbeat overview of various government bureaus
• 11.02: "Dumb Mobs" -- protests in Florence against globalism; mentions "The New Imperial Order" in passing, but basically about European protest movements
• 11.03: "Silent But Deadly" -- parallels between Enron and the old Lockheed aerospace skunkworks
• 11.04: "The Secret War Machine" -- about the Iran-Contra scandal, and how the same spirit motivates the current War on Terror; maybe you could wilfully distort this into "bitterness about the election," if you didn't mind sounding like a complete nutcase
• 11.05: Space race between China and India
• 11.06: "There's Something About Rummy" -- this is the only column that meets the "bitterness" test. Jeez, pretty sensitive, aren't you?

If it's anything like his columns for Wired, it will be filled with bitterness over the 2000 elections spilling over into everything he writes about.

Can't believe I'm taking time to refute this silly and groundless statement. Sterling's first column for Wired, issue 10.12 (December 2002), covered Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index -- no mention of the 2000 elections. Subsequent issues to date:

• 11.01 (Jan 2003): "The Cybersecurity Industrial Complex" -- upbeat overview of various government bureaus
• 11.02: "Dumb Mobs" -- protests in Florence against globalism; mentions "The New Imperial Order" in passing, but basically about European protest movements
• 11.03: "Silent But Deadly" -- parallels between Enron and the old Lockheed aerospace skunkworks
• 11.04: "The Secret War Machine" -- about the Iran-Contra scandal, and how the same spirit motivates the current War on Terror; maybe you could wilfully distort this into "bitterness about the election," if you didn't mind sounding like a complete nutcase
• 11.05: Space race between China and India
• 11.06: "There's Something About Rummy" -- this is the only column that meets the "bitterness" test. Jeez, pretty sensitive, aren't you?

Another great illustration of the tremendous effort people are willing to invest to make sure the right number of beans are in the right piles.

I am really looking forward to when the Internet becomes a public utility and Internet access is more like like freeway access (not toll roads, not GPS-scanned roads, just freeways). A global communication system, like a highway system, benefits you all the time, not just while you are personally using it.

here

mod up please!

Uh. What? Why are you posting about Windows programs here on a Mac thread?

Umm. What makes you think that Andromeda and the other streaming applications have anything to do with Windows? They all run w/ Apache (cross-platform, including OS X), PHP (cross-platform, including OS X), and stream to any mp3 player (including iTunes)

The "what Jobs taketh away" crack is nothing more or less than Michael being his normal idiot self. It doesn't actually refer to anything, much less some piece of shit Windows hack that looks so absurd up next to DAAP and Rendezvous that you should be ashamed for even thinking of it.

Again... I was referring to the Wired article that Michael was linking to, and not anything that is a "Windows hack".

Sigh.

W

That keenness is a concern to Padmajai Goenka, a 23-year-old technical support worker in Mumbai, India, who goes by the name of Pam when she's on duty troubleshooting problems for puzzled PC users in the United States who very rarely know they are speaking to someone who lives thousands of miles away.

Goenka, who requested her company name be withheld, said that she was trained to "act American."

"Even though there is a lot of yelling from the clients, I love this job." Goenka said. "I have been fascinated with America since I was a little girl. Now I get paid to pretend I am American -- it's wonderful."

Indian call center workers receive meticulous training before they are allowed to field tech support calls. Farhat Gupta, owner of several Bangalore call centers, said that little attention is paid to technical training, as "all the answers are always on the computer screen in front of the workers. We exist for people who do not want to use the Internet themselves to find their own answers."

Instead, instruction is centered on learning American culture, and "losing the British accents they all pick up in school," Gupta, who has an office in Jackson Heights, Queens, said.

Trainees typically watch dozens of American movies and TV shows for the first week to acclimatize themselves to U.S. slang and accents.

Better yet, check out this other article, linked from the above one.

Obviously not all companies use these kinds of practices to simulate Americanness in their tech support people; some companies make no effort to disguise their people as being people someplace other than who and where they are. But apparently at least some companies do this, and apparently at least some of their US customers are indeed fooled by it.