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It's 9 years since they've been promising to move away from the 680x0 series

Well, Amiga Inc (ie, the company) have only been around since 2000. OS4 is still somewhat vapourware (it was original planned for release in 2001, IIRC, now it's sometime this year), but you can't blame them for the fact that the two PC companies that owned the rights to the Amiga during previous years did bugger all (and indeed, Gateway's attempt at a new Amiga came number 2 in Wired's '99 Vaporware List).

Here's your prior art: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56409,00.html

Court Punts Sex.com Domain Case
4 Jan 2003
A dispute over the transfer of the domain name Sex.com may be heading
to California's highest court. In a decision published Friday ...

Tussle over sex.com
4 Jan 2003
... names and decide whether the nation's largest domain registry must face a multimillion-dollar
damage claim from the owner of the pornographic Web site sex.com....

Supreme Court Asked to Decide Domain Name Conversion Issue
7 Jan 2003
... true ownerâ(TM)s registration. The request is the latest turn in the
long legal battle over âoesex.com.â. The name was registered ...

News briefs from around California
4 Jan 2003
... SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court has asked California's top
court to rule on the alleged theft of the domain name sex.com.....

TECH TICKER
4 Jan 2003
... A federal appeals court asked California's high court to resolve questions about
the sex.com domain name in a dispute over whether VeriSign's Network Solutions ...

Putting a Price on Cyber Love
20 Dec 2002
... Although Kremen has since moved on to one of the Net's other profitable niches, and
is running the website Sex.com, he still views personals as one of the most ...

Court Punts Sex.com Domain Case
4 Jan 2003
A dispute over the transfer of the domain name Sex.com may be heading
to California's highest court. In a decision published Friday ...

Tussle over sex.com
4 Jan 2003
... names and decide whether the nation's largest domain registry must face a multimillion-dollar
damage claim from the owner of the pornographic Web site sex.com....

Supreme Court Asked to Decide Domain Name Conversion Issue
7 Jan 2003
... true ownerâ(TM)s registration. The request is the latest turn in the
long legal battle over âoesex.com.â. The name was registered ...

News briefs from around California
4 Jan 2003
... SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court has asked California's top
court to rule on the alleged theft of the domain name sex.com.....

TECH TICKER
4 Jan 2003
... A federal appeals court asked California's high court to resolve questions about
the sex.com domain name in a dispute over whether VeriSign's Network Solutions ...

Putting a Price on Cyber Love
20 Dec 2002
... Although Kremen has since moved on to one of the Net's other profitable niches, and
is running the website Sex.com, he still views personals as one of the most ...

From the Wired article:
Kremen said he wasn't looking forward to the prospect of more legal bills if the case winds up in the California Supreme Court but was pleased with Friday's decision.

"They clearly think this is a really important issue for Californians, and I think they're just trying to highlight that to make sure they get it absolutely right," he said.

But as Alex Kozinski, the lone dissenting judge in the case pointed out, there's no guarantee the state's high court will take the case. In his dissent, Kozinski noted that the state's high court has turned down a third of such requests submitted by the federal appeals court, a record he attributed to the California judges' already formidable caseload.

I'm hesitant to second-guess a federal judge in his assessment here, but perhaps the reason he cites for them not taking this case is precisely why they will. If they have a significant caseload and they keep getting this request, perhaps their attitude is "oh lets just get this over with."

Yes, a pulmonologist I saw had a palm or equiv. with lists of all the drugs, dosages, adn which would flag interactions on the spot. He said he'd like to use a Mac but "there's no software for it." Sigh.

Imagine a wireless connection on that handheld for checking medical records and entering orders. No more of the *&^@$*! physician handwriting. I'm sure you've heard of the people who died over handwriting (although arguably some were pharmacist error -- and they've had computers looking over their shoulders for a while).

With hardware like iPod (practically a computer in its own right) and writing recognition software like Inkwell out I would be very surprised not to see an Apple handheld in the near future. The way Newton was handled was bizarre, but then it's not easy being a trailblazer, and those were the "dark days" for Apple. It is rumored that Jobs' ego is simply antagonistic to anything he didn't invent. an interesting article They should leave the low end of the market to Palm etc., I doubt there's much money to be made there; same strategy as the iPos v. al those other MP3 players.

Hey, I wish they'd stayed in the web browser game, too. :)

In other words, there may be a very good health reason for the ubiquity of self-medicinal aluminium headware. Perhaps we should be attempting to investigate the link between tin hats and improvement in certain forms of mental illness, rather than simply mocking the subject (and QED anyone attempting to study it)?

What did all those domains have in common? They all had IRC servers on EfNet. Now I keep all my domains with GoDaddy, great service and they have clueful people answer the phone, even late at night on weekends.

-Joe

Among them are the hassle-free domain transfer as well as the "helpful and targeted" informational mailing sent out on the daily basis to thousands of small site operators by their "trusted partners".

Actually I'm wondering how ATM affects a pricing model?

Bellheads vs Netheads

One of the reasons for prefering ATM was it made "billing" easier. As well as QOS. I believe that most of the back-bone providers use it because it's easier, and cheaper to overcome some technological problems that "packet-switching" presents.

A very different approach to Google - from this months Wired:

"Over the years, Brin and Page have resisted pressure to run banners, opting instead for haiku-like text ads and unintrusive sponsored links. They've taken a stand against pop-ups and pop-unders..."

Apparently the sponsored link sites aren't even allowed to use popups.

Segway Owners a Small, Happy Club A Gizmo Wiz and His Scooter It's not a Mac Switch like Segway Plot!

Segway Owners a Small, Happy Club A Gizmo Wiz and His Scooter It's not a Mac Switch like Segway Plot!

Singapore is a high tech nation.

In 1994, the fledling (but well backed) wired magazine sent william to the tiny island nation. I was browsing wired archives a few weeks ago and found this.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.htm l?person=laurie_anderson&topic_set=wiredpeople

Alexis De Tocqueville Institution. The paper was titled "Opening the Open Source Debate". Alexis would be rolling in his grave to see what use they make of his name.

Wired article

Slashdot article, and a followup a week later.

Actually, yes. MSFT has an amazing history of shilling and astroturfing:

• MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
• fake "grass roots" letter writing
• another fake letter writing campaign
• paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
• paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
• paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
• MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
• Stuffed an on-line ballot box
• planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
• funded favorable think-tank whitepapers

I'm sure there's more, that's just all I can scrounge up in a few minutes. I seem to remember another MSFT-funded think-tank ("Indepence Institute"?) white paper, and there was an interesting "Brill's Content" article on how MSFT tracks reporters and what they write about MSFT. Actually, isn't the above enough? 10 items from 9 different sources about all varieties of shilling and astroturfing in forums from small to nation-wide. Yes, I think it's prudent to believe that MSFT employees watch Slashdot and mod-up pro-MSFT articles, or even submit them.

I'd go so far as to say that the average person should be suspicious of any pro-MSFT article or viewpoint posted in a public forum. If you, the reader, are pro-MSFT, I'm sorry: if you lie down with pigs, you can't expect to wake up in the morning smelling like roses.

I couldn't help it. Dammit, I'm already accruing coal in my stocking for 2003...

I suspect they're fried six ways from Sunday, to use the legal jargon. I was watching and counting rip-offs for amusement. Mind you, I think they did an excellent job recreating the original. Gene would be pleased. Truly difficult would be to count the novelties.

Humorless greedbag Paramount, on the other hand... 6 years ago they threatened a few dozen fan sites to drop their image and .wav collections in order to increase traffic to their for-profit official Trek site. (I assume they backed off?)

The rule is that derivative works are part of the original copyright. Some things like parodies are fiar use exceptions. Critically, the work need not mimic the original to nonetheless be derivative, rather it need only evoke the original in style or appearance or whatever. Here, the sight of the ship -- with music -- was more than enough. Even the door-slide effect sounds the same.

One of the tests is "substitution" -- could the new work displace demand for the original in the marketplace, or reduce the market for derivatives (such as by saturation)? Here, sure; they've basically produced a low-budget sequel, not that the original was high-budget.

Then there's trademark.... They could go to town here.

Disclaimer: I think the work is really cool, but wish they had applied their talents to either getting permission or coming up with new material. In case the lawyers come, I suggest the producers begin making their own Klingon® weaponry.

Sounds like our American friends pinching the credit for being first in something again :-)... AFAIK the first working, widely used industrial standard (discounting myths about Roman roads etc.) was the Whitworth thread, or "British Standard Whitworth" (still in use today) from Sir Joseph Whitworth in 1841. Standards in screw threads made possible huge simplifications in industrial processes.

Before this time standards and interchangeable parts were almost impossible, because craftsman made parts 'to fit'. (The parrallels with computer programming today are striking :-) ).

A nice article about how the Americans then decided to reinvent their own standard at wired: Turn of the Century

The story is that the whole thing was kicked off to a large extent by the mass manufacturing needed to create the Babbage engine, and Whitworth's experiences working on it... Babbage and Whitworth and machining and stuff

So, you're saying they didn't get TheThing shut down?

But at the beginning of December, Wolfgang Staehle, owner and director of The Thing, was notified by his service provider, Verio, that The Thing's Internet connection would be severed on Feb. 28, 2003.

Perhaps it is a two-step process:
First - Load;
Second - Shoot.

Happy New Year. Thanks for the post. Glad I've been better informed by your posting it.

Naw, the silk is being manufactured from milking herds of engineered African Pygmy Goats. And I thought venomless bees were cool.

Finally, people are getting serious about forward engineering life. When can I get a chairdog?

Actually, they are the problem, according to carefully designed scientific* studies:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/08/16/cell.phone.drivin g/index.html

I see your point, that rude, stupid people wil continue to do rude, stupid things with or without cell phones, but to say that cell phones are not a problem is simply wrong.

* - Oh, I'm sorry, are you one of those conservatives who circumvents science when it doesn't support your personal opinions and the political process has failed you?

To quote Jenny Holzer, "the future is stupid".

Average users wouldn't care.

the payphone out in the Middle of Nowhere already disappeared. Here is a link to the going-away of it and why. Basically, the National Park Service and the Mojave National Preserve thought that there would be too much environmental impact if the booth remained too much longer.

--Fuzz

Actually, there's still debate on whether or not computers are "Just Tools" as you put it. (I'm going to muck this part up a bit, but) Some view technology as a means of oppression by the capitalist establishment: "The substantive view sees the tool as having an innate influence on human action. The tool is not so innocent, but rather it effects a change on human behavior or consiousness, and in case of mordern technologies, that change is usually dehumanizing." (From Sullivan and Porter, _Opening Spaces Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices_, page 104). It is a summary in a larger discussion, but shows the line of thought nicely. There's also way to look at technology that is a happy medium somewhere between "just a tool" and "insidious artifact of capital domination."

Think about it for a minute and you can see how this idea came about. The old guard saw the first computers and were intimidated by them. They didn't want to subject themselves to learning a whole new set of behaviors inflicted on them by a machine. So "It is a tool of the establishment!" There was an interesting article a while back about how people were becoming slaves to their machines... the only things humans are better at than computers are making decisions where there is some ambiguity. I

Frankly, I'm not particularly surprised that your average government school teacher with little or no training in computers himself could make effective use of computers dropped into their classrooms. I know a High School English teacher who only this year figured out how to use email. I really don't see how someone like that could begin to use teach effectively using computers.

There has been a lot of research on computers in Composition Studies (the study of writing). Back when it was the typewriter vs. DOS word processors people studied all kinds of aspects of writing with computers. Many studies came to much the same conclusion: It depends. There's still a lot of work to be done (and a lot of work still going on: here's a conference later this year)

The fact of the matter is that at the higher levels of education (ala MS, MA, PhD.) it has made writing much EASIER. Revision is easier, Editing is easier. Whether that makes the writing BETTER is open to debate there, too, as what constitutes better writing is very difficult to define.

And Calvin was wrong. With the right approach, I can make you care about the material I present. I've found through experience that thumb-screws, the iron-maiden, shackles, and the lash all have very positive effects on student attitude toward the material presented.

From the article:
The Durabooks technology allows for another way to tire your hand while taking a bath with an erotica book. "If you masturbate in the bathtub, that's part of the idea -- even though it doesn't say it in the promotional material," Mohanraj said. "If you get distracted, it's not so bad to drop the book in the bathtub." Mohanraj said the book's pages withstand not only bath water, but also bodily fluids and sex oils. Wine, however, will stain the pages.

I'm not even going to sully this visual with my own commentary.

this, IMHO, is the most valuable information in Phrack 60:

Kevin Mitnick wrote a book, "The Art of Deception". The first chapter
has been deleted by the publisher at the last minute. It's available
on the internet:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56187,00. html
http://littlegreenguy.fateback.com/chapter1/Chapte r%201%20-%20Banned%20Edition.doc

[i linked this Phrack quote because Slash adds a space character to strings that wordwrap - can anyone tell me how to prevent this from happening?]

Well, somebody say something about Ultima Online. I've never played it but every time I read an article about the game online, the focus is always on community: guilds, online weddings(?) etc etc. Never any information about "quests" or killing monsters (just the odd complaint about PKers). Maybe it's just skillful PR by Lord British?

Also, for me role playing didn't necessarily mean pretending to be your character. I always thought that was weird. I was more into accurately describing what my character was doing and staying with his motives. I was never into hopping around and saying "hath" and "thou" every other word.

If only there was a way to combine the rules-enforcement aspects of computer play with the flexibity of table-top play! Supposedly some online games, such as Castle Marrach, by the folks over at Skotos, is trying to accomplish this. I have been too busy playing Diablo2 to find out though. =) Oh well.

Here is an interesting looking article on subject of online games on GameGrene.com.

And then Bush gets himself into office and starts bringing in all his Cold War and Big Oil buddies into his administration, and it's like "Oh, no, are we going to have to do the 60s activism thing and 70s environmental activism thing over again? At least nobody's threatening to blow up their enemies and take the whole world down with it this time.". And then there's September 11th, and we discover that we've _always_ been at war with Osama bin Laden, and that the secretary of defense thinks this will be a permanent state of war against terrorism, and Ashcroft reveals that he's more interested in peeking into _your_ bedroom now that he's got those nekkid statues in his own building covered up, and the economic manipulation that Greenspan did to pull the rug out of the economy 9 monhts before the election has helped trigger the instabilities that were fundamental to the bubble anyway, and basically things are starting to look like maybe they do suck after all.

If you're American, you have to wonder how the current topic squares with this Wired article on engineering brain-drain and how it impacts the U.S. Military. When the engineers leave, where are they going?

I first read about the concept of this language in Wired 10.12. They go on in the article talking about how all life is information and how all living matter computes in some way or another.

Old News Department: mentioned in Wired Magazine tens of days ago.

A few days ago someone wanted to impress their friends by getting a story submission posted on /. but he was obvious in his efforts...who didn't know (aside from the /. dude that accepted the story) that he was just flipping through PopSci Magazine back issues? We see the same trick with Wired magazine stories too often.

Unfortunately, most of the material available is in danish. However, I found something about it on wired, cdfreaks and infoanarchy. The most important link in danish is here. Siffan, the guy I mentioned in the parent, is working on an english translation of the bust, which happened in september. Currently, AntiPiratGruppen's methods of obtaining evidence are under investigation by the government.

DRM will fail in the long run, PERIOD. This is what Microsoft and others simply refuse to admit. This is what most if not all of us here on /. have come to a consensus on, right? Wasn't someone told to STFU by the RIAA... over a paper criticizing a DRM idea called the Secure Digital Music Initiative?

If Microsoft sells their flavor (or any flavor) of DRM to a content creator under the impression that it is 100% secure, they're flat out liars. All it takes is *one* person to crack the code, and release it over the 'net. Microsoft realizes they can't offer 100% security, I'm sure. Since they do realize this, they're going to tell their clients that their stab at DRM is better than no DRM at all, and companies are going to bite.. as they already are.

But it all comes down to this.

The instant people can't use their Windows computer to upload files to their MP3 player, a dangerous consumer backlash will occur. People won't buy the new flavor of Windows if it prevents them from ripping their own CDs, or if they find out they can't use Kazaa with it either.

Furthermore, nobody cares about WMA, which is a huge problem for Microsoft considering they NEED to use WMA for their DRM to work in the first place.

Truth is, consumers have already spoken. They want iPods, not the SDMI crap that Sony put out and forces NetMD and MemoryStick players to use.

SDMI ~ Add a few O's and replace with I with a Y and it better represents what it attempts^Hed to achieve.

Hi,

Actually, prime numbers just got easier to find, making practical very strong cryptography that much more practical.

BTW, I liked your other post, especially about the disruptive technologies and the showdown between them and TIA, Big Brother, etc.

Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

If you can grasp the notion that an internet is not the Internet, it means exactly what he said it means.

The bullshit started with the origional Wired article, then Racist Majoraty Leader Trent Lott got it rolling by mockingly saying that he had "taken the intiative in creating the paper clip." "Inventing" was then substituted for "creating" by the cocksucking media, and an urban legend was born.

This article does a nice job debunking the "invented the internet" myth. Go read it. After that go ahead and keep making jokes about Gore and the internet, its all funny haha, but know that you are spreading a baldface lie.

What really pisses me off is that the media had a grand old time eviscerating Gore for a plethora of false statments that he never actually made, while ignoring then Govenor Bush's ATTEMPT TO TAKE CREDIT FOR A BILL HE FUCKING VETOED!!!. During the 2000 debates Bush said "As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through." The shitsack VETOED that bill, and then only let it pass into law without his signature because the Texas legislature passed it again with veto proof margins!

There seems to have been a recent change in how some people/businesses are coping with online financial difficulties - begging.

There's probably an earlier example, but save karyn comes quickly to mind. She spent too much money on shoes on her credit card and she asked for donations to pay it back - and people did.... or at least, they pledged money. It's become enough of a phenomenom that there are articles on wired, caplan, and newhouse and many many others. And that's mostly in the realm of personal begging.

Companies now seem to be joining in.
Mandrake now have this money drive, and another one earlier in the year. Gnome is asking for money. And there seems to be a trend of having software for ransom.

All of this concerns me because it seems that there a plethora of open source related companies/products that aren't viable on their own merits.

Then the times didn't look very hard.

It's right here At the White House

I read it several days ago after actually reading the story that was reference by slash dot on Because Only Terrorists Use 802.11

Try and keep up, hold the hand of the person in front of you and keep a tight grip on the hand person behind you.

This Wired article notes that states are rapidly passing legislation that locally prohibits much of the federal gov't activities outlined in the Patriot Act.

Taste of their own medicine - Poindexter gets TIA'ed.

asscroft writes "[H] has this scoop - The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling. Wired has the article. The whole idea was started by Matt Smith, a columnist for SF Weekly. And the folks over at cryptome have continued on in fine fashion. Reminds me of the spammer getting spammed. If you have any dealings with mr. Poindexter yourself, you may want to "randomly" select him for security checks, whether you work in the airport, mcdonalds, ace hardware, etc. Let's remind this bozo why we have a 4th ammendment. and remember to support the EFF's efforts against TIA."

I dropped $2200 on my refurbished TiBook, though, and never looked back. If this can get someone to try out the OS, it's worth it. Anyone languishing in Windows really needs to investigate OS X as an alternative--especially if they think Linux is daunting.

Hint of the post: The TiBook lid can be closed and the computer swung to-and-fro to fend off the chicks that will surround your sexy computer.

Wired ran an article couple of years ago about adoption of IP to space latency. It's called Interplanetary Internet, no more no less...
here

if anybody still cares to up this story...

C'mon -- this is really small potatoes ...

Already been done:

IBM clocks in with new Linux watch Developers Warm Up to Linux Watch IBM's Linux Wristwatch IBM Research - Linux Watch

EA has made 1.5 billion in revenue last year, and reaped 100 million wingwangs this year alone. you can read about it here. the scale of their sports franchise alone is staggering: with tens of millions of clams being spent for marketing their sports games this year!

you might think of EA churning out craptastic games that leave you consistently overwhelmed, but the truth is that there are lots of people out there playing their console games. i mean, people i normally don't associate with, like, you know. people who play sports. and exercise. and stuff. physical exertion. pull-ups. push-ups. i dunno. i'm outta my league here now. but you know, like, THOSE people. the meatheads.

they like EA games.

and there are lots of meatheads out there.

me? i prefer more academic pursuits. if EA came out with a game like Madden for people like me, i'd give them a lot o my coin. say, instead of Madden, they had Fiercesome Librarian 2003. or Raging Geeks League Slide Rule Competition '02 (RGL '02).

but nooooo. they did their market research and realized that these sports fans can beat people like me-- the people who program these games, up. so they make stuff to appease them.

and it's gotten them a lot of moolah!

why, i remember loading up Racing Destruction Set on my c64, and watching the big square/circle/triangle change colors. i also remember modifying my 1541 drive with JiffyDos, which was a small add-on cache for the drive. SUPER LOAD TIMES!

i'm rambling. the point i'm trying to make is that yes, EA really is that big. and they're getting bigger. the sports nuts/meatheads control the market. and their population grows! fellow slashdotter, you know how always find yourself at home, alone, on friday nights? that's cause all the HAWT chix0rz are out getting their mack on, and their clothes off, with the big burly men who buy EA Sports games.

CITIZENS OF SLASHDOT! SCREW THE RIAA! SCREW THE MPAA!
FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON EA!
WORK HARD! GET MUSCLES!
AND TOGETHER WE CAN SCORE TEH HAWT CHIX0RZ!

This month's Wired has a good article on EA Sports. This company dominates sports games so much it's scary...

or even CD-oriented stores necessarily. It's about those CD's you see at the counter at convenience stores, truck stops and various places. Are they all legit?

One of the articles - maybe it was the one on wired - implied that it was about CDR's. I've never seen those for sale in any retail place, but maybe so.

The more interesting question is, say you're in business, you buy a load of CD's from some supplier, they look OK, and one day the RIAA comes knocking and declares them "pirated". Some commercial operations make authentic-looking ones. WHo takes the loss in this situation? And if it's the retailer, how are they supposed to tell in advance? Are we going to end up with holograms like on that old monopolist's SW, or dealer licences?

So they complain when something might interfere with their navigation, but not when they interfere with the navigation of whales?

Dual standards as usual...

That was flamebait, you know very well that porn/hentai is just a tiny fraction of anime. (The majority of it is toy commercials for 7
-year olds!)

But I must reply to tell you that "something recently in the news" was that animations of children engaged in sex is legal, even though the Republican Congress is trying to change that.

Story link HERE.

/. screwed the link, not me, really!