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"In the United Kingdom, about 7 million people have some kind of interactive TV subscription, more than any other country in the world."

Similarly, the Beatles' White Album. I bought that on vinyl, and later on cassette. Am I really required to buy it AGAIN to legally download MP3s that other licenseholders have made?

So Napster's effectively gone away. If Mr. Berry's figures are to beleived, this means that the RIAA doesn't have a few ingenious crackers and hackers on their hands trading MP3z on undergound IRC and Usenet channels. They have 30 MILLION FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, PISSED OFF users from all classes and races! Worse, they have a veritable legion of crackers and hackers who want to support these people's dirty MP3 habits in order to make money/points/karma/etc...

Your analysis would be correct if the RIAA had no plans to create an online music distribution system similar to Napster. But we all know that various RIAA members have expressed interests in online music delivery including Sony, BMG and EMI. The reason the RIAA has cleared the scene of Scour.net and Napster is so that people stop getting used to the idea that online music should be free. Once all the free online music services for the masses have been eliminated the RIAA can step in to fix the MP3 cravings with an online service that charges a mere $10 - $20 a month.

As for hackers creating a rival service, as long as the RIAA owns the copyrights on the music that people want to hear the law will be on their side. This means that any hacker(s) who create(s) a popular online music distribution system must be ready to contend with lawsuits and harassments from law enforcement and RIAA lawyers. Since most hackers already know where to get MP3's without the common tools (Gnutella, Napster, Scour, etc) it is unlikely that any hacker will put himself through the RIAA wringer just to enable other people to be able to download free music. Corporate investors will also tread warily with regards to facing the RIAA after what has happened to Scour and Napster.

Quite frankly, the RIAA is about to prove that "He with the most lawyers wins".

Wired did an article on Sealand sometime back. If you can get the print copy it's excellent. There's also a trimmed-down online version that I found here.

Michael J.

The UK and the US do not recognise Sealand. Since the 1987 expansion of Britain's territorial limits, Sealand has been within the our sea boundaries.
Check out this article

According to a US State Department official, who declined to be identified, "There are no independent principalities in the North Sea. As far as we are concerned, they are just Crown dependencies of Britain."

I wouldn't get too excited.

Sealand has survived up till now by not doing anything that annoyed anyone very much.
Officially it's a British crown dependency (its independence certainly hasn't been recognised by anyone that I know of) and if enough pressure is put on the British Government then they'd probably end up shutting it down. The UK extended her territorial waters a few years back, so it's no longer outside them (as it was in '67).

There's an article about it from Wired here

Is there anyway we can get a group of big wig tech heads (Stallman, etc.) to ask the Justice Department to investigate the RIAA the same way M$ is being investigated? I mean, making non-standard audio formats to lock smaller labels out (DVD-audio anyone?) and trying to kill our fair use rights is EVIL. It'd be nice if we actual got JUSTICE once instead of just the LAW.

Nitpick - the RIAA is technically a collusive system, not a monopoly - all the players in the market get together and agree to things that would never happen without the communication - their behavior is no different from price-fixing.

Unfortunately, there a couple reasons the RIAA will never see a federal courtroom any time soon:

1) Bush is president. As a rule, Republicans don't bring antitrust suits. Reagan ended the antitrust case against IBM (admittedly there were reasons why this might make sense). With comments already coming from the Bush administration about how they "don't litigate lightly" you won't expect to see them mopping up the floor with megacorps anytime soon.

2) The RIAA is politically aware. Microsoft didn't know what a lobbyist was until they were served half a dozen lawsuits. These boys have already pushed through the DMCA, the Sonny Bono copyright extension, and are now buying even more Republicans to oppose any sane changes to these monstrous laws. If they can purchase copyright extensions, they can purchase an antritrust exemption faster than you can get David Boies on the case.

3) There's no business complaining. Sun, Netscape, AOL, Apple, and dozens of other companies had all seen Microsoft's tricks firsthand. They were battered, but they lived to tell the tale, and lobby Congress and Clinton to do something. It helps if you can show a judge a beaten corporation - they don't give a damn about consumers anymore.

Unfortunately, the RIAA beat its competition out of existence decades ago. There are no corporate victims to parade around, just consumers. If only Clinton's judicial appointments hadn't all been roadblocked....

Michael Hart is one of my all-time heroes. This is a guy with some integrity and persistence. The first eTexts i read off a BBS were from Gutenberg and I ended up doing my final project on eTexts at uni, because of the PG.

To me PG is like one of those great ideas everyone in the world has at least once in a lifetime, which would work, if only you had enough dedication. Michael could (according to the article linked below) be a millionaire by now, if he has chosen to comprise on his vision... but instead he gave us free books.

Anyways, Wired Magazine did a well-researched feature on him a few years ago. Worth a read, if you want to get into the mind a genious.

-Kraft
----------------------------

Michael Hart is one of my all-time heroes. This is a guy with some integrity and persistence. The first eTexts i read off a BBS were from Gutenberg and I ended up doing my final project on eTexts at uni, because of the PG.

To me PG is like one of those great ideas everyone in the world has at least once in a lifetime, which would work, if only you had enough dedication. Michael could (according to the article linked below) be a millionaire by now, if he has chosen to comprise on his vision... but instead he gave us free books.

Anyways, Wired Magazine did a well-researched feature on him a few years ago. Worth a read, if you want to get into the mind a genious.

-Kraft
----------------------------

interesting article from wired.com

Here is an article from Wired magazine on Lake Vostok.

There are a few x-ray-like pictures of Antarctica I've seen here and there on the Net which show the position and size of the subglacial lake, including a small movie clip which even shows the lake's depth and dimensions.

Apple's stock is near it's 52-week low, but so are a lot of companies since the bubble hath burst. It's better to take a longer view.

Preliminary indications are that Apple users are not particularly interested in the complexity and sluggishness of Apple's latest operating system.

When are "users" ever interested in an OS? Pretty much the only time that ever happened was with Windows 95, and that was because of the press sucking of the teets of M$'s PR flacks.

Processor speed is stuck at 500 MHz.

Wrong.

Alternative architectures and software are killing Apple on features, price, and performance.

What you really mean is that generic boxen are killing apple on price. True. Features and performance, that's really, um, apples and oranges.

There are legions of corporations and individuals who have been disrespected by Apple...

This is true about any company, especially one that doesn't incorporate legacy hardware.

The main provider of Apple's microprocessor, Motorola, is hurting and hopes to leave the desktop processor business. Motorola announced 10000 layoffs so far this year, 2/3 in their fabs.

Most of Motorola's layoffs are in the cell phone hand-set sector. Secondly, it's hard to peg problems on Motorola's "Semiconductor Products Segment", because they provide parts to many other Motorola divisions (Iridium comes to mind). Also, remember that Motorola has about 130,000 employees.

Everyone does GUI and mice nowadays. Apple is left marketing decor. The most reasonable solution would be for Apple to open up. Open up its hardware specs and software so that where now exists little more than a corporate cult, there might exist a vibrant autonomous industry of developers, hackers, and hardware vendors.

You mean a vibrant, autonomous, industry like this one? Guess what? There are plenty of developers and hardware vendors for Macintosh, and almost everything they make works. Apple has already "opened up" where it counts, in Darwin.

If sunspots do influence weather by heating the Earth in uneven ways then that might create certain patterns of pressure fronts. IIRC, sunspots are locations of hotter sun activity so presumably the Earth would get more high pressure zones? But if that were true how would this affect the spread of influenza? Isn't influenza spread during cold seasons and wouldn't this require low pressure zones as opposed to high ones?

Another thing to consider is that influenza seems to originate with birds in China, Australia and some other places that I can not recall at the moment. So somehow the way weather is affected by sunspots causes the migration of these disease infected birds to spread to more populous areas thus infecting more people?

...or however the saying goes...it is little wonder this clever scheme has come into being with David Boies in the mix...He did his best to get Gore a win in Florida (I heard for $50 an hour), made Bill Gates look even more like an blubbering arrogant asshole than he usually does, is defending Napster, and now this...oh, yeah, and he was profiled on 60 Minutes last Sunday...cool dude, and very eccentric!

Going on means going far
Going far means returning

Oppressive government:

1) seeks back doors into encryption products
2) wants to be able to execute warrants before serving them (8th paragraph). Whole bill here.
3) Wants to track e-mail & browsing habits with out a warrant.
4) Carnivore. 'nuff said.

Oppressive government:

1) seeks back doors into encryption products
2) wants to be able to execute warrants before serving them (8th paragraph). Whole bill here.
3) Wants to track e-mail & browsing habits with out a warrant.
4) Carnivore. 'nuff said.

This article over at Yahoo reports that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is being accused of bias against Microsoft. Of course, if this were coming from MS no one would be suprised but it appears that some appeals court judges feel the same way. So a few disparaging remarks can be considered bias but working for the plaintiff is perfectly fine?

I for one wonder how a casual gamer would justify spending the $600 on what looks to be a kickass video card when just around the corner there is a kickass video game machine on the horizon with much the same technology.

And as is referenced by this story, the fact that the CPU and the GPU (I guess) share memory makes the X-box outpace the crap out of PC technology.

And I'm also wondering how long its gonna be before someone hacks this thing so that it can run like a regular PC, since it is kinda a cousin anyway. Sure it would suck for apps but man, what nifty graphics power...

This is the story on Wired that I was talking about, but it doesn't talk specifically to the client-side "tagging".

Was this traitor using proprietary software or "un-american" free software to do this double-crossing?

Wired, the affidavit, and World Net Daily indicate that he was using Linux and Palms.

I think it looks like a good background text on the beginnings of linux, so I bought it.
--

Getting govt to refuse GPL would be a huge point to them. What they really want is probably to get universities to ban GPL (something like : you can't get govt fund if you produce

An interesting attack angle is the court challenge of the GPL. You can bet that millions of dollars are currently spent to find how, and to bribe key people. But will MS have the balls to challenge the GPL ? This would be a disastrous PR, in an order that have never been done before. They may loose big time.

IBM® Developer Kit for Linux® on Itanium(TM)

IBM-SOAP has been contributed to form the Apache SOAP project.

IBM is major contributor to Apache's Xerces-J code base

Computer hardware giants Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, and NEC are joining together to fund an independent, nonprofit laboratory to help speed the development and testing of enterprise-targeted Linux projects.

Vested interest? Sure. IBM is not the powerhouse they used to be but IBM, Intel, HP, Sun (etc) do know how to play the capitol hill fiddle.

It will indeed be a very, very interesting next couple of years.....

You sir, are one of the brightest people I have ever met.

You are so right that children are not miniature adults. In fact, they have to get up in the morning and go to school, sometimes longer than the hours their parents work. Then they have homework, which means that even if they might like to go smoke some pot and be one of those "lawless hippie-children" you speak of, chances are they wouldn't have the time.


I may be one of those Lawless hippie-children that you speak of. I should go shower. I feel soooo dirty because of it. I don't need some fucking strong discipline. I don't do drugs, I'm nice to my parents, I'm not sleeping around, or doing any of that other stuff that you seem to think that every "child" in american society is doing. It disgusts me that people like YOU are keeping the responsible among us from doing everything we could. It's people like you who think that we should burn auschwitz because you'd rather lay the blame on somebody else, someone who can't defend themself, than make people think about what is causing the evil, and what has happened as a result in the past. It is people like you who are forcing ratings on everything and the CDA to make mandatory censorware in schools that the "children" go to so that they can't be exposed to another opinion.

So they end up close minded and hateful, just like you. I hope it makes you happy. I hope, that if you have children, when they go shoot up the school, that you realize the wrongs of your ways. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you'll do as others have done before and say that it's nothing but a child, and because you voted to keep their rights away, you are forced to take the responsibility for their actions. Will you realize then? Or would you rather let your children get shot up because freedom of speech didn't cover telling somebody about the hit list that little eric or little dylan happened to have? I'm finished. If this hasn't opened your mind up then nothing will.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net

Here are the "10 Most Surprising Things About the Human Genome."

Wired (yes, I know it doesn't have a sterling reputation at slashdot at the moment) had a pretty interesting article on cloning last month. You can find the text here. It points out that not only has cloning become so accessible that a moderately skilled scientist could do it by themselves, but it's quite possible it has been done already because of this.
--

Wired (yes, I know it doesn't have a sterling reputation at slashdot at the moment) had a pretty interesting article on cloning last month. You can find the text here. It points out that not only has cloning become so accessible that a moderately skilled scientist could do it by themselves, but it's quite possible it has been done already because of this.
--

--

The July 2000 issue of Wired spotlighted Sealand, a sovereign 'country' created from an abandoned oil rig in the Atlantic. The idea is that it can be used as a file server without the burden of national laws. This sounds like an excellent way to get around the copyright laws Napster is currently facing.

What if Napster (or another company) decided to move the central database like this? Could it be stopped without going after individual users?

Why don't these artists that yell and scream about copyright infringement voluntarily release that "magic number"--how much they make per song (average) from the record companies? Could it be they don't want us to know? I'd have to say that it is probably pretty small, compared to what the record companies take. I'm not talking about how much they get paid for touring and whatnot, I'm talking about how much they get for selling a CD. Take out the cost of the CD manufacturing, the payoffs to Tower, and everything that deals with distribution. Napster doesn't need that. What you're left with is embarrassing...ask Courtney Love.

Furthermore, let's start looking at all the money the record companies are generating from the information of the buying public (our PRIVACY!) like demographic info and the ad revenues from Pepsi and crap. Suddenly, what Napster users are stealing doesn't look so significant. I'm not saying that infringing on copyright is okay or right, I'm saying that Napster is doing a better job of distribution than the idiots that are fighting it. Napster is more efficient, convenient, and less politcal. Copyright is about discrimination, it is about making sure that somebody else isn't making money off of your music---passing it off as theirs or bilking you. But if you are using a more expensive method of copying and distribution, let's call a spade a spade. I can't empathize with you anymore.

This whole thing reminds me of the Hitch Hiker's Guide, where all the third class citizens crash land on Earth and decide to use leaves as currency. They have to resort to burning down the forest to stem the counterfitting problem!

On a different note, if one more technologist (or even just somebody posing as an intelligent person) tries to tell me how great ASP stuff is going to be and how great optical networks are going to make my life, I will PUKE! The same greed mentality that has the record companies covering their asses exists in the Telecom world and the energy world. Hello Bill, wake up! If your precious optical network got built, every telecom, cable, satellite, and who knows what else provider would shrivel. It won't happen, they will make sure of it... sure the "network" will get built out, but it will look more like the duct system in Brazil than your utopia. I guarantee it. Why? Because as a consumer culture we are lazy and stupid and unable to force the companies to REALLY give us what we want.

And for my last rant: why does everone insist on saying that the Internet is to blame for all these problems? IT IS NOT! Sure it makes it easier, but it is merely an offshoot of the real "problem"---digitization. I have been copying software since 1982. Why? How? There was no internet! Because it is infinitely easy to make an EXACT duplicate of something that is comprised of nothing but zeros and ones when you have a device that reads and writes zeros and ones. And Bill Joy is worried about the book world--who is he kidding? Bookmaking has been primarily digital for at least 20 years, it is just that the publishers have not "released" the digital source and OCR technology hasn't stepped it up yet. I guarantee you that PDF and the e-books will eventually do to the book what "digital" music has done to musicians. And we'll be in this same argument...if that is what he worries about I worry about him. How many trees do we need to keep chopping down so Bill Joy can have little pieces of PAPER to copyright?

Eventually these morons will begin to see what copyright REALLY is about: credit. (and not credit cards) Whether or not YOU, the author, gets CREDIT for what you wrote, and maybe some form of renumeration.

Only in America could we be so bold as to rather DESTROY our creations than let them out of our CONTROL.

Whoa, soldier!

Many points I would make here, hoping they fall on open ears. I think Tiemann would agree with you off the record that Allchin is a lunatic. He fairly called MS evil, but there are things I don't think you understand.

First the premise that MS is dead in the water (waitaminute, is this flamebait?? oh well...). It's hard to believe that a katrillion dollar company is dead in the water, but if they are dying, then let's make sure they don't take too many of us down with them. I don't know if you noticed, but they are starting to lobby legislators A Lot - check out today's Wired News . If they succeed in gaining credence with legislators who then make laws stifling Open Source (what kind of laws? Someone mentioned the licensing of programmers yesterday...), we may indeed suffer as 'we' become outlaws.

Linux and the open source replace MS? Not likely. Not until the Linux OS matures at least enough so it becomes a viable alternative to Windows. Before you consider this point flamebait, you must admit: our Moms would have a terrible time getting Linux to run, but they are comfortable with MS. I can't say much more, as I am only a reluctant Windows user (but some day...).

Your line, "The truth will out, as it has been shown throughout history" makes me wonder if you 'read' the piece. Tiemann actually addresses the arrogance of MS in believing that it can control the truth much in the same way that the Church sought to control the Truth a thousand years ago. This brought on the Dark Ages until people realized that the Truth exists independently of peoples wishes. We could actually experience a Dark Ages in computers, you know... what would it be like? I don't know, but it's got a crappy OS running the show and every click you make can be heard clear up to Redmond and D.C. I think it would involve loss of privacy And innovation as open source programmers become dispirited and disjoint. We would then live in a kind of 1984 where life is crappy as hell but we are told things are getting better every day. And I damn sure would not be allowed to type this stuff. Or maybe I could, but I would find out that my OS liked me less and less and I get the BSOD every three minutes instead of twice a day...

Is MS evil? Would they do anything to keep themselves on top, including lowering the entire world so they are relatively superior. I don't know, why don't we ask them?

This 'rebuttal' is absolutely essential so that the snide remarks of a very very powerful lunatic don't go by unchallenged. I salute Tiemann for stepping up to the plate and calling a spade a spade, standing before the Great Evil like David to Goliath...

...or maybe Galileo to Pope Urban VIII...

A couple not so encouraging eBook stories.
E-Books Barely a Blip on Publishing Radar says E-book sales barely show up in the $96 billion U.S. consumer electronics or publishing markets.

""Reading an e-book is just like reading a book ... but it's just less fun, more expensive and heavier," said Robert Hertzberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "That's not much of a marketing motto."

While Wired asks What if E-Books Cost Less?, one publisher is lowering prices to sell more books.

A couple not so encouraging eBook stories.
E-Books Barely a Blip on Publishing Radar says E-book sales barely show up in the $96 billion U.S. consumer electronics or publishing markets.

""Reading an e-book is just like reading a book ... but it's just less fun, more expensive and heavier," said Robert Hertzberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "That's not much of a marketing motto."

While Wired asks What if E-Books Cost Less?, one publisher is lowering prices to sell more books.

Heilemann did an article for Wired a couple of months ago called The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth on exactly this subject. I'm assuming that the book (which I haven't read) is essentially a more in-depth look at the same thing.

When I started the article, I was hopeful that it would be an even-handed analysis of how Microsoft had come by the drubbing they'd received at the hands of Jackson. (Although - pardon the pun - the jury is still out on whether it will stick.) I couple pages into it, I started to become disappointed: it seemed to me at that point to be shaping up to be a tale of how a dedicated band of young lawyers turned a foundering investigation against an evil empire around, and blah blah blah.

I'm glad I stuck with it. The article was indeed even handed, and still managed to be damning. For example, Heilemann asked Ballmer point-blank if Scott McNealy was right when he said that Microsoft licensed Java in bad faith (with the intent of breaking the contract). The response, edited for space:

"We always honored our license. We always intended to... We said, Hey Sun, you want to get on the back of us and ride, baby, ride?..." Ballmer's face was beet-red now, and he was screaming... Up on his feet, leaning across the table so that his face was no more than 6 inches from mine, "Nobody was ever one little teeny tiny bit confused that we and Sun had this wonderful dovetailing of strategic interests! Those sub-50-IQ people who work at Sun who believe that are either uninformed, crazy, or sleeping!"
I took this as a Yes.

It's such a weird picture - Ballmer starts off saying "Of course we entered into the contract in good faith," but seems to immediately do a 180, and finishes up with "Of course we didn't. And the Sun people wore morons to think we did."

I'm gonna buy the book. The article was worth the price of admission just for that.

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

A long and excellent article in Wired on this subject by the author is available here.

I used to entertain the thought of buying one of these just to be able to design some cool sculpture and print it out.

Given that there are several Supreme Court precedents upholding the right to speak anonymously, how can they possibly expect this to survive challenge?
/.

Privacy concerns, and governments addresses over these concerns, are like water and oil. Current events should point out the true factors when thinking about these two, although many never take the time to delve deeper into the situation, often overlooking many important factors that would normally be an outrage after the occurance, but seldom questioned until it is too late.

Politicians are often older people who will never utilize computers in the same fashions as us, and often do not understand what is going on. Law enforcement often uses scare tactics by injecting some outrageous scenarios into the minds of these politicians using cryptic terms themselves in hoping these politicians will pass these laws without incident, which will benefit law enforcement, and cripple the people.

Breakdown of questionable issues:

HR46 was an attempt to sneak a fast one.

Carnivore was used dozens of times and the FBI claims it was mostly on hackers. Note: Its been found that the Carnivore snoops everything on a segment what about your traffic? Were you on that network, was your traffic snooped?

makes me wonder...

FBI claims Castro is a hacker. In a country where they have close to nothing, do you really believe Cuba is a threat to the US, or is this just an attempt to step on Cuba when their down?

Bin Laden using technology to hide activities. Note: this isn't new news and judging from experiences in history, we've always needed an enemy for the sake of remaining a super power by enforcing authority. So if Osama is such a huge threat why isn't he stopped cold? Because the government can't or because they don't want to for the purpose of having an enemy?

Take a quick look at some of the stuff posted by Louis Tenet this week and do some rational thinking about how situations arise which can be handled by government, but are often purposely misconstrued for the sake of promoting other hidden agendas. Government will try to take as much privacy away as they can, any government so don't be fooled.

And it goes on and on with no end in site.

shhh... the world is out to get me

I can't bring myself to agree with a lot of the posting here, the wringing of hands and concern that before we set up Pentiums and WANs we should feed Africa, work on infrastructure, stabilize political scenes, defeat AIDS, etc. I think all those things need to be actively tackled, and are actively being addressed by those with the know-how, but some people are endowed with gifts to intuitively understand and enjoy TCP/IP and OOP instead of the engineering behind irrigation systems. For a group to forego the cushy material benefits of the Western world to share their joy...hey, let 'em rip.

Tangentially: I hadn't heard of Geekhalla before, but for the past week, I've been wondering whether volunteer projects like that existed or not. My own bent is toward medical care, and how computers make critical drug inventories and access to patient records so much more efficient. Maybe not the e-commerce stuff so much. I know first-hand that hospitals in the US don't have the slickest IT in the world due to budget constraints, so I have doubts that international volunteer groups have much at all in that department. Last night, I did a search on Freshmeat for "humanitarian", thinking I'd look into any open-source projects that might be cooking, but alas came up with zero records returned. The time isn't there for me to start my own project right now, but I'm wondering if I might clear some clutter and obligations in my life and start something. I've been reading about organization like Doctors Without Borders, wondering what people with the wiggle to understand complex information systems could do for trans-continental organizations like that, using lingua franca technology like Linux and FreeBSD. Just in the little probing I've done, it looks like there's an enormous impact computer gurus could make, and considering the level of commitment other highly skilled professionals like surgeons and physicians can make, why not IT folks?

Does anyone else remember the article in Wired - (May, 1994 - here)
about the war between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats? Go read it.
I love the line in the article where it says that usenet has 4,000 newsgroups - I remember seeing something like 25,000 in 1996, the last time I checked...

Cheers, Jim in Tokyo

I'm gonna have to take this one with a huge friggen grain of salt.

When I come to the machine to type a letter, I just sit down and type.... I don't have to launch the word processor. I just type; typing is enough of a clue for the interface to do the right thing.--from Down With GUIs

Okay, so the word processor isn't launched, it's built-in to the computer. Still, how does your computer know you want to write a letter, not create a spreadsheet? How does your computer know when you're typing a URL you want to go to?

Down With GUIs!" by Jeff Raskin.

Okay, so there's no whore like a karma whore. Sue me. Hey! Yeah, you. Looking for a l33t time, big boy?

I'm sure he has some great ideas (it's giving me a few ideas) but I don't think he's helping himself much. The whole piece was "I didn't say that. If you would read my book you would know better." Well, let's see. Here's an (printer friendly version) article by him, from Wired magazine.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/1.6_guis_p r.html

What does he say? The same stuff he says he didn't say. Start typing to make a document. Start drawing with a pen tablet to make a drawing. "One big mistake is the idea of an operating system." And, "An operating system, even the saccharine Mac or Windows desktop, is the program you have to hassle with before you get to hassle
with the application. It does nothing for you, wastes your time, is unnecessary."

How can he blame his critics for saying such things?

There is another link from Wired but it is from '94. I remember this being an issue and there was a promise of reform but I can't find anything recent abut the quota system. Does anybody else have more current information?

This reminds me of The Transparent Society article written by David Brin back in 1996. Still a good read today.

-AU

As always with security, you shouldn't have a single point of failure... make sure you encrypt the upper level protocols with the likes of VPND, IPSec or something similar.

Coincidentally, it has been reported that sensitive data from the Davo's World Economic Forum was stolen last week, and Microsoft and Compaq were touting the benefits of 802.11b network on the iPaq PocketPC, they issued all 2300 attendees with a device and installed numerous access points throughout the complex, hotel's etc. I wonder if this could of been the source of the exploit ?

It seems wherever Bill Gates (cheesy grin) goes... security flaws travel with him (like a fly to sh1t).

All the system will do is pick out Jimmy the Dip who as 3 convictions for pickpockting. As Jimmy has served his time, can you stop him going in without any evidence he has criminal intent?

Actually, 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

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......

"And the recent security problems with Linux, coupled with the lack of key enterprise elements in the new kernel, really call into question whether Linux should be used at all," Miller added.