Slashdot Mirror

Visit Wired's article at http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,36395,00.html. It outlines what IBM sees as the advantages of running Linux on OS/390.

I'm new to Linux, but the explanation makes sense to me. On an OS/390 mainframe, you can supposedly can run 200 to 300 Linux virtual servers. Add to that a low average yearly downtime (IBM claims 5 minutes a year), and a single mainframe becomes as practical as 200 individual boxes.

Why the hell are Microsoft allowed to suggest penalties or restrictions?

<disclaimer>
IANAL
</disclaimer>

That's because breaking up Microsoft isn't being suggested as a punitive measure: it's being suggested as a remedy.

Defendants that are found guilty of crimes in criminal proceedings are always expected to argue for leniency when they're being punished. But the situation here isn't even really punishment, which is why the government keeps using the terms "structural remedy," as opposed to "punitive measures."

That's also why Microsoft could argue that breaking up the company wouldn't make sense in the face of things like the AOL/Time Warner deal. Essentially, they were saying that the IT industry obviously wasn't in need of any help, because there were plenty of superpowers already being formed which have a reach at least equal to MS'.

Incidentally: while I believe that Microsoft was clearly as guilty as charged, and that remedies are clearly needed, I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I am with the idea of them being broken up. Further, I'm seriously worried that the AOL/TW merger is going to make MS' transgressions look like a bully in a schoolyard sandbox. Klein has already warned to expect many more of these suits in the future, and even Orrin Hatch is saying that he has misgivings about the merger. Especially now that the FCC is saying that Time Warner acted illegally during its recent spat with ABC.

Judge Charles Legge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday dismissed Sony's claims that Connectix violated trademark and copyright laws with its Virtual Game Station software.

In fact, Judge Legge is a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the federal trial court in which Sony sued Connectix. He had previously granted a preliminary injunction in favor of Sony and against Connectix on the basis that Sony was likely to succeed on its copyright and trademark claims. The Ninth Circuit (the federal appeals court which hears appeals from the Northern District of California) instructed Judge Legge to dissolve this preliminary injunction in its February 10, 2000 opinion:

[Judge Legge] concluded that Sony was likely to succeed on its infringement claim because Connectix's "intermediate copying " was not a protected "fair use" under 17 U.S.C. sec. 107. [Legge] enjoined Connectix from selling the Virtual Game Station or from copying or using the Sony BIOS code in the development of other Virtual Game Station products. [ . . . ]

We reverse and remand with instructions to dissolve the injunction. The intermediate copies made and used by Connectix during the course of its reverse engineering of the Sony BIOS were protected fair use, necessary to permit Connectix to make its non-infringing Virtual Game Station function with PlayStation games. [ . . . ]

[Legge] also found that Sony is likely to prevail on its claim that Connectix's sale of the Virtual Game Station program tarnishes the Sony PlayStation mark under 15 U.S.C. sec. 1125. We reverse that ruling as well.

In light of the Ninth Circuit's opinion, Judge Legge has now ruled that these claims by Sony (though not all claims by Sony) are deficient as a matter of law. Readers may judge for themselves whether they should be surprised by this turn of events.

According to this arcticle on Wired:
The session drew up talking points for the July summit in Okinawa of the G8 -- the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada, and Russia -- but did not propose a global "cyberpolice" or other new crime-fighting agencies.

It also states:

U.S. Assistant Attorney General James Robinson poured cold water on talk by French officials that Washington wanted to a global "cyberpolice" that could be a threat to civil liberties. He said U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno had never even suggested to him that she was interested in this idea and added: "That's certainly not been anything we have proposed here."

Curious... I checked other sources.

ZDNET has this to say: In his speech, Chevenement highlighted the trans-Atlantic gap by rejecting the idea of an international "cyberpolice" supported by U.S. officials eager to crack down quickly on computer crime. "Nothing could be more wrong," he declared. "Sovereign states can develop the capacity to act, first at home and then in international cooperation."

I don't think the CyberPolice issue is still on the table for the next summit in July. Of course, if everyone wants to get there panties in a wad about the U.S.'s meddlesome, high handed foriegn policies, please, don't let this stop you. Bash away.

But the US also wants to take your Money and they just passed an "IP Charges" Bill.
Just one step closer to the US trying to regulate the Internet. When will the realise that this will not work? .. Although a DoS would be very costly ($$) for that l33t h4x0r.. ;-)

"There's a few rough edges but it's really looking good," he said. Jobs said OS X's designers were "shooting for a new level of fit and finish never seen in a user interface before." To illustrate his point, he showed off the operating system's fluid and good-looking user interface, which features animated menus, buttons and control bars, and an easy-to-use, browser-like file navigation system.

Uh... animated menus? buttons? browser-like file navagation? Didn't we see this in Windoze 95? Sure, maybe it's done better on Mac OS X. But it's deffinitly been seen before.

IMHO, the controversy wasn't about individuals fanaticly defending their rights over their "published works" but something more complex that struck a nerve with many of the Slashdot readership whether they posted to that discussion or not. (I'll try to explain my view)

WHO
I think some folks are still uneasy with the thought that Slashdot is now a very much for-profit public company. As a public company they have a lawful obligation to maximize profit for their shareholders.

Despite this, we think of Slashdot as being different and they are. If the NY Times had published the entire discussion in a special Columbine One Year Later insert, we'ld be glad to have been heard, and their use of our "copyright" material wouldn't have surprised anyone. We expect Slashdot to exist on a higher moral plane than the rest of the media, and even if it can legally be done doesn't mean it's the Right Thing. We expected to be asked our feeling on the use of readers' comments before any kind of deals were signed.

Personlly, I think asking the overall readership their opinion on the matter in a Slashdot Poll *before* announcing the book as a done deal would have resulted in an overwelming positive response and given you the informal permission you needed to proceed without getting PR whacked. After the fact now, you've got all this greif and the publication of a good book is in limbo.

HOW
If Slashdot had announced that the comments were going to be published in a $1 edition of Wired magazine there would have been less upheavel. Had /. announced that they were distributing 20,000 copies in "note-pack" bindings at this year's Comdex instead of bumper stickers, etc. there may have been only praise. - But, when you publish a "real" book for ThinkGeek, an Andover company, to sell for $14.95 - you're inevitably going to alienate some readers.

As legal as it may be, Slashdot readers don't want to be used to help Andover's bottom line without being asked nicely first. It helps us maintain our suspension-of-disbelief that your not really a for-profit concern.

I thinkg /. is doing the right thing now and I hope they're successful in getting the book to press. I hope this somehow helps some understand the tension here. I think I'm stating the obvious, but from a lot of other posts I've read, maybe not.

why isn't there a story about last weeks DDOS attack?

wired article on Slashdot getting DOSed.

Could be any number of reasons, such as:

• VA Linux wants to keep it as quiet as possible how easy it is to knock their web properties (e.g., Slashdot) off-line. And we all know how VA Linux hates to see bad news reported by a "news" site that they own. Just like when the stock market was tanking, particularly the Linux stocks, and Slashdot mysteriously didn't have a single word to say about it -- well, not until they got rightfully flamed to a crisp by their readership and caved in to the demands of an article about it.
• Slashdot just hates admitting it whenever there's a problem in Linux/Apacheland. You see, it makes them look like major fools for constantly and mindlessly bashing the alternatives when they can't get their own stuff to work. (Which reminds me, did Slashdot ever run a story about when they got hacked?)

Oh well, those are the reasons that come to mind at first blush. There might be others, but either way, don't count on it ever being reported here, despite the fact that it is a big story to readers here. (Anyone want to try to argue that it's not a huge story to the people who actually visit this site? I'd love to hear it.) Of course, Slashdot will probably say that they're in the business of reporting news, not reporting about Slashdot itself -- shortly before they publish their 8th story about Microsoft lawyers sending letters to Slashdot.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Both Thursday and Friday. Check out this story at Wired.

Well, a) it wasn't obvious - it could have been problems with the server or whatever. Wired thought it interesting enough to mention it in a story, but if you hadn't read that you wouldn't have known.

And b) Obviously the /. readership thought it interesting to discuss, otherwise we wouldn't be dicussing it in an unrelated story. Even a mention about what was happenning attached to another story would have been nice, rather than leaving us to get our news from wired.

At least, according to a wired story. Thing is, I'd rather get my news from /. than Wired.

On an unrelated issue, anyone know what's up with the DOS attacks on /.? Are they over with? Wired has had a few stories on it that I've covered on geekpress. (There's been lots of news about Slashdot lately, including a profile of Malda and Bates.)

-- Diana Hsieh

Get your facts straight Siggy... the latest court ruling in the sex.com case in fact found that domain names weren't to be considered property.

http://www.wired.com/news/b usiness/0,1367,36313,00.html

From the ZDNet article:
Bennett Haselton, Webmaster for Peacefire.org, said the flaw involves sending a user an e-mail with an HTML attachment. When the user clicks on the attachment, the file sends a copy of the user?s cookie to the hacker.
Once that cookie is received, the hacker can insert it manually into the Netscape cookies.txt file and use that authentication key to log in to Hotmail as the user. Click here for a description of the trick.
<snip>
Not a 'trivial bug'
Since the cookie does not contain the user's password, the hacker can only access the account when the user is logged on and as long as the authentication code is valid. But Haselton said that five minutes would be long enough for a hacker with a prepared script to download all of a user's e-mail messages.

Best I could see, theres no email floating around doing this - its just an idea at this point. And for it to propagate(sp?) like luvbug or melissa, it'd need a script to use the hotmail address book. As it sits right now, it'd just come from one guy who knew lots of hotmail addresses. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this, tho :)

-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...

This is an embedded javascript exploit, just like some of the earlier exploits (not VBS as described above by CT). Hotmail is filtering out javascript within the bodies of e-mail, but not attached html files. They could remedy this by either filtering attached html files (not so easy to do) or by offloading the attachments to be read from a seperate server outside the *.hotmail.com domain (my recommendation).

Here's an awesome story about another risk of using web-based e-mail. It describes how your IP address could be identified if the sender attaches an IMG tag to the e-mail and then watches the web server log for when you read the mail and your browser requests the image from her server. Clever.

"You have all sorts of First Amendment problems with that," said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Civil libertarians said the measure should be rewritten to remove restrictions on Web publishing and eliminate a controversial section that would allow police to conduct secret searches and seizures.

Johnson has lobbied both Democratic and Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, arguing that the bill is so vague it could put even mainstream publishers at risk.

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserves neither."
--Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison

"You have all sorts of First Amendment problems with that," said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Civil libertarians said the measure should be rewritten to remove restrictions on Web publishing and eliminate a controversial section that would allow police to conduct secret searches and seizures.

Johnson has lobbied both Democratic and Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, arguing that the bill is so vague it could put even mainstream publishers at risk.

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserves neither."
--Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison

4) Consider researching/finding a radio plugin card that works under your OS of choice. Set it up such that a simple tap of a key starts/stops recording. With a decent radio station (that doesn't voice over the start and finish of songs) this could be an excellent source of free music for distribution via CD or server.

moderate above UP! Listen, it won't be long before $50 buys a credit card sized drive holds 4 *years* of *.mp3 recordings.. Gnapster and freenet plus exploding bandwidth will make a milennia of *.mp3 available for sharing.. deal with it!

http://www.techweb.com/wire/stor y/TWB19990824S0011
http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294 ,35079,00.html

anyway, i'm dying to record direct from radio.. does anyone know of a TiVO like device for grabbing broadcast radio signals and converting 'em to *.mp3?

(btw - yes, artists are getting royally screwed between corporations and "pirates".. it is a very bad thing .. stopping this abuse is up to us individuals.. currently i don't rip (no time) but when i start, i'll definately pay lars (it's the ethical thing to do.)

But while the win was significant for the RIAA, the real fight is still to come. "This was really a tune up for the main event," said [copyright attorney/talking head Whitney] Broussard. "The main event is going to be when Napster rolls out the Betamax defense, which will be very interesting."

So relax, people. <cliche'>It's only the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.</cliche'>

I found this article most amusing once I remembered this story from Wired, which got all hot and bothered about the number of registration profiles the site has managed to collect.

It bugs me to hear and read in Wired about the amount of flames that the various guys of Slashdot receive. If it was just Jon Katz, I could understand, but it seems all of them receive a large portion of flame mail. What they do is great for the community, if you read Slashdot regularly and for instance this article in Wired, you would know these guys are pretty sincere in what they are doing... So stop whining! :-)

Indeed, there's even a USENET law about it...

Wired Magazine actually has a story this month on next generation translation devices.
Interesting read.

Wired Magazine actually has a story this month on next generation translation devices.
Interesting read.

I am legally entitled to make a copy of my CD, but I am not entitled to copy CDs I do not own, and give the copies away to those who did legally purchase it. Nor can I buy the CD, repackage it in a different case (or copy it to tape, etc.) and give it to someone, regardless of whether that person has their own legally-aquired original.

In short, you can still copy your CDs to your heart's content, just don't give away the copies.

Sued, or worse.

Anyone remember the Solid Oak mailbomb flap?

Here's another link to similiar research. This guy has actually implanted transceivers, and he is planning on more--digital record and playback of nerve signals. http://www.wired.com/wired/arc hive/8.02/warwick.html

Have you read the 1989 OTA Report on home taping, which concluded that so-called "bootlegging" was no threat to music industry profits, and that it in fact served as free advertising? It turned out that the users making tapes illegally were also both more likely to buy more music themselves and more likely to encourage other fans to do so. While obviously the technology has improved significantly since 1989, aren't we really dealing with the same issues? After all, CD sales are way up, despite Napster. And you yourselves have credited bootleg tapes with your own popularity - why are you seeking to put napster out of business and deny other artists similar outlets?

For anyone that's interested there's another article about this on Wired. I found it on kuro5hin 3 days ago. I just stopped by there the for first time a couple days ago--very cool site for tech news junkies.

I rarely go to web sites I read about in print or see on TV because most of the time they don't point you directly to the content you want. I always pictured a cheap pen reader hooked to a USB port a good method of getting the URL from paper to the computer. If a web cam can do it that's great, but it will have to be fairly reliable. This technology will be great for business cards too. Especially if you can encode all the printed data on a business card into the barcode.

numb

*sing* my soma has a first name, it's m-o-n-e-y...

...especially with the short life span, but Wired ran a great story (available 2000.05.16) in the last issue about using Flywheels instead of lead-acid batteries. When can I get a Flywheel UPS?

You can forget about finding one of these for $50 now that WIRED has picked up the story.

The story has some comments from the guy behind the hacks, it turns out that it hasn't really been very lucrative selling the kits. They also ask him what he plans to hack next, to which he says he may look at the MailStation, but has dismissed VIRGIN's i-apppliance since the service contract is unavoidable.

You would think that especially after the i-opener, and the MSN rebate debacles, the lawyers for WebSurfer would have taken a second look at their agreements with all their retailers to ensure the device would not be sold without a binding ISP contract.

You can forget about finding one of these for $50 now that WIRED has picked up the story.

The story has some comments from the guy behind the hacks, it turns out that it hasn't really been very lucrative selling the kits. They also ask him what he plans to hack next, to which he says he may look at the MailStation, but has dismissed VIRGIN's i-apppliance since the service contract is unavoidable.

You would think that especially after the i-opener, and the MSN rebate debacles, the lawyers for WebSurfer would have taken a second look at their agreements with all their retailers to ensure the device would not be sold without a binding ISP contract.

You can forget about finding one of these for $50 now that WIRED has picked up the story.

The story has some comments from the guy behind the hacks, it turns out that it hasn't really been very lucrative selling the kits. They also ask him what he plans to hack next, to which he says he may look at the MailStation, but has dismissed VIRGIN's i-apppliance since the service contract is unavoidable.

You would think that especially after the i-opener, and the MSN rebate debacles, the lawyers for WebSurfer would have taken a second look at their agreements with all their retailers to ensure the device would not be sold without a binding ISP contract.

Now, note the part that says:

After investigating, Prodigy canceled the accounts, but was unable to identify the impostor.

Couldn't they have at least provided the credit card number that was used to open the account to investigators or something? Geez...

According to this article, the judge has no leeway in determining the minimum damages; the absolute minimum figure is said to be $800 million.

Unless this is overturned, or mp3.com settles with the RIAA (unlikely; the RIAA wants them annihilated and their tarred corpse hung up in a gibbet as a warning to others), mp3.com is kaput.

Tell that to the janitors in Silicon Valley.

Although I believe that MP3.com has always walked the fine line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, I honestly don't see the crime they committed.

Taken from this article on Wired:
The lawsuit brought by the RIAA and filed in the Southern District of New York claims that MP3.com created an illegal database of 45,000 CDs, which the company purchased and uploaded on to MP3.com's servers. The suit sought to shut down the service.

What's wrong with that? Does this mean that I have been breaking the law by converting my own 100s of CDs to MP3 format for my own convenience? The last I heard, this was no more illegal than dubbing a CD onto cassette to play in my non-CD equipped car. (If it is illegal, I didn't just post the previous paragraph)

Easily as outrageous, from the same article:
The RIAA suit asked the court to award $150,000 in damages per song streamed, which could cost MP3.com billions of dollars in back penalties.

Where did they get that math from? Do they honestly believe that every song streamed is then transmitted to tens of thousands of people?

Of course, IANAL, but at least I have a little common sense.

-Tommy

------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."

www.imesh.com
www.hotlinehq.com
there are plenty of ways to trade all kinds of files. this means:
-stopping napster (and its users, if dre is willing to go that far) won't do anything
-music/files will ALWAYS be traded for free-- encryptions will be broken, people will always go for the free stuff if they can avoid paying as you say, mp3 is now effectively ineradicable
Sony just introduced a new method of distribution for music on the internet.. it doesn't say it in that article, but in Billboard magazine they quoted a price of about $2.95 per song, to be distributed in conjunction with CD Now. Who in their right mind would pay three bucks for a song they can get free? The internet is changing all kinds of media, and the only thing we know for certain about where it's going is that record companies are being FORCED to stop overcharging for music, copyrights or not.

I'd love to see chuck D drop his gloves with Dr. Dre.

While so many musicians are attacking MP3's and Napster, Limp Bizkit has decided to support them. In addition, "Napster, securing its reputation for supplying free music to fans, will fund Bizkit's month-long tour for $1.8 million. The band will play 24 free shows in 3,000 to 5,000 seat ampitheaters in 10 cities, including Boston, New York, and San Francisco." According to an article at wired, Fred Durst, told a news conference that Napster was a great way for fans to sample an album before buying it. "I would think the only people worried about that are people that are really worried about their bank accounts," he said. Isn't this cool?

While so many musicians are attacking MP3's and Napster, Limp Bizkit has decided to support them. In addition, "Napster, securing its reputation for supplying free music to fans, will fund Bizkit's month-long tour for $1.8 million. The band will play 24 free shows in 3,000 to 5,000 seat ampitheaters in 10 cities, including Boston, New York, and San Francisco." According to an article at wired, Fred Durst, told a news conference that Napster was a great way for fans to sample an album before buying it. "I would think the only people worried about that are people that are really worried about their bank accounts," he said. Isn't this cool?

Wired has a short interview with the Marketing Director of MS France here.

MS seems to interpret the law as requiring that they open source Windows. He almost threatens to stop selling to the French government if the law through.

He says, 'If it was passed as it looks today it might make doing business with public authorities very difficult.'

Though they may be trying to exagerate the impact to build support against the bill.

Harris and Klebold enjoyed playing the bloody, shoot-'em-up video game Doom, a game licensed by the U.S. military to train soldiers to effectively kill from the APA Journal article

Barnett looks like he's explained this one before. "Marine Doom, as you saw, is not just a twitch game. The way you get through a Marine Doom scenario and survive is through teamwork and listening to your fire team leader and doing what you're supposed to...."

"It's about repetitive decision making," Snyder swiftly interjects. Snyder's habitual deference - even off-duty, he calls his friends sir - doesn't always extend to allowing Barnett to finish his sentences. "We're trying to get these things ingrained by doing them over and over, with variations. A real firefight is not a good time to explore new ideas."

"You also saw how everyone was absorbed," Barnett adds. "That's another part of it. Kids who join the marines today grew up with TV, videogames, and computers. So we thought, how can we educate them, how can we engage them and make them want to learn? This is perfect."

The psychological profession long ago decided that the road to power and political relevance was to reject the Aristotilean idea of catharsis and instead follow the Platonic idea that "the poets should be banned from the Republic because they get the people all stirred up." Otherwise, they won't get invited to testify on Capitol Hill or TV talk shows.

There are some counter articles out there today that everyone should also read:

Lawmakers are uneducated about video game industry, panelist says

Illinois attorney general urges end to sales of violent video games to minors

And, most importantly: Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers

I think the big question that everyone needs to ask themselves is who better serves American interests, jurists, or psychologists? I agree with R. A. Heinlein (who used to get guff from amateur psychologist when he was writing his juvenile novels, Red Planet, and others) that the psychological profession is full of charlatans and quacks. Of course, with the current low regard the First Amendment and the entire Constitution is held in in this country, I don't expect my opinions to hold much weight.

You don't see too many politicians sending spam saying "Vote for me". Spam is almost entirely commercial advertisements -- whether for fly-by-night get-rich-quick schemes, porno sites, or (formerly) legitimate corporations.

Actually, as today's Wired story notes, political spam is alive and well.

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but it's pretty similar. It's from Wired News; they were watching NTV too and listened to this conversation where one of the astronauts had a problem with, guess what?, Microsoft Outlook. =) and called Houston for help. I suppose it was running on one of the Thinkpads that they now carry with them on the shuttle.

actually, windows is still in wide use on the shuttle. A while back on Wired news there was a story about the astronauts not being able to work the e-mail with exchange or something. There was acutally an mp3 of a radio call back to Houston that I have. I'd put it up, but I'm a bit scared of flooding my 14.4k modem and my 486 with 24m ram, and my isp would be kinda pissed.

There are many reasons for this, most of which I covered in a Wired article last December.

Eventually digital will catch up, and it is an at-least-theoretically-unnecessary-and-definitely- costly pain to develop and scan in slides and negatives. But digital still isn't there yet.

Some examples, from my personal photo site:

DMCA protest:
analog
digital

Supreme Court:
analog
digital

B&W portraits:
analog
digital

B&W scenes:
analog
digital

Images that would be very difficult to replicate in digital:
portrait
nude

According to a Wired story the father was evidently involved in some illegal activities of his own. Sounds to me like they decided to charge the kid with some stuff so they could tap the phone, search the house, etc. and find some details on the father's crimes. The dad was the real target, they just went after the kid so that they had a legal excuse to raid the dad.