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AMD recently claimed they would have 30% overall market share by the end of the year, their goal before launching their 64 bit processor. It seems they are on track to meet those expectations. With NVidia's chipset offering a low-cost affordable solution for low-end machines and the 760MP chipset offering us the world's first multiprocessor AMD platform, they are putting themselves in a position to have real sway in the coming 64 bit desktop revolution.

I thought the P4 was supposed to have better branch prediction to minimize the pipeline flush penalty. Does anyone know which CPU has a better branch prediction algorithm?

I think its major improvement is to make each stage comparatively simple by lengthening pipelines, but it brings other problems as I said before

There are improvements in other aspects, but they are mostly useless, some reviewers said.

So is this then Netscape's second death? First they make browsers, then they're a portal (as announced circa 1998), then they're bought by AOL, which brilliantly gave SUN all of the company's real products. And now they're a portal again? Weren't they a portal before? Back when they announced the deployment of MyNetscape...

But wait a minute, now they want to start developing media agrogation products (maybe)? Weren't they o their way to doing that before all their server products were sold off to sun as the iPlanet 'partnertswhip'?

Sounds like yet another major direction change... Bad management? or maybe I'm just confused...

Oh, and for anyone who needs a recap of the earlier merger speculation around Netscape, before AOL bought them, here's a pretty good article from 1998 that evaluates each potential suitor as to what they would have added to the company.

--CTH

The ISBN is 0066620724.

It has been my experience posting in this forum that British citizens will often support such a system, while Americans almost to a man won't. I attribute this to the relationship that the Brits have with their government; one of consanguineity, a sense that one is of the same type, beliefs, origins, disposition, and outlook. As an American, I am baffled as to why, but they do support video cameras in their streets, surveillance platforms in their Irish towns, and other Big Brother devices.

The psychology must be one of fear. One must feel that he would be the last group to be attacked by the government he is so loyal to. That combined with an unrealistic fear of criminal elements / foreign terrorists / evil agents allows one to be seduced by the technological fix of spying on the entire planet indiscriminately.

Now, if you Are one of those in the Inner Circles of Power, well, then you have almost no choice but to embrace better ways of (as you must perceive) keeping your grip on the wolf's ears. Power serves itself in this instance and as such is incapable of saying 'no' to a means to enlarge, insulate, and safeguard itself. I suspect there is no good rationale for the existence of Echelon or Carnivore except for the need to stay on top.

But this is antithetical to our Constitution, and one would think, post-Magna Carta England, because one of the enlightened priciples espoused by the architects of (at least the US) system of government is a regime founded on the consent of the governed.

Echelon is certainly Un-American, and probably not very terribly British.

And the French, who know freedom, sovereignty, and independence as much as anybody, would certainly be the ones leading this charge, I would think, since they accused US of using Echelon to spy on some Brazilian contractor to steal a contract from France for, um, England? Hang on. Here.

Interestingly enough, it says that this was built during the Cold War. Also, using only the most dubious of logic, this quote from former CIA director James Woolsey:

A questionable justification from Woolsey for this activity at the time was that European companies have a "national culture" of bribery and are the "principle offenders from the point of view of paying bribes in major international contracts in the world".

Hell, you don't see us stopping work on missile defense just because the Soviets crumbled, do you? It's kind of like that.

Reality says, they're going to use it to track you whenever you have your cellphone on. No more need for that tedious police work, eh?

I find it curious and rather laughable that a number of Slashdot readers claim not to have heard of Caldera, or make comments to the effect that Caldera ought to further promote their distro and gain increased visibility. First, Caldera is oriented entirely towards the business user and server markets, thus its low "desktop user" name recognition.

Second, Caldera is that company that bought SCO-UNIX (remember them?) It has been committed to integrating features found in the commercial UnixWare product into mainstream Linux, and has been steadily developing Volution, a complete Linux network management infrastructure.

Caldera's target audience is the corporate space, which is not necessarily ideologically enamoured of Open Source, preferring to keep intellectual property rights and profit from them. Without a licensing scheme that gives these companies the confidence to venture into mainstream Linux acceptance, they never may. Caldera should be observed with keen interest, not scorn, for having the courage to say what many have been thinking for a while, and see what solutions thy come up with.

British Telecom already made such a device in 1998.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1998/40/ns-5698.html

It's not exactly what you talked about, but close enough.

- Serge Wroclawski

Still, this sign is funny

W
-------------------

I do agree that the size of the entertainment console market is large, but finite, and that the sooner one of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo comes in and claims their stake, the sooner the next-generation console will be over. However, given that there are over 30 million PS1 units out there (not counting N64 and DC owners not owning a PS1, and not counting the substantial growth in the industry as a whole), it is evident that most customers are still sitting on the sideline, and not rushing out to purchase the PS2. With two more consoles coming out in the short-term, and very few great games available for the PS2 just yet, I think most consumers are taking a "wait-and-see" attitude.

Basic problem: pointing in free space is not a good way to do input. It gets tiring fast, and it's not very accurate. This is partly why glove-type input devices never caught on. The GyroMouse people have found a niche market as a mouse replacement for people giving PowerPoint presentations, but that's about as useful as it gets.

But... Bluetooth and the upcoming IEEE 802.11B (note the B) are going to go head to head. It doesn't have the cool name or logo, but it does have the backing of both IEEE and Intel. You may hate Intel, but they have a lot of weight to throw around.

I must admit that I was really excited about the Bluetooth standard, but I would always choose an IEEE standard over an industry consortium. I'm still ticked off that USB has gained wide acceptance.

Unrelated but worth noting: There is some chance of interference between bluetooth and 802.11.

But... Bluetooth and the upcoming IEEE 802.11B (note the B) are going to go head to head. It doesn't have the cool name or logo, but it does have the backing of both IEEE and Intel. You may hate Intel, but they have a lot of weight to throw around.

I must admit that I was really excited about the Bluetooth standard, but I would always choose an IEEE standard over an industry consortium. I'm still ticked off that USB has gained wide acceptance.

Unrelated but worth noting: There is some chance of interference between bluetooth and 802.11.

Combine this new exploit with this old one that lets you read any file off someone's harddrive and I think Microsoft might be able to market these as .NET features.

-gerbik

here we do things in style. I've seen people turn up an hour before a deadline, get a copy of the code, rename functions and variables, then submit it. This totally pisses me off - these clueless fuckwits get grades they don't deserve! Think about it, for that particular practical a very nice girl I know had to spend two weeks coding. Fair? I think not.

"In the Internet space, time to market is much more important than it was ten years ago. What we end up doing is, we start to ratchet down," Prabhu said. "'How low can I go and still get away with it?'"

In some cases, vendors don't even need to ratchet down. The protocols being implemented in the wireless world simply don't lend themselves to high security.

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), set to become the default standard for getting Internet data to cell phones, has a known security hole: the point where the data goes from the wires to the air for wireless transmission.

Take for example Netcarta Webmapper(tm) for Unix(tm). This is a product which used to be available for Solaris and several other Unices, which made Solaris a better WWW maintenance platform.

Microsoft bought Netcarta, and now, new releases of Webmapper (now part of Back Office) are no longer avalailble Unix, and no longer have a remote web interface to launch searches (you have to be on the console of the Windows box).

While they still "support" (emphasis on the quotes) Webmapper on Unix, this support consisits of telling you that your bugs are fixed in the new release, which by the way is only avalailable for Microsoft platforms.

So who has been harmed here?

• people who bought Webmapper for Unix
• Unix vendors(who have one less application available for their OS.)

So they are actively removing application choices and upgrade support for users of other operating systems, and that harms those users and those operating systems vendors.

See:
http://www.exn.ca/Stories/1999/11/03/01.cfm
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/38/ns-18053.html
http://www.youve-got-male.com/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/09/23/0836256.shtm l

Is this funny, or is it informative?

- subsolar

They allow some really big ads (up to 140x800) but the maximum file size is 20k.

We have to learn to live with adverts -- you have them on TV (unless you watch the BBC in the UK), the net will have to use more advertising to survive, but it's important to be sensible. Check out what ZDNET think... they seem quite sensible.

A fun form of security is good and all, but they actually have higher aims than that. They want to keep Big Brother busy by forcing him to read spam that might contain whatever naughtiness they're supposed to be watching for.

Their site continues, linking to: Jam Echelon Day and Jam Echelon Day descends into spam farce

The XPFE also is so good, that it allows people to build applications on top of it! (Just like people build apps on top of UNIX tools). Check out MozDev.org for a good listing of these apps. They all can be run on any platform Moz runs on.

Mozilla is the next UNIX. If you don't believe me, see this article.

Anybody know if this thing is what Ginger will be all about?

Will Juno users realize what they are agreeing to?

My experience with Juno users is that they have been of two types. The first type is people who were dislocated from their previous ISP, typically AOL or Compuserve by their parents, and installed Juno to be able to get back online without their parents knowledge. The second type is of people who have no clue what this "Internet" thing is they keep hearing about, and they sure as gosh darn heck don't wanna have to pay, so they use a free server, and really don't even use it.

Of course, I'm omitting the third type, which are skr1pt k1dd13s who want to think they are secure from tracking by using these free servers, but I don't really count them as people, but more as illiterate brutes ;-)

In the first case, the kids don't care how they get online as long as they can get back to their chat/message boards/surfing/porn, and in the second case, they are too baffled by legalese to ever realize whats going on. As for the skr1pt k1dd13s, heck, let Microsoft get them for hacking their servers and stealing their source code, its no skin off my back to see those brats busted.

I think the bigger question instead of "Do Juno users realize what they are agreeing to" is "Is this ethical? And more importantly, is this right?"

Have we suspended Moore's law? The ASCI Red (currently 2nd on the Top 500 list) has 9632 processors, and it broke the Teraflop boundary with plain ol' Pentium Pro processors--1996 technology. (It's since been upgraded) Now, say this vaporware computer shows up 9 years later, that will give processor performance roughly 2^6 of an improvement. With 10-20K processors, that's roughly 64-128 Teraflops, not a Petaflop.

Now, 100-ish Teraflops is a lot more realistic than a petaflop, especially since this article quotes a figure of 100, not 1000 Teraflops.

Macromedia plans on supporting OSX to a webdeveloper this is the ultimate platform develope and test code all at the same time IE is being ported as well as MS Office. It's linux except with _usefull_ apps.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2001/2/ns-20270.html

Did I just read that the cipher is a simple XOR?

I. Shift the ciphertext by that length and XOR it with itself. This removes the key and leaves you with plaintext XORed with the plaintext shifted the length of the key.

This is a very simple known-plaintext attack which works well on systems which encrypt by XORing the plaintext with repeated copies of a short key. Assuming that the spec called for a short (say 64-bit) key to be assigned to the drive at the factory and used in this manner, then the decoding process would be fairly simple:

1. Store a large block of zeroes somewhere on the drive

2. Use some sort of device to read the raw ciphertext data from the hard drive (remember this is hardware encryption we're talking about here)

3. Read the key directly from the ciphertext.

However, the chances of such a small XOR key being used are slim (not zero, it's been done before)

What is much more likely is that a pseudorandom number generator is seeded with a short key to produce a much longer keystream (say 2^64 bits) with which to XOR the plaintext bits. This makes such a shifting attack all but useless (still technically possible though, if a 32-bit key was used, because of the sheer amount of encrypted data) - See Schneier 1996, ch.16 on stream ciphers for more.

Of course, all of this relies on your ability to read the ciphertext directly from the drive. Presumably, the spec would call for the drive to return only the decrypted data in response to software calls, or nothing at all if the key was incorrect.

As well, Andre's response indicates that this proposal was shelved in favour of a software solution which has the encryption performed off of the drive itself, which makes this whole discussion (-1, off-topic) :)

- cicadia

Sure, 2.4 still isn't here yet. But Linux developers have their wish lists for the 2.5 kernel

...if you're a dog (or a parrot)...

...but the world of computing isn't only the Internet, ya know. Somebody has to sit behind a keyboard writing software and designing sites and engineering all these toys we love. And in U.S. companies (I don't know about elsewhere) you'll find few women (in hands-on programming), and even fewer blacks, Native Americans, or Hispanics. Yes, they exist -- but not in any proportion corresponding to their relative existence in the general population.

Is it racism? Not directly; I see lots of Asians in our business, and plenty of Indians (especially in the low-paying "mass production" software houses.) Do the rest of you get these "hire cheap programmers from New Delhi -- and they even speak English!" spams?

Engineering is a "white collar" profession, and as such, it sets a high entrance bar that must be leapt by "minorities". This bar is set by cultural standards, educational opportunities, and other factors beyond the scope of any racism inherent to engineering.

We can definitively end all debate on this subject by using the Tool of Objective Truth, a.k.a. the Sucks-Rules-O-Meter.

Waterworld: sucks 236, rules/rocks 1255
Mission to Mars: sucks 93, rules/rocks 2280
Mars Attacks: sucks 204, rules/rocks 922
Battlefield Earth: sucks 81, rules/rocks 1624
The Matrix: sucks 1294, rules/rocks 6641
Red Planet: sucks 117, rules/rocks 2847

(Note: the terms "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet" combined with "rocks" may be yielding hits based on actual Martian lithology, not the movies.)

So there you have it, all of these movies rule more than they suck. I don't much agree with these results, but what can I say? This is hard science we're dealing with here; the TOOT does not lie!

This decision only confirms the wavering they've been having since at least June. They always wanted to see the goods before they committed themselves to shipping a product, and I guessed they aren't impressed. And unlike IBM, Compaq has never even demoed a transmeta prototype, so the decision is even easier for them to make without losing complete face.

• Large screen size
• Color screens
• Oval screens
• Touch screen
• Motion video
• Cameras the size of a phone button

Links to other concept phone galleries:

ZDNet - Road to 3G
FutureZone - Telecom 99 Photo Gallery
CeBIT 1999
Wireless Review - Future Phone
WSJ - Staying in Touch
BW - The Latest Web-Phone Wonders Are...Still Out of Reach "Clearly, somewhere between the trade fairs and the marketplace, Ericsson runs into troubles"

If you look hard enough, you can find references to all sorts of fantastic phones that won't exist for quite a while.
--

Following the news of this lawsuit between Cobalt and Apple over the use of cube-shaped casings, I intend to patent the cuboid, sphere, pyramid, cylinder and other three-dimensional geometric primitives. This would enable me to sue makers of pipes, drinks cans, Toblerone etc.., but also the biggies: I could take on anyone who builds skyscrapers, Egypt for massive infringement in their historical artifacts and, of course, humanity for wilfully inhabiting a planet whose shape violates my patent on spheres.

Have there been any cases of Amazon coming along and telling other sites to stop using one-click?

//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."

Last week, senior Sun executives said that although the firm's strategy with Cobalt has not been decided, they were leaning toward replacing Linux with a version of Solaris that is optimised for appliances.

Although it is tempting to believe that Sun wants to go around and purchase every Linux company and force them to use Solaris, this simply isn't what is happening here.

Within the next four months, a student or "other individual found downloading illegal MP3 tracks" will go to jail "as a clear signal that piracy will not be tolerated in the US."

So my question is, do American jails have enough room for 20 million pirates?

Matt
Fairtunes

The by-line for the story is ZD UK, so a visit to their web site tells me that CeBit say they did *not* ban Creative.

ZDNET UK: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/ 35/ns-17700.html

Official Site: http://ects.oit.net/2001/

ZDnet UK news: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/spec ials/1999/08/ects/

Schneier's 8/15 Cryptogram newsletter touched on these issues weeks ago.

Namely, if capability like the US government's Tempest technology (reads electro magnetic pulses, CRT, keyboard radiation, etc. - spy craft stuff) is available, it's a matter of time before such tactics are _readily_ used on commonplace bluetooth devices doing private or delicate matters in public. After all, reading your OpenSSH-downloaded, and GnuPG encrypted email privately to yourself in the back booth might seem secure, but, what if a black hat type is capturing your radiating emissions quite easily? Illusory protection. Treat Bluetooth as a broadcast protocol, because that's what it is, says Schneier.

What amazes me is the dearth of information about the security of this protocol. I'm sure someone has thought about it, a team designed some security into Bluetooth, and that those designers believe it to be secure. But has anyone reputable examined the protocol? Is the implementation known to be correct? Are there any programming errors? If Bluetooth is secure, it will be the first time ever that a major protocol has been released without any security flaws. I'm not optimistic, continues Schneier.

Check out some of these articles on Bluetooth, and it's lack of discussion on it's possibly inherent security shortcomings.

Bluetooth

A list of Bluetooth articles, none of them about security

One mention of security

An essay about the Bluetooth hype

Recent article on TEMPEST

Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks

Schneier's 8/15 Cryptogram newsletter touched on these issues weeks ago.

Namely, if capability like the US government's Tempest technology (reads electro magnetic pulses, CRT, keyboard radiation, etc. - spy craft stuff) is available, it's a matter of time before such tactics are _readily_ used on commonplace bluetooth devices doing private or delicate matters in public. After all, reading your OpenSSH-downloaded, and GnuPG encrypted email privately to yourself in the back booth might seem secure, but, what if a black hat type is capturing your radiating emissions quite easily? Illusory protection. Treat Bluetooth as a broadcast protocol, because that's what it is, says Schneier.

What amazes me is the dearth of information about the security of this protocol. I'm sure someone has thought about it, a team designed some security into Bluetooth, and that those designers believe it to be secure. But has anyone reputable examined the protocol? Is the implementation known to be correct? Are there any programming errors? If Bluetooth is secure, it will be the first time ever that a major protocol has been released without any security flaws. I'm not optimistic, continues Schneier.

Check out some of these articles on Bluetooth, and it's lack of discussion on it's possibly inherent security shortcomings.

Bluetooth

A list of Bluetooth articles, none of them about security

One mention of security

An essay about the Bluetooth hype

Recent article on TEMPEST

Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks

Wasn't reliability one of Dell's excuses for not making an AMD based system? At this rate they are running out of excuses. I know the quote on that is out there somewhere.

The aforementioned quote from Michael Dell can be found here.

=================================

To the non techy user, it's the speed that sells, and that's something that the PC manufacturers seem to play on as well. Generally, unless your doing some serous work on your computer, a 500Mhz chip should be fine. At work we've been getting 550 PIIs as the cheapest that our supplier can provide, and from now on it going to be 650 PIIIs.

Anyway, I was reading in my daily news from ZDNet:

"Every five to six weeks between now and early next year, AMD will introduce faster Athlons - beginning at 1.1GHz, Monday"

So they will be ahead of Intel again shortly.

The rest of the story is at:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/ 33/ns-17477.html

Except for the fact that Cobalt are suing Apple first for cubeness...

Slashdot article, ZDNet article, Cobalt press release about settlement with Cube Computer Corp.

I think I'll have to patent the remaining Euclidean solids... I want some money if someone tries make an icosahedron-shaped computer.

ZDNet UK has a list of ISPs offering unmetered access in the UK... along with information about costs and current availability.

Two more BT stories, for those unconvinced that BT is a useless greedy and - in its current form - ultimately doomed entity:

A report of further delays to ADSL roll-out: BT delays ADSL again, Freeserve says it's a 'disgrace' . "BT claims it could not get enough people to take part in the trial". That is such a bullshit claim. I know tech journalists and techhies in metropolitan areas who were turned away by BT when they asked to take part in the ADSL trial. That would be the same ADSL I saw being trialled in the US in 1995.

A longer ZDNet editorial on tryanny of BT

Lest we are left in any doubt about what we are dealing in. BT made circa £4billion profits last year, equal to £66 profit per head of the UK population.

Here's what their Chairman, Iain Vallance has to say about it all, as recently as November '99, from a speech to the TMA reported by ZDNet:

In a speech designed to silence the stream of criticism BT has faced from ISPs, users and government in recent weeks over Internet access charges and rollout of ADSL, Vallance claimed BT was playing the role of a "lollipop man trying to restrain the over-exuberant children"

On ADSL services, Vallance claimed the technology was not yet "fit for purpose" and that market demand was not sufficient to justify the cost.

Finally Vallance sought to dampen enthusiasm for the Internet. Highlighting problems of privacy, viruses and legality on the Net, Vallance questioned the technology. "It is, in many ways, in its infancy and not yet fit for purpose,"

You'll forgive me for swearing. Words fail me.

__________________________________________________ ___

Although the implementation may be more advanced (site says they want to use GPS), but this has already been done before, at the University of Reading, England.

See the ZDNet article here or Slashdot article here or the original academic text
here.
These first uses were to do with intelligent buildings though, for just positional and indentification info, rather than any form of biological monitoring.

Don't look much alike to me...

Winton

I've decided that I won't be buying any RIAA CDs for awhile personally (I've already cancelled a couple of orders, and I buy a ton of CDs) but decide for yourself.

Frankly I don't plan to stop buying CDs since I've always been opposed to Napster since all it is is a greedy VC funded company trying to make money of the work of others. Now on the other hand, even though Slashdot is well aware of the DeCSS fiasco, we are constantly bombarded with various articles on buying DVDs.

I'm not one to fault others for their personal decisions but if you plan to make a stand, make the right one. The more I people I see complaining about Napster the more it seems like all they care about is free music and not the issues of digital rights or the power of corporations. That seems to be the only explanation for dissing the RIAA but supporting an industry that uses Gestapo tactics to terrorize tenagers. Where are the grassroots efforts to boycott the MPAA?