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zdnet article posted today

Plans are afoot in Federal parliament to derail a controversial patent claim that could see Australian businesses charged millions of dollars to conduct international transactions over the Internet.

And yes, there are people fighting this.

This is what they needed to do.

See here. ZDnet is also running a story here

You bet SMS has a very high profit margin. However, it seems that Vodafone in Australia are about to change their voice-calling plans because they want to bump up their SMS profits even more!

Here's the story from ZDNet.

Indeed, searching for "ibm brick computer" on Google gives you this ZDNet article, with a picture of the system. I think Slashdot has covered this before, but I couldn't find the story.

The code requires carriers and service providers to only send bulk SMS messages to users who have "opted in", and to allow them to "opt out" of receiving the messages.

From ZDnet Australia:

However the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), which had participated in developing the code, has challenged the ACA's assertion.

Carriers won't be required to ensure consumers have "opted-in" to receive short-message-service (SMS) marketing under a new communications industry code released last week according to the ADMA.

Most of the spam comes from countries where that law cannot/wouldnot reach.

I've said this before (when the original article was posted), but I still suspect the JBoss split is related to their Sun certification troubles.

There's an interesting ZDnet article here that talks about JBoss not being 100% kosher J2EE, and the main group's ongoing dispute with Sun. I think that the breakaway group intendeds to fork JBoss to make a more easily certified version, and this Slashback seems to support that somewhat.

They're also trying to convince people that P2P is illegal:

"And, when you rip the CD, you do not open up your computer to all of the spyware and other viruses that are part and parcel of most illegal P2P services."

When will the RIAA learn that P2P is *NOT* illegal?? It can be used illegally, but the technology itself is legit. They should read this article.

Quark still makes up the vast majority of DP's choice of page layout app. The figures, although kept very quiet by Adobe AND Quark show anywhere between 70-90% Quark dominance.

Quark made a huge mistake, but they had the market share to withstand it.

I work in this industry, with many printers and designers and can tell you that VERY few have switched, at least from my seat...

I wonder if the timing of this 'walkout' has anything to do with the Sun / JBoss compliance spat? They have been having an ongoing battle (not in court as yet) about whether JBoss can use the J2EE brand without being certified as compliant by Sun.

Maybe the Core Developer folks are hoping to steal some business from their old employers using an easily certified fork. Perhaps they even hope to get some mileage from CIOs worried by the SCO thing.

After accusations of "cheating" ran rife near the end of Seti@homes run, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't find a thing.

for example

or another one a little closer to home

MPAA should be US-only problem.

When the easy group last did something the content industry disliked, they got slapped down - not by RIAA, but by The BPI (The British Phonographic Industry). Presumably at RIAA's behest.

I'm sure there's an MPAA equivilant in the UK, and I'm sure Chemical Valenti will just give them a call.

[because they're US only] MPAA should not have ANY say in the matter

I agree. But I suspect they think they've already got the right to go into Europe.

Look at the US content industry's attacks on Australians and lets not forget DVD Jon

Here in .au, there's a story about plans to add submarine cable protection zones. Do other countries already have similar restrictions in place? I would be interested to know. Thanks. (Submarine cable is related to international telecommunications, so I'm not entirely Off-topic!)

I am a windows dev for past 4 years.


Documentation:
Windows: None


There is more documentation for windows than i can shake a stick at. To this day, i haven't met one issue that i didn't resolve via MSDN, KB or Google/Newsgroups.


Support:
Windows: Support costs you hell a lot of money
RedHat: If you can't afford to pay RedHat, it's Linux for God's sake. There're thousands of people on the net willing to help you.


Considering you rarely need any support with Windows, and setting up the simplest things on Linux is a torture. Do we also want to spend the time figuing out something that the program creator should have?


Patches:
Windows: Waiting for patches if Microsoft has the time and mood to fix it. Service packs come out once in a blue moon.
RedHat: It's Linux. Thousands of people have access to the source code. Bug fixes come out rapidly.


This is just pure FUD bullshit. MS is very responsive to bugs, especially nowadays. Fixes are released sometimes hours after bugs are found. Subscribe to the security newsletter and find out for yourself.

Windows also reports less annual bugs than Linux, this is an old article, but the pattern continues to this day. A little search on SecurityFocus will show you.

Hmm.... Windows is better than RedHat?

Depends on your background. Don't be a stupid troll.

Yes, fingerprint scans often can be defeated easily.

The way things are structured today, from a licensing perspective, in the Linux world nobody will ever commercialise Linux the way the Sun commercialised FreeBSD. For some customers, that can be viewed as advantageous. But customers will never really know who stands behind this product. If the lead developer for this component chooses to do something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that? The fact that it will never be commercialised is assured by the GPL. The GPL licensing form does that, as opposed to the open-source license for FreeBSD, where you could say Sun took it and commercialised it and can say that they own it. Nobody can ever do that (with GPL).

If there haven't been prototypes, how is Sony going to start selling them in a few weeks? What am I missing?

Server Platforms (which includes SQL Server which by itself brings in a billion dollars in revenue) is also profitable.

Disclaimer: The above comments do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. They are solely my opinion.

Potentially full backwards compatibility.

-T

This is true in the industrial world but not in developing countries like Senegal, where you can hire laborers for dollars a day. The labor would actually be the cheapest part of the overall cost.

Think about it ... 500 km with a pole every 25 m, that's 10000 poles, each one has to be put up, the cable strung, etc. etc.

I was talking about 100 km, not 500 km, because the cost benefit of wired lines is greater at shorter distances. Also, I'm not sure where you got the value of 25 m. I'd say the poles could be much farther apart than that. Also, wooden poles are dirt-cheap in West Africa, because the forests are in-country (Ghana actually exports timber), so you wouldn't need to pay the costs of importing and international shipping (unlike the Wi-Fi electronics).

Of course, at a distance of 500 km, wires are normally put up using large metal towers at great distances apart. They'd cost more but would be more permanent. Regardless, I don't think either of us has enough data on this subject to do a proper comparison.

Laptops run on solar power.

No, they can be charged with solar power, but they cannot run on solar power. I know this because I actually tried it when I lived in Ghana. I brought a 60 cm by 30 cm portable solar panel with me to Ghana, thinking that I'd be able to power my laptop with it, but it was useless. Even in direct sunlight with no clouds in the sky, it took two days to charge the thing, and as you know, laptops can only run about 3 hours max on a full charge. That meant I could only use my laptop for 3 hours every two days! And of course, during the rainy season (a span of about four months), I couldn't use it at all because there was no sun. An even bigger issue is price. The small solar panel I brought with me cost $500. Are you suggesting we add $500 to the cost of each computer that these villagers buy? No, solar power just isn't feasible in the situation we're talking about. As for routers, even if they draw very little current, they'd still go dead at night if they were on solar power. I suppose you could add batteries (and thus several hundred dollars more to the cost), but I doubt they could store enough juice to last through a four-month rainy season.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that computers and APs don't need electricity, and the only issue is cost. Are you still suggesting that we hook up these rural villages to Wi-Fi before we give them electricity? Try going for a week without electricity sometime, and I think you'll find light bulbs will become much more important to you than Internet access. ;) (Seriously, I went without electrical power for long periods at a time while living in Ghana, and Internet access was not high on my list! A nice cool fan was much more valuable than a computer in those conditions.)

The bottom line is, you can do so much more with electricity than with Wi-Fi. Electricity gives you lights, fans, refrigerators, radios, TVs, and other appliances that have a much deeper impact on the quality of life than being able to surf the net. For instance, in the small rural town where I lived, the hospital used electricity to chill polio vaccines that would otherwise be ruined in the tropical heat. Meanwhile, in the center of town, women used an electric mill to grind cornmeal so they could prepare meals for their families. Are you honestly saying that Wi-Fi access and VoIP are more important than these things?

Although there are Wi-Fi APs that include routers, many don't.

Actually, I meant APs, not APs with routers. (I use the term "router" for both types.)

At each base station, the WiFi devices may be connected to any of the available routing and switching equipment that can be used with a normal TCP/IP network. So, each base station can tap into the data stream, and do whatever they like with it. Wi-Fi doesn't care how many "connections" there are, it's all TCP/IP packets.

You're saying that a Wi-Fi AP can support an arbitrary number of simultaneous connections, but this just isn't true. You cannot increase the number of connections to an AP without bound. Every time a computer connects to an AP and transmits packets, the AP has to allocate resources (RAM and CPU) to forward those packets. And because there is a finite amount of RAM and clock cycles in the AP, there is a finite number of simultaneous connections.

I did some more checking on this, and I have yet to find an off-the-shelf router that can handle more than 256 connections, and most can only handle 64. Try these links:
Envara
CheetahWireless
And this guy says his AP can't handle more than 7 (!) connections.

Not unheard of at all. This article taks about the number of X-Boxes that have needed replacement due to their strange behaviour of scratching the discs inside. And any old forum you got to has heaps of complaints about dodgy hardware, intermittent problems and the like. I think you're just lucky to not have had any problems. Yet.

For about one (or maybe two) days, before the bank or cardholder noticed and cancelled the card.

To start with you're right: the attack described by the Cambridge paper requires access to a PIN verification device; ... but the attack the parent comment described was recently and successfully used in Australia.

An ATM maintenance company is suspected of sniffing magstripes and PINs and according to reports I've heard managed to remain in operation for several months (possibly longer) before being caught, by moving the equipment between ATMs on a very regular basis. The best news reference I could find on this in a short time was here.

The problem is not that service providers pick the route that gets the packet to its destination quickest; it's that they pick the route that gets the packet off their network the fastest. Those two are not the same thing at all. Think about it geographically. Let's say I'm a square network and I receive a packet at the northern end of my western border destined for somewhere to my northeast. I know that the quickest way to get it to its destination is to move it east across my own network and deliver it to my eastern neighbor. However, I also know that if I pass it on to my northern neighbor it will still get there without coming to me again, and my northern neighbor is closer. So, if I'm a selfish bastard, what do I do? I ship it northward, minimizing the time that it spends on my own network but increasing the total time before it reaches its destination. If everyone does this same sort of "hot potato" routing, total load on the network increases for everyone. In fact, my northern neighbor might very well be doing the same for packets lying to our southwest. We'd both be better off if we'd "play nice" but since we're both trying to be selfish we both lose.

Yes, folks, it's an instance of the prisoners' dilemma and these researchers are not the first to notice the fact.

and you don't have to mod the xbox to run it. http://www.zdnet.com.au/gamespot/news/story/0,2000 011229,20271141,00.htm

http://www.zdnet.com.au/builder/program/unix/story /0,2000034968,20271425,00.htm

How about the coverage from ZDNet Australia. http://www.zdnet.com.au/builder/program/unix/story /0,2000034968,20271425,00.htm

Because as of October 2003, the USA will be requiring a passport with biometric information for all foreigners from countries participating in the Visa-waiver program with the USA. (Meaning those countries (mostly European) from which you can 'freely' travel to the USA instead of first needing to go through a long and arduous process to get a visa.)

Why the USA is requiring this? Well, because of the creepy teeeerrorists of course, duh! Blame the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001

Oh, you didn't know about this? Well, no one does. There's been like no mainstream media attention whatsoever about it from anywhere, and all the governments are just quietly implementing this. One of the few sources I could find was this one from last year dealing with Australia going to do it.

A few other people would agree that OpenBSD is the most secure OS. Although I'm a Debian user, kudos to the OpenBSD team on their work.

Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and 2) Terminate any and all accounts that this individual has through you.

Hotmail still has *nix at it's base, so it's still up.....

No
It
Doesn't.

The site www.hotmail.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

DNS lookup is definitely more optimized. For some links.. you can use bind or djbdns to set up your own DNS server. djbdns also has components to install scaled back dns servers like Tinydns or setup a local workstation dns cache.

If anyone cares, in win2k the hosts just get added to the dns cache (try ipconfig /displaydns).

I seem to remember Macs having a 340k limit on the hosts file, but that's probably ancient history by now.

The government is wise to these loopholes, which is why the law allows them to prosecute overseas companies that have assets in the US (or in a country like Australia that has certain reciprocal treaties with them). Do you really think that companies should be able to avoid all forms of taxes and regulations just by incorporating overseas?
From the ZDNET article....
He also pointed out that when Australian authorities attempted to prosecute someone in the US the process was generally considered not worth the effort. "It takes so long, we have to get a court order out of Australia, then go to the US and the US has to act on them," said McKimm. "And we do find they tend to drag their feet."

In other words, it would be nice to have two way traffic *S* This isn't about governments, its about large people (or corporations) badgering and bullying little people (or corporations).

The ISP dont have to comply to the letter at all.

Here's Zdnet's story about the case.

The ISP dont have to comply to the letter at all.

Here's Zdnet's story about the case.

Unfortunately, we've got at least 73 years to wait for the PS9.

By then, I'll be 103. Maybe by then they'll have figured out a way to extend our lives while keeping our faculties.

And maybe by then, I'll be able to afford a nice 1000HP V16 Cadillac.

I'll just wait until the PlayStation 9 comes out.

I found the stylus (pen) interface extremely good - the mouse will follow the stylus even if the stylus is not physically touching the screen up to a height of about 1.5 inches. This makes things a lot easier than having to drag the stylus physically across the screen when moving, say, a folder. A single click is acheived by just touching the stylus to the screen for most applications. The stylus on this machine was apparently "active", requiring one AAAA battery - I did not take it apart to verify this, and have no idea how long the battery would last, but it must be a fair while.

The "lazy susan" type keyboard (note: not full docking) station is extremely space efficient, and the key feel is (for me) not too bad for the form factor. The tablet is "smart" enough to know when it has been plugged in to the keyboard base, and rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode automatically. I was sold - it would be a great setup to take on the road, as it would actually be quite usable in an aircraft, on your lap etc.

Apparently there is a full docking station available (with CD/DVD ROM etc), but we did not have access to it. Under most circumstances, given the inbuilt WLAN interface, the keyboard station would be sufficient.

For those wanting to support Transmeta, this device contains the new 1Ghz Crusoe TM5800 processor. Battery life was claimed "up to five hours", realistically about 3.5-4hr max. Not stunning, but quite good considering the form factor. Speed was not lightning fast, but probably acceptable for most tasks you would envisage for this type of device. ZDNet bagged it in this review, but I did not find it as bad as they make out

I hardly used the digital ink features, so cannot comment on them, but others in my section who tried the journal feature seemed to like it.

When I first saw this device, I pretty much blew it off as a "toy" laptop with a detachable screen, but they really are a bit more than that. After using it for a short while I had to revise my initial hasty opinion, and by the end I did not want to give it back. I would use it in place of a "full" laptop without hesitation.

Naturally for a new product the price is a bit steep for what you get, and since as far as I know no Linux geeks have had a chance to check it out, its Linux readiness is unknown - it is a given that Linux probably cannot support the software augmented hardware features such as the digital ink/journal etc - but even if the device supported a standard linux install with X, and the mouse and wireless card worked, these would be a great portable. workstation.

If I can get my hands on one for a bit longer I will try a Linux install, but will need to be carefult to not blow away the OS if possible - it did not look easy to reinstall the base OS, given the lack of inbuilt CDROM device. Comments from anyone who has tried (even at this early stage) to install Linux are welcome.

You know what I just heard? ZDNet Australia has an interview with notorious Australian IT Minister Senator Richard Alston which could even be read as suggesting that he, like some others in the Australian government, has learned a little about his portfolio during his 7 years at the helm. He responds openly about his censorhip regime, lack of action against spam and his antipathy towards Electronic Frontiers Australia but refuses to get into details on cyberterrorism response and security expenditure.

Go read it!

Linux will be ready for the desktop when Gnome or KDE drop dead (I can't wait) and some consistency settles in. Until then, I'll run BSD on my servers (the documentation is much better as a result of the consistency) and Windows on the desktop.

Then you should look at
Xandros Linux
Which is based on debian/corel linux and is quite good

Or
Lindows

Or
Lycoris

All of these are quite good Windows replacments and they will get better. Have a look at each and their prices/policies. Lindows has click'n'run which you have heard of. Lycoris I have used and is quite good.

Reviews are available from

Xandros Review

Lycoris Review

Xandros Review

Xandros Review

Xandros Review

Lindows Review

Xandros Review

Lycoris Review

Xandros Review

Lycoris Review

Lindows Review

The biggest problem I see is that Microsoft is claiming patents on the CLI:

According to Microsoft, third-party developers who want to develop or deploy an implementation of C# development tools and CLI-compliant virtual machines, which are part of the .Net framework, must enter into a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) license agreement with Microsoft. That's the short answer. [...]

According to Microsoft's director of intellectual property Michele Herman, who I interviewed earlier this year, the answer is a qualified yes. "If someone implemented a product that conforms to the specification, we believe we have a patent or one pending that's essential to implementing the specification.

This has also been reported elsewhere and confirmed by Microsoft. What the patents in question are remains unclear; given that C#/CLI also really is just a copy of earlier technologies (and even Java/JVM hardly contains new ideas), the patents are probably bogus, but that wouldn't keep Microsoft from causing big legal troubles.

Note that the situation with Java/JVM isn't much better. Sun has been filing hundreds of patents on Java/JVM-related technologies, some of which look like they are essential for creating compatible implementations (e.g., the bytecode type checking), and Sun's intellectual property policy towards third party Java-related projects and implementations has often been hostile. Sun has repeatedly tried to kill third party Java implementations (all conforming Java implementations depend on Sun source code). Sun has had to be dragged kicking and screaming even to the point where they don't claim ownership of ideas developed by others (!) as part of the community process. And Sun renegged on their promise to make Java a language standard twice. Sun is not to be trusted either.

I think both Sun and Microsoft are equally duplicitous and manipulative when it comes to Java or C#, respectively. My conclusion is that, until either Sun or Microsoft or both make a firm, binding commitment on intellectual property issues, neither platform is suitable for widespread adoption by open source projects. Furthermore, until Sun and/or Microsoft create open standards without even a hint of patent encumbrances, even commercial software developers should consider both systems the equivalent of VisualBasic: a proprietary language that can be changed by its creators at will and for which there will be no viable independent third party implementations.

C# or Java could have been a great thing if they had turned out to be open, standardized, and widely used. But, frankly, there are plenty of better languages and runtimes than either C# or Java around anyway, so given that those languages remain proprietary, why bother with them?

here's one

here's another

and another

Well a simple pointer to the answer might be this article. Now whether this experiment was successful or can it be reproduced?

The Chinese people I know (both inside and outside of mainland China) don't care too much of what the government tells them. They know that a lot of what's said from government organizations etc are truths with modifications. You have to read between the lines to get the truth. My best guess is that a lot of Chinese people don't bother about the virus warnings because they don't trust their government. On the other hand, the Chinese government has brought up the Chinese into not believing what the US government says either... Just remember FBI's international Code Red warning.

Maybe the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center's report is part of a wider campaign into getting people ready for the upcoming Chinese Windows clone. (a guess would be that it has a lot of government sponsored spyware...) Making people aware of Microsoft's crappy software and then giving them a "fresh" alternative.

It's funny, but it seems many of the "grey areas" exist precisely because so called "white hats" haven't done their job very well. Here's one example.

It shouldn't be considered ok to invade someone else's computer as long as there's "no harm done."

Most of the computer profession had been starting to agree with that statement. Unfortuneatly gaining closure requires some compromise from both sides. You see it also isn't RIGHT to create a shoddy piece of software and bill it as "secure and easy to use". Just as it isn't RIGHT to manage a "critical" server so poorly an average 12 year old can break in. Further it's outright WRONG to misuse consumer information or to create and sell spyware to unsuspecting folks.

Perhaps "grey hats" are merely "white hats" willing to get a bit dirty in order to ensure that others don't stray into even worse colors. I personally applaude the work of bugtraq, @stake and others like them.

Hmm... this sounds like an obvious troll, but since you've been modded insightful, I'll byte.

The term "hacker" has a lot of confusion tied to it. Where I come from it's a term of respect for someone's raw technical abilities. A hacker is someone who is so good at taking things apart and understanding them that they can make gadgets and software do things the original designers never dreamed of. If you think everyone fitting that description without "proper approval" belongs in jail you've got another think coming.

Maybe when you say hacker you mean someone who breaks into systems belonging to someone else without permission. Yes, that is a minor criminal act, much like trespassing. And there is no excuse for responsible adults doing such things without very good reason, but kids will be kids (Sometimes a system is so insecure this can happen by accident. )

The term hacker in general usage today usually covers both the system hacker who gains access to systems not belonging to them as well as the software hacker who takes apart software they have rightfully purchased on their own system. Classically system hacking has been seen as wrong or illegal, but software hacking has always been accepted, and only disclosure has ever been at issue. The DMCA attempts to deal with both in one fell swoop and does so very badly. I take your comment to mean we should just enforce the law to it's fullest even while it is changing in subtle and terrible ways.

White hats hide information. It seems they *never* disclose exploit code. Black hats hide information. They only use vulnerabilities for themselves. It would seem to be only Grey hats who hold the advancement of security important by sharing their code and knowledge fully. In fact, I'd say it is highly unethical for a White hat to get a vulnerability fixed without ever disclosing it. Perhaps we need criminal penalties for that as well? It also seems a tragedy that white hats will never be inclined to disclose their exploit code even after a fix has been made. They just don't seem to realize that information sharing really is a power positive good. (wasn't that the hacker eithic?)

Actually there are a whole host of other things White hats can and do that are wrong. Like implanting spyware in a product or being negligent in protecting customer information. I don't see criminal penalties for those...

Check out this link here. It appears AMD is now in a position to redefine performance metrics.
...Formalising the goal of AMD's True Performance Initiative announced last October, Robinson said the CAI aims to establish a new industry metric for processor performance. He said the metric would be established through a consortium of industry representatives...
It's not just Mhz now...

Some handhelds can have 3D graphics... Tomb Raider is being/has been ported to certain handhelds. And isn't Romero and is long, sexy, flowing hair the cofounder of some company that makes games for mobile devices? Monkey-something?

I hate spam as much as most people do (wastes bandwidth, disk space, user's time, etc.), but I'm not convinced that legislation is the way to stop the deluge.

How does one define spam - in legal terms? This is something that would seem to be prone to misinterpretation: what types of advertisements count as spam? What about someone stating where they work (or that they're unemployed) in their sig? Could that be defined as spam?

Then there's the whole revenge thing - using the above, if you're receiving email from, say, someone you don't like, you may be able to declare HIM a spammer (even though his messages may not fit the original definition of spam).

I haven't read the text of the bill, nor am I a lawyer, so I can't say what is or isn't possible due to how it's written. However, this seems to be something to seriously consider - when laws try to regulate how the 'net works, they usually tend to make matters worse. Just look at spammers suing spam blacklists and those who put them on the blacklists for an example of things gone horribly wrong.

What do we do? We can't legislate, and we can't regulate on our own (without getting sued by some dumbass who would rather steal money from end-users and ISPs than stopping their own spam activities).