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Also targeted are content providers, defined as any company that "creates, collects, acquires or organizes electronic data" for profit. Any content provider that the Utah attorney general claims hosts material that's harmful to minors must rate it or face third-degree felony charges.

Because they caught a strong wiff of your arrogance.

Sure I'm proud of my accomplishments and my ability. I should be. But I truly don't think I'm condescending about it. I'm willing to change my opinions the instant someone shows me where they're wrong. I care far more about being right than asserting I'm right.

You can call me arrogant, but I think they reject me because they know I'm fully capable of replacing them, and they're too insecure about their job.

I'm curious too. After all, Linux can certainly run on an IBM VM/ESA 390 and zSeries. However, perhaps the thought is that Linux is not as scalable as versions of UNIX, not that it isn't scalable at all. On the other hand, others disagree and think it's an ideal approach.

What about IBM? Or are we just going to ignore the companies we like?

news.zdnet.com

You may notice the article has no details.

I did a Google News Search and found this one which is much better.

Also, the guys own website.

Hope this helps.

Martin Fink, general manager for H-P's Linux Systems Divison, has written a book titled "The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source." ($29.99 U.S., Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-047677-3) The prose doesn't exactly sparkle, but it covers all the bases quite well. Fink, interestingly, touched off quite a discussion by using LinuxWorld as a platform to urge FOSS developers to patent their work.

AOL: You've got VoIP

Sony now has a new CEO. The new CEO is a media and content proponent rather than a hardware man like his predecessor of ten years.

This will most likely mean a shift for Sony from being a hardware company to a content company. It will also mean hightend interest in DRM and copy protection on Sony's part.

Personally, I think it's a big mistake for Sony to forget "their old slogan".

Sony -- Because caucasians are too damn big!

No one ever said the world was full of geniuses.

North Carolina telecommunications company accused of deliberately blocking Internet phone traffic has reached a deal with federal regulators to halt the controversial practice.

Here's a link to ZDnet's updated coverage of the Vonage port-blocking fiasco.

The ISP is identified, and apparently the FCC did get involved with fines.

Right, and that's why two republican lawmakers want to apply broadcast TV standards to cable TV. Here are some links to the articles.

• Lawmakers Press for Decency Limits on Pay TV, Radio
• Cable, satellite next in line for indecency fines?

In short, the Republican agenda is all about enforcing their morals. If it takes bigger government and more regulation, so be it.

By the way, adult fare on cable is pretty lame. However I guess people who are offended by bare body parts would get upset with it.

Note: To all you fervent religious people, I respect your beliefs. However if you want to go live in a theocracy, then move to Iran, reinstate the Taliban, move to Israel, or start a Christian theocracy.

Let those of us who believe morality requires free will alone.

i was all like, yeah whatever, new small computer - horray. Then, i looked at this shot and now i kinda really want one :)

...so long as it can pull its weight doing the media junk in the house.

ChoicePoint data theft widens to 145,000 people

How about digital video? I'm converting my vast videotape/LaserDisc collection to VideoCD and DVD. I could tie up a 2048-processor Linux-based supercomputer with my video processing.

It's so easy, they'll just use this technology. Imagine having to pass that data through all those Cisco routers out to turn you in to the MPAA.

back me up with a serious link documenting that Cisco is pushing Trusted computing as part of NAC.

It was burried in the middle of my original post:

this source has just enough details in one place to pin it down. The title is "Cisco, others plan to ban insecure PCs". The last few paragraphs state that it requires "new hardware" and states that it will "spur sales of PCs and devices that use trusted-computing hardware".

If it requires hardware and it will spur the sales of Trusted Computing hardware then obviously the hardware it requires *is* Trusted hardware. I think NAC "spurring the sale of Trusted hardware" is pretty conclusive. I've read everything I could find on NAC and there's a variety of evidence and implications in different places, but that link is about the best single "smoking gun".

Some of the NAC documentation can clearly only do what it claims by using Trusted functionality, but it requires a pretty technicial understanding. If you're geeky enough and you understand Trusted Computing well enough then just reading the NAC explanation in the ZDNET article should give you a pretty good idea of how it works and why it's Trusted Computing based. There's no way the system could avoid being fooled by a virus or trojan unless it has Trusted hardware support to certify the report. The fact that the software is named "Cisco Trust Agent" is also pretty strong evidence, but admittedly not conclusive on it's own.

Furthermore the Cisco employee who replied never denied any Trusted Computing connection, though I admit he didn't confirm it. Hopefully he will answer my direct question and directly answer.

-

You're more right than you realize.

Microsoft and Cisco are both becoming "security companies" in the sense that "security" == "enforcing Trusted Computing". First I'll skim over the Windows issue, then I'll cover this new and insane threat from Cisco.

I assume we've all heard of Palladium. Well the next Windows release, Longhorn, *is* Palladium. Microsoft's own website documents that:
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) is new security technology for the Microsoft® Windows® platform. It will be included as part of an upcoming version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, code-named "Longhorn."...

"SSC" refers to the Security Support Component, a new PC hardware component...

The term "SSC" is generally interchangeable with "TPM" or trusted platform module. The TPM is a secure computing hardware module specified by the Trusted Computing Group

While Longhorn will likely technically run on a non-trusted computer, Microsoft has elswhere documented that it will go into a brain-damged cripple mode and lock you out of the full desktop graphics interface mode. Microsoft has documented that only Trusted Compliant hardwill will be "CertifiedWindowsCompatible". And we all know no PC manufacturer can afford to sell new PC's that are not CertifiedWindowsCompatible and which only run with a crippled and downgraded interface. Whebn Longhorn rolls out the simple fact is that ALL new PCs will ship with Trusted Computing compliant hardware. No major PC manufacturer can afford to do otherwise. At least one manufacturer - Samsung - has already declared that they are nor manufacturing nothing but Trusted compliant machines.

And now for Cisco. Cisco Cisco Cisco.

Some time ago Slashdot ran this story: Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router. Sounds wonderful, right? What the Slashdot story missed was that it does not actually have anything to do with routers blocking viruses. What it actually is is Cisco's new Network Admission Control (NAC). Anyone attempting to research exactly what Network Admission Control is and exactly how it works will find very little information available. Most Trusted Compuing projects tend to bury the fact that they are Trusted Computing based because they know it will draw anger and bad press, but Network Admission Control it a real whopper. I can back it up better with bits and peices from various sources, but this source has just enough details in one place to pin it down. The title is "Cisco, others plan to ban insecure PCs". The last few paragraphs state that it requires "new hardware" and states that it will "spur sales of PCs and devices that use trusted-computing hardware". If you read tha article it should be quite clear how it functions. Any computer which attempts to connect to the router and request a net connection must be running a Cisco Trust Agent. That Trust Agent only works on a Trusted Computing compliant computer. If you don't have a Trusted Computer then you are denied access to the net. The Trust agent then scans the operating system and software running on your computer and reports it to the router. If you are not running an approved operating system and running selected MANDATORY software then you are denied access to the net. The advertized purpose is to ensure that you have all of the latest operating system patches and that you are running an approved (mandatory) firewall and/or virus scanner. Of course it can be arbitrarily configured to make absolutely any kind of software mandatory, but the firewall and virus scanner are the ones they hype. And that where the silly Slashdot title about "Blocking viruses at the router" came from. It doesn't block viruses at the router, the router BANS computers that are not Trusted Compliant and it CAN be configured to enfor

Fact 1: National ID cards were used in Saddam Hussein's Iraq to track, then torture and kill people who said "bad things" about Hussein.

Fact 2: National ID cards were used to oppress citizens of the Soviet Union (do a find on "7. INTERNAL PASSPORTS").

Fact 3: Eastern Europeans experienced oppression and idiocy via national ID cards too.

Rumor 1 ("rumor", because it comes from prisonplanet.com rather than a more-reliable source): The Dept. of Homeland Security has hired the former head of socialist East Germany's infamous "Stasi" domestic spy agency - the same man who architected their national ID program.

Fact 4: Today, the U.S. House has approved by a 261-161 vote to institute an electronic national ID card system for all Americans.

Chances are good that President Bush will sign this into law, claiming that it will help fight terrorism and other boogeymen, nevermind the fact that the 9/11 hijackers used IDs as legit as anybody else's.

Question: From whom are you "free" of observation and interference when you are required to possess means of constant monitoring? Where is your right to be left alone, as suggested by Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis in his famous dissent in 1928?

Even former President Ronald Reagan recognized the danger of national ID cards, albeit, from the perspective of Biblical prophecy. What about today's Republicans? Oh, that's right, Reagan Republicanism is dead, except in convenient revivals of peoples' dreams of a (relatively) freer, happier, more-hopeful America for which Reagan is so well remembered. No, the new cheer among Republicans is "long live big government totalitarian bureaucracy!" as imposed by President Bush.

Most Republicans in government are fuckwads. If they want my vote, or the vote of anybody who is even *remotely* interested in protecting the civil liberties and Constitutional protections for which the U.S. has been so famous and well-regarded, then they'd do well to listen to one of their own.

Until then, fuck that coke-snorting, basement-level-IQ RINO running the country, fuck those groupthink RINOs in Congress. Real Republicans vote against totalitarianism and in favor of federalism -- precisely the opposite traits of any national ID program we could ever institute.

Fucking commie pinko red-staters, every one of them.

Everyone loves to second guess Steve Jobs, but based on how Apple has turned around since his return, I'd say he knows what the hell he's doing.

Here's another example: Ever since he killed the Newton, a small, vocal group of people have been screaming for an Apple PDA. Jobs refuses to make one. Said small, vocal group of people say he's crazy for ignoring such a huge market, and then look what happens: PDA sales have been falling for the last three years.

~Philly

The government has a huge database of checksums for all known child pornography images. When they bust a pedo ring, more are added. Now, suppose a carnivore style machine is installed between you and your ISP. Right at the entrance of your internet access. Any and all packets, incoming and outgoing, can be automatically filtered, reassembled and checksummed for a match. If your traffic matches the checksum, adios. It's off to federal pound me in the ass prison where Bubba will think you've got a cute mouth. You now risk serious consequences for reading any information where the sender may be anonymous. That includes email, usenet, slashdot, and well, just about everything else online that isn't encrypted. You are now free to choose. Unplug yourself from the internet, encrypt everything, or go to prison. Thanks SCOTUS! The DOJ couldn't have done it without you! America: Where Microsoft is free to distribute child pornography without penalty, while citizens are free to go to prison for accidently viewing it.

This article appears interesting to me. However, rather speculative...

The forums on ZDNet are filled with pro-Microsoft trollers. People like "No Ax To Grind", "Mike Cox", and "Loverock Davidson" have become infamous with their bizarre pro-Microsoft, anti-Linux messages. They're so out of touch with reality, they come across like some of the pro-terrorist commenters on Saudi Arabia's official news site about 9/11.

With vulnerability scanning there are a few different aspects to consider. the most important feature of a scanner (aside from speed and accuracy) is the level of updates. An out of date scanner is only mildly better then no scanner at all. In this regard commercial software has some advantage for the consumers (IT organizations). It's not that they can blame anyone (as was mentioned in several posts) but there is someone to yell "hey! where the hell is my signature for Vuln XYZ?" With open source there isn't a guarentee that the signature will be made quickly enough. Even nessus (as I pointed out in another post here somewhere) has moved to a pay model for plugins because of the cost of keeping those signatures up to date.
Now one can also take the Open Source approach here and write their OWN signatures but many companies just don't have the staff for that type of thing. The vulnerabilty details are so sparse these days (not so open disclosure rules) that recreating the actual exploit never mind finding a way to detect it remotely is beyond the skill of most teams in the limited timeframe that it's of vital importance. A team will have around 24-48 hours after a patch is released until some evil doer[s] have reverse engineered the patch and created an exploit out of it, slipped in a pre packaged payload and owned 3 out of your 7 class B segments. Sometimes less. I think the ISS worm last year was the record, something like > 20 hours from patch to worm [witty worm i think].
Some intersting article on scanning here and here

Just one other side note about the articles, Foundstone was purchased by McAfee last year so disregard those.

While the writer is making a fair point, one counter-argument is that a Linux corporate desktop installation would quite likely use thin clients like they did in Largo in order to make the system easier to manage for system administrators.

I don't get the complaints about the news/market share ratio. The most interesting stuff is not what everyone's doing, but rather what's happening on the fringes. I mean, if that's the news you're looking for, try here.

This idea of setting an arbitrarily low price, $100 in this case

I don't think so, the $100 price point was a Steve Ballmer idea. I think that he intended it being $100 and running Windows.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5419179.html

I can just see Bill, "Brilliant Steve, just brilliant"...

Last I checked it already was.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5227102.html/
http://linuxgazette.net/107/pramode.html/
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3240?PHPSESSID=262a094f ee677def32a8cc4d1b858f99/
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/origin alContent/0,289142,sid39_gci969248,00.html/

Just to name a few

No I don't think you are.

Here's who created the scanner, and what they have to say about it...

Thank you for choosing to Download DtecNet Parent File Scan. Parent File Scan is brought to you by DtecNet Software ApS. This free program allows you to search your computer for installed P2P applications as well as movie and music files. You will then be given the option to remove the identified applications and delete infringing movie and music files in a few easy steps. The program does not distinguish between legal and illegal copies, as it is up to the user to determine, whether the files found by the program have been acquired legally, or whether the material should be deleted. Information generated by the program will be made available only to the program's user and will not be shared with or reported to DtecNet Software or any other body.

The FAQ is even more insightful, here's a few choice items:
Q: Does the program distinguish between legal and illegal copies of multimedia files?
A: No. The program does not distinguish between legal and illegal copies. It is up to the user to determine whether the files found by the program have been acquired legally, or if the material should be deleted.

Q: How do I recover deleted files?
A: You can't. Once files are deleted, they cannot be recreated.

Oh, and it removes some "P2P software" if you want as well (Because obviously BitTorrent is for thieves)

From ZDNet:
Parent File Scan also uses a very liberal definition of file-swapping software. In a test on a CNET News.com computer, the software identified Mirc--a client for the Internet Relay Chat network, where files can be swapped, but where tens of thousands of wholly legal conversations happen every day--and Mercora, a streaming Web radio service that uses peer-to-peer technology but does not allow file swapping.

Argh...

This is from a person called "Southpaw018" on BBR:

Re: Nice tool for parents to keep eye on kids

This isn't about teaching kids right from wrong, it's about the MPAA using FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to get their way. This amounts to a fear-based campaign. I ran it on my system, and it highlighted something like 10,000 files. Most of them were audio files that were legitimate parts of programs installed on my computer - including Windows itself.

Some copyright detector this is.

Ok, we all know the type of user I'm talking about... those windows folks who have 18 quirky sounds, some obnoxiously colored background/desktop, who change 'themes' every two days (often after I remove them so I can save my sanity while I fix their latest screw-ups), and who think the Internet is what a computer "is."

What's going to happen when these folks run the 'MPAA scanner' and it recommends that they delete these 'bad files' - whammo ! away go the freaky grunts and squirts and squeaks they love so dearly, and they race to phone to call me to 'fix their Internet' again... Oh my.

This another attempt of hijacking PC memory business is going to fail. GDDR4 is supposed to come out this year, after all. Rambust may have gain a few round in Playstation 2/3, and busted a few DRAM manufacturers along the way, but the fact that RDRAM has never caught on shows XDR is NEVER going to be a mainstream.

This article from a few days ago dubs spyware "IT's public enemy #1" and I have to agree. I admin a small network of about 100 Windows PCs and it's such a headache. Sure, I know how to clean a machine completely... but it involves an arsenal of different programs plus a lot of by-hand work and reboots and safe-mode and such.

The problem is, there is no one effective tool. The antivirus industry has matured. Granted, Symantec might not catch EVERYTHING but what it DOES catch covers everything I've ever come across, and 99.999% of what most other people will too.

SpyBot... AdAware... SpySweeper... Giant/MS Antispyware... each catches stuff the others don't. Doesn't matter what order you run them. And I can run ALL of them, and sometimes go into HijackThis and find more spyware still lingering. Sometimes it's remnants of some spyware the tool identified but wasn't effective in completely removing. Sometimes it's an entirely NEW piece of spyware.

So what's a corporation to do? Sure, some of them offer corporate versions... but since none of the catch a reasonable amount, there's no single one worth investing that amount of money in. So what do you do... manually spend an hour ever week on each machine? x100? x1000? x10000? It's crazy.

I tend to grant Yahoo! the benefit of the doubt on this one. If the man had wanted the contents of his email box to be disclosed to his family, he would (or should) have made arrangements to do so.

From what I've heard Comcast is going to charge a whopping $39.95 per month for its service. That doesn't sound like too much of a deal to me compared to Vonage's $24.99 a month deal.

The most disturbing report was that Steve Jobs, after his Mac OS X Server demonstration went awry, was obviously angry, cut his speech short, and left the stage so abruptly, that when the demo began working, he was long gone. This is not what happened.

I did not have as good of a view as Mr. O'Grady did, so it possible that he did pick up a look of frustration on Mr. Jobs' face. He would have seen that on my face as well, if my grand finale failed to work. But, that notwithstanding, Mr. Jobs was a complete professional. He remained completely in control, explained that he did not know why the demo was not working now, but that it does "work really well". He then wrapped up his speech, and politely thanked and bowed to the crowd, then walked off stage. Why did he walk off the stage? Because the demo was his grand finale. He was done.

How do I know all of this? Because I watched the entire keynote once it was finally posted at ZDNET. I invite you to watch the keynote, and decide for yourselves if the keynote was a disaster or not.

Click here to view a streaming video. It shows Conan O'Brien easing the tension with his classic humor as Bill Gates encountered problems with his remote control while demoing the Windows Media Center.

I never said SCO profited. I said McBride profited, as did other SCO execs. They profited by telling a story about stolen code written by other people in other companies long ago, which legally fell to SCO through a convoluted chain of IP transfers. And although the stolen code will never materialize, the chances of SCO execs losing those windfalls are next to nil.

1. Value. The number one reason to move to Windows 2000 Professional is the overall value it offers your business. As this list proves, Windows 2000 Professional can help you reduce costs through improved management and increase productivity through improved reliability and ease of use. For example, analysis conducted at Credit Suisse First Boston predicted that using Windows® 2000 Professional could reduce the firm's directly related IT costs by 15 percent, as well as improve employee productivity by cutting computer-related unproductive time by as much as 41 percent. For more about return on investment, see these reports from Giga Information Group, Inc. and Arthur Andersen.
2. Reliability. An essential requirement for business users is a personal computer they can count on. That's why Windows 2000 Professional includes fundamental improvements--such as modifications to the operating system core to prevent crashes and the ability for the operating system to repair itself--that make it the most reliable desktop operating system Microsoft has ever produced. On comparative reliability tests conducted by ZD Labs, the average system uptime of Windows 2000 Professional was over 50 times that of Windows 98 and 17 times that of Windows NT Workstation 4.0.
3. Mobility. Mobile computing is simpler and more efficient with Windows 2000 Professional. This means you can work anywhere, anytime while also saving time and increasing productivity. As described in these news articles, Finally, a Notebook OS and Mobile Users In Love with Win2K, Windows 2000 Professional offers mobile users key productivity and time-saving features, including the ability to hibernate and restart the system without a reboot and the ability to easily take files and folders offline.
4. Manageability. Windows 2000 Professional is easier to deploy, manage, and support. Centralized management utilities, troubleshooting tools, and support for self-healing applications all make it simpler for administrators and users to deploy and manage desktop and laptop computers. These improvements pay off in reduced costs, as illustrated by this Eastman Chemical total cost of ownership analysis.
5. Performance. The advancements made throughout Windows 2000 Professional are accentuated by the operating system's speed. As shown in ZD Labs tests running the most popular business applications, with 64 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 was 32 percent faster than Windows 95 and 27 percent faster than Windows 98. It is also significantly faster than Windows NT 4.0 on configurations with 32 MB of RAM.
6. Security. Windows 2000 Professional provides comprehensive security features to protect your sensitive business data, both locally on your desktop computer and as it is transmitted over your local area network, phone lines, or the Internet. With its support for Internet-standard security features such as IP Security, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol, and Virtual Private Networking, Windows 2000 is so secure that banks, such as Credit Suisse First Boston, use it. For some organizations, such as the law firm Dorsey & Whi

It won't be free if CTO Craig Mundie has anything to say about it. From 2002...
Asked why it has taken Microsoft 25 years to get trustworthy computing into the forefront of its efforts, he said: "Because customers wouldn't pay for it until recently."

slate is already sold to washington post. . and here

So...?

Minidrive maker Cornice slapped with another suit

If you want to claim the Chinese doesn't respect the US IP system as much as the US do, just pointing out a Chinese firm being sued doesn't seem very convincing to me...

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. Software piracy is probably more (Or much more...) serious in China (And many developing countries.), and China doesn't seem to have a good track record in holding up the US IP system, but the above article doesn't tell much IMO, US companies get sued on IP infringements all the time... Umm?

As the article said, Firefox's market share is rising, the latest numbers have them up to 4%, eroding Internet Explorers commanding 92%. And they rose an entire percentage point in one month. This article on zdnet is from the 15th:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5491439.html

I think they've done it the only way possible, better features and publicity. I hope they take the time Microsoft is giving them to get even further ahead of the competition.

-dynamo

If you choose a standardized virtualized platform then you need not be limited to using in house clusters. Check out ActiveGrid(TM) info page, it includes support for third party distributed hosting provider such as Akamai, . Other providers in the future, will provide massively scaleable systems such as Cray's Red Storm Cluster. All running Linux.

Novell will be the one to come in and snatch up SCOX.

Novell is making Linux the centerpiece of its technology strategy, so it has something to loose.

Ending this thing once and for all would endear the Linux community to Novell, so it has something to gain.

It also has $475M earmarked for acquisitions.

Novell has a history with SCO/Canopy. Ray Noorda was the chairman at Novell before he started Caldera. Darcy Mott was Novell's Treasurer, and R. Duff Thompson was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. Even Darl McBride came through Novell.

SCOX has a $79M market cap. For this small portion of their acquisition warchest, all this goes away and they get real linux street cred. Their marketing department should be lobbying hardest for this one.

When they're done with that they'll buy UNIX(TM) from The Open Group and geeks will write songs about them.

Only if they want to crush Redhat, that is.

No prob, no offence intended.

But if indeed their "monopoly can be broken", then this is an excellent first step - well, at least one in the correct direction. It should have been done years ago in the US v. Microsoft case, and unfortunately if the government had respected and followed the will of the courts, it would have made a serious impact on the Microsoft we know of today.

There are many things that could be done (splitting them into business units like "Operating Systems" and "Office/Applications" - and before you say that's outrageous - look at what was done to AT&T in the 80's) and it produced a greater good for all.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has gone on for too long in this marketplace, bundling applicaiton after applicaiton, which really have nothing to do with the core OS itself, while at the same time disalowing competitors onto their prized "desktop". We have seen Microsoft exploit this in the "Great Browser Wars" only to succumb to it's own security flaws due to it's tieing, and it allowed IE to stagnate and only now after faced with real - new competition (Firefox) - is it trying to update it's browser and start spreading the "grassroots" and corporate FUD (security problems, etc).

It's always been about copying the "look and feel" of other systems, absorbing some technology then integrating it into the OS (NCSA Mosaic), then modifying it to keep up with the Jones' until the main competitiors died off (Netscape, et al) then letting it stagnate into the security/bloat/featureless mess we have today - which coincidently they will not update to add new features unless you buy the latest operating system. It will not change if they allow this to happen with the Media Player. We will come full circle once again.

That is what makes Microsoft so scary, they are so good at playing the system - and more power to them for it, but it is also good to see them being put into check by the appropriate forces.

Nothin' to see here. Just keep movin' folks.

here is an interesting article to read

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/index.php?p=77

If Linux has 3% of the desktop, they already surpass OS X. I'm not all that sure about their projections, but Linux on the desktop, in a fairly short time, has done one hell of a lot more then Apple ever has. Should anyone attempt to 'build on OS X's momentum', they are doomed to languish.

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/mai n/0,14179,2654011,00.html

I don't have a problem with Microsoft bundling apps, particularly good apps. As long as I can remove them and replace them with ones I like.

But putting in intentionally cripped software?