Slashdot Mirror

Borland recently decided to purchase TogetherSoft, whose ConrolCenter product can do VB.NET and C# projects.

I was on the Borland Developer Network page yesterday and found this article on Borland's upcoming .NET IDE.

"Borland plans to offer an alternative to Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET development environment. Such a product could suit application developers that want to leverage .NET and the best applications from many vendors."

The only other .NET IDE I know of today is SharpDevelop, which feels sluggish on my P3 1.2GHz. Anyone know of others?

Agreed - this isn't even secret.

When you look at the original article's disclaimer "Microsoft or one of its partners" this isn't much of a prediction.

While .Net was created for Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft did release a portion of the framework and C# to the ECMA standards committee. The Mono project, an implementation of .Net for Linux, includes the Framework and a C# compiler. This means that many applications, especially Web-based applications, can be written once and then run on multiple platforms.

Why has NOBODY asked the Security Services the following? I have posted this argument several times before.

Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.

INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from ZDNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. Or, just as dumbly, "They will not be interested in anything I do".

This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when government looked for dirt on individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. It was led by badly injured Pam Warren. She had over 20 operations after the 1999 rail crash (which killed 31 and injured many).

This group had fought for better and safer railways - all by legal means. By all accounts a group of fine outstanding people - with good intent.

So what was their crime, to deserve this investigation? It was just for showing up members of government to be the incompetents they were.

As usual, government tried to put a different spin on the story when they were found out. Even so, their intent was obvious - they wanted to use this information as propaganda - to smear the character of these good people.

Our honourable government would rather defile the character of its citizens, rather than address their reasonable concerns.

The government arrogantly presume this group of citizens would not worry about having their privacy invaded.

They can also check your outgoings match your income and that you are paying enough tax. What do you think all this privacy invasion is for? The War on Terrorism? You poor dupe. All your finances for them to scrutinize; heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent.

The authorities try make everything they say sound perfectly reasonable.

e.g. Officials from US Defence Department agency have said that they want, "the same level of accountability in cyberspace that we now have in the physical world".

Do government currently keep records of everything that you touch in the physical world to analyse?

No they do not - So then, is that the same level of accountability?

They wish to keep an electronic tag on you, like some kind of animal. Actually it is even worse than this - like some pervert sex offender that they have to keep track of. Would any person of intelligence call that accountability?

Do not believe the lies of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists. Every argument they use is subterfuge - pure spin.

In UK, the RIP Act is unjust - dim-witted ill-informed MPs believed governments 'experts'. Remember - they will get everything about you, your phone calls, emails, TV viewing - everything.

Americans - the Total Information Awareness plan, USA Patriot act and Homeland Defence - you are more technologically aware, are you really that easily led?

I cannot stress enough - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them. I know from experience, as fact, they have no morals and will purposefully twist this information to use against you. I have documentary evidence of this - actual government agency case notes. Should government take legal action to deny that they pervert how personal information is used, then these documents may be viewed in a court of Law.

P.S. The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization and the United States Department of Commerce are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem. The solution was ratified by honest attorneys. Please visit my site - not associated with United Nations WIPO.org. The United Nations WIPO deal with these conflicts - but are without honour and too cowardly to directly answer my easy questions (as are the US DoC).

Some people still prefer to not wear any computers.

No, but I have a photo of her!

It's what this guy isn't doing.

The truth is, running a company is hard. Wouldn't you rather have your job for the "Holiday season" that some free webboard tech support?

Part of the problem here is that it can be dangerous to have your employees posting as a representative of your company without any standard of what can or cannot be communicated safely.

It appears from this article that that some companies are setting up a policy that forbids this sort action by their employees. In a large company, this can be necessary. How well do the managers know their employees? Are they just spouting off about how much they hate their employers? Are managers going to scour the web for these people's posts?

It's true, it would be nice if this were allowed to continue, but I certainly understand why for liability's sake most companies don't want to be involved. This certainly doesn't warrant front page slashdot news. I know we all hate corporations, but often times companies get big because their the best at what they do, or at least good at making money while doing it.

Some day you kids will go off to college, and then, you might even have to get a job at a corporation, too.

Nicely put. The corporation has to live too (so it can pay those employees), and sometimes this unfortunately involves restrictions. ZD Net and MSNBC also cover this subject, but with a much more balanced point of view! Not only do those "kind" employees expose their employer to liability (if they get their advice wrong accidentally, and mess up a customer's computer), but they also compete with any premium support service that the company offers, or plans to offer. Moreover employees may also inadvertantly expose trade secrets.

It makes me wonder why an AnandTech article [anandtech.com] gave such a different opinion. Which one is right?

A more level-headed review, sitting more or less in the middle of both extremes can be found at ZDnet.

Just look at his silly face on the photo near this article.

The complete interview is on ZDnet.

ZDnet has an interesting article about a guy who got severe burns while using his laptop in the buff.

Click here

No problemo, the same article is also on ZDnet.

• on yahoo
• on MSNBC
• on ZDnet

about text mode demos. Read and enjoy! Preferably before lunch...

They did. More about this here. Why ZDnet is covering this, rather than hawking Microsoft's Sequelserver is a mystery to me as well...

Exactly. As soon as you dare to criticize the moderation system, you get modded down as a troll. Just read this article on ZDnet for some insightful statistics about the speed at which comments get modded down or up, depending on whether they criticize the moderation system or not.

Well, I guess that this comment here will get modded down really fast. Not only does it talk about the taboo subject of moderation, but moreover it links to an article on a site decried as being pro-MS. Hopefully, metamoderation will do its thing ;-) hehe ;-)

- A Source Forge Project under the name the name Freedows -- not much activity :(
- a ZDNet article dated Dec 31, 2000.
- From the WayBack Machine here are website snapshots dated April 18, 1998 and March 8, 2001.

Also from the WayBack machine, for www.allos.org:
- website snapshots from Dec 6, 1998 and Sept 22, 2001

Hmm, the reported archive dates don't correlate with the actual page dates. Curious. But it serves the purpose anyway.

Microsoft can obsolete DOS, but as of yet they haven't introduced a replacement that can get a machine on the network with a single floppy disk.

Their most likely solution: phase out the floppy drive. Intel and Microsoft have both been following Apple's lead (as usual) and pressuring OEMs to phase out the floppy. Soon the squiggles on ancient Greek ruins will be more readable than the floppies you're using today.

You are reaching if you think that combining Sun's statement on the JCP together with some minor revisions of Java2 mean that Sun makes available all their patents for free Java implementations.

Your ignoring the last paragraph quoted from Effort on the edge, Part 1

Gingell notes that, "When J2SE is available under the terms of JCP 2.5, if someone wanted to implement it from specifications, they could do so without also licensing the reference implementation. They would have to license the TCKs to verify that they'd made a compatible implementation. They would thus have to be a TCK licensee, which would be available for free to qualified nonprofits."

g4dget wrote:"Sun has made no legally binding commitments on keeping Java open.".
At least Sun's Robert A. Gingell Sun Fellow & Vice President has published a Letter of Intent which includes the declration

Again in the interests of meeting the spirit of the requirements, Sun will modify the specification licenses of all the JSRs currently in progress to reflect Apache's requirements as met in the new draft JSPA. And we reaffirm a previous statement that we would work over time to change the licenses of previously completed JSRs to comply with the new JSPA draft. We specifically commit to doing such changes at a minimum for:

JSR 31 (JAXB), JSRs 52, 53, 152, 154 (JSPs/Servlets), JSR 63 (JAXP), JSR 67 (JAXM), JSR 93 (JAXR), JSR 101 (JAXRPC), JSR 127 (Java Server Faces), JSR 172 (J2ME Web Services)

As noted in the introductory summary, we believe these changes constitute a full meeting of Apache's requirements both in letter and in spirit.

It's a start, and it's value should not be dismissed lightly. Once again, Where are the equivalent public declarations from Microsoft?

Why will not Sun pull out of this accord? - Because, increasingly, it is not in Sun's self interest to do so.

Sun has adopted the LGPL/GPL licensed GNOME Desktop for both it's Solaris and Linux systems. In fact so much more open sourced software is being deployed on their systems, adding value to the platforms, that it is not in Sun's interest to limit free lisenced code interoperation with the Java frameworks.
For similar reasons IBM and other Java licensese are pressuring Sun to further open up the Java enviroment.

In it's comments of the voting for the new JCP IBM even commented:

IBM's vote is based on the technical merits of this JSR and is not a vote on the licensing terms. IBM supports licensing models that create an open and level playing field by allowing third parties to create independent implementations of Java Specifications and that do not allow individuals or companies to exercise unnecessary control for proprietary advantage. We support open source as a licensing model for contributions in the JCP, and would hope others will support this direction. This comment is not necessarily directed at the current business or license terms for this JSR, however, it is a statement of IBM's preferred licensing model.

Forces are moving into place which is going to make it very difficult for Sun to backslide to a close model again.

As for FUD, it seem to me that over time, Microsoft is becoming the sole dominant player in lies based on untruths.

By the way g4dget, are you any relation to John Carroll?

He blames the blockers like MAPS... Why spam could destroy the Internet. I don't agree with him.

ZDNet realeased an article titled Windows XP Media Center: Who needs it? Not me back when the first of the XP Media Center devices/PCs turned up: the HP Media Center PC.

The title of the article sums it all up nicely in my book.

Russ

I gave this comment before - the logic is undeniable. Nobody has ever gave reasoned argument against it:

Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali), or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.

INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) that the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in the UK when government checked for dirt on individuals of the Paddington crash survivors group. This group was lead by the badly injured Pam Warren - whom they arrogantly presume would have nothing to worry about, having her privacy invaded.

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the LIES of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists.

P.S. On the Domain Name System, big business steal words that belong to everybody in UDRP and Sunrise - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment. Don't believe me? Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. Even common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat. It is major Corporations illegally abusing and expand their brand using domain names - above other trademarks and all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Trademark and Competition Law.

The authorities LIE - they know how to make these trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. They are aiding and abetting the pervertion of Law. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with the corrupt United Nations !

Part of the reason why this isn't exactly true is because Microsoft announced [techcentralstation.com] it is completely dropping UltimateTV

I noticed that when you said "Microsoft announced..." you pointed to a news article on another site, rather than a press release on UltimateTV's site. So I read that article, and sure enough, the author of that article says "Already, Microsoft has announced that they're discontinuing their UltimateTV set-top box,". So then I clicked his link to UltimateTV's site, and found absolutely no mention of any supposed discontinuation.

The Press Releases section bears no mention of any discontinuation. You can still buy it. If the company discontinued the product, it wouldn't make much sense that they'd still be promoting it.

This ZDNet article mentions some restructuring:

But UltimateTV didn't take off as Microsoft had hoped, and the company recently announced it was restructuring that division and laying off some workers.

So I found that article.

And then what may be the source of this rumor. A ZDNet "Story" by David Coursey entitled, "Why UltimateTV was an ultimate failure." From the piece: "If you call Microsoft, as I did, you will find the company disagrees will [sic] my assessment that it is getting out of the DVR business."

So as near as I can tell, some guy thinks Microsoft is getting out of the market because they cut their staff from 500 to 160. I dunno, maybe they are, but my point is that there was never a "Microsoft announced..." moment. At this point, it's still rumor. So let's keep the facts-to-speculation ratio as high as possible on slashdot. You too, moderators.

Paul may piss off the people working on the X-Box, but he's not going to affect UltimateTV one iota.

If your speculation is what you were basing your conclusion on, then I must disagree. I doubt Microsoft is really all that happy that a founder's company is using Linux on anything, regardless of their relative strength in that market.

If you were wondering what they're talking about, it might be:

in this submission

An article talks about it on
ZDnet

which I probably found on an old slashdot article.

You know, there would be a lot less of this niggling and policy crap (and rights being trampled, etc.) if some smart people mandated the creation of the .xxx domain extension. Easy to identify, easy to filter, easy to block. I guess it's not so easy to enforce. How could you enforce companies to use the new domain extension and abandon their old one by law with many countries having different pornography laws? Credit card companies could be mandated to refuse to pay for porn access from companies outside of this .xxx domain. You're a .com smutt dealer? Sorry, you're not getting paid!

Well anyways, David Coursey once talked about this idea (though most likely not his original idea) being one of the more simple approaches to tackle the censorship of Internet porn.

Something to think about methinks!

I have news for you. Microsoft doesn't give a crap about Linux or OS software and whatever insignificant market share they have.

Ballmer: Linux Is Top Threat To Windows

Microsoft acknowledges Linux threat

Ballmer: Microsoft sees the Linux challenge

You mention that "lots of big companies" are starting to deply Linux to the business desktop. Name a few.

Wall Street Embraces Linux

Linux for the Rest of Us

DreamWorks switches to HP, Linux

Secure Linux desktop begins shipping to UK police force

The MPIO-DMK is a better alternative for people wanting someone small and durable. While I agree having the built in USB port is nice, it also means that you have a removeable piece: the cover. And I guarantee over time and use, you're going to lose, break, bend, or damage the cover to the point of worthlessness, and once you don't have a cover, your USB port is going to get trashed.

Check out the MPIO-DMK

XDocs might be a threat to pdf in the field of online forms processing, as described in this zdnet article. Today pdf is used extensively in organizations that administer large quantities of paper forms that are sent to them.

But I don't think it can threaten pdf in other areas, because pdf is very, very established as the standard for online read-only documents. For instance, when I was looking for a new job earlier this year, I used Open Office to generate pdf files containing my applications that I sent to employers, and I didn't get a single complaint that they couldn't read it.

Actually, McNealy's use predates McGee's.

But I'm not saying that McNealy invented the expression - just that he's made it his own. Just like Barry Switzer didn't invent the wishbone offense; he just borrowed it and used to run over Nebraska and Texas for fifteen years or so.

--Jim

Wladawksy-Berger: Let me first comment on the complexity question because this is very important. Like other major technology infrastructures, such as electricity or the telephone network, the aim is that even though the infrastructure itself is complex--say to generate electricity you have Hoover dam, transmission lines from Hudson Bay, nuclear power plants in Canada--if want to toast a bagel in the morning, you don't have to know any of that.

A Technical Comparison of TTLS and PEAP

ZDNet also has a good overview of the proposed solutions.

Are here and here. Note that the first has a second page.

Are here and here. Note that the first has a second page.

I have posted similar comment several times before - the logic is undeniable. Nobody has ever gave reasoned argument against it:

Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali), or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.

SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) that the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in the UK when government checked for dirt on individuals of the Paddington crash survivors group. This group was lead by the badly injured Pam Warren - whom they arrogantly presume would have nothing to worry about, having her privacy invaded.

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the LIES of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists.

P.S. On the Domain Name System, big business steal words that belong to everybody - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment. Don't believe me? Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. Even common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat. It is major Corporations illegally abusing and expand their brand using domain names - above other trademarks and all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Trademark and Competition Law.

The authorities LIE - they know how to make these trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. They are aiding and abetting the pervertion of Law. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with the corrupt United Nations WIPO.org !

Well, I'm going through and confirming my facts, I haven't touched Suse for years. After checking my opinion hasn't changed other than possibly replacing the word proprietary with restrictive to make my opinion a little clearer.

I use GPL'd software and release my work under GPL for the sole reason that it gives me control over the software I use...

Suse has always had in my mind a desire to make money off my work without reinbursing me... Redhat and Mandrake do this by releasing their distributions under the GPL.

The problem with Yast is that it contaminates the entire distribution... With Redhat or Mandrake, I can burn a copy and distribute them with new systems that I sell to my customers... Can't do that with Suse, because I am doing a sale for money... So while I normally package a Linux on CD distribution and Mandrake or Redhat with windows systems I sell, Suse licensing ensures that I can't use them as a distribution.

But this is my decision... You find the licensing acceptable... I don't... Nothing wrong with this either way... I just don't use their product because of the licensing issues.

I also don't buy anything and Yahoo, don't shop at Best Buy, hate utility companies, hate with a vengence cable companies and phone companies, etc.

As long as I have a choice I work with whatever company supports me the most, ie customer service, support, etc...

So you may be right that Suse is not proprietary, however I firmly believe that they want to be. Which is fine as long as it's their own software... But once they start including my patches and software, they need to be giving back to me...

I appreciate their work on x11 and KDE, but that doesn't mean I want to restrict my actions by using their software.

Below are references which among others have helped to form my opinions.

Non-disclosure Agreement which violates GPL

article, Director of Suse Sales implies to my mind that they want to make Suse proprietary in order to protect their product

This Article shows what Suse will do when they have the opportunity.

Quote: Claims of invasions of privacy online are "baseless," says Mark Corallo, a spokesperson for the Justice Department.

What a load of spin (lies). I have posted similar comment a few times before - the logic is undeniable. Nobody has ever gave reasoned argument against it:

Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali) to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.

SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) that the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET [zdnet.com]: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in the UK when government checked for dirt on individuals of the Paddington crash survivors group. This group was lead by the badly injured Pam Warren - whom they presume would have nothing to worry about, having her privacy invaded.

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the LIES of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists.

P.S. On the Domain Name System, big business steal words that belong to everybody - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment. Don't believe me? Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. Even common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat. It is major Corporations illegally abusing and expand their brand using domain names - above other trademarks and all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Trademark and Competition Law.

The authorities LIE - they know how to make these trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. They are aiding and abetting the pervertion of Law. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with the corrupt United Nations WIPO.org !

I have posted similar comment a couple of times before - the logic is undeniable. Nobody has ever gave reasoned argument against it:

Ask Security Services in the US, UK or Indonesia (Bali) to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).

The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.

The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.

SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA

This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) that the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from CNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the LIES of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists.

P.S. On the Domain Name System, big business steal words that belong to everybody - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment. Corporations illegally abuse and expand their brand using domain names - above all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Competition Law.

The authorities LIE - they know how to make these trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. They are aiding and abetting the pervertion of Law. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with United Nations WIPO.org !

From ZDNet: Why Microsoft caved in on copy protection:

The Media Center software has been changed so that now the copyright owner, not Microsoft, gets to decide whether a particular TV program will be "encrypted to the hard drive"--meaning, "unable to be viewed on a different PC or DVD player."

THIS IS DONE by making the Media Center software cognizant of a television standard called Copy Generation Management System for Analog (CGMS-A). If a couple of bits in a program's CGMS-A settings are switched on, Media Center PCs will encrypt the program, making it unplayable on anything but the recording PC. Leave them unflipped, and the program remains copyable. Microsoft says its testing found no television programming with the encryption bits turned on.

Yes, this seems to be the case in this article. However, I found this maybe more interesting one (Making Solaris open source)

Clip (Sun chief engineer Rob Gingell, August 28, 2002 ):

The really valuable thing to us is this community. Not all predecessor communities have agreed to operate on the same IP principle that the Linux community operates on. Getting by that is a real impediment to throwing open the kimono and saying, "Here, Solaris is now open sourced." So, some of it has happened, and we are working on the rest of it. We may never be able to do it all because we may never be able to reach an agreement with the originators of the stuff. In short, the answer is that we're just sort of chipping away at it

This might be worth submitting to /. as a separate story if it has not already been here.

Having read about the recent demonstration of Bluetooth and IPv6 by Mike Foley, I was truly amazed. If this is the next step in component communication and networking, what will then be the step after that? When our objects and ourselves are networked so quickly and simply, in what do you foresee the next big innovation for the field? Thank you for your time.

"Every big computing disaster has come from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place, and the Itanium is exactly that," said Gordon Bell, a veteran computer designer and a Microsoft researcher.

An actual article here on ZDnet. It actually provides some background and some additional instances.

BTW, the first link is to an article on Netscape.com. I guess their department of redundancy department decided it should be netscape.com.com. At least the link works.

They also have their own lineup of, IMHO, a lot more sexier, better and more feature rich units than those from RIO. See the SlimX and their new HD unit, iDP-100 on their product listing page.

I'm getting a iMP-350 soon, and I guess this means that Real Soon Now(tm) I'll get to rip my CD collection to OGG and play it on this beauty! It's got very good reviews everywhere.

Cheers!

Costyn.

" ... this option [interoperability] could be part of a 1.1 specification ... "

kinda sounds like a w3c statement about a new standard protocol or language. amazing how ballmer & co. said this would "have little chance of mattering". gee, looks like it matters now. big banks, all the major credit companies, several of the web's biggest commerce fronts - i'd call that a strong base of interest and support for Liberty.

maybe they need a 3rd party to mediate so everyone plays nice for a while

Since Bluetooth and 802.11b run in the same frequency space (~2.4 Ghz), having the two running together causes interference, resulting in slower connections (discussed here and here). The effect does drop off with distance - having a 10 metre distance between the sources could result in a 10% performance hit for Bluetooth. Obviously, having both on the same card is asking for trouble...
Further information (with lots of pretty mathematical formulae) can be found in this ugly looking PDF.

David Coursey already has a writeup about this stuff, and he's not crazy about it. Neither are his readers. There's a related poll, "Would you buy networking hardware from Microsoft?" As of this writing, 85% of the responses are a resounding "no."

Microsoft has spent years making their bed of co-opted standards, and now they're finally going to lay in it. People are used to 802.11b devices that are platform-agnostic. Microsoft's networking hardware may not currently give preferential treatment to the 1's and 0's coming from Windows boxes, but with their track record can we really trust them to keep it that way forever?

Thanks, Bill, but I think I'll stick with LinkSys.

Nice summary by O'Reilly
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That study is based on how many copies of linux overall were sold and not how many users use it. For example I have purchased about 4 or 5 different linux distro's and have bought 3 or 4 different versions of redhat, 2 suse, and 2 caldera before sco fucked it up. In the IDC study that would equal 12 different linux users or installations. Very inaccurate.

You're joking, right? Don't forget, plenty of people run Linux who didn't buy a distro.. it's easy (and perfectly legal) to buy one copy of Linux and install it on dozens of systems, or to make copies of someone else's CD's, or to download ISO's. The IDC study would have had to take that into account if they were to seriously tackle the question.

Mac user sdo upgrade but not as often and only once avery couple of years. Last I heard from the gartner group about a year ago was that linux owned %.5 of the dekstop market while Apple owned %4. Linux however does make up %3 or %4 used as servers but thats it.

Again, you don't seriously you believe that Linux makes up only 3 or 4 percent of the installed server base, do you?. Gartner/Dataquest is citing Linux as earning 6% of server revenues in 2002, which amounts to a far higher unit share than that. Remember, one of the reason Epic committed to porting to Linux is from their experience that 50% of the high speed servers deployed for Unreal Tournament were running on Linux.

Linux, not Macintosh, is the second choice platform overall, based on the economics.

Big difference not to mention people who use linux are not teenage gamers but mostly hackers or administrators. People who use macs are ordinary people who might have a stronger appeal to games.

Yes, there are surely more commercial game sales on Macintosh than Linux, but that's not to say there aren't enough Linux users out there to make it worthwhile to do a port. Particularly when there are cross platform API's like OpenGL, Ogg Vorbis, and SDL that reduce the effort required.