Slashback: Errata, Futurity, Portality

Slashed back tonight: The (slight) return of the Y2K behemoth, good news for those locked out of port 80 by the recent unpleasantness, one interested party's response to Stephen Hawking's genetic-engineering ideas, and even an update on the Scarfo key-logging story.

Better than world-wide anarchy and privation. kejoki writes: "I came into work today and nobody had voicemail. We use an ancient AT&T system 25 (Merlin) with the Audix automated attendant/voice mail system ... not my bailiwick but the boss was going nuts trying to figure it out.

He finally called his System 25 guy and found out that quite a few people were having the same problem. Inspiration hit, and he set the system date back before 31 Dec 1999 ... whammo! The voice mail returneth.

AT&T->Lucent->Avaya, of course, no longer supports the system...as a matter of fact the boss seems to recall getting a letter from AT&T saying that they'd be taking care of the Y2K problems which might be in their equipment; but another soon after saying that support for the System 25 would be dropped as of 31 Dec 1999 ... hmmm.

Oddly enough, he's had a problem with the system giving a database I/O error for a while, but since he reset the date that has also vanished.

All very interesting. At any rate, if you have a System 25 and you can't get your voice mail, set back the date!"

And in related news, Che Fox writes :"The OpenLDAP project is one of the first to be hit by a major bug due to the S1G (one billion seconds) Unix time rollover. The slurpd replication daemon, which pushes changes from the master LDAP server to the slaves, no longer works now that time has rolled over to 1 billion seconds. This means that all LDAP-using networks in the world that use OpenLDAP and slave servers to replicate the data (very common) are now broken. There is a fix available against both the 1.2 and 2.x OpenLDAP releases in the OpenLDAP CVS repository."

You may assume your former activities for the moment. Agent Green writes: "I was checking out my firewall logs this morning and noticed an unusual amount of port 80 traffic and come to find out...it seems that AT&T Broadband has lifted their port 80 restrictions on its residential network. Let's see how long this lasts ..."

Probably until the next worm that takes over everyone's port 80, whatever OS it runs under.

So what did one giant say to the other? jshep writes: "Inventor Ray Kurzweil recently responded to physicist Stephen Hawking's concerns regarding the progression of AI (previous Slashdot story can be viewed here). Kurzweil takes aim at Hawking's suggestion that we use genetic engineering to augment the power of the human brain."

The man behind the curtain is ... uh, vital to national security! camusflage writes: "Reuters has a story (courtesy of Yahoo) that says the judge in the Nicodemo Scarfo believes the "national security" gambit about as much as the /. community does regarding the use of keyloggers. The most choice quote is "I don't know what it means. It's gobbledygook. More gobbledygook," referring to the argument put forth that the keylogger is a sensitive piece of national security. An assistant U.S. Attorney indicated he would provide "classified and unclassified summaries of the system's operation and more affidavits detailing the national security aspects at stake," next Friday."

Comments

slurpd replication daemon

[wiredog]

I don't know why, but "Slurped replication demon" just sounds funny as all hell. Try to visualize slurping a replicating demon.

Re:slurpd replication daemon

[wiredog]

Yeah, but are you demons?

comcast @home

[bluelip]

@Home is still blocking 80. Dang it. No biggie though. I redirected the main page elsewhere and then have that page come back in on a different port.

Re:comcast @home

[Splat]

If you have Dynamic IP's check out many of the fine Dynamic DNS services such as:

DynDNS & custom www.dyndns.org
Yi www.yi.org
DtDNS www.dtdns.com
HammerNode www.hn.org
EyeP www.eyep.net
DynU www.dynu.com
easyDNS www.easydns.com
No-IP www.no-ip.com
dyns.cx www.dyns.cx
dnsQ.org www.dnsq.org
myIP.org www.myip.org
ns1.net ns1.net
ZoneEdit www.zoneedit.com
dyn.ee www.dyn.ee
Central Information System www.centralinfo.net
NOLS www.nols.com
dhs.org www.dhs.org
YYweb.com www.yyweb.com
dyn.ca www.dyn.ca
DDNS.nu www.ddns.nu
miniDNS www.minidns.net

(This last gathered from the DirectUpdate homepage at www.directupdate.net)

Yeah

[l33t j03]

The OpenLDAP project is one of the first to be hit by a major bug due to the S1G

In other words: Expect Slashdot to go down for 6-8 hours tomorrow without explanation.

Another S1G bug

[stox]

cvsup, a utility used to synchronize CVS repository's, was hit by the S1G event. Version 16.1d is available to fix the bug.

Re:Another S1G bug

[ChadN]

Came in to work on Monday, and our electronic lock system wasn't working. All the doors were locked, and card keys didn't work. I don't know the vendor, but anyone else have a similar problem?

I'd be curious to know if it was coincidence, or related to the rollover. They replaced our old one in 1999 due to Y2K issues.

genetic engineering the brain

[perdida]

There is not one genetic engineering.

There are many kinds of GE.

One kind splices genes from other species into a species. This has problems with inaccurate gene-snips and potential allergies to foreign genetic matter.

Another kind of GE is simply eugenics, which many farmers have used for centuries; selecting the best representatives of a species to breed together, or hybridization. Eugenics presents political problems in humans.

Another kind of GE is the turning on of inoperative genes through hormonal treatments or other chemicals. Cancer genes (oncogenes) are turned on through sun damage and other carcinogenic interactions, for instance. This type of GE may be dangerous but it is noninvasive and can be done through conventional current gene therapy methods. I support this kind of work.

Now onto the spurious ethical questions.

There is no a-priori model of the human. Humans have been evolving for thousands of years, and our lifestyles and diets have a big part to play in that. The conscious manipulation of this process has the opportunity, actually, to be more ethical than the unconscious genetic engineering we have done.

The americans imported people from Africa in the slave trade and created "hybrid races" of humans, for instance. This has led to changes in frequency of various positive and negative genetic traits in the US population. Although slavery itself is reprehensible, I don't think anybody would consider treatments for sickle-cell anemia (which occurs primarily in Africans and African-Americans) immoral genetic engineering, for instance.

Conscious manipulation of human intelligence is a scientific technology question and is morally neutral. Methods and political superstructures surrounding the issue are not.

Re:genetic engineering the brain

[Cuthalion]

I don't think anybody would consider treatments for sickle-cell anemia (which occurs primarily in Africans and African-Americans) immoral genetic engineering, for instance.

Not really on topic, but the reason that sickle-cell anemia is more prevalant in Africa (and other tropical regions) is as follows:

Sickle-cell anemia is a recessive trait. If you have only one of them, you are not anemic. However, for whatever reason, you ARE more resistant to malaria.

Re:genetic engineering the brain

[bellings]

However, for whatever reason, you ARE more resistant to malaria.

In the dim recesses of my faulty memory, I seem to recall a study claiming that sickle-cell anemia makes one less resistant to malaria. A possible explanation was that, paradoxically, people suffering from anemica catch malaria more often, and younger, and build up an immunological resistance to the disease.

I'm far too lazy to actually do a search for the study, or to find out if follow up studies had been done, or any of the other things that would make this post +1 informative instead of -1 talking-out-of-ass. But I think I read some reporters (probably mangled) synopsis of the study in the NY Times between 6 and 8 years ago.

Re:genetic engineering the brain

[sydb]

Eugenics presents political problems in humans.

The implication being that it's a free for all in animals.

I don't really want to go hunting for the link, but there's some woman in the States breeds cats with deformed legs which prevents them walking normally. She calls them 'flippies' or something because that's how they move about. People buy them for their novelty value, apparently. That's eugenics, with a peculiar definition of 'best'. You might not think there are political issues with that, I do.

Re:genetic engineering the brain

[bellings]

Sorry. I hit "submit" instead of preview.

What I meant to write is that my understanding is that people with one copy of the sickle-cell anemia gene do not get better resistance to malaria -- they get worse resistance to malaria. In fact, the study I described suggested that many people with one copy of the gene had been infected with many strains of the malaria parasite, again and again, from a young age, at rates higher than the general population.

Of course, there is a huge difference between "being infected by malaria" and "suffering the debilitating effects of malaria". And, in fact, the described study came about as a recognition of this difference. In the past, it had simply been assumed that the sickle-cell gene conferred immunity because of its negative correllation with symptoms, but actual blood tests for the parasite had not been systematically performed. It turned out that people with one copy of the sickle-cell anemia gene, although not suffering the effects of malaria, and hence not historically diagnosed with malaria, were suprisingly still very often infected.

The reasons for this, or its implications, is anyone's guess. The reporter had given some possible reasons, but co-evolution of parasites is pretty danged freaky-cool and chaotic.

Of course, this is just something I vaguely remember reading in the NY Times one afternoon sometime in the early nineties. I'm damned if I know if I even really read it, much less if it turned out to be true.

Wow, 2 things to ba happy about!

[Enigma2175]

1) I think it is fantastic that the judge in the Scarfo case isn't dazzled by the FBI's "National Security" defense. This case has absolutely nothing to do with national security, the FBI is trying to establish precedent above the law. This time it is the keylogging technique, next time it is Carnivore v.2.0 that they try to hide behind the "national security" shield.

2) Being a subscriber, I am extremely happy that AT&T has lifted the ban in HTTP servers (I know I may assume too much given the anecdotal source). Most of the servers that run on the @home network are small, low traffic servers that don't cause much of a problem(unless they are infected). They must be worried about losing even the small percentage of customers that run web servers. Economic hard times are hitting everywhere...

national security...

[nettdata]

I could see how divulging how the keylogger works could be a national security issue... once it's been released how it works, people could start looking for the tell-tales, and then once word gets out about how many people are actually being logged, all hell breaks loose... both in and outside the US.

Re:national security...

[WhiteWolf666]

This is insane. How do we know that its just a keylogger? How do we know that its not a virus? How do we know that the government is only using it on people it has obtained a warrant for? How do we know that the government does not install it first, and then gets the warrant if necessary?

National security can go to hell. Worst case scenario (and this is unlikely)---the FBI looses its ability to log keys, and has to go back to doing real detective work. Big Deal. The U.S. will go on, and we will know that our rights are not being infringed.

If the FBI thinks that said documents really contain information pertaining to the case, subpeona the password.

I think if the government has the probably cause(is that the standard? whatever it is) necessary to get a warrant, the person targeted should know about it, and be able to challenge it, in the interets of privacy.

You have a right to know if you have been charged, so why don't you have a right to know if you privacy has been violated? Similarly, don't you have a right to not incriminate yourself? If the fifth amendment prevents the government from using a subpeona to get a password, than it is at least idealogical consistant that is should protect you from unknowingly giving the government your password.
And if it doesn't, and they say no, its a crime in and of itself, and the government than has every right to put the wiretap on whatever computers said person uses. This still provides a reasonable chance to catch the crook, or stop his illegal behavior, and still protects privacy rights. Yeah, this may reduce the probablity of catching them, but hey, it is better for 1000 guilty men to go free, than for 1 innocent man to be punished.

And, of course, I need to say this.

They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Yet Another.....

[[amorphis]]

The Jive Forum BBS software was hit by the bug as well, for the same reason as everybody else: the sort order changes when the values are stored in a character field.
Here's a comment from one of the developers regarding the design decision:

Hey all,

Thought I would respond since I'm a Jive developer. There were quite a few reasons for the date to be stored as it is:

1) Java uses the millesecond values since 1970 as its native date format. However, unlike Unix, this value is stored as a 64 bit long instead of a 32 bit integer. Effectively, this means there will never be date overflow. In any case, using the millesecond value is very easy and fast in Java.

2) Database support for dates is horrible. Most db's have a DATETIME or TIMESTAMP column type. However, all databases seem to implement them differently. Further, support for 64 bit numbers is also poorly supported across many databases. Therefore, we were forced to go with our own encoding (millesecond values), and to use character columns instead of numeric ones. This lets Jive work with over 10 different databases instead of 1 or 2.

3) Yep, we never thought about the date rollover bug until about a month and a half ago. Adding a few padding 0's was a simple fix and was released on Aug 8th as Jive 2.0.

-Matt

Nobody but nobody...

[HoldmyCauls]

...is going to pay my thought on this subject much attention, but here goes:

It is time for us to stop. Just to stop and take a moment to reflect on the knowledge we have and what is possible with it in hand. We make bigger, better, faster computers, and put them into operation immediately, for use in labs, and hospitals, and all the places where we need accuracy, and checking, and double-checking. We start cloning and genetically engineering humans without regard to the psychological consequences -- what will it be like to grow up knowing you wouldn't have just "happened" the way normal kids have. When we finally reach deep down enough inside the atom and find the particle we're currently looking for, that's not good enough. We have to build a bigger accelerator, abandoning the last one.

We need to start taking some responsibility -- the genetic code is a programming language in which we're not yet versed enough. Mistakes made there won't send up a compiler warning, they will ruin someone's life. Who's making sure we know what we're doing -- not what, WHY -- when we (as a global society) develop something like artificial intelligence? Sure, popular media -- so-called sci-fi movies and books -- pretend to address the issue, and some writers actually focus, but good luck getting those involved to turn an eye outward long enough to convince them of the moral issues involved.

The surest way to be sure of what we are doing is to stop relying on an economical system that simply doesn't work. Capitalism sucks, and we all know it. Technological tools are wasted on popular culture and ignorant masses. So many resources are wasted, so much time is wasted, so many lives are wasted. And before anyone posts beneath me calling me a Communist or whatever, no, I'm not. I just have no faith in ANY system that doesn't work, that is run by greed, and I'm open to suggestion. I'm a human being first and foremost, and I don't see how the world as we know it is run by and for human beings.

Every time I think of it, I flash back to Gödel, Escher, Bach: no system can ever be complete which relies on itself to define itself. It's a good book, and thank you to those who recommended it a couple months ago. I got it out that day, and I've read the first part so far, and I got it out again to finish it as soon as I returned to school.

Then again, I could be a complete idiot. Maybe I don't understand science and industry as well as I think I do from my limited viewpoint. Please post rational thoughts below.

Of course, maybe I should just stick to writing poetry...

--Joshua

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[geomcbay]

Bah, don't be such a one-timer!!

CLONE EVERYTHING!!

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[Winged Cat]

The problem with arguments like that, is that the only people who will pay them any heed are exactly the people who would care about the morality. If you ask them to stop, they may...but the unethical will continue blithely on. And then [PICK_RESEARCH_FIELD] will be dominated by the unethical: zealots (religious or otherwise) out to make life miserable for those who do not believe as they do, corporations who care for little save their current quarter's bottom line (even at the expense of their own future), and the just plain uninformed (who lack any basic education about the field with which to make moral decisions).

The result, then, is that it is the duty of those with any shred of ethics to aggressively pursue their research at the fastest possible speed, so that [PICK_RESEARCH_FIELD] may be tapped for the benefit of all humanity and countermeasures developed against its negative applications. This ensures that the ethical decisions that matter will be made by those who have some ethics, whether or not they have the fullest possible advantage of foresight. Perhaps the debate can rage while the research goes on, to give them some foresight...but to hold back the research until the ethics have been settled is to ensure catastrophe. (Besides, for many of these fields, the ethics may never be settled. See, for example, the continued debate over abortion, decades after - at least in the US - the issue was settled by the Supreme Court.)

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[Pope]

I just have no faith in ANY system that doesn't work, that is run by greed, and I'm open to suggestion. I'm a human being first and foremost, and I don't see how the world as we know it is run by and for human beings.

Humans aren't perfect; ergo, any system devised by Humans won't be perfect.
However, we can put in some checks and balances to even out the problems.

It is, in fact, why I believe that neither Communism nor Objectivism will ever actually work: both assume a priori that all involved in the system will behave like perfect little robots with no free will. Face it: just as there will always be overly-motivated people who will do anything to succeed including screwing over their mother, there will be slackers, and every option inbetween.

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[MegaFur]

Please note: some of the stuff said here might sound a little harsh, but it's not really meant to. This is not a flame.

Capitalism sucks, and we all know it.

Yes, yes, yes capitalism sucks. This isn't a totally original observation, you know. The thing is--can YOU give us something better? Until this happens, capitalism shall remain dominant.

Think about it. When Jesus Christ was up and walking around, there was still a tax collector! Tax collector implies taxes. Taxes imply money. Money implies capitalism. It's been around for a *really* *long* time. It's gonna be hard to get rid of it.

Every time I think of it, I flash back to Gödel

Gödel's Incompleteness Thm (AFAIK) says that a system P, which might be complete, can't have its completeness proven in its own system. The upshot is that there must, in any set of logical systems, be at least one logical system whose completeness or correctness is simply assumed rather than proven. I'm not sure what this has to do with capitalism. It's not really a logical system anyway. Trying to apply mathematical reasoning to capitalism is like trying to apply it to English (it's a (not very logical) system too) or something. GIGO.

Of course, maybe I should just stick to writing poetry...

Poetry has sometimes played an important role in major political and sociological changes in the past. If you want things to change, you've gotta try to change peoples minds. If you write enough poetry, perhaps you can achieve this.

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[eric17]

It is, in fact, why I believe that neither Communism nor Objectivism will ever actually work: both assume a priori that all involved in the system will behave like perfect little robots with no free will. Face it: just as there will always be overly-motivated people who will do anything to succeed including screwing over their mother, there will be slackers, and every option inbetween.


I offer a second opinion:
Objectivism won't work because people will never figure out the difference between a principled person acting in rational self-interest and a emotionless automaton with no ethics, principles or values.

Re:Nobody but nobody...

[Zoop]

Josh-

You sound afraid. Fear is generally born of ignorance. Why not try learning about it? It may be closer than you think, and not so scary when you didn't realize the difference:

what will it be like to grow up knowing you wouldn't have just "happened" the way normal kids have.

Why not ask that of your roommate, assuming you're in college? Odds are not small that he or she was conceived in a test tube and didn't "happen" the way "normal" kids have. What will you do? Will you treat him differently when you find out? Why? Is he any less human? Is the person with the genetically-determined mental retardation less than human? So how would an artificially engineered person be less than human?

Why do we build the bigger accelerator? Because we didn't find the answers to the questions we found with the smaller one. You only need a Time Magazine-level of physics knowledge to understand that.

For someone who claims to be above the "ignorant masses" on whom "technological tools are wasted," and thus fit to say what should and should not be (else what gives you the right to make the judgement?), you're displaying a fair amount of ignorance--and this is causing you to evidently lose sleep.

For your next book, I suggest Richard Dawkins's "Unweaving the Rainbow," perhaps followed by Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World."

Rest assured, they show proper appreciation of poetry and gently introduce one to the broader world that lies outside the narrow confines of the human imagination.

I don't buy it

[tester13]

Wigler insisted the government went by the book when it obtained a search warrant to install the key logger device, but he acknowledged that current statutes did not specifically address what type of warrant was needed for such a device. ``The problem is the technology has advanced quicker than the law,'' he said, adding current statutes do not state which law applies when authorities use something like the key logger device.

I don't buy it for a second! It seems completely disingenuous of the Wigler to suggest that this is a legal grey area. I am almost positive that this evidence will be suppressed (rightfully). I don't think many people if it were explained to them would see this as anything besides a wire tap. Disagree?

Re:I don't buy it

[jeffy124]

Bill gates attempted similar arguments that Wigler has. He said that because the computer industry has to keep up with the times or otherwise be left behind (duh). He said that anyone with an innovative idea can take teh market by storm quickly. Hence MS was forced to make sure they're able to compete with the market. As we all know, the argument didn't fly too well.

Port 80 blocking

[sting3r]

Folks -

Everyone who keeps complaining about the port 80 blocking needs to put the situation in perspective. (Yes I am one of them.) http is one of those "nice" Internet services that will easily run on any port, without changes to the client software. Try to do that with Windows SMB networking - you can't (easily) because the port range is hard-coded into the OS and can't be changed without much hacking. At least we have the option of simply changing our URLs to end with ":81" to solve the problem. And if you happen to be serving a domain off your cable modem and the :81 makes your URL look ugly... well, cable modems just weren't designed for serving domains anyway, so look for another provider.

If @home *really* wanted to be jerks, they could block incoming connections to your PC (except as required by ftp/irc clients). We agreed not to run servers so that's well within their rights. But they're not doing that and it's trivial to work around the port 80 block, so let's just be happy for what we have (and enjoy the newfound lack of Code Red sponsored congestion).

-sting3r
See what billg has up his sleeve

Re:Port 80 blocking

[Brian Stretch]

Port 80's still blocked where I live (Comcast land, after a territory swap with MediaOne). But they left https alone. The annoyance of certificate warning messages aside (unless you've bought one from the usual suspects), it's just nice to use crypto, and the https port (unlike port 81) is unlikely to be blocked by firewalls.

I haven't thought of anything crypto-worthy to say lately, tho. Maybe I should reread "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell".

Re:Port 80 blocking

[All Dead Homiez]

I'm not sure how widespread it is, but I observed that the way @home blocks connections to port 80 in my area (western Milwaukee suburbs) is by setting extra flags on all SYN packets headed to port 80. IIRC, these packets look like elements of an XMAS scan under tcpdump - many extra flags, such as ACK, FIN, and URG, are set and the packets are discarded as invalid by the stock kernel (and rightly so).

What I did to counter this was to make a very quick and dirty patch to my kernel, which accepted these malformed packets as normal SYN requests. The result? Web services were back to normal and Apache is chugging away as we speak. I've been doing this since the ban and have had no problems at all.

Might be something to try...

-all dead homiez

Re:Port 80 blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same experience; this works in New Brunswick too. Here is the patch I made:

--- tcp_input.c Sun Dec 10 18:49:44 2000
+++ /tmp/tcp_input.c Mon Sep 3 12:23:45 2001
@@ -2074,7 +2074,7 @@
/* These use the socket TOS..
* might want to be the received TOS
*/
- if(th->ack)
+ if(th->ack && !(th->source == 80 && th->fin))
return 1;

if(th->syn) {

Vulture Hawking Articles

[wmaheriv]

Has everyone interested in the Hawking story seen the recent Reg articles?
If not, check them out:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21414.html
Stephen Hawking predicts cyborg ascendancy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21488.html
Cyborg metaphysics

64 bits?

[Pope]

Then what the heck are we going to do in 292,278,994 ?!

AT&T Port 80 restriction.

[Lumpy]

It never existed for me. ever cince the "ban" I tried daily to see if It was put into effect yet. Hmmmm I never lost accessability(sp) to my machine.

I also know of a few others that also never lost Port 80 access to their AT&T@home home ran servers.

Although all of us run apache on linux, so it might have been a ban for only Microsoft products ....Wouldnt that have been a hoot!

my suspicion is that it was only in selected areas.

Survivial at a point dependant on GE?

[Empty Sands]

Although I'm concerned about some of the reckless GE experimentation conducted. I've always had this feeling at some point in human progress we might require the ability to GE ourselves in order to survive as a race. That might be considered a contradiction in itself.

Still because of this I'm not willing to reject GE out of hand, it seems better to be informed if and when this event might occur.

Of course existance of the moral ability and maturity within the modern culture to be able to deal with GE technology is debatable at present.

People have a limited idea of their own brains.

[Futurepower(tm)]

I study the programming of the human brain. I have an opinion that is quite different than yours.

Most people in the U.S., and most people in the other cultures I've studied, believe that they are less intelligent and less mentally capable than they potentially are. Since they have a limited idea of their own brains, they make a mistake when they try to guess how easy it would be for a computer to duplicate human mental ability.

Re:People have a limited idea of their own brains.

[Futurepower(tm)]

First, don't be upset with what I said. It is just my opinion.

I am only expressing the opinion that the human brain in far, far more powerful than people commonly think. Therefore "AI" is further in the future than the proponents say.

AI wouldn't take control of the world

[Supa Mentat]

Certainly, it would have the ability to do so if that's what it wanted to do, but why? I'm not saying "because pacifism is inherantly a smarter philosophy that is the path that AI would choose," how the hell should I know what way of life would be deemed best by AI? If I didn't need the nutrients and energy sources that Earth provides and I were a supremely intelligent being (for lack of a better word) I'd leave. "Fuck humans, they're annoying and I'm outa here," is the response I expect from any AI we produce.

Re:Microsoft & code theft

[Zeinfeld]

This explains why Microsoft chose to use VMS as a basis for their next generation operating system.

There is another reason. DEC screwed Dave Culter, the chief architect of VMS at just the time Microsoft got serious about operating systems again. Cutler left DEC with most of the core VMS kernel team for Microsoft. Shortly after DEC signed a co-development agreement with Microsoft under which Windows-NT would become the successor to VMS.

A few years later Rashid, the chief architect of CMU's MACH microkernel, which is generaly considered one of the bes UNIX kernels arround also joined Microsoft.

Bill works by offering top engineers seven figure golden hellos. That is how he got the team who designed Word to switch from Xerox Parc.

Re:Microsoft & code theft

[spitzak]

Total bullshit.

MSDOS 2.0 (the one that started on copying Unix/Xenix) was a vast improvement over 1.0. There were absolutely no performance problems. There were compatability problems and they panicked and "fixed" them in bad ways that we are living with today. This compatability has been the main reason a lot of stuff does not match Unix for no reason whatsoever (like backward slashes in the pathnames, useless \r characters in the files, and drive letters).

If VMS was the source of inspiration you would expect to see things resemble VMS more than Unix. But VMS used [n,m] and colons as parts of the filenames, used field-based files for text files, and did not have drive letters. Although NT does not match Unix, it certainly resembles it more closely than VMS.

Dave Cutler and friends were pissed that their baby was massacred by BSD Unix, and saw the chance MicroSoft offered as a chance for revenge. It should be obvious that gratuitious incompatability with Unix serves MicroSoft no competitive purpose (I would expect Linux would be nowhere and MicroSoft in 100% control if they had made it easier to port Unix programs to NT) and is entirely the result of a bunch of bitter old men.

Re:Mediaone.net

[IronChef]

I just installed my DSL modem from Covad/Speakeasy today. It rules. I had to sacrifice my stupid fast ATT@Home (Seattle) downloads though (400k/sec from a good server). I'm down to 150k/sec downloads now, which is certainly tolerable. My upstream has increased from 9-13k/sec to about 40k/sec, which is damn nice, because I run my small biz website from my home. Plus some hobby sites, and friends' sites, and a charity site... I have like 8 domains running out of here, and 2000 pageviews a day.

The best news is Speakeasy has a policy of allowing servers for residential customers. I asked some pointed questions about my needs (fixed IP, 100MB+ per day upstream from my web server, use of my own email and ftp servers) and they were FINE WITH ALL OF IT.

It is more expensive, yes, but it gives me a warm cozy feeling I never had from ATT, since I was running all these servers in violation of the TOS, and on a slow upstream connection.

Oh, the installation was totally painless too. Covad hooked the stuff up on their end, mailed me a modem, and it just WORKED. I couldn't believe it.

Of course, YMMV... but so far I am totally delighted with Speakeasy.

AT&T @Home, Salem OR - everything fine

[Micah]

I was never even blocked in the first place!

Not that it matters much. The only stuff I serve from home is personal experimentation type projects, and I just give people the URL including the numeric IP address anyway. So appending a :81 or :8080 to that address I give people would have been no big deal.

Re:Keylogging

[camusflage]

The other solution is for the OS/FS community to come up with a program which detects all off-site communication.

Uhh, I think we call this thing a firewall. At least, mine does this.

Running a server explicitly allowed

[Gregoyle]

Under the AT&T Roadrunner TOS, running a personal server is explicitly allowed. I believe it says something about not running a commercial one, but that makes perfect sense.

I agree, though, that they still have the right to turn off any inbound ports to protect their network integrity. I think it would be unreasonable for them to block ALL inbound traffic, because that blocks things that people expect to get from an online experience (like multiplayer gaming). But if there is activity on a certain port that is flummoxing things up, sure, block it.

Good point about http being a "nice" protocol, although I think you'll find that any protocol originating in the Unix world behaves similarly.

No^3! Why^3?

[Hard_Code]

"There is no a-priori model of the human. Humans have been evolving for thousands of years, and
our lifestyles and diets have a big part to play in that."

As far as I know, humans have been overwhelmingly genetically static for all of what we would consider "history". So, yeah, there is an a-priori model of the human. It's not like we're sprouting new limbs or migrating into the ocean or something.

But in any case, what is the rationale for "genetically engineering" humans? Is it so that we can live on fewer nutrients? Is it so that we can be more compassionate towards each other? No, it's merely to one-up a human-made technology. That's a ridiculous reason to entirely change the species (which is what the type of genetic engineering proposed by these two would entail). Should we just sacrifice our whole concept of humanity just to keep up with our own inventions? It's so aggravating...I just don't understand the point.

"Conscious manipulation of human intelligence is a scientific technology question and is morally neutral."

Ha! While I'm all for letting information free, and don't consider myself a luddite, it's just laughable that scientists don't have any moral responsibility.

"Sir, we invented a super-cool FOO technology"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a FOO-human interface so that we can maintain control over FOO technology"
"Ok, get right on it!"
"Sir, I just invented the super-cool FOO-HUMAN technology!"
"Oh, no, what are the implications of this for humanity!?"
"Sorry sir, I'm just a scientist and have no moral obligation to society, but I believe the solution is to fund me to invent a new BAR technology to combine with the FOO technology"
"What would be the point of that?"
"Sorry, I don't understand your question."
"Nevermind, you're the scientist and being morally neutral you must know what's right. Here's your lump of money, get to it! By the way, have you finished those nanobots which are supposed to sexually please us while removing tarter from our teeth and rendering crops immune to parasites?"