Slashback: Blender, Pictures, Servitude

Tonight, the updates and addenda continue apace, with more on the Anti-Unix Unix server, the possible future of Blender, Steve Mann's treatment at the hands of Air Canada, and an interesting consequence of Linux's popularity in Russia. Read below to enjoy.

Is your Blender still under warranty? Myriad writes: "NaN, the publishers of the free cross-platform 3D modeling and rendering package Blender, may not be as dead as was previously reported here on Slashdot. While Blender remains unavailable for download, some of the websites functionality has returned along with the notice "NaN is currently undergoing a re-organization of the company...and are working to restore wider operations as soon as possible." Hopefully they will manage to bring back Blender!"

"I only read Computerra for the pictures." Natalie Shahova writes: "As the translator of Just for Fun, I had to contact Linus by email in order to clarify some issues. This way we got virtually acquainted, and Linus agreed to give me an interview. Its Russian version was published in Computerra on March 26, but the original is - as you might guess - in English. As far as I know, Linus Torvalds has never given an interview to a Russian journalist before. Knowing from Just for Fun that Linus is tired of questions about Linux and open source, I chose some other subjects that interest me as a professional translator: languages, emigration, fiction, etc." A fun interview, with some amusing pictures, too (only in the Russian version). Thanks, Natalie!

Wasn't Windows NT 'More UNIX than UNIX'? thelizman writes: "C|Net is reporting that the joint Microsoft and Unisys website attacking Unix has been experiencing problems all day. Now, normally I would venture an evil laugh, but in light of yesterdays revelation here on /. about the site being FreeBSD powered, could this merely reinforce Microsoft's point? Not likely, since it was quickly switched over to IIS running on Windows 2000, and that's when the problem seems to have started."

What time is it when an elephant dances on your computer? Tom Veil writes: "Minor editorial changes have been made on the article "When Elephants Dance" (referenced earlier by Slashdot). The most interesting change adds one more step to the solution, suggesting that the DMCA must be repealed. A comment is also made as to how fair use is already protected, and thus 'there is no need for additional action in this area.'"

And thanks for flying Air Canada -- Have a nice day. steveha writes: "Linux Journal has more on cyborg Steve Mann's troubles with Air Canada. Over $100,000 in equipment damage, and possible... brain damage?!? Not good."

Comments

Anti-Unix site running IIS now?

[Zen Mastuh]

Can we be really sure that they are really running IIS on Win* now? They could be a bunch of 31337 h4x0rz running IIS over Wine. I bet Bill would be upset if he found out that was what was really going on...

Re:Anti-Unix site running IIS now?

[thrillbert]

Can we be really sure that they are really running IIS on Win* now?

It's down.. what more proof do you need that it truly is an IIS server on Win?

Re:Anti-Unix site running IIS now?

[NanoGator]

"It's down.. what more proof do you need that it truly is an IIS server on Win?"

No no, if it's down, it could simply be Slashdot affecting it. For proof that it's IIS, go to that site again and see if it tries to send you a virus.

Re:Anti-Unix site running IIS now?

[beebware]

Hmm...I can't do finger printing at the moment, but here's the results of a port scan:
www.wehavethewayout.com=130.94.214.143
Open ports: 21 (FTP Control:Microsoft FTP Service version 5.0), 25 (SMTP: Relay not authorized error), 80 (WWW: Microsoft IIS5.0/403 Access Forbidden), 110 (POP3), 389 (LDAP), 443 (HTTPS), 1433 (Microsoft SQL Server), 1755 (MS-Streaming), 1801 (Microsoft Message Queue), 2103 (Zephyr serv-hm connection), 2105 (MiniPay) AND (to round off all the nice open ports): 5900 (VNC!!!: no Terminal Services eh Microsoft?).
Talk about leaving the doors unlocked... Now if I could be bothered trying standard passwords we can see if they actually bothered closing the doors as well!
It's mainly Unisys to blame (according to the DNS records), but that is becoming a laugh a minute anyway!

not quite

[vectus]

the site still allows you to download the /bin/ls program, which indicates it is running *nix or bsd (on an improperly configured server).

Someone pointed this out in a previous discussion on the matter.

Re:not quite

[Carlos Laviola]

I believe it is a decoy. Running nmap, you'll get this:

Host www.wehavethewayout.com (130.94.214.143) appears to be up ... good.
Initiating SYN Stealth Scan against www.wehavethewayout.com (130.94.214.143)
(...)
Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release, MS Windows2000 Professional RC1/W2K Advance Server Beta3, Windows Millenium Edition v4.90.3000</pre>

Re:not quite

[naasking]

They probably just copied the whole httpd directory to the new machine without changing anything. If the original httpd on freebsd chroot'd, /bin/ls would have been there. That way they're running IIS on Win*, but they still have /bin/ls, et al. because they didn't bother to get rid of the directory contents that IIS didn't need.

Re:not quite

[GoRK]

Maybe they're packet filtering or proxying through a Windows machine "Routing and Remote Access" or Microsoft Proxy service, thus allowing the site to remain hosted on the FreeBSD. All the problems that are occuring could be the result of this

Re:not quite

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

It is likely a copy or hard-link of the system /bin/ls in the chroot environment in which ftpd runs. It needs that copy/hard-link to provide directory listings since it cannot access anything outside the chroot environment (this is done for security).

The /bin you see then isn't /bin on the system it is /path_to_ftpd_chroot_directory/bin

wehavethewayout.com down?

[Mr. Sketch]

When I click on the link, I get:
Directory Listing Denied
This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.
?!?!?!?!
I guess they must have hired some MCSEM's (Microsoft Certified System Engineer Monkeys) to set up their site.

I also tried /index.htm,html,asp and nothing worked.

Should have stuck with the leaders, I guess, instead of following Microsoft.

Cyborg?

[jhaberman]

I'm confused. Now, what the airline did to this guy sounds awful. Pretty much the worst nightmare for anyone. However, I guess I just don't understand his situation if his brain can be damaged by rebooting this system he's attached to. Truly bizzare. Is he a "cyborg" for medical reasons? Is he like that kook in the UK who sees himself as half machine?

What a strange and wonderful and horrible time we live in...

Re:Cyborg?

[SlightlyMadman]

Because he's been living with these enhancements for so long, they've become a neccesary part of him for functioning normally. He's basically handicapped without them.

As far as brain damage is concerned, maybe that has to do with the improper handling of the equipment while it was hooked up to him. It says he was bleeding from where they ripped electrodes from his skin. If they were that careless, they could easily have done something that would give him an electrical shock or something somewhere sensitive to that sort of thing.

The airlines have really gone too far. The last time I tried to board a plane, there was a man putting his hands down my pants and up my shirt TOUCHING CERTAIN SENTSITIVE AREAS OF MY BODY. I did nothing to provoke this (in fact, I had already passed through a security checkpoint a few minutes earlier where I was frisked), other than having steel toed boots that set off the metal detector.

It's one thing to increase security, but most of the things they're hassling people about really make no sense. What about Dr. Mann's gear gave any sort of indication that it could have been a bomb? I think they're just harassing people so it looks to everyone else like they're doing a good job.

Re:Cyborg?

[Sloppy]

I have become extremely accustomed to my sense of sight. Am I brain-damaged in the dark? Would I be brain-damage if I were permanently blinded?

I really sympathize for the guy (there was no reason for the airline to do what they did) but as an ignorant outsider, I find the whole brain damage thing to be implausible.

Re:Cyborg?

[tntt]

Steve Mann could see perfectly well with no glasses of any kind when I met him. Sounds like a stunt to promote his book. Perhaps he should lean to unplug his toys for a while and learn to enjoy not being on a electronic leash.

Just because he is a mad visionary doesn't mean we need to tolerate his stupidity. He can't be the one deciding when he should or should not be following the rules the rest of us have to follow. He basically chopped up a laptop in such a way as to make it wearable. If the pieces are hiding in various parts of his clothing then that is his problem not that of the security staff. In fact his home made jury-rigged devices are likely far more dangerous in terms of radio interference than a laptop that follows standards.

His mind may operate at a visionary level but that doesn't excuse the fact that he is lying about being handicapped and that he knew perfectly well that his gear should be treated as a laptop. Guess he wants to re-define society in his image. Fine line between being a visionary and being insane.

What? I will not remove my 'Wearable Gun' it is attached to my heart monitoring device! I'm handicapped, as I suffer from a fear complex. I need the cold blue steel against my chest in order to feel comfortable and have self-esteem.

Re:Cyborg?

[Artifex]

In fact his home made jury-rigged devices are likely far more dangerous in terms of radio interference than a laptop that follows standards.

This is a good point. And even conforming laptops are supposed to remain off during portions of the flight. I wonder if Mr. Mann follows regulations then, and what kind of "disorientation" he gets, then? Or does he blithely put all of his fellow passengers at potential risk by not following FCC regulations?

Re:Cyborg?

[Grab]

But Mann's electronics have no medical purpose. Furthermore, many witnesses who've worked with Mann over the last few years say that he doesn't wear his gadgets all the time (even for serious stuff like teaching), so he's perfectly capable of operating normally without them. This is not the case for Hawking.

Grab.

Brain Damage

[meggito]

It doesn't seem as though his 'brain damage' was exactly what we think of. The first thing that pops into my head is ratardation and the lack of ability to think. It seems, however, that the abilities were more related to his brain being able to control his body. For example, if you damaged part of your brain you would no longer be able to see, or move your arm, or feel your pinky toe. It appears that the brain damage was more realted to his ability to interact with his devices, most specifically the vision items, then his ability to formulate thought.

Either way, AirCanada really fucked this guy over. What they did was simply wrong, and they deserve what they get, and then some. This is some fucked up shit, and though the part about the knives is fairly irrelevant, it does throw their safety procedure excuse out the window.

Re:Brain Damage

[kwishot]

Actually, since he has worked with this equipment for 20+ years, his actual train of thought might be screwed up. I remember something from when the original story was posted that talked about how, without his vision equipment, he was disillusioned and had a hard time using his natural senses.
His dependency on the equipment makes him a true cyborg, I suppose..
-kwishot

Re:Brain Damage

[jheinen]

"I recall experiments from many years ago where the people were wearing glases that flipped everything upside down. At some point the people completely adjusted."

Just so. There have been a number of experiments that have shown the human body is remarkably adept at adjusting to changes in primary sensory input. The flipped vision thing you metioned is just one of them. Subjects wearing glasses with prisms that flip everything upside down eventually begin to see everything as normal. Take them off and the recovery period is even quicker. Same with auditory senses. Expose people to a constant background noise and people eventually filter it out until, for them, it's no longer there.

I am highly skeptical of Dr. Mann's claims in this case. Certainly he may have been a little disoriented without his gear, but it shouldn't be anything that he wouldn't recover from in a few hours at most. As for the "implants," I think that's pure bull. My understanding was he had some electrodes taped to his skin and he suffered some skin damage when the tape was removed. Certainly nothing like the image of invasive torture the original article conjures up. Of course the airlines shouldn't have forcibly removed anything from his person (and were probably committing assault in doing so), but nothing was ripped out of his body.

Also, if he wears this stuff constantly, I have to ask why the latest picture from his continuously updated "eyecam" is dated August 14, 2001?

He may be suffering from depression at the thought of having his equipment damaged (I can only imagine the state I'd be in if someone broke into my house and trashed all of my computers), and may even be having symptoms of withdrawl, assuming his attachment to his equipment was something like an addiction. However that's a pathological condition that could be argued is not very healthy in the first place.

I also have to question the quoted figure of >$100,000 in damage. I simply can't believe he was wearing half a million dollars worth of equipment. In fact I strongly doubt you would have to pay more than a few grand to put together an identical system. If you look through his site, all the documentation seems to indicate that his sytems are made out of easily available off the shelf components. I see nothing referencing any piece of exotic or outrageously expensive equipment.

Finally, let's not forget that Dr. Mann is the same guy who came up with the "shooting Back" project wherein people take cameras into places that have video surveillance and "shoot back" by filming the filmers. Principles notwithstanding, this is designed from the outset to elicit confrontational situations.

So ultimately I'd have to chalk this up as a fine publicity stunt that perhaps went a little too far.

Two things:

[teamhasnoi]

First:

Microsoft putting up an Anti-Unix site is like going to Sturgis on your Vespa Scooter, poking a Hell's Angel in the chest, and saying, "Hey, Fatass! My Vespa totally kicks ass over your American-Made pile of crap."

Second:

Exactly how much crap did Steve Mann have embedded in him? Come on, did he have a wire going into the center of his brain, or what? I'm certainly not a fan of 'go to the airport - forfeit your rights', but last time I checked his site (before Air Canaduh), he just had some VR gear and some wireless network thing. Not a pacemaker or anything. (Idea: send Dick Cheney to Canada via Air Canada)

TCP Fingerprint/Port Scan Results

[Mr. Sketch]

As you wish: (Modified for Lameness)

root:~$ nmap -O -P0 wehavethewayout.com

Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA30 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on www.wehavethewayout.com (130.94.214.143):
(The 1158 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: filtered or closed)
Port State Service
21/tcp open ftp
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
110/tcp open pop-3
443/tcp open https
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
2105/tcp open eklogin
3306/tcp open mysql
5900/tcp open vnc

Remote OS guesses: FreeBSD 2.2.1 - 4.1, Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release

Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 155 seconds
root:~$

Let me get this straight...

[zurab]

1. Unisys and MS start a $25+ mil PR campaign against Unix and set up a web site as a part of this wehavethewayout.com.

2. The website is running on Apache and FreeBSD and the campaign receives criticism.

3. Next day they move the hosting of the above to MS' domain and the server's IP address changes and software seems to be Win2k/IIS 5.

4. In no time after this move, the Win2k server gets cracked and started serving an empty HTML page and then getting 403 errors, campaign gets more bad PR.


Just a curious question. How in the hell are they spending this $25+ mil that has so far not gotten any positive coverage and only generated bad PR? Funny that the FreeBSD site seems to be still up and running at http://198.63.57.204/

Brain Damage

[Alien54]

Since the Brain is self rewiring, etc. I actually doubt physical brain damage.

But I can believe disorientation. Similar to losing hearing or some other input channel.

I recall experiments from many years ago where the people were wearing glases that flipped everything upside down. At some point the people completely adjusted.

in a similar fashion, space shuttle jockeys take about two weeks to get used to weightlessness, especially for tasks like throwing balls, etc. both throwing and catching are pretty hard wired.

Loss of an electronic input should not be any more damaging than any of these things.

Unless he is counting electronics as part of his brain.

Which I disagree with.

Now the reality check might be an issue as far dealing with non-electronic reality goes.

That poor webserver

[carpe_noctem]

Regardless of what wehavethewayout.com is running, that webserver has probably had a hell of a day. Besides being slashdotted, I would speculate that hundreds of curious slashdotters have portscanned, banner-scanned, and run all sorts of scripts against this server. No wonder it's offline right now. :)

the russian "translation" is very different!

[dunkelfalke]

i don't know how nataliya translated the text but sometime linus' sentences are given a different meaning. the best example is imho the last sentence.

the english one:
I don't think I have any special messages at all. I think the only "message" in my book was the tongue-in-cheek "Party on, Dude!"

and here is the russian one:
I definitely don't want to give a message to anybody. The most important thing in my book is its cool ending: "Let's rock, pal?"

this is just one of many examples.
A small info: i am a native russian speaker although i live in germany since 1993.

Re:the russian "translation" is very different!

[glwtta]

The question which you quote the response to is literally translated as "do you have something to say to your russian readers" which is a common enough expression in interviews, akin to the english "Do you have something to add?" when the interviewer gives the interviewee a chance to speak about something that's not necessarily on the "agenda"

Of course it's presented to Linus as this "special message" which he ovbiously takes as "messages" in his book. But then the russian translation of his response, can once again be taken (especially in view of the question) simply as "I don't want to say anything to anyone at all" which I found rather odd when I read it.

I am curious though, why you translated "Saegraem, paren'?" as "Let's rock, pal?" It's an idiom that literally means "Shall we play, you man?" (for lack of a better word), but I'd say that it has the same general meaning as "Party on, dude"

But then again, I haven't lived in a russian speaking country for some time, either; and yeah the translation is not exactly stellar.

Re:the russian "translation" is very different!

[achurch]

The important question is whether the Russian text imparts the same meaning and nuances to a native Russian reader as the English text does to an English reader--not whether the words happen to match up. I don't know any Russian, so I can't speak for this particular case, but I do speak fluent Japanese, and I have seen far too many "translations" that rely too heavily on dictionaries and end up missing critical points because of it. (Those who have played console games, particularly in the 8/16-bit era, will probably remember the frequency of unnatural English text in those games; one good example is "it's dangerous", which is a literal--and incorrect--translation of the Japanese word used to mean "look out!".) The better translation is not the one with the most word-for-word matches, but the one that causes readers in both languages to think the same thing. And with all due respect, I think it's difficult to judge that without a fluent knowledge of both languages involved.

It's also worth noting that it simply isn't possible to express some concepts in some languages, because the culture/society the language is used in simply doesn't have the concept in the first place. For example, Japanese has numerous words for expressing interpersonal relationships (such as nearly a dozen first-person singular pronouns, each with a different connotation); while you can approximate the meaning of those in English by playing games with sentence structure and the like, you can't get exactly the same nuance because English simply doesn't use the same concept set as Japanese does. So there will always be some inaccuracies in any translation, especially with colloquialisms like "party on, dude!"; the object is to keep them as few and as small as possible--again. in terms of the effect on the reader.

Of course, translating a Russian translation back into English is going to result in even more inaccuracies, like converting an MP3 file to Ogg Vorbis and then back to MP3 again; just because the final result sounds bad doesn't necessarily mean that the original or intermediate result are also bad.

Re:Who wants to bet Microsoft just changed the hea

[Wakko Warner]

Yes, because Microsoft and Unisys can't afford to buy two servers.

- A.P.

"Brain Damage" is melodramatic, but effect real

[Seth Finkelstein]

Calling it "brain damage" is not really accurate, but the effect is real. Think of what happened in this way:

Imagine you wear special, expensive, contact lens. You wear them all day, every day, for a long time. Then an airline security guard decides the contact lens might be the next thing in terms of smuggled terrorist weapons (after all, given a bomb hidden in shoes, and plastic explosives, well, better safe than sorry). So security rips the contact lenses out of your eyes (scratching your corneas in doing so), and ruins your lens with their grubby fingers in the process of examining them.

Suddenly, you're back to pre-contact lens vision, with some "damage" (not dramatic in the overall scale of things, but still painful) to your eyes.

Now imagine you can't get easily get new contact lenses, or even replacement glasses, because they're specially-made.

Stripped of the cyborgness, this is the sort of experience we're talking about. It's clear it's not a pleasant one.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

"Brain damage" is Prof. Mann playing the media.

[Christopher Thomas]

See the previous article re. Prof. Mann for testimony from myself and other students who have worked with him.

As far as any of us have been able to tell, he has absolutely no medical requirement for any of his equipment, or any actual physical or psychological dependence on his equipment. He has been observed working fine without it on several occasions.

This is a publicity stunt, plain and simple. Prof. Mann has an agenda to push and is pushing it as hard as he can.

He should THANK them for the brain damage

[splorf]

if it's real, though I think it's bullshit.

The only way he could be damaged is if his VR stuff caused some kind of permanent change to his brain by replacing part of its normal function, sort of like (imagine) if you lived in a weightless environment for long enough, you might lose your ability to walk in normal gravity. That change of course would be a very slow, gradual process that came from wearing the electronics for years.

The electronics are bound to fail sooner or later. If they were really causing some physical change in him, then if they ran for a few more years before failing, the change would have progressed that much further and the damage would have been worse. So if removing the stuff caused damage, it's good that he found out about it now while the effects aren't as bad.

But I agree with the Linuxjournal comment from the guy claiming to be a doctor, saying Mann is probably just looking for an excuse to sue. If that VR removal really caused brain damage, two things should happen:

1. Medical researchers should be swarming all over Mann, examining him to figure out exactly what happened.
2. The VR stuff should be regulated by the FDA, installed only under medical supervision, and nobody should be allowed to wear it for such extended periods.

Re:We have the way out, but we're not telling..

[TandyMasterControl]

There's been a mixup. You're supposed to point your browser to www.wecantfindthewayout.com

The site is mirrored at
www.pleabargainingisthewayout.com
and
www.when weshutoureyestheworldvanishes.com

Speaking of sleepytime, Bill has asked me to say
"Will the last person to leave wecantfindthewayout.com please shut off the lights?"

Thank You.

He was wearing some pretty odd gear.

[Christopher Thomas]

Why should this guy have to go through any trouble at all? He wasn't wearing anything that could be construed as a bomb or a weapon of any kind.

Unless he's changed it very recently, his gear looks like a fanny pack filled with gutted computer parts, with misc. cables going out to various peripherals, many with visible PCBs and so forth.

He may have cleaned it up a bit, but take this and add a reasonable-sized battery, and you have a rig that looks a lot like your "ACME Personal Bomb" from any action movie from the past decade or two.

Add to this the fact that Prof. Mann is a bit on the eccentric side and that he would very likely have gotten pushy with the guards when they challenged him (trust me on this one), and what you have is a recipe for a really bad day (and a really golden publicity opportunity, which was probably the plan).

Air Canada Responds

[sharkey]

A spokesman for Air Canada issued a statement concerning Steve Mann's latest claims, "Take off, eh? We didn't cause no brain damage! He was brain damaged before, eh? Why else would he got on our plane to start with? Now, let's go get a beer and a jelly donut, eh?"

Re:Dr. Mann, what's up with that?

[_Shad0w_]

He's been doing this for 20 years, it's his lifes research, he's a professor now, he's been interestesd in this field since he was a student.

The electrodes as far as I can tell are implanted under the skin, which means to remove them you would have to break them out of the skin, they're not designed to be removed except under clinical conditions I suspect...security gaurds randomly grabbing things is hardly clinical.

Personaly anyone who believe in their research enough to get this involved with it deserves one hell of a lot of respect, this is the very definition of putting your money where your mouth is.

If your body constantly uses something then it begins to expect it to be there, if you suddenly rip it all out you will seriously disorientate the body and it will not thankyou for it...think of it akin to someone who looses their sight or hearing during adulthood - it's seriously disorientating to them because it's always been there and they don't know how to function without it.

The whole fiasco sounds like someone on a powertrip to me...which went to far but by then they couldn't back down.

Steve Mann...

[cr0sh]

I can understand how removal of Mann's equipment would cause him something of a form of "brain damage". What we all tend to forget is how long Mann has been doing this sort of thing - his first rig (IIRC) was a TV attached to an Apple IIe back in the 80's!!!

His latest rigs are much more compact - others here have noted the research done using special glasses that flipped the image - in those researches the volunteers got used to it, but when they were taken away, they were "disoriented" again (if I have it right, the brain starts to reinterpret everything normally, but take away the special glasses, and the user sees things wrong, until the brain readjusts - someone posted that some of the volunteers NEVER readjusted, which is scary).

Furthermore, you have to realise that Mann's devices were a form of brain/memory augmentation - he literally had a system where he could look at locations/faces and "tag" them with reminders, so that he didn't have to remember names/places/items - he could just look at them again, and if he had tagged them before, the tag would appear - in true augmented reality "magic". Anything from names to reminders about events ("milk on sale", etc).

So, without the system, one could effectively say he had lost a portion of his memory (and he has been doing this so long, almost two decades now, that one could say his augmentation is normal for him - he seems to be truely a walking experiment). While I am sure some of his antics are publicity stunt type material, I don't really think this was the case here. It would be more akin to someone who had chopped their arm off intentionally to use a "bionic" replacement (custom designed, of course), but had it taken away because it could be a "bomb"...

As far as the comment about Mann's system being "wires and pc boards" and looking like it could be a bomb - the last version I remember Mann working on (and supposedly had a prototype of) was contained in the "lining" of a large suit sport coat, with the boards spread out among the coat's inner surface, maybe a bit of kit in a fanny pack (batteries likely), and a very small vision/camera system (can't remember the company that was developing it, but it looked like an ordinary set of glasses, with a very small prism mounted on one lens, with the projection system mounted on the earpiece of the frame projecting in from the side) - the whole thing was mostly "invisible". I suppose the camera and such made for a slightly more visible system, but I don't think (if this was the system he was wearing at the time) that it would be a "shocking" looking system. Of course, I could be wrong, and he might have been testing out something more recent...

I talked with Unisys folk today

[Multics]

As luck would have it, Unisys was already scheduled to come talk today. "Our senior management has decided that we'll be an all-Microsoft company."

So they're migrating all their mainframe customers to Win2k running on their very expensive up-to-32-way Wintel 'mainframe' (caugh).

me: So there are no plans for Linux then?
them: No. We don't think it scales and besides Unix is proprietary.
me: www.osdl.org has it on a 16cpu (4x4) NUMA and it appears to scale just fine.
them: We don't know. Nearly everyone we talk to asks us what our Linux plan is and we just tell them "senior management has decided we'll run Windows."

So I finished with the FreeBSD server stuff and they went 'oh yeah, we got some internal mail on that stuff'.

Unisys is just being their normal closed, proprietary self. They make zillions doing this by being kissy-face with governments all over. I hope this round bites them squarely since Windows does not make an enterprise O/S no matter how much wishful thinking is done on Bill's or Unisys's part.

-- Multics

wehavethewayout.com anon FTP open...

[shaka]

Both the DOS box (www.wehavethewayout.com) and the FreeBSD box (198.63.57.204) have anonymous FTP open. Both of them contains a file in the root directory, called 10k.html.
Both of these files are filled with the string "10k" repeated hundreds of times, ended with a </BODY> tag - the size is exactly 10000 bytes.
Did they put them there just to make /. readers wonder why, or what the heck is this!?