Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Blender, Pictures, Servitude
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 The most interesting change adds one more step to the solution, suggesting that the DMCA must be repealed.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."
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?
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.
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)
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!
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/
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.
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:
The site is mirrored at
www.pleabargainingisthewayout.com
and
www.whe
Speaking of sleepytime, Bill has asked me to say
"Will the last person to leave wecantfindthewayout.com please shut off the lights?"
Thank You.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
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).
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.
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