Slashback: Deception, Fusion, Membership

Slashback arrives tonight with updates on the lukewarm path to cold fusion, one more update on what Microsoft claims is "the way out" (really, this time), a hopeful look at Mandrake's Club, and more -- read on below for the details.

"Congratulations! You may already own goats.cx!" King Mongo writes: "Well, well. First Verisign sent mail to trick domain owners into switching registrars ( as described earlier on Slashdot ); today I received a similar letter from Verisign asking me to renew cruel-intention.com with them. The problem is, I never bought cruel-intention.com and I've never used Verisign as a registrar. But what's this? Whois says I've owned it since September 2001? And the Technical Contact is Verisign? And it's registered for 10 years? You can bet I'll be contacting my state AG, as well as the USPS Inspectors' office; what if the domain name was offensive, or actionable (it may even be a DMCA violation)? Verisign has taken it upon themselves to hijack my identity and expose me to litigation! At least they let me know!"

Port softly, and carry a big Club. joestar writes: "Just seen in Mandrake Linux news... It seems that the recent call for Mandrake Club subscriptions had a double effect: it was a financial success for MandrakeSoft ($390,000 since the Club was first created on November 28th, 2001), and at the same time it generated lots of questions about this new approach of doing business with Free-Software. In a really interesting message, MandrakeSoft's CEO Jacques Le Marois gives all details about the Club results and why and how they are currently inventing a new business model dedicated to Free-Software oriented companies, since the traditional business models fail for these companies. Actually I'm impressed."

OK, perhaps we only have the way sideways. gh0ul writes "news.com is featuring an article regarding Microsoft and Unisys' joint venture to steer companies/individuals away from Unix and branch in to the corporate servers based on Windows2000. With all the negative impact towards 'wehavethewayout.com', im supprised they kept it going.. guess that $28 million matters.."

We've patented that way to think, sorry. An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Symantec marketing droids are on the rampage again. After patenting their definition update technology, this time they patented heuristic virus scanning. When will this insanity end? :P"

I'll believe it when it's powering my air-car. abburdlen writes: "A month ago an article in the Journal Science appeared hyping the possibility of tabletop fusion. Quick summary: Sonoluminescence in heavy acetone ... temperature of collapsing bubbles reaching temperature hotter than the Sun ... evidence of fusion. There was some excitement. There were also many initial skeptics. Looks like the doubtful win again. From the APS, 'The possibility of a major discovery has been obscured by substandard experimental techniques.' Ouch."

One day we'll all have decent bandwidth, right? Pathway writes "I know this has been looked at by slashdot before, but here's a good update comparing the Zipp Fiber to the Terabyte Triangle in Spokane at thelocalplanet.com. In the article, they compare how one prodject is so successful, while the other is foundering. It's a good read."

Comments

Re:Mirrors.

[fmaxwell]

Hey, how about some dedicated FTP bandwidth for club members? I know the release of the PPC-
8.2 may well flatten the public servers.

I am sure that all 26 of you guys will be able to get your copies without too much of a problem.

PowerPCs make up all of about 5% of the market. What percentage of PowerPC users run something other than a Mac OS? About a tenth of a percent? Yeah, that's going to be a crushing demand. I hope that the Internet backbone providers can handle the traffic. Maybe Mandrake can add a few dozen OC-3 lines to handle the traffic if they release a DEC Alpha version of Mandrake 8.2.

Note to moderators: If you feel the need to mod this comment down, may I suggest Flamebait? "Troll" is really not right since I'm expressing my actual opinion, though in an offensive and confrontational manner. Also, since I am at 50 Karma points, I suggest first modding this up to +5 and then down to -1 to get the maximum effect (-6 karma points).

Re:Mirrors.

[saintlupus]

I am sure that all 26 of you guys will be able to get your copies without too much of a problem.

Hrm. Good point. I suppose Mandrake did well to stay with PPC rather than venturing into the high demand world of Linux on m68k or MIPS.

[/sarcasm]

--saint

Mandrake, Rude Hat and Freebies

[Glanz]

On the glitch count, Red Hat 7.2 comes embeded with every glitch known to mankind. They just slop together app and let the user solve their problems. The term "Dependency Hell" was invented by Red Hat users. Red Hat is a wannabe Micro$$$$$$oft of the Linux world. SuSE is not far behind with their "we don't like the "free software approach" attitude. Rude Hat is for suits...., and geeks of course.... but suits seem to be more attracted to it.Of course, RedHat does produce "mission Critical" stuff, but not for the desktop.
Mandrake, by comparison, has the desktop user in mind, listens to suggestions, and has never lost the debian-like spirit of what open source is all about.
As far as freebies go, talk all you want, but I have a smokin' Woody up and running that has more power and compiling ability than the most expensive RedHat Pro edition, and I didn't pay a cent, in money that is. A little time, a little development from time to time is my currency. Mandrake isn't far behind. It has got to be the best RPM distro around.