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

Mirrors.

[saintlupus]

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.

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.

--saint

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.

[bcrowell]

Yeah, you're right -- they're definitely going to need to offer members something real for their money in order to reach the membership numbers they're talking about. Right now, basically all you get is the ability to download some closed-source software, which is kinda lame -- people don't run Linux in order to run closed source. I bought one of Mandrake's boxed distributions, and am using it now, but I'm not even tempted to join the club based on what they're offering now.

I also don't understand how they can claim 3 million users worldwide. Where would numbers that high come from? They'd have to be desktop users, since most users are desktop users. Let's say there are a billion computer users worldwide, and 0.5% of them (according to a recent Slashdot story) use Linux. That makes 5 million desktop Linux users worldwide. How can 3 million of them be using Mandrake? Is Mandrake really more popular on the desktop than every other Linux distro put together?? I suspect they're double-counting people. After all, it's notoriously difficult for web sites to get accurate counts of unique visitors.

Re:Mirrors.

[BlueLines]

when i first read this, i though this was a new "BSD is Dying" troll. heh.

-BlueLines

Re:Mirrors.

[agallagh42]

...and what kind of sites do you manage? Geek related, or sites of interest to the general public? I'm sure it would make a hell of a difference in the stats.

"We have the way out"

[andres32a]

Both Microsoft and Unisys have declined to comment on the cause of the outage. It is unknown whether there was a technical problem at the hosting site or whether the site was merely bombarded with requests from IT managers clamoring for copies of the free papers on the site.

Yeah sure... millions of slashdotters thought that they could actually find a way out from Micro$oft!!!!!

Re:"We have the way out"

[darien]

Blaming everything on Sun again. :)

cool! (oh wait)

[phrontist]

Desktop Fusion would be incredible but I doubt this will work. I mean if it reaces temps hotter then the sun how can I keep it on my desk?

Re:cool! (oh wait)

[NanoGator]

Obviously you're not an AMD owner...

Re:cool! (oh wait)

[MegaGremlin]

Here's a vastly oversimplified reason you could probably keep it on your desk:

If you have enough energy to raise one molecule of acetone by 1,000,000 centigrade degrees, you also only have enough energy to raise 1,000,000 molecules of acetone by 1 centigrade degree.

That one molecule would be spectacularly hot, but the amount of energy in relation to the mass of surrounding fluid (assuming a couple of liters of fluid) is fairly low. The problem would be if you get the rate of fusion too high, and raise the whole mass 1,000,000 centigrade degrees.

Re:cool! (oh wait)

[tzanger]

Or a PIII laptop owner. My Compaq Evo will sear skin if you don't get some good ventilation on it. I guess a burned thigh is one way to get me to stop playing EverQuest.

I'm typing on a Compaq Evo N160 right now. It actually keeps a pretty decent (warm) temperature on my lap. No searage here. (P3/1G, 256M, 14.1 TFT, 20G + DVD)

Re:cool! (oh wait)

[jamesc]

Desktop Fusion would be incredible but I doubt this will work. I mean if it reaces temps hotter then the sun how can I keep it on my desk?

Others have addressed your confusion between temperature and actual energy content, but there's one thing more: The surface of the sun is not hot enough to cause nuclear fusion. They need to get near the temperature of the Sun's core to have a chance of fusion.

Actually, it's worse than that. To get fusion you have three factors involved: temperature, time, and pressure. All three multiplied together form a fusion quality number:

temperature * time * pressure * constant

In the Sun's core all three are enormous. In the experimental reactors, the time is short (milliseconds vs. millenia) and the pressure is much less (whatever they can manage with magnetic fields and/or inertia vs. the weight of an entire star). As a result, the temperature has to be even higher than that in the Sun's core.

They can offset this by using isotopes that are easier to fuse (deuterium and tritium), but that only helps so much.

Goats.cx?

[toupsie]

"Congratulations! You may already own goats.cx!"

I would rather own goatse.cx instead. Imagine the number of hits from losers you would get!

Re:Goats.cx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bastard, I just clicked on your link, YYAARRRRKKKKK. >:( >:( >:(

Re:Goats.cx?

[quantaman]

Just think of all the poor /. newbies who just clicked on your highly rated link to see what it was! I never saw I would see a goatse.cx higher than -1.

Re:Goats.cx?

[s20451]

They gotta learn somehow. Come to think of it, maybe we should have some elaborate initiation ritual for newbies ... where they have to endure the trials of goatse.cx and JonKatz before earning their Slashdot membership.

Re:Goats.cx?

[Anonymous Coward]

where they have to endure the trials of goatse.cx and JonKatz before earning their Slashdot membership

You say that as if they're two different things... :P

Check out this bullshit

[1010011010]

Both Microsoft and Unisys have declined to comment on the cause of the outage. It is unknown whether there was a technical problem at the hosting site or whether the site was merely bombarded with requests from IT managers clamoring for copies of the free papers on the site.

Oh yeah! Spin, baby! spin!

Re:Check out this bullshit

[dimator]

or whether the site was merely bombarded with requests from IT managers clamoring for copies of the free papers on the site.

"We have the way out! (except when you get a whole mess o' hits, then we can't find the way.)"

Re:Check out this bullshit

[Toddarooski]

This ain't exactly Microsoft-spin. (I think in this case they were smart enough to keep a low profile.) Note that Microsoft and Unisys refused to comment -- the sentence you're quoting was written by the news.com reporter, and not some Microsoft PR dude.

I think instead, it's a subtle bit of sarcasm on Mr. Kanellos' part. Go back and read it again.

--

Re:Check out this bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe Verisign hijacked wehavethewayout.com and gave it to King Mongo for a few days.

"If I were King Mongo for just one day..."

Re:Check out this bullshit

[alexburke]

This amount of spin can only be generated by a buttered cat drive, thereby proving the existence of this highly secretive technology!

Re:Check out this bullshit

[cpeterso]

Both Microsoft and Unisys have declined to comment on the cause of the outage. It is unknown whether there was a technical problem at the hosting site or whether the site was merely bombarded with requests from IT managers clamoring for copies of the free papers on the site.

Not to be a wet blanket, but that sentence is obviously the article author's tongue-in-cheek comment. If Microsoft and Unisys declined to comment, then how could they say anything about clamoring IT managers?

Re:Check out this bullshit

[1010011010]

I like that theory, but I think a lot of management types are sarcasm-deaf.

Re:Check out this bullshit

[elfkicker]

The best part is, that after the mad dash to change from a BSD/Apache setup over to IIS is that they are still running a MySQL backend.

This is about as embarrassing as the time I accidentally mixed up my boss's 12 year-old son's site with shemalesonline.com

Re:Check out this bullshit

[Tony-A]

Notice the light coming from the window.
Come out of the light (of Unix) and into the darkness (of Microsoft Windows).

Re:Check out this bullshit

[MsGeek]

the sentence you're quoting was written by the news.com reporter, and not some Microsoft PR dude.

And news.com reporters *AREN'T* Microsoft PR flacks?

Very Interesting Read on Cold Fusion

[BigBlockMopar]

Professor David Goodstein of Caltech has a very interesting paper on the physics of cold fusion and the history of the initial "discovery". He doesn't predict Mr. Fusion reactors strapped to the backs of our DeLoreans anytime soon.

Re:Very Interesting Read on Cold Fusion

[axlrosen]

Another good overview, a little more recent, from Scientific American.

Maze

[phrontist]

wehavethewayout.com has that image with the window at the end of a maze, and it leads off to a drop. very good analogy :-) ---------- Phrontist=Geek

Re:Maze

[Tony-A]

The light is coming from the maze side of the window.
They have the way out of the light into the dark.

Support alternate roots

[davidu]

There is a way to begin to move away from Verisign
OpenNIC :: http://www.opennic.unrated.net/

The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries.

Membership in the OpenNIC is open to every user of the Internet. All decisions are made either by a democratically elected administrator or through a direct ballot of the interested members and all decisions, regardless of how they are made, within OpenNIC are appealable to a vote of the general membership.

Using their root zone will have NO adverse effects on your current websurfing but it will allow you to view alternative roots which have been democratically decided upon.

Check it out!

--davidu

Re:Support alternate roots

[JLester]

The problem though is that if I want everyone to access my OpenNIC site, their ISPs must also add the OpenNIC root servers. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Jason

Re:Support alternate roots

[Pathwalker]

Using their root zone will have NO adverse effects on your current websurfing but it will allow you to view alternative roots which have been democratically decided upon.

Technically, I think that this is not quite right. I believe that OpenNic does not support the icann .biz zone.
Personally, I would have a hard time finding a way to care less than I already do about anything under .biz, so I use OpenNIC as my DNS root.

Re:Support alternate roots

[krogoth]

Yes, I tried that once but they make it extremely hard for anyone who's not using OpenNIC to contact them, so I wasn't able to get it working. I might try again someday.

Re:Support alternate roots

[SmittyTheBold]

Maybe wehavethewayout.biz can be registered to a "our product can get you away from ICANN" site. =)

I'm looking for "the way out"

[Pinball Wizard]

so I'm writing Perl functions to serve as drop-in replacements for people porting asp applications to perl. (I'm porting an application now, unfortunately Chilisoft asp couldn't handle the traffic this site gets).

So far I've gotten Trim, InStr, InStrRev, Left, Right, and a few others done. Having these functions really make translating the code a lot easier.

I wonder, is this too trivial to post on sourceforge? I'd love to share.

Re:I'm looking for "the way out"

[Daniel Dvorkin]

No, it's not too trivial. Sounds like a great idea to me. Actually, I could see the use of a number of codebases to help people escape from ASP: one for Perl, one for PHP, one for JSP, etc. ...

Re:I'm looking for "the way out"

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple years ago, I did a project in JScript/ASP. I ended up creating a library of VBS-like string functions (well, actually String and Date methods .left() .trim() .formatDate() etc). Seemed to help some of the greener guys we had, even though the JS stuff is 'superior' (regexp based).

Re:I'm looking for "the way out"

[Negadecimal]

so I'm writing Perl functions to serve as drop-in replacements for people porting asp applications to perl.

Ummmm... you can cover a lot of ground if you just install Apache::ASP.

Re:I'm looking for "the way out"

[Negadecimal]

which still would have to be ported as Apache::ASP still requires you to use perl

And I'll admit that Apache::ASP has performed very poorly for me. A great idea, but probably not implemented too cleanly.

Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[Jelloman]

domainnamebuyersguide.com was mentioned here about a year ago, but it's since been bought by a registrar (which is why I didn't make it a link).

Since there are so many ill-behaved registrars out there (starting with the root of all DNS evil, Verisign), I would really like to see some unbiased reviews of some of them. But Googling around, I'm having a hard time finding anything.

I'm mostly looking for a registrar whose customer agreement does not state somewhere in subparagraph J that they actually own my domain and can take it away anytime they feel like it for no good reason. I know the courts have said that they have that right anyway, at least in the US, but I'd at least prefer that they not shove it in my face.

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[Mr_Person]

Gandi has worked great for me. Only 12 euros per year (about $10) and their terms of service are very good (you actually own the domain). They also do website and e-mail redirection for free.

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[Azog]

Well, back before domainnamebuyersguide was bought out, I used it to pick Domain Discover

Their prices have gone up a little since I originally registered arnor.net and my other site, but their domain registration agreement is still readable, clearly states that you own the domain, and they can only take it away according to ICANN policies or non-payment. The web site makes it easy to modify the configuration for your domains. The free features like email and web site forwarding are really useful. If I register more domains, I'll keep going there.

And I should also mention Hosting-Network, Inc where I've got my site. I'm on the $60/year plan, they don't mess with your site, server is BSD/Apache with PHP,CGI and Perl, you get email addresses, lots of webspace, and your own IP address. It rocks.

At prices like this, everyone should have their own domain, website, and set of email addresses...

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[washirv]

I can't recommend gandi (www.gandi.net) highly enough. In addition to the small and entirely pro-consumer terms of service, it's really cheap: a mere $10. And since I switched to them, the email address that I use to register domain names has stopped getting spam. (The old one that I used with netsol still gets plenty). These guys are the best.
--
kurukshetra all the desi news and views you could use

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[krogoth]

Joker is an excellent registrar. They charge 12 Euros per year, they have good service, they never spam you...

Re:Is there a good registrar review site anywhere?

[James_G]

Just do a search for the words 'network', 'solutions', and 'sucks' in google and you'll find everything you need to know about them.

Personally, I use gandi.net - it's cheap, and it works for me.

I utterly hate netsol/verisign and everything they represent. There's a domain I wanted to buy recently that had expired almost a year ago, and I emailed to ask when I could expect it to be deleted from their database. Here's their response and my subsequent reply:

On Thu, 28 Feb 2002 CustomerService@networksolutions.com wrote:

> >
> Thank you for contacting VeriSign.
>
> VeriSign, Inc., periodically deletes domain names that are up
> for deletion in bulk since bulk deletion better enables us to
> insure that only those domain names that are actually up for
> deletion are properly deleted (as compared to running a deletion
> process).

Excuse me?

> The dates on which these bulk deletions occur are arbitrarily
> selected by our engineering department based upon system loading
> and other technical factors. In order to protect against
> an overload of our systems, we do not disclose these deletion dates.

So, to answer my question, it appears the answer is "When we feel like
it". Since this domain has been expired for almost a year, and you do
deletions in bulk, I think it's safe to extrapolate this to mean "Never".

> You may, therefore, either continue to check our site for the
> availability of the domain name and attempt to obtain it through
> the public registration process, contact http://www.snapnames.com

Who will charge me $45 for the privilege of monitoring a domain that I'll
never be able to buy because you won't delete it from the database.

> to attempt to back-order this domain, or, in the alternative, contact
> the listed registrant directly and discuss the possibility of
> executing a registrant name change agreement.

Since the current owner is a domain squatter, indicating my interest in
the domain would undoubtedly trigger them to charge an extortionate price.
This seems extremely bizarre considering the fact that they no longer
actually own this domain. By not deleting expired records, you're
effectively saving domain squatters huge amounts of money since they don't
actually need to renew the domain to retain ownership.

> Best regards,
> pat002

Thanks, pat002. Your answer is pretty much what I had expected. I know
that there's nothing you can personally do to help me, so I'd ask that you
pass my email onto whatever superior you can. Perhaps eventually someone
will realise that it's these sort of questionable business practices that
are driving many many people to use alternate domain registrars.

Other instances? More Proof?

[sourcehunter]

"Verisign has taken it upon themselves to hijack my identity and expose me to litigation! At least they let me know!"

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm a bit skeptical of this. This could really land Verisign into some HOT HOT HOT water. It ain't like Verisign is going to target ONE person. If this has only happened to ONE person, then perhaps someone else registered the domain. What other domains does this guy have? Anything similar? Info Info info!!!! The slashback doesn't give much!

Re:Other instances? More Proof?

[drudd]

A very similar thing happened to me, except I actually recieved a bill for someone else's domain!

I notified (networksolutions at the time) them about their error and they actually wanted me to fax them a copy of my driver's license to verify my identity!

I finally emailed the admin contact listed for the domain and told them if they wanted their domain they needed to sort things out.

As it turned out, it was a stupid data entry error by some minimum wage slave... they mistyped one character and assigned me as the billing contact rather than the correct person...

For the life of me I can't understand how this company is still in business.... I have had nothing but problems whenever I delt with them, and their prices are inordiate...

Doug

What DB is wehavethewayout.com?

[(H)elix1]

Jumping over to The Register

But is the site itself entirely clean? The server yesterday revealed that some interesting ports were left open. The most interesting of which is port 3306, which is used by MySQL and Postgres. Since wehavethewayout.com was a BSD/Apache combination, it was almost certainly running an open source database, too. While Unisys has switched the front-end server to Windows IIS, the most likely explanation for keeping this port open is that the back-end still interfaces to a MySQL database. MySQL is cross platform, and there's a Windows version too. This would certainly make for a rapid port, as it doesn't require a rewrite of the cgi scripts.

Oh, will the pain never end (grin)...

Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com?

[brer_rabbit]

fyi-- port 3306 is typically MySQL, not PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL typically runs on 5432.

Still, it's a fair assumption they were running MySQL. Possibly just out of the box -- does MySQL listen to a network port by default? PostgreSQL only listens on unix domain sockets by default, you actually have to edit the config to get it to listen to the network.

Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com?

[tzanger]

The most interesting of which is port 3306, which is used by MySQL and Postgres.

Postgres (at least on my systems) defaults to tcp/5432.

Re:What DB is wehavethewayout.com?

[brer_rabbit]

Ya, MySQL listens on 3306 by default, open to the whole world on my machine. It also uses root as the default account (not that it's any better than the default of postgres on PostgreSQL).

wait a minute, how can you argue that using root is better than a non-priveleged account? Is the postgres account is compromised, they get postgres data. If root is compromised, they get the keys to your car.

Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm)

[BigBlockMopar]

Is it possible (easy?) for someone to register a domain name using someone else's information? That could be an explanation for Verisign sending you a letter about a domain you never registered...

Uhh... yeah. I guess you've never bought a domain.

Okay. For *.com, *.net and probably *.org:

1. Type the name of the domain you want.
2. Read the message that it's already been taken.
3. Choose a new domain name.
4. Repeat 1-4 until you hit paydirt.
5. Type your name, country, address, telephone, e-mail address. Note: this e-mail address will be spammed, and all this other info will be visible in whois.
6. Whip out your credit card. Pay $35/year. Make sure your browser is using HTTPS before you click the form submit button and send your credit card across 400 unsecured routers.
7. Enter the hostnames of your nameservers. If you're hosting the site yourself, you will need to create a host record including name and IP address for each of your primary and secondary DNS.
8. Wait for confirmation e-mail, telephone call, etc.
9. Look your domain up in whois and find yourself!
10. Wait an agonizing two days or so before top-level DNS servers catch up with the whois database and people can see your Apache test page.

It's really not very difficult.

Re:Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm)

[khuber]

Make sure your browser is using HTTPS before you click the form submit button and send your credit card across 400 unsecured routers.

Silly -- the TTL field in TCP has a maximum value of 255, so you could only send insecure credit card data through 254 routers. And the default TTL is usually 64 on Linux and FreeBSD, though it is higher on Solaris and Windows.

Realistically and conservatively you should only expect to be able to send your insecure data through about 60 routers. You'd need multiple routes or multicast to exceed 255 routers, so you may want to consider mass email or mass Usenet posting instead.

-Kevin

Re:Steps to Buying a Domain Name For Dummies(tm)

[BigBlockMopar]

Silly -- the TTL field in TCP has a maximum value of 255, so you could only send insecure credit card data through 254 routers. And the default TTL is usually 64 on Linux and FreeBSD, though it is higher on Solaris and Windows.

Yeah. Hyperbole.

Realistically, however, less than 30 hops by traceroute.

Realistically and conservatively you should only expect to be able to send your insecure data through about 60 routers. You'd need multiple routes or multicast to exceed 255 routers, so you may want to consider mass email or mass Usenet posting instead.

Calling Mastercard: "Hi, I'd like to cancel my card. No, I didn't lose it... I accidentally spammed over 1.3 million e-mail addresses and 40,000 newsgroups with it. Yeah. I think you can expect a little activity on that number over the next few years...."

Slashback. Hmm.

[joestar]

Strangely, the Mandrake Club story, which is great, went to Slashback among other stories. Slashdot editors somtimes act strangely.

Clarification regarding "the way out"

[Jayde Stargunner]

Last time I checked, the site really wasn't touting IIS for web hosting, but using Windows servers for enterprise solutions. That's a pretty different situation.

It's also quite possible that since this really isn't an "in-house" Microsoft deal, they didn't have their web developers working on it...they probably farmed it out to some starving web-heads from SF for an absurdly low price. That said, most web developers don't develop for MS boxes simply because hosting companies charge twice as much for Windows space as a general rule.

Sure, it may seem like some mass hypocricy or something...but if the website isn't about "Use IIS for hosting two-page, temp web pages!" there really isn't much of an issue.

Also, notice the page has at the bottom:
"©1994-2002 Unisys Corporation. All rights reserved."
NOT
"©1994-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."

-Jayde

Re:Clarification regarding "the way out"

[gad_zuki!]

Sure, it may seem like some mass hypocricy or something...but if the website isn't about "Use IIS for hosting two-page, temp web pages!" there really isn't much of an issue.

I agree with the sentiment that this isn't about web hosting, but then again its about business. Appearances are important and downtime just looks bad period for potential customers. It may not be logical, but if my storefront is falling apart you probably won't walk in to check out my products regardless of their merits.

Well maybe it is logical, if a company can't properly set up a marketing site how much faith can one have in its other decisions in outsourcing. At a certain point you just have to ask yourself, "Who is making these outsourcing decisions and why do they still have a job?"

On top of that, this is a marketing attempt against open source which has very little marketing muscle. Its just plain embarassing to see the world's wealthiest corporation falter in front of some geeks and some IBM marketing.

Re:Clarification regarding "the way out"

[Tony-A]

Appearances are important and downtime just looks bad period for potential customers.
You don't pull the plug on the old system until the new system is ready. If you don't know when the new system will be ready, that itself speaks volumes.

Speaking of IBM marketing, I keep remembering the Cheddar.com commercial, although in the case of wehavethewayout.com, Swiss and Limburger seem more appropriate than Roquefort.

Re:Clarification regarding "the way out"

[Trepalium]

Lets put it this way. If they can't use the platform they're promoting for hosting a simple set of webpages, why should I trust it with mission critical data? They promote the idea that inexspensive MSCEs can handle their machines, and what do they have after they switch the server to Windows -- downtime. If it was just the fact they were using non-Windows servers to host this, that would be one thing, but changing the platform, and then having mysterious "configuration problems", does not paint a good picture for what they're trying to sell.

Substandard techniques?

[quantaman]

reaching temperature hotter than the Sun ... evidence of fusion.

From the APS, 'The possibility of a major discovery has been obscured by substandard experimental techniques.

What kind of experimental technique could account for that kind of error? Oops! Maybe maybe we shouldn't have set it up in a nuclear reactor that must be where the heat is coming from!!

Re:Substandard techniques?

[Cato the Elder]

What the hell are you talking about? The APS article stated that the temperatures produced by caviation were widely accepted. They criticized other parts of the experiment, pointing out some inconsistencies in the detection times for related events and possible sources of noise.

Patents

[felipeal]

When will this insanity end?

I don't know if this is the case with Symantec, but I have a friend that works for a company in the semi-conductors business, and that company has a patent-incentive policy: for each patent request filled, the author receives a US$500 bonus. If the request is approved (and the company - not the author, of course - gets the patent), he/she gets another US$2000.

That would explain a lot of crazy/stupid/useless patents...

Re:Patents

[brer_rabbit]

getting a $2500 bonus hardly explains the crazy patent scenario. For the extra effort involved you might as well get a paper route, you'd make similar money either way. And that's even with the help of the big company lawyers assisting with the writeup.

Whats more important is that your name is on a patent. This makes a big difference to some folks, and employers as well. For the individual, it's kinda the professional equivalent of getting a research paper published.

Re:Patents

[zmooc]

I think the main reason for this bonus-system is to stimulate employees with good innovative ideas to "give" the idea to the company. most employees of most companies are required to do that by their contract anyway. This is probably just meant as an extra bonus for not keeping the idea to yourself (and making money of it yourself). This is pretty standard actually; a lot of good ideas come from education/experience you get by working at the company so they'd like to profit from that. I don't think it was meant to have as many patents as possible.

Re:cruel-intention.com

[Rick the Red]

Oh, it's very easy. My wife got a similar letter from Verisign; someone stole her identity last year and signed up for several domain addresses.

We naturally checked out the domain and it's unused -- probably because the initial payment to Verisign bounced (we had to cancel all our credit cards and start over) -- but Verisign's still trying to get us to pay for a renewal! Gotta love their optimism; too bad we can't get 'em arrested for fraud, but then I guess Verisign itself has technically done nothing wrong here, just tried to perpetuate someone else's fraud.

Wow!

[wiredog]

A goatsex link that's on-topic and in context.

wehavethewayout.com FTP

[silvaran]

They really did a number on this one. For a few days, while the site was down, they were running the default anonymous FTP server. It's still up, but they removed all traces of FreeBSD.

You can still log in as anonymous, but there's just a dummy html file there. Before, you could find /bin/ls. Doing a 'file' on it revealed it was a FreeBSD binary. Hmm.. hanging around on an IIS server? Wow, imagine that.

The PR people know their stuff. I would imagine they took plenty of courses during those several days of downtime to learn how 'cp -R *' actually works.

Re:wehavethewayout.com FTP

[q-soe]

Who ever said it was IIS ?

It's BSD/Apache as a quick check of a million other posts on this and other sites would have found out and even the site in question would have told you. Microsoft runs BSD and UNIX very heavily internally and has done since the network was first set up

Now why they would choose apache over IIS is up to you to guess ?

I'm not defending them but...

[DeadBugs]

Unisys has been in the computer buisness from the beginning long before Microsoft was around. After the fallout between Microsoft and IBM, Unisys became deeply involved with Micorsoft providing servers and direct tech support for Microsoft products. They are not as fortunate as IBM to have jumped off the boat long ago. Their siding with Microsoft because they have so much invested, if everyone went to Linux tommorow Microsoft would not be the only company to suffer.

Re:I'm not defending them but...

[gorilla]

That's slightly right. Unisys is the result of many mergers over the years, most recently (1986) between Sperry and Burroughs. Sperry was a 1955 merger between Remmington Rand and Sperry. Remington Rand were the producers of the 409, aka the Univac 60, which was in 1949, the first commerical business computer. So while part of Unisys was in from the begining, they're not a huge percentage of the modern Unisys.

Re:cruel-intention.com

[ShaunC]

This is probably exactly what happened. King Mongo doesn't mention whether or not the email address used in the registration (myuniq_id@themail.com) is his, but I tend to doubt it, since he seems to have other domains and wouldn't need a freebie mail account.

Sounds like someone just registered the domain to him for no good reason - most of mine are or were registered to fictitious addresses, it's easy enough to do. The record was updated in December; perhaps since the poster is listed as the owner, Verisign would be willing to give him information regarding the history of the domain. The state of the record prior to December might bear some information regarding who actually registered it.

In any case, I have my doubts that Verisign was behind this. Most likely it was some sort of prank, or maybe an undelivered gift?

Shaun

going with 2000, not XP

[Alien54]

Interesting that even though they managed to get another box up with win 2k, that they are going with the older OS for their flag ship promo site.

And we are supposed to trust them when they don't even bother getting a site up running XP as the OS?

Given that this is a flag ship promo site, you would think they would have all the OS issues sorted out well in advance.

If I was witty, I would think up something to do with the activation screwing them up.

Re:going with 2000, not XP

[cmowire]

Not really. XP is for the consumer and workstation versions. The server is Windows.NET and that's not out yet. So as far as they are concerned, everybody should be using Win2k for serving still.

Re:going with 2000, not XP

[donutello]

And we are supposed to trust them when they don't even bother getting a site up running XP as the OS?

Aaaargh. Win2K is a server OS. Windows XP is a desktop OS. Why would you use a desktop OS to host a website? That's almost as asinine as expecting palm.com to be running on an array of palm pilots.

Anyway, the campaign was about Big Iron data servers, not web servers.

Re:going with 2000, not XP

[mrmag00]

Because Windows XP is a desktop OS. .net server, which will replace windows 2000 server, is currently in beta/development.

Re:going with 2000, not XP

[Tony-A]

Anyway, the campaign was about Big Iron data servers, not web servers.
I assume that web servers are much easier and simpler than Big Iron data servers.

Unix is the light

[Trevelyan]

look at the pic on www.wehavethewayout.com notice the light shines out from their unix represntation, in to the dark MS world.
which way would you go, from the light into the dark or from the dark in to the light?

thier PR ppl missed that metaphore =)

hehe

Re:Unix is the light

[fizban]

HAHAHAHA

From February through July of 2000 we set out to identify software infrastructure trends of Internet computing. Our approach involved several different activities. We studied the needs and realities of eCommerce sites by visiting several of them and interviewing decision makers.

(We bought some stuff at Amazon and interviewed each other about our experiences.)

We analyzed appropriate fractions of current research activity by visiting universities and attending a few key conferences and workshops.

(We hung out at some colleges and went to some frat parties - sorority chicks rule!)

We also informed ourselves directly by exploring material available at appropriate Web sites [21, 23].

(We browsed the web.)

Re:Unix is the light

[smeng]

Schmuks. You would think that with the amount of money that they spend on marketing, they would at least have realised something like this. Oh well, free advertising for Unix I suppose :D

Re:Unix is the light

[Tony-A]

Hehe, I read it, partways at least. They are almost catching up with yesterday.
No wonder IBM mainframes are selling well. IBM knows something, and it's about tomorrow not just today.

From what I can tell, Microsoft offerings have sacrificed security, flexibility, and functionality for initial setup simplicity and wowser gizmos. Unix may be a maze (amazing? ;), but seems to be about as simple as anything can be that stands a reasonable chance of actually succeeding.

Re:Unix is the light

[Tony-A]

They do have the way out!
I closed a few IE windows, got back to the one for wehavethewayout.com, and Internet Explorer (5.0 on NT4) crashed on me.
Now what that has to do with going from the lighted and a-maze-ing unix side to the dark and bottomless pit Microsoft Windows side, I have no idea.

OpenNIC will never catch on

[Starship Trooper]

And there are a number of reasons why, but I can tell you the one most glaring and obvious reason: aesthetics. The original TLDs .com, .org, .net, .edu, and .mil are all short, easy to type, one syllable to pronounce (except for .edu), and most importantly look good at the end of a domain name.

From OpenNIC's TLD list, you have chosen the TLDs .glue, .indy, .geek, .null, .oss, .parody, and .bbs. All of these are either horribly narrow-reaching and have no reason to be a TLD (.geek, .oss, .parody), sound stupid (.glue, .indy), look stupid (.geek, .oss, .bbs), or are too long (all of them except .oss and .bbs).

These are the same reasons nobody wants a domain under .biz, .info, .museum or any of the other "official" new TLDs. Geeks seem to be naturally deficient at proper design, so I'm not blaming what is essentially a geek project for having this problem. An alternative to the monstrosity Verisign and ICANN have made of their root servers is severely needed. But, if I may, I would like to suggest you ditch these ugly TLDs and put some more thought into choosing names people actually would want on the end of their site names. Think to yourself, would you seriously consider getting a ".parody" domain? Here are some tips:

• The TLDs must all be short. Extremely short. No more than 3 characters. Preferably monosyllabic.
• Don't use ugly letters like 'y', 'k', or 'z', especially at the beginning or end of the domain.
• Avoid catering to special interests. ".com", ".org" and ".net" all work because they're broad and unspecific. TLDs like ".geek" and ".oss" are just going to make nongeeks roll their eyes and look elsewhere.
• Most importantly, before you approve a new TLD, seriously ask yourself (and preferably a few other regular people), "would I buy a domain under this TLD?" Few people are going to want a ".geek" domain, I can tell you.

I really want to see a project like this succeed, but you have to create domains that appeal to broad ranges of people, are easy to type and remember, and look good.

Re:OpenNIC will never catch on

[Anonymous DWord]

Really what we want is to have any top-level domain you can think of. Having just .coms is stupid - it was fine at the time, but now that everybody and their dog has a site, it's like trying to find a new hotmail address - there's none left. I don't accept thisismynewwebpagenamebecausealltheothersaretaken. com as a valid solution.

Re:OpenNIC will never catch on

[crucini]

That was a really good post. I think that the original tld's somehow had a good aesthetic character. .biz, .info and .museum make my stomach turn for some reason. It does seem logical to separate tld's in a way that minimizes trademark confusion and conflict. I think any such allocation should be based on the distribution of existing domains - essentially Huffman coding to insure that all tld's of equal length are roughly equally full. In other words, no .museum because there aren't nearly enough museums to matter. Instead, maybe domains like 'csf' - Company, Service Sector, Food or 'cta' - Company, Transportation, Air.

Then american.cta and american.csf obviously have no reason to sue each other. It's no cure-all, but it seems smarter than creating these narrow, ridiculous and ugly names.

Re:OpenNIC will never catch on

[dzero]

The reasons you give are interesting but sound an awful lot like the oft-mentioned FUD we hear about on Slashdot from time to time.

You are expressing a shocking (to me) level of doubt in something which is a clearly better alternative to the ridiculous conservatism in the TLD world. The TLDs OpenNIC has chosen aren't good enough for you. Suggest some! Isn't that the point? It's a system that's open enough that everyone can help make it better, instead of something like ICANN. That's the point of OpenNIC. Open. NIC. Not ICANN.

(For the record, I hadn't heard of OpenNIC until today)

Someone in another thread mentioned this, and it's true: what we really want is any TLD at all. Why append three letters to a URL when it's mostly meaningless now?

Most parties purchase .com, .org and .net of their chosen name -- effectively eliminating any meaning the TLDs were meant to have. VeriSign (admittedly, according to something I read on the OpenNIC site) no longer requests any justification for choice of TLD because they realize everybody just wants all of them.

So how is the TLD remotely meaningful?

And FYI there has been acceptance of the new ICANN-endorsed TLD's.

I live in New York City and am a regular user of the MTA's (Metropolitan Transit Authority) services, most obviously and frequently the subway. Everywhere the MTA's old URL used to be on posters and signs, there is a little circle with "new" or something, and their new URL: http://www.mta.info.

".info" used to look stupid to me, too, but now it looks pretty darn normal.

So, general acceptance or not, some people seem to be finding this useful. "Think outside the box" and you'll eventually realize that the TLDs can actually convey useful information about a URL.

All it takes to make the unfamiliar familiar and the awkward comfortable is a little love and clarity. Why wait?

Versign: They're Bastards!

[IronTek]

A friend of mine had registered a domain through Network Solutions (Verisign) and had renewed it for several years.

Last year, when his domain was coming up to expire, he didn't want to pay Verisign's fees...so he just figured he's let it lapse and maybe go reregister it with someone else...trouble is, though its expired, Verisign hasn't released the domain!

So my friend can't renew/reregister with anyone except Verisign b/c they won't release the domain back into the pool of available domains!

Re:Versign: They're Bastards!

[Electrawn]

Right now they are evaluating your expired domain and have put it on the expired domains list so some stupid korean will buy it before it is released back into the domain pool. Essentually, you are screwed. If you want it back, renew with verisign, or sue.

I speak from experience.

No surprise about Mandrake

[Richthofen80]

Mandrake's finacial success doesn't suprise me. People are willing to pay for the membership in the club because Mandrake linux is perhaps one of the best distributions. Easy to use, reliable, but by no means just for a novice user.
I tried redhat at first, because thats what I heard was one of the best. But I found Mandrake to be friendlier to me, a windows user. It hasn't crashed in two months, and runs my apache server just fine. Also shares my home network connection, so I don't have to pay at&t the extra cash for extra IPs.

And I actually paid for my copy, bought it at staples. worth every penny.

Re:No surprise about Mandrake

[carm$y$]

Mandrake *is* a redhat spin-off, maybe friendlier, but stil, a "mee-too".

And their CEO says (quote) A temporary increase in capital by selling shares doesn't solve a company's financial needs. All businesses need to adjust their expenses relative to income -- this depends on having a sustainable long-term revenue model. A shareholder expects a financial return on investment. A customer pays for a service. (end quote)

Translation: you're just lousy users, we want you to pay. It's not 1999 any more, no more freebies here. We don't want to give anything more for your money. It's just that you have to pay for what was free until now, so that we can pay the people who already lost 90 cents to the buck in the last 3 years.

I don't have anything in particular against mandrake, just want to keep things in perspective. Like, comparing mandrake + club to redhat + rhn (redhat wins, imho)

Re:'wehaveawayout' debacle...

[Osty]

Didn't MS kill Java in XP? So someone using Microsoft's latest OS that is perusing the Unisys site will get a big empty grey block in their browser...

No, they'll get a dialog asking them if they wish to install Java, and if so will then go ahead and download and install Microsoft's JVM. Subsequent visits to any site with java applets will work just fine without any prompting (because they already installed the JVM).

Re:Yes, new TLDs are needed...

[Anonymous DWord]

Why have any restrictions at all? If somebody wants www.this-site.sucksass, why not give it to them?

Re:what's up with the department? (slightly ot)

[timothy]

I was just happy to find that The Philipino Connection (a very small restaurant here in Knoxville TN, basically takeout with one or two tables) has just opened up a new location near me. I stopped in there yesterday, ate way too much. It's not *great* food, but it's cheap, pretty tasty, and interesting. I would avoid the pepper steak in the future, but the eggrolls, rice dishes, noodles and friend bananas are good. They don't have any of the really exotic Philipino food, but perhaps on some days of the year ...

timothy

I worked for Univac a lo-ong time ago and

[crovira]

they haven't got a lot smarter since I left.

Expensive Experts

[Gurp]

Remember how, according to Microsoft/Unisys, companies shouldn't need "expensive experts"?

So far, their non-experts:

1) Installed a system that has embarrassed the company (by using the competitor's OS)
2) While fixing this, it was down for ages (more embarrassment)
3) Now that it's up, it's a sitting duck (with MySQL bound to the external network interface) for crackers

Now, tell me again about how companies shouldn't use experts?

"hacking" see "Whining "

[autopr0n]

As a hacker, I felt it entirely natural to begin to attempt to encapsulate, measure, and then control reality with software. (For what I mean by the word "hack," see http://www.tuxedo.org/ ~esr/ jargon/jargon.html#hack:. To interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed way. 'Whatcha up to?' 'Oh, just hacking.' " Criminals need to get themselves another word, we had it first.)

Wank, wank, wank.

Well, keep that up and "hacker" will soon mean "a whinny little bitch." I'm so sick of that crap (well, thankfully it's mostly died down of late). It is entirely possible for words to have multiple meanings. The fact that a word you think sounds "cool" does not give you license to go out and try to change the English language. Sheesh.

Re:"hacking" see "Whining "

[neo]

The fact that a word you think sounds "cool" does not give you license to go out and try to change the English language. Sheesh.

Actually it does. English is a living language and usage dictates the meanings of words. A dictionary is not the guide to how words are spelled and what they mean, it is rather a reflection of usage.

From Ambrose Bierce:

"DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. "

Cold Fusion story and other things

[connorbd]

I once pursued a woman who happened at the time to be an Allaire employee, long before the Macromedia buyout. Beautiful girl, a little short in the brains department, but I didn't figure that out until long after she crushed my heart by hitting on my boss right in front of me. But anyway. Ever since then I've always thought that there was something weirdly appropriate about the fact that someone like her -- bimbo-in-geek's-clothing -- would work for a company whose flagship product was called Cold Fusion. (I met some people a while later who had worked with her -- I got the sense that my impression of her was not far off from the impression she gave around the office.)

As for the matter of wehavethewayout.com... Two companies that had it coming. The dinosaur and the Borg... wonder how much fingerpointing is going on right now. (Come to think of it, Rick Belluzzo... never mind.)

/Brian

More of the firestorm about that fusion experiment

[sunhou]

There were two more articles in Science about this "bubble fusion" stuff: one, called To publish or not to publish that explains why they published the article despite the controversy, and another one called 'Bubble Fusion' Paper Generates a Tempest in a Beaker which has some opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you need to be a subscriber or at a university which subscribes to access those (I access it through my university account).

It's all very interesting, and I'll be curious to see what the final conclusions are. I'm still not sure if I think it was best to publish now, or wait for more independent confirmation. At least they didn't try to hide all the controversy (they even point out that senior science managers at Oak Ridge Lab contacted the journal and asked them to delay publishing the paper..)

Physics Today has an article on cold fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an analysis called Skepticism Greets Claim of Bubble Fusion on Physics Today's web site.

Re:heuristic might actually be useful...

[connorbd]

Er... the patent is expired. RSA is as free as it gets. You're free to remain ticked off at the idea of the patent, mind you, I think most of us here are annoyed by it, but principles aside this particular case is no longer relevant.

/Brian

Verisign Renewals

[Ark42]

Our hostmaster@ address received (about 8 months ago) numerous emails from versign asking us to renew domains we didnt really own.

If I remember correctly, there were all along the lines of:
fart-sluts.com
shitonmyface.com
..etc..

I wish I still had the list, there were so funny!

wehavetheway...

[Guido69]

...to Adobe? Anyone else think it's odd that the only format offered for the reports is pdf? Also noticed that there aren't any FrontPage headers in the site source. Hmmm. Perhaps Linux does have a chance on the desktop. I sense a new trend starting in Redmond.

Good Registrar

[chmod4755]

I personally use gandi[http://gandi.net] for all of my domain registrations. I find them fast, very easy to deal with, and straight forward.

I would recommend Gandi to any person registering a domain.

Could Terabyte's tagline be any more obnoxious?

[nobodyman]

The slogan on their website reads:

"Nothing is more important than bandwidth."

Oh really? Well then PLEASE SHOOT ME NOW. Because I was hoping that the cure for AIDS and/or Cancer, the resolution of the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and perhaps cold fusion would be a big deal.

I recently had DSL installed, so apparently it's all downhill from here.

Mail from VeriSign might be correct

[DavidYaw]

Don't forget, mail about your domains might not be spam... VeriSign has been buying up several Domain Registrars, so mail from them might have a valid purpose.

Right on target

[dcavanaugh]

This whole thing has "lowball webhead" written all over it. M$ pays real money to some talented advertising and graphics people; this "Junior Achievement" project is out of character for them.

Strange how they have a budget that is supposedly $25+ million, yet none of it was spent on this little web fiasco. If I had that kind of money to spend, the site would be a "tour de force" of graphics, articles, and commentary. Then again, I wouldn't do it at all if I had to sell M$ products. This kind of advertising works best if you have a good story to tell. In the case of M$, it's just going to draw sniper fire. Using the web to tell IT people that M$ is scalable, stable, and secure is like trying to sell household nuclear power plants to environmentalists.

Just wait and see -- M$ and possibly Unisys marketing will soon be relegated to golf outings with technially clueless CEOs, as part of a "sell high" strategy. That's really the final frontier for products that depend more on salesmanship and less on quality, features, and value.

Sure - kick the danes, while you're at it!

[Hektor_Troy]

Don't use ugly letters like 'y', 'k', or 'z', especially at the beginning or end of the domain.

.dk is an official TLD for the "danish" part of the web.

Thank you for telling us, that our TLD is ugly.

Go suck on my.dk ;-)

Re:Yes, new TLDs are needed...

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Actually Rob wants http://slashdot.dot