Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Deception, Fusion, Membership
"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."
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
I would rather own goatse.cx instead. Imagine the number of hits from losers you would get!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Oh yeah! Spin, baby! spin!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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
T( H)GSB Apr 21-27
--davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Obviously you're not an AMD owner...
"Derp de derp."
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.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
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.
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!
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
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)...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
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:
It's really not very difficult.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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
What's a sig?
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!!
I stole this Sig
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...
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.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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.
/bin/ls. Doing a 'file' on it revealed it was a FreeBSD binary. Hmm.. hanging around on an IIS server? Wow, imagine that.
You can still log in as anonymous, but there's just a dummy html file there. Before, you could find
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.
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.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
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
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.Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
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!
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.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Why have any restrictions at all? If somebody wants www.this-site.sucksass, why not give it to them?
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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?
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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
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..)
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
...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.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
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.
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
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.