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Slashback: NWLink, Vivendi, Gatherings
"Uhh ... isn't this the 'Slammer'?" An anonymous reader writes "According to the BBC, two people suspected of creating the Slammer worm have been arrested in a combined operation by the FBI and the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. The raids in the UK resulted in the seizure of two men, aged 19 and 21, accused of being members of a hacker group that calls itself THr34t-Krew."
Gather together, hoist a few drinks. We've made a few mentions of this year's CodeCon; Len Sassaman writes "The schedule for CodeCon 2.0 is now online. CodeCon is already starting to get some media attention. There's less than two weeks left to register at the reduced rate, and conference seats are filling up quickly.If this conference is anything like its predecessor, expect to see some of the most interesting new technology of the coming year discussed."
And a slightly different type of gathering: Tony Stanco writes: "The agenda is up for the March 17-19 Open Source in Government conference and the free registration is now open. Please see www.eGovOS.org.
It promises to be another educational and exciting event with over 120 sessions and the keynote from the White House. Even Microsoft is trying to directly engage the community at this conference."
On the count of three, everyone shrug at once. In January, I posted a link ("far from confirmed") about the possibility that Microsoft would buy Vivendi. Now, Yagdrasil writes "USA today is reporting that the Microsoft buyout of Vivendi's game division (which includes Blizzard) was a hoax. It looks like the hoax originated from a student at Purdue."
But the EOLs are nearly upon us! Flee! Wister285 writes "Mandrake announced that they are going to stop updating the packages of 'legacy products.' It seems as though they took their cue from Red Hat and their continuing financial problems. I was a little surprised though about how short the support periods will be. Mandrake 9.0 will be considered obsolete September 30, 2003 (for desktop) and March 31, 2004 (for the base). This brings up two questions. First of all, do distros release too often thus creating too many versions to maintain? Secondly, how much faith do you have in the upgrade feature of install?"
I hope it features a dunk tank and some perpetrators. The ongoing war on spam continues; here's your chance to influence its direction (or at least to hear about what's going on in that sphere), even if you missed the conference at MIT. wayne writes "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that they will be holding a three day public SPAM workshop in the end of April. I wonder if they will get an overflow crowd they way the MIT SPAM conference did. I hope they also make streaming video available."
Bandwidth is expensive. ndogg writes "NWLink.com has posted a response to the events that have happened in regards to SDF. In short, they say that they support SDF and what it is doing, however, the DDoS attack over the last three weeks has been costing them a lot of money."
fonixmunkee puts it differently: "The message is an interesting read, to say the least. instead of working the issue, NWLink's apparent (unofficial) solution to combating DDoS'es is to simply terminate the subscriber's connection. with all the slammer worms & Code Reds nowadays, NWLink should have no more customers left in about 2 years."
Legal liability is expensive, too. Tom Allender writes "irc-chat.net has announced a more restrictive Acceptable Use Policy after being contacted by the MPAA. They also refer to DALnets AUP changes mentioned here recently."
I am sorry, sahib, but this most glorious FP belongs to me. Why did Vishnu choose to bless me this way? I am not knowing.
Stupid mozilla is so slow, I knew I should of kept with kde and not install gnome 2.2, yuck!
... as we know them. They are malicious pieces of junk code designed to ruin business transactions and consumer's PC systems.
I have no sympathy for hackers, crackers, whackers, or any other name you want to call them. Breaking the law is breaking the law, and I strongly disagree with anyone who says that learning how to write code by producing viruses is some type of "education".
That's blatantly incorrect; the only proper education is done in the classroom or at home with an O'Reilly Nutshell book using standard example programs and functions. "Learning how to code" by writing a VB Script virus just isn't truly education by any standard.
I'm glad to see these purpetrators put to justice. We can thank our law authorities for jumping into this virus situation hole, hog. It's either that, or we all suffer without the Internet for another weekend.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
As we finish out a week in which we find out there's a new desktop consortium with huge industry leaders footing the paybill, I must question others as to whether or not these MPAA/RIAA rulings and covert operations are good for Linux as we know it.
Linux thrives on open program exchanges, so if these industry behemouths are hell intent on shutting down and and all file sharing, how would code be distributed in the future?
How will the MPAA, FBI, ect. be able to determine whether you're trading the latest Top 40 mp3 or if you're sending Linux code?
Thanks in advants to any one who can provide links to interesting information about this topic.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
When Red Hat sets agressive EOL dates for its software, it's an evil plot by "The Man".
When Mandrake sets agressive EOL dates for its software, it's a sound business decision.
so why does carnegie mellon have this reputation for gays? can someone please explain!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Industrialist Andrew Carnegie was found dead in his Pittsburgh home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his homosexual-breeding university, there's no denying his contributions to gay culture. Truly an American icon.