Slashback: Hilbert's, Transgenic, Silicon

Slashback tonight with another round of updates and corrections to recent stories, including transgenic fish, Hilbert's 16th problem, Microsoft's FAT patent plans, Utah's hyped public fiber network, and more. Read on for the details.

Still an acorn at this point. Jose Nazario writes with a correction to my recent post claiming that OpenBSD had gained a "fuzzy" user-profiling IDS. Jose writes: "It is NOT in tree. it is a privately developed research project. It is not an official project."

And Yes, the Apple I schematics were available, too. In response to the recent article about the freely available chip design from opencores.org implemented by Flextronics, Henry Keultjes offers a reminder that this is not the first time chip whose internals have been open for inspection:

"Happened quite some time ago with PowerPC. That's the essence of Microsoft's deal with IBM because without that Open Architecture Microsoft would have had to buy a lot more than it did. This for example is used in a roughly $150 French set-top box that has USB and, according to a friend in the UK who has tried that, runs just fine as a PC with the attached USB HDD, KB and rodent."

Could Wayne Inouye sell you an eMachine? After reading many pointed comments in the story about eMachine's Athlon offerings, arrasmith writes "To add to the topic of AMD64 eMachines and the launch of "I hate eMachine" posts I'll throw out why you should buy one.

eMachines are the number-3 seller of computers, only behind Dell and HP. If you are wondering about how that happened, you need to read about the new CEO.

Wayne Inouye has had some articles published about him in Business Week and Forbes. Great articles on how you can sell good computers at reasonable prices. And if you are wondering why eMachines is selling an AMD64 system read the Business Week article."

OK, as long as you buy it from us. Alien54 writes "As reported in the most recent Spyware Info Newsletter, Dell seems to have listened to the criticism handed to them last week, after their decision to forbid tech support persons from providing assistance to spyware-infected customers became public knowledge. They have partnered with PestPatrol, Inc. to sell Pest Patrol's spyware removal software to Dell customers. It is interesting to note that Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.' Which is simply silly, of course."

Utah may not be Utopia after all. brysnot writes "The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Utopia project, which plans to run fiber to every home in Utah, has miscalculated its 2003 budget and now needs each member cities to come up with an additional $250,000. Also reported is that 'Its largest member, Salt Lake City, is uncertain whether to provide financial backing to guarantee payment of the principal and interest on the bonds the project needs -- a development that could force the project to be scaled back.'"

Writes Lighthop "The best way to overcome Qwest's vast resources and well orchestrated opposition is for citizens and business owners to speak out and let their city council members know we support them in approving UTOPIA's funding. We have to be visible and give them some political cover.

The 18 UTOPIA member cities are Brigham City, Cedar City, Cedar Hills, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Perry, Riverton, Roy, Salt Lake City, South Jordan, Taylorsville, Tremonton and West Valley."

Hilbert's 16th is still a problem. commodoresloat writes "The work of Elin Oxenhielm, the 22-year old Swedish student who apparently solved part of the 16th Hilbert problem, is coming under heavy fire from some prominent mathematicians, including her own adviser, who said the work contained "serious mistakes, which I think any educated mathematician can easily see." Here's an article in English. Oxenhielm responded to the criticism by saying that the journal that accepted her work, which now owns the copyright, is responsible for any errors. More information on this weblog."

Periscope is up, showdown commences. McSpew writes "The Register states that Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem may be subject to new scrutiny, thanks to their announced plan to collect royalties from media and CE manufacturers. The Public Patent Foundation is behind the effort to get the USPTO to start from scratch with Microsoft's FAT patents."

FDA gives GM fish sales the eerie green light. fishfishfish writes "The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday released a statement saying that it will not be stopping the sale of transgenic Zebra danios in the USA. The move could allow fish retailers in any U.S. state to sell the fish. Apart from California, where Arnie has banned them..."

Comments

Dell is mixing upo OSS with Shareware/Freeware...

[Androgynous Coward]

...Dell does not recommend any freeware or shareware product becausefreeware or shareware product because 'we cannot test these open source utilities reliably.'

Someone should inform Dell that freeware and/or shareware products are not necessarily open-source.

Why is there no law.....

[Microsofts slave]

that makes it impossible for a patent holder to hold people hostage on a technology after it becomes ubiquitous.

Conspiracy?

[jfmiller]

If one were a conspiracy theorist, and I am not, one might postulate that dell ether now or in the future plans to install spyware themselves and that open source programs would mess this up. Therefore they have told there techs not to recommend any of them, and now have found a willing corp. that will agree with them about the difference between marketing tools and spyware. Bu there is of course no proof and since I am not a conspiracy theorist, I will not make such accusations.

IANACT

JFMILLER

Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[segment]

Dell seems to have listened to the criticism handed to them last week, after their decision to forbid tech support persons from providing assistance to spyware-infected customers became public knowledge.

I'm all for helping people when necessary, and I would agree with Dell for not wanting to waste their own money on people's stupidities.

Now I work at an ISP and sub as IT staff at a mid sized college every here and there. (Fixing T1's, students' comps, all sorts of shit) main causes of students' issues? Spyware. I visited I think 80% of the campus based students for the same shit... Joe football player wants VirtuaGirl on his machine and clicks on everything in existence... Result? Spyware, viruses, and trojans. One chick had a 8k phone bill on her cellphone because she kept her info on a backdoored machine. All this after they receive bulletins, I've told the same ones over and over, etc.

I would side with Dell, just think about the costs of a persons moronicy on the Dell level. So you have say low ball figure of 100,000 morons calling you because they've just downloaded garbage...

TS = Tech Support (low ball salary) $10.00 an hour...

DU = duration of call say 5 minutes

CL = Calls (per 8 hour day)

Whats that an extra +1000 tech support staff that need to be hired? 20mill per year thrown away on morons...

Re:Drawing the Hardware/Software line

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I think you're being a bit harsh. Part of it is a lot of this crap comes from holes in software. Is someone who got rooted (can I say Administrator'ed?) because of an IE hole a moron? And before you say "patch your systems" I can say zero-day exploits and unpatched holes in IE.

But lets say thats just part of the issue, most people are running unpacthed versions of Windows, using IE (unpacthed IE, shudder). They're browsing the web because . . . they bought the computer to browse the web. They're opening email attachments because . . . attachments are made for you to open. They're using the machien for what it's designed for. They're doing what all the nice shiny pretty people in the commercials say they can do.

Closest real world analogy I can think of would be:
guy comes home. Guy doesn't lock door. Robber comes in, beats guy up. Guy goes to hospital, but insurance refuses to pay because he was too stupid to lock the dorr, so go bleed somewhere else.

Would never happen. We'd just solve the problem. Even the door angle is too simplistic, for most people it would be closer to "robber comes in through grate at bottom of building that connects through shaft which goes to his room". Non obvious stuff.

The issue is computers are immature. Neither windows nor Unix were originally designed to be in a hostile network environment. UNIX has improved a lot more than Windows has, but there are still flaws. Until we redesign everything to live in a hostile world, we will have issues. Until then, it will be us morons who program the systems, and the marketing morons who sell a bill of goods that can't be delivered.

Zhou is protecting herself

[GuyMannDude]

Did you read the article that was linked to? Zhou's public comments are an attempt to distance herself from Oxenhielm. Oxenhielm thanks Zhou in her (possibly flawed) paper for assistance and Zhou is terrified that the community is going to laugh at her (Zhou). It's easy to forgive a youngster for getting excited and making mistakes but they would come down very hard on Zhou for letting stuff like this slip through. Effectively Oxenhielm has put Zhou's name on this work in spite of the fact that Zhou never reviewed it. You wouldn't want to be blamed for something you had no hand in, would you?

Oxenhielm is probably too young to remember what happened to Ponds and Fleishman at University of Utah regarding cold fusion. Zhou wants to make sure that Oxenhielm doesn't take her down too when her proof gets shot down.

GMD

Re:AMD 64bit CPU's and linux

[mcelrath]

An int on a 64-bit CPU is 32-bits. A long int is 64 bits and an int* is 64 bits. Thus most C code is highly compatible. The fatal flaw being when programmers assume sizeof(int)=sizeof(int*) which fails.

The other posts in this thread indicating otherwise are wrong. An int is 32 bits on 64-bit archs under linux and gcc. (I know, I have 2 alphas and a sparc)

-- Bob

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Here's an idea for Dell...

[bckrispi]

Instead of making their customers jump through hoops to remove the preinstalled spyware, why don't they grow a pair and forbid the crap from being installed in the first place??? Don't they have some kind of say-so in what gets loaded on their products? Shouldn't they be held accountable for protecting their customers' privacy? As the saying goes: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". It looks like Dell has already determined which side of the line they want to be on.