> Even music CDs are attached to > that plastic extender-thingy
The only time I have seen these was in the USA. Here in Germany (and the other European countries I have visited so far), CDs are sold in their jewel case, with no extra packaging except maybe for a transparent plastic wrap around the album.
This is the second review from Duke of URL linked here on Slashdot, and for the second time, I think that the reviewers have little knowledge of what they are writing about.
On the topic of Beowulf clusters, does anybody know what actually happend to Project Übermensch? It looked like fraud right away, but I wonder whatever happened to those involved.
Arcor here in Germany, one of the major Telcos, is a cooperation of Mannesmann (a major German industrial conglomerate) and Deutsche Bahn (= German Rail).
Deutsche Bahn gives Mannesmann access to their excessive fiber network backbone that goes along the tracks of all major German rail connections.
As you Americans may not be aware of, here in Europe, the railway system is as closely knit as the American Greyhound bus system - there's a railway connection to almost every town.
Thanks to this cooperation, Arcor instantly had a major network backbone between all the major German cities.
It's funny - their project list contains a number of projects that I like for their cool design.
I wasn't aware that all these products were designed by the same company. Designers should be mentioned in a product's manual... Keep up your work, guys.
Your article is about the same logic as saying "I did not get sunburn today. The reason must be that I ate fish today. Go visit our local fish restaurant, they make a great dish of fish."
Your choice of mail server software IS NOT the reason that the virus / trojan hasn't hit you. Assuming otherwise shows your ignorance after days and days of/incredibly/ well-done and accurate reporting by the mass media about how this virus works and how it spreads. I'm amazed that even the regional yellow press explained the technical details of the virus / trojan by 90% correct here. That's a first for technology reporting.
The ILOVEYOU trojan horse affects mail clients only (to be more precise, the MS Outlook mail client, running on Windows machines).
It DOES NOT affect mail server software, so it is irrelevant if your mail server is running Sendmail on Solaris, Communigate Pro on Linux, Mercur on Windows NT or whatever.
Also, the MAPS RBL has no business with stopping the spread of the ILOVEYOU message or similar harmful mail.
MAPS RBL is about stopping spammers and other persistent mail abusers. To get someone into the Real Time Blackhole list, you have to follow a very strict and bureacratic nomination protocol. E.g., you have to document the mail abuse/and/ that you contacted the abuser's provider personally/and/ that they declined your request to stop the abuser.
It doesn't take a minute to get a mail server rbl'ed - and that is good, because the MAPS team has put a lot of effort into making their system a fully documented weapon against spam, not a personal vendetta black-mail against providers that some individuals do not like.
The only reasons that the virus / trojan didn't reach you is either a) your friends are pretty smart and did not fall for the virus or b) none of your friends is using Outlook or c) you have no friends. Pick your favourite explanation.:-)
If you are into gaming, the Espresso PC is probably not for you. (I will get mine as a freelancer software developer, so it suits my needs as a travelling computer user just fine.)
However, both Intel and AMD have recently shown their concepts for miniature mainboards that should be interesting for lan party folks.
Last CeBIT, you could see lots and lots of ultra-mini mainboards and computer cases, usually 1/3 the size of today's "mini tower" cases. The Asian trade halls had all kinds of weird design
These mainboards run the latest CPUs and come with a similar all-in-one chipset as the Espresso, but if I remember correctly, had at least one slot for an additional graphics card so that one can replace the poor mainboard graphics with something more suited for 3d.
I'd expect a number of these sub-mini computers on the shelves quite soon, usually targeted for the mom-and-pop market.
(I am not a hardware expert, this is what I remember from my last CeBIT visit.)
...as I already pointed out previously, the Espresso will be distributed in Germany by AWE. I recently got their price list, prices were reasonable, starting from 2500,- DM for a well-equipped beginner system.
You can also buy just the box without a CPU, without RAM and without harddisk from AWE, but their prices for these components were within German standards and so their price for a complete kit was the same or better than buying their box and the rest somewhere else.
Seems like / and I both have a high Karma already.
FYI: Posting with anonymously gives you a default 0 points, posting with a user name gives you 1 point, posting with a user name and having a high Karma gives you 2.
So no, / and my messages weren't moderated up, 2 was simply their default score.
But yes, it was offtopic. Because of that, I now used the "no score +1 bonus" that is used by default. Back to a score of 1.
Ok, this is going to hurt my karma, but let me vent my anger here.
At University, I am working on a protocol extension to Jini to bring Jini to non-Java capable devices, e.g. embedded CPUs. Back when I began, we thought that we should find a cool hardware device to try the new protocol on. The Axis camera is a great product (I knew from several job-related projects) and it is hands-down the coolest device out there that combines an embedded microcontroller, an ethernet connector and a restricted hardware environment. Perfect to demonstrate my project of native Jini support without the need for a Java Virtual Machine.
October last year, long before I actually started working on my thesis, I requested developer information from Axis about their network camera. It took me four requests to get any response from them in the first place. Finally, after writing a polite complaint to Axis HQ Sweden, I got to an overly enthusiastic marketing drone from Axis Germany.
He told me that my project is a great thing, that Axis was very interested in it and that he would do everything he could do to help me.
He just noted that the formerly close-source firmware of the Axis camera will be changed to a port of the Linux kernel very soon and that I should wait for the new Linux version, due out in November.
"Isn't that great?" he told me "you don't even have to sign an NDA, we will provide you with the complete source of the firmware and one or two free demo units. All you have to do to get the demo units is sign a research agreement with us." I have an email from him lying around somewhere where he confirms this offer.
Oh, you can imagine how happy I was. Just a few weeks to get a demo unit with full firmware source and it's a cool product, too!
Well, weeks passed. Months passed. My contact person was always happy, bright and optimistic when I called him and asked about the progress of the product. No matter when I called him, the camera was due to be released "in two or three weeks" and "yes, you will get your demo unit with firmware source from us."
Strange that one time he asked me specifically not to contact the firmware developers at Axis Sweden before the release of the camera, since is "going to cause problems" for him...
Well, the camera was finally released in late Februar for CeBIT. There, I met an actual developer from Axis Sweden. He had never heard of my continuous requests.
"Interesting. It would have been nice to know this a few months back so that we could have looked into this project during our development." Yeah, but I told Axis about it four months ago.
The bottom line: There will be no freely available firmware source of the camera until "the end of the year". The developers' superiour has no interest in my thesis project, so that even with an NDA I will not be allowed to modify the camera's firmware now. (I could wait another year, but hey, one day I do want to finish University...)
I would have been nice to know this four months ago. Of course, because of the continouing promises and full confirmations by Axis Germany, I did not look into alternative hardware.
For your information: AWE (http://www.awe-gmbh.de) will be the German distributor of the Espresso PC. I talked with them yesterday, they will start shipping it in May.
> I'll paint with a broad brush here. > A religious orginization wanting world > domination? Shocking!
I knew that my original comment wasn't quite as clear as it should have been (sorry, English is not my first language).
Anyway, sure, almost every religion believes to be the only true source of wisdom. Nevertheless, there's a difference (although we are going way off-topic now): Scientology has, by its deepest core, an unethical and questionable background. Read some background info about Scientology (both pro and contra) and make up your own mind.
It is, of course, always left to one's own opinion what is ethical or not. Nevertheless, Scientology isn't (IMHO) a good idea gone wrong, it doesn't have some "jerks in it". It is a bad idea right from the start.
> Under German Law, state and federal > governments can't do business with a > member of the Church of Scientology > (maybe someone knows exactly why, I > don't).
For more info about Scientology (plus a lot of English translations of the German governments' view on this self-declared "church"): http://www.xenu.net/
Quote: L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology): "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion"
To sum it up: Scientology claims to be a church, but Germany (among others) does not grant this organization this status and generally calls Scientology's beliefs and practices unconstitutional.
The German government sees Scientology as an oppressive psycho-cult that uses its "church" status to hide behind laws that protect religions and grant tax reductions.
Scientology, firm in its belief that it is destined to "clear" the world to make it a Scientology-only place, has repeatedly engouraged its members to use dirty and illegal tricks against non-members for the (financial) benefit of the cult.
Now you may understand why having a core application of an operating system used by most businesses and governments world wide under the control of an unethical, mad cult creates a bit of an eery feeling for some folks.
Sure, Microsoft is jokingly called the evil empire, but nevertheless, Scientology *is* an evil empire.
------------------
Popular in Germany? Well, I haven't seen any.
on
Date Pagers
·
· Score: 3
Uhm, being a German geek who likes to check out any new gizmo and who lives in Hamburg where there are a lot of technology-gadget shops, I'd like to mention that I have never seen these devices anywhere.
Ok, so this is a gadget I *wouldn't* buy.*
But nevertheless, the only time I ever saw these things mentioned anywhere was in a newspaper article about a singles party event where they issued these things to the visitors as a gimmick. But that's it.
If everyone stops watching commercials...the companies will say "why are we paying for commercials when people don't watch them?"
Right. And they already do. Just look at billboards around you.
An increasing number of billboards say "your ad could be here!" these days. Sometimes you will see posters for charity. these posters are not free advertisement by the billboard owner to the charity organization. These are just a way to hide that this billboard was not sold for "normal" advertisement.
The problem with shareware was that too many not-so-good programs were distributed that asked for far too high prices. These died out and only few shareware authors remained, but those that did are alive and well.
The same thing is happening on Palm Pilot now. There are a lot of small hacks that ask for a ridiculous 50$ registration fee. Those will fade and be forgotten, but those other Palm shareware software applications, those that are worth registering, will continue to exist.
...and during commercial break on TV, I am not allowed to go to the bathroom, but have to stay and watch?
Face it, the advertisting industry is struggling right now because more and more people simply ignore ads *most of the time*. A business plan solely based on *ad revenue* does not work anymore these days, because advertisers are reluctant to advertise. There's so much advertising space these days, and thanks to new media, we are having more ad space added all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
> Even music CDs are attached to
> that plastic extender-thingy
The only time I have seen these was in the USA. Here in Germany (and the other European countries I have visited so far), CDs are sold in their jewel case, with no extra packaging except maybe for a transparent plastic wrap around the album.
------------------
Hey, this /does/ read like a script from Matlock...
------------------
This is the second review from Duke of URL linked here on Slashdot, and for the second time, I think that the reviewers have little knowledge of what they are writing about.
------------------
...it is a a Back Orifice-like program masquerading as a movie clip is infecting thousands of computers worldwide.
------------------
...squeak? Come on, a computer device that must be squeezed, tacked and stroked should make little rubber ducky noises, too.
Just imagine a whole IT department in a major corporation equipped with these...
------------------
On the topic of Beowulf clusters, does anybody know what actually happend to Project Übermensch? It looked like fraud right away, but I wonder whatever happened to those involved.
------------------
Arcor here in Germany, one of the major Telcos, is a cooperation of Mannesmann (a major German industrial conglomerate) and Deutsche Bahn (= German Rail).
Deutsche Bahn gives Mannesmann access to their excessive fiber network backbone that goes along the tracks of all major German rail connections.
As you Americans may not be aware of, here in Europe, the railway system is as closely knit as the American Greyhound bus system - there's a railway connection to almost every town.
Thanks to this cooperation, Arcor instantly had a major network backbone between all the major German cities.
------------------
It's funny - their project list contains a number of projects that I like for their cool design.
I wasn't aware that all these products were designed by the same company. Designers should be mentioned in a product's manual... Keep up your work, guys.
------------------
Your article is about the same logic as saying "I did not get sunburn today. The reason must be that I ate fish today. Go visit our local fish restaurant, they make a great dish of fish."
/incredibly/ well-done and accurate reporting by the mass media about how this virus works and how it spreads. I'm amazed that even the regional yellow press explained the technical details of the virus / trojan by 90% correct here. That's a first for technology reporting.
/and/ that you contacted the abuser's provider personally /and/ that they declined your request to stop the abuser.
:-)
Your choice of mail server software IS NOT the reason that the virus / trojan hasn't hit you.
Assuming otherwise shows your ignorance after days and days of
The ILOVEYOU trojan horse affects mail clients only (to be more precise, the MS Outlook mail client, running on Windows machines).
It DOES NOT affect mail server software, so it is irrelevant if your mail server is running Sendmail on Solaris, Communigate Pro on Linux, Mercur on Windows NT or whatever.
Also, the MAPS RBL has no business with stopping the spread of the ILOVEYOU message or similar harmful mail.
MAPS RBL is about stopping spammers and other persistent mail abusers. To get someone into the Real Time Blackhole list, you have to follow a very strict and bureacratic nomination protocol. E.g., you have to document the mail abuse
It doesn't take a minute to get a mail server rbl'ed - and that is good, because the MAPS team has put a lot of effort into making their system a fully documented weapon against spam, not a personal vendetta black-mail against providers that some individuals do not like.
The only reasons that the virus / trojan didn't reach you is either a) your friends are pretty smart and did not fall for the virus or b) none of your friends is using Outlook or c) you have no friends. Pick your favourite explanation.
------------------
If you are into gaming, the Espresso PC is probably not for you. (I will get mine as a freelancer software developer, so it suits my needs as a travelling computer user just fine.)
However, both Intel and AMD have recently shown their concepts for miniature mainboards that should be interesting for lan party folks.
Last CeBIT, you could see lots and lots of ultra-mini mainboards and computer cases, usually 1/3 the size of today's "mini tower" cases. The Asian trade halls had all kinds of weird design
These mainboards run the latest CPUs and come with a similar all-in-one chipset as the Espresso, but if I remember correctly, had at least one slot for an additional graphics card so that one can replace the poor mainboard graphics with something more suited for 3d.
I'd expect a number of these sub-mini computers on the shelves quite soon, usually targeted for the mom-and-pop market.
(I am not a hardware expert, this is what I remember from my last CeBIT visit.)
------------------
You can also buy just the box without a CPU, without RAM and without harddisk from AWE, but their prices for these components were within German standards and so their price for a complete kit was the same or better than buying their box and the rest somewhere else.
------------------
Seems like / and I both have a high Karma already.
FYI: Posting with anonymously gives you a default 0 points, posting with a user name gives you 1 point, posting with a user name and having a high Karma gives you 2.
So no, / and my messages weren't moderated up, 2 was simply their default score.
But yes, it was offtopic. Because of that, I now used the "no score +1 bonus" that is used by default. Back to a score of 1.
------------------
Hmm. The Axis software developer I met at CeBIT told me that I'd need the SDK to do so.
Anyway, dear Anonymous Coward, if you know more about this, please contact me at kontakt@hanno.de.
------------------
However, I don't quite understand your comment. Here in Germany, the word "Axis" or the German translation "Achse" isn't regarded as fascist vocabulary, unlike other words that you Americans seem to think are ok.
------------------
At University, I am working on a protocol extension to Jini to bring Jini to non-Java capable devices, e.g. embedded CPUs. Back when I began, we thought that we should find a cool hardware device to try the new protocol on. The Axis camera is a great product (I knew from several job-related projects) and it is hands-down the coolest device out there that combines an embedded microcontroller, an ethernet connector and a restricted hardware environment. Perfect to demonstrate my project of native Jini support without the need for a Java Virtual Machine.
October last year, long before I actually started working on my thesis, I requested developer information from Axis about their network camera. It took me four requests to get any response from them in the first place. Finally, after writing a polite complaint to Axis HQ Sweden, I got to an overly enthusiastic marketing drone from Axis Germany.
He told me that my project is a great thing, that Axis was very interested in it and that he would do everything he could do to help me.
He just noted that the formerly close-source firmware of the Axis camera will be changed to a port of the Linux kernel very soon and that I should wait for the new Linux version, due out in November.
"Isn't that great?" he told me "you don't even have to sign an NDA, we will provide you with the complete source of the firmware and one or two free demo units. All you have to do to get the demo units is sign a research agreement with us." I have an email from him lying around somewhere where he confirms this offer.
Oh, you can imagine how happy I was. Just a few weeks to get a demo unit with full firmware source and it's a cool product, too!
Well, weeks passed. Months passed. My contact person was always happy, bright and optimistic when I called him and asked about the progress of the product. No matter when I called him, the camera was due to be released "in two or three weeks" and "yes, you will get your demo unit with firmware source from us."
Strange that one time he asked me specifically not to contact the firmware developers at Axis Sweden before the release of the camera, since is "going to cause problems" for him...
Well, the camera was finally released in late Februar for CeBIT. There, I met an actual developer from Axis Sweden. He had never heard of my continuous requests.
"Interesting. It would have been nice to know this a few months back so that we could have looked into this project during our development." Yeah, but I told Axis about it four months ago.
The bottom line: There will be no freely available firmware source of the camera until "the end of the year". The developers' superiour has no interest in my thesis project, so that even with an NDA I will not be allowed to modify the camera's firmware now. (I could wait another year, but hey, one day I do want to finish University...)
I would have been nice to know this four months ago. Of course, because of the continouing promises and full confirmations by Axis Germany, I did not look into alternative hardware.
Anyway, if you're interested, see http://developer.jini.org:80/exc hange/users/hanno/ for more information about my protocol extension. You'll need a Jini developer account.
------------------
For your information: AWE (http://www.awe-gmbh.de) will be the German distributor of the Espresso PC. I talked with them yesterday, they will start shipping it in May.
------------------
No, according to this article from the German Heise Newsticker, the PSN has been disabled by default in the new Celeron.
------------------
> I'll paint with a broad brush here.
> A religious orginization wanting world
> domination? Shocking!
I knew that my original comment wasn't quite as clear as it should have been (sorry, English is not my first language).
Anyway, sure, almost every religion believes to be the only true source of wisdom. Nevertheless, there's a difference (although we are going way off-topic now): Scientology has, by its deepest core, an unethical and questionable background. Read some background info about Scientology (both pro and contra) and make up your own mind.
It is, of course, always left to one's own opinion what is ethical or not. Nevertheless, Scientology isn't (IMHO) a good idea gone wrong, it doesn't have some "jerks in it". It is a bad idea right from the start.
------------------
> Under German Law, state and federal
> governments can't do business with a
> member of the Church of Scientology
> (maybe someone knows exactly why, I
> don't).
For more info about Scientology (plus a lot of English translations of the German governments' view on this self-declared "church"): http://www.xenu.net/
Quote: L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology): "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion"
To sum it up: Scientology claims to be a church, but Germany (among others) does not grant this organization this status and generally calls Scientology's beliefs and practices unconstitutional.
The German government sees Scientology as an oppressive psycho-cult that uses its "church" status to hide behind laws that protect religions and grant tax reductions.
Scientology, firm in its belief that it is destined to "clear" the world to make it a Scientology-only place, has repeatedly engouraged its members to use dirty and illegal tricks against non-members for the (financial) benefit of the cult.
Now you may understand why having a core application of an operating system used by most businesses and governments world wide under the control of an unethical, mad cult creates a bit of an eery feeling for some folks.
Sure, Microsoft is jokingly called the evil empire, but nevertheless, Scientology *is* an evil empire.
------------------
Uhm, being a German geek who likes to check out any new gizmo and who lives in Hamburg where there are a lot of technology-gadget shops, I'd like to mention that I have never seen these devices anywhere.
Ok, so this is a gadget I *wouldn't* buy.*
But nevertheless, the only time I ever saw these things mentioned anywhere was in a newspaper article about a singles party event where they issued these things to the visitors as a gimmick. But that's it.
(* Yes I know, you don't believe me, anyway.)
P.S.: Note the German web page. It is dated 1998.
------------------
Right. And they already do. Just look at billboards around you.
An increasing number of billboards say "your ad could be here!" these days. Sometimes you will see posters for charity. these posters are not free advertisement by the billboard owner to the charity organization. These are just a way to hide that this billboard was not sold for "normal" advertisement.
------------------
The problem with shareware was that too many not-so-good programs were distributed that asked for far too high prices. These died out and only few shareware authors remained, but those that did are alive and well.
The same thing is happening on Palm Pilot now. There are a lot of small hacks that ask for a ridiculous 50$ registration fee. Those will fade and be forgotten, but those other Palm shareware software applications, those that are worth registering, will continue to exist.
------------------
...and during commercial break on TV, I am not allowed to go to the bathroom, but have to stay and watch?
Face it, the advertisting industry is struggling right now because more and more people simply ignore ads *most of the time*. A business plan solely based on *ad revenue* does not work anymore these days, because advertisers are reluctant to advertise. There's so much advertising space these days, and thanks to new media, we are having more ad space added all the time.
------------------
Full version: Pay for it.
Free version: Agree to have ads *in the software's window*
Free version with no ads: Fewer features.
With "free hardware incl. ads" going down the drain, I wonder if Eudora's business model will be more successful.
------------------
And why did they choose you as a target?
------------------