Regardless of your opinions of Microsoft, it's advertising. AOL has done the same for years, leaving their CDs or floppy disks everywhere imaginable.
So MS puts posters in CDs into a USPS office? Big deal. It's not like you can argue that the USPS is a government office and the government is promoting it, the USPS is a government-contracted company, just look it up in your history book.
If the USPS agrees to hang the signs, then they're there. Personally, either someone will or won't upgrade, and a nifty poster in a post office won't influence too many people, and certainly not the type who would use Linux.
Call me a troll for not flaming Microsoft, but it's just marketing, not monopolistic business tactics. And hell, maybe the cost of postage will go down with the money that MS gives the USPS for putting the posters.
The only problem with a 6-day LAN party, aside from the fact that you'll need to carry in a fridge to feed yourself, is the fact that undoubtedly many of the people there will be your stereotypical computer nerd. And will not shower. For 6 days. I think that's as good a reason as any to avoid a LAN party that big.
If your sole reason for slapping everyone is that this is purely off topic, than that's just sad.
If, in fact, you find the fact that we, the denizens of slashdot, find your editor moderation tactics to be somewhat fascist, and therefore resent our right to free speech, then just come out and say so. Delete the posts. Hell, delete our accounts. But just slapping down everyone who posts to -1 is a waste of your time.
What they plan on doing is distributing a CD-Ripping program where, when you start it, you're given a question:
Are you ripping this to copy the mp3s onto your MP3 player and only your mp3 player, or are you going to listen to them on your computer and/or pirate them via P2P applications?
Answer yes, you rip. Answer no, your computer melts.
On several recent occasions, Web sites critical of big companies -- using domains called, generically, companynamesucks.com -- have had their names revoked and given to the companies that claimed trademark violations. It's still outrageous that the companies can win these cases, but maybe the victories are transitory if the critics' sites, by other names, can still be found easily.
The point that he either neglected to mention or totally missed was the freedom of speech. Some people just prefer to use it as free speech, which is perfectly acceptable.
Either way, it's a good article, and judging by the increasing prominence of "Register yourname.com!" advertisements everywhere I go, he's right. People are registering less, and the companies are getting worried that they won't get as much money.
exactly what model of Mac does your friend have, iGawyn? hmmmmm? fucking troll.
It's the first model G3 tower, and he was informed by the local Apple technician that it was not possible to mount a second IDE harddrive onto it without getting a PCI card for it.
If you want to flame me, go ahead. But make sure that you find out all of the facts, first, don't just blindly assume things.
The G4s were not out at that point in time, my iMac only has USB, and memory upgrades are not a 1-minute operation. It requires you to pull apart the computer, seperating the CRT from the "tray", and some fancy work underneath the motherboard to put in the low-profile 2nd RAM chip.
If you want to criticize what I say, at least take notice of the fact that I said it was a 333MHz iMac and therefore what you said doesn't apply.
Although the tower cases are meant to be upgraded, while talking with a friend of mine, he's recently running into trouble, trying to add a second harddrive to his G3 tower. He needs to buy a special PCI card to enable the ability to have two harddrives, as well as mounting gear for his case. So, while you can do some upgrades, you're still limited by your ability to buy things such as a new motherboard and the like.
However, my iMac is the bastard child of the line. The last before slot-loading CDs, the last before firewire, so all I have is USB connectivity.
The main problem is that people on both sides of the line, PC (x86) and Mac (68k/PPC) users have biases towards the other. PC users go "The Macs had crappy tech support for years, people are afraid because of that" and the Mac users go "You have to mess around with a ton of cables, cracking open the case, playing with cards, just to make it run."
Now, I own 3 computers. An iMac (333), an AMD 1.2GHz Athlon, and an AMD 700 Duron, respectively running OS 9.1, Win2000, and OpenBSD. I try not to be too biased, however, every operating system has it's bugs, that's a part of life.
To get my computers working, no, I didn't have to crack the cases, play around with PCI/AGP cards, until I decided that I wanted to completely overhaul my system, replacing motherboard/processor/video card. I've upgraded every one of my systems, and even from the hardware standpoint, they each have their drawbacks.
The iMac's case is a pain in the ass to work in. I've upgraded it to 192MB of RAM and a 30GB HD. It's nearly impossible to do so, and I've probably voided the warranty in the process, although it's too old to still have a valid one. It works great. As my router.
The 1.2GHz machine's case is a nice, new Enlight case. It's a breeze to work in, and about the only drawback is that it's so big and open, I often wonder where I want to put things, and how many more fans I can put in there. It's great, as my gaming PC.
The 700MHz machine is part of an old barebones system I got from a seedy vender at a computer show. It's got a crappy case, although you have some room, there isn't too much. I use it for running all sorts of random n*x experiments on it.
Now, as far as your average home user, what would I recommend? Well, it depends. If you want a cheap, relatively easy to use, vaguely stable system, sure, buy a cheap PC. You can get a PC, and everything you need to go online, check your e-mail, surf the web a bit, write the occasional document and print it. If you want some more stability, but don't mind jacking the price up, then sure, get a mac.
However, most of us here on slashdot are also part of a "niche market." We're the overclockers, power-users, computer geeks who love tweaking the systems in any way possible. What I would buy for myself, I'll most likely never recommend for my mother to use.
As far as ease-of-use, well, it's a learned habit. If you start out on Windows, sure, it'll take some work to get to use Macs. The reverse is also true. Personally, I don't like the look of the new iMac. Just by seeing it on the computer, I can tell that if I had one, and I wanted to pop the case, upgrade the harddrive or ram, it'd be a pain in the ass. You're always fighting a trade off. Ease/ability to upgrade vs. size. I don't care about size. I like being able to tweak things.
What's right for you? Whichever one you're happiest with. Platform wars are just a waste of time, regardless of public opinion, market share, or anything else under the sun.
The problem with this digital rights management solution, just like all of the others, is that they cannot force people to upgrade. Although there is a certain segment of the populace that will desire to own the latest and greatest everything multimedia, and therefore trip himself into owning devices embedded with DRM, the average American won't want to spend the extra money to upgrade.
Therefore, unless you give them a major incentive, the RIAA/MPAA is foiled again. No upgrades means that all of the time they spent plotting up yet another scheme to control what we can and can't watch is ruined by consumer apathy.
If they really wanted people to upgrade, they would (a) develop a new, proprietary format, (b) stop release of all current and future products on CD/VHS/DVD, (c) release ONLY on aforementioned proprietary format. Eventually, enough people would switch to make it worth their while.
Even with this, though, people will find a way around the Digital Rights Management schemes, as they also do.
To use a famous quote, "Where there's a will, there's a way." And when it comes to copying CDs, VHS tapes, or DVDs, there is most certainly a will.
If you are concerned enough about your data to want to permanently delete it, or at least keep your tracks covered, you'll use PGP and either wipe your freespace multiple times to completely obscure data, and/or keep your important files encrypted.
Although encryption is, in theory, breakable, the resources to do so don't exist (unless the NSA has some quantum computers squirreled away somewhere), your files will be safe.
In short, if you want to keep files private, use PGP, and use it wisely. If you don't make more of an attempt, other than "well, if I tell Windows to delete it, it's gone", to keep files hidden/gone for good, you deserve to have your data recovered.
Actually, if you think that legal battles don't matter, you're sadly mistaken. The major changes to the internet and "life as we know it" will happen in the courtrooms, far from most of us. That is what the EFF is here for, to fight for the rights of, well, people like us. Those of us who use computers, the internet, DVDs, what have you. Legal issues are often underlooked in the online community, but they are very important.
At least most of the law professors interviewed by the NYT haven't lost all touch with reality. They predict things such as users not patronizing RIAA-run music services (no suprise there), the government abusing its powers under the new USA-Patriot act (again, no suprise), more court cases being brought up to fight the Constitutionality of the DCMA and predictions that the Supreme Court will hear them, internet privacy battles being fought over how much the government can regulate what we do.
None of it's really suprising, if you pay attention to the news, but the good news is that prominent law professors realize that this is happening, and many of them at least appear to be siding with sanity.
Perhaps in the next few years, we'll see either the DMCA being revoked, or at least heavily amended, and if we're really lucky, some of those quoted law professors will mean what they say and go to bat for the public against the government, protesting the invasions of privacy.
The main problem that both the RIAA and the MPAA have is that they have lost touch with reality. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, computer literate people. Because of this, you get idiotic decisions like the Cactus CD-Rip protection, the 0.99GB per.vob limit on DVDs, CSS, any all of the rest of the things that we love to laugh at.
If they wanted to sell their products, they'd lower the prices (seriously, 10$ CDs are good, but 30$ for a DVD? Come on, a DVD isn't that expensive, and you've already raped the consumer in the theaters, so drop the price. 15$ or 20$ for a new DVD would be nice), as well as try to get intelligent people to protect their goods.
Instead of going after whoever cracked CSS, the MPAA should have approached them, asked for suggestions to improve encryption, not sue them for copyright infringement, or whatever bullshit they currently are pulling out of their asses.
Information will find a way to be free, be it ripping CDs, DVDs, or whatever. As long as you have computer-illiterate people making the decisions, we'll always have news stories to post on/. and laugh at.
However, if your product gets a bad reputation because you refuse to support people, because they haven't donated, then less people will want to use your product, which means less donations. It's a vicious circle, which eventually the Smoothwall developers will have to break.
Sure, it's free, it's GPLed. Big deal. There are plenty of free, GPLed firewalls out there, and the developers of them are probably a lot nicer. What sets Smoothwall above the rest? Tech support? Reading/., that doesn't seem likely. Features? That only goes so far. Security? You have to plan for the worst, and just because you don't think there's a chance in hell of someone gaining root on the box doesn't mean you don't shadow your passwords, etc.
Gawyn
Re:IDG article is apparently original source
on
No Solaris 9 for x86
·
· Score: 1
If it wasn't for the fact that today's undergraduates are among the most brainwashed people around, I'd have to agree with you. I'm a student at UMD (University of Maryland) and we've had about half a dozen Microsoft guys come and speak to us on different occasions about WinXP, OfficeXP,.NET, and everything under the sun.
Microsoft is really pushing to convince undergrads that Microsoft is the only path to take, and not everyone has the common sense to look around and experiment with other OSes, before getting suckered into becoming yet another MSCE lined up and ready for work rebooting NT servers daily.
This wasn't a review, this was a marketing speech about how cool it is. It's an attractive looking PDA, however, they don't tell you much useful information, just gloss over the attractive features, throw some more bullshit at you, and then tell you where to buy it.
Just because a reviewer may like a product doesn't mean that he doesn't have a job to do, to review it in great detail, give the specifications for it, talk about good and bad points, and the like.
A DDoS attack is damaging, either spoofed or non-spoofed, but Gibson's main premise is that, with the inclusion of raw sockets into WinXP, spoofed DDoS attacks will conquer the internet, be untraceable and unblockable, and generally bring around the end of the world as we know it.
For more info on paranoia, read here. Then, before the marketing spin catches a hold of your soul, read here.
Yea, lower gauge. The gauge system of shotguns has always mystified me about how it works. What I meant, though, was a more powerful gun. "Look, ma!" Boom. "Oops, I just helped DDoS microsoft."
Just about every ISP worth the money you pay per month does this. I'm not sure how many ISPs do filter, but it's a very simple, one line addition to the Cisco routers, to check to see if the source IP is within it's IP pool. If not, then you can either discard and ignore the packets, or discard and flag them, based on repeat offenders, and from there, track down which user is sending them and inform them of this.
I'm not implying that there's no problems with raw sockets, any time that you give users a higher-gauge shotgun (in the form an OS) aimed at their foot, you're causing more problems.
However, the solution is not to remove raw sockets, it's to (a) forcibly educate the users, such as making them run through a tutorial on first-boot from a PC, or (b) lock down the system, instead of leaving it open, like MS typically does.
I'm definitely sure there will be WinXP DDoS attacks, I know enough about network security and the like to think there won't be, but it'll be nowhere near the catastrophic levels predicted by Gibon, Cringley, and groupies.
So you're saying that Steve Gibson may be right? Even so, with the raw sockets exploit, UPnP propogation, "spoofed DDoS attacks gone rampant", and everything else Gibson predicts, the internet will continue fine.
Unless something extraordinarily stupid happens, such as some of the major internet backbones being exposed and targeted by DDoS attacks, the internet will continue just fine, with sites vanishing for a while, then re-appearing, as they currently do.
You shouldn't trust him, as he most likely views his predictions thing as nothing more than a game, and certainly doesn't take them seriously himself. If he did, he'd have sold his MS stock and bought lots of Cisco. That or he's lying about the Cisco stock that he supposedly does not own.
However, since he said he sat at the sales division meeting, wouldn't that mean that he had some stock, or maybe they just invited him for the hell of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Escaflowne the series was originally a shoujo manga series, which then became turned into a 26-episode anime run.
Escaflowne the movie was originally a shounen manga series, which became turned into a movie.
That's why the story is different, the people look different, and so on.
The series spends a lot of time on the love story between Hitomi, Van, and Allen, while the movie is about Van's fight.
Each has it's merits, it's just up to you to choose which you like most.
Gawyn
Regardless of your opinions of Microsoft, it's advertising. AOL has done the same for years, leaving their CDs or floppy disks everywhere imaginable.
So MS puts posters in CDs into a USPS office? Big deal. It's not like you can argue that the USPS is a government office and the government is promoting it, the USPS is a government-contracted company, just look it up in your history book.
If the USPS agrees to hang the signs, then they're there. Personally, either someone will or won't upgrade, and a nifty poster in a post office won't influence too many people, and certainly not the type who would use Linux.
Call me a troll for not flaming Microsoft, but it's just marketing, not monopolistic business tactics. And hell, maybe the cost of postage will go down with the money that MS gives the USPS for putting the posters.
Gawyn
The only problem with a 6-day LAN party, aside from the fact that you'll need to carry in a fridge to feed yourself, is the fact that undoubtedly many of the people there will be your stereotypical computer nerd. And will not shower. For 6 days. I think that's as good a reason as any to avoid a LAN party that big.
Gawyn
If your sole reason for slapping everyone is that this is purely off topic, than that's just sad.
If, in fact, you find the fact that we, the denizens of slashdot, find your editor moderation tactics to be somewhat fascist, and therefore resent our right to free speech, then just come out and say so. Delete the posts. Hell, delete our accounts. But just slapping down everyone who posts to -1 is a waste of your time.
Kill 3 of my karma. Have fun.
Gawyn
What they plan on doing is distributing a CD-Ripping program where, when you start it, you're given a question:
Are you ripping this to copy the mp3s onto your MP3 player and only your mp3 player, or are you going to listen to them on your computer and/or pirate them via P2P applications?
Answer yes, you rip. Answer no, your computer melts.
Gawyn
The point that he either neglected to mention or totally missed was the freedom of speech. Some people just prefer to use it as free speech, which is perfectly acceptable.
Either way, it's a good article, and judging by the increasing prominence of "Register yourname.com!" advertisements everywhere I go, he's right. People are registering less, and the companies are getting worried that they won't get as much money.
Gawyn
exactly what model of Mac does your friend have, iGawyn? hmmmmm? fucking troll.
It's the first model G3 tower, and he was informed by the local Apple technician that it was not possible to mount a second IDE harddrive onto it without getting a PCI card for it.
If you want to flame me, go ahead. But make sure that you find out all of the facts, first, don't just blindly assume things.
Gawyn
The G4s were not out at that point in time, my iMac only has USB, and memory upgrades are not a 1-minute operation. It requires you to pull apart the computer, seperating the CRT from the "tray", and some fancy work underneath the motherboard to put in the low-profile 2nd RAM chip.
If you want to criticize what I say, at least take notice of the fact that I said it was a 333MHz iMac and therefore what you said doesn't apply.
Although the tower cases are meant to be upgraded, while talking with a friend of mine, he's recently running into trouble, trying to add a second harddrive to his G3 tower. He needs to buy a special PCI card to enable the ability to have two harddrives, as well as mounting gear for his case. So, while you can do some upgrades, you're still limited by your ability to buy things such as a new motherboard and the like.
However, my iMac is the bastard child of the line. The last before slot-loading CDs, the last before firewire, so all I have is USB connectivity.
Gawyn
The main problem is that people on both sides of the line, PC (x86) and Mac (68k/PPC) users have biases towards the other. PC users go "The Macs had crappy tech support for years, people are afraid because of that" and the Mac users go "You have to mess around with a ton of cables, cracking open the case, playing with cards, just to make it run."
Now, I own 3 computers. An iMac (333), an AMD 1.2GHz Athlon, and an AMD 700 Duron, respectively running OS 9.1, Win2000, and OpenBSD. I try not to be too biased, however, every operating system has it's bugs, that's a part of life.
To get my computers working, no, I didn't have to crack the cases, play around with PCI/AGP cards, until I decided that I wanted to completely overhaul my system, replacing motherboard/processor/video card. I've upgraded every one of my systems, and even from the hardware standpoint, they each have their drawbacks.
The iMac's case is a pain in the ass to work in. I've upgraded it to 192MB of RAM and a 30GB HD. It's nearly impossible to do so, and I've probably voided the warranty in the process, although it's too old to still have a valid one. It works great. As my router.
The 1.2GHz machine's case is a nice, new Enlight case. It's a breeze to work in, and about the only drawback is that it's so big and open, I often wonder where I want to put things, and how many more fans I can put in there. It's great, as my gaming PC.
The 700MHz machine is part of an old barebones system I got from a seedy vender at a computer show. It's got a crappy case, although you have some room, there isn't too much. I use it for running all sorts of random n*x experiments on it.
Now, as far as your average home user, what would I recommend? Well, it depends. If you want a cheap, relatively easy to use, vaguely stable system, sure, buy a cheap PC. You can get a PC, and everything you need to go online, check your e-mail, surf the web a bit, write the occasional document and print it. If you want some more stability, but don't mind jacking the price up, then sure, get a mac.
However, most of us here on slashdot are also part of a "niche market." We're the overclockers, power-users, computer geeks who love tweaking the systems in any way possible. What I would buy for myself, I'll most likely never recommend for my mother to use.
As far as ease-of-use, well, it's a learned habit. If you start out on Windows, sure, it'll take some work to get to use Macs. The reverse is also true. Personally, I don't like the look of the new iMac. Just by seeing it on the computer, I can tell that if I had one, and I wanted to pop the case, upgrade the harddrive or ram, it'd be a pain in the ass. You're always fighting a trade off. Ease/ability to upgrade vs. size. I don't care about size. I like being able to tweak things.
What's right for you? Whichever one you're happiest with. Platform wars are just a waste of time, regardless of public opinion, market share, or anything else under the sun.
Gawyn
The problem with this digital rights management solution, just like all of the others, is that they cannot force people to upgrade. Although there is a certain segment of the populace that will desire to own the latest and greatest everything multimedia, and therefore trip himself into owning devices embedded with DRM, the average American won't want to spend the extra money to upgrade.
Therefore, unless you give them a major incentive, the RIAA/MPAA is foiled again. No upgrades means that all of the time they spent plotting up yet another scheme to control what we can and can't watch is ruined by consumer apathy.
If they really wanted people to upgrade, they would (a) develop a new, proprietary format, (b) stop release of all current and future products on CD/VHS/DVD, (c) release ONLY on aforementioned proprietary format. Eventually, enough people would switch to make it worth their while.
Even with this, though, people will find a way around the Digital Rights Management schemes, as they also do.
To use a famous quote, "Where there's a will, there's a way." And when it comes to copying CDs, VHS tapes, or DVDs, there is most certainly a will.
Gawyn
If you are concerned enough about your data to want to permanently delete it, or at least keep your tracks covered, you'll use PGP and either wipe your freespace multiple times to completely obscure data, and/or keep your important files encrypted.
Although encryption is, in theory, breakable, the resources to do so don't exist (unless the NSA has some quantum computers squirreled away somewhere), your files will be safe.
In short, if you want to keep files private, use PGP, and use it wisely. If you don't make more of an attempt, other than "well, if I tell Windows to delete it, it's gone", to keep files hidden/gone for good, you deserve to have your data recovered.
Gawyn
Actually, if you think that legal battles don't matter, you're sadly mistaken. The major changes to the internet and "life as we know it" will happen in the courtrooms, far from most of us. That is what the EFF is here for, to fight for the rights of, well, people like us. Those of us who use computers, the internet, DVDs, what have you. Legal issues are often underlooked in the online community, but they are very important.
Gawyn
At least most of the law professors interviewed by the NYT haven't lost all touch with reality. They predict things such as users not patronizing RIAA-run music services (no suprise there), the government abusing its powers under the new USA-Patriot act (again, no suprise), more court cases being brought up to fight the Constitutionality of the DCMA and predictions that the Supreme Court will hear them, internet privacy battles being fought over how much the government can regulate what we do.
None of it's really suprising, if you pay attention to the news, but the good news is that prominent law professors realize that this is happening, and many of them at least appear to be siding with sanity.
Perhaps in the next few years, we'll see either the DMCA being revoked, or at least heavily amended, and if we're really lucky, some of those quoted law professors will mean what they say and go to bat for the public against the government, protesting the invasions of privacy.
Gawyn
At Suncoast or Babbages, any anime DVD that I buy costs me 29$ or so. I can find them online for a little bit less, but it's still over 20$.
The main problem that both the RIAA and the MPAA have is that they have lost touch with reality. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, computer literate people. Because of this, you get idiotic decisions like the Cactus CD-Rip protection, the 0.99GB per .vob limit on DVDs, CSS, any all of the rest of the things that we love to laugh at.
/. and laugh at.
If they wanted to sell their products, they'd lower the prices (seriously, 10$ CDs are good, but 30$ for a DVD? Come on, a DVD isn't that expensive, and you've already raped the consumer in the theaters, so drop the price. 15$ or 20$ for a new DVD would be nice), as well as try to get intelligent people to protect their goods.
Instead of going after whoever cracked CSS, the MPAA should have approached them, asked for suggestions to improve encryption, not sue them for copyright infringement, or whatever bullshit they currently are pulling out of their asses.
Information will find a way to be free, be it ripping CDs, DVDs, or whatever. As long as you have computer-illiterate people making the decisions, we'll always have news stories to post on
Gawyn
However, if your product gets a bad reputation because you refuse to support people, because they haven't donated, then less people will want to use your product, which means less donations. It's a vicious circle, which eventually the Smoothwall developers will have to break.
/., that doesn't seem likely. Features? That only goes so far. Security? You have to plan for the worst, and just because you don't think there's a chance in hell of someone gaining root on the box doesn't mean you don't shadow your passwords, etc.
Sure, it's free, it's GPLed. Big deal. There are plenty of free, GPLed firewalls out there, and the developers of them are probably a lot nicer. What sets Smoothwall above the rest? Tech support? Reading
Gawyn
If it wasn't for the fact that today's undergraduates are among the most brainwashed people around, I'd have to agree with you. I'm a student at UMD (University of Maryland) and we've had about half a dozen Microsoft guys come and speak to us on different occasions about WinXP, OfficeXP, .NET, and everything under the sun.
Microsoft is really pushing to convince undergrads that Microsoft is the only path to take, and not everyone has the common sense to look around and experiment with other OSes, before getting suckered into becoming yet another MSCE lined up and ready for work rebooting NT servers daily.
Gawyn
This wasn't a review, this was a marketing speech about how cool it is. It's an attractive looking PDA, however, they don't tell you much useful information, just gloss over the attractive features, throw some more bullshit at you, and then tell you where to buy it.
Just because a reviewer may like a product doesn't mean that he doesn't have a job to do, to review it in great detail, give the specifications for it, talk about good and bad points, and the like.
Gawyn
A DDoS attack is damaging, either spoofed or non-spoofed, but Gibson's main premise is that, with the inclusion of raw sockets into WinXP, spoofed DDoS attacks will conquer the internet, be untraceable and unblockable, and generally bring around the end of the world as we know it.
For more info on paranoia, read here. Then, before the marketing spin catches a hold of your soul, read here.
Gawyn
Yea, lower gauge. The gauge system of shotguns has always mystified me about how it works. What I meant, though, was a more powerful gun. "Look, ma!" Boom. "Oops, I just helped DDoS microsoft."
Gawyn
Just about every ISP worth the money you pay per month does this. I'm not sure how many ISPs do filter, but it's a very simple, one line addition to the Cisco routers, to check to see if the source IP is within it's IP pool. If not, then you can either discard and ignore the packets, or discard and flag them, based on repeat offenders, and from there, track down which user is sending them and inform them of this.
Gawyn
I'm not implying that there's no problems with raw sockets, any time that you give users a higher-gauge shotgun (in the form an OS) aimed at their foot, you're causing more problems.
However, the solution is not to remove raw sockets, it's to (a) forcibly educate the users, such as making them run through a tutorial on first-boot from a PC, or (b) lock down the system, instead of leaving it open, like MS typically does.
I'm definitely sure there will be WinXP DDoS attacks, I know enough about network security and the like to think there won't be, but it'll be nowhere near the catastrophic levels predicted by Gibon, Cringley, and groupies.
Gawyn
So you're saying that Steve Gibson may be right? Even so, with the raw sockets exploit, UPnP propogation, "spoofed DDoS attacks gone rampant", and everything else Gibson predicts, the internet will continue fine.
Unless something extraordinarily stupid happens, such as some of the major internet backbones being exposed and targeted by DDoS attacks, the internet will continue just fine, with sites vanishing for a while, then re-appearing, as they currently do.
Gawyn
You shouldn't trust him, as he most likely views his predictions thing as nothing more than a game, and certainly doesn't take them seriously himself. If he did, he'd have sold his MS stock and bought lots of Cisco. That or he's lying about the Cisco stock that he supposedly does not own.
However, since he said he sat at the sales division meeting, wouldn't that mean that he had some stock, or maybe they just invited him for the hell of it.
Gawyn