I am Canadian, and bud you hit the nail on the head. I was laughing all the way through your comment.
But, on the other hand, we have cultural diversity, a tolerant society, snow, universal health care, great beer, snow, not many gun problems, snow, and ummmmm....snow. Oh, and we have lots of women up here and all of them are drop dead gorgeous - it's just hard to tell with them in parkas and mukluks all the time.
BTW, we _were_ going to go to Mars ourselved _in_ a Zamboni, but we didn't have enough room for beer. And we spent the money on hospitals.
P.S. My buddy in the border patrol will be checking for that hash with a rubber glove.
So, will VA let you play with thier latest toys under development? Slashdot on a 16 way Itanium server, running Trillian sounds cool. Good way to melt a T3 anyway;).
Microsoft "improves" the ATA100 standard so it actually works with Windows, gets the "standard" changed by strong-arm tactics to include said "improvements", and your kernel pukes into the bit-bucket.
<HardwareGuy><Hypocrite>I wish people would keep the volume on triumphs low, and failures high - keeps development energy where it belongs, fixing bugs and improving packages</Hypocrite></HardwareGuy>
The Crusoe is an excellent piece of technology, and will go a long way to making acceptable devices for remote computing. There is one point I'd like to make - and that's Floating Point. I've searched through thier site, and only found one mention of a FPU, and it wasn't in any benchmarks. I'd like to know how the Crusoe stacks up against other processors with a floating point intesive app like MicroStation, AutoCAD or The GIMP. I know DVD can be FP intensive, but that's only a single application, and therefore easy to optimize for. Heck, let's have some people in the Scientific comunity try one of those huge mathematical FORTAN written apps on a Crusoe based machine, just to see how it stacks up to a PIII Xeon. Ooh, better still, an Athlon. Ooooh! - the ultimate - an EV7 Alpha! If it can keep up to one of these guys, it's the ultimate in processors.
There are those who require a number cruncher - even on the road.
Those screen shots are, in a word, gorgeous. I'll have to fire up the Cable Modem tonite for sure.
This whole GNOME/KDE thing will be rendered moote if the package actually IS stable and easy to use. The reason? The people we want to run Linux/BSD/TRU64/*nix-flavour-of-the-day mostly use Windows at the moment. A UI this nice, this pleasing to the eye will draw them like bees to honey. Never underestimate the power a pretty picture has over John Q User. If they get work done, so much the better.
Right now I use KDE - but will likely end up using GNOME. Just to show off the pretty screens to the lusers looking over my shoulder.
Don't forget, everyone, that the Alpha was originally a DEC product. DEC was always populated by engineers of a more "research" bent, i.e. they never really left college - they just moved to DECs lab. From what I've read, DEC was in on the Alpha Linux port from the get-go. Stands to reason that they'd like to "get back in the game", even with the Compaq stuffed shirts running around pushing ProLiants.
BTW, I've used TRU64 on a DS10 - it's something of a RAM pig, but it doesn't stop for much, and it is a nice environment.
"Well, not by most people, who have stated in overwhelming majorities time and again that they would be perfectly happy to pay a fair price for what they receive, but by a very small segment who would profit by cultivating and taking advantage of each person's least admirable qualities
This guy sounds like he's pretty much on the ball - except if he thinks that $22CDN for the average CD is a fair price. We should be using the net to communicate to Joe Average Consumer what a bunch of gouging, thieving bastards these record company executives are, instead of "appropriating" thier wares in a questionable manner.
Thier news page shows they have deals and investment from Intel.
Very cool stuff, especially for laptops. You could selectively power RAM to save a few watts here or there. The only problem I see with a system with nothing but non-volitile RAM is filling the cache inside the processor. Easy to fix I'm sure, but if the cache was non-volitile too, you'd have the entire machine state saved.
Intel got in early - I'm sure Transmeta would be terribly interested in RAM that you can take power away from, and have it maintain state...
1. There are more protocols than internet protocols
Yup. Other ones don't really matter - right now anyway. The open structure of the Internet is what's most important at this particular time.
2. Taking away their right to develop a new internet protocol, takes away the same right from me as well - this means nothing new will be developed.
Not exactly what I said - you, or anyone can develop any new protocol or thing you/they want, except if it's used on the Internet, the exact specifications of said protocol must be published for open review. If anyone has the "embrace and extend" tactic on thier mind when they "enhance" an Open Standard Protocol, this will short circuit them, since thier extentions will have to be published. Ensconsed in law, it would be virtually impossible for any one person or entity to co-opt a open standard, and then by default the Internet.
3. I think you just made a silly statement I think not. The Internet is a public communications network, and as such public officials should be able to step in when the threat of it not being public anymore arises. Legally enforcing Open Standards on the Internet will lead to a set-it-and-forget-it solution to keeping the Internet open and free for all.
BTW, MS-Anything is what I'm trying to avoid, as well as SUN-Anything, NOVELL-Anything or LINUX-Anything. Unless, of course, it's actually worth something to the Internet in general. Then the spec would be published, and everyone gets to use it.
If they split up M$ in 2 or 3 or whatever, each one can still monopolize thier particular segment since they have so much leverage - a huge installed base. Each company can still embrace, extend and do all the other nasty anti-competitive things they do now. The Internet wasn't meant for Microsoft, it was meant for _everyone_. So, lets break out the saws and the shackles together, people. Force them to only implement pure internet standard protocols in any of thier products, and if they do extend anything the specs have to be released with an unrestrictive license. Then, ingenuity will take over where innovation left off, and we'll see some competition.
2. How can Microsoft use the Kerberos name, which signifies an open standard protocol, in connection with a proprietary protocol?
Here it comes, people. Pretty soon, we'll see a legal battle fought over an open standard - may be Kerberos, could be something else. If we allow these corporate-money-sucking monsters too many kicks at the can, they'll eventually find a way pry a protocol, a language or something else out of the public domain and into thier hot little hands. Then the Gates (no pun intended?)will be breached, and the corporate hordes will rush in to feast on the spoils.
We need laws - international laws - that say "Open standards are sacrosanct, and ye shall not deviate from them, under pain of losing _any_ capital you've gained from them". This would remove the incentive to acquire a standard, and may give us some peace.
Quick question for all you legal eagle types out there - how does the DCMA apply to CANADA? I thought my country was sort of out of the jurisdiction of any US institutions. I AM Canadian, after all, so can a US court has a say in what I do up here?
Last time I looked, the DCMA was a US law, not an International law. Fuck 'em. (BTW, the link needs QuickTime. Sorry)
Microsoft says that it is using Kerberos, which is a PUBLISHED standard - open. By nature, an Open Standard means that your implementation works with my implementation - if not, somethings not open. Thus:
1. As an implementation of an open standard, thier Kerberos will work with anyone elses standard implementation. Since they've called it Kerberos, if it doesn't work, we can do what's necessary to fix it, no?
2. If this is not the case, then it's not really Kerberos, and Microsoft has all those packages of Win2k out there with little white lies on them - grounds for charging them with false or misleading advertising.
Either way, they're sunk. They should just shut up, submit thier extentions to the IEEE, and move on. They should also take an anti-arrogance course. Putzes.
Yeah, yeah, we're all outraged at Mico$oft trying to hijack Kerberos, and then trying to censor Slashdot. And remember the Halloween Documents, hmmm? OK, people, enough sitting around, railing at the man and crying in our (free) beer. Time to get off our collective duffs and fight fire with fire.
We want open standards. We have morals, we have egos, we have intelligence enough to know that if we broach an open standard, it'll get squashed, and we loose a measure of the currency that really matters - the repsect of our peers. If we do it on purpose, it's good bye geekdom.
Corporations want to own what they produce. Corporations aren't people, so they don't have morals (except the morality of living up to thier shareholders expectation of bigger profits), don't have egos (of thier own anyway - some may disagree) and only have a collective intelligence dedicated to generating bigger profits. The pursuit of profit is a worthy goal of a corporation, but when they get too zealous, they need to be stepped on - hard. (Duh)
This Kerberos thing is very dangerous, and demonstrates what some companies will do when they put on the blinders to anything but the bottom line. We need a big hammer to squash them flat. A hammer bigger than the DCMA.
Since turn-about is fair play, I propose that the illustrious leaders of Slashdot, Andover and anyone else who wishes to chime in put up a web site dedicated to having Open Internet Standards entrenched in LAW. An anti-DCMA of some sort, that says "You can not say you are Compliant with a Recognized Open Standard if you change anything in that standard one iota - no exceptions. If you do say that you are compliant with a recognized open standard, and are not, you are exempt from the protective provisions of the DCMA, and your Open Standard Compliant product can be reverse engineered/de-compiled/circumvented/hacked/whateve r in order for everyone to ensure compatibility with thier truly open standard product. This is done to protect the interoperability and openess of the Internet, to ensure that it provides the same benefit for everyone.", or some such legalese like that.
We as a community are terribly important to our respective governments, our voice does carry weight. They need us for the future. We matter, and therefore so do our opinions. As cheesy as it sounds, we should have electronic petitions, freely viewable on a central site. (Technical details can be worked out later. By people who are far better programmers than I.). We start with the good ol' USA, and every one else in the world will cave in.(BTW, I am Canadian:])
We don't need to do this under the banner of the FSF, ALCU, or any other organization for that matter. That will invite other people to the party, possibly clouding the issue. We should be focused on only one thing - using the Lawyer's own stick on the backside of anyone who threatens to co-opt Open Standards for thier own ends.
This is very simple to do. You too can try it by doing this:
Materials: A PC connected to the Internet via Ethernet (i.e. via DSL, Cable Modem or T1) The Napster client - loaded and configured on the PC Some sort of sniffer software, loaded and configured on the same PC
Method: Start up the Sniffer, then launch the Napster client, tracing the packets compng to your machine. Stop the trace, sort through the packets and note the port number that your machine is using to get to the Napster net. This gives you the port # that Napster uses. Next, start another trace, but filter out all but the Napster port coming to your machine. Use the Napster Client to search for "Metallica". Now your sniffer will capture packets from every one on the net who's sharing songs by Metallica - including thier IP address. Now you can trace them back to their ISP - so much for anonymity.
This is script-kiddie stuff. If this NetPD is any good at all, they'll find you at your access point - so as you can see, getting to you, regardless of your Napster user name, is terribly simple.
Be careful about whose songs you're trading, people.
Check out this Globe and Mail story about Sick Childrens Hospital in Toronto sorting the map - with a supercomputer. I've seen pictures - SGI Origins all over the place. Cool hardware - now let's hope they "Do no harm" with any knowlege they gain.
I can't wait for one of these - I've always wanted to see a heat sink the size of a shoebox...
Let's see - Linux et. al. have M$ on the decline, and IMHO the Alpha could sink _any_ x86 processor out there. The guard is changing. Two years ago I was getting bored with this industry, but not anymore.
I intend to send the following letter to my MP and other members of the Canadian Government (I'm in the Great White North)ASAP, hopefully to implement a pre-emptive strike against Micro$oft's "rapacious and predatory" behaviour:
The Right Honourable Jean Crétien Prime Minister of Canada
Dear Mr. Crétien,
I'm sure you are aware of the news that a District of Columbia Superiour Court Judge has found Microsoft Corporation guilty of anti-competative and predatory behaviour. Although this decision made in the United States has no legal binding in our great country, I feel it necessary to recommend that following legislation should be enacted in Canada in order to protect our burgeoning Information and Technology sector:
1. Modification or extension of a currently published "open" network protocols is illegal. Any current, published standard Internet Protocols must remain unaltered in order to give all companies the ability to compete effectively on the Internet. The CRTC should be given a mandate to police and enforce any subversive use of a standard protocol modification. 2. Any company or person using these protocols must fully disclose to the public how their product makes use of the protocol, or it is an illegal product Namely, any API (Application Programming Interface) that can potentially make use of basic connectivity on the Internet must be fully disclosed and published. 3. Any company or person who intends to establish a new Internet communications protocol must disclose the entire technical details of this new usage before it is allowed.
These steps will ensure that no one entity can "own" any part of the Internet, at least in Canada. Microsoft has shown in the past that they are not above using subversive tactics to head of competition (I know you are extremely busy, but please read "The Halloween Documents" at http://www.opensource.org/halloween/).
The normal authority on Internet Protocols is the IEEE, as they publish "RFCs" that describe and explain the intricacies of these protocols. Companies like Microsoft are in positions where they can "pollute" these protocols and turn them into proprietary standards, with which they can stifle innovation and essentially co-opt sections of the Internet.
I urge you to consider this pre-emptive measure in order to keep the Internet available to all as a resource to expand our economy, our vision and improve our world.
Kindest regards, Ron Sokoloski, Network Analyst Southam Information Technology Group 44 Frid Street, Hamilton, ON L8N 3G3 e-mail: ----- Desk: ------ Cell: -----
Re:Don't encourage them!
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
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· Score: 2
I assumed that the Slashdot readership was intelligent enough to read the article:
What's more, in honor of April Fools' Day, we've actually put the power of creative prankstering in your hands with our interactive Net-hoax generator. Now, CNET doesn't advocate or endorse playing online pranks or spreading hoaxes, so be advised that this feature is for entertainment purposes only.
Read the section title, too. It's funny - laugh. Hope that gives you a sense of why I submitted the story.
Continents are a rather fitting metaphor, since even they aren't static. The tectonic plates shift, meld and sometimes grind against each other - I could wax poetic for quite sometime about these simliarities and what's happening with the "divisions" you described.
Some thoughtless types may think that they can pidgeon-hole people based on what type of sites they frequent, and therefore what "continent" they inhabit, or in a more sinister vein, should inhabit. The only thing is, that we have the capability to hop from "continent" to "continent" with the click of a mouse - we can reside in this world where ever we wish. If we could only transpose that to the non-cyber world - but there's no "Beam me to Punjab, Scotty" yet. *Sigh*.
If we could live anywhere on earth, it's rather obvious that we would get better perspectives on our fellow human beings, and there might be hope for this beautiful place callled Earth. That is the true power of the 'net - our hearts and minds can travel the world, and hopefully make it a better place.
A really perverse thought...
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Textmode Quake
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Quake on an old LA120. Just in case you hate trees.
Micro$erf: So, when are you upgrading to Windows 2000? Me: When you get the 65K or so of bugs out of the code. Micro$erf: First service pack will take care of that - a month at the outside. Upgrading then? Me: Um, no. I'd have to get rid of all the Alphas we rolled out for NT4 first. Micro$erf: Ouch, tough luck. Want me to call Dell for you? $25K gets you the equivelent - Me: -of a $10K Alpha. Micro$erf: Heh, um yeah. But Windows 2000 has Active Directory!!! Dynamic DNS!!! We'll reduce your TCO to new lows, especially for your workstations!!! Me: Even the Macs? Micro$erf: Macs? Why would you want a dead architecture? Me: 'cause we're in publishing. Micro$erf: Oh well, Macs can get files, and they can print, that's all they need. Me: K. If you say so. I read in the initial stages of Win2K that it would do MacIP - where is it? Micro$erf: Upcoming feature. It'll probrably only be $49 or so per client, too. Isn't that wonderful!!! Me: Beautiful. Really. Y'know, lately I've been playing with Linux, and- Micro$erf: OH GOOOOOD! We've got another add on for unix-type machines, since we're supporting choice these days. Me: So they get to participate in Active Directory? Micro$erf: No, but it helps you migrate NIS into AD. You get to use all the familliar Unix utilities, and you can migrate to NT at your leisure from those nasty old legacy systems. For 149$ a server, you can't go wrong. Me: Sure, what ever you say. Micro$erf: See we figured it out and you'l only have to spend umm.... $75K to upgrade. Of course, we didn't include all the new Servers, network switches, WAN upgrades and wasted hardware in that price, but why worry about that? So when can we expect you to order? Me: (puts on red fadora, picks up stuffed penguin)When you get out of the psyciatric ward.
To those worrying and windging about VA's ownership of/. - settle down. We have the Slash code, don't we? If things go down hill too far, I'm sure someone will light up a new community with the same format, on a different server, under different editorial control. That's the best thing about open source - it keeps everyone honest. Those with a vested interest are going to be even more scrupulous, since it protects thier investments.
Slashdot Mirror
I am Canadian, and bud you hit the nail on the head. I was laughing all the way through your comment.
But, on the other hand, we have cultural diversity, a tolerant society, snow, universal health care, great beer, snow, not many gun problems, snow, and ummmmm....snow. Oh, and we have lots of women up here and all of them are drop dead gorgeous - it's just hard to tell with them in parkas and mukluks all the time.
BTW, we _were_ going to go to Mars ourselved _in_ a Zamboni, but we didn't have enough room for beer. And we spent the money on hospitals.
P.S. My buddy in the border patrol will be checking for that hash with a rubber glove.
So, will VA let you play with thier latest toys under development? Slashdot on a 16 way Itanium server, running Trillian sounds cool. Good way to melt a T3 anyway ;).
Microsoft "improves" the ATA100 standard so it actually works with Windows, gets the "standard" changed by strong-arm tactics to include said "improvements", and your kernel pukes into the bit-bucket.
<HardwareGuy><Hypocrite>I wish people would keep the volume on triumphs low, and failures high - keeps development energy where it belongs, fixing bugs and improving packages</Hypocrite></HardwareGuy>
The Crusoe is an excellent piece of technology, and will go a long way to making acceptable devices for remote computing. There is one point I'd like to make - and that's Floating Point. I've searched through thier site, and only found one mention of a FPU, and it wasn't in any benchmarks. I'd like to know how the Crusoe stacks up against other processors with a floating point intesive app like MicroStation, AutoCAD or The GIMP. I know DVD can be FP intensive, but that's only a single application, and therefore easy to optimize for. Heck, let's have some people in the Scientific comunity try one of those huge mathematical FORTAN written apps on a Crusoe based machine, just to see how it stacks up to a PIII Xeon. Ooh, better still, an Athlon. Ooooh! - the ultimate - an EV7 Alpha! If it can keep up to one of these guys, it's the ultimate in processors.
There are those who require a number cruncher - even on the road.
Those screen shots are, in a word, gorgeous. I'll have to fire up the Cable Modem tonite for sure.
This whole GNOME/KDE thing will be rendered moote if the package actually IS stable and easy to use. The reason? The people we want to run Linux/BSD/TRU64/*nix-flavour-of-the-day mostly use Windows at the moment. A UI this nice, this pleasing to the eye will draw them like bees to honey. Never underestimate the power a pretty picture has over John Q User. If they get work done, so much the better.
Right now I use KDE - but will likely end up using GNOME. Just to show off the pretty screens to the lusers looking over my shoulder.
Don't forget, everyone, that the Alpha was originally a DEC product. DEC was always populated by engineers of a more "research" bent, i.e. they never really left college - they just moved to DECs lab. From what I've read, DEC was in on the Alpha Linux port from the get-go. Stands to reason that they'd like to "get back in the game", even with the Compaq stuffed shirts running around pushing ProLiants.
BTW, I've used TRU64 on a DS10 - it's something of a RAM pig, but it doesn't stop for much, and it is a nice environment.
From the speech:
"Well, not by most people, who have stated in overwhelming majorities time and again that they would be perfectly happy to pay a fair price for what they receive, but by a very small segment who would profit by cultivating and taking advantage of each person's least admirable qualities
This guy sounds like he's pretty much on the ball - except if he thinks that $22CDN for the average CD is a fair price. We should be using the net to communicate to Joe Average Consumer what a bunch of gouging, thieving bastards these record company executives are, instead of "appropriating" thier wares in a questionable manner.
Thier news page shows they have deals and investment from Intel.
Very cool stuff, especially for laptops. You could selectively power RAM to save a few watts here or there. The only problem I see with a system with nothing but non-volitile RAM is filling the cache inside the processor. Easy to fix I'm sure, but if the cache was non-volitile too, you'd have the entire machine state saved.
Intel got in early - I'm sure Transmeta would be terribly interested in RAM that you can take power away from, and have it maintain state...
1. There are more protocols than internet protocols
Yup. Other ones don't really matter - right now anyway. The open structure of the Internet is what's most important at this particular time.
2. Taking away their right to develop a new internet protocol, takes away the same right from me as well - this means nothing new will be developed.
Not exactly what I said - you, or anyone can develop any new protocol or thing you/they want, except if it's used on the Internet, the exact specifications of said protocol must be published for open review. If anyone has the "embrace and extend" tactic on thier mind when they "enhance" an Open Standard Protocol, this will short circuit them, since thier extentions will have to be published. Ensconsed in law, it would be virtually impossible for any one person or entity to co-opt a open standard, and then by default the Internet.
3. I think you just made a silly statement
I think not. The Internet is a public communications network, and as such public officials should be able to step in when the threat of it not being public anymore arises. Legally enforcing Open Standards on the Internet will lead to a set-it-and-forget-it solution to keeping the Internet open and free for all.
BTW, MS-Anything is what I'm trying to avoid, as well as SUN-Anything, NOVELL-Anything or LINUX-Anything. Unless, of course, it's actually worth something to the Internet in general. Then the spec would be published, and everyone gets to use it.
Thinks for the response.
If they split up M$ in 2 or 3 or whatever, each one can still monopolize thier particular segment since they have so much leverage - a huge installed base. Each company can still embrace, extend and do all the other nasty anti-competitive things they do now. The Internet wasn't meant for Microsoft, it was meant for _everyone_. So, lets break out the saws and the shackles together, people. Force them to only implement pure internet standard protocols in any of thier products, and if they do extend anything the specs have to be released with an unrestrictive license. Then, ingenuity will take over where innovation left off, and we'll see some competition.
IETF standards as Law - the next crusade.
Geysers, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, atmosphere being poisoned... sounds a lot like Yellowstone (sulphur pun intended), doesn't it?
2. How can Microsoft use the Kerberos name, which signifies an open standard protocol, in connection with a proprietary protocol?
Here it comes, people. Pretty soon, we'll see a legal battle fought over an open standard - may be Kerberos, could be something else. If we allow these corporate-money-sucking monsters too many kicks at the can, they'll eventually find a way pry a protocol, a language or something else out of the public domain and into thier hot little hands. Then the Gates (no pun intended?)will be breached, and the corporate hordes will rush in to feast on the spoils.
We need laws - international laws - that say "Open standards are sacrosanct, and ye shall not deviate from them, under pain of losing _any_ capital you've gained from them". This would remove the incentive to acquire a standard, and may give us some peace.
Quick question for all you legal eagle types out there - how does the DCMA apply to CANADA? I thought my country was sort of out of the jurisdiction of any US institutions. I AM Canadian, after all, so can a US court has a say in what I do up here?
Last time I looked, the DCMA was a US law, not an International law. Fuck 'em.
(BTW, the link needs QuickTime. Sorry)
Microsoft says that it is using Kerberos, which is a PUBLISHED standard - open. By nature, an Open Standard means that your implementation works with my implementation - if not, somethings not open. Thus:
1. As an implementation of an open standard, thier Kerberos will work with anyone elses standard implementation. Since they've called it Kerberos, if it doesn't work, we can do what's necessary to fix it, no?
2. If this is not the case, then it's not really Kerberos, and Microsoft has all those packages of Win2k out there with little white lies on them - grounds for charging them with false or misleading advertising.
Either way, they're sunk. They should just shut up, submit thier extentions to the IEEE, and move on.
They should also take an anti-arrogance course. Putzes.
Yeah, yeah, we're all outraged at Mico$oft trying to hijack Kerberos, and then trying to censor Slashdot. And remember the Halloween Documents, hmmm? OK, people, enough sitting around, railing at the man and crying in our (free) beer. Time to get off our collective duffs and fight fire with fire.
We want open standards. We have morals, we have egos, we have intelligence enough to know that if we broach an open standard, it'll get squashed, and we loose a measure of the currency that really matters - the repsect of our peers. If we do it on purpose, it's good bye geekdom.
Corporations want to own what they produce. Corporations aren't people, so they don't have morals (except the morality of living up to thier shareholders expectation of bigger profits), don't have egos (of thier own anyway - some may disagree) and only have a collective intelligence dedicated to generating bigger profits. The pursuit of profit is a worthy goal of a corporation, but when they get too zealous, they need to be stepped on - hard. (Duh)
This Kerberos thing is very dangerous, and demonstrates what some companies will do when they put on the blinders to anything but the bottom line. We need a big hammer to squash them flat. A hammer bigger than the DCMA.
Since turn-about is fair play, I propose that the illustrious leaders of Slashdot, Andover and anyone else who wishes to chime in put up a web site dedicated to having Open Internet Standards entrenched in LAW. An anti-DCMA of some sort, that says "You can not say you are Compliant with a Recognized Open Standard if you change anything in that standard one iota - no exceptions. If you do say that you are compliant with a recognized open standard, and are not, you are exempt from the protective provisions of the DCMA, and your Open Standard Compliant product can be reverse engineered/de-compiled/circumvented/hacked/whatev
We as a community are terribly important to our respective governments, our voice does carry weight. They need us for the future. We matter, and therefore so do our opinions. As cheesy as it sounds, we should have electronic petitions, freely viewable on a central site. (Technical details can be worked out later. By people who are far better programmers than I.). We start with the good ol' USA, and every one else in the world will cave in.(BTW, I am Canadian
We don't need to do this under the banner of the FSF, ALCU, or any other organization for that matter. That will invite other people to the party, possibly clouding the issue. We should be focused on only one thing - using the Lawyer's own stick on the backside of anyone who threatens to co-opt Open Standards for thier own ends.
Any takers?
Hi. Your .sig should be credited to Neal Peart, the drummer for Rush, or Ayn Rand (since I haven't actually read her book that "2112" is based on).
This is very simple to do. You too can try it by doing this:
Materials:
A PC connected to the Internet via Ethernet (i.e. via DSL, Cable Modem or T1)
The Napster client - loaded and configured on the PC
Some sort of sniffer software, loaded and configured on the same PC
Method:
Start up the Sniffer, then launch the Napster client, tracing the packets compng to your machine. Stop the trace, sort through the packets and note the port number that your machine is using to get to the Napster net. This gives you the port # that Napster uses. Next, start another trace, but filter out all but the Napster port coming to your machine. Use the Napster Client to search for "Metallica". Now your sniffer will capture packets from every one on the net who's sharing songs by Metallica - including thier IP address. Now you can trace them back to their ISP - so much for anonymity.
This is script-kiddie stuff. If this NetPD is any good at all, they'll find you at your access point - so as you can see, getting to you, regardless of your Napster user name, is terribly simple.
Be careful about whose songs you're trading, people.
Check out this Globe and Mail story about Sick Childrens Hospital in Toronto sorting the map - with a supercomputer. I've seen pictures - SGI Origins all over the place. Cool hardware - now let's hope they "Do no harm" with any knowlege they gain.
I can't wait for one of these - I've always wanted to see a heat sink the size of a shoebox...
Let's see - Linux et. al. have M$ on the decline, and IMHO the Alpha could sink _any_ x86 processor out there. The guard is changing. Two years ago I was getting bored with this industry, but not anymore.
BTW, check out http://www.digital.com/info/hp c/ref/ref_alpha_ia64.pdf for the reasons Alphas will smoke IA64. Technical, but interesting.
I intend to send the following letter to my MP and other members of the Canadian Government (I'm in the Great White North)ASAP, hopefully to implement a pre-emptive strike against Micro$oft's "rapacious and predatory" behaviour:
The Right Honourable Jean Crétien
Prime Minister of Canada
Dear Mr. Crétien,
I'm sure you are aware of the news that a District of Columbia Superiour Court Judge has found Microsoft Corporation guilty of anti-competative and predatory behaviour. Although this decision made in the United States has no legal binding in our great country, I feel it necessary to recommend that following legislation should be enacted in Canada in order to protect our burgeoning Information and Technology sector:
1. Modification or extension of a currently published "open" network protocols is illegal.
Any current, published standard Internet Protocols must remain unaltered in order to give all companies the ability to compete effectively on the Internet. The CRTC should be given a mandate to police and enforce any subversive use of a standard protocol modification.
2. Any company or person using these protocols must fully disclose to the public how their product makes use of the protocol, or it is an illegal product
Namely, any API (Application Programming Interface) that can potentially make use of basic connectivity on the Internet must be fully disclosed and published.
3. Any company or person who intends to establish a new Internet communications protocol must disclose the entire technical details of this new usage before it is allowed.
These steps will ensure that no one entity can "own" any part of the Internet, at least in Canada. Microsoft has shown in the past that they are not above using subversive tactics to head of competition (I know you are extremely busy, but please read "The Halloween Documents" at http://www.opensource.org/halloween/).
The normal authority on Internet Protocols is the IEEE, as they publish "RFCs" that describe and explain the intricacies of these protocols. Companies like Microsoft are in positions where they can "pollute" these protocols and turn them into proprietary standards, with which they can stifle innovation and essentially co-opt sections of the Internet.
I urge you to consider this pre-emptive measure in order to keep the Internet available to all as a resource to expand our economy, our vision and improve our world.
Kindest regards,
Ron Sokoloski, Network Analyst
Southam Information Technology Group
44 Frid Street, Hamilton, ON L8N 3G3
e-mail: -----
Desk: ------
Cell: -----
What's more, in honor of April Fools' Day, we've actually put the power of creative prankstering in your hands with our interactive Net-hoax generator. Now, CNET doesn't advocate or endorse playing online pranks or spreading hoaxes, so be advised that this feature is for entertainment purposes only.
Read the section title, too. It's funny - laugh. Hope that gives you a sense of why I submitted the story.
Pretty good list, John.
Continents are a rather fitting metaphor, since even they aren't static. The tectonic plates shift, meld and sometimes grind against each other - I could wax poetic for quite sometime about these simliarities and what's happening with the "divisions" you described.
Some thoughtless types may think that they can pidgeon-hole people based on what type of sites they frequent, and therefore what "continent" they inhabit, or in a more sinister vein, should inhabit. The only thing is, that we have the capability to hop from "continent" to "continent" with the click of a mouse - we can reside in this world where ever we wish. If we could only transpose that to the non-cyber world - but there's no "Beam me to Punjab, Scotty" yet. *Sigh*.
If we could live anywhere on earth, it's rather obvious that we would get better perspectives on our fellow human beings, and there might be hope for this beautiful place callled Earth. That is the true power of the 'net - our hearts and minds can travel the world, and hopefully make it a better place.
Quake on an old LA120. Just in case you hate trees.
OK, I can see the M$ rep on Monday...
Micro$erf: So, when are you upgrading to Windows 2000?
Me: When you get the 65K or so of bugs out of the code.
Micro$erf: First service pack will take care of that - a month at the outside. Upgrading then?
Me: Um, no. I'd have to get rid of all the Alphas we rolled out for NT4 first.
Micro$erf: Ouch, tough luck. Want me to call Dell for you? $25K gets you the equivelent -
Me: -of a $10K Alpha.
Micro$erf: Heh, um yeah. But Windows 2000 has Active Directory!!! Dynamic DNS!!! We'll reduce your TCO to new lows, especially for your workstations!!!
Me: Even the Macs?
Micro$erf: Macs? Why would you want a dead architecture?
Me: 'cause we're in publishing.
Micro$erf: Oh well, Macs can get files, and they can print, that's all they need.
Me: K. If you say so. I read in the initial stages of Win2K that it would do MacIP - where is it?
Micro$erf: Upcoming feature. It'll probrably only be $49 or so per client, too. Isn't that wonderful!!!
Me: Beautiful. Really. Y'know, lately I've been playing with Linux, and-
Micro$erf: OH GOOOOOD! We've got another add on for unix-type machines, since we're supporting choice these days.
Me: So they get to participate in Active Directory?
Micro$erf: No, but it helps you migrate NIS into AD. You get to use all the familliar Unix utilities, and you can migrate to NT at your leisure from those nasty old legacy systems. For 149$ a server, you can't go wrong.
Me: Sure, what ever you say.
Micro$erf: See we figured it out and you'l only have to spend umm.... $75K to upgrade. Of course, we didn't include all the new Servers, network switches, WAN upgrades and wasted hardware in that price, but why worry about that?
So when can we expect you to order?
Me: (puts on red fadora, picks up stuffed penguin)When you get out of the psyciatric ward.
To those worrying and windging about VA's ownership of /. - settle down. We have the Slash code, don't we? If things go down hill too far, I'm sure someone will light up a new community with the same format, on a different server, under different editorial control. That's the best thing about open source - it keeps everyone honest. Those with a vested interest are going to be even more scrupulous, since it protects thier investments.