A New Wireless Web Link Phone Firms Testing High-Speed Technology Called EvDO
Technicians test a technology known as EvDO that provides wireless data connections 10 times as fast as a regular modem. (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
By Christopher Stern Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 23, 2003; Page E01
WHIPPANY, N.J.
Inside a white van decked out with computer screens on the back of each seat, two Lucent Technologies Inc. technicians eagerly put their company's new wireless data network through its paces.
As the van rolls around a parking lot, one techie taps at a keyboard, and the screens jump from one Web site to another. Even the pages full of connection-clogging photos and graphics pop up at a speed rivaling any desktop computer tethered to the Internet by a cable or a telephone line.
For a grand finale, one of the technicians tunes into CNBC via the Internet. A dial-up connection would produce herky-jerky pictures and tinny sounds, but here the financial news channel comes in loud and clear.
The technology, known as EvDO (Evolution Data Only), provides wireless data connections that are 10 times as fast as a regular modem. Proponents say EvDO offers huge advantages over WiFi, another wireless data technology that is popping up around the country in hotel lobbies and coffee shops, and that it may even be the long sought path around local telephone and cable companies' lock on the high-speed Internet market in most residential areas.
But after learning some hard lessons in the last few years, the U.S. wireless industry is skittish about investing heavily in anything that does not have immediate promise of improving its bottom line.
EvDO would require wireless companies to spend billions of dollars to buy additional spectrum and update every cell tower in their networks with new software. But the industry is still smarting from the failure of other once promising wireless technologies: In Europe, "3G" (third generation) technologies were supposed to transform the economy, turning cell phones into mini-entertainment centers, but reality failed to live up to the hype.
Despite the expense and concerns about market demand for EvDO, it is already gaining a toehold in other countries and even in some small U.S. cities. It has been widely rolled out in South Korea, and Monet Mobile Networks Inc., a company based in Kirkland, Wash., launched EvDO networks last October in seven midwestern markets, including Sioux City, Iowa, and Grand Forks, N.D.
In addition to being far faster than WiFi, EvDO can work over existing cell phone networks and deliver a connection anywhere there is a mobile phone signal. In contrast, WiFi users must be within 300 feet or so of a base station or "hot spot."
Verizon Wireless executives say they were impressed by EvDO in market tests using Lucent's technology in the Washington area. Nortel Networks Ltd. equipment is also being tested in San Diego.
Bill Stone, Verizon Wireless executive director of network planning, said EvDO may prove to be a breakthrough for the entire wireless industry. He likens EvDO's potential to energize the mobile communications business to the introduction of the cell phone in the 1980s and its subsequent surge in popularity in the 1990s, when mobile phones moved from analog to digital technology.
"This could jump-start the industry all over again," Stone said.
A takeoff of EvDO would not only provide Verizon with a new high-speed Internet service to market, but it would probably help struggling equipment suppliers such as Lucent and Nortel, which have already developed the software and hardware to get the network up and running. Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc. and other cell phone makers would benefit from the introduction of new products capable of high-speed Internet access.
A U.S. launch of EvDO would also be a boon to San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., which controls many of the patents underlying the technology. The growing interest in EvDO adds to the momentum of Qualcomm's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standard that is now used by some of the largest wireless companies, including Verizon and Sprint Corp. Other companies are likely to migrate to CMDA in part because it uses spectrum more efficiently than rival wireless standards and opens the door to high-speed data technologies such as EvDO, according to Coleman Bazelon, a vice president at AnalysisGroup/Economics, a Boston-based research firm.
One of the biggest barriers to EvDO is that it requires wireless companies to set aside a slice of their valuable airwaves just to transmit data. Because mobile phone companies barely have enough room to handle their voice traffic, EvDO is likely to remain on the back burner until the firms can acquire more spectrum.
Some wireless industry analysts say that, notwithstanding the excitement about the technology, the scarcity of airwaves and ongoing tumult in the telecommunications industry makes the rollout of EvDO far from a sure thing. Jane Zweig, chief executive of Shosteck Group, a wireless industry consulting company, said there is no assurance that EvDO technology will ever be widely deployed in the United States. "To assume they will do all this" with EvDO "is a leap of faith," Zweig said.
Denny Strigl , chief executive of Verizon Wireless Inc., has cautioned that the company will go slow on the new technology. Still, company spokesman Andrea Linskey said EvDO is a natural extension of its current data offering, which provides access to the Internet at speeds comparable to a dial-up modem. Verizon agreed last month to buy a large slice of airwaves in 50 markets for $750 million, in part to make room for future services such as EvDO, Linskey said.
While EvDO would require huge investments by cash-strapped telecommunications companies, WiFi's popularity stems largely from the fact that it is an inexpensive and relatively simple technology to get into operation. For about $200, anyone can buy a WiFi network's basic components and, with some computer savvy and a lot of luck, have it running in less than an hour.
A consortium of telecommunications and technology companies that includes Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Corp. is backing a WiFi company named Cometa Networks Inc., which plans to string together more than 20,000 WiFi "hot spots" into a nationwide wireless network.
Even with thousands of hot spots around the country, Cometa executives acknowledge that the company will not be able to offer blanket coverage. Instead, the goal is to provide a hot spot within a five-minute walk of any office in an urban area or five-minute drive in a suburban area, according to Steve Harris, vice president for corporate affairs at Cometa Networks. Boingo Wireless Inc., another firm putting together a national WiFi network, plans to have 5,000 hot spots running by the end of the year.
Critics and rivals say that creating a national network from tens of thousands of hot spots is more difficult and expensive than Cometa and others expect. And to create a truly national network that would have the reach of a cell-phone system would require more than 100,000 hot spots.
"To put together a national WiFi network is going to be extremely complicated and take a long time," said George M. Tronsrue III, chief executive of Monet.
Unlike Verizon Wireless, which probably would launch EvDO over its existing wireless network, Monet built a stand-alone wireless system in the seven markets where it operates. Monet's system bypasses the local phone network, commonly known as the local loop, offering high-speed connections in some places where wired high-speed service is unavailable. Competition in the high-speed Internet business has been stymied largely by the huge expense of building a wired connection to every house and building in a market.
"This technology allows you to have a broadband connection that unlocks the local loop," said Tronsrue, Monet's chief executive.
Monet launched in October and so far has about 1,000 customers, according to the company. Most of its subscribers are business customers that use the high-speed connection to download inventory lists and spreadsheets that would bog down when moving on a slower connection, although, like a cable broadband network, EvDO's access speeds do slow as more people sign on. That fits in with Lucent's prediction that EvDO will be popular with business travelers who often are now limited to the dial-up Internet service in hotel rooms or the pokey wireless networks currently offered by Verizon and Sprint.
Like Cometa, Tronsrue has big-name investors, including billionaire George Soros and Intel, and he is excited about the EvDO technology. But he has also learned that there are no sure things in technology. "Right now our main target is that at the end of 2003, we are still operating."
The biggest security hole is not buffer overflows, ICMP packet manipulation, or poorly written software.
The easiest security breaches are to be had via social engineering, such as human manipulation and simple password guesses such as the default password for a certain system.
You can have all the conferences on security and corporate code reviews you want, but people will always be stupid. You can't change that.
In February of 2001, Sega announced that they would focus solely on making games for other systems.
"Indeed, Sega has fallen, they are down, posting quarterly losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fourth time in a row, but they are not out. In fact, Sega's future appears to be a bright one as the company is now officially third party. From now on, Sega will only be making games for other companies' systems."
I can't imagine the shit that goes down over in Sony and Nintendo's dumpsters. The competition between the two companies is so fierce, I wouldn't be suprised if "dumpster diving" was a promotion-worthy pasttime!
He wrote "At least HP had a laptop in their booth running Linux. Yes, folks, this is the first time I have seen a laptop in an HP booth with Linux on it -- or at least mostly on it; the person who brought it said its sound didn't work (with Red Hat 8.0, and he didn't care because he was only using it to demonstrate printers.)"...I agree and am equally disgusted with this...most presentation and slide shows seem to be done w/powerpoint rather than soffice..perhaps a sign that linux still isnt easy enough for the avg person..well i should get going..crowds are really getting tight now and i want to visit a couple more booths b4 a late lunch..-AV
Posting from my Treo 300...must say the booth babes are really hot this yr...RedHat booth was cool, so was the OSDN one...lots of freebies..worth the trip.-AV
Whether you are but a n00b, or a seasoned practitioner of the Slashdot black arts, you may be wondering to yourself, 'I have a complaint regarding this site, what should I do?'. This article serves as a primer on the ways in which you, yes you can begin to complain about Slashdot.org.
The simplest way to introduce yourself to complaining on Slashdot is through the use of examples. As such, here's 10 sure fire ways to vent your frustration, whatever it may be.
Example #1: The old-timer
A kid tested, mom approved approach is to leverage your uid or your post count to bolster your complaint. Suggestions include 'I remember the DDOS, and even then it wasn't this bad' or 'I can look back to the days when this site had discussion'. Be careful though, as this approach warrants a 'oh yeah, well, my uid is lower than yours, pal!' rejoinder.
Example #2: The slashdot gambit
If, at certain times, the level of trolling, and/or crapflooding rises in volume, the slashdot gambit may be played. Phrases such as 'oh great, next thing you know frist p0st will appear', or 'taco's middle name is rusty' can be batted about with reckless abandon. Note: the clever poster will point out that this URL happens to point here.
Example #3: Monacle polish
A sure-fire method to express your anger is if you subscribed. In this variant, you can easily leverage the fact that you donated to Slashdot, but have seen little results since, aside from hotlists, and reply tracking. Bonus points go to those who equate server costs with Vespas and boats.
Example #4: Saddam strikes back
In the event Slashdot displeases you, make sure to lambast the political submissions to the queue. Combining with the 'old-timer' play can work wonders here, but make sure to cite evidence, lest you be tripped up. A caution, however: be wary of posting against politics and arguing it at the same time, you may be caught!
Example #5: The ox cart defense
No matter how droll your post, nothing beats a good 'I would have posted something witty, but it took forever for Slashdot to load, so I gave up' excuse. Conspiracy theories, and general malaise can all find a happy home in this ploy, so dig in! Bonus goes to those who mention scoop patches or google spidering.
Example #6: The roto-rooter
A variant of #2, but deserving of it's own place in the list. Those in the know can hardly scoff at a claim that crapflooding is ruining the site. Use terms like 'edit queue abuse' or '$USER is back again, when will taco ban this guy?', and the road to success is free and clear.
Example #7: Single point failure
Sometimes you can't articulate your complaint towards Slashdot in general, but fear not, just use a scapegoat! Focus your anger on a single user, and in no time flat, you'll be feeling fine. Easy targets are people who spell their names with a lot of spaces, or turmeric.
Example #8: Illuminati
A spin off of the single point failure, but with a slightly different philosophy. Blaming secret groups, cabals, or rusty clones for Slashdot's ills is a great stand-by maneuver. Don't lean too heavily on this one though, as many.sigs have been devoted disavowing such groups existence.
Example #9: Leavin on a Jet Plane
Why just complain, when you can take action? Nothing gets your annoyance with Slashdot across better than threatening to leave. Make sure to pepper some of your better reasons for leaving with profanity for that extra punch. Be wary though, a common counter attack is the 'don't let the door hit your ass on the way out' play.
Example #10: Supersize your combo meal
Seasoned complaint masters will not use a single move, but intertwine many to craft their volley. Try showing how a single user is turning Slashdot into slashdot. Argue that a cabal is responsible for the slowness. Call all political arguments crapfloods. The permutations are endless. Use 4 or more in one single complaint, and you are truly a zen master.
This article serves only as an introduction to some of the most common modes of complaint on Slashdot, ready willing, and able to to the job in the event of frustration. But by no means is this list complete. In fact, I hope you use this as a template to craft your own complaints to take Slashdot to the next level. Now rant on!
The government just ordered all ISPs in China to start monitoring email for subversive phrases and the like, so I started replying to Chinese spam with little replies of the form at the end of this spam. Might be a useful tactic on companies who think that unsolicited email is "just regular advertising."
"Jack(export manager)" wrote: > > Dear Sir > How are you. > > We are a lighting factory in China,It is glad > to introduce ourselves to you: > > I am XUBIN (Jack) , XUBIN is my chinese name , you can just > call me Jack !! , I am export manager of [deleted], > China, our group have four factory [snipped] > > Here is our company profile: >
[Rest of sales talk snipped]
(And now, the reply)
Thank you for your coded order. The weapons and ammunition will ship by way of the usual route in ten days, and you already know our secret Swiss bank account number to wire the payment to.
It is a pleasure doing business with you for so long, and I hope your cause will prevail. I am new to this particular computer, so I hope the encryption is working and the monitoring authorities cannot read what I am sending you.
While lint(1) "proper" doesn't exist for Linux (because copyright issues), you all could try lclint.
It's available at larch.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/Larch/lclint.
"If all you're doing is compiling programs that have lint(1) targets in the Makefile, you can probably just comment out (or remove) the lint targets and actions from the Makefile. If the program has already been ported to Linux, they won't produce anything of interest to you unless you are a developer. I hope this helps."
More details Appeared in FSE 2002. Finds funny bugs by looking for redundant operations (dead code, unused assignments, etc.). From empirical measurements, code with such redundant errors is 50-100% more likely to have hard errors. Also describes how to check for redundancies to find holes in specifications.
Link to PostScript file for easy viewing/printing File
Before you spend a half-hour downloading any packages, please note that shared libraries aren't supported yet for Mac OS X version 10.2.
Well, to rephrase this, you can build them, but Lucasfilm have't gotten them to link due to undefined symbols and are probably doing something wrong in the Makefile system.
The test suite will automatically try to link shared libraries if you've built them, so 'make check' will fail. To run the confidence tests, tell configure not to build shared libraries ("./configure --enable-shared=no").
More details are available in the README document.
This is, hands down, the worst exploitation of labor and intelligence I may ever see.
Lucasfilm needs to write a lot of code and make some serious software in the very near future, so they make what they're tricking us into thinking is a grand gesture. What many of you don't realize, and what I didn't at first realize, is that this is a blatant ploy at extorting labor out of us by creating Open Source filters and conversion utilities which will then, upon completion and after some testing, be renamed as Lucasfilm software programs and then used to help George Lucas buy a few more houses and make a few more crappy movies.
It's bad enough that Lucas has taken a back seat to Spielberg in terms of film earnings and film quality, but now that he's using his own fans for free labor, I don't think I'll bother lining his pockets with more cash after a disrespectful act such as this.
I'm appalled and outraged, and I hope you all heed my warning.
Nice, it's wonderful to see that Lucas and his company have read up on, understood, and embraced the Open Source market. For those who don't remember, they pretty much set the gold standard in the movie industry, and we still live with the benefits today. But while this sounds like a good idea at first for us geeks, I have to wonder about some of the choices made in the design of this new format.
Linux is specifically written for the desktop market these days anyway, which is why Lucasfilm probably decided to go cross-platform on us.
It's a good idea, don't get me wrong. But, I'd like to see them take a more sensible approach in the future and consider which platform dominates home users and not which feels best in their hearts.
Their hearts will heal with more money, not with little to no business from Linux users, all of whom tend to spend less than $10 a year on computer software.
I give up. I finally got epoch4.0p0 built on this lame-ass piece of sh*t because SCO puts those routines in libX.a.
Idiots.
And, it immediately barfs because the gethostname() method, thus bringing my machine and its software down with it.
The call is correct according to the spec, but it's returning -1. Perror tells me it's an "invalid argument" which sounds like a garbage error message and doesn't really tell me anything.
So I hack around that and I start getting "Xlib: sequence lost..." errors. The epoch process then goes into CPU-eating mode and I eventually kill it from the command line.
If anyone manages to get this very popular app working in SCO (I had it on Linux), please let me know how you did it.
... and fuck everyone else who's just on the Open Source bandwagon until it's no longer profitable for them.
They see our movement and they think, "Wow, free labor. Cool. Alright boys, let's see if we can't drag up some nice, fully-working programs and call them our own, erm, I mean modify them to our purposes."
When the dust settles, the only friends we'll have as Open Source programmers are each other. The Reals, IBMs, Netscapes, etc. will have cashed out their winnings by then and be on the next computing bandwagon.
Posted by michael on Wednesday January 22, @08:26AM from the beaten-down-by-windows-media-player dept.
Thanks for the always insightful remarks, Mike, but I'd wager that those of us who give two damns about our privacy would much rather use a cross-platform, free solution such as Helix as opposed to the DRM'ing-you-and-all-your-files program known as Windows Media Player.
But hey, what do I know, I'm not an omnipotent Slashdot editor.
My Range Rover has two RFID transmitters, actually. One serves as the primary indicator and the other is there to simply replace it in case it fails for some reason.
I'm all for these new RFID multiplexors for a few reasons:
If I run out of gas in highway traffic, a dealer will be notified and can disperse a gasoline truck within 5 minutes
In the event of an accident, the RFID will switch on and notify ambulance and fire patrols so that there's a better chance those involved in the collission with me can survive
They're a good use of modern tracking systems such as GPS, GSPS, and standard 802.11.x protocols which are becoming more and more prevalent.
The word levy originally descended from Middle English tongue as levite, which came from Old German as the word leviet, which was the masculine past participle of levi, an old Amish name for pants.
Slashdot Mirror
A New Wireless Web Link
Phone Firms Testing High-Speed Technology Called EvDO
Technicians test a technology known as EvDO that provides wireless data connections 10 times as fast as a regular modem. (Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 23, 2003; Page E01
WHIPPANY, N.J.
Inside a white van decked out with computer screens on the back of each seat, two Lucent Technologies Inc. technicians eagerly put their company's new wireless data network through its paces.
As the van rolls around a parking lot, one techie taps at a keyboard, and the screens jump from one Web site to another. Even the pages full of connection-clogging photos and graphics pop up at a speed rivaling any desktop computer tethered to the Internet by a cable or a telephone line.
For a grand finale, one of the technicians tunes into CNBC via the Internet. A dial-up connection would produce herky-jerky pictures and tinny sounds, but here the financial news channel comes in loud and clear.
The technology, known as EvDO (Evolution Data Only), provides wireless data connections that are 10 times as fast as a regular modem. Proponents say EvDO offers huge advantages over WiFi, another wireless data technology that is popping up around the country in hotel lobbies and coffee shops, and that it may even be the long sought path around local telephone and cable companies' lock on the high-speed Internet market in most residential areas.
But after learning some hard lessons in the last few years, the U.S. wireless industry is skittish about investing heavily in anything that does not have immediate promise of improving its bottom line.
EvDO would require wireless companies to spend billions of dollars to buy additional spectrum and update every cell tower in their networks with new software. But the industry is still smarting from the failure of other once promising wireless technologies: In Europe, "3G" (third generation) technologies were supposed to transform the economy, turning cell phones into mini-entertainment centers, but reality failed to live up to the hype.
Despite the expense and concerns about market demand for EvDO, it is already gaining a toehold in other countries and even in some small U.S. cities. It has been widely rolled out in South Korea, and Monet Mobile Networks Inc., a company based in Kirkland, Wash., launched EvDO networks last October in seven midwestern markets, including Sioux City, Iowa, and Grand Forks, N.D.
In addition to being far faster than WiFi, EvDO can work over existing cell phone networks and deliver a connection anywhere there is a mobile phone signal. In contrast, WiFi users must be within 300 feet or so of a base station or "hot spot."
Verizon Wireless executives say they were impressed by EvDO in market tests using Lucent's technology in the Washington area. Nortel Networks Ltd. equipment is also being tested in San Diego.
Bill Stone, Verizon Wireless executive director of network planning, said EvDO may prove to be a breakthrough for the entire wireless industry. He likens EvDO's potential to energize the mobile communications business to the introduction of the cell phone in the 1980s and its subsequent surge in popularity in the 1990s, when mobile phones moved from analog to digital technology.
"This could jump-start the industry all over again," Stone said.
A takeoff of EvDO would not only provide Verizon with a new high-speed Internet service to market, but it would probably help struggling equipment suppliers such as Lucent and Nortel, which have already developed the software and hardware to get the network up and running. Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc. and other cell phone makers would benefit from the introduction of new products capable of high-speed Internet access.
A U.S. launch of EvDO would also be a boon to San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., which controls many of the patents underlying the technology. The growing interest in EvDO adds to the momentum of Qualcomm's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) standard that is now used by some of the largest wireless companies, including Verizon and Sprint Corp. Other companies are likely to migrate to CMDA in part because it uses spectrum more efficiently than rival wireless standards and opens the door to high-speed data technologies such as EvDO, according to Coleman Bazelon, a vice president at AnalysisGroup/Economics, a Boston-based research firm.
One of the biggest barriers to EvDO is that it requires wireless companies to set aside a slice of their valuable airwaves just to transmit data. Because mobile phone companies barely have enough room to handle their voice traffic, EvDO is likely to remain on the back burner until the firms can acquire more spectrum.
Some wireless industry analysts say that, notwithstanding the excitement about the technology, the scarcity of airwaves and ongoing tumult in the telecommunications industry makes the rollout of EvDO far from a sure thing. Jane Zweig, chief executive of Shosteck Group, a wireless industry consulting company, said there is no assurance that EvDO technology will ever be widely deployed in the United States. "To assume they will do all this" with EvDO "is a leap of faith," Zweig said.
Denny Strigl , chief executive of Verizon Wireless Inc., has cautioned that the company will go slow on the new technology. Still, company spokesman Andrea Linskey said EvDO is a natural extension of its current data offering, which provides access to the Internet at speeds comparable to a dial-up modem. Verizon agreed last month to buy a large slice of airwaves in 50 markets for $750 million, in part to make room for future services such as EvDO, Linskey said.
While EvDO would require huge investments by cash-strapped telecommunications companies, WiFi's popularity stems largely from the fact that it is an inexpensive and relatively simple technology to get into operation. For about $200, anyone can buy a WiFi network's basic components and, with some computer savvy and a lot of luck, have it running in less than an hour.
A consortium of telecommunications and technology companies that includes Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Corp. is backing a WiFi company named Cometa Networks Inc., which plans to string together more than 20,000 WiFi "hot spots" into a nationwide wireless network.
Even with thousands of hot spots around the country, Cometa executives acknowledge that the company will not be able to offer blanket coverage. Instead, the goal is to provide a hot spot within a five-minute walk of any office in an urban area or five-minute drive in a suburban area, according to Steve Harris, vice president for corporate affairs at Cometa Networks. Boingo Wireless Inc., another firm putting together a national WiFi network, plans to have 5,000 hot spots running by the end of the year.
Critics and rivals say that creating a national network from tens of thousands of hot spots is more difficult and expensive than Cometa and others expect. And to create a truly national network that would have the reach of a cell-phone system would require more than 100,000 hot spots.
"To put together a national WiFi network is going to be extremely complicated and take a long time," said George M. Tronsrue III, chief executive of Monet.
Unlike Verizon Wireless, which probably would launch EvDO over its existing wireless network, Monet built a stand-alone wireless system in the seven markets where it operates. Monet's system bypasses the local phone network, commonly known as the local loop, offering high-speed connections in some places where wired high-speed service is unavailable. Competition in the high-speed Internet business has been stymied largely by the huge expense of building a wired connection to every house and building in a market.
"This technology allows you to have a broadband connection that unlocks the local loop," said Tronsrue, Monet's chief executive.
Monet launched in October and so far has about 1,000 customers, according to the company. Most of its subscribers are business customers that use the high-speed connection to download inventory lists and spreadsheets that would bog down when moving on a slower connection, although, like a cable broadband network, EvDO's access speeds do slow as more people sign on. That fits in with Lucent's prediction that EvDO will be popular with business travelers who often are now limited to the dial-up Internet service in hotel rooms or the pokey wireless networks currently offered by Verizon and Sprint.
Like Cometa, Tronsrue has big-name investors, including billionaire George Soros and Intel, and he is excited about the EvDO technology. But he has also learned that there are no sure things in technology. "Right now our main target is that at the end of 2003, we are still operating."
I just got into CmdrTaco's account...!
The biggest security hole is not buffer overflows, ICMP packet manipulation, or poorly written software.
The easiest security breaches are to be had via social engineering, such as human manipulation and simple password guesses such as the default password for a certain system.
You can have all the conferences on security and corporate code reviews you want, but people will always be stupid. You can't change that.
In February of 2001, Sega announced that they would focus solely on making games for other systems.
"Indeed, Sega has fallen, they are down, posting quarterly losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fourth time in a row, but they are not out. In fact, Sega's future appears to be a bright one as the company is now officially third party. From now on, Sega will only be making games for other companies' systems."
Read the entire article here.
I can't imagine the shit that goes down over in Sony and Nintendo's dumpsters. The competition between the two companies is so fierce, I wouldn't be suprised if "dumpster diving" was a promotion-worthy pasttime!
He wrote "At least HP had a laptop in their booth running Linux. Yes, folks, this is the first time I have seen a laptop in an HP booth with Linux on it -- or at least mostly on it; the person who brought it said its sound didn't work (with Red Hat 8.0, and he didn't care because he was only using it to demonstrate printers.)"...I agree and am equally disgusted with this...most presentation and slide shows seem to be done w/powerpoint rather than soffice..perhaps a sign that linux still isnt easy enough for the avg person..well i should get going..crowds are really getting tight now and i want to visit a couple more booths b4 a late lunch..-AV
Posting from my Treo 300...must say the booth babes are really hot this yr...RedHat booth was cool, so was the OSDN one...lots of freebies..worth the trip.-AV
After several years of practice, you've mastered the art of posting articles to the Slashdot.org community Web site.
Perfect grammer and spelling in the article summary coupled with the all new comment-enabled article option make for a delectable geeky news treat.
Kudos, sir!
Getting technology news from the New York Post is like getting medical advice from an Ask Slashdot.
How to complain about Slashdot: a user's guide.
.sigs have been devoted disavowing such groups existence.
Whether you are but a n00b, or a seasoned practitioner of the Slashdot black arts, you may be wondering to yourself, 'I have a complaint regarding this site, what should I do?'. This article serves as a primer on the ways in which you, yes you can begin to complain about Slashdot.org.
The simplest way to introduce yourself to complaining on Slashdot is through the use of examples. As such, here's 10 sure fire ways to vent your frustration, whatever it may be.
Example #1: The old-timer
A kid tested, mom approved approach is to leverage your uid or your post count to bolster your complaint. Suggestions include 'I remember the DDOS, and even then it wasn't this bad' or 'I can look back to the days when this site had discussion'. Be careful though, as this approach warrants a 'oh yeah, well, my uid is lower than yours, pal!' rejoinder.
Example #2: The slashdot gambit
If, at certain times, the level of trolling, and/or crapflooding rises in volume, the slashdot gambit may be played. Phrases such as 'oh great, next thing you know frist p0st will appear', or 'taco's middle name is rusty' can be batted about with reckless abandon. Note: the clever poster will point out that this URL happens to point here.
Example #3: Monacle polish
A sure-fire method to express your anger is if you subscribed. In this variant, you can easily leverage the fact that you donated to Slashdot, but have seen little results since, aside from hotlists, and reply tracking. Bonus points go to those who equate server costs with Vespas and boats.
Example #4: Saddam strikes back
In the event Slashdot displeases you, make sure to lambast the political submissions to the queue. Combining with the 'old-timer' play can work wonders here, but make sure to cite evidence, lest you be tripped up. A caution, however: be wary of posting against politics and arguing it at the same time, you may be caught!
Example #5: The ox cart defense
No matter how droll your post, nothing beats a good 'I would have posted something witty, but it took forever for Slashdot to load, so I gave up' excuse. Conspiracy theories, and general malaise can all find a happy home in this ploy, so dig in! Bonus goes to those who mention scoop patches or google spidering.
Example #6: The roto-rooter
A variant of #2, but deserving of it's own place in the list. Those in the know can hardly scoff at a claim that crapflooding is ruining the site. Use terms like 'edit queue abuse' or '$USER is back again, when will taco ban this guy?', and the road to success is free and clear.
Example #7: Single point failure
Sometimes you can't articulate your complaint towards Slashdot in general, but fear not, just use a scapegoat! Focus your anger on a single user, and in no time flat, you'll be feeling fine. Easy targets are people who spell their names with a lot of spaces, or turmeric.
Example #8: Illuminati
A spin off of the single point failure, but with a slightly different philosophy. Blaming secret groups, cabals, or rusty clones for Slashdot's ills is a great stand-by maneuver. Don't lean too heavily on this one though, as many
Example #9: Leavin on a Jet Plane
Why just complain, when you can take action? Nothing gets your annoyance with Slashdot across better than threatening to leave. Make sure to pepper some of your better reasons for leaving with profanity for that extra punch. Be wary though, a common counter attack is the 'don't let the door hit your ass on the way out' play.
Example #10: Supersize your combo meal
Seasoned complaint masters will not use a single move, but intertwine many to craft their volley. Try showing how a single user is turning Slashdot into slashdot. Argue that a cabal is responsible for the slowness. Call all political arguments crapfloods. The permutations are endless. Use 4 or more in one single complaint, and you are truly a zen master.
This article serves only as an introduction to some of the most common modes of complaint on Slashdot, ready willing, and able to to the job in the event of frustration. But by no means is this list complete. In fact, I hope you use this as a template to craft your own complaints to take Slashdot to the next level. Now rant on!
The government just ordered all ISPs in China to start monitoring email for subversive phrases and the like, so I started replying to Chinese spam with little replies of the form at the end of this spam. Might be a useful tactic on companies who think that unsolicited email is "just regular advertising."
. ,It is glad , :
l )
"Jack(export manager)" wrote:
>
> Dear Sir
> How are you
>
> We are a lighting factory in China
> to introduce ourselves to you:
>
> I am XUBIN (Jack) , XUBIN is my chinese name , you can just
> call me Jack !! , I am export manager of [deleted]
> China, our group have four factory
[snipped]
>
> Here is our company profile
>
[Rest of sales talk snipped]
(And now, the reply)
Thank you for your coded order. The weapons and ammunition will ship by way of the usual route in ten days, and you already know our secret Swiss bank account number to wire the payment to.
It is a pleasure doing business with you for so long, and I hope your cause will prevail. I am new to this particular computer, so I hope the encryption is working and the monitoring authorities cannot read what I am sending you.
Long live the Falun Gong! Free Tibet!
Best regards, Your arms supplier
(from http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/02/Feb/spam.htm
While lint(1) "proper" doesn't exist for Linux (because copyright issues), you all could try lclint.
It's available at larch.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/Larch/lclint.
"If all you're doing is compiling programs that have lint(1) targets in the Makefile, you can probably just comment out (or remove) the lint targets and actions from the Makefile. If the program has already been ported to Linux, they won't produce anything of interest to you unless you are a developer. I hope this helps."
Isn't this the job of that smart dude down the hall who runs Lunix computers and reads some Slash Period website or something?
Well, at least that's how I finish all my projects.
while(1)
findError();
while(1)
findError();
while(1)
findError();
while(1)
findError();
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
More details
Appeared in FSE 2002. Finds funny bugs by looking for redundant operations (dead code, unused assignments, etc.). From empirical measurements, code with such redundant errors is 50-100% more likely to have hard errors. Also describes how to check for redundancies to find holes in specifications.
Link to PostScript file for easy viewing/printing
File
How's that for redundant?
Before you spend a half-hour downloading any packages, please note that shared libraries aren't supported yet for Mac OS X version 10.2.
Well, to rephrase this, you can build them, but Lucasfilm have't gotten them to link due to undefined symbols and are probably
doing something wrong in the Makefile system.
The test suite will automatically try to link shared libraries if you've built them, so 'make check' will fail. To run the confidence tests, tell configure not to build shared libraries ("./configure --enable-shared=no").
More details are available in the README document.
This is, hands down, the worst exploitation of labor and intelligence I may ever see.
Lucasfilm needs to write a lot of code and make some serious software in the very near future, so they make what they're tricking us into thinking is a grand gesture. What many of you don't realize, and what I didn't at first realize, is that this is a blatant ploy at extorting labor out of us by creating Open Source filters and conversion utilities which will then, upon completion and after some testing, be renamed as Lucasfilm software programs and then used to help George Lucas buy a few more houses and make a few more crappy movies.
It's bad enough that Lucas has taken a back seat to Spielberg in terms of film earnings and film quality, but now that he's using his own fans for free labor, I don't think I'll bother lining his pockets with more cash after a disrespectful act such as this.
I'm appalled and outraged, and I hope you all heed my warning.
Nice, it's wonderful to see that Lucas and his company have read up on, understood, and embraced the Open Source market. For those who don't remember, they pretty much set the gold standard in the movie industry, and we still live with the benefits today. But while this sounds like a good idea at first for us geeks, I have to wonder about some of the choices made in the design of this new format.
Linux is specifically written for the desktop market these days anyway, which is why Lucasfilm probably decided to go cross-platform on us.
It's a good idea, don't get me wrong. But, I'd like to see them take a more sensible approach in the future and consider which platform dominates home users and not which feels best in their hearts.
Their hearts will heal with more money, not with little to no business from Linux users, all of whom tend to spend less than $10 a year on computer software.
I give up. I finally got epoch4.0p0 built on this lame-ass piece of sh*t because SCO puts those routines in libX.a.
Idiots.
And, it immediately barfs because the gethostname() method, thus bringing my machine and its software down with it.
The call is correct according to the spec, but it's returning -1. Perror tells me it's an "invalid argument" which sounds like a garbage error message and doesn't really tell me anything.
So I hack around that and I start getting "Xlib: sequence lost..." errors. The epoch process then goes into CPU-eating mode and I eventually kill it from the command line.
If anyone manages to get this very popular app working in SCO (I had it on Linux), please
let me know how you did it.
... and fuck everyone else who's just on the Open Source bandwagon until it's no longer profitable for them.
They see our movement and they think, "Wow, free labor. Cool. Alright boys, let's see if we can't drag up some nice, fully-working programs and call them our own, erm, I mean modify them to our purposes."
When the dust settles, the only friends we'll have as Open Source programmers are each other. The Reals, IBMs, Netscapes, etc. will have cashed out their winnings by then and be on the next computing bandwagon.
Posted by michael on Wednesday January 22, @08:26AM
from the beaten-down-by-windows-media-player dept.
Thanks for the always insightful remarks, Mike, but I'd wager that those of us who give two damns about our privacy would much rather use a cross-platform, free solution such as Helix as opposed to the DRM'ing-you-and-all-your-files program known as Windows Media Player.
But hey, what do I know, I'm not an omnipotent Slashdot editor.
I'm all for these new RFID multiplexors for a few reasons:
If I run out of gas in highway traffic, a dealer will be notified and can disperse a gasoline truck within 5 minutes
In the event of an accident, the RFID will switch on and notify ambulance and fire patrols so that there's a better chance those involved in the collission with me can survive
They're a good use of modern tracking systems such as GPS, GSPS, and standard 802.11.x protocols which are becoming more and more prevalent.
"You now have a lot more riding on your tires, so don't do anything stupid 'cause we're watchin' your ass, bitch."
The word levy originally descended from Middle English tongue as levite, which came from Old German as the word leviet, which was the masculine past participle of levi, an old Amish name for pants.