In the hopes of clearing up some misconceptions, here is an explanation of the protocol issue in the fight over AIM.
There are two protocols that AOL uses for instant messaging. There is the one proprietary protocol that the Windows and Macintosh clients use, and then there is a published protocol intended for use by people who prefer Unix (it works with the Tcl, Lisp, and the various Java clients, along with some small third-party ones like LAIM).
Having said that, it must be made clear that MSN Messenger is using a reverse-engineered version of the AIM protocol, not the published version that AOL made available to Unix users.
Yahoo Messenger uses the published protocol (sflap), but it has been blocked by AOL from using the published version, too. It has been reported that Prodigy's messaging client was very similar to Yahoo's (in its use of TOC).
The published AIM protocol and its special TOC server, according to the documentation of the Tik client, isn't intended for this kind of use by a major third-party client but as an effort to bolster the Open-Source movement and to let Unix users gain access to the world of AIM and AOL at large.
MSN is clearly wrong for reverse-engineering the proprietary, unpublished protocol. Yahoo is less so because they are using the publically-published protocol. However, Yahoo really shouldn't be using the TOC server protocol without releasing the source to its Yahoo Messenger client because TOC's protocol was under the rules of the GPL.
The Tik clients still work with the TOC server. Yahoo and Prodigy are blocked. Tonight, MSN still seems to work for me after downloading the three different versions (the new ones no longer say "compatible" in the ID string). Since MSN is now looking quite much like a real AIM client does to the AIM servers, doesn't anyone at MSN think they would be in trouble for copyright infringement?
Cyrix MediaGX is a certified as a supported platform for WinCE: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsce/embedded/reso urces/proc21.asp
Also, noted earlier, it is fully i586-compatible with an MMU, plus a companion chipset that supplies a PC-on-two-chips solution. I run several versions of Unix-like OS's on MediaGX systems, as well as Windows 98 and NT. It is not the same architecture as the other Cyrix chips. It's an original Nat'l Semi design and the newer (MMX-enhanced versions) had some Cyrix influence when Nat'l Semi bought them. MediaGX is not involved in the VIA sale at all -- it stays at Nat'l Semi.
Just like the original MediaGX, when you plug a video card into the motherboard, it cedes the video to it or lets you use multiple-monitor support depending on the BIOS and the OS. However, the market for this chipset probably doesn't include PC's with expansion slots in them.
Philip Greenspun's reasons are more well-stated than mine were. Having said that, all of the removed features can be replaced by folks who have the initiative to do so. After all, this is beta 1 of the product. If this is a reason to drop advocacy of the server, the potential to add features in the Open Source effort is a better reason to advocate it.
You mean to tell me you can't tell the difference between a firewall and a web server? What makes you think that opening up hosts in the world's largest network to DoS attacks is advantageous?
This just isn't true. Sure, the press reports that things are found now and then, and there may have been problems in the past, but his posting about the so-called "client-based security model" is just plain incorrect, wrong, and downright clueless. If he really knew what he was talking about, he'd have been able to exploit any security hole -- which he admits he was not able to do. How such an obviously wrong posting gets a score of "4: Interesting" is beyond me. Besides, what does it have to do with AOLserver at all?
All of the features you were crying about were useful back in, say, 1994, but not now. If you can't learn Tcl, and if as you say "it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to upgrade to 3.0 without a TON of work" then you might have to look for another line of work.
It helps to understand the difference between a software development organization and a network operations organization. Your complaints have nothing to do with the software.
First, AOLpress has been dead for almost two years. If you're still using it, you're clueless.
Server-side includes are simply the wrong way to publish web content when you have ADP's, which give you Tcl scripting right in your web page. Once more, if you still cry for SSI's, you're clueless.
Java servlets were not dropped, they were always an optional object. The code for that is merely a cgi-like proxy to the Java Web Server and anyone can write his own version. Once more, you're clueless.
Virtual FTP was nice (it was a feature I championed) but there are other things that do it much better.
If you pine for web-based administration, it's time to get with the program. The control port interface gives you extensive control that you just can't achieve on web pages.
And, of course, the rest of the missing features of 2.3 can be re-implemented by anyone, you know, and you can even make great new features yourself.
AOLserver has always had an extensive C API which let you add shared objects. It's still there, of course. Why not use it to add the features you liked?
The law concerning broadcast networks is "The Satellite Television Act S. 303." Also, DirecTV/DirecDuo is the only service that lets you get all the channels on one dish. EchoStar (DISH Network) requires two dishes to get all the channels and doesn't yet offer an internet service, though they have announced integrated landline WebTV set-top boxes.
Hughes sells the DirecDuo dish which is an elliptical dish designed to receive the regular three DBS satellites plus the Internet receive service. The dish has two focal points that aim the signals from the three satellites more precisely at the LNB (two of the birds are practically on top of each other while the third is 10 degrees away). As you might guess the aiming of the signal is very important for data quality. Aiming the dish requires a lot more skill than regular DBS (physics tells us that larger dishes require more precise aiming). This service provides regular DirecTV service plus 400 kbs internet service. You still need a modem for sending data. There are many mixed feelings on the net about this; check dejanews for more. This service has been in production for a couple of years.
The same dish with just one LNB is sold as the internet-only "DirecPC" service. You'd be happier with DirecDuo since it gives you your precious tee vee.
On broadcast networks: Congress and the House recently passed a law allowing the DBS providers to transmit the network channels regardless of the signal quality in your area. Previously, you have to have no signal and/or you must obtain permission from each local affiliate. However, nothing seems to have happened as a result of the legislation, yet. I don't have the details (see directv.com or primetime24.com). I think the law has yet to go into effect.
If you really think the networks are that good (I don't) then put an antenna in your attic.
Tik is a very good open-source project run by AOL that essentially makes it the be-all and end-all of instant messenger clients. You can add all sorts of things to it, including Slashdot stories. It's definitely Done Right with respect to the online community. I suspect the new media acquisitions today will also be Done Right, as have Netscape, ICQ, and CompuServe.
I have had poor luck with OEM power supplies that come with brand-named computers. I have also seen lots of cheap ATX power supplies that are rated 140 watts peak. Remember, the rating you're seeing is the peak rating, not the optimal power rating which is usually 20-40% lower than the peak rating. AT power supplies are always cheaper and always offer higher wattage ratings per dollar.
One major problem that I have experienced wth ATX power supplies is that since the fan is mounted on a horizontal plane it seems to be more prone to wear and "chuffing."
ATX motherboards are great since they reduce ribbon cable clutter. However, if you must use ATX you should ALWAYS get a motherboard that has AT power supply connectors (most aftermarket boards do). You'll save at least $30 and be able to get higher-rated power supplies for less money. You also won't have the annoying power button problems.
Sun's Fibre Channel and some ultrawide SCSI disc arrays allow multiple computers to share not only several drives in the disc array but can actually share volumes. That means several computers can share real hard disc volumes with the high speed and low latency of ultrawide SCSI. With these solutions, beowulf clustering can actually be a feasible alternative to expensive SMP motherboards for i/o-intensive tasks. Kris
I don't know about the shared memory thing, it appears to be enforced by the hardware. However, Linux really doesn't like the fact that these motherboards (esp. MediaGX) have uncommon video memory. For example, the two different MediaGX BIOS's I've dealt with let you change the amount of shared memory in use, but you only get to choose between 1.5 MB and 2.5 MB. Nowhere in XF86 are you able to set the memory to either of those values, so I think it's XF86's fault. Even the newer Debian that actually has MediaGX in its list of video cards can't handle MediaGX.
I've moved these machines to server-land, which isn't such a bad idea because I don't have enough monitors, anyway.
Sound/Video integrated motherboards are great for servers!! This is because they're super cheap and you don't have to waste a good video card on the server, or cripple it with a really slow ISA card, just to boot the stupid thing!
Boy am I glad I threw out the TigerDirect catalog. I was wondering why they didn't offer a non-ATX super socket7 motherboard. I went instead to Computer Parts Only (www.cponly.com) where I previously bought a replacement MediaGX motherboard. Their prices were lower than Tiger on the same motherboards and they also sold better brands.
They're a small outfit, but they really know what they're doing.
I'm still looking for a dealer for Epox motherboards, though. I have one in a Pentium 2 computer that I'm very pleased with, even though it's only 66 MHz front-side. Bah.
Perhaps you'd like to run around town looking for used Macintoshes, Amigas, and Atari ST's. Then grab a copy of "LInux Roughcuts" from Red Hat. It has the old mkLinux, Yyggradsil(sp), and other Linux kernel distributions for weird architectures for about $26 at Cheap Bytes.
And if you can't find an old Mac or Amiga lying around, there's always NetBSD or Slackware.
My favorite paragraph of the article follows. It would be nice if the author knew the correct name of a certain Sun CPU, knew that AIX runs on PowerPC, RS/6000, and Power2 architectures, and might have known that "codeveloped" is not a word in the English language. It would have been nice if he realized that Windows NT used to run on MIPS architectures and had a short-lived PowerPC version as well. Still, the comparisons presented in the article are well-researched.
It sometimes seems as if NT gets less portable by the day. NT currently supports the Alpha and x86 architectures. Although you can probably find a version of UNIX that runs on any given hardware platform, the leading commercial UNIX releases are even less portable that NT, running only on their vendors' proprietary CPU type, and sometimes on the x86 as well. For example, Sun Microsystems developed Solaris for the SUN Sparq chip but ports Solaris to the x86. IBM's AIX runs only on the PowerPC chip, which IBM codeveloped with Motorola.
Most media reports today quote the British military as saying that this kind of "taking over" of a satellite just can't be done. Just like the girl who "invented" a new form of cryptography, the facts in this case are missing once more. If you were the "crackers" in this case, answer these questions for us.
1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility?
2) How did you "break into" an air gap-protected uplink facility?
3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?
4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?
5) Do you really think the British military is this stupid?
6) Have you been watching Superman and James Bond films too many times?
Tetris clones have been legally challenged for years. In the very late 80's and early 90's, when the Tetris clones first appeared, the Fred Fish Amiga archives was served with a "Cease and desist" letter to remove all Tetris clones from the archive. A similar thing happened to the Tengen version of Tetris for Nintendo in which Nintendo sued Tengen (an Atari subsidiary) because Nintendo paid Elog for the Tetris license while Tengen didn't. Nintendo won that case, as well as another case against Tengen that accused them of cracking the Nintendo lockout chip.
How can this be news? This story is as old as the hills.
I recently purchased a quantity of 233 MHz MediaGX machines from a local dealer. These are complete machines around $400 each and come with 32 MB of RAM, a 2.5 gigabyte hard drive, a real internal modem (not a Winmodem!), and Windows 98. All I had to do was add a $40 ne2000 compatible ethernet card and I now have a group of fairly fast servers that aren't too shabby at regular programming.
So far, the MediaGX's around my house run Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Windows 98. Ironically, Windows NT won't install on these machines but it will run a pre-existing installation if restored from tape. Still, since I have no current need for NT, the Unixes on these boxes run just fine.
The new Hewlett-Packard Kayak PC's are using DMI. DMI has many interesting features to allow for management of a Win32 system in a big office. One of the more interesting features of this system is the serial number reporting mechanism. There is a "Serial Number" and an "Asset Number," both of which are stored in non-volatile memory. The "Serial Number" is set at the factory and apparently cannot be changed. These serial number data are available through calls to the DMI agent on the system or via a suitable DMI-aware application.
There was a Microsoft developer forum there for a long time. Even when MSN came out, the Microsoft developer forum remained on CompuServe for quite a long time afterwards until microsoft.com got their act together.
I am rather relieved to see Intel proposing an ID number system. Recently, I purchased a "300 MHz" Pentium II system that turned out to be a 233 MHz machine clocked up to 300 MHz on the motherboard. The only way I could know for sure was to visually inspect the chip for non-obvious serial number tampering and to run the ECC checker program. Even then, it was a coincidence that 300 MHz chips always have ECC cache, so you can't check if your 330 or 350 MHz box is really an overclocked 300 MHz machine.
With chip ID coding, now you can be sure of the chip you're using. I stopped purchasing Intel CPU's for this reason. Cyrix and AMD have extremely stringent, tamper-proof markings. Intel only has silk-screened letters on a soft plastic cartridge. I think Intel is moving in the right direction, even if some people here think it's for the wrong reasons (product tracking, et. al).
Slashdot Mirror
There are two protocols that AOL uses for instant messaging. There is the one proprietary protocol that the Windows and Macintosh clients use, and then there is a published protocol intended for use by people who prefer Unix (it works with the Tcl, Lisp, and the various Java clients, along with some small third-party ones like LAIM).
Having said that, it must be made clear that MSN Messenger is using a reverse-engineered version of the AIM protocol, not the published version that AOL made available to Unix users.
Yahoo Messenger uses the published protocol (sflap), but it has been blocked by AOL from using the published version, too. It has been reported that Prodigy's messaging client was very similar to Yahoo's (in its use of TOC).
The published AIM protocol and its special TOC server, according to the documentation of the Tik client, isn't intended for this kind of use by a major third-party client but as an effort to bolster the Open-Source movement and to let Unix users gain access to the world of AIM and AOL at large.
MSN is clearly wrong for reverse-engineering the proprietary, unpublished protocol. Yahoo is less so because they are using the publically-published protocol. However, Yahoo really shouldn't be using the TOC server protocol without releasing the source to its Yahoo Messenger client because TOC's protocol was under the rules of the GPL.
The Tik clients still work with the TOC server. Yahoo and Prodigy are blocked. Tonight, MSN still seems to work for me after downloading the three different versions (the new ones no longer say "compatible" in the ID string). Since MSN is now looking quite much like a real AIM client does to the AIM servers, doesn't anyone at MSN think they would be in trouble for copyright infringement?
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsce/embedded/res
Also, noted earlier, it is fully i586-compatible with an MMU, plus a companion chipset that supplies a PC-on-two-chips solution. I run several versions of Unix-like OS's on MediaGX systems, as well as Windows 98 and NT. It is not the same architecture as the other Cyrix chips. It's an original Nat'l Semi design and the newer (MMX-enhanced versions) had some Cyrix influence when Nat'l Semi bought them. MediaGX is not involved in the VIA sale at all -- it stays at Nat'l Semi.
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
*shakes head in disbelief*
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
How such an obviously wrong posting gets a score of "4: Interesting" is beyond me. Besides, what does it have to do with AOLserver at all?
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Good luck with thhtpd.
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
First, AOLpress has been dead for almost two years. If you're still using it, you're clueless.
Server-side includes are simply the wrong way to publish web content when you have ADP's, which give you Tcl scripting right in your web page. Once more, if you still cry for SSI's, you're clueless.
Java servlets were not dropped, they were always an optional object. The code for that is merely a cgi-like proxy to the Java Web Server and anyone can write his own version. Once more, you're clueless.
Virtual FTP was nice (it was a feature I championed) but there are other things that do it much better.
If you pine for web-based administration, it's time to get with the program. The control port interface gives you extensive control that you just can't achieve on web pages.
And, of course, the rest of the missing features of 2.3 can be re-implemented by anyone, you know, and you can even make great new features yourself.
AOLserver has always had an extensive C API which let you add shared objects. It's still there, of course. Why not use it to add the features you liked?
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
The same dish with just one LNB is sold as the internet-only "DirecPC" service. You'd be happier with DirecDuo since it gives you your precious tee vee.
On broadcast networks: Congress and the House recently passed a law allowing the DBS providers to transmit the network channels regardless of the signal quality in your area. Previously, you have to have no signal and/or you must obtain permission from each local affiliate. However, nothing seems to have happened as a result of the legislation, yet. I don't have the details (see directv.com or primetime24.com). I think the law has yet to go into effect.
If you really think the networks are that good (I don't) then put an antenna in your attic.
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
One major problem that I have experienced wth ATX power supplies is that since the fan is mounted on a horizontal plane it seems to be more prone to wear and "chuffing."
ATX motherboards are great since they reduce ribbon cable clutter. However, if you must use ATX you should ALWAYS get a motherboard that has AT power supply connectors (most aftermarket boards do). You'll save at least $30 and be able to get higher-rated power supplies for less money. You also won't have the annoying power button problems.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
I've moved these machines to server-land, which isn't such a bad idea because I don't have enough monitors, anyway.
Sound/Video integrated motherboards are great for servers!! This is because they're super cheap and you don't have to waste a good video card on the server, or cripple it with a really slow ISA card, just to boot the stupid thing!
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
They're a small outfit, but they really know what they're doing.
I'm still looking for a dealer for Epox motherboards, though. I have one in a Pentium 2 computer that I'm very pleased with, even though it's only 66 MHz front-side. Bah.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
And if you can't find an old Mac or Amiga lying around, there's always NetBSD or Slackware.
Yours in pain,
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
1) Where is the high-powered uplink facility?
2) How did you "break into" an air gap-protected uplink facility?
3) How did you afford your own high-powered uplink facility?
4) With your fancy new high-powered uplink facility, how did you break the encryption and the access codes required to repurpose the satellite? How did you find the coordinates of is current location?
5) Do you really think the British military is this stupid?
6) Have you been watching Superman and James Bond films too many times?
7) Do your friends call you "Captain Midnight?"
We're waiting.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
How can this be news? This story is as old as the hills.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
So far, the MediaGX's around my house run Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Windows 98. Ironically, Windows NT won't install on these machines but it will run a pre-existing installation if restored from tape. Still, since I have no current need for NT, the Unixes on these boxes run just fine.
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kris
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
With chip ID coding, now you can be sure of the chip you're using. I stopped purchasing Intel CPU's for this reason. Cyrix and AMD have extremely stringent, tamper-proof markings. Intel only has silk-screened letters on a soft plastic cartridge. I think Intel is moving in the right direction, even if some people here think it's for the wrong reasons (product tracking, et. al).
I don't like buying junk.
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/