Yeah, great, so we encourage 3000 children all over the world to play with new technological toys. Big deal. I'm saying that there are better applications of that money, other than having a small percentage of the world's population (1 out of 2 million) play with a new toy.
I just don't think that this is a great idea. These kids won't remember that this happened (if indeed it ever does). If they do remember that it happened, they likely won't remember why it was such a big deal. If they know why it was a big deal, it wouldn't be about the technology, it would be about the media exposure they got (being on TV, getting on a plane, etc).
Or maybe I'm just an asshole who can't see the bright side of this. I really don't think there is a bright side. I'd much rather see children fed than children playing with PDAs. I'd much rather see children educated than children playing with PDAs. I'd much rather *NOT* see children exploited for a corporation's PR purposes than see children play with PDAs.
Excuse me for being cynical, but how is getting 3000 young children together and giving them PDAs somehow "innovative" or "world-changing"?
I don't see how this is anything more than a few companies (who are mysteriously remaining nameless) to get together and try to cultivate some public interest by "making 3000 children to join hands and sing for world peace". Give me a break.
I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is deserving of the millions of dollars you're putting into it. I'd much rather see that money go towards feeding the hundreds of millions of people starving all around the world, and not to some corporate PR department trying to spin this as world-changing.
You honestly think that the Microsoft lobbiests will let the Feds choose something that's open-source over their proprietary formats?
You really think that all the oil/health care/tobacco/technology industries are going to keep quiet over this type of thing? It impacts them too, you know.
The government will not change because the corporations (who own the government, figuratively speaking) will not let them change. Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns, the corporations will continue to control the government and the open-source movement (and all other movements) will get stomped on.
...putting one in your pocket on a crowded subway?
...trying to *type* on this thing?
...the cost of these things?
...how this will impact the PDA market?
...the cost of these things?
...having a Beowulf cluster in a card catalog?
My thoughts
on
Arguing A.I.
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
You know, I've done quite a bit of thinking on the matter of AI, and I've come to the following predictions:
Within 50 years, there will be a computer that will pass the Turing Test. For those of you who don't know (and I hope nobody is in this category on Slashdot:-) the Turing Test is basically making a computer indistinguishable from a human being. A tester will ask the computer questions, and will be unable to determine whether a computer is answering the questions or whether a human is mimicing a computer.
Within 50 years after that (100 years total), computers will be able to parse speech flawlessly, so voice recognition will finally end up being plausible. Computers will understand the nuances of speech and will be able to change homonyms (here and hear) based on the context of the sentence.
Within 50 years of that (150 years total) we'll have computers that can respond to voice commands like in Star Trek. The computer will not only understand the syntax of language, but it will be able to determine, on its own, the difference between a question asked in conversation and a question asked to the computer in conversation.
Of course, these are just random guesses on my part, but I really think that they're reasonable. Give me your thoughts, please.
It's going to be a moot point, anyways. Once the Xbox launches in Japan (February 22, if memory serves) and it flops, you're going to see all the 3rd party developers in Japan jump ship faster than... something really fast.
Games are what matters on a console, not how many polygons it can push. The Japanese launch lineup for the Xbox is pathetic. There are 4 snowboarding games, DoA3 (a practical port of DoA2, a launch game for PS2 a year ago), and Genma Onimusha, when Onimusha has been out for more than 6 months on the PS2.
When the Japanese launch of the Xbox flops, the Japanese developers will jump ship. When the Japanese developers jump ship, the Xbox will lose about 60% of its title lineup. When 60% of the titles go to other platforms, people will stop buying the Xbox. When people stop buying the Xbox, the other 40% will jump ship to either the PS2 or the Gamecube.
To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries. As a corollary, just because something does well in one country does not automatically spell success in the other country.
In 2 years, nobody will remember the Xbox. It will have entered the Gaming Lore books right along side the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Tubro Grafix 16, and dozens of other systems that went obsolete because they had no games.
Has anybody tried to get this working under VMWare yet?
For those of you who don't know, VMWare is a way in which multiple virtual machines can be created on your desktop. What VMWare actually does is it isolates a section of hard drive (appears as a regular file in Linux) and isolates sections of memory (I've had up to 128 MB allocated) and runs a "virtual machine" which runs through a "BIOS" and can do pretty much everything that another computer can do, including running Windows 98 Games!
So, has anybody got this running under VMWare yet?
This guy admits to illegally cracking into at least 5 websites to post his "anarchy message" and defends it by saying "It was necessary to get the word out"? Come on, people!
I really don't think that this is going to have the effect of breaking up Palm. Remember, they have 3COM backing them, and 3COM still makes one helluva network card.
What I see happening is Palm beginning to sell their OS to other handhelds to try and steal some of the market away from Microsoft Windows CE (because, as all Slashdotters know, M$ == evil). By splitting the two companies, Palm OS can now be viably marketed to other platforms. Before, it was just a single company with a lot of proprietary knowledge, but once they do this split, they can start to open-source it (in a manner of speaking).
It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes, because if Palm does begin to sell their OS separately, then they'll have money for development. If they have money for development, then we'll see some great enhancements to the Palm OS, and I for one will welcome the change... just so long as they keep supporting my Palm IIIx:-)
This is quickly becoming a show of solidarity against the "moderators" of this thread. From what I can see, we're up to 733 posts (ironically, the same as the clockspeed of my P3 Coppermine). I can deal with the fact that the editors of Slashdot have infinite moderator points. I can deal with the fact that they can ban anybody they wish at a moment's notice.
What I have a problem with is the simple fact that they have not made 1 single statement regarding this incident, and they continue to bitchslap the entire thread with Offtopic moderations, without any reason why. And furthermore, they still claim that it's a "user-moderated site". Bullshit. The users have given up on moderating this thread a long time ago. Now it's the hypocritical editors who keep this up.
Keep posting, people. Let the voice be heard. Oh, and I was bitchslapped once, and never used a script to do it, in direct violation of the high-and-mighty FAQ.
Hypocracy at its finest.
Come on, how is it news that cryptography was broken? It's not hard! All it takes is time. The Distrubuted.net clients taught us that.
Yes, it's bad that the cryptography was broken, but how can any Slashdot reader see this as anything more than the inevitable conclusion of using too weak a standard? Even 128-bit encryption can be cracked, given enough time and enough computers crunching on it!
I don't understand why the Government can get involved in what a private arcade owner does. If an arcade owner doesn't want to include violent video games, then they don't have to.
This is just another example of the government intruding into matters of private businesses. Businesses should be allowed to do whatever they want to do, without the Big Bad Government getting involved in it.
I, for one, don't want games like GTA3 influencing the next generation of school shooters. I'm not saying that video games cause violence; I'm saying that reinforcing bad behavior by making it publically available is wrong.
Nowadays, it only makes sense for educational institutions to start making money off of their programs. Think about it: For the "serious" programmers, they go and get their PhDs in Computer Science, and then what? Get paid to be a code monkey? I don't think so. They go and teach.
However, teaching isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore. With the government cutting the money for higher education ($100 billion last year) and with the ever-tightening restrictions imposed by Affirmative Action (raising dropout rates to 25% in some fields) it's no wonder that schools are starting to find ways to make money any way they can.
It may be going off on a rant, but it's time that we take money from the military and start giving it to the school systems (especially publically-funded schools like universities are) because otherwise, the U.S.A. is going to become a group of complete loser jocks who couldn't tell you the difference between a hole in the ground and the goatse.cx guy.
Hear me out, don't judge me prematurely. Hey, that means you, Mr. Moderator!
Linux will not survive because of the people who are backing it. I'm not going to bash RMS or Torvalds, I'm talking about the hardcore hackers and coders out there who make Linux work. These people are all going to graduate from college, get married, find Jesus, or do something that will take the place of their current coding obsession. I know, because I was once an open-source programmer for a log parsing program (making it easier to grep through those huge logfiles). But then, I graduated college and had to make money for a living, and suddenly my open-source project fell by the wayside.
Face it: Linux is free. The Linux economy (i.e., getting people to work for free) is based off of the concept that deep down, people are generally good. The Linux community is based upon the ideal that money is not the only motivation, and I agree; there are plenty of other human motivators other than money. However, I don't think that any motivator comes close to good 'ole greenbacks. People want money. People want PS2s. People want Final Fantasy X. People want a house. People want MONEY. The Linux community, with the exceptions of the major distributions (RedHat, Slackware, etc) cannot keep people monetarily satisfied.
Once this generation of coders falls away (and they will) then Linux will lose its support in the forms of coders. Once the Linux source becomes obsolete, Linux is dead. The only reason these.bombs were so popular is because it allowed the coders to write Linux programs and earn money. Now that it's over, so is Linux.
I can already hear the moderators giving me "Flamebait" and "Troll" for this post, but I don't care. My Karma can take the hit. But it's true; Linux's price model (free) is what is dooming it to a slow and painful death.
I think you're right; I am a software person (that's what I'm supposed to be doing now, heh) and I love to tinker with software... coding, "tricking out" the memory, etc, trying to get the most out of the hardware by changing the software. Overclockers try to get the most out
of software by changing the hardware.
<VOICE STYLE="Yoda">Two sides of the same coin, we are</VOICE>
The car analogy is another good one; I personally don't care about tweaking my car, but I have friends here at work who talk about racing their cars, exhaust systems, distributor caps, etc. I just sit back and nod, not having the first clue what they're talking about. I guess that's just a type of personality, and I don't have it. Thanks, cavemanf16.
Personally, I never really understood the whole "overclocking" thing myself. I tweak my computer system, sure. But the things I tweak are (in the old days) loading locations in high memory of my modules within CONFIG.SYS, or I tweak the settings of Netscape or online games to satisfy my own personal preferences...
But in terms of voiding warranties, possibly destroying hardware, and overheating delicate computer systems, I never really had the urge to do it. I just can't understand the reasoning behind overclocking a processor just to squeeze a couple of extra megahertz out of it, when it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between MHz these days.
Any overclockers care to enlighten me regarding the reasoning behind overclocking?
I just received an e-mail from a valid Microsoft.com address, and I am now convinced; This isn't a hoax.
Personally, I still can't believe it (as in, it astonishes me) but I would have to accept it. Sorry that I doubted you, but you have to admit that an AC on Slashdot isn't exactly a reputable source:-)
I had to run that post through my translator, hold on:
The non-profit security team w00w00.org... Translating...
The juvenile h4x0r kiddies at w00w00.org...
uncovering a serious flaw in AOL's Instant Messenger protocol Translating...
illegally reverse-engineered a crack into AOL's IM protocol
I can't believe that Slashdot is propogating this crap. This stuff is not something we want to get out to the public! Yes, these crackers found a hole in AOL. The problem is server-side and will be fixed in a few days. In the mean time, Slashdot has just propogated this information (and the crack) to millions of people worldwide.
I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty irresponsible to me.
If you're interested in not having tons and tons of units, with the focus more on strategy (you know, the "S" in "RTS"?) then I suggest Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. Here's the reviews over on gamerankings.com. And guess what? If you don't like booting out of Linux (if you boot *into* Linux), it's even been ported over there by Loki!
It's a very good game, with heavy focus on flanking units, configuring well-balanced troops, and actual STRATEGY, with an innovative and streamlined resource management model. It's highly recommended to anybody who wants to play a strategy game.
Warcraft III is, by far, one of the most eagerly anticipated games of, oh, the past EPOCH. My only problem is this: To be a Beta tester, you have to have a lot of free time to play and debug the game, especially online. This means long hours of sitting at night, playing Warcraft III endlessly. Why is this bad? Oh, let me count the ways:
Civilization III
Halo
GTA3
Final Fantasy X
Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Pikmin
Not to mention the countless TV programs, and...
They say that Truth is the first casualty of war. I say that sleep is the first victim of Beta testing...
Yeah! We have rock solid confirmation, then! I mean, why should I believe The Register when I could believe an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot?
I know you're a troll, and just waiting for bites, and since I'm in a sporting mood, I'd like for you to send me an e-mail (baberg.at.mps.ohio-state.edu), from your Microsoft account at work, with some kind of obscure message. It doesn't matter what's in the message. I just want to receive a valid message from a microsoft.com account. THEN I will believe you.
Thanks, troll, you gave me a reason to live this afternoon.
I admitted in this thread that it would be pretty easy to "leak" the e-mail (if nothing else, good old pen-and-paper works great!) but it's just that I'm always skeptical of anything from "anonymous sources". And yeah, you could track things going through the central Exchange server, with a pretty simple mechanism. But still...
I think you're right; it was used as a scare tactic towards the clueless non-tech people who don't necessarily have the technical background to filter out the hype from the truth.
Back to my original point, I still think it's a hoax. Maybe it's just my cynicism shining through, but I can't believe that Microsoft is really focusing that much attention on Linux. The hype surrounding Linux in the media has died down, Linux companies are going Chapter 11 left and right... Unless the Xbox is more of a flop than I anticipated, I can't believe Microsoft is that concerned with Linux. I could be wrong, though...
Yeah, you're right, if you assume clueless users. I mean, it would be a pretty simple matter to monitor the outgoing mail through their Exchange server, and just catch keywords...
On the other hand, why not just print it out (or copy it down by hand), take it home, and mail it out from a home dial-up account?
This whole thing was a hoax, plain and simple. And the Slashdot editors (and a large percentage of Slashdot readers) bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Maybe it's just me, but I always react with skepticism whenever an "anonymous source" leaks a "classified document" to the public. For all we know, this e-mail was written up by Mark Jabroni from Nowhere, TX.
What especially rings my "hoax/troll bell" is the last couple of lines about the message being "Microsoft Confidential" and how he can track any and all forwards. Give me a break.
This article is complete bull. Nobody will ever be able to convince me otherwise. It was written by a well-intentioned Linux advocate and sent to The Register because it would give the people of Slashdot a reason to cheer.
Nothing to see here, folks. These are not the e-mails you're looking for. Move along.
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't think that this is a great idea. These kids won't remember that this happened (if indeed it ever does). If they do remember that it happened, they likely won't remember why it was such a big deal. If they know why it was a big deal, it wouldn't be about the technology, it would be about the media exposure they got (being on TV, getting on a plane, etc).
Or maybe I'm just an asshole who can't see the bright side of this. I really don't think there is a bright side. I'd much rather see children fed than children playing with PDAs. I'd much rather see children educated than children playing with PDAs. I'd much rather *NOT* see children exploited for a corporation's PR purposes than see children play with PDAs.
I don't see how this is anything more than a few companies (who are mysteriously remaining nameless) to get together and try to cultivate some public interest by "making 3000 children to join hands and sing for world peace". Give me a break.
I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is deserving of the millions of dollars you're putting into it. I'd much rather see that money go towards feeding the hundreds of millions of people starving all around the world, and not to some corporate PR department trying to spin this as world-changing.
Or maybe it's just me.
You really think that all the oil/health care/tobacco/technology industries are going to keep quiet over this type of thing? It impacts them too, you know.
The government will not change because the corporations (who own the government, figuratively speaking) will not let them change. Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns, the corporations will continue to control the government and the open-source movement (and all other movements) will get stomped on.
Although I guess the open-air environment of cell phones would make air circulation a breeze (pun intended)
(ok, one more) Would dropping my cell phone into a toilet be counted as "water-cooling"?
...putting one in your pocket on a crowded subway?
...trying to *type* on this thing?
...the cost of these things?
...how this will impact the PDA market?
...the cost of these things?
...having a Beowulf cluster in a card catalog?
- Within 50 years, there will be a computer that will pass the Turing Test. For those of you who don't know (and I hope nobody is in this category on Slashdot
:-) the Turing Test is basically making a computer indistinguishable from a human being. A tester will ask the computer questions, and will be unable to determine whether a computer is answering the questions or whether a human is mimicing a computer.
- Within 50 years after that (100 years total), computers will be able to parse speech flawlessly, so voice recognition will finally end up being plausible. Computers will understand the nuances of speech and will be able to change homonyms (here and hear) based on the context of the sentence.
- Within 50 years of that (150 years total) we'll have computers that can respond to voice commands like in Star Trek. The computer will not only understand the syntax of language, but it will be able to determine, on its own, the difference between a question asked in conversation and a question asked to the computer in conversation.
Of course, these are just random guesses on my part, but I really think that they're reasonable. Give me your thoughts, please.Games are what matters on a console, not how many polygons it can push. The Japanese launch lineup for the Xbox is pathetic. There are 4 snowboarding games, DoA3 (a practical port of DoA2, a launch game for PS2 a year ago), and Genma Onimusha, when Onimusha has been out for more than 6 months on the PS2.
When the Japanese launch of the Xbox flops, the Japanese developers will jump ship. When the Japanese developers jump ship, the Xbox will lose about 60% of its title lineup. When 60% of the titles go to other platforms, people will stop buying the Xbox. When people stop buying the Xbox, the other 40% will jump ship to either the PS2 or the Gamecube.
To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries. As a corollary, just because something does well in one country does not automatically spell success in the other country.
In 2 years, nobody will remember the Xbox. It will have entered the Gaming Lore books right along side the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Tubro Grafix 16, and dozens of other systems that went obsolete because they had no games.
For those of you who don't know, VMWare is a way in which multiple virtual machines can be created on your desktop. What VMWare actually does is it isolates a section of hard drive (appears as a regular file in Linux) and isolates sections of memory (I've had up to 128 MB allocated) and runs a "virtual machine" which runs through a "BIOS" and can do pretty much everything that another computer can do, including running Windows 98 Games!
So, has anybody got this running under VMWare yet?
Computer cracking was illegal well before 9-11.
What I see happening is Palm beginning to sell their OS to other handhelds to try and steal some of the market away from Microsoft Windows CE (because, as all Slashdotters know, M$ == evil). By splitting the two companies, Palm OS can now be viably marketed to other platforms. Before, it was just a single company with a lot of proprietary knowledge, but once they do this split, they can start to open-source it (in a manner of speaking).
It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes, because if Palm does begin to sell their OS separately, then they'll have money for development. If they have money for development, then we'll see some great enhancements to the Palm OS, and I for one will welcome the change... just so long as they keep supporting my Palm IIIx :-)
This is quickly becoming a show of solidarity against the "moderators" of this thread. From what I can see, we're up to 733 posts (ironically, the same as the clockspeed of my P3 Coppermine). I can deal with the fact that the editors of Slashdot have infinite moderator points. I can deal with the fact that they can ban anybody they wish at a moment's notice. What I have a problem with is the simple fact that they have not made 1 single statement regarding this incident, and they continue to bitchslap the entire thread with Offtopic moderations, without any reason why. And furthermore, they still claim that it's a "user-moderated site". Bullshit. The users have given up on moderating this thread a long time ago. Now it's the hypocritical editors who keep this up. Keep posting, people. Let the voice be heard. Oh, and I was bitchslapped once, and never used a script to do it, in direct violation of the high-and-mighty FAQ. Hypocracy at its finest.
Come on, how is it news that cryptography was broken? It's not hard! All it takes is time. The Distrubuted.net clients taught us that. Yes, it's bad that the cryptography was broken, but how can any Slashdot reader see this as anything more than the inevitable conclusion of using too weak a standard? Even 128-bit encryption can be cracked, given enough time and enough computers crunching on it!
This is just another example of the government intruding into matters of private businesses. Businesses should be allowed to do whatever they want to do, without the Big Bad Government getting involved in it.
I, for one, don't want games like GTA3 influencing the next generation of school shooters. I'm not saying that video games cause violence; I'm saying that reinforcing bad behavior by making it publically available is wrong.
What do you think?
However, teaching isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore. With the government cutting the money for higher education ($100 billion last year) and with the ever-tightening restrictions imposed by Affirmative Action (raising dropout rates to 25% in some fields) it's no wonder that schools are starting to find ways to make money any way they can.
It may be going off on a rant, but it's time that we take money from the military and start giving it to the school systems (especially publically-funded schools like universities are) because otherwise, the U.S.A. is going to become a group of complete loser jocks who couldn't tell you the difference between a hole in the ground and the goatse.cx guy.
It was only a matter of time...
Linux will not survive because of the people who are backing it. I'm not going to bash RMS or Torvalds, I'm talking about the hardcore hackers and coders out there who make Linux work. These people are all going to graduate from college, get married, find Jesus, or do something that will take the place of their current coding obsession. I know, because I was once an open-source programmer for a log parsing program (making it easier to grep through those huge logfiles). But then, I graduated college and had to make money for a living, and suddenly my open-source project fell by the wayside.
Face it: Linux is free. The Linux economy (i.e., getting people to work for free) is based off of the concept that deep down, people are generally good. The Linux community is based upon the ideal that money is not the only motivation, and I agree; there are plenty of other human motivators other than money. However, I don't think that any motivator comes close to good 'ole greenbacks. People want money. People want PS2s. People want Final Fantasy X. People want a house. People want MONEY. The Linux community, with the exceptions of the major distributions (RedHat, Slackware, etc) cannot keep people monetarily satisfied.
Once this generation of coders falls away (and they will) then Linux will lose its support in the forms of coders. Once the Linux source becomes obsolete, Linux is dead. The only reason these .bombs were so popular is because it allowed the coders to write Linux programs and earn money. Now that it's over, so is Linux.
I can already hear the moderators giving me "Flamebait" and "Troll" for this post, but I don't care. My Karma can take the hit. But it's true; Linux's price model (free) is what is dooming it to a slow and painful death.
<VOICE STYLE="Yoda">Two sides of the same coin, we are</VOICE>
The car analogy is another good one; I personally don't care about tweaking my car, but I have friends here at work who talk about racing their cars, exhaust systems, distributor caps, etc. I just sit back and nod, not having the first clue what they're talking about. I guess that's just a type of personality, and I don't have it. Thanks, cavemanf16.
But in terms of voiding warranties, possibly destroying hardware, and overheating delicate computer systems, I never really had the urge to do it. I just can't understand the reasoning behind overclocking a processor just to squeeze a couple of extra megahertz out of it, when it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between MHz these days.
Any overclockers care to enlighten me regarding the reasoning behind overclocking?
Personally, I still can't believe it (as in, it astonishes me) but I would have to accept it. Sorry that I doubted you, but you have to admit that an AC on Slashdot isn't exactly a reputable source :-)
The non-profit security team w00w00.org...
Translating...
The juvenile h4x0r kiddies at w00w00.org...
uncovering a serious flaw in AOL's Instant Messenger protocol
Translating...
illegally reverse-engineered a crack into AOL's IM protocol
I can't believe that Slashdot is propogating this crap. This stuff is not something we want to get out to the public! Yes, these crackers found a hole in AOL. The problem is server-side and will be fixed in a few days. In the mean time, Slashdot has just propogated this information (and the crack) to millions of people worldwide.
I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty irresponsible to me.
It's a very good game, with heavy focus on flanking units, configuring well-balanced troops, and actual STRATEGY, with an innovative and streamlined resource management model. It's highly recommended to anybody who wants to play a strategy game.
- Civilization III
- Halo
- GTA3
- Final Fantasy X
- Super Smash Brothers: Melee
- Pikmin
Not to mention the countless TV programs, and...They say that Truth is the first casualty of war. I say that sleep is the first victim of Beta testing...
I know you're a troll, and just waiting for bites, and since I'm in a sporting mood, I'd like for you to send me an e-mail (baberg.at.mps.ohio-state.edu), from your Microsoft account at work, with some kind of obscure message. It doesn't matter what's in the message. I just want to receive a valid message from a microsoft.com account. THEN I will believe you.
Thanks, troll, you gave me a reason to live this afternoon.
I think you're right; it was used as a scare tactic towards the clueless non-tech people who don't necessarily have the technical background to filter out the hype from the truth.
Back to my original point, I still think it's a hoax. Maybe it's just my cynicism shining through, but I can't believe that Microsoft is really focusing that much attention on Linux. The hype surrounding Linux in the media has died down, Linux companies are going Chapter 11 left and right... Unless the Xbox is more of a flop than I anticipated, I can't believe Microsoft is that concerned with Linux. I could be wrong, though...
On the other hand, why not just print it out (or copy it down by hand), take it home, and mail it out from a home dial-up account?
This whole thing was a hoax, plain and simple. And the Slashdot editors (and a large percentage of Slashdot readers) bought it hook, line, and sinker.
What especially rings my "hoax/troll bell" is the last couple of lines about the message being "Microsoft Confidential" and how he can track any and all forwards. Give me a break.
This article is complete bull. Nobody will ever be able to convince me otherwise. It was written by a well-intentioned Linux advocate and sent to The Register because it would give the people of Slashdot a reason to cheer.
Nothing to see here, folks. These are not the e-mails you're looking for. Move along.