When listening to Channel 9 on United, you aren't actually listening to the internal cockpit communications you are listening to the cockpit's communications with the terminal and centre controllers. And that's where the irony is; the controllers are telling the pilot(s) where to go and what altitude to fly at, etc, that is, ATC has the real control of how things pan out. So while you might be helping to fly the plane [into the ground] you really have no say in how the plane gets to it's destination. And, furthermore, the real irony is that all this communication and procedures that the passenger is listening to is something that basically hasn't changed in the past several decades.
Maybe you have to be a pilot to fully understand what I mean. -dr
Get Adobe and Macromedia to port to Linux and I think you'll see a major increase in usage
I don't necessarily think that will help. I pointed out to our company's graphics/design girl that PhotoShop runs under Linux quite nicely using the latest version of CrossOver Office last week. However, she likes her Windows and sees little reason to switch. She's gotten used to the way things work under Windows and has yet to see the smoking gun that will make her switch.
And on the point of pointing the apps to Linux, I think I'd rather see them at least contribute money or time to the Wine/CrossOver project to improve stability of apps like PhotoShop. -dr
Thus, it depends on the particular Jabber server(s) you use
Actually, the servers all still need to use a transport, and AFAIK, there is only the one, outdated MSN transport. And as I said above, that transport will need to be updated before October as it uses an older MSN protocol. -dr
The current Jabber transport uses the old protocol, and thus will require updating before OC=ctober 15th. There is already a thread about this on the JDEV mailing list. -dr
Most people overlook Canada when it comes to being a tech "hotbed"
It's funny how everyone always overlooks Calgary. Well, at least the article didn't neglect to mention it. Often Calgary is thought to be synonymous oil and gas. And while that is true to a point, there are a lot of technology-based companies here. And becuase of the oil and gas influence, there is a lot of money to be spent on cool technologies. Take TransCanada (where I happen to be at these days). TC is a huge pipeline company that isn't afraid to spend money on leading edge technologies. Pretty cool if you can handle the bureaucracy.
As for the "eh?" comments, well I don't think you can really generalize regions as there are a lot of Westerners out east and vice versa. Regardless of where you are, you are gonna hear it... more often than not. -dr
Re:Why is LISP superior?
on
RMS The Coder
·
· Score: 1
Funny, RMS came up with the POSIX name.:)
What I found funny was the part of the article where the interviewers figured they could argue with RMS... that Perl was better than Lisp no less. While I'm not completely sure I agree, especially since I use neither language anymore, I don't think I would be silly enough to argue with him [RMS]. -dr
Here's a hillarious video of the robot's instability on nec's site
Of course, most of us are SOL, as you need a quicktime plug-in to view the video... (not to start a hige flam war against Apple like yesterday in the article about Vendetta) -dr
but the fact that they open-sourced it is a very good thing...A move like this effectively stops any corporation from hogging the protocol and "locking down" the market.
I think you are mixing up "open source" in it's purest form with the notion of simply releasing source code. Maybe I'm wrong, but for me, an open source project is more than something where the source code is freely available for all to download. A project like that is simply looking to jump on the hype bandwagon. And call me a sceptic, but I simply don't see HP incorporating bug fixes and code that other people write into their code tree.
I think that the general public is far too easily fooled by the words "open source" and instead of no one hearing about E-Speak, now it is yet another "hot topic". -dr
I still can't view it. So who cares about the apology?
I think this is a terrible attitute to take, and most definitely doesn't deserve a +1 moderated score. Reform takes time, and they gave a target date that is within reason. If they had said something like 'Wait till 2011' then ya, an attitude like that is well deserved, but they said things would be good to go within a week, which is not too bad since they are not in the business of providing web content. We can expect 1 day turnaround from companies like Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, etc... who claim to be portal, web-content based companies, but from a company who used the web as a way to transfer info, I think a week is okay.
Anyway, I'm hammered (way too many rye/cokes at the company Xmas party), and really have no time for people with: a) no patience (expocting an instant fix to as problem) b) an attitude that does nothing but make Linux users look like a bunch of whiners.
They are addressing the problem, which is far more than any Microsoft employee, deptarment, group, etc... has ever done.
the database they have on-line appears to only be a fraction of the web
I highly doubt any of the claims that they make... why? Well the facts just don't seem to add up.
The biggest flaw I found was that these guys claim they have been 'programming' for 'the last four years straight' to be 'able to provide the most efficiently coded and fastest search engine on the Internet' and yet the engine requires that you have Perl (leading me to believe that is what the whole thing is written in) as stated on the support page (which isn't more that 1 small paragraph saying 'this is a work in progress' it says:
The GNU Juggernaut Search Engine, as distributed by Juggernautsearch LLC, depends on the use of Perl software (version 5.005 or later).
And if these guys did have the world's greatest search engine, would they not have enough pride to design a website a little better than one using a tiled background and a pink coloured table?
Finally, while would the online demo suck and not have many hits? Well they admit to that at least...
The present database online represents a small sample compared to the full size database available through subscription.
But why only have a few sites indexed only? Why not have the whole thing but only show us a few? If I search for slashdot I should get more than 1 hit...
I usually don't like to be a sceptic, but the whole thing just smells funny, especially when there are very few concrete details about the whole thing. -dr
I think it's really funny how articles like this prompt so many comments saying "this is legal" and an equal amount of comments says "this is illegal"...
Basically, it shows how misguided society is as a whole with regard to copyright laws (and probably most laws for that matter.) I am equally guilty of this, of course, as my initial reaction was "that must be illegal"... but upon further investigation, in Canada anyway, it seems to be legal (of course, I am no lawyer, so enterpret my enterpretation as you see fit) and like most people posting to/., I have not given you any URL's to back this up.:) -dr
Fundamental flaw: A working class stiff usually doesn't have a $25,000 credit line on one card.
Not being an American and not having an AMEX card myself, I don't know for sure, but I always thought that the draw to American Express credit cards was due to the fact that they had no upper limit (but you had to pay the balance off each month.)
In any event, I'm not sure you can make a generalization like that. My roommate just started a brand new job out of school, set up a business account at a bank he had never dealt with and they gave him a $15,000 line of credit. (Of course, that is Canadian money, which is basically the same a monopoly money down in the states... *sad grin*) -dr
since he will base his ratings on issues important to six-year-olds, such as "shiny", "red", and "vrooooooom". Whereas a forty-year-old would ignore these issues and concentrate on meaningless [to a six year old] things like transmission and price
It would be very helpful if they laid out the specifics as to how they based their ratings, ie. how much weight did they give to manuals, how much to support, etc... For example, the Canadian magazine Maclean's rates Canadian universities every year (and always causes quite a still on campuses) but clearly lays out how much weight they give to each of the categories, rather than simply say the Univesity of Calgary is the best (which they didn't say but I 'biasedly' believe to be the case).
So in the case of this article about Linux distributions, I could dismiss it's findings if they based 90% of the rating on manuals if, for example, I never read manuals. -dr
The site's FAQ admits to that (in not so many words)...
Warning: The "transcript" that is output by the speech recognition software (and shown in small extracts on the Results and Details pages) rarely matches what was spoken exactly, and often often does not read very well. Because different people speak at different rates and with different degrees of clarity, speech recognition software does not correctly interpret every word. However, research has shown that meaningful words are recognized with a high degree of accuracy, and that even when a word is missed, it will most likely be recognized when it is spoken somewhere else in the program.
And in all fairness, they are not claiming to be a "transcript service" per se, though I can certainly see a lot of transcript writers losing their jobs in the future as the technology advances. -dr
The FAQ is incredibly vague and the About page doesn't say much either in terms of the actual technology used. It says that they index 20 shows and index daily. Does anyone know what the time to actually do an index is and what kind of processing power these guys are using?
On an un-related note, the about page says that Compaq has a research lab in Australia... sweet. -dr
Obviously this wasn't some working class man trying to earn money for his family so I could care less.
I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I think that gambling is a serious addition for a lot of people, and more often than not the people who require help ARE the working class people looking to make some quick, easy money.
While I do not support the people who are pushing to have gambling and slot machines outlawed, I do think we need to have some measures in place to help prevent this kind of thing from happening. Unfortunately, what this solution is, I'm not entirely sure. But following Homer's morals and not caring 'cause you don't know 'em isn't the answer.
And in AMEX's defence, I don't think they should be accountable because he gambled away a crap load of money. To me, that is as silly as holding gun companies accountable for a murder. As far as I'm concerned, unless there is blatent negligence, accountability is always found in the do-er of the action (of course there is who whole notion of being ordered to do something, say in the Army, but that's a whole other topic). -dr
Given enough time, I think m.o will come around and realize that Slashdot's tag line is: "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
I used to read Wired news faithfully every morning, and mostly read the technology stuff, and popping over to/. once in a while. I had been doing that since day one at Wired. Now, however, I never read Wired or any other news provider. Why troll through 8 different sites when I can get all the cool news right here? The rest of the not-so-important news I get by reading the Calgary Herald every morning over breakfast.
And the other important point to consider is the fact that a news article is written from a single perspective, that of the writer/reporter. Here at/. we get the opinions of the world pretty much, through the discussion that take place around articles. This in turn means that you are usually able to get the complete story, not just what was written by the reporter in the initial story.
Whenever there is no competition, there is no reason not to sit back and relax. And that's when quality starts to drop.
I don't think this is necessarily true, especially with open source products. While I can't speak for the Apache group, as an example, in the KDE slashdot interview, one of the developers said that the competition between GNOME and KDE had little if any effect on them, saying [in question #7]:
I think the whole "competition makes for better products" thing is bunk. KDE developers work to make KDE the best that they can -- and they would be doing so even if GNOME didn't exist!
That said, I would think that the Apache group probably feels the same way. Why would they care about competition? They aren't really making money from developing it, so chances are they care about making Apache the best possible product they can, and if they gobble up 100% of market share along the way, well that's even better.
While I would like to think that the/. community is above this kind of thing, I think that statistics says that all groups are bound to have bad eggs.
Anyway, I think that as you read the article and think about the situation that developed, the most important thing to remember was nicely stated by Wieger:
"The [free speech advocates] are saying,'Why didn't [Wieger] stand up for the Constitution?'" Zieper said. "I think that's very easy to say from afar. But when the knock comes for you, it's a terrifying experience."
It is one thing to stand up for certain things no matter what, there comes a point where one has to say, is this worth losing my house, my car, my computer, my whatever? And I'm sure someone will flame me saying that if they don't have their 'rights' they don't want to live, let alone have any of those possessions. While that too may be true, Wieger was simply taking precautions in order to prevent the ruining of his life. And when dealing with anything like this, situation and individual preferences will dictate.
And finally, I think we need to remember that not everyone has the same morals nor does everyone choose the same level of involvement. Me, for example, I support forest and wildlife conservation efforts and show my support passively by donating money to groups like the Canadian Wildlife Federation. But I can't ever see chaining myself to a tree and actively protesting in that manner. Does that make me any less of a supporter? I dunno for sure, but I don't think so.
A one key reboot may not be the greatest of ideas... but it sure would be damn funny to press it on your buddies keyboard after he's been up all night writing his/her master's thesis...
Actually though, my favourite button is the f*ck it key.
I'm curious, but how many of your would actually say "ALT-CONTROL-DELETE"?
That's very observant, and darn funny that he wrote it that way... I forget what it's called, but my brain just processed the sentence as the more standard order "Ctrl-Alt-Delete".
If I start on the left-hand side of the keyboard I do Ctrl-Alt-Delete, using the Alt key on the left-hand side of the spacebar. However, if you start at the Alt key on the right side of the spacebar, you can do Alt-Ctrl-Del... but it definitely sounds and feels wrong.
When will these companies say hey do we really need to make stereos that hook up to the interent?
To me, this whole notion of "everything-internet" is like Microsoft's stupid idea about having a web-browser in every application. If I want to peruse the Internet, I'll use a web browser and when I want to type up a document, I'll [maybe] use a word processor [more likely I'll use Emacs]...
And while I do see some benefit to being able to program my VCR from a computer at work, I don't think the average consumer would ever do that since the only people I know that can consistantly program any VCR without a "For Dummies" book (note to IDG: please don't sue Slashdot for having this reference) are geeks, programmers, computer literates, etc...
Don't get me wrong, some non-Net appliances can be connected in a cool way (though even pop machines on the net are nothing so great anymore) but I think most net-based appliance features would lose their appeal after a few weeks (after that all your friends will grow tired of hering you talk about "how cool" this is)...
doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of Apache
It would be a fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc, I think) to conclude that the down time was a result of Apache. There are a thousand things that could have resulted in an outage... plus it's not that the servers weren't responding, the home page simply stated that the store wan't available.
And, if you bothered to actually read the article on CNet, you would have seen that there were other outages before the switch over.
Amazon suffered a similar downtime in July, when its site was down for about 35 minutes just days after it launched its new toys and electronics stores. Last year, the company experienced a pair of multi-hour outages, including a 12-hour outage in January 1998.
They say the proof is in the pudding, and Apache has been rock solid for us. Regardless, I think configuration-wise, Apache is far superior. IIS 4 is still a far cry from Apache in terms of customizing the way things work, and IIS 3 was so pathetic I won't even talk about the dozen or so things you could only configure.
been running just fine on several IIS/NT machines that take a heavy beating
'heavy' is a rather vague term, don't you think? Heavy to a corner store with a website may be 100 hits a day but to Amazon, that is nothing. Anyway, I'm reminded (once again) of Hotmail's attempt to move from *nix to NT web servers without success...
Slashdot Mirror
When listening to Channel 9 on United, you aren't actually listening to the internal cockpit communications you are listening to the cockpit's communications with the terminal and centre controllers. And that's where the irony is; the controllers are telling the pilot(s) where to go and what altitude to fly at, etc, that is, ATC has the real control of how things pan out. So while you might be helping to fly the plane [into the ground] you really have no say in how the plane gets to it's destination. And, furthermore, the real irony is that all this communication and procedures that the passenger is listening to is something that basically hasn't changed in the past several decades.
Maybe you have to be a pilot to fully understand what I mean.
-dr
Get Adobe and Macromedia to port to Linux and I think you'll see a major increase in usage
I don't necessarily think that will help. I pointed out to our company's graphics/design girl that PhotoShop runs under Linux quite nicely using the latest version of CrossOver Office last week. However, she likes her Windows and sees little reason to switch. She's gotten used to the way things work under Windows and has yet to see the smoking gun that will make her switch.
And on the point of pointing the apps to Linux, I think I'd rather see them at least contribute money or time to the Wine/CrossOver project to improve stability of apps like PhotoShop.
-dr
Thus, it depends on the particular Jabber server(s) you use
Actually, the servers all still need to use a transport, and AFAIK, there is only the one, outdated MSN transport. And as I said above, that transport will need to be updated before October as it uses an older MSN protocol.
-dr
The current Jabber transport uses the old protocol, and thus will require updating before OC=ctober 15th. There is already a thread about this on the JDEV mailing list.
-dr
Most people overlook Canada when it comes to being a tech "hotbed"
It's funny how everyone always overlooks Calgary. Well, at least the article didn't neglect to mention it. Often Calgary is thought to be synonymous oil and gas. And while that is true to a point, there are a lot of technology-based companies here. And becuase of the oil and gas influence, there is a lot of money to be spent on cool technologies. Take TransCanada (where I happen to be at these days). TC is a huge pipeline company that isn't afraid to spend money on leading edge technologies. Pretty cool if you can handle the bureaucracy.
As for the "eh?" comments, well I don't think you can really generalize regions as there are a lot of Westerners out east and vice versa. Regardless of where you are, you are gonna hear it... more often than not.
-dr
What I found funny was the part of the article where the interviewers figured they could argue with RMS... that Perl was better than Lisp no less. While I'm not completely sure I agree, especially since I use neither language anymore, I don't think I would be silly enough to argue with him [RMS].
-dr
Of course, most of us are SOL, as you need a quicktime plug-in to view the video... (not to start a hige flam war against Apple like yesterday in the article about Vendetta)
-dr
I think you are mixing up "open source" in it's purest form with the notion of simply releasing source code. Maybe I'm wrong, but for me, an open source project is more than something where the source code is freely available for all to download. A project like that is simply looking to jump on the hype bandwagon. And call me a sceptic, but I simply don't see HP incorporating bug fixes and code that other people write into their code tree.
I think that the general public is far too easily fooled by the words "open source" and instead of no one hearing about E-Speak, now it is yet another "hot topic".
-dr
I think this is a terrible attitute to take, and most definitely doesn't deserve a +1 moderated score. Reform takes time, and they gave a target date that is within reason. If they had said something like 'Wait till 2011' then ya, an attitude like that is well deserved, but they said things would be good to go within a week, which is not too bad since they are not in the business of providing web content. We can expect 1 day turnaround from companies like Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, etc... who claim to be portal, web-content based companies, but from a company who used the web as a way to transfer info, I think a week is okay.
Anyway, I'm hammered (way too many rye/cokes at the company Xmas party), and really have no time for people with:
a) no patience (expocting an instant fix to as problem)
b) an attitude that does nothing but make Linux users look like a bunch of whiners.
They are addressing the problem, which is far more than any Microsoft employee, deptarment, group, etc... has ever done.
-dr
I highly doubt any of the claims that they make... why? Well the facts just don't seem to add up.
The biggest flaw I found was that these guys claim they have been 'programming' for 'the last four years straight' to be 'able to provide the most efficiently coded and fastest search engine on the Internet' and yet the engine requires that you have Perl (leading me to believe that is what the whole thing is written in) as stated on the support page (which isn't more that 1 small paragraph saying 'this is a work in progress' it says:
And if these guys did have the world's greatest search engine, would they not have enough pride to design a website a little better than one using a tiled background and a pink coloured table?
Finally, while would the online demo suck and not have many hits? Well they admit to that at least...
But why only have a few sites indexed only? Why not have the whole thing but only show us a few? If I search for slashdot I should get more than 1 hit...
I usually don't like to be a sceptic, but the whole thing just smells funny, especially when there are very few concrete details about the whole thing.
-dr
Basically, it shows how misguided society is as a whole with regard to copyright laws (and probably most laws for that matter.) I am equally guilty of this, of course, as my initial reaction was "that must be illegal"... but upon further investigation, in Canada anyway, it seems to be legal (of course, I am no lawyer, so enterpret my enterpretation as you see fit) and like most people posting to /., I have not given you any URL's to back this up. :)
-dr
Not being an American and not having an AMEX card myself, I don't know for sure, but I always thought that the draw to American Express credit cards was due to the fact that they had no upper limit (but you had to pay the balance off each month.)
In any event, I'm not sure you can make a generalization like that. My roommate just started a brand new job out of school, set up a business account at a bank he had never dealt with and they gave him a $15,000 line of credit. (Of course, that is Canadian money, which is basically the same a monopoly money down in the states... *sad grin*)
-dr
It would be very helpful if they laid out the specifics as to how they based their ratings, ie. how much weight did they give to manuals, how much to support, etc... For example, the Canadian magazine Maclean's rates Canadian universities every year (and always causes quite a still on campuses) but clearly lays out how much weight they give to each of the categories, rather than simply say the Univesity of Calgary is the best (which they didn't say but I 'biasedly' believe to be the case).
So in the case of this article about Linux distributions, I could dismiss it's findings if they based 90% of the rating on manuals if, for example, I never read manuals.
-dr
The site's FAQ admits to that (in not so many words)...
And in all fairness, they are not claiming to be a "transcript service" per se, though I can certainly see a lot of transcript writers losing their jobs in the future as the technology advances.
-dr
On an un-related note, the about page says that Compaq has a research lab in Australia... sweet.
-dr
I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I think that gambling is a serious addition for a lot of people, and more often than not the people who require help ARE the working class people looking to make some quick, easy money.
While I do not support the people who are pushing to have gambling and slot machines outlawed, I do think we need to have some measures in place to help prevent this kind of thing from happening. Unfortunately, what this solution is, I'm not entirely sure. But following Homer's morals and not caring 'cause you don't know 'em isn't the answer.
And in AMEX's defence, I don't think they should be accountable because he gambled away a crap load of money. To me, that is as silly as holding gun companies accountable for a murder. As far as I'm concerned, unless there is blatent negligence, accountability is always found in the do-er of the action (of course there is who whole notion of being ordered to do something, say in the Army, but that's a whole other topic).
-dr
Why is that lame? Cause too many people think DVD stands for Digital Video Disc, rather than Digital Versatile Disc.
I'm probably on crack, but for some reason it really bothers me when people call it a video disc as if there are no other uses for the technology.
Anyway,
-dr
I used to read Wired news faithfully every morning, and mostly read the technology stuff, and popping over to /. once in a while. I had been doing that since day one at Wired. Now, however, I never read Wired or any other news provider. Why troll through 8 different sites when I can get all the cool news right here? The rest of the not-so-important news I get by reading the Calgary Herald every morning over breakfast.
And the other important point to consider is the fact that a news article is written from a single perspective, that of the writer/reporter. Here at /. we get the opinions of the world pretty much, through the discussion that take place around articles. This in turn means that you are usually able to get the complete story, not just what was written by the reporter in the initial story.
-dr
I don't think this is necessarily true, especially with open source products. While I can't speak for the Apache group, as an example, in the KDE slashdot interview, one of the developers said that the competition between GNOME and KDE had little if any effect on them, saying [in question #7]:
That said, I would think that the Apache group probably feels the same way. Why would they care about competition? They aren't really making money from developing it, so chances are they care about making Apache the best possible product they can, and if they gobble up 100% of market share along the way, well that's even better.
Anyway, I think that as you read the article and think about the situation that developed, the most important thing to remember was nicely stated by Wieger:
"The [free speech advocates] are saying,'Why didn't [Wieger] stand up for the Constitution?'" Zieper said. "I think that's very easy to say from afar. But when the knock comes for you, it's a terrifying experience."
It is one thing to stand up for certain things no matter what, there comes a point where one has to say, is this worth losing my house, my car, my computer, my whatever? And I'm sure someone will flame me saying that if they don't have their 'rights' they don't want to live, let alone have any of those possessions. While that too may be true, Wieger was simply taking precautions in order to prevent the ruining of his life. And when dealing with anything like this, situation and individual preferences will dictate.
And finally, I think we need to remember that not everyone has the same morals nor does everyone choose the same level of involvement. Me, for example, I support forest and wildlife conservation efforts and show my support passively by donating money to groups like the Canadian Wildlife Federation. But I can't ever see chaining myself to a tree and actively protesting in that manner. Does that make me any less of a supporter? I dunno for sure, but I don't think so.
-dr
A one key reboot may not be the greatest of ideas... but it sure would be damn funny to press it on your buddies keyboard after he's been up all night writing his/her master's thesis...
Actually though, my favourite button is the f*ck it key.
-dr
That's very observant, and darn funny that he wrote it that way... I forget what it's called, but my brain just processed the sentence as the more standard order "Ctrl-Alt-Delete".
If I start on the left-hand side of the keyboard I do Ctrl-Alt-Delete, using the Alt key on the left-hand side of the spacebar. However, if you start at the Alt key on the right side of the spacebar, you can do Alt-Ctrl-Del... but it definitely sounds and feels wrong.
Anyways... whatever. :)
-dr
To me, this whole notion of "everything-internet" is like Microsoft's stupid idea about having a web-browser in every application. If I want to peruse the Internet, I'll use a web browser and when I want to type up a document, I'll [maybe] use a word processor [more likely I'll use Emacs]...
And while I do see some benefit to being able to program my VCR from a computer at work, I don't think the average consumer would ever do that since the only people I know that can consistantly program any VCR without a "For Dummies" book (note to IDG: please don't sue Slashdot for having this reference) are geeks, programmers, computer literates, etc...
Don't get me wrong, some non-Net appliances can be connected in a cool way (though even pop machines on the net are nothing so great anymore) but I think most net-based appliance features would lose their appeal after a few weeks (after that all your friends will grow tired of hering you talk about "how cool" this is)...
It would be a fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc, I think) to conclude that the down time was a result of Apache. There are a thousand things that could have resulted in an outage... plus it's not that the servers weren't responding, the home page simply stated that the store wan't available.
And, if you bothered to actually read the article on CNet, you would have seen that there were other outages before the switch over.
They say the proof is in the pudding, and Apache has been rock solid for us. Regardless, I think configuration-wise, Apache is far superior. IIS 4 is still a far cry from Apache in terms of customizing the way things work, and IIS 3 was so pathetic I won't even talk about the dozen or so things you could only configure.
been running just fine on several IIS/NT machines that take a heavy beating
'heavy' is a rather vague term, don't you think? Heavy to a corner store with a website may be 100 hits a day but to Amazon, that is nothing. Anyway, I'm reminded (once again) of Hotmail's attempt to move from *nix to NT web servers without success...