Install MultiZilla. It has an option to do this. It also makes Mozilla tabs much more useful. MultiZilla and radial context menus are the first things I install when I'm setting up Mozilla on a new box.
The point he's making is, unlike what you said, the target isn't a single server. It doesn't have to be a server at all. You send requests ('status', 'players', whatever) to game servers and they send their large responses to the address you spoofed when you sent the request. Whoever has that address is your target, not the game server.
A program combining this technique with queries to Gamespy's master servers (or even better, The All-Seeing Eye's scanner servers, they do some of the work for you) to find large servers with lots of players has the potential to be fairly devastating providing the network you launched the attack from allows spoofed UDP packets out.
The worst thing about this is that there isn't an easy fix for the issue. You basically have a couple different options:
1) Change the protocol. This is a problem because you'd have to change all the applications that use it as well as all the games. On top of that, servers handle TONS of these requests from legitimate sources and any overhead you add to them (ie. using TCP, implementing a handshake of some kind) is going to decrease server performance and increase network traffic, perhaps dramatically. You'd be at risk of turning this DoS on clients on its head and introducing an easy DoS for the game servers themselves by flinging a few thousand requests at them simultaneously.
2) Rate limit responses. It doesn't really matter, there are tens or hundreds of thousands of vulnerable game servers. One response from each of them with, say, 20 players or more, would be a huge amount of traffic.
3) Get network admins to stop spoofed UDP packets at the source. This is the real solution, but... yeah, right.
I'd say it's the other way around. I find beating an actual human opponent to be much more satisfying than beating some computer that doesn't really care one way or the other.
What I was once told from people who are likely to know better than myself, is that the Quake series of games had, for a long time, physics quirks in it. These very well may still be in Quake 3, though I don't know for certain. In these games certain jumps that allowed you to reach various places (usually the homes of high-powered items) much faster than normal players became possible only if your framerate was above a certain number. I can't remember if it was 100 or 120 FPS, but it was a triple-digit number.
There used to be, and very well may still be, archives of game demos of people demonstrating these jumps and trying to one-up each other. Almost all of the people I know who contributed to these archives believed this was true.
That said, I have never been that hardcore of a 1v1 or Team DM player to care about this and as such haven't researched its truth myself. It very well may just be some bullshit that spread because enough people blindly passed it on like I am. If someone wants to correct me, please do.
The Kennedy Space Center I'll second as one of the cooler things to see. The sheer scale of the crawlers they use to haul the shuttles out to the launching pad truly needs to be seen to be appreciated.
I've never been on the CNN Studio Tour, but I ate lunch in CNN center almost every day for a year and a half. The tickets seem to go quick and everyone that I've seen on the tour appeared to be having a good time. Plus they film Talk Back Live right across from the food court so if you get bored on the tour you can try to promote Free Software on national TV. Sounds win-win to me!
It wasn't for me, but that wasn't their fault. It's nowhere near as bad as the horror stories people have been telling about other schools. Then again, if you're looking to party, it's no UGA or FSU either.
Of course, you probably wouldn't be on/. or considering GT if you were really looking to party:P.
Just kidding. I hate cold in general, but I wouldn't have minded a white Christmas.
My family did most of the big Christmas stuff (opening most of the presents, getting together with relatives, spreading holiday cheer until we're exhausted) last night like we always do. Christmas Day is reserved for spending time with the immediate family and relaxing.
We've been switching back and forth between The Godfather and A Christmas Story marathons for most of the day and cooking pies and a giant turkey which we'll soon begin digging into. Truly one of the best days of the year.
Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves in a similar manner, regardless of their reasons for celebration.
This goofy two-slot setup reminds me way too much of what 3dfx started doing when they couldn't keep up with a "normal" board. We all know what happened next...
Unless they can trim that extra fat off the board I'll stick with ATI's offerings.
A lot of what I say may sound like blasphemy to the average Linux zealot Slashdot user. This is fine. Just remember, you asked:P. My desktop PCs run either Linux or FreeBSD, so this is more of an educated guess than why I use Windows.
People stay on Windows because:
It came with their computer Most people aren't savvy enough to install their own operating system. Yes, OS installations are horribly easy now compared to just a couple years ago. This doesn't matter. These are the people with the blinking 12:00's on their VCRs (yeah, they still own VCRs you snobs). Though I'm certainly an elitist bastard, this doesn't mean that all of these people are stupid. They just have better things to do. They don't want to contemplate their choice of OS, they don't even care. They just want their computer to work, do what they need it to do, and get out of the way so they can play with their kids, go outside, or enjoy a hobby. You know, things we (as system administrators and technology gurus, if just to the rest of our family) have been promising them for years they will be able to do with the extra time the computer will save them.
It's too different Most people don't have problems with the way Windows behaves from an end-user standpoint. Even if they did, moving to one of the Free Software (beer, speech, whatever) alternatives isn't going to get them any usability improvements.
No, they're just going to have to re-learn how to do the exact same things with different programs that, at best, are one-off clones. Most likely they work completely differently. They don't care that the Free program can do the exact same thing, perhaps even better than the Windows program. They don't know how to use this feature, therefore to them it doesn't exist. The sorry state of Free Software documentation in most cases doesn't help matters.
It's not supported If Mozilla is so great why doesn't my bank let me use it to access their site? The answer to this question is not because the bank is stupid. The bank works fine. They saw it working just a few minutes ago in IE on Windows. You can't convince the user that you are right and the world is wrong. Even if you can, it doesn't help your cause any. They need the bank, they don't need Free Software.
These brief examples aren't the only reasons people use Windows. Hell, I even heard once from this crazy hobo that some people like Windows. That may not be true, but there's more than just a monopoly that's keeping it on the vast majority of users' computers.
How can you help? Simple. Give users a real reason to switch. Money alone isn't the reason for a home user to switch, people buy their Windows license with their computer. Saving a few bucks on that license against the price of a $1000+ machine isn't worth their while if it keeps them from doing even one thing they really want to do. Freedom? Psh. Look at what's flowing through Congress lately.
If you want to help, make something that's Free Software and is truly cool. Make the Windows users lust after our neat new toys, rather than vice versa. Make something that lets users get more done, or that is more entertaining, or that is easier to work with. Under-the-hood enhancements don't count. End users don't care about Netfilter or Soft Updates. These things are definitely cool in their own way, and certinaly necessary, but don't expect them to get Free Software on the desktop any faster.
The alternative? Make it so easy for users to switch that the monetary or freedom benefits can win out over their practical concerns that they won't be able to do as much. This is the road that is taken more, but it's also more difficult. You're handing the key to your success to Microsoft and saying "here, just don't do what we're doing and you win." The ability to integrate with Windows is cool and currently necessary, but basing everything around this almost ensures you'll always be one step behind.
Off the record (:P), I've gotta say that I don't care too much. I like my Linux and FreeBSD desktops. I'm used to Vim. I'm used to Fluxbox or WindowMaker. I'm happy in an xterm. I can get everything I want to get done currently done in a Free OS. The Crossover plugin keeps me from missing out on a lot of cool stuff on the web. If only it worked on FreeBSD...
You won't be seeing the NV30 until next spring. Last I heard there were (NVIDIA acknowledged) problems with moving to the smaller manufacturing process on the new chip and they are/were getting pretty low yields. ATI made a smart decision (or perhaps just got lucky with timing on their release) by putting this off until the 9700 was out. Now they've got the top dog and plenty of time to milk it while at the same time preparing to make a similar process change on their next part.
Most are predicting that even when it arrives the NV30 won't be a compelling upgrade over a Radeon 9700. Add in the fact that by the time it comes out ATI should have no problem bringing out a refresh of the 9700 that would at least keep it dead even with NV30 and ATI is sitting pretty.
This isn't anything too bad or unexpected, though. The same thing happened to Intel for a while. They ran out of steam on the P3 and had to take a back seat performance-wise to the Athlon while they worked on getting their next gen part out. Now they've got the P4 that seems like it can scale to the moon and the current Athlon (XP|MP) series seems to be almost tapped out.
You should just go ahead and get the Radeon if you're going to be upgrading or building a new system anytime soon. Besides, using your wallet to establish a true competitor to NVIDIA in the high end gaming arena (something they haven't had since well before the end of 3dfx) could only be a good thing down the road. We'll see more and faster innovation (perhaps part of the reason NVIDIA slipped from its legendary 6mo product cycle because it was too cocky in its dominance) and perhaps even lower prices.
The Crossover Plugin will download and install Trillian for you. I don't use it in Linux, personally, but the Crossover stuff seems to work pretty solidly so I'd be surprised if it didn't run acceptably.
The AIM file transfer capabilities of Trillian seal the deal for me. I realize that for more technical users that this isn't a big deal (everyone has a server, right?), but my less technical friends are always trying to send me files via AIM and it gets old really quickly explaining why you are using a client that isn't capable of accepting their transfers. I use Gaim on my non-Microsoft boxen and this appears to be the only major feature it's missing.
I shelled out the $25 for Trillian Pro when I saw the first screenshot. The default interface is arguably better than AIM's and is much tighter than the ugly rounded default of the free version. The "Send to" context menus for initiating IM transfers out of Explorer, Open... dialog boxes, and just about everywhere else are a nice time saver. The weather, mail and Winamp plugins make it useful enough to consider "docking" to one side of your screen if you have the real estate (I don't do this because I have already discovered the "one true way" for my Windows desktop). Finally, with the Minibrowser plugin you even get the full HTML profiles you see in the regular AIM client.
Oh, and Trillian Pro will notify you of mail in your Yahoo! account too (and MSN, and even AOL it looks like), but unlike the other clients it gives you quick and easy checkboxes to turn this feature off if you, like me, don't waste your time with Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.
This is my biggest (and really only) problem with mod_perl. While the power and interface that mod_perl gives you is extremely powerful, far too often shooting myself in the foot as I am wont to do results in Apache exploding.
I wish there were a more intermediate solution. I suppose (*sniff*) I don't *need* the all access power of mod_perl, but Perl CGI doesn't really float my boat either.
There are a lot of traps and pitfalls in OO PHP that most people would call all-out bugs. The Zend team likely agrees as 99% of the gripes that I've heard about PHP's OO are fixed in the forthcoming Zend2 engine (you can pick up alpha releases using it on php.net).
Most people who've written a whole lot of PHP start out by writing a lot of procedural code. Then they write a whole bunch of classes. Usually, they finally end up going back more towards the procedural side when they realize that trying to get a big hierarchy of classes to play nice together when you're throwing around object references and such is more trouble than it's worth.
Classes in PHP, for myself, are more useful as an analog to the package statement in Perl. That is to say, I find it more useful as a way to put sets of functions in different namespaces than I do to actually build apps out of tree of objects.
I'm all for anime, but honestly I never watched the Saturday night block anyway due to my crazy desire to be social once in a while.
Their Sunday lineup is ridiculously good, though. Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021 are some of the funniest stuff on TV (along with The Simpsons, of course). The possibility of seeing these shows, Futurama, and whatever other great stuff Cartoon Network can come up with four nights a week gets me all excited.
I'll just continue to purchase the anime I really want to see on DVD and get the stuff that isn't available on my side of the pond from those glorious fansubbers out there. Yay.
First off, the CD burning routines aren't that important. There is plenty of Open Source code out there that can burn a decent CD. The media playing bits are the important and interesting part.
Real appears to have two licenses available for use. One caters to the Open Source community and one seems to cater to businesses that aren't as keen on OSS.
Under the RPSL (the license intended for the OSS community) code based on the Helix source needs to itself be released under the RPSL, but it can also be dual licensed with a great deal of Open Source licenses including, among others, the BSD license, the (L)GPL, and Apple's source license. The full list can be found here:
https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/complicen se
It looks like they've got a really good start here for being a good citizen in the OSS community while not alienating potential customers who aren't comfortable with the concept yet. I still need to read the RPSL thoroughly, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with this.
Unless it was stated somewhere that the information was internal or unpublished (I didn't see that said anywhere) and if it was available on a public server (it apparently was), I don't see how even a court of law could find fault with Reuter's actions (and I'm not much into giving credit to the judicial system at this point).
In the court of clue (heh, I made that up!) they should be charged with three counts of public stupidity. One, for putting the information on a publicly reachable server in the first place if it was that important that no one see it yet. Two, for not protecting said information beyond just not linking to it from anywhere. Three, for suing. I'm just getting damn tired of companies suing people and each other because they don't understand their own technology at this point.
Now, how they got the URL might be another story if there was an employee who leaked it or something, but I wouldn't be surprised if the explanation was simply all their earnings reports were available as files in the same directory as earnings-200x.html.
Slashdot Mirror
That ep was funny if only for:
"I'm Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire tyrant!"
DALnet's dying faster than BSD :P
1) Get a time machine.
2) Go back 20+ years.
3) ???
4) Profit.
Install MultiZilla. It has an option to do this. It also makes Mozilla tabs much more useful. MultiZilla and radial context menus are the first things I install when I'm setting up Mozilla on a new box.
The point he's making is, unlike what you said, the target isn't a single server. It doesn't have to be a server at all. You send requests ('status', 'players', whatever) to game servers and they send their large responses to the address you spoofed when you sent the request. Whoever has that address is your target, not the game server.
A program combining this technique with queries to Gamespy's master servers (or even better, The All-Seeing Eye's scanner servers, they do some of the work for you) to find large servers with lots of players has the potential to be fairly devastating providing the network you launched the attack from allows spoofed UDP packets out.
The worst thing about this is that there isn't an easy fix for the issue. You basically have a couple different options:
1) Change the protocol. This is a problem because you'd have to change all the applications that use it as well as all the games. On top of that, servers handle TONS of these requests from legitimate sources and any overhead you add to them (ie. using TCP, implementing a handshake of some kind) is going to decrease server performance and increase network traffic, perhaps dramatically. You'd be at risk of turning this DoS on clients on its head and introducing an easy DoS for the game servers themselves by flinging a few thousand requests at them simultaneously.
2) Rate limit responses. It doesn't really matter, there are tens or hundreds of thousands of vulnerable game servers. One response from each of them with, say, 20 players or more, would be a huge amount of traffic.
3) Get network admins to stop spoofed UDP packets at the source. This is the real solution, but... yeah, right.
I'd say it's the other way around. I find beating an actual human opponent to be much more satisfying than beating some computer that doesn't really care one way or the other.
Now, when I sleep in my bed, I'm surround everywhere by warm fluf.
I got the same thing by dating a really fat chick.
What I was once told from people who are likely to know better than myself, is that the Quake series of games had, for a long time, physics quirks in it. These very well may still be in Quake 3, though I don't know for certain. In these games certain jumps that allowed you to reach various places (usually the homes of high-powered items) much faster than normal players became possible only if your framerate was above a certain number. I can't remember if it was 100 or 120 FPS, but it was a triple-digit number.
There used to be, and very well may still be, archives of game demos of people demonstrating these jumps and trying to one-up each other. Almost all of the people I know who contributed to these archives believed this was true.
That said, I have never been that hardcore of a 1v1 or Team DM player to care about this and as such haven't researched its truth myself. It very well may just be some bullshit that spread because enough people blindly passed it on like I am. If someone wants to correct me, please do.
The Kennedy Space Center I'll second as one of the cooler things to see. The sheer scale of the crawlers they use to haul the shuttles out to the launching pad truly needs to be seen to be appreciated.
I've never been on the CNN Studio Tour, but I ate lunch in CNN center almost every day for a year and a half. The tickets seem to go quick and everyone that I've seen on the tour appeared to be having a good time. Plus they film Talk Back Live right across from the food court so if you get bored on the tour you can try to promote Free Software on national TV. Sounds win-win to me!
It's just an excuse to get off work and drink like an idiot.
I'll drink to that.
It wasn't for me, but that wasn't their fault. It's nowhere near as bad as the horror stories people have been telling about other schools. Then again, if you're looking to party, it's no UGA or FSU either.
/. or considering GT if you were really looking to party :P.
Of course, you probably wouldn't be on
Philo T. Farnsworth didn't invent TV. I did. Philo T. Farnsworth is the devil.
Snow? What snow :)? Suckers...
Just kidding. I hate cold in general, but I wouldn't have minded a white Christmas.
My family did most of the big Christmas stuff (opening most of the presents, getting together with relatives, spreading holiday cheer until we're exhausted) last night like we always do. Christmas Day is reserved for spending time with the immediate family and relaxing.
We've been switching back and forth between The Godfather and A Christmas Story marathons for most of the day and cooking pies and a giant turkey which we'll soon begin digging into. Truly one of the best days of the year.
Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves in a similar manner, regardless of their reasons for celebration.
Google apparently already turns a profit.
This goofy two-slot setup reminds me way too much of what 3dfx started doing when they couldn't keep up with a "normal" board. We all know what happened next...
Unless they can trim that extra fat off the board I'll stick with ATI's offerings.
A lot of what I say may sound like blasphemy to the average Linux zealot Slashdot user. This is fine. Just remember, you asked :P. My desktop PCs run either Linux or FreeBSD, so this is more of an educated guess than why I use Windows.
People stay on Windows because:
It came with their computer
Most people aren't savvy enough to install their own operating system. Yes, OS installations are horribly easy now compared to just a couple years ago. This doesn't matter. These are the people with the blinking 12:00's on their VCRs (yeah, they still own VCRs you snobs). Though I'm certainly an elitist bastard, this doesn't mean that all of these people are stupid. They just have better things to do. They don't want to contemplate their choice of OS, they don't even care. They just want their computer to work, do what they need it to do, and get out of the way so they can play with their kids, go outside, or enjoy a hobby. You know, things we (as system administrators and technology gurus, if just to the rest of our family) have been promising them for years they will be able to do with the extra time the computer will save them.
It's too different
Most people don't have problems with the way Windows behaves from an end-user standpoint. Even if they did, moving to one of the Free Software (beer, speech, whatever) alternatives isn't going to get them any usability improvements.
No, they're just going to have to re-learn how to do the exact same things with different programs that, at best, are one-off clones. Most likely they work completely differently. They don't care that the Free program can do the exact same thing, perhaps even better than the Windows program. They don't know how to use this feature, therefore to them it doesn't exist. The sorry state of Free Software documentation in most cases doesn't help matters.
It's not supported
If Mozilla is so great why doesn't my bank let me use it to access their site? The answer to this question is not because the bank is stupid. The bank works fine. They saw it working just a few minutes ago in IE on Windows. You can't convince the user that you are right and the world is wrong. Even if you can, it doesn't help your cause any. They need the bank, they don't need Free Software.
These brief examples aren't the only reasons people use Windows. Hell, I even heard once from this crazy hobo that some people like Windows. That may not be true, but there's more than just a monopoly that's keeping it on the vast majority of users' computers.
How can you help?
Simple. Give users a real reason to switch. Money alone isn't the reason for a home user to switch, people buy their Windows license with their computer. Saving a few bucks on that license against the price of a $1000+ machine isn't worth their while if it keeps them from doing even one thing they really want to do. Freedom? Psh. Look at what's flowing through Congress lately.
If you want to help, make something that's Free Software and is truly cool. Make the Windows users lust after our neat new toys, rather than vice versa. Make something that lets users get more done, or that is more entertaining, or that is easier to work with. Under-the-hood enhancements don't count. End users don't care about Netfilter or Soft Updates. These things are definitely cool in their own way, and certinaly necessary, but don't expect them to get Free Software on the desktop any faster.
The alternative? Make it so easy for users to switch that the monetary or freedom benefits can win out over their practical concerns that they won't be able to do as much. This is the road that is taken more, but it's also more difficult. You're handing the key to your success to Microsoft and saying "here, just don't do what we're doing and you win." The ability to integrate with Windows is cool and currently necessary, but basing everything around this almost ensures you'll always be one step behind.
Off the record (:P), I've gotta say that I don't care too much. I like my Linux and FreeBSD desktops. I'm used to Vim. I'm used to Fluxbox or WindowMaker. I'm happy in an xterm. I can get everything I want to get done currently done in a Free OS. The Crossover plugin keeps me from missing out on a lot of cool stuff on the web. If only it worked on FreeBSD...
You won't be seeing the NV30 until next spring. Last I heard there were (NVIDIA acknowledged) problems with moving to the smaller manufacturing process on the new chip and they are/were getting pretty low yields. ATI made a smart decision (or perhaps just got lucky with timing on their release) by putting this off until the 9700 was out. Now they've got the top dog and plenty of time to milk it while at the same time preparing to make a similar process change on their next part.
Most are predicting that even when it arrives the NV30 won't be a compelling upgrade over a Radeon 9700. Add in the fact that by the time it comes out ATI should have no problem bringing out a refresh of the 9700 that would at least keep it dead even with NV30 and ATI is sitting pretty.
This isn't anything too bad or unexpected, though. The same thing happened to Intel for a while. They ran out of steam on the P3 and had to take a back seat performance-wise to the Athlon while they worked on getting their next gen part out. Now they've got the P4 that seems like it can scale to the moon and the current Athlon (XP|MP) series seems to be almost tapped out.
You should just go ahead and get the Radeon if you're going to be upgrading or building a new system anytime soon. Besides, using your wallet to establish a true competitor to NVIDIA in the high end gaming arena (something they haven't had since well before the end of 3dfx) could only be a good thing down the road. We'll see more and faster innovation (perhaps part of the reason NVIDIA slipped from its legendary 6mo product cycle because it was too cocky in its dominance) and perhaps even lower prices.
The Crossover Plugin will download and install Trillian for you. I don't use it in Linux, personally, but the Crossover stuff seems to work pretty solidly so I'd be surprised if it didn't run acceptably.
The AIM file transfer capabilities of Trillian seal the deal for me. I realize that for more technical users that this isn't a big deal (everyone has a server, right?), but my less technical friends are always trying to send me files via AIM and it gets old really quickly explaining why you are using a client that isn't capable of accepting their transfers. I use Gaim on my non-Microsoft boxen and this appears to be the only major feature it's missing.
I shelled out the $25 for Trillian Pro when I saw the first screenshot. The default interface is arguably better than AIM's and is much tighter than the ugly rounded default of the free version. The "Send to" context menus for initiating IM transfers out of Explorer, Open... dialog boxes, and just about everywhere else are a nice time saver. The weather, mail and Winamp plugins make it useful enough to consider "docking" to one side of your screen if you have the real estate (I don't do this because I have already discovered the "one true way" for my Windows desktop). Finally, with the Minibrowser plugin you even get the full HTML profiles you see in the regular AIM client.
Oh, and Trillian Pro will notify you of mail in your Yahoo! account too (and MSN, and even AOL it looks like), but unlike the other clients it gives you quick and easy checkboxes to turn this feature off if you, like me, don't waste your time with Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.
poor sandboxing, easy to screw up server
This is my biggest (and really only) problem with mod_perl. While the power and interface that mod_perl gives you is extremely powerful, far too often shooting myself in the foot as I am wont to do results in Apache exploding.
I wish there were a more intermediate solution. I suppose (*sniff*) I don't *need* the all access power of mod_perl, but Perl CGI doesn't really float my boat either.
There are a lot of traps and pitfalls in OO PHP that most people would call all-out bugs. The Zend team likely agrees as 99% of the gripes that I've heard about PHP's OO are fixed in the forthcoming Zend2 engine (you can pick up alpha releases using it on php.net).
Most people who've written a whole lot of PHP start out by writing a lot of procedural code. Then they write a whole bunch of classes. Usually, they finally end up going back more towards the procedural side when they realize that trying to get a big hierarchy of classes to play nice together when you're throwing around object references and such is more trouble than it's worth.
Classes in PHP, for myself, are more useful as an analog to the package statement in Perl. That is to say, I find it more useful as a way to put sets of functions in different namespaces than I do to actually build apps out of tree of objects.
I'm all for anime, but honestly I never watched the Saturday night block anyway due to my crazy desire to be social once in a while.
Their Sunday lineup is ridiculously good, though. Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021 are some of the funniest stuff on TV (along with The Simpsons, of course). The possibility of seeing these shows, Futurama, and whatever other great stuff Cartoon Network can come up with four nights a week gets me all excited.
I'll just continue to purchase the anime I really want to see on DVD and get the stuff that isn't available on my side of the pond from those glorious fansubbers out there. Yay.
First off, the CD burning routines aren't that important. There is plenty of Open Source code out there that can burn a decent CD. The media playing bits are the important and interesting part.
n se
Real appears to have two licenses available for use. One caters to the Open Source community and one seems to cater to businesses that aren't as keen on OSS.
Under the RPSL (the license intended for the OSS community) code based on the Helix source needs to itself be released under the RPSL, but it can also be dual licensed with a great deal of Open Source licenses including, among others, the BSD license, the (L)GPL, and Apple's source license. The full list can be found here:
https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/complice
It looks like they've got a really good start here for being a good citizen in the OSS community while not alienating potential customers who aren't comfortable with the concept yet. I still need to read the RPSL thoroughly, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with this.
They just have some strange belief that Perl is the best language for everything, when it isn't.
What's this blasphemy? Take your lies elsewhere!
Unless it was stated somewhere that the information was internal or unpublished (I didn't see that said anywhere) and if it was available on a public server (it apparently was), I don't see how even a court of law could find fault with Reuter's actions (and I'm not much into giving credit to the judicial system at this point).
In the court of clue (heh, I made that up!) they should be charged with three counts of public stupidity. One, for putting the information on a publicly reachable server in the first place if it was that important that no one see it yet. Two, for not protecting said information beyond just not linking to it from anywhere. Three, for suing. I'm just getting damn tired of companies suing people and each other because they don't understand their own technology at this point.
Now, how they got the URL might be another story if there was an employee who leaked it or something, but I wouldn't be surprised if the explanation was simply all their earnings reports were available as files in the same directory as earnings-200x.html.