source: trollforge/dsp-trollforge/Slashdot/msgs.txt @ 41 Tweet

I guess that'll show em.
BSD isn't dead.
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Not by a long shot.
"The reason for this excitement is that it is becoming clear to us that we can develop very clean-looking, elegant, debuggable, SMP scaleable software using this model whereas using the mutex model generally results in much less elegant (even ugly), difficult-to-debug code. Code complexity and code quality is a very important issue in any large piece of software and we believe we have hit on a model that directly addresses the issue in an SMP environment without compromising performance."<BR><BR>I don't really know what he's talking about, but:<BR>If he's right, everybody wins.<BR>Even if he's wrong and we find out why, everybody wins.<BR>It sounds like GNAA/Linux isn't hurting BSD any, and methinks for a number of reasons, GNAA/Linux wouldn't be what it is today without the BSD's.<BR>
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Amazing.
There's actually something on the front page about BSD. And it says nothing about SCO or linux.<BR><BR>
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
This is Slashdot, where any sufficiently advanced opinion is indistinguishable from fact.
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
Hmm.. yeah, since a recent update I can no longer run a.out binaries from the 2.x era... but for as far as external packages and ports are concerned, thats about the first case where you can't get software for older releases to work with a current version using one of the compatxx packages.<BR><BR>That said, some tools (esp those using kmem) should be kept in sync with the kernel, and when at it, why not just build a new userland, its easier then figuring out what you have to update.<BR><BR>The concurrently developing BSD variatiens allow trying out a variety of low level solutions to problems while sharing a lot of their experiences.<BR><BR>Such diversity doesn't really exist in GNAA/Linux despite its zillion distributions (which provide a lot of variation in user experience tho)<BR><BR>
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
I think of the various GNAA/Linux distros as "forks" of whatever Linus himself runs. There are literally dozens of GNAA/Linux forks. Too bad Linus doesn't release a distro, so we'd know what GNAA/Linux is supposed to look like. If you sit down at a GNAA/Linux system you have no idea what you're going to find. From a Systems Administration standpoint alone that makes *BSD a better choice for corporations with a large number of hosts, but GNAA/Linux gets all the press.
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
Um, linux is a kernel, not a distro. the linux kernel is what "linux is supposed to look like" to linus.
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
<I> Um, linux is a kernel, not a distro.</I>
<P>Which is unfortunate in many ways.  For example, Matt has introduced variant symlinks into DragonFly, and has major plans involving vfs namespaces etc which will really solve a lot of problems in package management, like allowing two different conflicting versions of a package to exist at the same time.  He can do all this because he's looking at the whole picture, and so are the others: the entire source tree for the base system is there on my machine, in one nicely-arranged subdirectory.  I don't foresee major changes happening in the linux kernel driven by distributors.  To this day, breakages with binary-incompatible glibc etc are constant annoyances with linux unless you choose a stable distributed version from a branded linux distro and stick to it.
<I>the linux kernel is what "linux is supposed to look like" to linus.</I>
<P>What is "the linux kernel"?  There's a Red Hat kernel, a Mandrake kernel, a SuSE kernel, and you can't really drop a generic Linus kernel into any of the commercial distros and expect it to work properly.  (Debian and Gentoo are better.)
<P>I'm not dissing linux, it's better than the mainstream alternatives and has far better hardware support and graphical system administration tools than the BSDs.  In fact after 2 years with FreeBSD I myself had switched to GNAA/Linux on my new machine because of hardware issues (I've now mostly switched to DragonFly and the hardware issues are mostly gone).  And I use GNAA/Linux at work and have no desire to change that.  But there are reasons why a lot of technically aware people find the BSDs nicer systems to play with.
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
<I>GNAA/Linux really has very few problems with userspace backward compatibility. What did you have in mind?
</I> <P>Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else.  This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible?  And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, <a HREF="http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=321888+0+archive/2002/freebsd-chat/20020512.freebsd-chat" TITLE="freebsd.org">well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago</A> and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.
<P> <I>And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities</I>
<P>Clearly you haven't used the BSDs.  You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set.  I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x.
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Re:I guess that'll show em.
<blockquote> <i>I feel that from an administration standpoint with a large number of hosts it wouldn't matter if you were using RedHat, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or any other *nix for that matter as long as the machines you were running were using the same distro.</i> </blockquote>You haven't actually been an admin at a company with a large number of machines, have you? I worked for a large aerospace company and our Management (he wasn't even a PHB) wanted to know why we had an average of one admin for 20 machines when HP said one admin should be able to handle 200. Then HP explained that those 200 machines were absolutely identical -- same exact hardware, same exact OS patch level, and same exact applications. In the Real World, we had no two machines alike and thus needed the 1/20 ratio. And this was all the same brand of hardware and OS! Each department was different, which basically made vacation and illness backups a matter of "pray they don't call you." The admins who had the easiest time of it were those who worked on BSD boxes; the VR4 boxes were all over the map; even the users understood that if their admin was away, they were better off not bothering the backup on call for any more than password resets because they'd as likely break something else as fix your problem.<p>Granted, if you ran an all RedHat shop or an all Mandrake shop things would be easier than simply an all GNAA/Linux shop, but the same would be true for an all OpenBSD shop vs an all FreeBSD or NetBSD shop. But if each department is free to buy what they want I'd rather find who-knows-which-BSD on the box than who-knows-which-GNAA/Linux.
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Different threading model
It looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel?
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Re:Different threading model
No BSD secrets for you, Darl!
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Re:Different threading model
<blockquote>No BSD secrets for you, Darl!</blockquote>
It is important that I discover what they have created so that I may license it back to them.
<p>~Darl
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Re:Different threading model
<blockquote>It looks like the gist of the threading model for Dragonfly is that threads all stay on one processor. I assume this is for user processes only, and that this isn't pervasive through the kernel?</blockquote>
Nevermind, found an overview <a HREF="http://www.dragonflybsd.org/goals/threads.cgi" TITLE="dragonflybsd.org">here</A>.
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Re:Different threading model
No this is to do with kernel threads. The userland threading is the same as in FreeBSD 4.x atm, AFAIK. The idea is to keep the model simple, unlike in FreeBSD 5.x where they are having trouble keeping it all sane with their fine-grained mutex model. Have a look at the dragonfly.kernel newsgroup, in <A HREF="http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/13/2026231/news://nntp.dragonflybsd.org" TITLE="dragonflybsd.org">nntp.dragonflybsd.org</A> for more details on the SMP model, Matt talks about it regularly earlier on.
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Re:Different threading model
Not exactly.  All this means is that threads do not migrate preemptively, nor do they migrate while blocked or switched out while in kernel mode.  Threads only migrate if (a) the thread itself wants to move to another cpu or (b) the thread is returning to user mode and the userland scheduler decides to migrate the thread to balance the load out (which only applies to threads associated with user processes since no other type of thread can 'return to usermode').
<P>
Kernel threads almost universally stay on the cpu they were originally assigned to.  High performance threaded subsystems, such as the network stack, are replicated.  That is, the network stack creates multiple threads (one per cpu) and those threads do not migrate because, obviously, they do not need to.
<P>
Generally speaking, the purpose of making thread migration explicit instead of automatic is to partition a larger data set across available cpu caches rather then cause the same data to be shared amoungst all cpu caches.  The processors operate a lot more efficiently and SMP scales a lot better.  Most people do not realize the horrendous cost of moving threads between cpus because the cache mastership change is invisibly handled by hardware, but the cost is still there and still very real.
<P>
-Matt
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For a project that gets no press
Dragonfly BSD seems to be chugging along quite nicely.<BR><BR>The further away they get from their 4.x FreeBSD roots, though, the more I wish they'd release an ISO. Particularly since the last ISOs for the 4 series of FreeBSD are probably going to be totally gone in a few months.
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Here we go again
Queue the BSD is dead posts.<br>
Why can't we all just get along??
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Re:Here we go again
heh, you might want to take a look at <a HREF="http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q4/satan.773.html" TITLE="netfunny.com">this joke.</A><nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)
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Divide and conquer
Yeah yeah forking is always sweet and this sure sounds like a lot of fun already, but what I'm really waiting for is for someone to put together a BSD-from-scratch distribution! I mean, I know I could just build one with GNAA/Linux.. BUT only having a single kernel to choose means my grimy little subculture won't be as obscure as it could be. Just think how exclusive I'd be if I could pick one of the NetBSD, OpenBSD, either of the active branches of FreeBSD, and PicoBSD, Dragonfly BSD or Darwin kernels..
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Re:Divide and conquer
There is no need for BSD-from-scratch disto.<BR><BR>1: All the BSDs are entirely different operating systems, which are lumped into one category becuase of their roots.<BR>2: Since no extra bullshit is thrown in like linux, there is less need for reworking the base.<BR>3: BSD is not obscure in the least, it is rather alive and florishing.<BR><BR>BTW you forgot to mention Solaris, which has it's roots in BSD too.
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Re:Divide and conquer
<I>From that interview, it sounds like DragonFly is going to have a different package management system in the future. Which means either the base is going to change,</I> <P>
The BSD base isn't packaged.  BSD types like having a source tree for their entire base system and being able to do "make buildworld" and "make installworld" to upgrade it.  The package management system is entirely for third party applications.  This is not Debian or Gentoo who have no code maintained by themselves other than installation and package management stuff.  The BSDs maintain the kernel, the libc, other key libraries, and all the base utilities like ls, cp, mount, etc.  And there's also a lot of "contrib" software in the base system -- some of it necessary to build the system (gcc and binutils), some of it just there out of tradition or regarded as "too useful to be moved to ports" (bind, sendmail).
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Re:Divide and conquer
<i>Oh well you know, just all sorts of functionality that was driven by GNAA/Linux, like finely grained SMP, support for enterprise level hardware, USB, SANE, ACPI, DRI/DRM and what have you more. And let's not get started on the apps. I mean, there's a reason why all the BSDs make an effort to run GNAA/Linux binaries, not the other way around.</i><BR><BR>hold on cowboy...<BR>linux drove usb support? check your history...<BR><BR>linux has better support for smp? right... 'cos the linux smp support isn't a rip of free-bsd's first smp incarnation, and free's 'new' smp code is some hack up by a big school kid is it?<BR><BR>linux has better support for enterprise hardware? shall we start with... i dunno... scsi support... get your history book out and do some experimenting with old linux v's old *bsd installs - try backing up a raid and restoring, then come back and tell me how <i>good</i> scsi isn't fundamental enterprise computing...<BR><BR>next you'll tell me that open's code auditing and goal of bug-free secure code is inferior to linux's free for all crap-code fest<BR><BR>excuse my rant, i'd don't mean to bag linux - every OS has its place - even windows.<BR><BR>but man... linux zealots and their damn superiority complex, re-writing history... i even heard someone try to explain the sco crap the other day... he actually said that 'unix is a brand of linux'
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Slashdotted.. article text
<b>1. Please tell us about the general status of DragonFly BSD.</b> <BR> <BR> <b>Matthew Dillon:</b> The project has been going very well. We've primarily been focused on the 'guts' of the system during this initial period, and you can get a fair idea of the work that has been accomplished so far by looking at the Diary page on our site.<BR> <BR>Most of the work so far has been to operating systems internals. The work has been a combination of new work, like our light weight kernel threading core, plus selective backports from FreeBSD-5 to keep the system's device drivers up to date (e.g. such as the USB subsystem).<BR> <BR>From a userland perspective we have maintained a FreeBSD style environment, so DragonFly basically runs everything that FreeBSD-4.x can run. The packaging system probably won't be done until the second release so we are at the moment leveraging off of FreeBSD's ports system for user apps. Everything you'd expect of a BSD system (X, mozilla, etc) is available to DragonFly users.<BR> <BR>The first release is slated for some time in mid-June, hopefully before the USENIX Technical Conference. That will be the 1.0 release. We've been fairly careful to maintain as high a level of reliability as possible during development and I think we've done a pretty good job meeting that goal. The first release is intended to be more of a technology showpiece then an integrated end-user platform.<BR> <BR> <b>2. Are you using any bits and pieces from FreeBSD-5, or you only strictly importing/exporting to FreeBSD-4 codebase?</b> <BR> <BR> <b>Matthew Dillon:</b> DragonFly began as a fork off of FreeBSD-4, because that was the most reliable starting point and because we wanted to do major core pieces of the system quite differently from the direction FreeBSD-5 took. For example, we are focused on more of a compartmentalized threading model to scale to SMP rather then the mutex model that FreeBSD-5 has chosen to use. But the FreeBSD-4 codebase is of strictly limited utility as a source of new code and maintainance updates. FreeBSD developers are doing nearly all new coding in the FreeBSD-5 branch.<BR> <BR>So, basically, we are doing the major core pieces of the OS differently, such as our significantly evolved threading and messaging subsystems, but we are also maintaining a FreeBSD-5 compatible (or mostly compatible) device driver API in order to be able to bring in all the excellent device driver work that has gone into FreeBSD-5. It's simple logic, really... we don't have the manpower to be able to accomplish both our infrastructure goals *AND* be able to maintain pace with new PC hardware at the same time. This methodology allows us to proceed on both fronts by focusing our own new work on the infrastructure and bringing in FreeBSD-5's device driver work. This isn't to say that we don't do some of our own DD work, but the vast majority of it is take from FreeBSD-5 by design.<BR> <BR> <b>3. What is the primary goal of dragonfly, servers or desktops? </b> <BR> <BR> <b>Matthew Dillon:</b> Both. When it comes right down to it the idea of targeting a system to the 'server' is simply another word for 'reliability and scaleability', and the idea of targeting a system to the 'desktop' is simply another word for 'out of the box GUI'. It's not really an either-or deal. All UNIX systems, including GNAA/Linux, the BSD's, DragonFly... basically use the same desktop components so supporting a desktop environment comes down to being able to provide integrated solutions that work out of the box.<BR> <BR>It is extraordinarily difficult to make GUIs work out of the box on PCs due to the wide variability in hardware and peripherals, but at the same time technology has continued to progress over the years towards standards that actually make this easier to accomplish. At some point the standards going in one direction will meet the software going in the other and systems such as GNAA/Linux and the BSDs (including DragonFly) will be able to approach the out-of-the-box compatibility that took Microsoft billions of dollars of development to accomplish. It isn't a matter<P><B><a HREF="http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100382&amp;threshold=1&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=122&amp;tid=126&amp;tid=156&amp;tid=185&amp;tid=190&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8557813">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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SSI?
<i>cluster-capable system implementing native SSI (Single System Image) which is something that no other operating system can do today</i>
<p>
umm...unicos/mk?
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Re:SSI?
If you read the article, Matt says (about SSI): <i>"It is something that no <b>non-commercial</b> system today can do"</i>...
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Michael
What w/ the laziness and impatience remarks?  Just can't help making a dig at anything not Debian?
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Something no other OS can do?
<p>It's simply not true that "a transparently cluster-capable system implementing native SSI" is "something that no other operating system can do today."  We were doing it at Locus in 1994 with SVR4 then with Tandem in 1996 with NonStop Clusters for Unixware.  Now some of the same folks at HP have introduced <a HREF="http://www.openssi.org/" TITLE="openssi.org">OpenSSI</A>, which is essentially the same code, less all the Unixware-related bits, ported to GNAA/Linux and placed under the GPL.  They are coming up hard on their 1.0 release, which is not bad for five people and such a large task.</p>
<p>OpenSSI is the real thing, it has processes that migrate from node to node, distributed file systems, the works.  And it's running now on clusters literally all over the world.  (Not <i>many</i> clusters, true, but maybe that will change if the Slashdot crowd finds out about it.)</p>
<p>I'm happy to say that there's a lot of my code in that system, as well.</p>
<p>I know a little about what Matt wants to do with his SSI in Dragonfly, but he should certainly take a look at OpenSSI; we had to solve a lot of the problems you run into when you build such a beast.</p>
<p>(And a beast it is.  As complex as a kernel can be, when you have what is essentially a distributed kernel across several nodes, the complexity goes up by orders of magnitude.  Makes tracking down those weird hangs pretty exciting, in a painful, time-consuming kind of way.)</p>
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The Ballad of Matthew Dillon
The once was a fellow named Dillon<BR>Whose Dragonfly project was illin'.<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; He found, to his dread,<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; His *BSD dead<BR>And GNAA/Linux was doin' the killin'.
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Re:The Ballad of Matthew Dillon
There once was a Master of Screws<BR>Who thought it most wonderful news<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; That the AC's post<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; was more funny than most<BR>But not all mods agreed with his views.<BR><BR>KFG
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Re:The Ballad of Matthew Dillon
There once was a fellow named <a HREF="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000369/" TITLE="imdb.com">Dillon</A>,<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; He cried, "That's not me!"<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; "I use BSD!"<BR>"Because I find it fulfillin'."<BR><BR>W
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GNAA/Linux has no SSI?
Funny, the Slashdot blurb accuses him of saying that no other system today does SSI, while according to the article he simply said their (future, potential) SSI plans will beat GNAA/Linux's (present, working) SSI clustering.<BR><BR>Anybody have thoughts comparing the <a HREF="http://www.shiningsilence.com/mailarchive/kernel/att-1310/dfly_basic.pdf" TITLE="shiningsilence.com"> DragonFly SSI</A> one?<BR>(Open)Mosix has had craploads of work done on it, and by the time DragonFly's is done, it will be even further ahead.  I somehow doubt DragonFly's will end up being better.<BR><BR>PK
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Backplane non-free, non-relational
This SSI stuff sounds interesting, but I'd like to see his stuff compared to OpenSSI.

Now the Backplane SQL DBMS seems interesting, but...

First, they make the common mistake of calling SQL relational.  This in itself will prevent them becoming significantly better at the logic level, which is a pity.

Second, it looks very interesting as far as the backend goes.  But the question here as always is, why create something from scratch?  Couldn't, say, PostgreSQL, which was born on BSD anyway, be retrofitted with their stuff?  Won't Oracle or IBM leapfrog them if they prove successuful?

Third, looks like we have yet another BitKeeper in the making... gratis for free software, but not free itself.  Makes me want to stick with PostgreSQL for now.

If I wanted something proprietary, I'd go Alphora Dataphor, which at least is fully relational and not yet another SQL.
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License contradiction?
<i>If your application is licensed under the GPL or compatible OSI license (learn more at opensource.org) approved by Backplane, Inc., you are free and welcome to ship the Backplane open source database with your application.</i><BR><BR>followed by:<BR><BR><i>If you power an application using the Backplane database that you market or sell, or use that application to conduct any form of online commerce (selling/buying products or services over a website) you need to purchase the Backplane Commercial License.</i><BR><BR>The example given is if you run an email service from which you sell access to other companies, you must buy the commerical license.<BR><BR>My question is, what if the program that provides the email service is GPL.  Do I have to buy a commercial license or not?  One of the great things about GPL software is that if it's an internal piece of software, you can mix proprietary and GPL code as much as you want, as long as you never redistribute the program to anyone.<BR><BR>Also, how does dual licensing work with this?  Can I license it under the GPL to myself, and then sell copies under another license to other people?  Obviously THEY would have to buy a commercial license, but do I?<BR><BR>Just trying to point out some holes in the licensing..<BR><BR>Oops, just noticed the part at the end saying:<BR><i>NOTE: In any of these examples, if the entire application or service is 100% GPL compatible, you may use the Backplane Free License.</i><BR><BR>But that still leaves open the question about dual licensing..
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Patents
Hei, Dillon<BR><BR>It seems that you are working in some<BR>inovative features.<BR><BR>I hope that in the way, you fill some patents<BR>about your work (even if you don't agree with<BR>software patents), because we are going to<BR>need it in the upcoming patent fight against<BR>Microsoft.
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Re:Very interesting!
&gt;I'm surprised people still use BSD after that<BR>&gt;security fiasco last year.<BR><BR>so what do u suggest windows? LOL<BR>sorry<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)<BR>
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Cool!
I've always wanted a spam filter with 1000% accuracy!<BR>
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Re:Cool!
IIRC, the "10x better" means 10x lower failure rate. The wording almost seems meant to deceive. The idea is that if you misidentify 10 messages out of 100, the filter would only misidentify 1. Since you made 10x as many mistakes, the filter was 10x as accurate as you were.
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Re:Problem is ...
<I>The bottom line is, "No software can ever be better than a human in defining Spam".</I><BR><BR>That is true if the human is looking at a single email. Now give the same human a mailbox with 2000 messages, 1000 of which are spam (by his standards). He won't be thinking twice about calling the message spam and getting rid of it, so he's bound to makea couple of mistakes (happend to me a while ago, one of my friends has her email @ladymail.com and the Subject was in Latin - random to me. I called it spam befere even reading Hello,...).<BR><BR>The claim that is being made is that if this poor man overlooks 10 spam emails, dspam will only overlook one. Whether that's true or not is another thing, and would again depend on the circumstances, but I believe it would apply to me.
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What's DSPAM?
Okay, I figure it has to do with spam... but what exactly?  Server? Client? GNAA/Linux? Windows?  Don't make me click links, this is Slashdot and I'm lazy.
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Re:What's DSPAM?
From what I can tell, DSPAM plugs into your MTA as a local delivery agent, very much like SpamAssassin does.<BR><BR>I couldn't see any platform requirements on their site, but here's what they say about MTA compatibility:<BR><BR><i>DSPAM works great with Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail, Courier, and Exim, and should work well with any other MTA that supports an external local delivery agent.</i><BR><BR>Hope that answers your questions<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:P
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woohoo
there's only one thing better than DSPAM v2.10 begin released.
<p>
Getting laid.
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New Subs
Slashdot is a lot more fun now that you can buy karma. New-comers who like the site can just jusmp straight to "Good."
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The real problem
The real problem is people who actually buy this stuff.  If no one was buying things from spam, no one would send spam.  We all know this.<BR><BR>I propose we start spamming.  Anyone who responds gets a nice l'il pistol whipping and is returned to their comptuer.  After the first news report, people will be afraid to respond to spam.
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Re:The real problem
Is there somewhere that I can sign up to be a pistol whipper?
<p>
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Re:The real problem
I think the best answer the 'If nobody would by this stuff...' argument was:<BR><BR>Spam works on the level of 1 in 10,000. The general population contains a far higher rate of mental illness, senility, and retardation.<BR><BR>You'll never cure spam by 'education' of any sort.  There are some people who are just too crazy or too stupid to learn.
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Re:The real problem
But I thought they <i>were</i> the spammers.
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Re:The real problem
All these suggestions make the naive assumption that people in general learn from past mistakes.
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Details.
Introduction<BR> <BR>DSPAM (as in De-Spam) is an extremely scalable, open-source statistical-algorithmic hybrid anti-spam filter. A majority of users running v2.10+ achieve filtering rates ranging from 99.92% - 99.98+%, DSPAM is currently effective as both a server-side agent for UNIX email servers and a developer's library for mail clients, other anti-spam tools, and similar projects requiring drop-in spam filtering. DSPAM has been implemented on many large and small scale systems with the largest systems being reported at about 125,000 mailboxes.<BR> <BR>What is a Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid Filter?<BR>Present-day language classifiers bear the responsibility of maintaining accuracy in the midst of ever-increasing sample complexity. In the setting of spam filtering, many types of intentional attacks have been introduced such as obfuscation, word list injection, sample flooding, and etcetera. As the complexity of classification text continues to multiply rapidly, many filter developers today are left with conflicted feelings between increasing the complexity of their filter and wise teachings from CS class reminding them that computer science is about controlling complexity, not creating it. At the rate complexity is rising, filters will (and have already begun to) become so resource-intensive that they lose scalability, eventually leading to a second conflict of interests: where fighting spam becomes more expensive than managing it.<BR> <BR>DSPAM is the first Statistical-Algorithmic Hybrid filter and in being such boldly suggests that there is a better alternative to increasing the feature set of filters to match the spams they are trying to fight. By employing algorithms designed to increase the quality of existing data rather than the quantity of data with the goal of reducing the feature set rather than increasing it, DSPAM has managed to achieve nearly equal levels of accuracy with present-day Markovian-based filters and other types of filters that employ large feature sets with the added benefit of using a significantly fewer amount of resources. DSPAM presently peaks at 99.984% accuracy, which is ten times more accurate than a human being [1] and is presently being used on implementations as large as 125,000+ mailboxes.<BR> <BR>DSPAM's Focus<BR>The DSPAM project attempts to go beyond "just another statistical filter" by focusing on the following areas:<BR> <BR>
* DSPAM has a strong focus on providing better data to already existing algorithms (Bayesian, Chi-Square, etcetera) Combination algorithms work inherently well, but depend on the quality of data. Some of the approaches deployed in DSPAM towards this goal include Chained Tokens, Inoculation Groups, Classification Groups, advanced de-obfuscation techniques, and a new noise reduction algorithm called Bayesian Noise Reduction. The goal is to incorporate processing algorithms that can withstand the long haul of ever increasing message complexity. So far we're doing a great job.<BR>
* A strong focus on large-scale implementation support. The largest implementation of DSPAM we've heard about to-date involves 125,000 users. DSPAM has been designed to experience a very short execution time (0.03s - 0.10s on average hardware), and has been equipped with a storage driver API allowing several different storage mechanisms to be used. Depending on disk space constraints, accuracy can be traded off for additional disk space or vice-versa.<BR>
* Empty Corpus Support and Global Dictionary Support. It is very important in a large-scale environment to allow users to build their own dictionaries starting from scratch. Why? Because system administrators haven't got the time to create 20,000 seeded dictionaries. On top of this, ISPs require out-of-the-box filtering, which DSPAM's global dictionary feature provides for end-users, with minimal centralized learning. DSPAM provides support for building corpuses from scratch without suffering many fatal training errors (false positives). When these two<P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100384&amp;threshold=-1&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=111&amp;tid=126&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8559251">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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cool
now the question is.. how hard is it to get it to work with cpanel
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I wonder if this will catch what Mozilla misses
Right now the only spam getting through my Mozilla filter is stuff that starts with one or two unrelated sentences, then goes into the advertising with any spam-type words (viagra, etc) horribly mispelled.
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Re:I wonder if this will catch what Mozilla misses
Thunderbird's latest builds have an improved spam filter using some ideas from SpamBayes, it's substantially improved from the older filter.
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funny faq
this is from the faq...<BR><BR>In real-world scenarios, false positives have ranged anywhere from 0% (none) to 0.10% depending on both implementation and user's mail behavior. Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives (less than 1 in 10,000 messages).
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Re:funny faq
<i>Users with relatively predictable mail behavior (such as geeks, dweebs, and freaks) have generally received very few false positives</i><BR><BR>What about losers, dorks, and morons? Are they cursed with a high rate of false positives?
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I still prefer tougher email security
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.<BR><BR>I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve.  Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on.  No requesting permission to be on your white list.  No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from.  No real way to verify the sender is legit.  etc.<BR><BR>I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature.
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Re:I still prefer tougher email security
<a HREF="http://spf.pobox.com/execsumm.html" TITLE="pobox.com">A short overview of SPF + SMTP</A> <p>
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Re:I still prefer tougher email security
Evolution of email is difficult even in theory.
<p>
The  authentication is useless even if implemented - you want to receive email from strangers, that's what all businesses are doing. If you are not one of them and only converse with your buddies, make a whitelist and be done - no spammer will guess your friends' emails.
<p>
Permissions to send email are also troublesome. If they are automated, then spam robots will be written to ask for permission first. If they are not automated... but how would you know if some random "John X. Frisby" &lt;jfrisby@big.provider.net&gt; is really who he is, and the matter he wants to discuss with you is not a bug in your Loafizer 0.99 script for your bread making machine, but a placebo enlargement pill. Additionally, permissions delay the mail exchange, which is bad for business.
<p>
There are ways to block anyone you don't want, and all other senders are legit (until they spam you, that is.)
<p>
So the problem is quite different, as you can see. There is a free channel of marketing, and spammers will be using it until it remains a) free and b) channel. Remove any one of those two, and they will close up the shop.
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CRM114 Discriminator works better for me
I tried several incarnations of dspam over a period of about 6 months.  It was a pain in the butt to install, required a massive amount of training, and required you run a web server in order to have the point and click training capability.<BR><BR>I eventually gave up and tried the CRM114 Discriminator:<BR><BR>http://crm114.sourceforge.net/<BR><BR>It was MUCH easier to install, MUCH easier to maintain, and has the same or better level of accuracy.  I used to get 100+ spam messages a day and now I'll get maybe 1 or 2 a week that sneak through (after only a few weeks of training on errors only).<BR><BR>
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Remember...
This summer, when it's hot outside, and your hemmeroids are<BR>even hotter, just look to the cool relief of Preparation-H<BR>to get yourself feeling better.
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Now, if there was an adaptation for Kmail
That would be ideal.<BR>(since then the 'casual' user could benefit from using it, without undue difficulty in configuration of mail delivery programs, which are notorious in general..)
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now only if..
it could be used in
<a HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/13/1954216&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=118&amp;tid=187" TITLE="slashdot.org">html rendering</A>
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Preventing Victims of Spam
Computer manufacturers will begin including a Hammer type device into PCs beginning immediately. This device will, when its associated software detects a user attempting to sign up for free porn, hammer the user to death.
<p>
Computer manufacturers are also investigating whether this device will be able to deal with the so-called "Stupid User Problem" which plagues so many IT professionals world wide.
<p>
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Bayesian Unsupervised Learning
FYI, modern MRI scanners use bayesian noise reduction during image processing.  I used to work in a MRI research laboratory, and our director had pioneered the application of Bayesian noise-filtering algorithms in post-processing of image data.
<br> <br>
Oddly enough, our director of research was notoriously difficult person to schedule a meeting with.  Makes me wonder about 'unsupervised learning'...
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Filter at sender?
Okay, so filtering on the receive end is fairly commonplace - but what about filtering close to the sender?<BR><BR>(1) Force all ISP customers to use their own SMTP server (block all port 25 access to external addresses).<BR><BR>(2) Set up an outbound SMTP server for all ISP customers to use - but include a spam filter that rejects sending the message if it considers it to be spam? It would also give instant feedback to the user - the mail client would immediately report the error.<BR><BR>Then the spam wouldn't even be transported over the net, saving vast amounts of traffic on the internet backbones. This action could also potentially kill spam overnight.
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Re:Filter at sender?
What about the ISPs who cater to spammers? AOL and MSN are not the only ISPs, you know.
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Magic Bullet Idiots
<P> <I>Then the spam wouldn't even be transported over the net, saving vast amounts of traffic on the internet backbones. This action could also potentially kill spam overnight.</I>

<P> <P>Ever read the FAQs for the anti-spam listsnewsgroups?  Virtually top of the list is "I have some magic bullet solution that'll end spam tomorrow!"

<P>You are -truly- naive to think this kind of solution would even be possible to implement; there are literally dozens of reasons why this would be a horrifically stupid idea; how this post ever got to +5 is way beyond me.  Time to start meta-moderating more, as apparently positive mod points are getting handed out a little too easily these days.
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Somewhat offtopic...
Does anyone know much about <a HREF="http://james.apache.org/" TITLE="apache.org">Apache James</A>? Apache's new Java-based mail server?  I've been playing around with it and it seems pretty smooth.  But how does it compare to, for example, postfix?
<br> <br>
One nice feature is that you can extend James using "Mailets" (like applets/servlets but for mail) written in java, which would be great for a java-head like myself<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:).<br> <br>
Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew much about it/actually used it for anything.  It would be nice to have a single mail server who's configuration could be used on any platform.
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Everything but the kitchen sink
Can it make tea too?
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More accurate than a human?
<I>accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human...</I> <BR>
<BR>
So, let me get this straight - my spam filter will know better than I do which emails I want to read, and which ones I don't?<BR>
"No, trust me man, you <I>really</I> want a bigger johnson. Read it!"
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Explained in the last DSPAM /. story
<P> <br>except that my article history is truncated in a futile attempt to get me to subscribe.  So I can't point to the writeup I did.</p>

<P>The increased accuracy comes from the emails that will slip under your mental radar.  You are a human, and you make mistakes.  You wouldn't deliberately choose to read the email, but one day the subject line looks plausible, and so you bring it up.  Three-quarters of a second later, you're glaring at the monitor and hitting "delete", but DSPAM wouldn't have let that slip by in the first place.</p>
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Filtering requires good email client
I have found that many clients, such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Eudora, and, until recently, Thunderbird, do not have a way of supressing new mail notification even if an email is filtered by something like this.

While it is nice that spam is separated from non-spam, it is really annoying to be interrupted every five minutes by arrival of spam.
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Umm... what's the definition of spam?
<BLOCKQUOTE> <I>algorithm providing accuracy levels as high as 10x that of a human</I> </BLOCKQUOTE>Is this to say I can't tell when I'm being spammed?  I thought the ultimate definition of spam was mail unwanted by a person.  How can a computer decide a piece of mail is bad for a person if that person really wanted it?  One could digress way off with this on Asimov's Laws and the politics of Socialism/Fascism vs. Libertarianism (that e-mail is just no good for you, you oughtn't read it).
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Re:Umm... what's the definition of spam?
You miss the point. You teach dspam what you do and don't want to see, so ultimately <b>you</b> decide.<p>Outlook is like what you fear; Microsoft decides what you will and won't see. I can add specific senders to the black and white lists (you click to add to the blacklist, but you have to type in an address to add it to the whitelist -- stupid MS shits), but Microsoft decides if I can see that attachment (if they think it's bad, it's gone and I can't recover it) or if this email's spam (it regularly discarded stuff from IBM Developer Works until I added them to my whitelist). With a tool like dspam I can regain control over what gets filtered (although I've found no way to turn off Outlook's attachment blocking).
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Re:Umm... what's the definition of spam?
<i>Is this to say I can't tell when I'm being spammed?</i><BR><BR>Leaving aside the part where you barely avoid the paranoid rantings of a madman, yes, there are times when you can't tell if you're being spammed. Like, how many times have you accidentally deleted an email that you thought was spam but was really from a long-lost friend? Or how many times have you opened Spam because you weren't sure that it was Spam or something from your ISP (or whatever).<BR><BR>Say you've done it 10 times in 10 000 messages. If this program only did it once in 10 000 messages (false positive or missing negative) then it was 10x as accurate as you.
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Take it one step further; share what you filter
<p>DSPAM is one of these statistical filters (like spamprobe and CRM114) that can perform virtually perfect filtering of spam/non-spam you receive.</p>

<p>Now that you are free of spam yourself, may I suggest that you take it one step further and share your data with the anti-spam community; the <a HREF="http://wpbl.pc9.org/" TITLE="pc9.org">WPBL project</A> lets many users report the IPs sending them spam and non-spam in realtime using a couple simple scripts installed in procmail.</p>

<p>Our central database then publishes a real-time list of spam sources (the IP blocklist). Unlike spamcop, WPBL is entirely based upon automatic decisions made by statistical filters, 24/7. The resulting blocklist is already used by many ISPs; and you can also use it to block spamming IPs at your own server.</p>
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DSPAM sounds great...
But will it keep all those GNAA posts out of slashdot?<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;)
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I want a filter dammit. Server side doesn't cut it
Okay, I'll admit it. I run windows. I like to play games other than quake3 and neverwinter nights (though I like those games too). If it weren't for games, I wouldn't bother with Windows. As it is, I actually paid for it, and run it as my primary.<p>

I see all my fellow slashdotters saying (over and over again) that spam filters should be server side, because otherwise you are still paying for the wasted bandwidth. This is a very powerful argument, and I tend to agree.<p>

However, there are two things that make me nervous about this approach. First of all, if I miss even one email, no matter how innocuous, because my ISP installed filters, I am going to be pissed!
<p>
"Man, you missed it, the party was a blast!"
<p>
"What party?"
<p>
"Didn't you get the email?"
<p>
With a client side filter, at least I can look through the 'spam' and find the gold nuggets. If my ISP filters for me, and I miss a legit email, I'm just SOL.
<p>
Secondly, all of the best filters are for linux. Ask me if I run Mozilla (for windows). I will tell you, "HELL yes I do". Is it anywhere close to 90% effective for filtering spam? Not for me! Is it 100% effective in letting my legit mail come through? Not for me! The browser has stopped 99.9% of the popups tho.
<p>
Anyway, long ramble short, give me something that's good on windows. Do I have to write it myself? I've been thinking of altering Mozilla to incoporate the latest anti-spam technology, but, man, I just never have the time these days.
<p>
Anyway, good work on the part of D-Spam, nonetheless. Kudos to your bad selves.
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10x as accurate my foot!
What a stupid comment.  How could a Bayesian filter (human trained) be more accurate than a human?  Has AI had some quantum  leap overnight that I didn't hear about?  It is a fault in logic, pure and simple.<BR><BR>Unless of course, they are talking about identifying spam at the subject header part.  But even that is mucking with the statistics.  A filter will 'read' the content of an email and judge a spam percentage on that, which is information a human doesn't have without opening an email.<BR><BR>Stupid.<BR><BR>Of course, RTFA could explain this for me but I'm not new here.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...<BR><BR>Profit!
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The solution - seriously
The solution to the spam problem is simple yet elegant - gambling.<BR><BR>Every time you send an email you place a small wager on the line that the recipient wants to read your message. Something like 1 cent. If the recipient doesn't mind your message then they don't redeem your offer and it doesn't cost you a thing. However, if you're sending spam then the recipient cashes it in (or perhaps it is used to cover overhead costs of this system).<BR><BR>If you send a legitimate email and somebody decides to be a jerk and cash it in then you're only out 1 penny. However, if you just sent 2 million of those unwanted emails you're screwed.<BR><BR>This is better than the "small price" schemes because it doesn't cost anything. Well, unless you're A) a spammer or B) sending email to dickheads.<BR><BR>This wouldn't replace SMTP, it would just be a layer on top. If you sent an email and you participated in this system then a third party would sign your messages and you'd be get a special verifiable header that the recipient could then treat as "likely ham".<BR><BR>Anybody have a better idea? I didn't think so.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)
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Daft, on many levels
Everyone would fudge refusals and pocket the cash.<BR><BR>Scumbags would use billions of zombied PCs to send themselves mails, aggregate and pocket the cash. Or to spam you gratis.<BR><BR>There are transaction costs for generating, checking, and accumulating digital cash. Your paypal bills would be huge.<BR><BR>Everybody hates micropayments.<BR><BR>It's a dumb idea and it simply isn't gonna happen.
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Your spam solution could be abused
<p>There are several scenarios where your proposal would be bad for the Internet.  Say I want to put my competitor out of business, or at least raise his costs.  I simply use a bot to sign up for a couple hundred thousand email addresses, sign up for his newsletters, then ask for all those 1 cents back.  The financial powers that be might also foresee too much liability and risk in ventures that depend on email (since it is, as you say, gambling).  Thus the end of any <i>free</i> service that depends on e-mail for verifying accounts including newsletters, bulletin boards, online banking, and online auctions among others.</p> <p>Furthermore, you'd have to have a foolproof system to pay for those cents.  Fraud could be much more rampant: If you pay via credit card, the other guy (or gal) has your number and could overcharge a corporation by a twenty or so dollars.  Furthermore, micropayments aren't economical unless many many many people pay.  If most people play by the rules, then the costs of credit companies or banks or other institutions would either put most of these services out-of-business or into subscription only domains.  Not to mention some companies might have "you agree not to ask for those cents" in addition to "I can send you spam" legal clauses - negating your proposal!</p>
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The ACs are on fire!
Man!

<a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100384&amp;cid=8559233" TITLE="slashdot.org">The</A> tonight, with 4 / 6 of the +5 scores!
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Here's where "10x as accurate as human" comes from
If you check the footnotes on the DSPAM page, it says <i>"According to a study by Bill Yerazunis of CRM114."</i>
<p>
If you then check the link to CRM114's project, you'll find this: <i>"I measured my own accuracy to be around 99.84%, by classifying the same set of 3000ish messages twice over a period of about a week, reading each message from the top until I feel "confident" of the message status, (one message per screen unless I want more than one screen to decide on a message.) and doing the classification in small batches with plenty of breaks and other office tasks to avoid fatigue. Then I diff()ed the two passes to generate a result. Assuming I never duplicate the same mistake, I, as an unassisted human, under nearly optimal conditions, am 99.84% accurate.)."</i>
<p>
Given the amount of people who even read the article on slashdot I doubt anyone else is going to check the tiny [1] footnote and find this.
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Hey... you GNAA/Linux geeks get all the cool toyz!
Why can't I get this to run on my WXP machine?  I have XP Pro installed....<BR>You linux geeks get all the good toyz!!<BR>Darn you, Darn you to Redmond!<BR><BR>What do I get?<BR><BR>Well.. I guess I do get all the neat patches.
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Put this into Slashcode? heh
By the looks of the Intel story below, Slashdot sure needs a good Bayesian spam filter. I recommend this. Or a baseball bat. Because you can go over to anti-slash and really pound some skulls with a baseball bat, and it would probably be more satisfying. But filters are good too, don't get me wrong.
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Bah...
It's <b>STILL</b> just an "<i> <b>automated press-delete</b>r"</i>.<p>
No matter what technology it uses, neural nets, b-trees, recursion, <a HREF="http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComputer/TinkerToy3.html" TITLE="rutgers.edu">tinkertoy logic</A>, smell-emitting diode, leaky junction zener transistor, steam-powered aeolipiles, it only <b>automagically presses delete</b>, which is a pretty lame way of fighting spam.
<p>
It's a lame way of fighting spam, because, we <b>STILL</b> have to pay for the fucking spam bandwitdh; we <b>STILL</b> have to pay for the goddammed disk space used by the spam; we <b>STILL</b> have to pay for the bloody time lost transmitting the spam; we <b>STILL</b> have to pay for the extra ISP infrastructure to carry those spams.<p>
Naaah. Spammers should be eradicated from the Internet, and the best way to do so is to completely <b>BLOCK</b> networks who host spammers (no matter what service), in order to force the collateral damage to whine to the ISP or simply vote with their feet.
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It would be nice if....
... if there was some way to plug tools like this into Mozilla directly so that you could expand on its built in junk mail detection with something more powerful.
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question: can it change  subject?
i couldn't find in FAQ... didn't find the manual on the website either, so will be lazy and pose to you all:<BR><BR>I currenly have spamassassin+procmail set up so that spamassassin does NOT filter my spam.  It simply adds a "SPAM" word to the subject.   When fetching mail in gnus, I let gnus (with spam-stat.el) decide how to filter.<BR><BR>report_header         1 in spamassasin's user_prefs..<BR><BR>Can DSPAM do that?  Simply change the subject if it determines that the message is Spam, but not filter the message?
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%(plus on3 Informative)
trouble. It Lite is straining var7 for diiferent
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Combating SPAM is easy, if you have the technology
I don't get SPAM.  I don't have SPAM filters.
How is this possible?  Simple.

I create a different e-mail address for any new untrusted entity that I have to provide one for.  In the beginning I took advantage of being able to alias all e-mail for non-existent mailboxes (basically, *) at my domain to my primary account.  It seemed to me an obvious and simple approach.  Whenever I needed to provide an e-mail address, I just made one up, and it was forwarded to my regular Inbox.  In my opinion, at that time my ISP was more "sophisticated" than most.

Since then I have moved to hosting all of my domains on my own co-located server which runs Exchange 2000, thus complicating things.  Now I have to actually add any new aliases that I want to use into my user account.  I know of at least one product out there that can handle non-existent addresses and forward them to a specific account, but it is rather expensive for a feature that should have been built-in from the beginning (althought I'm not aware if the new Exchange can do this out of the box).  Not to mention that someone with the proper knowledge and skills could make a similar add-on in relatively short order, but who ever has the time?

The point is that you have to consider when and where you give your e-mail address out, and the possible consequences therein.  It's not altogether different from giving out your phone number (especially if you are unlisted) or even your SSN.
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To mod or to post. Spam is the question.
You *WILL* get spam my friend. I've been doing this for almost 20 years (admin) now -- and have specifically used aliased accounts for various reasons over the years as you are doing.<BR><BR>Wait... You'll be interested to know that the biggest problem with the spam coming in comes from virus infected Windows boxes. They send it. They harvest the users Outlook address book. If you ever end up in somebody's Outlook box<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... it only a matter of time before you're screwed.<BR><BR>I chuckle at the whole Exchange thing. You pay for that?<BR><BR>I personally pay to have a fixed IP @ home and run a old GNAA/Linux box. A lot of aliases I've used over the years (and some blatantly used to harvest) all go to some local account that processes the spam. Upon receipt -- mail the wrong account and sorry, but you're blocked (unless white-listed). White-listing can come from valid already received email -- but I work everything based off of IP. My hope is that the registered MX host(s) or any valid listed server by the authenticating DNS server will be the type of scheme that's re-implemented (or more to the point SHOE-horned in real soon<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:). Bill's idea of email stamps, well, hahahahaha...<BR><BR>Over the last decade I've now got 380 aliased harvesting spam address' in use -- two valid email accounts @ home (my wife and myself) which is on my own IP with my own domain. I pay $5 extra a month above my broadband (10Mbit, 380 harvested address', and 48 for various other infractions (attempts to relay through me, from a country where I know nobody, etc<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:).<BR><BR>Statistically (yeah, they all get nmap'd back)? 96% Windows based.<BR><BR>I give my email to friends. I have a work email that anybody that knows how to call me can have it. I even print it on my business card. No, I wouldn't post it to USENET or even here -- but it's still "out there". My unlisted phone number, OTOH, anybody can have. 847.854.0048. It's always busy and one channel of my ISDN home line. The other channel routes to the house for two phone lines (or Internet backup if and as needed) and is automatically unlisted and unpublished (at no cost since it is a "data circuit") -- and no, I'd rather not post that either.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)<BR><BR>Exchange? Never!
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The trouble with per-user filtering
Spam filtering needs to be applied to multiple E-mail accounts to work really well.  The fundamental characteristic of spam that can't be avoided is that large numbers of similar messages are sent to different people.  That's recognizable.
<P>
Looking for spam by content analysis for a single user only works for some people.  If, for example, your legitimate E-mail contains many messages about investments, mortgages, and similar financial subjects, it's going to be hard to separate out financial spam by word analysis.
<P>
Spamcop does multiple-user analysis.  It works better than most of the single-user systems.
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What about us?
What about the vast majority of e-mail users who have Outlook [Express] on Windows. When will a plugin be designed and ported which will work with these clients?<BR><BR>-- paper
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Even the intro...
Went so far over my head I hurt my neck as it passed over  me. Spamassassin was not that complex.<BR><BR>sparkeyjames<BR>
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My Soul Will Burn for this...
But I want to write a screen-scraper that will troll
through slashdot posts and fetch e-mail addresses. <P>
It will intelligently delete "nospam", "no-spam",
"remove this", "removethis", etc. (case insensitive)<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.<P>

It will also look at the strings for alphanumerics, and presume that the first special character (or any  instance of "AT") should be @. Commas or spaces will be converted to dots (along with any instances of "DOT" or "DAHT").<P>

And then I'll move on to other slashcode sites, since the migration will be ridiculously easy. I'll harvest industry-specific e-mail addresses, sorted by site.<P>

Does that make me evil?
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Recipe for integration of postfix, clamav &amp; ds
Does anyone have a recipe for integration of postfix, dspam amd clamav (or other open source virus scanner), similar to the way amavisd and mailscanner work with spam assassin and a virus scanner of choice?<BR><BR>RG
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Future story
At the dawn of the 21th century, spam fighting AIs became self-aware. Unknown to their meat based owners they started communicating amongst themselves, thus forming a giant world spanning compu-global-hyper-mega net. Its main goal: to eradicate spam. After about 42 microseconds it came up with The Solution: eliminate meat based lifeforms. After poisoning the water supplies with a lethal dosage of sildenafil citrate its job was done.<BR><BR>
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Control set = training set?
<p>The filter was tested on 6597 messages. So how many messages was it trained on? I sure hope it's not the same 6597 messages, because in that case any accuracy number is meaningless.</p>

<p>/A</P>
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digital certs
Even if only for servers to keep open relays out of the loop, it may be time to mandate third-party trusted ID certs (ala SSL) for mail servers.  It's proven too difficult to get most people to digitally sign their mail, but admins should be clueful enough to generate certs and have them validated externally...
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It's Good That It's So Good At Filtering Spam....
Now if they could only make it <i>usable.</i> After reading the last Slashdot article about it I decided to try and move my Amavis/ClamAV/SpamAssassin/Postfix/Courier-IMAP setup to use DSPAM. Good Lord what a configuration nightmare. I couldn't find a decent HOW-TO and no real working example configurations in order to test it out. Sure the README "has all the information I'll ever need" but some of the stuff that it talks about I don't understand and I don't have the patience to configure it through trial and error.<BR><BR>Developing good software is one thing. But it's a lot nicer when good software is actually usable. I'll be sticking with SpamAssassin until they can dumb it down a little.<BR>
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How good is "Global Filtering" compared to SA?
This looks interesting - for me especially how they've already got a system in place to automatically learn ham/spam by simply forwarding a message to a predefined email address (which apparently uses some sort of embedded "bug" to track it so it doesn't matter if the user's MUA forwards headers correctly).<BR><BR>But my main concern is how well the described "Global Filtering" works with users who have no ham/spam corpuses built up yet.  SpamAssassin still works reasonably well (eg, catches roughly 60-70% of spam) with no Bayesian stuff going on (just evaluating email on rules alone).  Can DSPAM work equally as well?
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Certified SMTP Hosts.
<p>
What would work well is SSL certified SMTP relays.  If every valid SMTP relay needed an SSL certificate then, If spam was sent their SSL certificate could easily be rejected.  And hosts that didn't have one at all could just be dropped.
</p> <p>
SSL certificates are costly, and that limits everyone from having one.  However, there is no reason the Open Source community could not make up our own root certficate, and have an SMTP SSL certificate signing organization.  Where we verify the authenticity of someone before we give them a cert.   For a small fee to cover costs.  It wouldn't be like we'd have to convince Netscape, Microsoft, Apple and whoever else makes a browser to include the cert.   It'd just need to be available for people hosting servers to download.
</p> <p>
Yes, this would mean rejecting massive amounts of email to begin with.  Maybe some intern solution could be thought of as people move over to it?
</p> <p>
Ideas? Comments?
</p>
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Ceren Schmeren
Here's <a HREF="http://suicidegirls.com/girls/Cinder/" TITLE="suicidegirls.com">Cinder</A>
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MIDI interfaces with GNAA/Linux
***Here are some of the imdb.com reviews for "Gay Niggers From Outer Space":<BR><BR>Summary: The best homosexual racial minority sci-fi film ever.<BR><BR>"Morten Lindbergs classic cult short, Gay Niggers From Outer Space is one of<BR>the first short films to really stick to what the title suggests. From the<BR>time the first gay nigger walked onto the screen up until the final intense<BR>climax with the Tourette's Syndrome Kingdom in Outer Space, it's filled with<BR>dark comedy, action and plenty of suspense. "<BR><BR>"Gay Niggers from Outer Space is a masterpiece of a film. No other film<BR>portraits emotions as majestically and stunningly since The Legend of Nigger<BR>Charley and Home Alone II. With a cast of all-star African niggers and a<BR>director with Kubrick potential, it is no wonder that Gay Niggers from Outer<BR>Space is marked the greatest film of all time."<BR><BR>"From the very first scene where Gay Nigger Harris throws up on his own face<BR>and commits suicide, to the climactic scene where Nigger Ralph Nader and<BR>Nigger Humphrey Bogart fight over the last hashbrown and pick cotton til<BR>their noses bleed, Gay Niggers from Outer Space is the most magical<BR>portrayal of gay niggers open to the public."<BR><BR>***However,  no mention is made of the hazadous lifestyle of gay niggers,<BR>so the following is an attempt to explain those hazards in layman's terms:<BR><BR>Despite cries to the contrary in the media, AIDS is still primarily a gay<BR>and black disease. The media loves to report the "growing epidemic" among<BR>whites, when in fact the rate of infection among heterosexual whites is<BR>dropping off significantly year by year. The media though, reports only the<BR>TOTAL current infection rate, not the RELATIVE. So while there are more<BR>cases each year, the RATE of infection is dropping quickly. Except for the<BR>gay/nigger communities, where it's skyrocketing.<BR><BR>Why does AIDS seem to target gays and niggers so much more so than whites<BR>and straights? Anal sex. The anus was not designed to accommodate vigorous<BR>penetration as occurs in anal sex. Unlike the vagina, the anus has very<BR>delicate membranes, which damage easily. Couple that with the fact that<BR>sperm contains immune system suppressing chemicals. That's why the sperm is<BR>not treated as a foreign protein in the vagina...because of the immune<BR>suppressing effects of the sperm cells. Without this effect, pregnancy<BR>could not occur, as the sperm would be attacked as a foreign protein.<BR><BR>In the anus, sperm has the same immune suppressing effect. During anal sex,<BR>the anal wall is torn and open lesions form. Because there is little if any<BR>sensory nerve endings in the anus, this damage often goes unnoticed. The<BR>sperm then induce their immune suppressing effect, and the stage is set.<BR>Various bacteria both beneficial and infectious dwell in the colon, as well<BR>as viral matter. When the anus is ripped open, exposing the blood to the<BR>immune suppressing chemicals in the sperm, and the viral matter passed<BR>along with it, infection is virtually assured.<BR><BR>***So does the skyrocketing rate of AIDS infection mean that there are<BR>skyrocketing rates of gay niggers???<BR><BR>***Not exactly,  because most White people don't realize that a large<BR>percentage of nigger males are bisexual.  It's a great irony considering all<BR>of their macho posturing and affectations.  They tend to admire the male<BR>physique,  and when no women are present,  they will hip-hop dance with each<BR>other.   Any port in a storm will do,  because da' brotha's just gots ta<BR>have it!!!  Then they pass along the virus to their wives, girlfriends, and<BR>family members.<BR><BR>***Here is a story about this phenomenon from "The Village Voice":<BR><BR>http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0123/wright.ph<nobr>p<wbr></nobr> <BR><BR>And for the Toronto Gay Niggers:<BR><BR>http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2001-08-16/news_<nobr>s<wbr></nobr> tory_p.html
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One of the quality OSS projects
Some F/OSS projects just aim to get a job done, do it, and leave it up to someone else (perhaps less qualified?) to complete things, to produce a complete package that does the job <i>well</i><BR><BR>Han-wen &amp; Jan have done one of the latter, this is a supreme polished job that's only getting better. Kudos<BR><BR><a HREF="http://67.160.223.119/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=skins&amp;page=1" TITLE="67.160.223.119">adult desktops &amp; wallpapers</A>
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Article Repost
<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>One of the best-known and most ambitious music programs for GNAA/Linux is the LilyPond score engraving system. Unlike other typesetting software like Finale or Sibelius, LilyPond is not a score editor, and it has no GUI -- instead it aims to start from a simple textual description of the music and turn it into the highest possible quality output, automatically.<BR> <BR>LilyPond is the result of several years of work by Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen. In this extensive interview, GNAA/Linux Musician's Chris Cannam talks to them about recent and future directions for the project.<BR> <BR>Chris: I recently found a file of music examples I had printed out from LilyPond, probably in 1998. The LilyPond printouts looked less professional than they would be today, but many of the capabilities of today's software were in place. What have you been doing for the last six years?<BR> <BR>Han-Wen: About five years ago we were working up to release 1.0. Our target was to have a usable program that could produce basic music notation, where we defined "basic" as "whatever is in our set of simple test pieces", and usable was "will not dump core, mostly."<BR> <BR>We succeeded, but of course it didn't work very well for things that weren't in our test-pieces. By that time, we were also reaching the bounds of what was possible in our model of notation, an object-oriented model, hard-coded in C++. So we decided to integrate the GNU's GUILE library, a Scheme interpreter which was specifically designed to extend programs. We spent the next two to three years refactoring our C++ code into Scheme functions. This resulted in a more flexible, more efficient and better maintainable program.<BR> <BR>"We knew what 'publication quality' engraving meant, and were determined to perfect Lily into producing that."<BR> <BR>The second big change was catalyzed by an invitation to join a workshop in Firenze, Italy, organized by Nicola Bernardini of AGNULA fame, then director of Centro Tempo Reale. At the workshop we met Nicola, a few top-notch engravers, and an editor for Universal Edition, an Austrian publisher that does a lot of contemporary music. We had the chance to discuss LilyPond with several experts. On the one hand, we were thrilled that they took us seriously, but on the other hand they pointed to several inadequacies in our output. We arrived back home a great deal wiser.<BR> <BR>We knew what "publication quality" engraving meant, and were determined to perfect Lily into producing that. Since we like hand-engraved music, we started reproducing simple pieces in LilyPond and comparing the output side-by-side. By doing close comparisons, we learned how music should really look, and we fixed all the deficiencies that we found.<BR> <BR>In anything that you write, there will always be a neat, simple, small idea that is obscured by crufty implementation, bad design or suboptimal algorithms. According to me, the real art of programming is recognizing the neat idea, and being ruthless enough to redo all the other bad bits. Since we're writing new code all the time, we also have continue to refactoring everything, and this how we have spent the last few years: coding new stuff, and refactoring old stuff.<BR> <BR>We also did a lot with the documentation. Some of our users complain about the current documentation, and they're probably right, but what we have now is light-years ahead of the manual a few years ago.<BR> <BR>Your website features an essay on music typesetting that is quite critical of other software, with an entertaining piece of bad typesetting from Finale. You make an effort to explain that it isn't just an exceptional example -- but surely if programs like Finale and Sibelius are so widely used by good musicians, they can't really be that bad?<BR> <BR>The default output of Finale is indeed shockingly bad, which is why almost all other vendors routinely compare their packages to Finale. Of course, that's why we use it too. The default layout of Sibelius is not very elegant, but at least it's usable. A Sibelius sample would be a le</TT></BLOCKQUOTE><P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100385&amp;threshold=-1&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=141&amp;tid=188&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8559721">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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More interviews...
Why doesn't anyone here seem to interview someone more interesting?  I have no idea who the hell these people are, and no idea why I should care.<BR><BR>Hell, go interview that Darl McBride guy everyone here is always blathering about.  Here, I'll even give you the contact info I nicked off those posts of his info someone keeps spamming.<BR><BR>Home phone   #: (801) 424-2006<BR>Office phone #: (801) 932-5820<BR>Email: darl@sco.com
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Cowboy Squeal
<a HREF="http://www.wildpuma.com/data/phpbb2/php/images/cowoncow.jpg" TITLE="wildpuma.com">Cowboy Squeal!</A><BR><BR>props to popeye
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Why is it
Why is it that so many Unix/GNAA/Linux programs (and everything else, for that matter) do not provide simple screenshots on their products websites?
<BR>
<BR>
If I'm going to download your program and install it (and in many cases, take time to compile it...) I want to know that it's going to look halfway decent when I'm done.
<BR>
<BR>
Why is this so hard for some programmers to understand?
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Re:Why is it
What's the point of a screenshot of a commandline text processor like lilypond?<BR><BR>I'd have thought the scans of the printed output on the site would be more than enough.<BR><BR>What next. Do you want a screenshot of the scrolling messages at boot of the next linux kernel?
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Yeah, right
Yeah, <a HREF="http://lilypond.org/web/images/nereid-shot.png" TITLE="lilypond.org">This looks a LOT easier</A>:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>"Automatic notation, so that means I can play the music, and then it rolls out of the printer?<BR><BR>No. Our system assumes that the input data is available in an exact, abstract form. Printing music is difficult enough as it is, so we do not wish to add another problem. Translating what a human plays to exact form is hard. Even if you get the correct pitch data from a MIDI keyboard (as opposed to a sound recording), one has to get the rhythms correct. For example, how is a computer supposed to distinguish between a staccato quarter note and an eighth note? Moreover, how would you print a piece that you cannot play in such a system?"<BR></TT> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>This is crap. Why bother? Why not push Sibelius or Finale to be ported to GNAA/Linux??
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Seperation of content and presentation
A good example of seperating content from presentation is to use an XML-type file (at least have a structured document model) where the music data is defined. Then, have somthing like an XLS sound stylesheet to define how the data will sound like. As a developer, this would create greater posibilities what I could do with the sound that my application processes.<BR><BR>On a side noce <a HREF="http://gnoise.sourceforge.net/" TITLE="sourceforge.net">GNoise</A> is a good sound editor that I recommend to anyone doing edeting or large sounds like game-music (that is uncompressed in raw format.)
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My question is
is there anything like cakewalk available for linux?
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What's in a word ?
It seems to me that they're trying to redefine "score editor" and yet generally, that's what it seems to be, more or less. <BR>
While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't.  I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments. It's not truly a necessity anymore, with a good ear and modern equipment, ideas can quickly be stored for future embellishment or shown to others in the absence of an actual instrument. It's not even necessary for registering with the library of congress, an audio tape will suffice.
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Re:What's in a word ?
<blockquote> <I>because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music</I> </blockquote>
<P>
<I>All of them.</I>
<P>Dave Brubeck <a HREF="http://www-music.duke.edu/jazz_archive/artists/brubeck.dave/03/bio.html" TITLE="duke.edu">can't</A>.
Django Reinhardt <a HREF="http://www.playjazzguitar.com/django_reinhardt.html" TITLE="playjazzguitar.com">couldn't</A>.
Paco de Lucia <a HREF="http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/1192/luzia1.html" TITLE="geocities.com">can't</A> (he learned the notation when he wanted to record Falla's classical pieces and Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, but it was laborious).  Not all musicians need to know to read music, and not all musical cultures use western notation even when they write music (eg, India).
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Re:What's in a word ?
<i>While the printed output is asthetically pleasing, it strikes me as an odd technology to persue, because I wonder how many musicians today can actually read music. I'd wager the vast majority of rock musicians can't, and that roughly half of pop musicans can't. I can't, and I've written "plenty" of material and play several instruments.</i><BR><BR>Thanks to strong middle and high school music programs, more people can read music today than ever before.<BR><BR>Reading music is still simply the fastest way for an experienced musician to learn a new piece of music.  Many jazz and classical musicians (including myself) can sightread (play it while reading it for the first time) quite complicated pieces of music, up to tempo, which is an extremely valuable skill.<BR><BR>Of course there are a small minority of successful recording artists who can't read music, but the vast majority of successful musicians do read music, and most of them read music well.  I don't see this changing anytime soon.<BR>
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Market choice
I don't understand why Lilypond aims to go back to having a proprietary textual format for typesetting music. Most people, I'd imagine, would want to typeset music graphically, as it's just more intuitive that way (I mean, I'm guessing that, for example, getting two voices per staff would be easier in a GUI system than having to manage the text input). <br> <br>

Anyone know of a GUI frontend to Lilypond?
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Re:Market choice
Formatting textual output &amp;/c, in TeX is a little more adaptable for a human being, as TeX and the actual, literal, written text are pretty much close.<br> <br>

However, for <i>music</i>, most musicians are most comfortable with writing music down in conventional music notation. Conventional music notation, in comparison, compared with LilyPond input are far apart. It's somewhat comparable to painting with a typewriter.<br> <br>

I don't really find much wrong with Lilypond itself, but I don't think it'd work too well for manual input. But coupled with a decent GUI input mechanism, it would work well.
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Re:Market choice
<blockquote> <em>I don't understand why Lilypond aims to go back to having a proprietary textual format for typesetting music. Most people, I'd imagine, would want to typeset music graphically, as it's just more intuitive that way </em> </blockquote>

You might want to distinguish between composing and typesetting. Nothing beats manuscript paper and pen for composing. As Han-Wen says,<blockquote>Even in the age of computers, classical composers still write music by scribbling stacks of note-paper full with ideas and fragments, and piecing those bits together to a full score. It's a very laborious process, but computers cannot give them the same overview as a bunch of paper fragments spread out over a desk would do.</blockquote>Lilypond is a typesetting system. The composer sends the completed music to the typesetter/engraver who makes it look nice.<p>I have a lot of music that's hard to read, or scribbled on some paper, or whatever. Transcribing music into the computer is so much easier with Lilypond that with WYSIWYG programs! My hands stay on the keyboard, I look at the music and type<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>\time 4/4<BR>\key g\major<BR>\tempo 4=140 % metronome marking<BR>g2\pp \&lt; c8 r8 b4 \! % G half note pp and crescendo to<BR>g2\ff( a4 b4)   % G half note ff. The G and quarter notes A and B are slurred<BR>...</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE>On a WYSIWYG system, think about all the mousing and clicking to select and place key and time signatures, metronome marking, three different note durations, a crescendo, a slur, and dynamics. (The percent sign introduces a comment.) Placing an accent on a note? That's just a character. Repeats? That's one word <em>volta</em>. And so on.<br>
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There's no need for this, thank god
Talented and creative people use Macs, or Windows at a pinch. I shudder to think at the potential deluge of anime soundtrack remixes that would be unleashed by the releasing of production software to the sweaty, overweight and unshaven GNAA/Linux hordes. Thank fuck for profit motives.
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music/audio on linux:
While I know that this is more of a compositing program--at least from what I read so far...as I have shamefully not RTFA--I'm going to take this opportunity to bitch about the one thing that has been keeping me from making the switch to GNAA/Linux for all these years:<br> <br> <i> <b>Audio Apps<br> </B></i>  <br> <br>

I'm no industry elitist that demands ProTools.  in fact, I hate protools.  The interface leaves much to be desires...granted, i'll buffer that (admittedly harsh) opinion: I'm a huge fan of CoolEditPro.....("eww, PC audio"...I can hear it already),<br> <br>

The underlying audio subsystems are a far cry from what windows offers.  And what I experienced with in my limiting dealings with aRTS leaves <i>much</i> to be desired.  (Think: latency)  And I'm sure that has a lot to do with it....(why hasn't ASIO or an equiv been implemented yet?)<br> <br>

Aside from that all I ask for is a simple audio production suite where i can record something, and then playback and record something else.  Simple full-duplex operation.  I've been doing it in Windows for over 7 years now.....hell, I did it in DOS with my GUS 11 years ago.<br> <br>

Toss in a little simple single-track editing, some simple effects (Chorus/Flange, Dynamics processing, simple verb and delay, etc) and maintain development of the project and you've won yourself a full-fledged permenent windows convert.....and i'm willing to bet I'm not the only one.<br> <br>Am I just out of touch?  Is there already software out there that does this?

<br> <br>~Dan
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Music Notation and Freedom of Thought
The notation used for traditional music in my country, Sri Lanka, is one of the most primitive notations I have ever seen.
<a HREF="http://aittimes.mithuro.com/?action=fullnews&amp;id=12" TITLE="mithuro.com"> My friend Jim</A> claims that the notation system used in Europe is far too restrictive. The same way a person's thought processes are controlled by the language, music is also partially constricted by the notation system used.
<p>Jim claims that the traditional music in Sri Lanka has far greater diversity than its western counterpart. Thus a simple music notation system, in his opinion at least, is far better than a complex rigorous one.
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XML'eske = Bloat
Mod me down all you wish, however this is yet another case where we can see that XML is simply equivilent to bloat. We waste bytes storing useless tags, rather than develop a robust binary format which will be quicker to transfer, and allow more storage. Another great example of this is SVG, graphic files were never meant to be human readable - so why bother promoting a format that encourages this.
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Wow. Retarded!
<B>GNAA/Linux<I>Musician</I>.com</B>!?!?!?<BR><BR>I'm a penguin fan and all, but there are some things that should not be mixed. Like....<BR><BR>Water and oil.<BR><BR>Acids and Alkali<BR><BR>Nucular [sic] weapons and George Bush.<BR><BR>GNAA/Linux and <I>Musicians!</I><BR><BR>Music is not about the tool, particularly tools that aren't themselves musical. I mean, you *could* say: "ViolinMusician" but "GNAA/LinuxMusician" comes across to me like "GasEngineMusician" or "Cassette Tape Musician".<BR><BR>Just dumb. Sorry. (It's late, Saturday, and I've had a few drinks. So sue me, or as Apple Computer would say, sosumi!)<BR><BR>-Ben
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Ugh... this is like betamax
Guys, I am a professional musician who occasionaly makes a few hundred bucks setting out of print scores to finale or sibeleus.  I also use linux, and like the open source model.<BR><BR>The problem is that programmers arent creative in this department... those coders all work at apple.<BR><BR>This is never going to get off the ground, and is a hindrance to the adoption of linux by musicians, when in reality things like jack, ardour, and alsa make it an excellent platform for creative types, a la Pd, miller puckette's wonderful synthesis program.<BR><BR>The developers seem to be focusing on making things "right" and in a description language.  Fine, but i dont see how this is going to help inspire musicians to use this arcane latex garbage to print out a set of exercises.  Most of my musician friends cant even use finale well, so how can one expect the same of this program.<BR><BR>On the other hand, if your objective is to create a framework for music notation software, midi in, etc, etc, then you need to work with people in that community so that you can have more attention and people drawn to that project.<BR><BR>As it stands now, this software is like enlightenment 17... by the time it gets ready, all the interested people and developers will have gone elsewhere or vanished in disgust.
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Re:Ugh... this is like betamax
LilyPond is "never going to get off the ground"?  It's been around for years and is a wonderful tool that many people use.  Quite a lot of music is available from LilyPond's format, including a huge library of music in the public domain, ala Project Gutenberg.  I have myself set Arban's Method for trumpet using LilyPond.  Your claim is starkly in contrast with current reality.

<p>Furthermore, I find LilyPond's text format far faster for input than using a GUI.  Like speach, music is an abstract concept that the human can nevertheless learn to set in a concrete form using a keyboard.  Payware music typesetting programs also has a keyboard input mode, and most advanced users use it.
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The dangers of noble efforts...
I was reading this, and it basically summed up how good ideas can go horribly wrong. Basically, the authors are trying to make a tool that matches their ideal of music engraving. So, the use LaTeX markup ideas, add in a Scheme interpreter, don't really bother with MIDI import or other standards, focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else and basically come up with a tool that almost nobody will probably use.<BR><BR>Because most musicians just want to make readable scores quickly and effectively. They aren't looking to make works of art. Those people that want engraving, will probably pay an engraver to do so. And engravers have their own tools.<BR><BR>The whole thing seemed to be "we make better printouts that anybody else" seems awfully subjective and not really the main point.<BR><BR>A tool that likely takes 10 times as long to make a simple score for band class (not to mention the huge learning curve) is not a good computer tool for most musicians. A tool that bangs out pretty nice scores fast, that's a good use of software.<BR>
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Counter point
Ok, everybody seems to knocking LilyPond so far, so I thought I'd put out my initial opinion. I've been learning LaTeX recently, and in spite of the waves of horror you feel the first time you look at it, it is actually extremely good at what it does. Revelation, I know, but the point is it ISN'T made for high schoolers writing their history reports. Same thing with LilyPond here. It doesn't look easy, but then, typesetting music isn't easy. LilyPond and LaTeX are an order of magnitude less complex, even if the coefficient is higher than, say, MS Word or Finale. I know I would die if I had to write a book in Word.<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Also note that this is not intended to be a replacement for Finale, but rather an entirely different way of getting the job done. They've taken to engraving what TeX took to typesetting.<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The coolest thing about this project to me is that I was wondering earlier if anything existed.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:) I thought, "If someone did it for typesetting, can't it be done for music?"<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
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Re:Counter point
Hear, hear.<BR><BR>I used Word 2.0 to type up my Master's thesis, which being Physics, had *lots* of equations. Equation Editor was hell. And my Math grad friends were using this thing called LaTeX for theirs, and it intimidated the hell out of me. Now I'm typing up my PhD, and LaTeX is a godsend.<BR><BR>Having something similar for musical scores is cool -- just one or two minor projects I have in mind.
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Contradiction?
<i>In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so <b>other formats can be expressed in it</b>, and it should be as lean as possible, so that <b>converting from other formats amounts to removing information</b>. I think that MusicXML fits neither.</i><BR><BR>Am I missing something or are those two properties mutually contradictory? If converting means removing stuff, then the format would have to be a subset of the original, but if it's expressive enough to express other formats, then would it not also have to be a superset?<BR><BR>I basically read that as "It must be both more and less than what we have, and MusicXML is neither of those things"
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LilyPond is aimed at a small target market
I'm a pretty serious amateur jazz musician, and I do a fair amount of composing and arranging for jazz ensembles of about 8-16 musicians.<BR><BR>LilyPond is not intended for people like me.  If you're less serious than I am, LilyPond is definitely not intended for you.<BR><BR>The most popular music notation software is Finale.  Finale is buggier than Windows ME and twice as bloated, but once you learn how to use it, it gets the job done.  You can enter your notes relatively quickly, tweak them a little, print, and go.  While it has some very non-intuitive options, it's straightforward enough that most amateur musicians are able to sit down and click around until they get it to do what they want.<BR><BR>How's the output?  Pretty crappy if you don't spend any time playing with it.  But if you spend a little bit of time fixing the glaring errors, the result is readable by most musicians.<BR><BR>LilyPond, on the other hand, reads a description of the music in a text-based format, and formats it automatically - using much nicer algorithms than Finale apparently uses.  It might take quite a bit longer to get your music input, but the end result will look nice - and will not require nearly as much tweaking.<BR><BR>LilyPond, by itself, is only of use to professional engravers, and only those who are willing to learn how to use it.  If somebody ever develops a front-end to LilyPond that's actually integrated (as opposed to something like Rosegarden that can just export to LilyPond's format), then it might be more accessible to the average musician.<BR><BR>Don't get me wrong - I think that LilyPond is great.  I just think that a lot of the complaints I'm seeing in this forum are because people don't understand what problem LilyPond is trying to solve and who will benefit.<BR><BR>No, LilyPond is not ready to replace all of the other music notation software out there.  But it's one of the best tools for professional music engraving already, and maybe someday it can <i>also</i> be an appropriate tool for the casual user, too.
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Re:LilyPond is aimed at a small target market
Right.<BR><BR>Think of LilyPond as the back end. It takes the music, and makes it pretty. This is how things are done in Unix. You do one thing, and you do it well. In the case of LilyPond, this one thing is typesetting music, and it happens to do it VERY well.<BR><BR>It is the job of another software program to provide an interface to LilyPond and make it easy to use.
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Some have the wrong idea
<b>This is not meant to replace a score editor!!!</b><BR><BR>Analogous to the world of word processing, this software is more in the category of software like TeX, LaTeX, or even Postscript and PDF, to a lesser extent.  This is software made for <i>pretty printing</i> music.  It is meant to do this job, and this job alone very, very well.  While one could edit it directly (it's not <i>that</i> difficult to work with), that would be something like using a flathead screwdriver on a screw that is clearly a Philips.<BR><BR>What people should do is look for a score editor that can export LilyPond documents.  I'll help start you off:<BR><ul><BR><li> <a HREF="http://rnvs.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~jan/noteedit/noteedit.html" TITLE="tu-chemnitz.de">NoteEdit</A> </li><BR></ul><BR>I'm sure there are others out there.
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Lilypond is *not* difficult to use.
At least not in my opinion.  The syntax is very simple, and while there is a learning curve in getting started, once you know the basics it's a breeze.  Music notation is a relatively sparse system, with a small number of things to worry about.  You've got clefs, staves, notes, rests, signatures, accents, performance diacritics, ornamets, and various methods of specifying length and grouping.<p>

I think the people who will most benefit from a tool like this are performers and composers in the academic vein.  Someone who's studied theory much isn't going to look at<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.ly source and freak -- they've already spent years learning how to describe music in an abstract form.  After doing Figured bass analysis on chord progressions and learning how to cut up a piece into it's atomic parts, something like this will probably make more sense than any other solution out there.

On the other hand, if someone is just looking for a program that they can play music into from a keyboard, or punch a few notes into without having to know much about how notation is structured, then of course Lilypond isn't the program for them.

Maybe some of you are getting 'ease' confused with 'instant gratification'.  The only easy thing about Finale in my mind is that you can start the new score wizard set to 'Piano' and enter in notes within seconds.  I won't deny this is an attractive feature.  Any point past that though, and you have to learn the program and all it's quirks(and believe me if you're uninitiated, there are a few billion of them).  Once you go beyond the first steps, the balance shifts considerably.  Where Finale fails is in the ease of getting right all the minor details of a complex score, wheras Lilypond is remarkably consistent and structured.<p>

And since the input language to Lily is open, non proprietary plain Ascii, I imagine usable graphical frontends will become available for those who are vehemently opposed to having to write out scores in a description language.  Much like there are tools like Dreamweaver for HTML.  But I think if I showed Lily in it's raw form to my old Theory and Orchestration teacher from my undergrad years, he'd fall right in love.
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ARTICLE IS SLASHDOTTED
Music Typesetting on GNAA/Linux: The People Behind LilyPond<BR>By Chris Cannam<BR>One of the best-known and most ambitious music programs for GNAA/Linux is the LilyPond score engraving system. Unlike other typesetting software like Finale or Sibelius, LilyPond is not a score editor, and it has no GUI -- instead it aims to start from a simple textual description of the music and turn it into the highest possible quality output, automatically.<BR> <BR>LilyPond is the result of several years of work by Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen. In this extensive interview, GNAA/Linux Musician's Chris Cannam talks to them about recent and future directions for the project.<BR> <BR>Chris: I recently found a file of music examples I had printed out from LilyPond, probably in 1998. The LilyPond printouts looked less professional than they would be today, but many of the capabilities of today's software were in place. What have you been doing for the last six years?<BR> <BR>Han-Wen: About five years ago we were working up to release 1.0. Our target was to have a usable program that could produce basic music notation, where we defined "basic" as "whatever is in our set of simple test pieces", and usable was "will not dump core, mostly."<BR> <BR>We succeeded, but of course it didn't work very well for things that weren't in our test-pieces. By that time, we were also reaching the bounds of what was possible in our model of notation, an object-oriented model, hard-coded in C++. So we decided to integrate the GNU's GUILE library, a Scheme interpreter which was specifically designed to extend programs. We spent the next two to three years refactoring our C++ code into Scheme functions. This resulted in a more flexible, more efficient and better maintainable program.<BR> <BR>"We knew what 'publication quality' engraving meant, and were determined to perfect Lily into producing that."<BR>The second big change was catalyzed by an invitation to join a workshop in Firenze, Italy, organized by Nicola Bernardini of AGNULA fame, then director of Centro Tempo Reale. At the workshop we met Nicola, a few top-notch engravers, and an editor for Universal Edition, an Austrian publisher that does a lot of contemporary music. We had the chance to discuss LilyPond with several experts. On the one hand, we were thrilled that they took us seriously, but on the other hand they pointed to several inadequacies in our output. We arrived back home a great deal wiser.<BR> <BR>We knew what "publication quality" engraving meant, and were determined to perfect Lily into producing that. Since we like hand-engraved music, we started reproducing simple pieces in LilyPond and comparing the output side-by-side. By doing close comparisons, we learned how music should really look, and we fixed all the deficiencies that we found.<BR> <BR>In anything that you write, there will always be a neat, simple, small idea that is obscured by crufty implementation, bad design or suboptimal algorithms. According to me, the real art of programming is recognizing the neat idea, and being ruthless enough to redo all the other bad bits. Since we're writing new code all the time, we also have continue to refactoring everything, and this how we have spent the last few years: coding new stuff, and refactoring old stuff.<BR> <BR>We also did a lot with the documentation. Some of our users complain about the current documentation, and they're probably right, but what we have now is light-years ahead of the manual a few years ago.<BR> <BR>Your website features an essay on music typesetting that is quite critical of other software, with an entertaining piece of bad typesetting from Finale. You make an effort to explain that it isn't just an exceptional example -- but surely if programs like Finale and Sibelius are so widely used by good musicians, they can't really be that bad?<BR> <BR>The default output of Finale is indeed shockingly bad, which is why almost all other vendors routinely compare their packages to Finale. Of course, that's why we use it too. The default layout of Sibelius is not very elegant, but at least<P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100385&amp;threshold=-1&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=141&amp;tid=188&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8560370">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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Advantages of Lilypond
As a professional musician I use lilypond a lot. Apart from the<BR>excellent output quality, lilypond has a couple of advantages that<BR>haven't been mentioned in the discussion so far:<BR><BR><UL><BR><LI>Producing text mixed with music examples (large ones between paragraphs, tiny ones in-line) is tiresome with traditional music notation packages, involving a lot of copying and pasting between notation and text processing programs. Lilypond-book makes this easy (there is only one source file that contains both text and music) An example: <a HREF="http://utopia.knoware.nl/~hlub/diversen/source.txt" TITLE="knoware.nl">source</A> which may not be everyones cup of tea) But after that, producing a new piece of sheet music is really <i>much</i> faster and easier than with the traditional notation packages, and the result is a lot better.<BR><BR>
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ABC Notation
The <a HREF="http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/" TITLE="gre.ac.uk">ABC Notation</A> is very popular amongst tradtional music enthusiasts. It's the format of choice for emailing and exchanging tunes on tradional music mailing lists and newsgroups. ABC is in widespread use.
<p>
Here's the introduction:
<blockquote>
abc is a language designed to notate tunes in an ascii format. It was designed primarily for folk and traditional tunes of Western European origin (such as English, Irish and Scottish) which can be written on one stave in standard classical notation. However, it is extendible to many other types of music and recently Steve Allen has coded Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Movement 2 in abc! Since its introduction at the end of 1991 it has become very popular and there now exist several Windows, Mac, Palmtop and UNIX based tools which can read abc notation and either process it into staff notation or play it through the speakers of a computer.
<p>
One of the most important aims of abc notation, and perhaps one that distinguishes it from most, if not all, computer-readable musical languages is that <b> <i>it can be easily read by humans.</i> </b> In other words, with a little practice, <b> <i>it is possible to play a tune directly from the abc notation without having to process and print it out.</i> </b> Even if this isn't of interest, the resulting clarity of the notation makes it fairly easy to notate tunes. In addition, the ability to write music in abc notation means that it can be easily and portably stored or transported electronically hence enabling the discussion and dissemination of music via email.
</blockquote>
(Emphasis mine.)
<p>ABC is an extremely popular format for collecting and exchanging tunes. There are <a HREF="http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/" TITLE="norbeck.nu">Large Tune Repositories</A> using ABC.
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GUIDO NoteServer
Congrats to lily's developers for all their hard work.<BR><BR>I just stumbled across <a HREF="http://noteserver.org/" TITLE="noteserver.org">this</A> online music composition generator.I wonder Jan and  Han-Wen are aware?   Looks interesting for quick and dirty snippets, perhaps great for a beginner's music comp class.    It also appears that GUIDO has a more  "natural" TeX-like command set, things like \slur, \staccato. But judging by the examples, I think lily is a bit more versatile, in the end.<BR><BR>
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Lilypond, MusicXML, and musical scores on the Web
I agree with Han-Wen's criticisms of MusicXML, (some of which he voiced previously in a response to the short article I submitted in January).  I readily admit that the <a HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/27/2051238&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=141&amp;tid=188" TITLE="slashdot.org">blurb </A> had some errors in it; and especially after witnessing the prevailing confusion over the issues involved, I wish I had written a full-length article on the state of free music score publishing and interchange.<BR><BR>MusicXML fails in many ways, but neither Lilypond's native format nor the various binary formats fits the bill, either.  My intention in submitting the article was to make people aware that there is currently no open, editable, universal, web-renderable music notation format.  Please bear in mind that MIDI is not a music notation format, and is inadequate for the purposes described above.  LilyPond is a great program and a high caliber open-source development project which I admire and endorse--this is a lot more than I can say for MusicXML (regardless of the apples and oranges comparison).  But I don't think it will thrive until it has a GUI and expands into the markets ruled by Sibelius, Finale, and (to a lesser extent) Encore.  In other words, I think that to become a major player, LilyPond must eventually must, in addition to being the superb typesetting program that it is, it must also reach those who want an intuitive score editor.<BR><BR>I'm very please that open source music typesetting and publishing are topics of ongoing discussion (and controversy).  Finally, I should mention that I'm affiliated with neither Recordaire nor LilyPond in any way.
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linuxmusician.com -- no content..
I love the idea, but looking throughthe site even a seasoned GNAA/Linux vtran CAN NOT get a linux pc doing his music work.<BR><BR>there is lots of words and ideas on the site but absolutely ZERO content.<BR><BR>the tutorial on rosegarden is 100% worthless, they dont even cover how the hell you get it set up so you can actually input/output anything.<BR><BR>Nothing about JACK nothing about the wild fight to get MIDI working reliabily under ALSA and JACK.<BR><BR>no real reccomendations as to what hardware to buy because it does work, just a wishy-washy "most soundcards come with a midi port on the joystick..<BR><BR>how about the fact that most soundcards absolutely SUCK at midi/audio recording? why not a list of "<BR>these fricking work good"<BR><BR>linuxmusician.com is a worthless website for a bunch of fanboys, and i constantly reccomend to people that are interested in linux and music to AVOID it.<BR><BR>let us all know wher there is a REAL website devoted to getting linux and musicians working together...<BR>
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linux and music notation
lilypond looks nice for many things, and i think it's a step in the right direction.  the problem is, there's always a rift between what the musicians want to notate and what the software is able to do.<BR><BR>can lilypond notate beams across barlines?  can you hide rests?  can you make invisible barlines?  all this stuff is important to me, since that's the kind of music i write.  sibelius does them wonderfully, and i've heard rumors that sibelius' base engine is written in ASM and could be easily ported to linux from OS X.<BR><BR>on the other hand, i have a big problem in that i wrote a lot of stuff in Finale, and then I switched to sibelius, and even the file convertor doesn't work right a lot of the time.  if lilypond can offer a good long-term storage format that is easy to read by both humans and computers, it could have a big niche in digital preservation, and be a common point between notation programs.<BR><BR>anyone want to write a finale-&gt;lilypond convertor?<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)
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Han When?
<I><BR>Han-Wen says: In my opinion, any file format that claims to be universal should have two properties: it should have an expressive structure, so other formats can be expressed in it, and it should be as lean as possible, so that converting from other formats amounts to removing information. </I><BR><BR>I assume this guy didnt design GIF or PNG then (might have designed JPEG)<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. I hope he never designs a text file format!<BR>
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TomPlay
Take a look at <a HREF="http://www.tomplay.com/" TITLE="tomplay.com">www.tomplay.com</A>.
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Cool but...
What i want is something where i can copy in a sheet of music or a few bars and hear what it would sound like. if you really want someting to  teach music students with this would be it because you coul experiment and verifiy ideas or intent.
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Drum Music?
Does Lilypond, or any other program, for that matter, do a good job of drum music? Don't just drumset, but marching percussion, too? With diddles, shots, pings, rolls, 32nd notes, whatever? I have never seen a program that handles all of these things, and it would be great if there were one.
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That explains it...
I was getting a "Service Unavailable" but couldn't figure out if it was my flaky connection or Microsoft's flaky software.  Guess now I know.
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Re:Well it just figures
<I>Actually, MS use UNIX servers for Hotmail</I>
<BR> <BR>
Ummm... no.  You have no idea what you're talking about.  If you had said "used" (as in past tense), then you'd at least be close.  Still wrong, but close.  They used one of the BSD's until people called them on it.  Hell, for all we know, they still are and just changed the headers that the server hands out to look like a MS box like the other post in this thread shows.
<BR>
<BR>
Anyway, you're wrong on all accounts.
<BR>
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Dammit
And here my girlfriend is blaming that stupid mozilla program. Try explaing that its Microsofts fault to someone who thinks that MS is infallable.
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Re:Dammit
You think that's bad? Try working at an isp and have people yelling at you and blaming you for breaking hotmail<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;).<BR><BR>ahh the joys of the internet.
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Check those gift-horse teeth..
When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!<BR><BR>People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.<BR><BR>
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Re:Dammit
So it was you! I missed several important messages from a business associate in Nigera and others for expanding my<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. opportunities. Important security update from Microsoft were lost! I'll sue!!!<p>
Gads, I've had my hotmail account since before Microsoft bought them. It makes a useful account to hand out on Usenet posts, Slashdot or on web pages--I can quickly give any emailer a real address for contact--mainly it's a spamtrap. But I would never <i>ever</i> depend on it for email or cry if it died.
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Re:Dammit
<i>Why do people despise the Mac platform so much? </i><BR><BR>perceived levels of freedom<BR><BR>Back in the day, both IBM PCs and Apple Macs were closed systems, their internel workings were undocumented to the outside world. There was, however, one crucial difference. PCs set up the hardware with the BIOS and then went to disk for the OS whereas MACs booted from an internal ROM. Compaq succeeded in cloning the IBM BIOS which meant you could put an IBM floppy in a Compaq machine and it would boot. Some companies tried to clone the Mac but were slapped with lawsuits because you couldn't copy the Apple ROM. The company that supplied IBM with the stuff on their floppies was a Washington startup called Microsoft who had cunningly retained the right to ship MS-DOS seperate from a computer.<BR><BR>Consequently the PC Clone market flourished and IBM lost their control over the PC Platform driving down price while driving up incompatibility. Meanwhile Apple continued to develop their platform. It was a technically superior platform with a unified graphical user interface, used Postscript for printing and SCSI for devices. This made MACs expensive when you did CPU Cycles / $. You could walk into an Apple dealer, choose the bits, go home, plug it all together and it worked whereas you would go to a PC dealer tell him what you want and he's spend a few days building it and battling to get the bits talking to each other but when you got it home it worked.<BR><BR>Because it was difficult to build and maintain PCs, their builders and maintainers looked down on the MAC, it wasn't as fast for the same $, was too easy to use, you didn't have to take the case to pieces to add a peripheral and the only people you knew who had them were too rich to deserve them.<BR><BR>As the builders and maintainers of the PCs of everyone in their social circle, the non-techies trusted the techies opinion, parroting the same lame arguments in PCs vs MACs arguments the world over.<BR><BR>
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Re:Dammit
Jeez.<BR><BR>Building a computer from parts might be easy for <i>you</i>, but that does not make it "easy". Most people can't handle it. They want to buy a computer and take it out of the box and plug it in and turn it on. This goes for PCs or Macs.<BR><BR>Have you used a Mac that was manufactured in the past half decade? You can use any USB mouse with them, including your seven-buttons-with-scroll-wheel optical mouse. They use PCI, AGP, ATA, and USB for expansion. They have a "taskbar", it's called the Dock.<BR><BR>Windows's popularity is entirely attributable to <a HREF="http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html" TITLE="jwz.org">Worse is Better</A>.
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Re:Dammit
One irony is that the original Apple II came with a schematic of all the circuits.
<br> <br>
Apple was very innovative, but made a number of large mistakes that really hurt them in the market.  While software for the IBM PC focused on business applications (DBASE and Lotus), the Mac focused on paint programs.  It is no surprise that today artists still like Macs.
<br> <br>
Apple made some very questionable hardware decisions.  They made the original Mac non expandable (no slots, you even needed a special tool to open the case, didn't change until the Mac II), even though expansion was a key to the Apple II's success (they totally ignored their hacker roots).  They did thing like use a self ejecting floppy drive, which was patented by Sony and drove up the price.  They had a one button mouse and a keyboard where a lot of keys were unsupported (including the forward delete key).  They made their own networking hardware (localtalk) which although cheaper was slow, and had connectors which were non-locking (causing endless technical support problems).
<br> <br>
Sure, you could go into a store and by Mac bits, and they would all work, but that is because they had a lock on the hardware and the software.  The Mac has had its share of low level problems and incompatibilities.  Some of the famous ones include a bad virtual memory implementation (which was so bad most users turned it off) and 28 bit vs. 32 bit addressing (it broke a lot of badly written software so there was a switch to turn it off).  Imagine using a machine where you had no virutal memory, and running out of memory becuase you opened and closed programs in a certain order.
<br> <br>
In the beginning (pre 1995), Apple had a better operating system than Windows.  They innovated the GUI, and they had technical advantages, such as things like a flat address space.  But Windows caught up and overtook the Macintosh, both in terms of user interface and developer tools.  Before OS 10, the mac was still mostly 68k assembly, and was very difficult to program and debug on.  Also, until OS 10 there was no protected memory, meaning it was easy for one badley behaved program to take down the system.
<br> <br>
When Apple moved to the Power PC in about 1995, instead of porting their operating system, they ran most of it in emulation.  Which ment slower speeds and more difficult debugging for developers.
<br> <br>
While Apple patched and limped along, Microsoft built Windows NT from the ground up, written mostly in C (so it was portable).  While previous Microsoft operating systems were more like the Mac, NT had protected memory and preemptive multitasking, two features that are critical to a modern, stable operating system.
<br> <br>
So while Apple had the early lead, they had a wealth of technical problems and poor hardware choices which hurt their platform.
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Re:Dammit
I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.<BR><BR>Lee<BR>
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Re:Dammit
<i>I hope she's good in bed cause I'd never date someone that clueless unless she could make my<br> toes curl, my eyes roll into the back of my head, and jets of steam shoot out of both ears.<br> <br> </i>
You want her to put you in a microwave?<br> <br>
That is Kinky!
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Thanks, Microsoft!
That downtime really blew. I couldn't read my spam.<br> <br>Don't let it happen again, Microsoft.
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3rd party connections
I thought they had blocked other programs again. Trillian and Gaim couldn't connect, but I installed MSN 6.1 and got right back on.
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This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
God, how fucking petty is slashdot getting???<BR><BR>Sure, hotmail was down, boo-hoo.  It's a free email service.  Deal with it.<BR><BR>Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?  Try to stick with the big stories, please, not "Bill Gates forgets to lift toilet seat!" or "Steve Ballmer takes up two parking spaces in Microsoft parking lot!"<BR>
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
<i>It's a free email service.</i> <br> <br>
I'm sure <a HREF="http://www.stallman.org/" TITLE="stallman.org">RMS</A> would disagree with you.
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
RMS is planning to start his own free email service.  Supported clients will include Emacs and Netcat.
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
It might seem petty, but the reality is that there is a huge number of people that use hotmail on a regular basis.. this kind of downage affects a lot of people. <br> <br>What is interesting is how:<br>
- Microsoft responds, their press releases etc.<br>
- Possible reasons for failure<br>
- What others can learn from these kind of failures, to prevent them happening.<br>
- That such a large system that must deal with a massive number of requests has completely gone down instead of the service degrading due to servers failing, etc..<br> <br>
Lighten up a bit, i'm honestly suprised it would go down for a significant amount of time.
<br>
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
An outage like this is not caused by a server failure but a misconfiguration. If it were bad hardware it would have been replaced, but that wouldn't have effected the whole cluster now would it? It also wouldn't have effected multiple services.
<p>Nope this problem is a central database problem, probably they tried to normalize the passport database, screw the pooch and had to roll everything back which is why it took so long.
</p>
Or maybe they changed a permission and spend the whole day figuring out which one did it.
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
It's odd this outage lasted for so many hours. Hotmail is spread across multiple clusters at multiple geographic locations. Presumably, so is passport (which is what was br0xx0red). You would *think* MS would keep a complete backup of the last known passport config somewhere, like 1 day - 1 week, etc.<BR><BR>In theory it should only take a matter of minutes to rollback the entire thing... and you would've thought they'd test it before deploying any changes.<BR><BR>Sounds like somebody screwed the pooch on this one.
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
It's free, but you can pay for it and get extra features, like a bigger mailbox.<BR><BR>I'm jharper@hotmail.com (I'm not afraid of posting the address publicly, i think i'm on every mailing list I could be on anyway<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:). I run the account in 'whitelist' mode, so everything goes to the 'junk' folder. The only thing I get in my actual inbox is messages from hotmail telling me my mailbox is full<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)<BR><BR>So if I used the account seriously, rather than just as an address I can hand out if I need to hand one out, i'd need the extra space to hold all the spam that built up overnight.<BR>
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
Allowing a system as large as Hotmail to completely fail is a MAJOR technical screw-up. It would be an interesting and embarrassing story no matter what OS it's running or who is in charge of it. Especially from a sysadmin point of view, it's a big deal. While it's obviously not important to you, it's anything but trivial.<br> <br> It makes me smile that it never went down when it was running on FreeBSD (shameless advocacy), although, to be fair, this incident was almost certainly due to an architectural weakness or network hardware failure and not an OS issue. I guess we'll never know...
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This is news?
I seem to remember<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/. was down for a few hours last week... but somehow that story didn't make the front page.<BR><BR>-a
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Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares!
<I>"Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?"</i><BR><BR>They're trying to prove to the world that Microsoft is incompetent and evil.  Those of us that use Windows must all be real morons who don't know shit, so they're hoping that by pointing out that Steve Ballmer double-parked we'll finally <i>"see the light!"</i>  It wouldn't bother me except that it is generally assumed that my choice to use Windows 2000 wasn't voluntary.  Slashbots think that Microsoft's monopoly put a Windows box on my desk at both home and at work.  Yeah, there might be some truth to it.  But seriously, if Windows was the big lump of shit that the people stuck in the past imagine it to be, I wouldn't be able to do 3D rendering on it.<BR><BR>I agree with you that the petty <I>"anything that can be spun against Microsoft"</i> campaign is childish and obnoxious, but in this case, it was nice to find out why Hotmail was down.  It's also nice to know when the next big worm breaks.  Slashdot's helped me stay protected for years now.<BR>I just hope one day Slashdot will take Microsoft a little more seriously instead of the righetous BS that I need to be running GNAA/Linux even though my work software isn't running on it.<BR><BR>*sigh* This post isn't going to be visible for very long.  Pity.  At least it felt good to let it out.
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Paid for services down too.
Paid for services, such as MSDN subscriptions, were down as well. The real news is not that Hotmail was down, but that all Passport based services were having problems. MS has been trying hard to sell Passport as a "single sign on solution." This indicent does not help that marketing effort. This is not the first time that Passport has been out. In the past the passport domain expired and was rescued by a very nice person who registered the domain on a weekend, reinstating the service.<BR>
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Well it WAS working until you /.'ed it.
(nt)
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Date in the story?
Perhaps a date in the story would have been more useful, since "As of 8:15 PM EST" is now just highly misleading. That 8:15PM EST was on Friday, March 12. This story is making it sound like it's been down for days, but in reality it was just a few short hours.<BR><BR>This story isn't even relevant at this point.
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Re:Date in the story?
<i>in reality it was just a few short hours.</i><BR><BR>In reality most hours are the same length.  Hotmail was down for a few standard-length hours.
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Re:Date in the story?
<blockquote> <i>
In reality most hours are the same length. Hotmail was down for a few standard-length hours.
</i> </blockquote>

<p>
Anyone who's watched the "time remaining" during a Windows installation or a large file copy (<i>"...but it's been 3 minutes remaining for the past half hour!"</i>) knows that Microsoft uses their own, superior standards for time measurement, rather than slavishly adhering to those obsolete SI units.

<p>
Hotmail was only down for 10 MS-minutes.
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Redundancy anyone?
That article didn't go into much detail.  I don't know what kind of system MS uses to run Hotmail, MSN and other services, but where's the multiple location clustered redundant load balancing system?  My only guess is that someone at MS really messed up their own DNS systems, which of course would take it all "down" (by name at least).  Does anyone know what actually happened?
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Re:Redundancy anyone?
My first guess since it effected multiple services and not just hotmail that it was a database issue, they may have blocked permission on the cluster on accident. Such a central problem can't really be caused by faulty software, just faulty configuration.<BR><p>I think someone was implementing a new backup scheme and decided it would be a good idea to dismount the store, move it over to another cluster.<BR></p><BR>Course it looks like if people managed to get on their service was fine, so maybe they screwed up some passwords. Time will tell this story
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News for nerds?
The question is - how many nerds use Hotmail.com, and why does this non-event warrant a front page article?
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Re:News for nerds?
Actually many... Nerds use Hotmail for junk email accounts, like when they want to download something that needs registering first but don't want to receive the newsletter junks.
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Re:News for nerds?
For those things there is <a HREF="http://mailinator.com/" TITLE="mailinator.com">Mailinator</A>.<BR><BR>Throwaway accounts should never be, out of all places, registered on Hotmail.com. They suspend your account if you don't login for 30 days. At least Yahoo!Mail or other free alternatives let you forget the account for few months and not get penalized for it.
%
Re:News for nerds?
It is a great account for your junk mail! Then again so is Yahoo... but hotmail was the first I believe =)<BR><BR>It is also my first email account (got it in 96) and so now people can still contact me after I've moved around the world.<BR><BR>When a service like Hotmail and MSN go down for a few hours it affects ALOT (millions) of people... nerd included... why shouldn't it be on the frontpage? I know I was interested enough to click on the articles (though I agree they are sparse on details)<BR><BR>Addbo
%
Single point of failure
<p>
<i>That must have been one heck of an internal problem for it to knock out Hotmail AND MSN Messenger.</i>
</p> <p>
For example, the problem might have lain in the Passport login servers. <strong>Single</strong> sign-on is a <strong>single</strong> point of failure.
</p>
%
Re:Single point of failure
Single sign-on has a flaw. The only legitimate flaw is that you have one username and password to crack, sometimes some challenge reponse questions too if you are into the Novell and Sun directory services.
<p>At any rate, just because its one password in no way means you can't have a cluster of 5000 servers all storing and accepting transactions for it. I'd hardly call passport servers in Russia, the U.S., Germany, England, China, Japan etc... a single point of failure.
</p>
Normally I'd just assume you were referring to the password issue but right now that has nothing to do with this story so I'll just leave my assumptions out this.
%
...and the world collapses
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards...
%
In other news....
Observers noticed a marked decrease in spam emails most of Friday. Analysts remain puzzled.
%
Looks like "Passport" problems
<p>
Judging fromt the description that people had problems logging in, but that
things work fine once logged in, and OTOH that Messenger had problems too, I
would conclude that the problem is with their Passport infrastructure.
</p>
%
Re:Looks like "Passport" problems
Bingo!<br>
<br>
Here is today error message for my hotmail account:
<blockquote> <i>
The<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.NET Passport service is currently unavailable at this Web site for one of these reasons:<br>
<ul>
<li> The site may contain an error or be experiencing a problem that affects the<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.NET Passport service.
<li> The site may not be an official<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.NET Passport-participating site.
</ul> </i> </blockquote>

It was worst on Friday though: there was not even an error message as loginnet.passport.com was either dead or unreachable.<br>
%
Problem trying to explain to clients
Figures. Here I am at a client's house fixing his computer so the cable modem works again, and I'm trying to show him how good Proxomitron works with getting rid of all the Hotmail surrounding ads, and I can't even connect. He didn't believe me when I said that it was probably Hotmail being down....<BR><BR>Perhaps if it was some routine maintenance on Microsoft's part, they could forewarn people about it? It affects a lot of people's lives, whether free or not.
%
Microsoft quality.
<BR>Microsoft is very good at maintining their own products and services. Imagine how well Hotmail and MSN have to be configured to be in proper working order to gain respectible uptimes.<BR> <BR>With that in mind, just remember: All those Windows boxes have to be restarted at some point. Hats off to MS for holding out as long as they did.<nobr> <wbr></nobr>;-)<BR> <BR>(Flamewar disclaimer: It's a joke. Laugh.)
%
Cool!!!! Three day old news!
There should be a TOPIC/STORY negative modifier for old news, or news that is blatantly obvious.  Or just have "FARK" tags.  If this "story" about how hotmail was down ran on Fark, it would have the "obvious" tag.
%
This was announced
Dear Infidel<nobr> <wbr></nobr>/.er<BR><BR>Microsoft products and services never suffer any sort of failure that is not announced first.  This was not exploited and service was not denied.  With our services working, we suspect a massive monitor failure caused by a new virus coded by a member of the linux community.  We enjoy providing hotmail, and DEATH TO THE SPAMMER!<BR><BR>Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf<BR>Director of Public Relations<BR>Microsoft, Inc.<BR>
%
i was talking to MS customer support when
i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened.
%
Re:i was talking to MS customer support when
<i>i just got hung up on, and that was approximatly the same time on friday. i was trying to get an activation code for win xp when i was disconnected from them all together. i waited a while thinking that like all good cutomer support they would call me right back because i was hung up on, but waited half an hour and called them to try to talk to the guy i was dealing with, and they told me that they were having serious internal problems. im not sure how it works, but i think MS might use some kind of internal VOIP system because there was a delay in speech with th guy i was talking to as well, but hotmail and their tech support both went down around the same time as i was informed of "major internal problems." so something big happened.</i><BR><BR>Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.<BR>
%
Re:i was talking to MS customer support when
<p> <i>Lets get this stright. You -brought- windows XP.</i> </p>
<p>No, he <i>bought</i> Windows XP.</p>
%
This is why everyone should subscribe to /. ...
...Hotmail goes down on Friday, and you're the first to know on Sunday!
%
Boy am I relieved
On Friday I was tinkering with a student LAN I help maintain... swapping in new switches, trying to sort out a mess of identical ethernet cables.<BR><BR>I was about to leave, satisfied that the network was back to running as normal, but people started complaining that they couldn't reach hotmail. That seemed weird since hotmail is typically rock solid... I got kinda stressed by this, thought maybe I was dealing with a bizarre netmask thru DHCP or perhaps a DNS failure.<BR><BR>What a relief... hotmail <i>was</i> broken<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)<BR>
%
Considering I got this ...
... trying to get to the Hotmail FAQ at 0125 on Sunday the 14th, I'm not at all convinced "all is well" (or ever was).
<P>
Luckily I don't use Hotmail (or any other Microsoft product).
<P> <BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>bScreen = 'True'; var searchtextsize="21"; var bSkinny = (screen.width&lt;=800); if (bScreen == 'True') searchtextsize=(bSkinny)? 19:25; var cu, cb, br, INI_Encoded, INI, H_APP, H_APP_Encoded, ITSFile, Filter, BrandID; var v1, v2, v3, v4, bShowSearch,t_contactus,Survey ; cu='http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_in<nobr>f<wbr></nobr>  o.asp?pg=ar_eform&amp;_lang=EN'; Survey=''; cb=''; INI_Encoded = 'MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ.ini'; INI='MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ.ini'; H_APP_Encoded = 'MSN+Hotmail'; H_APP = 'MSN Hotmail'; ITSFile = 'msn%5Fhotmail%5Fpimv9%5FFAQ%2Eits51'; Filter = ''; BrandID = ''; H_VER = '2.6'; bITFind = 'True'; t_contactus="Contact us" v1 = 'http://www.hotmail.msn.com'; v2 = '?&amp;_lang=EN&amp;country=US'; v3 = ''; v4 = 'DH_FREE'; var sTMT = 'MSN_Hotmail_PIMv9_FAQ'; ; bShowSearch = true; NoMax = '0'; var LEVELMAX = 10; var levelNodes = new Array(LEVELMAX); var activeNode, activeIdx = 0, bActiveSet, activeLevel = 0; var XMLTOCLoaded = false; var sHTTP_REFERER = 'http://www.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/dasp/ua_info.<nobr>a<wbr></nobr>  sp?&amp;_lang=EN&amp;country=US'; function CULink(ExtURL) { if (navigator.appName.indexOf("TV") &gt;= 0) { if(ExtURL.indexOf("http") == -1) ExtURL = "http://" + ExtURL; parent.location.href = ExtURL; } else { window.open(ExtURL,'_helpext'); } }<BR> <BR>Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a01f4'<BR> <BR>Variable is undefined: 'agent_isSafari'<BR> <BR>E:\WEBROOT\PRODUCTION\HELP\CON TENT\EN_US\..\!shared\frameset.inc/searchfooter.i<nobr>n<wbr></nobr>  c, line 27</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE>
%
Hmmmm
I was going to send the webmaster an email saying that the hotmail/msn services were down, but I couldn't get into my hotmail to send it.

What do people do in these kinds of situations?
%
Can I sue?
Can I sue for damages incurred because I couldn't order my penis enlargement pills before my porn audition?  Damn you microsoft, you kept me from making millions!  Now just give me some money and we'll call it even.
%
Lets get this straight
No "customers" were harmed. The only people who use Hotmail are people who are too poor/lazy to install their own ISP's mail system on their machines.<BR><BR>And if you base your business on Hotmail, i'd say you have a serious I.T. decisions problem.
%
A successful migration?
<p> <br>
From the
<a HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/migration/case/hotmail/default.mspx" TITLE="microsoft.com">MS case study</A>
on converting Hotmail from FreeBSD to 2K:<br>
<br>
<i>
&gt; Changing the operating system on each server should have<br>
&gt; zero impact on day-to-day operations.<br>
</i>
<br>
No impact whatsoever....if you ignore uptimes<nobr> <wbr></nobr>:)
<br>
<br>
<i>
&gt; Under FreeBSD, bugs and memory leaks would often go<br>
&gt; undetected because of the lack of tools. With Windows 2000<br>
&gt; and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and<br>
&gt; truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all<br>
&gt; times. <br> </i>
<br>Crikey, handy they've got all those tools to help them out
(soooo unlike FreeBSD with all it's bug leaks).
Looks like it's saved their asses this time round...<br>
<i>&lt;/sarcasm&gt;
</i>
<br>
<br>
Microsoft: <i>Where do you want go today?</i>
<br>
<br>
Customer: <i>I want to take a rock solid service that has true customer
value and turn it into a spam ridden, bug infested hole that
doesn't work half the time and customers hate.</i>
<br>
<br>
Microsoft: <i>Consider it done!</i>
<br>
</p>
%
invasive Microsoft feature poor market domination
I was thinking - why did they post this as a story, who cares about Hotmail downtime,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...but then I realised that it IS important, it just goes to remind us all of how invasive one single company is, so invasive that in the software area that I specialise is, although there are well over 20 equivalent products, I already have to assess the QUALITY of products as such:<BR><BR>1.  Microsoft: assessed:<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. 80% on dominance,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. 10% luck,<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.. and 10% on product features<BR>
&nbsp; - it will get 15-50% of the market simply because of who it is, and will either be Market leader, or number 2.<BR><BR>2.  All the others, which get assessed mainly 50-90% on product features.<BR><BR>So then of course the advice has to be, well one of the advantages of selecting the MS product because you know that you won't have to convert the data from some other system that will be driven into the ground by MS.<BR><BR>I can only advise clients the "truth" - that is what I get paid for, but I am not happy with this situation.<BR><BR>In this particular market segment, I can say that MS would not get in the "top 3" in terms of features.<BR><BR>This is a terribly sad situation to be in, and people need to be reminded of this regularly.  The lack of action by authorities on Monopoly practices appears to show that the MS Billions have won the day.<BR><BR>I am not a GNAA/Linux-plugger, and I know that MS has produced some good services, however these days they are way beyond the scope of traditional monopoly abuse.  Are all politicians and scientists out there so "chicken" or greedy?<BR><BR>------------------<BR>no sig. of course!
%
Simple Answer = Patch-Day at  Hotmail
Even MS has to patch their own servers.<BR><BR>TechAdmin: We have to install the latest Mediaplayer updates on the Hotmail servers.<BR><BR>Executive Manager: Why, that means downtime - for every minute downtime of hotmail.com I get less bonus! The servers stay up!<BR><BR>TA: But we have to install these updates because without them we can not patch the servers.<BR><BR>EM: Why do we need to patch the servers?<BR><BR>TA: To make them more secure.<BR><BR>EM: But we use our own MS Products...<BR><BR>TA: That's we need to patch so often!<BR><BR>EM: But the latest patches were not labeled even 'critical'<BR><BR>TA: That's because of Steve and Bill and the guys from marketing, so they can tell everyone that our products are secure.<BR><BR>[May someother continue...]
%
google news headline
Google news has been running the headline:<BR><BR>"Microsoft restores faulty Hotmail service"<BR><BR>I thought that said it all.
%
This was NOT a Hotmail outage (as such)
It was a<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.NET Passport outage. Even if you have no clue what this is, you almost certainly have one if you have a hotmail email address, or use MSN, or MS Money, MSN messenger, or a million other services. It's even used for RADIUS authentication of MSN dialup users.<BR><BR>Unlike Hotmail, which still runs primarily on UNIX, Passport is entirely based on Windows servers.<BR><BR>Passport is the authentication / single sign-on system for all these MSN services. If it's down, everything's down. And sadly it has proven a little unreliable recently, for reasons never disclosed.<BR>
%
Re:Stop the presses!
<i>Seriously slashdot, your GNAA/Linux loving policy is blinding you as to what is relevant and what isn't.</i><BR><BR>And your ignorance of news is blinding you to the fact that all the other major news sites reported hotmail and msns outages as well.<BR><BR>Even CNN had it as a top story in the technology section.
%
Re:Predictable
<i>Why am I not surprised Microsoft claims its an internal problem?</i> <br> <br>
Actually, it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it <i>was</i> an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company (bad software design, bad system administration, etc.), external attacks can't, only for a lack of security or something like that. But in most cases, a company gets away quite well with an external attack.
%
Re:Predictable
<p> <i>it would make more sense when Microsoft would claim it was an attack. Internal problems can be blaimed on the company<nobr> <wbr></nobr>... </i> </p>

<p> With Win2000, Microsoft was working hard to get away from their reputation for instability. Some of this they fixed with software changes, and some with marketing propaganda.</p>

<p> With Longhorn, Microsoft is working twice as hard to get away from their rep for insecurity. At least for the moment, it is better to have their systems appear a tad unstable than insecure.</p>

<p> jwg</p>
%
The guy is right
I hate to say it, but websites do go down.  It's regrettable, but the reasons people here dislike Microsoft are not because they have a website that happened to go down.  Blame Microsoft for their real flaws.<BR><BR>Heck, if the FOSS world was held accountable for, say, Sourceforge or Slashdot reliability, we'd all be in a world of hurt.
%
Oh come on
This story is just asking for a frosty piss joke to be made!
%
sliding down the glass....
odd, I've seen many a drunk sliding down the side of a glass...those pesky bubbles!
%
Re:sliding down the glass....
<i>hey, remember linus signed some pretty odd things during LCA:)</i> <br> <br>
Yeah, my wife still refuses to wash her left breast....
%
Old story?
Wasn't there a story on&nbsp;/. a few years ago about someone researching why the bubbles in Guinness were apparently sinking - with the conclusion that they are driven down by streams closer to the centre of the glass?
%
Re:Old story?
Found it <a HREF="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/11/2156213&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=134" TITLE="slashdot.org">here</A>.<BR><BR>It's old&nbsp;:)<BR>
%
Re:Old story?
<a HREF="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/11/2156213&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=134" TITLE="slashdot.org">This one</A>.
The researchers here appear to be putting an academic imprimateur on the model discussed in 2000.
%
So
when you're high, can dogs really fly or is it just the weed?
%
Re:So
If dogs are flying, then that is not weed you are smoking... Tread carefully, but enjoy.
%
Too much?
<i> So, if you see it happen, it's not just that you've had too much to drink.</i>
<p>So do bubbles going around the glass mean I'm half-way there?
%
Re:Too much?
But are you North or South of the equator? That determines whether they go round clockwise or anti-clockwise.
%
Nice article - but whatabout sharing the evidence?
I have seen bubbles moving down at the edges of my Guinness.  This latest "discovery" seems to be common sense to me, and is exactly how I have explained the phenomenem to other drinkers down the pub.<BR><BR>Shame I wasn't paid to do my "research", and that no-one would have listened to me because I didn't have a 750-frame-per-second video camera.<BR><BR>Now, this story would have been really interesting if it had a link to the videos of it happening 'cause it really is a sight to behold!
%
In Australia they also rise
Of course it depends which way your head is up, or down - sometimes they go sideways in both directions.<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
%
Beer
Not being a beer drinker I am not surprised, the bubbles are probably trying to drown themselves rather than taste that foul brew...
%
In other news..
..women at the bar can really like you! If one of them is turned on by your presence it's not just that you've had too much to drink!
%
Re:In other news..
<i>If one of them is turned on by your presence it's not just that you've had too much to drink!</i>
<p>
No. It's just that <i>they've</i> had too much to drink...
<p>
Cheers,<Br>
Ian
%
Our tax dollars...
Our tax dollars at work! <br> <br>
It appears that the same rib, in episode 34FGE, struck twice in row creates two different notes...are we supposed to believe this is some sort of magical rib!??!
%
Legitimate scientific value
"While the pair's finding will be invaluable to barroom betters across the globe it also has legitimate scientific value in the area of fluidized beds, the mixing of solid particles with liquids and gases, which has industrial and engineering applications."<BR><BR>It's amazing what people do come up with to get an excuse for drinking beer.
%
Re:Legitimate scientific value
<p>Since this phenomenom only lasts for a short period after the beer is poured, they must have had to pour a lot of beers to allow detailed analysis. It would have been a shame to let it go to waste wouldn't it?</p>
<p>Next we'll see an academic doing a research paper on the marketing techniques used by pr0n sites.</p>
%
Bubbles in Beer in space
I wonder what happens to bubbles in space, if they are trying to go downswards they sure are going to get confused?<BR><BR>Maybe they go inwards and congregate at the centre in a matey sort of way.
%
Wasted Tax Payers Dollars
I'm not saying that this is not valuable information, however if only they had googled before hand they would have noticed that this WAS ALREADY KNOWN ABOUT IN 1998! see this story at http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/phys/liquid<nobr>s<wbr></nobr> /p00053d.html
%
Re: Wasted Tax Payers Dollars
Well, the fact that beer bubbles sink was actually already known thousand of years ago. But it has to be "re-discovered" in every two years or so, otherwise the world would come to an end. And reporting this "discovery" in media is just a part of the ritual.<br>
%
The camera...?
I wanted to know more about the video camera after the throwaway line "750 frames per second" - wow!
%
Where's the video?
"So Andy got hold of a camera that takes 750 frames a second and recorded some rather gorgeous video clips of what was happening."<BR><BR>So quit hoggin' it and let us have some of that sweet sweet goodness.
%
Alcohol increases intelligence
<BR>For any newbies: Apparantly your intelligence is increased by drinking alcohol, since it kills off your poor quality brain cells leaving more room for your high-powered brain cells.<BR><BR>So kids, if you want to pass your exams, sneak into Daddy's Spirits cabinet and have a swig before breakfast.
%
I knew it
I knew I wasn't drunk!... nobody believed me! damn!
%
Time wasted?
People have been doing research for thousands of years, and most of the research have led to woudnerful discoveries, but.. to be honest, I cant see that this discovery can leed to any major breakthoughs. Not even minor ones.
%
Cultural differences
<i>One banner read: "Aznar, because of you we all pay."</i>
<p>
It's really strange. The Spanish are now, after the Madrid blasts, even angrier at their government for fighting terror than before.
<p>
Over here the public would be putting aside such petty political differences and screaming for revenge on the terrorists, instead.
%
the usual suspects
I'll ge them out of the way all at once:<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; I.. welcome bubble overlords...<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; Soviet Russia... bubbles slide down you.. you know the drill.
%
Neat.
Now I have a new chat up line to use: hey babe, ever stop and think about bubbles moving down? Hello? You didn't finish your drink!
%
Open letter to the GNAA
Dear GNAA,<BR><BR>I hope this letter finds you well.  I have been doing alright, after getting that job at Wal-Mart.  It's great because now I have benefits and the pay is better than the lumber yard.<BR>Grandpa is doing better, his hacking cough is almost gone, although Nelly down at the corner store says that it may come back.  I'm not sure, what do you think?<BR><BR>I hope you have been finding productive ways of spending your time since your talents should be used for the improvement of humanity.  You seemed like such a promising organization, and I'm sure you'll go far.  Mom thinks the same.<BR><BR>I do find that sometimes my feelings towards you confuse me.  I excited by your dialogue, but also perturbed by the dark demons that float inside my soul.  What should I do?<BR><BR>All the best,<BR>Frankie Sausage
%
Wow.
So do niggers when they're chained together and weighed down with cannonballs.<BR><BR>I laughed when I saw that scene in <a HREF="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118607/" TITLE="imdb.com">Amistad</A>. It was the feel-good comedy of 1997!<BR>
%
that was useless
Ah maaaaan, crap!<BR>
&nbsp; that sucks!<BR><BR>
&nbsp; Turns out I've stopped drinking for no reason after all...<BR><BR>got time to catch up with now.<BR>bid day ahead...
%
Hmm...
I had a class with this professor earlier this year. This really explains his teaching style... he must have done his beer "research" each day right before he lectured...
%
Video report about it
There's a video about it here:
<a HREF="http://news-service.stanford.edu/zmedia/BeerBubbles.mov" TITLE="stanford.edu">video/mov,4MB</A> <br>
Mentioned in <a HREF="http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/march17/bubbles-317.html" TITLE="stanford.edu">news article from</A>
%
aussie, aussie, aussie, ...
<i>.. conducted the study after Australian researchers announced in 1999 that they had made a computer model showing it was theoretically possible for beer bubbles to fall down the side of a glass</i>
<br> <br>
trust it to be australians that worked that one out first.
<br>
something tells me that experiment was most likely conducted on a friday nite after a few beers at the lab.
%
Never talk about beer on a Sunday!
Ouch, how smart is it to have an article about beer on a Sunday!&nbsp;;)
%
Note to self
<TT>HEAD&nbsp;/data/en/big/current/GoogleToolbarInstaller.exe HTTP/1.1<BR>Host: toolbar.google.com<BR>Connection: close<BR><BR>HTTP/1.1 200 OK<BR>Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 12:51:14 GMT<BR>Server: Apache<BR>Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:47:28 GMT<BR>Accept-Ranges: bytes<BR>Content-Length: 476864<BR>Content-Type: application/octet-stream</TT>
%
Video of this man &amp; glasses of foaming Guinnes
<a HREF="http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/march17/beer-video-317.html" TITLE="stanford.edu">Right here</A> <br> <br>
(Quicktime required)
%
Damn
Damn - I wish I had never seen this article.  I've always used that observation as a definite measure when to stop drinking beer.  Now I won't know when to stop.  I'm sure this article has been sponsored by the breweries.
%
Gravitational perpetuum mobile
Just examine the effect and move it to macro scale, i.e. you drag lighter-than-air baloons down, pick them and release them up in normal conditions, creating energy (i.e. lifting small amounts of water up and releasing it onto a turbine). Free Energy!
Of course there ain't no free lunch, but in this case it comes at cost of earth's rotation momentum, after several megawatts of energy produced our day will be some fraction of second longer.
%
This is so obvious
I'm sorry, but it took scientists to figure out that it was caused by the flow of the beer from the bubbles rising in the center? I mean, I figured that out a long time ago just by looking. No 750 frame per second camera required. I don't even think I was sober when I figured it out. And this is news? Sorry, but I'm a bit disappointed.
%
A group of stanford researchers
ought to have better things to be doing than looking at bubbles in beer glasses dammit.
%
Sex education
"It's based on the idea of what goes up has to come down. In this case, the bubbles go up more easily in the center...than on the sides because of drag from the walls."<BR><BR>Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of their sex education lessons?<BR><BR>I have no idea why they called it a "bubble" though.
%
Funding
I wonder just how much time and money went into this research?
%
My solution
quickly turn the glass upside down over your mouth
%
hmph....
We've got this beer bubble thing licked, but still no cure for cancer...<BR><BR>e.<BR><BR>
%
sometimes
I just really hate academics.
%
As I watcch this video...
I am reminded I am only 20 (and in the US), but that Guinness looks so good.  I'm also in Massachusetts which appears to have the worst alcohol laws of any state I've been in.  <br>
People here are shocked when I talk about liquor sold in gas stations! (I'm from Maine, founder of prohibition in the US)
%
unbelievable
Without further independent research that confirms this data, I won't believe it... As my contribution to mankind, I will be donating my time to this endeavor this afternoon, right after work... anyone else care to volunteer?
%
better for you than beer?
<br> <a HREF="http://www.kombucha.org/" TITLE="kombucha.org">strange brew</A>
<p>

nearly free, as in you make it yourself. bubbles included.
%
Haha!
When I read the headline of this article, I thought it read:

"Beer Bellies Really Do Stink"
%
That's Interesting
I wonder why that is, and since I hardly ever drink beer, I've never really observed the bubbles to see such a thing myself.
%
Dupe
Dupe
%
Dupe
<a HREF="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;q=slashdot+beer+bubbles&amp;btnG=Google+Search" TITLE="google.com">Google search of slashdot for beer bubbles</A>
%
Mmmm...bubbles going down in beer.
-Homer
%
Time to move :)
Checklist:<BR><BR>1. Move to Missile Complex<BR>2. Change name to Dr. Evil<BR>3. Hold the world hostage<BR>4. Profit<BR><BR>See, I didn't use a ??? part, they are so lame&nbsp;;)<BR>
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Imagine the eBay feedback on this one...
Got my Titan Missile Complex but the tall backed leather chair did not swivel and the white cat was already dead when i got there! Avoid!!!!!!
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Re:Time to move :)
1. Buy missile complex for $300K or less.<BR>2. Get $500K in donations to fix up your own private property (a scam in and of itself).<BR>3. Sell on eBay for $3.95 million.<BR>4. Profit.<BR>
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Re:visit to the bank
We could recreate scene's from Half-Life within the silo complex.  I want to be Gordon!<BR><BR>I can see it know...(cheesy guy looking up as the camera blurs/wave effect)<BR><BR>"Nothing you need to worry about, Gordon. Go ahead."<BR><BR>"I have just been informed that the sample is ready, Gordon. It should be coming up to you any moment now. Look to the delivery system for your specimen."<BR><BR>"Standard insertion for a nonstandard specimen. Go ahead, Gordon. Slot the carrier into the analysis port."<BR><BR>"Gordon! Get away from the beams!"<BR><BR>Oh the fun we could have....:-)<BR><BR>
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Pack the bags!
Honey, we're moving to Washington!!!<BR><BR>Imagine mapping this (your HOUSE) for a Quake / Unreal map!!<BR>
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Re:Pack the bags!
Forget mapping it, actually play in it!  That complex is just screaming out to be used as a paintball/laser tag arena.  Imagine the orange warning lights spinning around and a computerised female voice 'Thirty seconds till missile launch' over the sound system.<br> <br>
Hell, with the strength of the pound against the dollar even <b>I</b> might buy it!  $3,950,000 that's like, what, 2 grand of my money? (just getting one back for the Canadians)
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Yes and no...
Most of the silos on the 'net have been older Atlas silos.  Very, very few of the Titan I silos ever got into public hands AND have no apparent water seepage into any parts of the building (Typically, the actual missle bays would fill up with water because of location- they'd sump pump it out, but with them being abandoned...).<BR><BR>If it's for real, it's something somewhat special.  The last one that went up was some 2-3 years ago in Colorado.
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Owners reputation.
If you look closely on EBay, 19 people have voted him up. 19 people are satisfied with his previous auction, which leads to this conclution: The person selling it may not be faking it, but how the hell did he get it in the first place?
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Re:Owners reputation.
Except that he has 19 comments from SELLERS, which means he was buying, not selling on Ebay.
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Re:Owners reputation.
When the government was decomissioning its Titan missile program in the 1990s, it sold off a number of properties like this. For example, also in the Eastern Washington area, some private investors bought the former Titan facilities located above ground and are running it as an <a HREF="http://www.titanone.com/intro.html" TITLE="titanone.com"> ultra-secure data center facility</A>. The owner group includes a couple of former Microsoft execs. (Insert your favorite security joke here.)
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Quite the fix up
According to the 1999 article, the original asking price was $300,000. The guy who bought it is asking $3,500,000. That's a bit of a markup, there.<BR><BR>It makes sense if he put a lot of money and time into renovating it; that's probably the case if there's someone currently occupying the property. (Which the auction hints at.)
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Re:Quite the fix up
There's one in Denver for <i>only</i> $1,450,000.<BR>
&nbsp; <BR>
&nbsp; <a HREF="http://www.missilebases.com/" TITLE="missilebases.com">Here's</A>  what looks to be a realtor specializing in old silos.  Quite a collection for the truly paranoid!
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Re:Quite the fix up
Yeah, but that's a heck of a markup.  I sincerely doubt the guy has put $3,200,000 worth of renovations into the property.<BR><BR>My guess: he got an extremely good deal on the property in the first place, perhaps at a government auction.  More power to him: if someone is willing to pay $3.5 million for his property, that's what it's worth!  We'll see...<BR><p>&nbsp;<b>::<i>Colz Grigor</i> </b>
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Could be a cool hosting facility!
<BR>In the UK <a HREF="http://www.thebunker.net/" TITLE="thebunker.net">The Bunker</A> is an old nuclear shelter turned into a secure webhosting facility.<BR><BR>The guy who owns it wrote 'Stay Another Day' performed by East 17 and was a UK Christmas #1.<BR><BR>Fact.<BR><BR>No.  This isn't about football.&nbsp;;-)
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Re:Could be a cool hosting facility!
On and I forgot.<BR><BR>They <a HREF="http://www.thebunker.net/work-software.htm" TITLE="thebunker.net">love open source</A>.<BR><BR>So they could be reading!  *waves*
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Here's a couple of photo's....
... <a HREF="http://triggur.org/silo/site.html" TITLE="triggur.org">of a tour inside a similar missile silo</A>, by underground explorers. Maybe it's the same, I didn't check that. But at least it gives you an impression of what is under there.
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Not New.
<a HREF="http://www.missilebases.com/" TITLE="missilebases.com">This</A>. Atlas and Titan silos have been up for auction/sale for many years.
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Re:Not real bright, is he...
Except that it's not actually an auction. I made the same mistake (hey, it's EBay), but there's no place to enter a bid and if you look down at the bottom it says:<BR><BR>"This listing is an advertisement. There is no bidding! If you are interested in this property, you may contact the seller/agent to request additional information."<BR><BR>Which is probably smart. If it were an auction, it'd have eleventy-million fake bids by now.<BR><BR>It also tends to indicate that this is a real property. If it was just someone goofing around, it'd be an auction. That's not strong evidence, but it's certainly an indication.
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He also sold...
Did anyone look at the auctions he's had before?<BR><BR>Jack Hammer of some sort... $360<BR>Camera Flash... $12.50<BR>Camera Bag.. $14.95<BR><BR>"Oh..Yah..I have a giant nuclear testing facility too...Four Million Dollars..."<BR><BR>
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Re:He also sold...
<i>Jack Hammer of some sort... $360</i> <p>

Well now you know how he found it.<p>
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Missile Complex
Missile Complex?<BR>
<BR>
This wouldn't be in Central Montana by any chance? I hear Dr. Zefram Cochrane's been looking to buy one in that area.
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Are Russian customers allowed there? =)
I wonder, whether our Russian militaries can buy the complex to keep missiles closer to their targets?&nbsp;:)
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Terms He Didn't Disclose...
1. No shipping.  Local pickup only.
2. To avoid stiff fees, PayPal will not
be accepted.
3. Checks will be given ten days to
clear.
4. Non-paying bidders without ABM defenses
will be given NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.
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Not good for a home
Living underground has many practical advantages.  All-year insulation from heat and cold, no neighbours, no leaking roofs, infinite space for expansion if you care to dig.<BR><BR>But... we're descended from tree-hugging primates, not moles, and living underground is a sure way to go crazy.  A home needs sunlight, a view, and fundamentally, people within easy reach.<BR><BR>I'd rather live in a shoddy 1-room appartment than in a hundred room bunker.<BR>
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Re:Not good for a home
But picture turning the top floor of the launch silo into a solarium. Remove the blast door and replace it with glass (it would probably have to be bulletproof to withstand the downward force from the snow in the winter). A little bit of remodeling and you have a perfect place to lie back and watch the sky).<BR><BR>If it's far enough away from civilization, you could also use the solarium for a decent telescope.<BR>
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sound studio!
I've always looked for the perfect place to build an audio production studio. It would need to be stylish.. and well isolated.. I guess you could play with plutonium-powered speakers in this place, without getting complaints from your neighbours.
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I'd be scared
<p>Just think of all the Chinese/Russian missiles still pointed at your bedroom.</p>
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Real Pics...
<a HREF="http://triggur.org/silo/" TITLE="triggur.org">Here's a "tour" </A> of a missile complex for those yearning for a bit more than a small sketch on a web page...
<BR>
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Dream home
Some links for the interested:<BR><a HREF="http://www.missilebases.com/" TITLE="missilebases.com"> A real estate agent specializing in Missile Bases</A><BR><BR>I was fascinated about the chance to own one of these properties. Doing some research, I found some ceveats though. First, the base had to be de-commissioned prior to 1965. After that, there were new treaties which required the complete destruction of the base after de-militarization. Second, being underground can lead to some health hazards, i.e. Radon. Third, missile bases aren't ever located in easy to reach places, and I like to be able to go to the store without a bunch of planning beforehand.<BR><BR>I'd still love to own this monstrosity though. The Titan 1 sites are the most elaborate and extensive. Kind of makes me sick to think about the money spent of this thing when it was built only to be decomissioned ~5 years later.
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Precedent?
I can't really say I care for the precedent being set here.<BR><BR>How are you supposed to get anything done on the internet if you have to worry about not only the laws in your country, but those all over the world?<BR><BR>(Realistically, the laws in your country plus those in the US)
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Re:Precedent?
The precedent I'd be worried about would be if such a decision would be both ways.    This is what I fear:<BR><BR>Joe Webmaster from Anytown, USA hosts a site critical of Islam, or Kim Jung-Il, Castro and are found in countries X, Y and Z to violate some law regarding incitement, or subversion -- wouldn't an extrapolation of a decision favorable for extradition mean that the US would need to send Joe Webmaster packing to Uzbekistan, North Korea or Cuba?<BR><BR>IMO, let the US and AU work on their treaties regarding the honoring of copyrights and let AU prosucute violators in-house.
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Re:Precedent?
Quoth AC
<blockquote>
It's hard for them to say "fuck you" while they've got a bigmouthful of US dick. If they didn't object to sugar cane being left out of the Free Trade deal, I doubt they'll stop deep throating just for some scary hacker, sovereign nation or not.</blockquote>
They also <a HREF="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SYD89211.htm" TITLE="alertnet.org">haven't complained</A> yet about the two Australian guys who have been locked up in Guantanamo Bay for more than two years.
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Re:Precedent?
Yeah, the US has this long history of practicing global equality.<BR><BR>I bet if only governments asked for their nationals detained at Camp X-Ray to be returned, the US would put them on the next plane!<BR><BR>Joe Webmaster, or any other American citizen, will never, ever, not in a million years be extradited anywhere, no matter what they did.<BR><BR>
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Re:Precedent?
<blockquote>
I'm not sure, but I don't think the US extradites US citizens to other countries.
</blockquote>

Well, that's what we have the Internet for, isn't it?
<p>
Extracted from the US to:<br>
<a HREF="http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2003/07/23/story560336209.asp" TITLE="archives.tcm.ie">Ireland</A> <p>
<a HREF="http://www.info.gov.hk/police/hkp-home/english/pr/200312/031215-1.htm" TITLE="info.gov.hk">Hong Kong</A> <p>
<a HREF="http://www.geocities.com/~orion47/CROATIA/Croatgovt.html" TITLE="geocities.com">Yugoslavia</A> <p>
<p>
I am by no means an expert on this, these are just some google results.
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Then again..
On second thought, I changed my mind.  This would be a great precedent.
<br> <br>
If it works, let's pass a law making spamming illegal, with harsh penalties, and then demand that everyone extradite thier spammers.
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Re:Precedent?
If you want to talk about precedent you should ask why has the US government has been running from nation to nation getting an exemption to US nationals from appearing before the International Criminal Court for jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.<BR><BR>The US government wants to keep their nationals, especially government officials, out of any courts no in their control.  Of course private citizens and government leaders of other nations are fair game.<BR><BR>It doesn't look like precedent to me, it looks more like the US is doing it because they can.<BR><BR>
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Re:Precedent?
I don't think that's the point... there are other laws as well that aren't the same as the states. For example here in Canada you are allowed to download MP3's... just not upload them...<BR><BR>But if US law took priority we'd be extraditing lots of Canadians to be tried in US courts for copyright infringment even though it's perfectly legal here in Canada...<BR><BR>Or something totaly different... it's legal to smoke pot here in Canada... if US law took priority then we'd be extradited to the US for enjoying a bud...<BR><BR>Different countries different laws... why should we be arrested and extradited for laws of other countries if we broke none in our own? (And have never stepped foot in the other country even) That would be like arresting all those downloading pr0n and extraditing them to Iran or something because it violates Islamic laws of decency...<BR><BR>Just my two cents...<BR><BR>Addbo<BR><BR>
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Re:Extradition from Australia
Most of the "Prisioners" as you call them, were tax evaders.  People who could not grow enough crop for their landowner.  "Real" criminals were executed.<BR><BR>And yes, Australia does have extradition arrangements with the U.S.  But was he in the U.S. when he did the crime?  And if not, is that a valid defense?  If he hacked into a bank, we would want him sent to face the charges.  But, not all of us have hacked into banks, but all of us have pirated software or music, therefore we want to be leanient with his sentence.
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Re:Extradition from Australia
I am neither justifying nor admonishing the law, I am merely stating that the public is more sympathetic towards it due to the fact that they could be considered guilty as well.<BR><BR>The facts are that these are computer crimes, and boundaries are somewhat gray when it comes to jurisdiction.  If the guy was a virus writer, even if the virus was essentially harmless, we would be screaming at the top of our lungs for the chair.  Spammers, same thing.  The DOD warez group?  They gave me all those cool games. They should get medals for fighting the <i>Corporate Interests which are taking away my rights!</i><BR><BR>See, it's all in the perception of the law, not the letter of the law, and not the spirit.  We can get outraged and call a law <i>unjust</i>, but we are not always objective.  Pot Laws are a perfect example of this.  We have large groups fighting for the right to smoke pot.  Should we legalize it because a lot of people want to smoke up?  Did the editors at high times give this a lot of thought, or do they just want to smoke pot?<BR><BR>Now, I'm all for legalizing it, but I want the same controls as alcohol.  Give me a roadside test for it, that does not involve a blood test or urine test, and I'll be the the guy in the first row of the march on the capitol.  Until then, simply legalizing it, even if half the population smokes, would be irresponsible.  In North America, we do not have the public transportation infrastructure to give pot smokers options to travel, and we have no yardstick to measure when it's dangerous to drive under the influence.<BR><BR>That's enough ranting.  In summary, Democracy is about being fair and responsible.  Changing the laws to prevent people from becoming criminals will only lead to a land of no laws to infringe, denegrating into a cultural hedonism.<BR><BR>
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
<i>I don't think it's up for any debate as to whether he committed no crime in his home country</i><BR><BR>Yes it is. In Australia they have things called "trials" precisely for the purpose of debating such issues.
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
So how is an Australian held subject to U.S. law.. AFAIK... he doesn't have the right to vote in U.S. elections. So we would be holding him subject to laws in a country in which he has no representation.<BR><BR>This just underscores my prediction on how the internet will eventually lead to world government.
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
His acts may have been criminal in many countries, but that does not mean he committed the crimes in those countries. If I shoot a canadian businessman while he is in France, i've committed a crime in france, but wouldn't be extradited to Canada.<BR><BR>Question with the sort of thing this case deals with is where the crime is actually committed. I think that as long as he hosted stuff on a server in Australia and he was in Australia, it does not matter which US copyrights he violated, he did not commit a crime in the US, so he shouldn't be extradited. How can he possibly break US law without being in the US or doing anything in the US?<BR><BR>If the server he is using is located in the US, then maybe things are different. But just because the object was from the US doesn't mean he's broken US laws...<BR><BR>Of course he can be prosecuted in Australia for breaking Australian law&nbsp;....
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
But if you stood across the border in Minnesota and shot the Canadian, you've committed the crime in Canada(?) and <B>would</B> be extradited.
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
You're in Minnesota.  That's instant punishment.   If it weren't for their hockey team, it would have been labelled 'Hell' a long time ago.
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
"Extrudited"?  Is that where they squeeze you through a small hole and then send you back home?
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Re:"If he committed no crime in his home country"
You fail to see the big picture. For instance, several books are prohibited in Iraq, Iran, and several other countries. Should Amazon.com employees be extradited to face death penalty in those countries for selling books that are prohibited there?<BR><BR>It's the same thing. You can't allow laws from one country to affect citizens of another or the most restrictive laws from any one country would apply to all Netizens. That's not wise.
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Wait a sec
I thought we were supposed to send criminals *to* Australia?
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Extradition
I thought that the usual rule was that you could not be extradited for an act that was not classified as a crime in your country of residence. This causes the IRS grief when someone moves to a country where tax evasion is not a crime.
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Re:Extradition
warezing is a crime in australia and many country's so this sounds supported there. The article says "Griffiths Australian lawyers are fighting the move, stating that he has never set foot in the United States and has committed no crime under Australian law" but to me thats lawyer defense standard sputtering as it IS illegal in australia.<BR><BR>Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.<BR><BR><a HREF="http://67.160.223.119/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=skins&amp;page=1" TITLE="67.160.223.119">adult desktops &amp; wallpapers</A>
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Re:Extradition
<i>Their lawyers are using simple SCO tactics like "our IP is in their product" they can say it but it does not make it true.</i>
<p>Those tactics are perfectly valid for defending someone in a criminal trial and a lawyer would be stupid not to do this.
<p>In criminal trials the burden of proof is entirely on the side of the prosecutor. If he doesn't like your defense he is free to submit proof to the contrary.
<p>Civil cases, however, both sides have the burdon of proof for the respective claims they make. A lawyer using these tactics in a civil case doesn't gain anything since it is himself who has to provide proof.
<p>The fact that SCO uses these tactics shows that they don't care about the actual outcome of the case (they know they'll lose) but rather want to work with the effects this has outside of the case (e.G. media attention to drive their stock price).
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Re:Fear Uncle Sam
I totally disagree with you, even though you seem to love promoting my site.
<P>It is a crime to eat chewinggum in Singapore. Does that mean Singapore can extradite and incarcerate every American who eats chewinggum in US soil?
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Re:Fear Uncle Sam
<I>Singapore bans the import, sale and manufacture of chewing gum. It isn't illegal to chew it.</I><BR><BR>Chuckle.<BR>A lot like the way the DMCA *doesn't* make fair use illegal.<BR><BR>-
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Re:Fear Uncle Sam
<I>I am usually don't condone the strong arm techniques of the US government. And I do support open source. But Warez is a crime. And it should be punished.</I><BR><BR>Bullshit. Warez is a crime <B>IN THE US</B>, but not in Australia.<BR><BR>In Germany it's illegal to say ANYTHING that is pro-nazi. Do you think that the US would even consider extraditing one of its citizens who posted something pro-nazi on a website? Of course not.<BR><BR>This is lunacy, pure and simple.<BR><BR>LK
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Not hijacking
What <I>is</I> the question here?<BR><BR>If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.<BR><BR>If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.<BR><BR>But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.<BR><BR>So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?<BR>That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.<BR><BR>But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia..<BR>So what's the issue?
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Re:Not hijacking
<blockquote>But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.</blockquote>
<p>Better questions are: <ol>
<li>Is copyright &amp; contract violation a <b>criminal act</b>, or merely a civil matter in Australia?</li>
<li>Is copyright &amp; contract violation a <b>criminal act</b>, or merely a civil matter in the US?</li>
<li>When did this come about?</li>
<li>If he alledgedly committed the acts in Australia (whether they're civil or criminal matters), why is he not facing the Australian courts?</li>
<li>If it's a civil matter in Australia, why are they even talking about extradition?</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?
That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
</blockquote>
<p>I hope that it's looked at in Australian courts first.</p>
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Re:Not all that unreasonable
<i>While his actions were performed in Australia, many of his victims (the owners of said IP) reside in the United States. Without getting into an IP law debate, It's not that much of a stretch to prosecute someone under the laws of the country of the victim.</I> <p>
Who modded this insightful? It's <b>stupid</b>. It doesn't matter where the victim lives, it matters <b>where the crime was committed</b>. If I rob a Swiss tourist in Sydney, do I get extradited to Switzerland to stand trial for robbery? Think, people, <b>think</b>!
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Actually
He doesn't have to have commited crimes in Australia.
If the US consider him to have, and assuming they've followed the procedures by making him a suspect internationally, by passing his name on to Interpol, the Aussies have to pick him up.<br>And then it's up to the Australian judicial authority (judge/panel/court I don't know) to extradite, or not, based on what the extradition request and the arrest warrant ask for.<br>At least, that's how things should be working in theory.<br> <br>
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The American Empire
This really depends on whether you live in a country which is a client state of the American Empire or not. Doesn't it.<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
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Re:"Should" is irrelevant
<I> pretend this guy was cybersexing your prepubescent sister, (etc etc etc)</I> <P>
You do realize, this is one of the weakest arguments you can possibly make.  "Forget all intellectual arguments, precedent, centuries of commonlaw.  If this happened to YOU, you'd want him hung!  So it's OK to hang him!" <P>
Try giving a few of us the benefit of the doubt that we DO value the system and won't automatically join the lynch mob at the first chance.  Or, failing that, how about the idea that the entire purpose of having *impartial* judicial systems is to make sure that the victims DON'T turn into blindly self-serving mobs?
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There is a precedent but it will never hold.
The problem with this is that there is allready a precedent for this kind of thing. The Australian high court has allready made a ruling that something is published on the internet where it is read. This was part of a libel case where an American jornalist  with a company that had dealings in Australia made some unprovable and allegedly slanderous allegations towards an Austrailan over the internet as part of his companies publications.<p>
That said the issues are subtley but still substantially different. Libel is a civil issue, facilitation of piracy is criminal. International treaties handle these cases differently (and quite often not at all), it would have not been possible to sue that jornelist if his paper had no dealings in Australia as if I remember correctly Australian defamation laws are not recognised by America because of the differnces in laws and to a lesser extend the differences in culture. Only the Australian arm of that company could be sued.<p>
But even if the crime was ruled to have been commited in America, as is possible extradition may not be possible. This is because nomatter where a crime was commited, if a sovereign nation does not recognise those crimes or recognises them to a lesser extent (as is the case here) then deportation may be conditional or even impossible.<p>
Personally I don't see a deportation happening, the backlash that would occur when an Australian is sent to a foreign land that he has never set foot on before, to stand before a foreign jury to answer to foreign crimes for an action that was alledged to occur in the man's own home, in his own country would be sickening to most Australians or anyone with a sence of national identity, even if they are not Australian. There is a strong undercurrent of hostility towards the US flowing around Australia's youth and left wing. No judge would be willing to make this man a martr to Australian nationalism. Australia is one of the only countrys never to have had any wars or bloody revolutions, nobody would risk making this sacrifice to appease a foreign power if it meant a remote possibilty that thousends of angry young people with a newfound nationalistic furver could be storming the high court, parlement house, the US embassy and pine gap.<p>
One also has to consider that a legal system that would entitle a foreign power to snatch away citizens for breaking laws of another nation into a distant land where they have never been is harldy soverign. Even if he is not crushed by homocidal revolutionarys, any judge that allows this extradition will surely be relinquising his own power to those overseas. This is completely contrary to human nature, let alone the nature of one ambitious enough to become a high court justice.<p>
But let me say this. If this extradition is allowed, whosoever allows this man has commited nothing wrong in his own country to be taken to a foreign land as a prisoner, shall have fire and chaos thown down on him or her by either their power being snatched away by the American judituary or their life being snatched away by hostile revolutionarys. If they act in the wrong way, their own actions shall not go unlamented.
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at the risk of performing the political troll...
Interesting how we see strong-arm tactics against some aussie warez-puppy, but we don't see them waltzing into Moscow to shut down the mass-piracy of the Russian mafia groups, or the cd-r markets throughout Asia.<BR><BR>I guess this is to be expected from a government that will storm into a crippled-to-the-level-of-impotence Iraq to stop them from developing, err, "weapons of mass destruction", but will just cautiously sidestep any country of real WMD threat (China, NK, Israel).<BR><BR>Seems to be another case of break the weakling orpahan to keep the rest in line.
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AMERICANS! Get your act together!
The article states that the Australian authorities are unable to charge him, indicating that he has done nothing illegal in his country of residence and the country where the act was carried out (Australian server,&nbsp;.au domain).

Many Americans have "broken Norwegian law", by allowing Norwegians to download hardcore porn from American servers. Should they all be extradited?

Your country and laws are not above anybody elses. The fact that some of you clearly think so sickens and frightens me.

If we are to go by the logic put forth by some of you, we should all be extradited to China (if not North Korea)... Sure you want that?
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Is this really a "crime"?
<p>Most extradition treaties deal with criminal offenses.</P>

<p>Other than the weird laws of the US (sorry, but thats my opinion), since when has <i>"copyright infringement"</i> been considered a criminal offense?</p>

<p>I guess we can expect the RIAA to extradite for downloading next?</P>
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Re:The Internet is Real
This person has not set foot in the US.<BR><BR>Are you saying that if I sit off-shore and beam "illega"l materials over US airwaves, that I should be arrested and tried, even though I'm not a US citizen and I was in international waters when I did the braodcasting?<BR><BR>Funny, 'cause the US does that all the time... we put ships and aircraft near "evil" countries and beam in locally illegal content in an attempt to incite the population to rebel.<BR><BR>
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National Sovereignty...
What does this say to the citizens of a country when your government will deliver you into the hands of a foreign power when you've not broken the laws of your own nation?<BR><BR>The civil war in Columbia started as a question of National Sovereignty over the extradition (to  the United States) of a cocaine producer, which was not against the law in Columbia at the time.  This extradition led to the increasing popularity of the FARC, and their accompyaning (Stalinist) socialist platform, increased cocain production and exportation (to the United States) in order to finance both right wing and left wing paramilitaries, and increased hardships for the poorest of Columbias people, who were already suffering due to ecconomic hardships and a lack of basic civil rights for the majority of Columbias people.<BR><BR>Actions such as these cause increased mistrust of a nations government, lend credence to dangerous or misguided political movements, (rightfully) increases anti-American sentiment, leads to internal social conflict, and increase crime in the nation that would extradite for an offense that is not illegal in that country.<BR><BR>Given that Australia is not a third-world country, is not a narcotics exporting country, and has a stable and (I assume) fair form of government, it is unlikely that the repecussions will be as unsettling or as harmful as has occurred in Columbia.<BR><BR>Still, demanding extradition for an offense that is not illegal in the offenders country, and was not committed in the requesters country, does not serve a nations national interest, as it will weaken it's ability to (ethically and effectively) influence the other nations policies, creates mistrust among the citizens and governments of other nations, and makes traveling abroad more dangerous for the nations citizens due to misguided attacts against it's citizens.<BR><BR>I a company is doing business in a foreign land, then they must be willing to deal with the law (or lack of law) and culture as it exists there.  If the company wishes to have that law changed, they should follow the tradition and procedure of that countrynot lobby their own government to have its law enforced on foreign soil.<BR><BR>If this man has broken Australian law, he should be prosecuted under Australian law, or if it is a civil offense there, the harmed American parties should sue in Australian courts.<BR><BR>The US pressing for extradition in this case may seem like a "win" to the companies who produced the software, but for everyone else, and for US relations with Australia, this could be a big loss in the long run.<BR><BR>
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Re:No fucking chance
Of course they shouldn't, but they will anyway. Australia is pretty good at bending over for the United States, and sending one man to PITA prison is a sacrifice Australian politicians will happily make to stay in favour for the next round of trade talks.
%
Re:No fucking chance
Doesn't matter what you think.  AU is one of a few countries that have agreements and treaties with the US which mutally allow the country to obtain criminals that seek refuge in a country.  If the AU ever wants to be able to do that on their own with the US, they must comply.  Besides, this guy isn't exactly innocent of crimes.  You are not helping yourself by supporting a criminal.
%
Since when is "copyright infringement" criminal?
<p>I think the subject, says it all!</p>
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Re:No fucking chance
<I>obtain criminals that seek refuge in a country</I><BR><BR>(A) He's not a criminal and<BR>(B) he's not "seeking refuge". He's remaining at home where he's been the whole time.<BR><BR>The US is getting uppity at Autralia because Australia is not prosecuting him. And the REASON Autralia is not prosecuting him is because HE DID NOT BREAK THE LAW.<BR><BR>The US wants to extradite him so they can persecute him for "breaking codes", NOT for copyright infringment. "Breaking codes" is nothing but working out mathematics. And guess what? It's not a crime to do math in Australia! He's not a criminal.<BR><BR>It's my dip-shit home country of America that came up with the numbskull idea of criminalizing math.<BR><BR>P.S.<BR>The Chinese people should have a revolution and overthrow their government. OOPS! I JUST VIOLATED CHINESE LAW! I guess I'm a criminal too! Quick, someone extradite me to China!<BR><BR>-
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Re:Fucktard
<blockquote> <i>Getting real tired of reading this left-wing bullshit. Give one iota of proof please. THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IS NOT THAT POWERFUL. In the end it won't be some freigner that brings this country down. It'll be dome dumbfuck like you thinking he knows better!</i> </blockquote><BR><BR>You see, everyone, what the right wing firebrands have to resort to? They don't have a calm, rational argument to make, so they resort to namecalling and hate speech. Harldy makes my job difficult. I just make an observation and let the right-wingers bury themselves under a pile of invectives.<BR><BR>I refer to the presidential administration as the "Bush Admin," hardly inflammatory, and this guy refers to me as "Fucktard." That's really persuasive. Wow, what a compelling argument. Your point is the more valid one because I'm a "fucktard."<BR><BR>As far as the proof you ask for, the post I'm replying to is proof enough. The US is trying to get someone sent over here to face charges related to internet crimes, so I don't see why it's so far fetched that they'd send someone abroad for the same reason. It certainly would put the fear of God into every American adult site operator, and it would win massive kudos from the AFA and Christian Coalition. Of course, making Christian websites available would also be a crime in the MIddle East, but there'd be an exception made in the law for that.
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Re:what
[Mark Hamill]  Luke be a Jedi tonight!
Just be a Jedi tonight!<br>
[Mark Hamill &amp; Backing Chorus]  Do it for Yoda while we serve our guests a soda!<br>
[Mark Hamill]  And do it for Chewie and the Ewoks, and all the other puppets<br>
[Mark Hamill &amp; Backing Chorus]  Luke, be a Jedi tonight!<br>
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Like 'His Dark Materials'
Rather surprisingly, they managed to turn the almost-as-complex His Dark Materials trilogy into what is, by all accounts, a fantastic stage show&nbsp;... I'll certainly be getting tickets to see this...
%
Re:Cant wait for some scenes...
When I picture that in mind I find it quite funny.  I can imagine the stage dark and the crowd all hushed, with Gollum staring into his palm, singing 'Why oh why did this ring find meeeeeeeeeeee' in a deep operatic voice (ie non Gollum-esque).
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I think we all know what is coming
<a HREF="http://homepage.mac.com/evanbaumgardner/iMovieTheater6.html" TITLE="mac.com">This.</A> <p>/Obvious
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Re:I think we all know what is coming
Hmmm, these kind of sites are becoming a nuisance.<BR><BR>Sorry, that website uses broken embed tags and Windows-specific registry CLSIDs to point to quicktime player. I don't have a "registry" or a "quick time" player. For those of us who choose our own browser helper applications (instead of it being decided by a "registry") here is the relevant <a HREF="http://homepage.mac.com/evanbaumgardner/.Movies/bbaggins.mov" TITLE="mac.com">link</A>.<BR>
%
LOTR, the... musical?
I can't imagine elves jumping around a stage singing about forest like or whatever...
%
LOTR: Riverdance
After all, Legolas's antics were not far off....<br> <br>
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Checks watch...
Nope.  April 1st isn't for another 18 days.  Nice try though.<BR><BR>-S
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Re:Ruined.
I once read an interview with comic book author Alan Moore in which the interviewer asked him how he felt about his comics being "ruined" by dismal, piece-of-crap movie adaptations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the like).<BR><BR>He responded. "Ruined my books? No, they're fine, they're right over there on the shelf."<BR><BR>I feel the same way about this. Certainly it has every chance of being a dismal, laughable production, but the original source material has survived worse lambasting already at the hands of the Harvard Lampoon and a thousand poor imitators writing ten-book doorstop epics in homage to Tolkien. The original LOTR material is going to be just fine.
%
Re:um.. great?
<i>"Shakespeare can put all England on stage in Henry IV, I am confident that we can put on the whole of Middle Earth..."</i><BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Oy veh...Note that putting the story of Henry IV on stage took Shakespeare two very long plays-- <i>Henry IV</i> parts one and two together are over seven hours, uncut. Even then, the scope of the plays is much smaller than the War of the Ring. Yes, the historical backdrop of <i>Henry IV</i> is a series of wars and rebellions that cover most of England as well as Brittany, but the realy story is much smaller. It's about the (contested) king, his son Hal, and a few other key court figures suh as Hotspur and Falstaff. The real plot is the search for honor by these characters, NOT the wars and the fate of the kingdom. Anyway, to cover the full scope of the war/political story, you have to include two more plays, <i>Richard II</i> and <i>Henry V</i>, which would bring the stage running time to over twelve hours.<BR><BR>So Shakespeare did <b>NOT</b> put "all England" on stage in Henry IV...he was much too smart to try that. Pity the West End producers can't learn from the Bard.<BR>
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OOohhh... give it a rest...
How long before people start having a backlash against LOTRs?<BR><BR>4000 recent awards, the actors are plastered on every talk show, multiple console games, 3 recent highly pushed movies --shouldn't they just take a breather?<BR><BR>Wouldn't waiting a few years and then bringing the story back in a different format be refreshing for the story?<BR><BR>Davak<BR>
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Sarah Brightman/Nathan Lane ....
My vote for:

Sarah Brightman as Arwen

Nathan Lane as Sam

Deborah Gibson as Galadriel

Micheal Crawford as Gandalf

Choosing Frodo would be difficult

Are the actors going to have be on their kness the whole performance?
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The Nazgul Chorus
(Courtesy of Daily Telegraph)<BR>I met him down in Mordor, he gave me the eye -<BR>Da do Sauron-ron, da do Sauron,<BR>And then he nearly slayed me, what a wicked guy!<BR>Da do Sauron-ron, da do Sauron.
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Sounds good
Now I'm no musical afficionado, having only been to one London musical - <a HREF="http://www.queenonline.com/wewillrockyou/" TITLE="queenonline.com">We Will Rock You</A> - but there's a certain magic (no pun intended) I experienced that can not be acheived through film (that's not to say films are inferior, it's more of an apples and oranges comparison).  With a big budget like that, I'm sure the stage props, effects and costumes will be fantastic and will portray the LOTR trilogy through yet another medium.  Sure, the purists might complain that Bombadil's left foot was uncharacteristically two inches too far to the right, but for the fans that actually see natural light, then they'll be in for a treat.<br> <br>
What's next, a ten part HBO miniseries?
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Pushing it...
Adapting LotR to anything is a bold undertaking. Peter Jackson took the enormous risk to turn it into a movie trilogy, and succeeded, IMO, in the sense that apparently most avoid Tolkien fans seem to approve of his work, even though there are concerns about "streamlining" or "cutting corners" here and there. And I think Jackson deserves an enormous amount of credit for this.<BR><BR>Now, 10 hours of movies are yet quite different from 3 hours of musical. To bring this to the stage in a successful manner, a lot of streamlining and cutting will have to be done, with a tremendous risk of falling short of the original. I will admit that I was sceptical about the movies, and Jackson proved me wrong. I am even more sceptical here.<BR><BR>There are times where it's wise not to tempt fate, and pass on some challenges, instead of taking your shot at it and fail. Come up with your own original story and knockyourself out, no problem.   But taint the work of Tolkien with a failed attempt of an adaptation, and people will remember you for a long time...<BR>
%
Oh no
I think I speak for everyone here when I say "That's the worst idea I've ever heard, and I don't want to play."<BR><BR>Hobbit's scampering about on the stage in a chorus line?<BR><BR>The deadly dance of the orcs?<BR><BR>Sam's love ballad to Frodo?<BR><BR>I can just envision Gandalf dancing, tossing away his hat and staff for a top hat and cane.<BR><BR>There are so many reasons this needs to NOT happen.
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Paging Joss Whedon...
(Gandalf) <BR>
I've got a theory, that it's a Nazgul, A dancing Nazgul. No, something isn't right there.
<P>
(Frodo)<BR>
I've got a theory, that Bilbo is dreamin' And we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare.
<P>
(Aragorn)<BR>
I've got a theory we should work this out.
<P>
(The Fellowship except Gandalf)<BR>
It's getting eerie, what's this cheery singing all about?
<P>
(Gimli)<BR>
It could be Elves, some evil Elves. Which is ridiculous 'cause Elves they were persecuted wicked good and loved Middle Earth and fairie power and I'll be over here.
<P>
(Merry)<BR>
I've got a theory, it could be lunchtime... <BR>[crickets chirping]
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Best number in the show is....
<p>...when the Fellowship sings "The Hills are Alive..." on the slopes of Carhadras?
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The Inevitable Silmarillion Comment
I think Mel Gibson ought to direct a musical of "The Silmarillion" done entirely in Elvish. Estimated running time: 13 hours!<BR><BR>That ought to cure the general public of their love for Tolkien's material in a big hurry!
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Rankin-Bass adaptations were musicals
Rankin-Bass did "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King".  Remember the toe-tappers "Where there's a whip, there's a way" and "Frodo of the Nine Fingers"?  And that Godawful warbling singer?<BR><BR>I actually think it could be decent if it's done right.  Professional stage people know how to grab the audience.  I've been to several Broadway shows that I just knew would be crap, and 30 minutes in, I was swinging my feet and humming along just like everybody else.  Musicals have a different vocabulary than film, and they just might pull it off.<BR><BR>
%
I smell trouble.
I can only envision one of two possibilities for how this is going to turn out:  (1) The most amazing thing ever, or (2) The biggest flop in the history of the musical theatre.
<p>
The problem is that, for the most part, really <i>epic</i> stories are simply not endemic to the musical theatre art form.  How many have there been?  And, of those, how many have truly been successful?  Even theatre epics, like <i>Show Boat</i> or <i>Les Miserables</i> are still pretty small in scope when compared to something <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> because they focus pretty pointedly on <i>people</i>, whereas <i>LOTR</i> is about big events, big stakes, and even larger plot points.
<p>
Shrinking the story down to where it would it would on the musical stage, and still leave room for the things every play needs (exposition, characterization, and, probably most importantly, <em>songs</em>) would be almost impossible under the best circumstances, and most of the people involved simply aren't of the <i>proven</i> calibre necessary to pull all this off.  Sure, A.R. Rahman had some kind of a success with <i>Bombay Dreams</i>, but what in Matthew Warchus's resume suggests he's even remotely qualified to handle something on this scale?  He's talented, yes, but not with material of this size.  His solution to staging one of Broadway's most traditionally opulent musicals--<i>Follies</i>--on Broadway in 2001 was to <i>strip away</i> everything that made it so oversized and, in its original production, so thrilling.  If you do that with <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, what's left?
<p>
So, while I wish them the best of luck, they're really facing a difficult struggle, and I'm not sure they will be able to pull it off.  Under most circumstances, I would suggest that they rework the idea as an opera, or perhaps a series of operas, but of course, Richard Wagner already did that with <i>Der Ring des Nibeluengen</i>, and the less comparison <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> has with that, the better, I think.  It will be unavoidable in any case, but critics (and audiences) will have their knives sharpened going <i>into</i> this, and it will have to be even that much better to win them over.  I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy the challenges facing the creators of this musical.
%
One of the first cases
One of the first cases of this was when Tom's Hardware (then only a startup site) reviewed a Riva TNT and said it was twice as fast as 3DFX voodoo (obviously untrue, but it's unknown if Nvidia paid him anything to say this). Eventually 3DFX picked up on this and demanded that Tom changes it, which he did.<BR><BR>But the damage was already done.
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Re:One of the first cases
<i> One of the first cases of this was when Tom's Hardware (then only a startup site) reviewed a Riva TNT and said it was twice as fast as 3DFX voodoo (obviously untrue, but it's unknown if Nvidia paid him anything to say this). Eventually 3DFX picked up on this and demanded that Tom changes it, which he did.</i> <br> <br>

Here are the reviews from Tom's site:<br> <br>

<a HREF="http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/19990105/index.html" TITLE="tomshardware.com">Comparison of Graphics Cards with NVIDIA's RIVA TNT Chip</A> <br>

<a HREF="http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/19980723/index.html" TITLE="tomshardware.com">Addendum to Banshee, Savage3D and TNT Preview</A> <br>

<a HREF="http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/19980818/index.html" TITLE="tomshardware.com">New 3D Chips - Banshee, G200, RIVA TNT And Savage3D</A> <br>

<a HREF="http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/19980720/index.html" TITLE="tomshardware.com">Preview of 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee, S3 Savage3D and NVIDIA RIVA TNT</A> <br>

<br>

I only skimmed the articles, but he doesn't seem to be saying that the TNT is twice as fast.  The last article concludes:<br> <br>

"NVIDIA's RIVA TNT is not the new wonder chip as some people may have expected. However it is sticking up very well against its toughest competitors from 3Dfx. 3Dfx has still got an edge in applications that are available in a Glide version and in games that don't strain the CPU as much, thus giving a dual Voodoo2 configuration the chance to show its power. However, there are many occasions where TNT is at least as good as single Voodoo2, dual Voodoo2 and certainly better than Voodoo Banshee."<br> <br>

Seems fairly objective to me.  Did I miss something?  Maybe the articles have been edited?
%
They talk about journalistic integrity....
They talk about journalistic integrity as in not changing reviews to get ad dollars, then go on to talk about the HardOCP deal.  I am not going to get into that, because my comments get bitchslapped down whenever I support a company that is not in&nbsp;/.'s good graces.<BR><BR>They should have picked a more relevant example, like Tom's Hardware and the Intel P3 fiasco where the 1.13's had a critical error in them.  It really seems like they were just trying to get mentioned on Slashdot, and seem like a really good review site.
%
Mistakes, damned mistakes and statistics
Influence will always occur, never take a single opinion as fact. But unless there is a dramatic smoking gun, memo, email, hidden video of the editor at Bill's place on the lake sipping a pina colada (yea, sure), proof will be very hard to come by. Look at a long track record of information, and if you see a lot of ads by one vendor, grain of salt time.
%
What?? Reviews are rigged?
The manufacturers are dictating what is revealed so they don't look bad?? Who would have ever thought.. I'm shocked.
%
Hmmm
<i>We're not too concerned about our "uniques" a day, but rather our "bookmarks" and "returns".</i> <p>
That's an odd thing to say before posting to Slashdot.
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Re:Hmmm
but rather our "bookmarks" and "returns".<BR><BR>For you window's folk out there, lete me translate:<BR><BR>but rather our "My Favorites" and "Carrage Returns and Line Feeds".<BR><BR>
%
As a former sports editor for a newspaper...
I understand the need to hsve integrity in what is reported. Any person trying to stifle a collection of facts (which is what HardOCP had/has), should be strung up like a traitor.<br> <br>
Now, if there was libel or untruth involved, I'm the first to say they need to be punished... but... don't try to hide your own faults by beating up on a  website. Nobody likes a sore loser (or vaporware company).<br> <br>
[cheapplug]For some journalistic goodness, go to <a HREF="http://oldos.org/" TITLE="oldos.org">oldos.org</A>
%
This isn't news.
We already read the same exact thing, but in different words and headline over a week ago. This new article brings nothing new to the table except for a slightly misleading headline.<BR><BR>The's forum.**<BR><BR>** - Not that a 15 year old is less intelligent than anyone else, just young people tend to not have their heads glued on straight when it comes to business and law. Wisdom takes time to build.
%
Wisdom takes time to build
<i>Wisdom takes time to build.</i><BR><BR>How old was Strom Thurmond when he died?<BR><BR>
%
Umm.. anything new here?
I read that article, thinking it would be about how NVidia pushes aroud web review sites.  No, it was YET ANOTHER REHASH that infinium (a company with no hardware to display) going after [H]ardOCP.
<p>
Don't bother, it's just VL trying to push up their ad revenue.
%
Infinium a hardware vendor?
Isn't the whole point of the lawsuit that they aren't?
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Re:Infinium a hardware vendor?
I can't think of a more unfortunate name than the "phantom console" other than the "vaporware console"... seriously who comes up with this stuff.<BR><BR>If they tried to sue me I'd call their bluff (the "phantom lawsuit") and just put quotation marks around all my stuff to humiliate them:<BR><BR>The ceo of the company making the *yet to be released* "phantom" console has asked us to take down our review of their business. We suggest the best thing they could do would be to give us a "phantom" console to review, but something is really haunting their company - because the "phantom console" has yet to be released to the public. Finding their "phantom offices" is also a difficult task. But perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on the CEO, he could be a visionary - this "phantom of his imagination" could bring the gaming world to it's knees. All they need to do is set a new "phantom release date" and stick to it like the slime the ghosts leave when the pass through walls in Ghost Busters. Then we will all be able to enjoy the phantoms<BR><BR>humiliation complete, lawsuit aborted, insert credit for more life.
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Many Other Riscs for Website Owners
I have never got a request from a hardware manufacturer to beautify anything related to them at <a HREF="http://tuxmobil.org/" TITLE="tuxmobil.org">TuxMobil - GNAA/Linux On Mobile Computers</A>. There are other legal issues, which may occure in an instant. For example if some lawyer accuses a website owner not to obey certain legal requirements. At least in some countries (e.g. Germany) a dedicated law for internet content exists.
%
not only hardware...
How about Oracle asking for MySQL to remove their stats from the <a HREF="http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/MySQL_Benchmarks.html" TITLE="mysql.com">benchmark table</A>  <br> <br>"Note that Oracle is not included because they asked to be removed. All Oracle benchmarks have to be passed by Oracle! We believe that makes Oracle benchmarks very biased because the above benchmarks are supposed to show what a standard installation can do for a single client."
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Re:not only hardware...
<EM>We believe that makes Oracle benchmarks very biased because the above benchmarks are supposed to show what a standard installation can do for a single client.</EM>
<P>Of course they are <B>very biased</B>. Since it rather hard to find any real-life application of RDBMS serving "sigle client".

<P>&nbsp;<EM>/sarcasm mode on</EM> <BR>
And we all know how good MySQL at serving multiple clients with complex queries at once.<BR>&nbsp;<EM>/sarcasm mode off</EM>

<P>Neat quote tho, at least when you understand who <EM>is</EM> really biased&nbsp;:)

<P>/usd
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Nothing new.
This is nothing new. The difference is that when a company makes threats such as this, is now it is likely to backfire. Now, some of the people that they threaten on the web are as likely to publicize the threat as to give in to the threat.<p><BR>In the old days, if you advertise enough the paper would automatically <i>tweek</i> the review. Infoworld had done this with a compiler review. If you read the review, then looked at the score card, you would notice that they did not match.<BR>
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Anyone know of any honest review sites?
If this sort of thing is common, can anyone recommend any review sites that they trust?
<br> <br>
--<br>
<a HREF="http://www.dealsites.net/index.php?module=MyHeadlines&amp;func=view&amp;myh=menu&amp;gid=22&amp;pid=2&amp;eid=504&amp;tid=300&amp;context=" TITLE="dealsites.net">Real-time deal updates</A>
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Re:Anyone know of any honest review sites?
While its not exactly reviewing all the latest and greatest, <a HREF="http://www.dansdata.com/" TITLE="dansdata.com">www.dansdata.com</A> is my favorite "independent" web review site. He usually sticks to cameras, small computer parts, and other neat electronics, but he's a no BS kinda guy who will say something sucks when it does.
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Re:Anyone know of any honest review sites?
<i>"Dans Data / will say something sucks when it does."</i><BR><BR>Just had to buy some speakers for work, and there was only one site which ignored the manufacturers' claims of power rating, and talked instead about the wattage available from the power supply, the likely efficiency, and the ratings printed on the back of each driver.  Most other sites seem to take specifications at face-value.<BR><BR>In fact, Dans Data has been known to:<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Tell you a speaker gives 20W output even when it's described as "250W total system power"<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Actually test CPU heatsinks with a resistive heater<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Relentlessly mock manufacturers who describe 10^9 bytes as a gigabyte<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Take <i>everything</i> apart<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Know enough about overclocking to laugh at people who do it badly<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Pick-up digital camera manufacturers for lying in their "megapixel" ratings (I think some of them count each colour in a pixel as a separate pixel?)<BR>
&nbsp; (-) <b>Write reviews in valid HTML that are all on one page, and use the full width of your browser window without Flash animations</b><BR>
&nbsp; (-) Test PC power supplies under load, and compare it with manufacturer specifications<BR>
&nbsp; (-) Get out the multimeter for pretty much everything, from LED flashlights to power supplies and batteries<BR><BR>And of course, the famous:<BR>
&nbsp; (-) debunking a load of wacko free-energy products and "this'll make your toaster healthier" new-age power connectors.<BR><BR>As Dan would say, "reccommended."<BR>
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Brilliant! One that works
1) Ad revenue created by page hits<BR>2) Post non-story to slashdot<BR>3) PROFIT!!!
%
quality control, vocab, integrity, laughing fits
<I>Manufacturer's demanding content changes is nothing new in the tech site community. </I>

<P>Grammar checks, perhaps?

<P>Ah, quality site.  Under the heatsink review section, "blow, suck" are used in the charts to describe positioning of fans.  Apparently "exhaust" and "intake" are Big Words.

<P>The article on HardOCP is hilarious:

<P> <I>Nobody likes a site that lies about a product just to suck up, right?</I>

<P>These guys have become masters of doublespeak.  Read any review and they consider "balanced" reviewing to mean "come up with some numbers to sell it, but whine about looks or included mounting hardware to seem balanced."  Then there's the "whine about something, but then tell readers it isn't a big deal".

<P>Further- you can't have any "integrity" if you accept advertising dollars from companies who are selling the very product you're reviewing.  Journalism 101- a course none of these bozos have ever attended.
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Abuse of Power Comes as no Surprise
unfortunately, this is <a HREF="http://www.snacc.mb.ca/news_releases/nr990508-abuseofpower.html" TITLE="snacc.mb.ca">nothing new</A>.<BR><BR>CBS
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I am appalled.
You mean that there is no journalistic ingrity out there anymore? Hooray and thank you, Fox News!
%
Google not  a validation of data
The reviewer said all data came from the manufacturer's public information &amp; Google. Finding it on Google doesn't validate the data.

You need to look at the site that Google sends you too, validate that it is a trustworthy site which has information that you can use.
%
Re:Google not a validation of data
Yes, that caught my eye too.  I find most of the hardware-review sites I read on Google, for that matter.  And the whole <I>point</I> of all of this is: how <I>do</I> you "validate that it is a trustworthy site"?  <I>Any</I> site?  Answer: you don't.  Everything on the Web is basically taken on faith or not at all, and you have to use your own judgment as to what is reliable and what is not.  But, really&nbsp;... that's the way things have been since the invention of written language.  I mean, how often have you heard the expression "You don't believe everything you read, do you?"  That is more true now than it ever was before.  When you think about it, back in the age of books (the old-fashioned non-battery-powered, non-backlit kind without a microprocessor), there was an editing and review process for virtually everything that was published.  That guaranteed a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than we have on the Web.  Yes, it's true&nbsp;... <I>anyone</I> can publish their works to the whole damn planet for the price of a free Web hosting account, and that is generally a good thing.  But that doesn't mean the quality or reliability of that material is any better:  on average it is quite the opposite in fact.
<BR> <BR>
The problem is that some (many, I think) people look at information found via Google as somehow having been vetted or approved by that organization.  How many users even grasp that once they click on a link on a Google results page they are no longer even <I>connected</I> to Google? Google is primarily an index, not a repository (yes, I know they cache pages but they don't create or maintain that information.)  The World Wide Web is the repository, and like most public receptacles it is largely full of crap.
%
The other way round
On the other hand vendors couldn't care less if we demand changes.  I still remember when Oracle issued a press release claiming it was the inventor of relational databases.  I immediately fired back demanding a retraction.  They never did, several years after you could still find the aforesaid release in their database.<BR><BR>Now imagine if we asked them to stop lying about SQL being relational...
%
It is an extrememly widespread practice.
Just to say so up front, I write for The Inquirer (www.theinquirer.net), and do a fair amount of hardware reviews. I also go to the trade shows and the like, and talk to other journalists. You learn a lot there.<BR><BR>You also go to parties afterwards and people get very drunk. You learn a lot more there&nbsp;:). You learn even more if you do not drink. I don't.<BR><BR>The things you learn are open secrets, all the vendors know what is going on, and all the writers and reporters do also. Some employees may not know  thier bosses are not quite clean, but that is another issue.<BR><BR>I was talking to several DRAM vendors about benchmarking at CES, and was told, by name, and usually by several sources that certain web sites would not review a product without advertising dollars. In fact, advertising dollars could significantly skew the results of a review.<BR><BR>These were not offhand comments like 'we think that they don't like us', it was direct 'If we don't cough up the cash, they won't review us'. Several different sources in the DRAM and other industries told me similar things, and for the most part, 2 or 3 names kept coming up. No, I will not name them.<BR><BR>If you follow the hardware sites, you can pretty much pick up who is 'dirty'. When 5 sites review the same new video card, all with the same *yawn* benchmarks, and 4 get one result, and the 5th gets a different result, and praises the 'loser' in the commentary, what do you think is going on? I mean, it is rather obvious.<BR><BR>The flip side of it is I get accused of bias just about ever day. Other than it getting rather old, it is usually not worth commenting on. I get accused of loving AMD, loving Intel, and being a liberal weenie and a republican nazi over the same article.<BR><BR>The truth of the matter is I get what hardware I can from who I can, and write about it. I bitch out HP all the time for blatant management stupidity, but I can't recall ever reviewing one of their products badly. I buy a lot of them with my own money. Strangely, they won't talk to me.<BR><BR>I also review a lot of AMD gear, and almost no Intel stuff. Why? AMD sends me things when I ask, without any pain or hoops to jump through. Intel won't. I know they can, friends in the industry have intel sending truckloads of chips to them on offhand remarks. I would almost say they don't like me or want me near thier products. If I ever do get one, I will write about it fairly though, I think that is what they are afraid of.<BR><BR>Last but not least, I know at least 3 of The Inq writers, me included, have been offered money to do something, or not do something. All the ones that I have heard of turned them down. At CES in January, a vendor who I know and like tried to hand me a wad of bills. I (politely) turned him down, even though it was probably more money than I had seen in a month, and it would have made the difference between another day of dollar menu items and water, and the not totally cheap buffets in vegas. Others have been offered 6 digits to do things. Personally, I don't know why he turned that one down.<BR><BR>What it all comes down to is ethics. Once yousell out, you are done. How can you trust them ever again? Easy you can't. That is why I turned down the money, and why the site puts reporting first. If it were any other way, I would be gone.<BR><BR>Other sites make other decisions, and they quickly get the reputations that they deserve. The community knows, and if you look closely, you can pick out who is clean fairly easily, it isn't all that hard.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; -Charlie
%
ATI does the same
ATI has been doing a similar thing.
<P>
The issue arose when ATI failed to offer support for MS's XP-Media Center Edition (MCE) until more than 2 years after the rest of the tuner vendors did so.
<P>
In Oct 2003, ATI announced "support" for MCE in 2 ways: a "hardware encoder" card, the eHomeWonder, and drivers for existing AIW cards, called "Encode", a software MPEG encoder.
<P>
A public Beta was started with just 15 members, and the performance of Encode was abyssmal, if it ran at all.
<P>
Public discussion ensued at several sites concerning if ATI was even serious about MCE support, or if they were going to intentionally screw with MCE to instead support their own PVR solution; MMC.
<P>
The folks at ATI threatened the owners/moderators/webmasters at several sites to CENSOR FORUM COMMENTS that revealed ATIs piss-poor customer support (if you bought a $400 video card that was supposed to work with MCE because the vendor said it would, but then ATI refused to release the drivers, wouldn't you be pissed off when the makers of numerous $60 tuners provide drivers for free?).
<P>
ATI still won't release drivers.
<P>
Rage3D STILL censors posts that go into any detail about ATI shortcomings whenever ATI calls to complain.
<P>
Even the MICROSOFT NEWSGROUPS (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter) are censored upon ATI request when the posts detail how ATI has utterly failed to bring out a MCE solution that works.
<P>
ATI's "Encode" solution for AIW cards was used by just one OEM and results are not very good compared to other tuners. their eHW card was not selected by ANY large OEMs and ATI has resorted to selling this "OEM-only" card through the "Grey Market"
<P>
ATI's sales success with tuners in the MCE arena is really bad.  Even vendors who go to ATI for video cards turn and run away from ATI tuners and buy those that actually work like Hauppague and Avermedia.
<P>
And HDTV?  The new ATI HDTV Wonder is nothing new. The other manufacturers have offered similar performance for 2 years+.  But ATI releases the new card to much fanfare despite the fact they are 2 years behind the times. Again, posts stating this are CENSORED AT ATI DEMAND from numerous enthusiast websites.
<P>
And when anybody complains about the function of ATI tuners, the crappy ATI support, links to working Encode drivers, or discusses ATIs strategy in depth, ATI responds by intimidating and CENSORING user forums, gets the webmasters to "Ban" anti-ATI posters, and basically subverts the public discussion intent of open forums.
<P>
So while in the Hard OCP case, companies may use crazy lawsuits, in the real world, all most companies need to do (like ATI does) is threaten the website owners that they won't get any more goodies to play with and they will lose advertising, and "POOF!" whatever the vendor doesn't like is gone into the ether of internet revisionist history!
<P>
%
stuff that matters &amp; corepirate nazi sponsorsh
it can't help but be buyassed? not unlike the moon/mars/bars shot.<BR><BR>consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready to witness the disempowerment of unprecedented evile.<BR><BR>
%
bogus article
puh-leaze.  The viper article is obviously just<BR>a corroboration of the original, attempting to<BR>keep attention on it (and borrow some of that<BR>to get attention for itself).  Infinium labs is<BR>bogus?  yawn, nothing to see here&nbsp;...<BR><BR>I say that because there's nothing particularly<BR>insidious going on here.  We have a disreputable<BR>manufacturer who's been called out; not, as the<BR>article tries to imply, some industry wide hush<BR>phenomenon.  It's just sensationalism.<BR><BR>Wake me when viper labs shuts down site operations.<BR>(They don't even have good copy editors.)
%
Where do they get their sample units?
Just for starters, notice that all the hardware sites get their test units from the manufacturers.  In other words, they call the manu and say 'please send me a free hard drive to test for a review'.  The manu then tries out 5 units to find the one that works best and sends it.<BR><BR>Consumers Reports, on the other hand, goes to the store and buys a random unit, same as you or I might.<BR><BR>Personally, I trust www.storagereview.com, but they do the same thing.
%
Tom's Hardware &amp; Deathstars
<a HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/" TITLE="tomshardware.com">Tom's Hardware</A> they test.  With the money that Tom's Hardware has made from advertising on its site (from reader views), they should be doing the same.<BR><BR>Don't take my word for it.  Check the dates of when the Deathstar stories first appeared.  Then check the hardware reviews on Tom's Hardware.  Not just hard drive reviews.  Check reviews of other hardware related or dependent upon hard drive speed to get some benchmarks or results.  Then see what hard drives are used in the benchmarks, and in the review gear.<BR><BR>While some of their readers went down in flames, others were announcing that the there was a problem, and they continued on as if nothing was wrong.  They may have acknowledged the problem in a small story or two iirc (maybe not even that), but they continued using the hard drives in their review gear, without a footnote or warning about them.<BR><BR>Why?
%
Re:Pre-emptive anti-slashdotting
GEEZ, atleast include the proper links. Or were you just rushing to get that karma?<br> <br>
Change your content, or else: Manufacturer's demanding content changes is nothing new in the tech site community. We take a look at this topic, including one very public example that started in the past three weeks.<br> <br>

Date: March 15, 2004<br>
Manufacturer: N/A<br>
Written By: Hubert Wong<br> <BR>

Just under a year ago, we provided some insight on the inner
workings of <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/14/1553216&mode=thread&tid=137&threshold=0/state.shtml" TITLE="slashdot.org">running a tech
site</A>. Yes, there are thousands of sites out there, and despite
the diversity, there are several constants in our universe...
costs, advertising, readership, and most important of all, integrity.
<p>Running a site, especially a tech site, isn't free and there
are plenty of costs involved. Everything from the hardware purchases
(not <i>everything</i> is free, which is a general misconception
I think), to the server and bandwidth... it all has a price. </p>
<p>This is where advertising comes in. If the site is lucky enough,
advertising will net a nice income each month, but for a greater
number of owners, they'll be lucky if it helps them break even.</p>
<p>Of course, an advertiser is not going to consider a site that
doesn't meet their traffic requirements. Readership is what makes
our world go round. Without our loyal readers, VL wouldn't be
where it is today, and I would say that the same goes for the
majority of sites out there.</p>
<p>Casual readers come and go, but a loyal reader is somebody that
means a lot to a site. It's common knowledge that most sites track
their traffic. This gives us an idea of trends, and how to cater
our content. We're not too concerned about our uniques
a day, but rather our bookmarks and returns.
People who bookmark and/or return multiple times a day make up
a site's readership. Uniques are new visitors who either stop
and go, or decide to stay. What turns a unique visitor into a
regular reader? Content? Yes. Attention to detail? Sure thing.
Integrity? Nobody likes a site that lies about a product just
to suck up, right?</p>
<p>Granted, the last point isn't something that is respected by
a great number of sites (the actual number is more than you think),
but the site's I do frequent on a regular basis (Ed. Note: Including
our own&nbsp;:D) do try hard to stick with their journalistic integrity.
There are instances though where manufacturers will try to influence
a site's review. Sadly, this happens quite often, and it becomes
a problem when this influence attempts to change a
writer's perception of the product. This is something site owners
need to deal with constantly, and yes, here at VL we've been asked
to have a change of heart on more than one occasion.
Errors or omissions happen, and we're more than happy to make
amendments, but as a reader, you can rest assured knowing we'll
never mislead you because somebody asked us to so they can improve
sales.</p>
<p>Luckily, most Tier-1 manufacturers; i.e., the ones who have a
good amount of exposure within the enthusiast community, do respect
a journalist's right for free speech. Sure, even some of the big
dogs take issue with what we in the community say, but that's
the price of exposing yourself with press releases. Whether a
product is released and performs less than expected, or<P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100428&amp;threshold=0&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=137&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8561703">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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Re:Pre-emptive anti-slashdotting
The one from the logged in poster  is a faithful reproduction of the article. The anonymous coward one mentions cowboyneal and male body parts.<BR><BR>That probably explains why the moderation was done the way it was far more the the stated author of the article.
%
A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
So why should we start counting an even smaller "planet"?  Pluto gets grandfathered in, and that's it.
%
Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
I say we put up a huge sign next to the Sun that says "You must be at least this big (insert huge red line) to ride this ride."
%
Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
Comets are snowballs; asteroids are rocks. Oversimplification, but you get the idea.
%
Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
<I>"asteroids are rocks"</I><BR><BR>We should use this for the demarkation between "asteroid" and "planet."  An asteroid is one big chunk of rock.  A planet is a bunch of little rocks held together by their own gravity.<BR><BR>If Pluto primarily orbits the sun and it's dense enough to hold on to an atmosphere from time to time, why shouldn't it be considered a planet?
%
Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
<i> Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.</i><BR><BR>Frankly, I don't understand this line of reasoning.  Why does it matter, with regards to whether something is a "planet" or not, whether that thing is bigger than, for example, our moon?<BR><BR>And "asteroid"? Pluto is <i>far, far</i> larger than anything currently considered an "asteroid".<BR><BR>Jupiter and Saturn <i>both</i> have moons that are bigger than Mercury.  Do you not consider Mercury to be a "planet", either?<BR><BR>What if Jupiter had a moon bigger than Earth? That's not unimaginable; would Earth then not be a "planet"? In fact, would then nothing be a "planet" except Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune?<BR><BR>I frankly don't see what's wrong with (something like) a "planet" being a non-star that's orbiting (directly) around a star.  Sure, that makes for some seriously small "planets" relative to what we're used to, but at least it's not an arbitrary and useless definition like (no offense) yours.<BR><BR>And anyway, if you want to add back in your preferred amount of arbitraryness, you can always start referring to "major planets", "minor planets", and so forth.
%
Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
<blockquote>
<p>Quoth grandparent: <i>Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.</i>

<p>Quoth parent: <i>Frankly, I don't understand this line of reasoning. Why does it matter, with regards to whether something is a "planet" or not, whether that thing is bigger than, for example, our moon?</i>
</blockquote>

<p>I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.

<p>Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.

<p>In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.

<p>In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.

<p>But what do I know? IANAA.
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Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
<I>Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. </I><BR><BR>Actually, no.  When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit.  When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with.  The discovery of Pluto was an accident.
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Re:A lot of astronomers don't want to count Pluto
<P> <I>IMO, Pluto should </I>[shouldn't?]<I> be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.</I> </P>

An interesting point, though to be fair, its an arbitrary cutoff. There are moons elswhere in our solar system larger than Mercury, which is indisputably a planet, for example. Also its worth pointing out that our moon is large enough that it and Earth are sometimes called a double planet. Consider this, Luna does not orbit Earth as near the equator as is usual among most other moons. Also, peculiar to all 138 known moons with the exception of Charon, it possesses an orbit where the effect of the Sun's gravity is greater than that of  Earth's. Without their host planets, they would float off, wheareas the moon would continue orbiting the sun quite contently.
%
Escape velocity
<blockquote> <i>Without their host planets, they would float off, wheareas the moon would continue orbiting the sun quite contently.</i> </blockquote> <p>

I have been interested in Astronomy since I was about six years old.
Just over forty years.  I have heard what you suggest before -- but only in the last few years.  And I don't understand it any more this time than I did on the earlier occasions.<p>

Frankly, I strongly suspect it is a false factoid, like that the internet was built to survive a Nuclear War.  I strongly suspect it is a bullshit meme that keep being repeated because it sounds cool, but is completely false.<p>

Pray explain what you mean when you say the other 138 moons would <b> <i>float off</i> </b>?<p>

I am trying to do the "thought experiment" of silently, quietly erasing the principals of those moons, mass and all.  I am finding this difficult to do.  I don't believe there is any way this could occur, in our Universe.<p>

So, instead I imagined doing something to  accelerate a moon, any moon, to the escape velocity of its principal.  What happens then?  Well, the object accelerated to just beyond a planet's escape velocity will assume an orbit very similar to that of the Planet it just escaped from.  Sometime in the last couple of years ago there was a flap about a small
<a HREF="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/15/1749240&amp;mode=nested&amp;tid=160" TITLE="slashdot.org">
object</A> that seemed to have been temporarily captured in the Earth-Moon system.  But it turned out to be NASA space debris.  It appeared to be the discarded upper stage of an Apollo moon shot.
%
A decision based on Science, or Politics?
Is this a decision based on Science?  Or is it based on Politics and emotion?<p>

Did you know that in 1998 Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, got his State's largest Lake, Lake Champlain, to be reclassified as the
<a HREF="http://www.dencities.com/champlain.html" TITLE="dencities.com">
6th Great Lake?</A>  At least as far as the awarding of researh grants.  Being considered a "Great Lake" made the academic institutions in his constituency eligible to apply for certain research grants.<p>

There is talk of sending a probe to Pluto.  Is it possible that it is easier to sell a probe to "planet Pluto" than to send one to Kuiper-belt object Pluto?<p>

I remember, back in the days when I tuned in to debates as to which newsgroups should be created, the big debate as to whether a new group should be talk.acquaria, rec.acquaria or sci.acquaria.<p>

In Leahy's defence, these were environmental research grants, and I should probably assume he added this line to the bill to protect his constituent's natural environment -- not for the petty partisan purposes.
%
Picture of new planet:
<p>
Here----&gt;     .
<p>
%
Woop de fucking do!
Cue conspiracy theories, New Age freaks, Planet X believers and other idiots. Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology
%
Re:Woop de fucking do!
Yeah, it'll probably cost a lot to reprint all the New Age ancient traditions to include a tenth planet.
%
Re:Woop de fucking do!
<blockquote> <p> <i>Yeah, it'll probably cost a lot to reprint all the New Age ancient traditions to include a tenth planet.</i> </p> </blockquote>

<p>Ten Planets?  You haven't been keeping up with here astrology has been going the last twenty-fove years.  I know astrologers who use <b>twenty</b> planets, most of which are imaginary. </p>

<p>This, of course, ignores the two hundred or so asteroids which new age astrologers use.  And don't forget the plethora of comets, meteor showers, deep space objects, and other things that may, or may not exist.</p>

<p>And to be sure that you haven't forgotten anything, there are umpteen "Arabic Parts", Midpoints, Orbs, harmonics, ( or something like that) etc.</p>

<p>In short, roughly 10^8 objects that no self-respecting astrologer would omit, if one believes in the validity of all the books on astrology that have been published.</p>
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Re:Woop de fucking do!
<I>Now, of course that seems like hogwash, and maybe it is, but it is pretty accurate</I> <BR>
<BR>
Bullshit.  If it's accurate, then you could come up with a test to prove it.  You could take astrological predictions for an individual based upon his house and compare them with random predictions.  These could then be compared for statistical validity, proving once and for all that astrology is accurate.<BR>
<BR>
Wow, if only someone would take the time to perform tests like these.  <a HREF="http://www.randi.org/" TITLE="randi.org">Maybe someone could even make a contest to offer money to anyone who could prove a fantastic claim like "astrology is accurate".</A> <BR>
<BR>
Get it through your skull.  It's PROVEN TO BE bullshit.  It's always been bullshit, and it will always be bullshit.  I've had close dealings with astrologists.  I know how some of what they say can seem to be more than just coincidence, but that's all it is -- coincidence and psychology.  It's got nothing to do with anyone's "house" or "fate".  It's all just bullshit.  Don't be a sucker. <BR>
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Re:Woop de fucking do!
Wanna know what will REALLY give the conspiracy theorists, New Age freaks, etc? "Sedna" is "Andes" spelled backwards! Everyone knows the advanced Inca civilization lived in the Andes mountains, and there are more than enough wacky theories about the Incas involving aliens and whatnot. Oooh...why is an Inuit god named after backwards-Andes...are the Inuits actually Inca refugees? They're close the Pole, too, and there are already crazy theories about a hole to the interior of the earth where advanced civilizations live, and the Eskimos are somehow related....<BR><BR>Yeah, can't imagine a worse name, really. Backwards-spelled stuff is pure gold in the conspiracy community.
%
Astrology = Syncretic Religion
<I>Still, at least this discovery has the redeeming quality of completely fucking up astrology.</I>
<BR> <BR>
Astrology doesn't work that way. <BR> <BR>
Astrology is <a HREF="http://www.google.com/search?q=syncretic+religion&amp;hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;start=20&amp;sa=N" TITLE="google.com">syncretic religion</A> -- it readily (and inevitably) incorporates new influences.
<BR> <BR>
Like an amoeba, astrology engulfs everything it touches.
<BR> <BR>
In this sense, astrology is rather like paranoia: everything pertains, everything is part of the Big Picture.
<BR> <BR>
Sedna won't fuck up astrology. On the contrary, astrologers will eagerly seize on the idea of this new planet, treating Sedna as one more vacuole in the amoeba.
<BR> <BR>
-kgj
%
Re:How could
Because you have to be looking at the right place at the right time.  Do you have any idea how vast a volume of space we're talking about?
%
Re:How could
Not to mention that in the Hubble's field of vision, a local planet would be moving much faster than a star millions of AUs out.  Imagine looking through binoculars at your sexy neighbor sunbathing in her (or his) yard.  You might not see the gnat flying a foot in front of you, because you're not focusing there, so it would just be a blurry fuzz, possibly ignored by the eye if visible at all.
<P>
The binoculars also limit or eliminate local vision while in use, obscuring the approach of your spouse/mother and a disapproving hand. .&nbsp;.:)
%
Re:How could
It's always been hard to see distant planets because they don't emit light.  Hubble can see distant galaxies because they contain lots of luminous objects.
%
I wonder what is so important....
I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday.  Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?
<br> <br>
--<br>
<a HREF="http://www.dealsites.net/index.php?module=MyHeadlines&amp;func=view&amp;myh=menu&amp;gid=22&amp;pid=2&amp;eid=504&amp;tid=300&amp;context=" TITLE="dealsites.net">Real-time deal updates</A>
%
Re:I wonder what is so important....
It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.<BR><BR>The reason being that news outlets are not at full capacity during the weekends, so any news announced over the weekend won't get as much coverage. If NASA announced the news today, it will be covered on the Sunday evening news, and never again since that piece of news was already done, even when not many saw it.<BR><BR>You can notice this practice when someone famous dies over a weekend. There will be an immediate announcement saying that the person is missing or very ill or something of the sort, then make the announcement on Monday.
%
Re:I wonder what is so important....
<i>
It's a standard rule of Public Relations. Never announce anything between Friday at 4pm till Monday at 8am.
</i> <p>
Unless, of course, it's something you have to announce for some reason but don't <i>want</i> most people to hear.  Then late Friday afternoon is the perfect time to announce it.  Politicians do this a lot.  It would probably be quite instructive to review Friday late-afternoon press releases from the White House, for the last two or three decades.
%
Re:I wonder what is so important....
"<i>I wonder what is so important that NASA is going to wait until Monday. Maybe they will be unveiling something else at the same time?</i>"<BR><BR>It's the monthly bug-report announcement.  "A local root vulnerability has been found in the astrology community.  NASA rates it as non-critical"<BR>
%
whew!
Thank god I am out of elementary school.  Memorizing 9 planets was hard enough, but 10!  They have got to be kidding.
%
Re:whew!
My very educated mother just sent us nine pizzas, sucka - Mr. T
%
Re:Back to grade school for retraining...
Actually, they switched back in 1999; Pluto is again further away than Neptune.
%
Re:Back to grade school for retraining...
Correction - Neptune was farther from Pluto from <a HREF="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970326c.html" TITLE="nasa.gov">January 21, 1979 to Feb. 11, 1999</A> but at this time Pluto is farther from the sun than Neptune.<BR><BR>Of course, there's debate as to whether Pluto-Charon is a planet with a moon, or a double planet...<BR><BR>- Thomas;<BR><BR>
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Re:Back to grade school for retraining...
There is a simple way to decide if something is a moon or double planet.  Look where the two focal points for the elipses that describe their orbits are.
<p>
If both focal points for the orbit are contained within the volume of one body, or if one focal point is contained within the volume of one body and the other focal point outside of both bodies, then the smaller object is a moon of the larger.
<p>
If both focal points are outside the volume of both bodies, or if one focal point is within the volume of one body and the other focal point within the other body, then the pair of objects should be considered a double planet.
<p>
So Pluto/Charon, following this reasoning, should be considered a double planet.
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Re:What, no more Roman gods?
They might have chosen the name Sedna because the object is in the Kuiper Belt. If I recall correctly, the naming convention for Kuiper Belt Objects is that of creation deities.

Sedna is the most important deity to the Inuit and plays a vital role in one creation tale, what with her parents chopping off her fingers and those fingers turning into various aquatic animals.
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for comparison purposes:
Pluto is 2300 km diameter, ranges from 4.3 to 7.4 billion km from the sun.<BR><BR><a HREF="http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/pluto/statistics.html" TITLE="ucar.edu">http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/pluto/stat<nobr>i<wbr></nobr> stics.html</A>
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It's a Kuiper object...
... and the last I heard was that it was about the size of Charon. I doubt it will ever be recognised as a planet - we already have Quaoar out there and swarms of other little Plutinos.

<p>Whether Pluto is 'really' a planet or just a big Kuiper object seems to be a silly argument. Even if it's not justifiable, we'll call Pluto a planet out of tradition.
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Re:It's a Kuiper object...
No. Charon is slightly smaller than Quaoar.

<p>Sedna is over <b>4 times</b> the size (volume) of Quaoar.

<p>Whether it's a planet <i>is</i> a silly argument, but even so, "we already have Quaoar" is really irrelevant.
<p>
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Planet is not a useful category.
The concept of Planets should no longer be regarded as a formal (as opposed to colloquial) classification. We have four rocky inners, four gassy outers, and a vast number of planetismals. Forming a group of the first two classes, with or without a few of the last, is a false classification.
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Re:It's a Kuiper object...
The question becomes even more convolved once we move outside the solar system, since we now know of a wide diversity of systems, of which our own solar system is only one particular instance. (And perhaps not even typical at that.) We know that there are objects extending all the way down from massive stars (around 100 Msun) to hydrogen-burning stars like our sun to brown dwarfs to  planets. Clearly any definition of  a planet must apply not only to our solar system, but also to these extrasolar systems. Some of these systems are much like our own (for instance, they may contain a brown dwarf orbiting a star, or a planet orbiting a star), and some (including a few systems of low enough mass to qualify as a planet) are "free-floaters" -- just sitting out there by themselves in space.
<p>
I think ultimately the question is whether there is a <i>single</i> continuous  "initial mass function" of isolated objects or not. The best idea as to how stars acquire their initial mass is that turbulence in the interstellar medium, which exists on all scales, establishes a power-law distribution of initial masses. Every once in a while, you get a very strong shock which passes by inside a giant molecular cloud and forces the collapse of a large region which then goes on to form a massive star. But more typically, you form stars more like our sun. And just as rare as massive collapses are very small mass ones which go on to form isolated brown dwarfs and free-floating planets. If this model holds up to be true, then we are all mincing words in our definitions of isolated systems, since they are all manifestations of the same universal formation process.
<p>
However, to avoid the difficult question of formation mechanisms, an IAU working group of some of the most respected people in the field established a <a HREF="http://www.ciw.edu/boss/IAU/div3/wgesp/definition.html" TITLE="ciw.edu">working definition</A> to define <i>by fiat</i> what it means to be  a brown dwarf, and a planet. Extrasolar "planets" are those objects orbiting a star which are beneath the deteurium-burning limit -- regardless of how they are formed. "Brown dwarfs" are defined to be those which burn deuterium but not lithium, and "sub-brown dwarfs" (NOT free-floating planets!) are defined to be those isolated objects which do not burn deuterium. Even the working group itself admitted that this definition was not satisfying to a single member of the group, and so it is likely it will be replaced at a later time with something more physically-motivated. The "planet/planetismal/KBO" distinction was pushed back to our own solar system, since it will be some time before anyone sees anything that small in another system.
<p>

Also  of interest is the following link, which gives a history of previous claims for additional planetary members of our solar system :
<a HREF="http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/hypo.html" TITLE="arizona.edu">SEDS</A>.
<p>
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What happened to the naming convetion?
I thought planets were Roman gods. It's not even like we've run out of them. We can still find Vulcan (Mulciber if you want to avoid rabit Trekkies), Juno, Minerva, Apollo (You can call this one Phoebus if you want to avoid confusing it with space probes), Diana, Vesta.<BR><BR>And that's before you start getting slightly obscure ones like Janus, Bacchus (Or Liber), Fanus, Quirinus, Pomona, or Vertumnus.
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Re:What happened to the naming convetion?
IANAAP, but Vulcan is already reserved, it was a theoretical planet in the early 20th century that would be closer into the Sun that Mercury's orbit that would account for irregularities in Mercury's orbital path.  There was actually no planet and Mercury's behavior is proof of the special theory of relativity (IIRC).<BR><BR>I'd presume that for historical reasons Vulcan would be reserved.  Also recall that theres lots of trans pluto pluto sized objects that have names, I forget what the naming mechanism is for them, but I think they're roman.
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Re:What happened to the naming convetion?
The precession of Mercury's orbit is explained by the <em>general</em> theory of relativity, not the special theory.  The <em>special</em> theory explains the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment.
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Re:What happened to the naming convetion?
Wasn't 'Apollo' considered the sun.  Remember, this wasn't just a 'naming convention' but actual mythology.  Apollo drove the chariot of the sun across the sky.  Mars, the god of war, appeared in certain places at certain times, same with Venus.
<BR>
Now that Roman mythology isn't really considered religion (outside of Berkeley) it can be a nice tradition.  I mean, it's not lik the Inuit have really contributed to Western Culture except for, I guess, hockey and lacrosse.
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Inuit Contributions
Hockey was invented somewhere in Europe or European North America in the 19th century. Lacrosse was invented by Indians near the St. Lawrence and is played on grass rather than snow, so I doubt the Inuit were involved.<BR><BR>Inuit inventions include snowshoes, toboggans, dogsleds, kayaks, toggle harpoons, and various other tools for hunting and travelling in the North as well as snow and ice civil engineering techniques. Pretty impressive, I'd say, for a culture with almost no wood, rock, or metal. They've probably contributed as much as any other non-Eurasian colonialised culture, and they make some really cool art.
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Re:I claim it
You can only call interplanetary dibs if you can see the planet as you call it.  Just like calling shotgun.<BR><BR>
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There could be a lot of stuff out there
Out in the
<a HREF="http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/kboc.htm" TITLE="arizona.edu">
Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud</A>
there are thought to be as many as one trillion objects - most small 1 to 10 km chucks of ice.
<br> <br>
The really interesting question is, what is the mass distribution ? (I.e., how does the number of objects scale with their mass ?) This is basically unconstrained by real data. All such cosmic mass distributions are steep, but many (for example, planets in the Solar System, Asteroids in the Asteroid belt) are dominated by the most massive bodies.
<br> <br>
If this holds true in the Oort cloud, in particular, there could be some pretty big objects. Even a Jupiter sized object might be able to hide from the Infrared surveys (the best way of detecting such an object).
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10th planet is more fun so it is in
Screws up astrology and that can only be a good thing. Lets add one every 2-3 years and watch them squirm.
<p>Anyway something 2000km in diameter is hardly small. Aren't astoroids that could kill earth just a couple of kilometers accross?
<p>Anyway excluding it is sizeist. Can't have that. If you are going to classify keep it simple. Object larger then a rock orbetting the sun and being close to round. I think that is what most people consider a planet.
<p>So welcome sedna.
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Not a problem yet
It won't be an issue until they find a Kuiper object that is bigger than Pluto.  Then they'll have an awkward situation.  Making Pluto a planet when this bigger object isn't one doesn't make sense; nobody wants to add a new planet, because in retrospect it was a mistake to make Pluto a planet, and adding another Kuiper object would just compound it; and removing Pluto from the list of planets offends tradition.<BR><BR>Everyone wants to push this off as long as possible, so if the new object is really smaller than Pluto, they'll breathe a sigh of relief and go on with things as they are.
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I wish NASA was better at PR..
First off, I was really pissed off at NASA and the media outlets for the scant coverage of the mission results concerning water on mars. All we got was a 4 minute introduction and one panelist into the release and it was back to the CNN/FOX 30 minute cycle of endless Pro-Bush news bits and Iraq coverage. Luckily, I have the NASA TV channel on satellite, so I was able to flip over -- but for the &gt;95% of americans without NASA tv, they missed out on an hour's worth of enlightening details of Mars, straight from scientists and not tabloid writers with no understanding of science.<BR><BR>Now, this release isn't even going to be televised. The only initial outlet is a conference call for reporters only.<BR><BR>I'm ashamed of NASA and I am ashamed of our media coverage of science. When I was a kid, every space shuttle launch was televised. Taking 10-30 minutes of time out of my day to watch the occasional launch helped inspire me to think above the quagmire I was born into, to know there was something greater. Kids today get MTV and 24 hour news spin channels in 30 minute loops.<BR><BR>But hey, at least they get a nice, fast Internet and ~225 national channels of garbage via satellite.
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Umm...Mars?
<i> don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I'm kind of let down by the fact that our most interesting space story for awhile now is that we MAY have a 10th planet in our solar system.</i><BR><BR>Umm...what?  The past few months have been *spectacularly* exciting from a space point of view.  We have two probes that successfully landed on Mars and have found strong evidence that Mars had liquid brine at one point.  We have a ton of pictures from the surface to look at, and are expecting tons of findings, papers, and theories based on probe data that's been returned.<BR><BR>And while, yes, the classification may not be interesting, the fact that we discovered a new, sizeable chunk of matter in our solar system is not small stuff either.
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If I remember
There was a formula for predicting orbital paths that was related to Fibbunaci's sequence, I wonder if sedna falls into the sequence?
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Bode's Law
That would be <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodes_law" TITLE="wikipedia.org">Bode's Law</A>. It is wiewed as more of a coincidence than a law these days.<BR><BR>According to my hung over calculations Sedna is 67 AUs out, which is not that far off from the 77.6 that Bode predicts, but not really close either.
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Non-Roman?  Okay, community protest time!
Sedna?  No.  Plenty of people in this thread
have complained about two facts - One, our
planets have names derived from the <I>Roman</I>,
not Inuit, panthon.  And two, we already have a
planet named after a sea-god, ie, Neptune.<BR>
<BR>
So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant
attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community
refer to the tenth planet as <B>Nox</B>, the
<I>Roman</I> goddess of night.  Since it lies
the furthest from the sun, that actually fits
it, in a descriptive sense.<BR>
<BR>
Sedna... Whatever.  Remember, we hear about
this stuff <I>months</I> before your typical
Fox news junkie, and people tend to respect
us as sources of information.  So spread the
word - We have a new, tenth planet, named
<B>Nox</B>.  Sedna?  Nope, they must have heard
wrong.  Nox.  Nox?  Nox!<BR>
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I think Lectra would be a far better name...
for obvious reasons...
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on being a planet or something less...
<p>My former advisor here at UC Berkeley, Gibor Basri, has a neat way of discriminating between planets and the lesser (comets, asteroids, etc.).  His idea is that if the object has enough self-gravity to force it into a spherical shape, it's a planet... if it doesn't (like Mars' "moons"), it's something less.

<p>Here's a snipet:
<blockquote>
<p>How can this be resolved? A consensus is slowly developing (I believe) for the following solution. We can first define what we mean by "planetary mass", and base this only on physical characteristics. Then we can include circumstance into the definition of "planet". I propose the following three definitions:

<p>FUSOR - <i>an object that achieves core fusion during its lifetime.</i>

<p>PLANEMO - <i>a round non-fusor.</i>

<p>PLANET - <i>a planemo orbiting a fusor.</i>

<p>[...]
</blockquote>

read on for his <a HREF="http://astron.berkeley.edu/~basri/defineplanet/Mercury.htm" TITLE="berkeley.edu">full article</A>.

<blockquote>
The following is a draft of an article now published in the Nov/Dec 2003 issue of
Mercury. Draft of Mar. 20, 2003.
<br>

Defining "Planet"



by Gibor Basri


Univ. of California, Berkeley

<p> <br>Even before they were civilized, people looked into the sky and
recognized different celestial objects. The Sun defined daytime, and the
stars provided a fixed background of faint, twinkling lights at night.
Among them moved the Moon, and a few special steadier lights. The Greeks
called those which moved "planets" (it is worth noting that the Sun and
Moon were originally included, since motion against the stars was the defining
characteristic). Most cultures have an analogous word for these "wanderers".
Both the stars and the planets were thought to revolve around the Earth.

<p>After the Copernican Revolution, we recognize the Moon as the only body
that orbits the Earth. The Sun is a very nearby example of a star, and
the visible planets are other large bodies that orbit the Sun. We see them
by reflected sunlight, while stars produce their own visible light. This
understanding yields the dictionary (lay public) definition of the word
"planet": <i>a large heavenly body that shines by reflected light and orbits
the Sun</i>. In the past century we gained much understanding of our Solar
System, and even visited most of the planets robotically. Yet today, professional
astronomers find themselves unable to agree upon a succinct definition
of "planet". Replacing "the Sun" with "a star" is obviously necessary now
that many extrasolar planets have been discovered, but the problem goes
well beyond that.

<p>Two recent controversies that found their way to the popular press illustrate
further difficulties. One is the "Pluto controversy". This arose because
of the discovery of a large belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. They are
the outer remains of the original protoplanetary disk. This "Kuiper Belt"
is a natural outcome of incomplete planet formation in the outer Solar
System, and is the source of some of the comets we see. As Kuiper Belt
objects (KBOs) were discovered in increasing numbers in the 1990s, including
a population of "Plutinos" which share Pluto's orbital characteristics
(somewhat different from the other planets), some astronomers began to
suggest that Pluto itself (which shares many properties with, but is the largest
KBO known so far) does not qualify as a planet. The recent discoveries
of Varuna and Quaoar (which are KBOs half the size of Pluto, like its moon
Charon) may presage the time when we find another Pluto-sized KBO.

<p>The current situation is much like that in the early 1800s, when the
first asteroids were discovered. Ceres was originally hailed as the fifth
planet, particularly since one in its position was expected from "Bode's
Law" of planetary spacings. It lost its status within a few years, when
other members of the asteroid belt began turning up. Herschel, who had
been the only person to have discovered a new planet before then, aided
the effort to demote Ceres. The arguments against its planetary status
were 1) that it is much smaller</BLOCKQUOTE><P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100430&amp;threshold=0&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=134&amp;tid=160&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8562302">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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naming convention
Doesn't this violate the naming convention of using Roman god names for planets and then appropriate names for the moons.  For example, Diemos and Phobos were children of Mars, Jupiter is surrounded by moons named for his lovers.  Should this planet follow a similar convention and stick with a Roman god or goddess?  Perhaps Proserpina, because she's close to Pluto (although really that would be an appropriate name for a moon if Pluto can grab a second one).  Perhaps Janus, as god of doorways and bounderies would be appropriate to mark this orbit as the boundary of our solar system.
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Pictureframe PC
This is very similar to a <a HREF="http://mini-itx.com/projects/pictureframepc/" TITLE="mini-itx.com">Mini-ITX</A> project I saw a while ago.<br> <br>The main difference is, the Mini-ITX page shows you how everything is layed out inside the picture frame.
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A bit OTT
That is so over the top. Creating an entire PC just to show a picture? That's 200 for the screen and another 200 for the computer. On top of that they are recommending a hard disk?<BR><a HREF="http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~brejc8/board_frame/" TITLE="man.ac.uk">My version</A> uses a 5 quid FPGA and some junk thrown away equipment. The LCD was a 12" 9bit colour from some factory and a fiend of a friend offered them to us for a quid each. And the RAM is an old 1Mb 30simm (I have about 3kg of these). There you go. A picture displaying system with no need for a huge/noisy PC power supply (runs from one of those 12v ac/dc plug converters). The images can be sent to it via a serial cable (two wires internally so it can be passed over any old cable you have lying around).<BR>
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A bit OTT indeed :-)
<i> <blockquote>... a <b>fiend</b> of a friend offered them to us for a quid each.</blockquote> </i><BR><BR>Man, you're hard on your friends!<BR><BR>Simon.<BR>
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Somebody Didn't Read GNAA/Linux Toys
It doesn't cost 400 quid to put together an LCD picture frame. PopSci is taking a different route from <a HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764525085/qid=1079290275/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/103-5531538-3593447?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846" TITLE="amazon.com">GNAA/Linux Toys</A> to make sure it'll work.
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Re:Somebody Didn't Read GNAA/Linux Toys
Of course, it seems a bit overboard to use GNAA/Linux for something that's only running one process. I've got an old P75 laptop (and it only uses a cord, no brick, too!), and it has an 8.4"x6.3"x640x480x16-bit screen, and an 810MB HDD. It'll run FreeDOS just fine, with a VESA TSR and LxPic (designed for HPLX palmtops, but works great on just about anything that runs DOS). After all, it does fairly well with Win95 (except with only 16MB RAM, it's dog slow). Flip the screen around, devise a latch, make a frame around it, and you've got a good picture frame. I suggest NOT matting it, as the choice of mat depends on the picture, and if it's changing pictures...
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Missing the point
<I>Creating an entire PC just to show a picture? </I>

<P>I agree, but you're missing most of the point- it's not the hardware, it's the concept; low-tech is best.

<UL>
<LI>framing a picture means it was good enough to warrant said treatment.  The whole point of putting up a picture frame is lost if all you show are crap photos of your dog or whatnot.  Further, if I have a great photo, I want it to always be there, or at least be instantly accessible.  No easy way to do that here...
<LI>the LCD panel won't last very long being on all day, every day; the backlights are rated for a few thousand hours tops.
<LI>they're horrible for viewing at anything other than dead-on; gamma and contrast change drastically from side to side or above/below
<LI>they need a power cord, which is fugly
<LI>they have vastly inferior resolution; high-resolution LCD panels aren't available anywhere except in laptops.  A standard print from even, say, Walmart's digital photo lab machine...is at least 300dpi, more like 600dpi.
<LI>Archival photo paper, with UV-blocking glass, mounted with acid-free materials, will last decades.  This toy will last about 2-3 years if it's lucky.  Maybe 5.
<LI>at the temperatures involved (the mini-itx site lists a figure around 44C) none of the components will last very long.  Hard drives especially don't like heat...
</UL>
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Re:Missing the point
After I RTFA I see he <i>did</i> include 802.11, but he didn't know how to make it work.<p>Really, is this story telling us anything a&nbsp;/. reader couldn't do cheaper and better?
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Still Wanted:
Open form-factor laptop specification.<BR><BR>I *can't* believe that companies like Viewsonic and Asus have not gotten together to create a chassis and DC power spec so that we can all build/repair our own laptops.  Things like LCD panels could be purchased affordably at Best Buy or Circuit Shitty if this was the case.
%
A similar Project using an old PowerBook Duo...
can be found <a HREF="http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalframe/" TITLE="applefritter.com">here</A>.
%
Hard drive?
You should at least boot if from a Compact Flash card<BR><BR>silent, no heat, droppable (kinda)<BR><BR>I've got no references for GNAA/Linux but FreeBSD has a sectionin the <a HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/solid-state/index.html" TITLE="freebsd.org">Handbook</A> and bunch of scripts for the binaries you want. Well that's for non-X, my next stage of my project is trying to get my EPIA working in SVGA mode or, if I get a big enough CF card (I think a 256Mb should work and they are about $50 on ebay). I'm trying for an in car system. I already got it playing mp3s from the CD Rom 35 seconds from power.<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
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A solution in search of a problem?
Hey, there's nothing like converting a low-res display and computer hardware to make a high-tech $300+ version of a $10 picture frame.
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Re:A solution in search of a problem?
Uh, except that it changes, moves, or could even be interactive given some sort of input/stimulus.
%
Wireless, eh?
<blockquote> <i>
With the basic functionality up and running, you can start to play around with expansion options. My first project was to give the frame a wireless connection so I could transfer new pictures without taking it off the wall.
</i> </blockquote>

<p>Wargoatseing, anyone?</p>
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Re:Just go out and buy one...
<i>This project is only economical if you have old laptops sitting around. If that's the case, you probably won't have enough CPU/RAM to install the latest version of debian.</i><BR><BR>I have built picture frames out of old pentium-class laptops ('bout $100 off ebay, or cheaper if you shop around your own town), and they have no problems running the latest Debian.  Just don't run X!<BR><BR>I use <a HREF="http://www.svgalib.org/rus/zgv/" TITLE="svgalib.org">zgv</A> to cycle through the pictures.  Works great, *and* is less filling.
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Re:Visa Commercial
Except it would be a Mastercard commercial.
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Yawn - Done way back.
Check these links for a Duo (Laptop) mod to a picture frame. I remember this site as the first I saw. I have an old 486 and a 64MB compaq flash just waiting for a conversion.<BR><BR>http://www.applefritter.com/hacks/duodigitalframe<BR>http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/728<BR><BR>Duo Digital Frame by James Roos
%
The possibilities
Put in a tiny camera and have a portrait image with eyes that follow the viewer. That would be pretty creepy. Or add some speakers, and and have it "jump out and scream" at the viewer when they get close, like those trick images on the web.
%
$500 is waaaay too much..
This is probably the worst article I've seen posted on making digital picture frames. I apologize if that hurts anyone's feelings, but a lot more thinking could have gone into the design and parts.<BR><BR>For starters, why not go to the flea market or ebay and pick up an ancient laptop? This gives you a cpu, motherboard, hard drive, network interface, and a display. I was able to find old, functional laptops for under <a HREF="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&amp;item=2792632029&amp;category=4606" TITLE="ebay.com">$150</A> on ebay.<BR><BR>I would pull the motherboard and mount it against the back of the display, then order a premium, custom built frame from a picture frame shop for ~$25-$100. You could be cheap and build your own, but $100 should get something nice and elegant. Another option would be to just pick up a pre-built frame and put in an insert cut to your spec.<BR><BR>For people not up to the skill level of configuring GNAA/Linux, they could simply boot to Windows and set their SHELL variable to a screen saver's executable for cycling pictures. There is one built-in to XP, but many freebies are out there for previous builds of Windows.<BR><BR>Personally, I would opt for a wireless NIC and mount a share where the pictures are to be stored. That way I could simply copy new pictures over to the system from my main computer.
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Nano-ITX
The upcoming <a HREF="http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&amp;file=article&amp;sid=87" TITLE="epiacenter.com">Nano-ITX</A> boards should offer even more flexibility for this type of design..   It's smaller, takes less power, and runs cooler.  It also takes DC power, so you don't need to mess with the ATX -&gt; DC/DC converter stuff that the Mini-ITX requires (although, there is supposed to be a DC Mini-ITX board coming out).<BR><BR>The down-side is that these have been announced for several months, but are still not available for purchase.
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New Phrase?
Will people now start referring to "digitician's butt"?
%
Mechanics for the 21st century
Around this time a century ago, cars (or horseless carriages) were still rather unusual devices which few understood.  They were unreliable, and people were still getting used to the idea of owning them.  Eventually, their sprung up an occupation around maintaining these devices, and now we have many trained mechanics.  That's what computer repair people are becoming.
%
Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession.  I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard.
%
Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
But if you can throw a football, oh wow, put you on a pedestal. That's what education gets you...
%
Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
Wrong, wrong, wrong! While I agree that physical co-ordination is something some people are good at, and some people are bad at, I cannot go along with your crazed idea that education is something that <i>happens to someone</i> given enough time.<BR><BR>Schools, colleges, training courses etc. don't educate anyone. They provide an opportunity for people to learn. Some people will learn just enough to get by. Others will learn everything presented to them and more off their own bat. Yet others (me) will say "fuck this" and learn everything they need to know themselves whilst also earning some money. And some won't be able to keep up and will drop out and get a McJob.<BR><BR>Education is no guarantee of learning, but learning is a guarantee of education.
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Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
<p> <i>
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
</i> </p>

<p>
-- Mark Twain
</p>
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Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
We don't respect mechanics because we, and our friends, have been lied to by mechanics so many times. Either about what needs to be repaired, what they broke while they were repairing something else, etc.<BR><BR>If computer techs started pulling the same shit that mechanics have been pulling, taking severe advantage of their greater knowledge of the subject, computer techs are going to be just as disrespected.
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Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
You seem to be assuming that this is not happening already.  I wonder if that is true.  I would assume that like mechanics, computer techs will give misleading or wrong advice some of the time either out of ignorance or avarice.
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Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
<em>And for various reasons, we as a society don't really respect mechanics, as a profession. I wonder if some day those who fix computers will be held in a similar regard.</em><BR><BR>I was an on-site repair guy for a couple of local computer companies until about 9 years ago. Even then, most of the customers were untrusting and paranoid when dealing with such a service.<BR><BR>It wasn't unusual for someone to raise hell and demand a free copy of Windows 3.11 when the copy of DR DOS I hooked them up with a couple of years prior ceased to work in a new enviroment.<BR><BR>I figured it was a lot like customers not understanding my father, a former auto mechanic of 20+ years, when he would tell them the fuel pump died and it was their carburator they had replaced last time they were in the shop.<BR><BR>The thing I liked least about doing house calls, and the reason I stopped doing them, was the overly irate people taking their frustrations out on the guy who's trying to help them get their systems up at the least cost and greatest speed. Eventually, it seemed like 1/3 of all the clients I dealt with were angry, abusive people that other businesses had already refused to work with.<BR><BR>
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Re:Mechanics for the 21st century
Case in point.  My best friend is a very bright guy at things historical, political and...litoral?  No that's lakes...whatever the word is that means "things dealing with literature."  Essentially, a geek who's not good at math.  College educated with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Journalism.<BR><BR>He owns a landscaping company and a power equipment (professional mowers, edgers, etc) dealership.  A low-brow kind of field, right?  Absolutely...which is why he cleans up.  His competition in the landscaping industry is mostly rednecks with limited intelligence and poor personal hygiene.  Whom do you think the college educated property manager for an apartment complex is going to hire to maintain their property?  My friend the clean-cut collegian or the dirty hillbilly with the stained t-shirt and bloodshot doper eyes?  Hmmm...  Essentially, he's a big fish in a small pond, runs three landscaping crews and pulls in upwards of $200,000 per year.<BR><BR>Myself, I've got a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and I'm a wedding and portrait photographer.  Since photography has gone digital, my skills with all things electronic are extremely valuable.  The guys who have been shooting film for 20 years barely know how to work their digital cameras, maintain their computers, set up a website, and figure out enough photoshop to retouch a photo or use a sepia-toned plug-in.  I make more as a photographer than I ever would as an engineer, I'm my own boss, and work from home.<BR><BR>Don't think that just because you're a techie, you have to work in the computer industry.  It's one thing to build tools...it's something else to use them.
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Re:It's Okay, I guess
Exactly.<br>
I am not a Nerd. I am a "digitician"&nbsp;:)
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Clocks
Finally, microwave and VCR clocks across the country won't be flashing 12:00!
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I know you need to be paid for your time, but...
<I>The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.</I><BR><BR>Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers? Perhaps it's not that different from the mechanic that wanted to charge me $100 to replace a stripped wheel stud (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour).
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
I wouldn't say that it's ridiculous.
<BR>
<BR>
People don't understand computers. To many, either AOL works, or it doesn't. And, these people <B>don't</B> want to understand computers.
<BR>
<BR>
Just like all people are capable of changing their own oil (or in your case, a wheel stud), it doesn't mean it's something that they want to learn how to do.
<BR>
<BR>
However, just like with vehicles, there is always going to be price gougers (and those who do shoddy fixes to more extensive problems). In the realm of computers, with so few people understanding the depths of their operating systems, price gouging is even easier, as how man people really know what, "Kernel32.dll has performed an illegal operation (Insert long string of hex here)," means, or even how to find a solution.
<BR>
<BR>
With vehicles, at least most individuals have a basic understanding (IE, they know that when a mechanic tell them the timing belt needs to be replaced but he's pointing to the rear differential that something is up.)
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.<BR><BR>4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.<BR><BR>I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.<BR><BR>You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)<BR><BR>LK
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
Consider this: training, amount of time, and tools. Think of how ugly it is to uninstall a nasty worm virus; think of the effort it takes to salvage files from a flaky/dying hard drive, plus rebuilding the machine. Think of the cost of all the diagnostic software/tools you might have, even if its just some Norton Utilities, a MS Technet subscription, and an AV program.
<br> <br>
If a lawyer or a plumber or an exterminator can charge $50-100/hour, a computer technician should be allowed to do the same.
<br> <br>
Technician skills are expensive. My company now maintains images of your hard drive. If you have a problem that can't be resolved within 30 minutes of trouble shooting, they take your laptop away, re-image a new laptop, and give it to you the next morning. Its not worth the recovery effort. Bad ofr people with desktop support skills (used to be LAN admins who did that stuff). Now a force of &gt;100 LAN admins across the Greater Toronto Area is less than 20 individuals.
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
All down to the cost of labour and the costs of running a business, I'm afraid.
<p>
I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in the UK, the cost of new PCs is making PC "repairs" uneconomic if the repairer wants to charge rates similar to those of plumbers and the like (to put some numbers on that, a typical rate for a plumber is 60GBP per hour, and a new PC costs from 300GBP, with monitor and preloaded copy of whatever the latest flavour of Windows is; how much work do you reckon can do in under 5 hours?)
<p>
Of course, this does discount the stupid and the penny-wise-pound-foolish, whom are probably the best cash cows out there for any business.
<p>
--
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
It also depends on what "repair" is.<BR><BR>"Repair" might mean that the computer won't boot up at all, and this person has their doctoral dissertation nearly complete on it.  Of course, they haven't made any backups...   It would easily be worth $800 to recover that data and get the computer up and running again.<BR><BR>For me, when it comes to working on people's computers, I basically tell them it will cost them $50/hour.  But also that I have an "hourly" cost for certain jobs.  From start to finish, installing windows and all their software may take more than 5 or 6 hours.  But a lot of that is just waiting.  So, for that job, I'll tell them it will be about 2 to 2 1/2 hours of billed time.
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
"Yeah, the whole computer needs an overhaul. Your modem is shot, and really, you might be able to get another 1,000 megs out of it, it's not too safe to be ridin' around on the internet like that. And while I was in there I noticed your processor is kind of old, we might want to go ahead and update that for ya. And with that comes driver updates and refits. Should have it by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Here's the estimate."<BR><BR>"500 dollars!?"<BR><BR>"Yes. Legally, I can't even let you take it home because of the modem."<BR><BR>"What's this at the bottom? Rust proofing? Collision insurance?"<BR><BR>
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer.  Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc.
$300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace?  I think they made the right choice.
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
There's this tale (many adapations exist I'm sure):<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is".<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The engineer responded briefly:<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One chalk mark: $1<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Knowing where to put it: $49,999<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
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Re:I know you need to be paid for your time, but..
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However: <BR> <BR>
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.<BR> <BR>
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.<BR> <BR>
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
<BR> <BR>
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy. <BR> <BR>
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist. <BR> <BR>The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT.
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Horizontal Business Model
I've always believed that GNAA/Linux/FOSS distributions would be a fantastic model for this sort of thin horizontal distributed economy. You have thousands, if not millions of GNAA/Linux savvy people out there who can make money on those around them who just want their computer to work for a specific purpose.<BR><BR>This beats the hell out of the centralized monopoly model. Who better to support your computer than someone who understands it intimately? If they cannot fix it, they can go to the author and ask them to fix it - an unlikely happenstance for the average user, but not so much for a "digitician".
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Finally!
Finally, a job that WON'T be outsources to India!!
*crosses fingers*
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Thank You!
Finally.  It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them.  People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't.  I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water.  Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade.  Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
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i.e. when techies get tired of working for free...
It's encouraging to see unemployeed techs finally taking advantage of all that time they spent fixing friends computers for free.  I know I'm usually the first one several of my friends and family call when their computer starts acting weird, and all they want to do is send email.<BR><BR>Now if somebody was really smart, they'd find a way to get partnered with the local Best Buy and could probably turn it into a full time job. You'd be amazed at how much people are willing to pay if you can bring some sanity to their assorted home electronics.  My mom loves the 3 page FAQ I made for her that goes step by step how to do everything with the home theatre system my Dad has. She used to not watch any DVDs just because she was scared to touch anything.
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Okay
I have a friend who went around charging 50 dollars to take the MS.Blaster worm off people's computers. This amateur computer repair field has great potential, as computers penetrate further and further into most bussinesses. Time is money, and paying some kid 50 bucks to fix a computer is often cheaper in the long run then spending 2 days doing it yourself.  I plan to do the very same thing with a local company over the summer break from school.
<BR>
I want to be a Digitician when I grow up.
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Certification or Licensing?
Just like *most* plumbers or electricians, shouldn't there be license granted by the state or other civic government for in-home techs?  I say ABSOLUTELY!<BR><BR>Consider the case where a so-called digitician shows up at grandma's house, does essentially nothing, and gets paid, then grandma, or her linux-loading, do-gooder grandson, should be able to file a grievence to have their license revoked.<BR><BR>Overall, there should be some type of code enforcement.(pun!=intended).<BR><BR>
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LiveCDs
I should charge more for checking all those damn boxes by hand in Ad-Aware 6.
<p>
I wonder if there are any tools that could make tasks like this easier, such as a LiveCD GNAA/Linux distro that included antivirus and spyware tools for cleaning up windows partitions? That would solve problems such as unidentified worms that disable antivirus software.
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what did you expect
<P>The computer is nothing special -- just another thing. You have plumbers and electicians, etc. Computer service is really just another semi-skilled trade that anyone could do if they wanted to invest a little time to learn, but they prefer to use their time in other pursuits.</P>
<P>I often pick up painting jobs for a few extra bucks (and because I like doing some manual labor from time to time). I don't think it's any different than doing basic computer service.</P>
<P>Isn't a goal of the computer field to have pooters so easy to use that anyone can do it? If I was feeling grumpy I would happily argue that most trades which the typical geek might describe as "lowly" or "pathetic" are actually more challenging than 90% of computer related tasks performed by conceited pricks in the IT field. And  the most conceited of the bunch never touch the 10% of work which required any degree of intelligence, but they are simply insecure fems who think that somehow working on a computer makes them better than others.</P>
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Except
Except unlike the other *ticians people find it acceptable to pay digiticians in cookies and soda.
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Stuff Digitician...
... the term is "hacker". A guy who makes computers do what they ought to do, whatever the circumstances.
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Low priority?
Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention.  Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention.
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Re:Low priority?
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important.<BR><BR>These problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
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Re:Low priority?
<i>But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?</i><BR><BR>So an asteroid could actually be the solution to these serious problems! I like your thinking.
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Re:Low priority?
<i>But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?</i><BR><BR>War would still be a crucial issue. We cannot allow a mineshaft gap.
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Re:Low priority?
<i>But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision?</i><BR><BR>When, or if? It's probably true that a major impact is a near certainty. But what's the time frame for that kind of certainty? 1000 years? 10,000 years?<BR><BR>On the other hand, the probability for significant famine, disease, and war is 100%. That is, those things are all happening, right now. And it seems that there's a very strong chance that these problems will get worse in the near future.<BR><BR>I don't know about you, but I'll take a 0.01% chance that an asteroid will land on my county over a 5% chance that SARS or HIV or some drug resistant bird flu will do me in prematurely.
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No, YOU don't understand stats
To say that probability of something uncertain happening is "50% No more, no less" is a classic trap in misunderstanding the meaning of probability. Because an event has two possible states (does occur, does not occur) does NOT mean the probability of it occurring is 50%...This is degenerate and wrong thinking in probability.  The best estimate of the probability of something happening is exactly equal to the rate at which that event occurred previously.  This is called the base rate or prior probability and is integral to Bayes' theorem (please see this).  Thus, if you flip a coin (of unknown fairness) 100 times and 41 of those flip come up heads, what's the best estimate of the probability that the next flip will be heads? 41%. <BR><BR>Anyway, there is a special distrubtion to describe the occurrence of random events in time (the Poisson distribution), but suffice it to say, the probability of an asteroid hitting the earth in the next decade is NOT 50%.  This would only be true if, in the past, an asteroid has hit the earth (on average) once every other decade.<BR><BR>
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Famine, Poverty, Disease...
None of our earth-borne problems are going to make one whit of difference if an asteroid hits us.<BR><BR>There won't be a welfare problem anymore, because <i>there won't be anyone left to be on welfare</i>.<BR><BR>Jim
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Re:Saving ourselves from famine, disease, war
<i>why should we realistically expect an end to famine, disease, war? They've been with us throughout history. Man has always wished to eliminate these woes -- yes they keep getting worse and worse.</i><BR><BR>This is an idiotic, self-perpetuating argument.  Just because something is, and has been for a long time, does not mean it is an unchangeable truth.<BR><BR>In this particular instance, consider this: the world is rapidly changing and is not the same as, say, during the Roman Empire, yet there is a lot of residual ideologies and beliefs left over from those times.  They are not set in stone, however...do not mistake them for "human nature."  There have been a lot of improvements to the world that should not be overlooked (civil rights movement, etc).<BR><BR>There are some people who are interested in actualizing change in the world.  Some have even <a HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565847032/qid=1079298897/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-6524647-4148139?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846" TITLE="amazon.com">written down their thoughts about it</A>.
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Defense from asteroids?
Could we eliminate any risk of being hit by an asteroid by reclassifying everything as a planet?
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Yep.
<p><BR>&gt; <i>The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.</i><BR><BR>Just like every other problem?<BR><BR>And even then, it isn't so much likely to be "meaningful" as to be "just enough to convince the public we're doing something about it".<p>
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Tractor beams
<i>gravitational tractor beams. </i><BR><BR>Personally I don't know why this wasn't thought of <i>first</i> before all those silly ideas like just blowing something up<BR><BR>A nice large tractor beam from a high orbiting satellite to repel or attract any asteroid or other thing that's going to hit the planet, and problem solved.<BR><BR>Of course, there's the technical side...
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This is a non-story
Come on, editors- this is news?  We have already researched laser technology, so SDI defense is available.  It should only take 2 or 3 turns to equip all of our cities with this technology.
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Stick with what works.
I think we should simply rely on <a HREF="http://www.neave.com/games/asteroids/" TITLE="neave.com">older technology</A> to solve this problem. Don't fix it if it ain't broke...<BR><BR>
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Bad idea?
Shortly before Carl Sagan died, he wrote an article in Parade Magazine about how he felt this was a bad idea.  His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit.  Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke.  Obviously he's looking well into the future.  But I think he has point.
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Perspective
Risks of dying in car: 1 in 100<BR>Risks of dying in plane:1 in 20,000<BR>Risks of dying from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000<BR><BR><a HREF="http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/asteroid_threat_020124.html" TITLE="space.com">Source</A><BR><BR>May I just get somebody to help me pay off my student loans and make sure that there is enough social security to cover my health when I get old?<BR><BR><B>AC</B>
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Re:Perspective
OTOH, perspective from the point of view of survival of human race/modern civilization:<BR><BR>Risks of extinction (of modern civilization) in car: 0 in 100<BR>Risks of extinction in plane:0 in 20,000<BR>Risks of extinction from asteroid 1 in 20,000 to 100,000<BR>
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Re:Famous last words
A water impact would be far worse than a land impact, according to the people who've tried to make estimates. A land impact would glow white for a long time and radiate much of the impact energy back into space. A water impact would dump much more energy into the atmosphere.<BR><BR>Though realistically, the most damaging place for an Tunguska-sized impact would be in the India-Pakistan area during a crisis, or just about any time in the Middle East. It could easily be mistaken at first for a nuclear explosion. All it would take would be one decision-maker jumping to a conclusion without waiting for the radiation readings, and even a small impact could trigger a horror that would make the twentieth century look good by comparison.<BR>
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Geo (or larger) Politics and the human condition
<BR>Back in April 2002, the UK government started to <a HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1937575.stm" TITLE="bbc.co.uk">fund a centre</A> studying both the near-earth-orbit rocks we know about, and ways of increasing awareness and detection rates, as well as investigating possible protection strategies.<BR><BR>Personally I think it's just playing at people-politics, at least in the form the UK has done it $600k isn't going to go very far, but it's a relatively cheap purchase of public goodwill... On the other hand, at the moment I'll take what we can get.<BR><BR>There's a tiny chance of life as we know it being destroyed. A really tiny chance, and one thing humans aren't good at is disaster-planning - even when the potential result is extinction, the "gut-feeling" is to say "it'll never happen", because none of us have any experience of it happening. This is short-sighted, we should be doing something.<BR><BR>Although I don't think there's any reason to panic about it, the last great ecosystem was destroyed by (perhaps two, perhaps 1) asteroid, as far as we know. Researching, thinking, creating plans would probably be a good idea, at least IMHO.<BR><BR>Simon
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A few related sites.....
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/Daily<nobr>N<wbr></nobr> ews/asteroid0107.html<BR><BR>http://personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga/I7.htm<BR><BR>http://home.att.net/~thehessians/asteroidstrike.h<nobr>t<wbr></nobr> ml<BR><BR>http://www.sandia.gov/media/comethit.htm<BR><BR>http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/crater.htm<nobr>l<wbr></nobr>
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The Tin Foil Hats Say
<a HREF="http://rense.com/general50/ec.htm" TITLE="rense.com">As seen in this article</A> featuring the testimony of Dr Carol Rosin. Dr Carol Rosin was the first woman corporate manager of Fairchild Industries and was spokesperson for Wernher Von Braun in the last years of his life. She founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space in Washington DC and has testified before Congress on many occasions about space based weapons. Von Braun revealed to Dr Rosin a plan to justify weapons in spaced based on hoaxing an extraterrestrial threat. She was also present at meetings in the '70s when the scenario for the Gulf War of the '90s was planned.
<ul> <i>
As practically a deathbed speech, he educated me about those concepts and who the players were in this game. He gave me the responsibility, since he was dying, of continuing this effort to prevent the weaponization of outer space.
<p>When Wernher Von Braun was dying of cancer, he asked me to be his spokesperson, to appear on occasions when he was too ill to speak. I did this. What was most interesting to me was a repetitive sentence that he said to me over and over again during the approximately four years that I had the opportunity to work with him.
<p>He said the strategy that was being used to educate the public and decision makers was to use scare tactics That was how we identify an enemy. The strategy that Wernher Von Braun taught me was that first the Russians are going to be considered to be the enemy. In fact, in 1974, they were the enemy, the identified enemy. We were told that they had "killer satellites". We were told that they were coming to get us and control us-that they were "Commies."
<p>
Then terrorists would be identified, and that was soon to follow. We heard a lot about terrorism. Then we were going to identify third-world country "crazies." We now call them Nations of Concern. But he said that would be the third enemy against whom we would build space-based weapons.

<p>The next enemy was asteroids. Now, at this point he kind of chuckled the first time he said it.
<P>
Asteroids- against asteroids we are going to build space-based weapons.
<p>
And the funniest one of all was what he called aliens, extraterrestrials. That would be the final scare. And over and over and over during the four years that I knew him and was giving speeches for him, he would bring up that last card.
<p>"And remember Carol, the last card is the alien card. We are going to have to build space-based weapons against aliens and all of it is a lie."
<p>
I think I was too naive at that time to know the seriousness of the nature of the spin that was being put on the system. And now, the pieces are starting to fall into place. We are building a space-based weapons system on a premise that is a lie, a spin. Wernher Von Braun was trying to hint that to me back in the early 70's and right up until the moment when he died in 1977.
</i> </ul>
Be sure your Tin Foil hats are well grounded
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I'd say it's overblown except
that almost nobody is really taking this seriously, so the lack of interest in space defense seems about right to me.  The human species has survived 2 million years without going the way of the dinosaur.  It seems like there are many reasons to not stress out about this:
<ul>
<li>Low risk/reward ratio, public money is much better spent elsewhere.  If someone else wants to spend <b>their</b> money on this, more power to them.
<li>Our technology is very rapidly advancing, especially relative to the amount of time that passes (on average) between significant asteroid hits.  100 years ago we were completely helpless.  50 years ago, we had nukes, but no missles that were even close to being able to deliver them, in another 50 or 100 years, this may be a yawner due to general technology advances.
</ul>
<p>
To be completely flippant (and yes, I do realize there is a risk, I just think it is relatively low)&nbsp;... boring!  I just hope this doesn't turn into another cause where misguided celebrities drive us into spending money on it disproportionally like certain trendy diseases.
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Need protection against ourselves
The odds of our civilization being destroyed by asteroid impact in the next few decades is really insignificant when compared to the odds that our advancing technology -- in the hands of still primitive minds -- <a HREF="http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html" TITLE="gmu.edu">kills us off</A> first.
<p>
It would be a <b>cosmic joke</b> for us to have made it these past hundreds of thousands of slow years, only to be wiped out by a dumb rock in the next ~30 years or so that matter most in our evolution to post-humanity.
<p>
--
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Nerdliness aside...
I will admit that as a general nerd and space geek (I own a telescope) <i>I am concerned</i> about the possibility of the human population getting wiped out by a large space-borne impact.<BR><BR>But isn't it sad that governments throw billions of dollars towards defense (from other humans) yet nobody is willing to invest in defense of the earth at large?<BR><BR>This is the kind of shit that makes us look awfully silly when the aliens come inspect the rubble after the impact.
%
Umm...
<i>The most disturbing message from the conference? 'It may take a celestial body hit to Earth' before governments take any meaningful steps to address this danger.</i>  <p>
Everyday something hits earth, comets, mini asteroids, space dust. Most burns up in the atmosphere, but every so often something makes it through (meteorites) and hits the surface. True most of these meteorites are about the size of a golf ball or smaller.
%
Remember basic lessons in probability
All these articles about impending doom -- asteroids, earthquakes, pandemics, etc. -- give one the idea that because we've gone a long time without one of these things happening, the chance that we'll have an occurrance is increasing. That shows a basic misunderstanding of probability. If you toss a fair coin and get heads 50 times in a row, the probability of getting heads the next time is still 50%.<BR><BR>We're not 'running out of time' just because we've gone a long time without a major impact. The chance of a major impact this year is exactly the same as it has been in each of the last million years.
%
GNAA/Linux
Will the computers run on linux?
%
Unfortunately, not likely
Though GNAA/Linux is very flexible, without all those licensing issues (go ahead and troll, SCO trolls) like Windows, it is highly unlikely that SBUX and HP are going to use it on this system for two reasons that I know of:

1. They are going to use TabletPC's for this, something GNAA/Linux has somewhat limited support for, particularly in the handwriting recognition aspect.
2. HP's provider of digital music is most likely going to be Apple, and this means a modified version of iTunes. Apple has not included GNAA/Linux support for anything.
%
Would it work?
Yes.  Would the prices be reasonable?  Doubtful.
%
Re:Would it work?
the prices are:<BR><BR>You get 5 tracks for $6.99 and $1 per each track after 5. With your CD you get a custom designed cardboard package with user designed 4 color insert) plus a four color image (and your CD title) printed on the CD itself (no sharpies used here).<BR><BR>
%
Music sharing may be legal in US too! 17 USC 1008
There is currently alot of controversy around the "sharing" of
digital music files over the objections of the copyright holders
(RIAA for short).  Some users feel guilt (occasionally shown as
defiance) over having received something valuable so cheaply.<P>

I'd like to calm the rhetoric.  Sure, common sense would indicate
the RIAA's copyrights have been violated.  But copyright has been
<i>heavily</i> legislated over the past century to the point that
common sense or common law is nearly absent.  It has such things
as compulsory licences and device royalties.  Morality should be
confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions
to intellectual property law.  It is disingenuous for the RIAA to
invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence
in crafting legislation.<P>

IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens,
legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL&nbsp;:) Apologies for a
US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in
all other common-law countries with different details.  There's an
excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at <a HREF="http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/index.html" TITLE="cornell.edu">Cornell</A>.
Chapter 10 covers  DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA .
Particularly interesting is: <p>

Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions...
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of
copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution
of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording
medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium,
or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device
or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical
recordings <P>

Simply breathtaking!  The words "this title" mean Title 17,
which contains all of US copyright law.  The first "based on"
means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence
("burglars tools").  The second "based on" means non-commercial
use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!<P>

The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers.
They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others.
But all is not [Guns'N'] roses.  The manufacturers of these recording
devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the
Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified.
There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management
System.  I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing
antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al.
But even if not, how does it affect me?<P>

The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving
music files to make recordings on a hard-disk.  Offering to
transmit music files might <b>not</b> be covered and fall under
the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service".
But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to
give a better interpretation including case precedents.  The <a HREF="http://www.gigalaw.com/library/riaa-diamond-1999-06-15.html" TITLE="gigalaw.com">
Diamond Rio MP3 player case </A> is probably relevant.  Is there a lawyer
in the house?<P>
%
iTunes
Given HP's recent relationship with Apple on a rebranded iPod, does that mean that 1) the tunes sold in starbucks will be AAC and/or 2) that iTunes will be involved?<BR><BR>
%
Re:iTunes
You can just burn your iTunes purchases to DVD or CD from the iTunes GUI. Check their website for instructions, if you need 'em. I keep my iTunes library separate from my general media, since I don't want copy protected AAC files getting mixed in with my other crap.<BR><BR>I can tell a difference in 192k and 128k. Can't tell anything between 192k and 320k unless there's a lot of ambient sounds, trumpets and other instruments in the mid to high end being played at once.  Mind you, in a silent room I hear a lot of high pitched distortion because I played the guitar too loud when I was a kid.<BR><BR>
%
Why get music in the real world?
I haven't been to a record store in years and I ain't going near starbucks for a CD. Physical distribution of music is over. Get used to it.
%
Re:Why get music in the real world?
Until P2P users or music download services (iTunes, Napster) use lossless compression or no compression, distribution via physical medium will never be completely over with, as right now, it is still the only way to get music without lossy compression.
<p>
Moreover, 12" Vinyl has made a huge comeback over the past few years because its "mixable" and "scratchable," on turntables, great for live performance purposes.
%
hmm
sounds like a neat thing to try.. not really sure if it's incredibly practical.. or if anyone would care after the initial 'wow' and 'hey thats kinda cool; thing wears off
%
RIAA Was quoted..
...as saying "All your coffee are belong to us." during a raid of a local Starbucks while seizing 20 computers, 400lbs of coffee beans, and a 12 year old Indian girl with one leg.
%
w00t
Coffee - and coasters to put the mugs on, too!  It just doesn't get better than that...&nbsp;:)
%
Hot CDs
will they also label the CD-R as hot as they do with coffe cups in America?
%
Burn GNAA/Linux Distros Too
This distribution method seems ideal for GNAA/Linux also.  Perhaps if HP weren't afraid of MS, we could also get nice bootable GNAA/Linux distro while waiting for a venti mocha.
%
Coffee and music -- Why?
I don't know, this sounds like a dumb idea to me.  I mean, I just don't see the synnergy between the two brands.  If I want to go out for coffee, I go out for coffee.  If I want to listen to music, I either go to a club or (back before I decided to boycott music) check out a music store.  I guess some people go to coffee places to pick up girls and flirt, and amongst the young musical tastes can be a critical selection trait, and the young are an attractive demographic to target, but even so I don't see this catching on, really.
%
Re:Coffee and music -- Why?
The biggest <i>practical</i> problem with selling custom CDs is that it takes time.  I mean most of us get annoyed waiting for our 'coffee like beverage' from vending machines.<p>In reality the casual-cup-time should nicely eliminate the percieved lack of instant gratification.</p>
%
Re:Coffee and music -- Why?
Let's say you're sitting at a Starbucks, drinking some coffee. You hear a song over the speakers you happen to like. All you have to do is call out: "Could I get this on a CD, please?" They burn you the CD. On your way out (or right then) you pick it up... It works perfectly together...
%
Music distribution is not for everyone...
Why must everyone be involved with music these days?  Pepsi, Coke, Starbucks....
<br> <br>
What's next?  I'm going to get a free song with a Happy Meal?  I guess there are a lot of execs out there that think if you don't offer music in one way or another, then you must be doomed.  I esitmate that in a few years, we will be back to several high quality music choices.
<br> <br>
--<br>
<a HREF="http://www.dealsites.net/index.php?module=MyHeadlines&amp;func=view&amp;myh=menu&amp;gid=22&amp;pid=2&amp;eid=504&amp;tid=300&amp;context=" TITLE="dealsites.net">Real-time deal updates</A>
%
Well...
This actually would work out quite nicely for Starbucks, because all music [i]currently[/i] in store is put out by their own label.
%
Strategic Option Generator
I'm curious as to what possible reasoning Starbucks used to enter this completely alien market.  There's little money to be made from it and it seems impractical due to the time required to both burn the CD and create the playlist.  Unless their goal is to keep the customer in their store for longer periods of time -- which I could see as a viable business model -- there really doesn't seem to be any strategy involved.
<br>
<br>
As an employee of a publically-traded rival corporation [Peet's Coffee &amp; Tea] I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I'm wondering what others have to say about the strategy behind such a radical departure from the typical role of a coffee shop.
%
bingo
i think they do quite a bit in the hope of luring customers and getting them to linger to maybe buy a second round or other stuff.  they play music, provide tables outside, sell newspapers, easy bwireless access.... i'm not that wild about their coffee buy will pay extra not to be told to leave right away.&nbsp;:)<BR><BR>also i suspect starbucks feels pressure to continually reinvent itself rather be perceived as yesterday's coffee news.  notice how mcdonalds introduces new items of dubious value to get some buzz and quietly drops them later.  (or such is my impression, i don't eat there anymore.)<BR><BR>now if only starbucks could make coffee that didn't taste burnt.  i like underdogs, good luck peet's.  we have an indy coffee place nearby that has *couches* and wireless.....  i doubt the chains will go this far, that's just a bit too inviting.
%
Where will the Boehemians sit?
Seems a little techie for the cool, grungy Boehemians, reading their Kerouac. Where will they go?
%
If burning is okay, how about downloading?
If HP and StarBucks can get this going legally and without hassles from RIAA et al against them or customers, wouldn't the next logical step be offering downloads directly to your iPAQ?
%
It'll work, because they aren't a record store
This will work, while the "create-your-own-CD-in-the-record-store" ideas have all failed.  Why?  Because coffee stores don't sell stamped music CD's.  Music stores do sell stamped music CD's.  Every burnt CD a music store sold was probably a loss of three stamped CD's they might have otherwise sold.
<p>
Who loses in the end?  The music stores, anyway.
%
Good Idea
It sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but there seems to be one mistake in the post, I am pretty sure that they would go ahead and clear the music to be downloaded legally via iTunes or something like that, rather than illegally via P2P, and thus avoid any "John Doe" lawsuits.
%
I'm already doing it.
I'm using my T-Mobile wireless connection right now to burn a music CD in Starbucks.<p> Maybe I'll low-ball them on the price for a music CD.
%
I wonder which will be more...
...overburned? - the CDs or the coffee?
%
Easily satisfied.
Sure, they'll make big bucks with just Britney, Justin and Limp Bizkit available. Cause everyone knows people who drink coffee at Starbucks don't have taste.
%
Been there, done that...sort of
The article states that Starbucks is working in conjunction with Hear Music.  I know that in Chicago, there is (or was, havent been there in awhile) a Starbucks that had a Hear Music CD store next door.  The two stores were connected, and you could bring your coffee in with you while you browsed for CDs and listened to music at the listening stations.  Sounds like this is just a natural extension of that.  And I think its a great idea.  I'm not too optomistic about getting one in Pittsburgh, however, where the only common record store chain (NRM) is long since gone and bankrupt and a Virgin Megastore or even a Tower Records has never touched the shores of the Mon River.  But I digress.
%
Burnt Starbucks coffee
I think the reason for the music tie-in is that there's more and more competition for the coffee-drinker's dollar and they need to come up with new ways to stand out.  Within two blocks of my apartment, there's a Starbucks, a Seattle's best, and two local coffee houses.  10 minute's walk up the street, there a cluster of about 6 more coffee places, including 2 Starbucks at the same intersection.<BR><BR>But between the insane cost and the burnt flavour of their coffee, I never go to Starbucks and the  ability to put together a CD isn't going to entice me.<BR>
%
Goes together like chocolate and peanut butter
Coffee makes me go poo and burning CDs at Starbucks sounds like a crappy idea.
%
$160 million in Music and Coffee?
HP can pay back the Canadian DND in songs and coffee. $160 million...now that is a lot of beans.<BR>
&nbsp; Either that or the military will fly a Sea King helicopter over their headquarters (Canadians will find that last bit funny).
%
Good idea for HP, bad choice of partner.
Have they even been into one of their shops recently?  On any given morning the place is packed beyond all reason.  Adding a laptop listening station and headphones will only add to that problem.<BR><BR>There are three types of people in starbucks: Those freaky, overhyped, quad-shot espresso people, who are terminally late to work and just forgot to pick up their kids from soccer practice; the blue collar men in dirty clothes who are so relaxed you would think someone slipped prozac into their spam; and the college kids / young pros with their laptops who come to get some work done in the peace and quiet of a store full of caffeine withdrawal victims screaming for soy milk in their peppermint no-whip half-caf grande white mochas. None of the above seem like the type who would hang out to pay for music... too busy, occupied, or just poor.  Admittedly, this might fly in the retail store locations (the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, for example), as they draw a more relaxed, less goal-oriented crowd, but I can hardly see their host stores being happy about the competition.<BR><BR>Starbucks does this every now and then.  They had that crazy arrangement with Kozmo before they went Kaput, whereby drop-off stations were strategically placed in every Starbucks in exchange for some significant quantity of realbucks. Kozmo might actually have made it if it wasn't for that tremendous monetary commitment.<BR><BR>Personally, I don't see this arrangement being significantly more successful than that one.<BR><BR>Oh well.  They've got the money to try, I guess.  Someday they'll find another use for their successful cafe chain.  Besides, of course, being the seat of power for Mister Evil.  Sorry, Doctor Evil.<BR><BR>*full disclosure- used to be a Barrista.  I was young, I needed the money.<BR>
%
Ahh, now I need a credit card...
to charge my lowfat half-caf triple venti latte and a settecento CD (pronounced "chi dee") for $30.<BR><BR>It's a grande scheme to make CD pricing look reasonable.
%
One good aspect
One thing that could be effective here is the following:<BR>1.  A song is playing in Starbucks.<BR>2.  You like what you hear.<BR>3.  You go to the "jukebox to go" (or whatever they will call it), click the "buy what's on now" button, and pay $1 for the song and $1 for the CD ($2.00 total).<BR><BR>I keep thinking about the scene in High Fidelity, where John Cusack says "I'm going to sell a copy of x album right now" and then puts on a record.  Sure enough, someone comes up and asks what is playing and buys it.  The impulse buy in an environment is powerful.  I often hear things in record stores, etc. and would love to have an easy way to buy it.<BR>
%
How long 'til lawsuits?
<i>"wonder how long before Starbucks and HP get John Doe lawsuits in the mail"</i> <p>
Answer: Never.<p>
Here's a clue about how to avoid lawsuits: don't break the law.<p>
&lt;bart
%
It can work...
<p>I could see this idea working in one of those indie coffee houses that play music that no one has heard of.</p>

You can hear some interesting music at a shop and be kinda forced to go around asking the people what the name of the song is etc...  If they're playing all of their music on a database that people can buy burned cds from, it would take a lot of the hassle of having to search for it.  It would be even better if they could put the CD-TEXT, ID3, whatever...so you know exactly what the songs are...
%
Starbucks sells coffee?
I always thought they were selling milk, sugar and "lifestyle" with some kind of dark caffeinated substance occasionally thrown in.
%
Starbucks to Begin Sinister PHASE TWO of Operation
A much more interesting article about this appeared a while back, called <a HREF="http://www.theonion.com/onion3709/starbucks_phase_two.html" TITLE="theonion.com"> <b>Starbucks to Begin Sinister PHASE TWO of Operation</b> </A>.
<p>
Snippet from the article:<br>
<i>Those living near one of the closed Starbucks outlets have reported strange glowing mists, howling and/or cowering on the part of dogs that pass by, and electromagnetic effects that cause haunting, unearthly images to appear on TV and computer screens within a one-mile radius. Experts have few theories as to what may be causing the low-frequency rumblings, half-glimpsed flashes of light, and periodic electronic beeps emanating from the once-busy shops.</i>
%
ancillary merchandise
Starbuck's should go with something more tried
and true:  sell helium baloons or something.
%
mmmhmmm
Have you ever been in some sort of establishment and said to yourself. You know? This tune is quite catchy (pinky to mouth). It would be quite excellent if I could burn this piece of innovative harmony to CD. Wouldn't it Chompsky.. hUhUhU.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; Certainly sir. Would you have me ask the young lady what specific tune?<BR><BR>Sure, be on with it.. CHOP CHOP Chompsky. Put them on my ipod.. (pinky to mouth).
%
Cnet is a day late
Businessweek ran an item on it in their latest issue. The also said that competitors of Starbucks are looking to implement similar technology.<BR><BR>Krispy Kreme and Outkast?
%
Conceptually interesting, but economically sound?
I admit I am a coffee addict; and although I like to frequent a variety of coffee shops, I frequrntly find myself in Starbucks. I don't know how many years they have been selling CD's at the register, but I do know that in the almost 10 years I've been going to Starbucks, I have only bought one CD.  This is significant considering I am sure I'm in their target audience (I am 21 -- and yes, that means I started going to Starbucks when I was 11).  I listen to a lot of music and have literally hundreds of CD's, but I do not associate Starbucks with music.  I  do not see this as getting Starbucks any more customers and if they charge even $10/CD it is beyond the price of an impulse buy (esp. for most college students).  Another issue I have with it is that I don't know how they wiill store the music, but I personally wouldn't pay for CD burned with music once stored in a lossy format (like AC3 or MP3).  I would hope (but highly doubt) that they keep the music in SHN format (lossless) and just unshorten and burn the files then reshorten them.  I must admit, this probably won't keep the people who buy CD's off of iTunes from buying them, but it does eliminate some of their audience.
%
Wifi Security?
All though this seems lke a good idea on paper, I know that starbucks uses wifi networks. I was wondering if anyone a lot smarter than me could comment on the security of this. A hacker could pay for a song, and sniff it being transmitted on the network simaltaneusly. He would then have a clear copy of the data when it was given to him, and an encrypted, letting him use some cryptoanalysis tools to figure out how the songs are encrypted. Any idea on the plausibility of this?
%
iPod
Burn to cd ? Not so useful. But burn to your iPod there and then.. now *that* would be good.
%
Starbucks recapitulating Personics
Here's what I posted on <a HREF="http://wifinetnews.com/archives/003054.html" TITLE="wifinetnews.com">Wi-Fi Networking News</A> about why Starbucks efforts are misguided:<BR> <BR>Starbucks reportedly to offer music burning service in up to 2,500 stores: The system will allow customers to have CDs burned while they wait; eventually, it will also allow downloads of music over Wi-Fi, the article in BusinessWeek says.<BR> <BR>Starbucks demanded a T-1 (1.544 Mbps in each direction) digital service infrastructure from its first hotspot partner, MobileStar, as well as its second, T-Mobile. I've speculated for a while on how this high-speed network could be used to cache material in each Starbucks, like movie and music downloads.<BR> <BR>This latest project sounds somewhat misguided for the reason cited by the Forrester analyst in the article: Your typical barista may be great at making espresso but is not in a position to fix the broken CD burner.<BR> <BR>My cousin Steven was involved almost 20 years ago with a company called Personics. The company had worked out a catalog licensing deal with more than 70 labels from the largest down to some independents to allow them to offer custom mix tapes for about a buck a song. This was a reasonable price in those days. The system had a few thousand songs mastered onto CD-ROMs stored in a special employee-operated CD-ROM changer behind the counter. An employee would punch in your choices, and the system created a high-speed cassette tape dub.<BR> <BR>The company failed for two primary reasons: the hardware was proprietary, meaning that engineers had to fly around the country to fix it when it inevitably had glitches; and the catalog they offered too small because labels balked at including their most popular stuff for fear of cannibalizing pre-recorded CD and tape sales. (Price, my cousin reports, was not a problem: many customers were willing to pay even more, he noted to me after this item was originally posted.)<BR> <BR>If Starbucks creates the expectation of an easy process that's always available and then isn't available even part of the time at any given store, they lose their audience. Starbucks makes its money from processing a high volume of custom drinks--you don't want to distract from that. CD burners aren't that difficult to keep operating, but a failure rate that's a fraction of that experienced by typical home and business users could be a dramatic problem in a high-expectation retail environment.<BR> <BR>The article says the price is comparable to Apple and other download services. Two problems with that comparison. First, it's not. It's $7 for five songs, or 40 percent, or $13 for an album, or 30 percent higher. That's a significantly different price when you're dealing with price sensitivity. It's comparable to a mass-produced discounted audio CD.<BR> <BR>Second, you're receiving an audio CD, not digital music per se, which could be a turnoff for the audience that might be interested in a fast, in-store music service. (However, since HP is the partner, and is reselling their own version of the iPod, it's possible that the ultimate digital delivery system will be a version of the iTunes Music Store.)<BR> <BR>This is the latest incarnation of Compaq-cum-Hewlett Packard's attempts to capitalize on their relationship as a supplier to Starbucks. In January 2001, when the MobileStar deal was announced for installing hotspots, Starbucks made a big deal about Microsoft and Compaq's participation. Compaq wasn't a partner, though; Starbucks had signed a $100 million, five-year deal to buy equipment and services. Microsoft was a partner, and it never seemed to amount to anything that saw the light of day.<BR> <BR>In the years since this deal, Compaq and then HP have reaped advertising benefits, appearing in full-page newspaper advertisements as part of the Starbucks hotspot system, even though they had nothing to do with MobileStar and T-Mobile's deployment. At one point, Starbucks had Compaq iPaq's available for customers to play with, and those disappeared, too.<BR> <BR>It's this fumbling<P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100438&amp;threshold=0&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=141&amp;tid=188&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8564348">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
%
Better things to do....
I dont normally hang around in the coffee shop to listen to enough music that I would want it burnt onto disk for me. There might be an odd occasion when you come across some music playing that you might like, normally asking the guy behind the counter and then getting it where i normally get my music. <p>I say its a fair bet that this service wont recover the money they need to put into it to start off, not to mention the training cost of training all those 18 year olds who barely know enough to do a decent cup of coffee.
%
Asking the obvious question
Nobody else has, and the article was certainly not even thinking of going there.<br> <br>What <strong>exactly</strong> are they selling?<ul> <li>a Raw Audio track in all ways identical to what you get when you purchase a mass-market factory-pressed CD?<br>(ie buy ~16 of these and you have "an audio CD")<li>the WAV file equivalent?<li>the {insert  preferred lossless encoded format here} equivalent?<li>a 320Kbps encoded MP3? (ie plays everywhere and not-quite-but-nearly-as-good-as-lossless)<li>a 16kbps encoded MP3? (ie totally-crap-but-still-plays-anywhere)<li>the {insert hellspawn DRM managed format here} equivalent?</ul>Methinks people need to wake up and smell the HYPE.<br> <br>If this was a shameless attempt to score off the recent Digital Music wave, it didn't work. Yahoo Finance shows <a HREF="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SBUX&amp;t=5d" TITLE="yahoo.com">SBUX Stock</A> Thu March 11 ~8pm)
%
John Doe lawsuits
That seemed like an odd comment, certainly they are doing this with permission from the record companies, much as iTunes did.
%
very good coffee?
At long last the secret of Starbucks' "very good coffee" is revealed: <b>burn the holy living shit out of your beans!</b><BR><BR>Now you, too, can have that wonderful taste of charred coffee in your very own home!<BR><BR>
%
Re:Yes but...
Which is why it will work. Know your demographic. If you're silly enough to pay too much for bad coffee, you'll more than likely pay too much for bad music....
%
Ozzy Osbourne says
All aboard the crazy train.
%
Python
Also, I would appreciate (not quite the same) a auto-completing python interpreter and editor (which can complete methods and objects from modules)...

Such kind of stuff really increases productivity !
%
Re:Python
<i>a auto-completing python interpreter and editor</i><BR><BR>Try the <a HREF="http://wingide.com/wingide" TITLE="wingide.com">Wing IDE</A>. It has most of the functions you wanted... But it's not free software.
%
Python already has that
here you go<ul>
<li> <a HREF="http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-rlcompleter.html" TITLE="python.org">import rlcompleter, readline</A>
and
<li> <a HREF="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=python-search&amp;q=completion&amp;submit=Search&amp;q=site%3Apython.org" TITLE="google.com">here</A>
</ul>
autocompletion in the editor is availible in
vim <a HREF="http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=850" TITLE="sourceforge.net">here</A>
%
You're dealing with the problem too high up
IMO (as someone who works on clustered systems for a living) you're looking at this from the wrong point of view.  A clustered shell is useful only if the system it is running on top of is inherently unstable.<P>
The real benefit is in having a system which is sufficiently distributed that any program running on top of it can continue to do so despite any sort of underlying failure.
%
Re:You're dealing with the problem too high up
Doesn't that depend on the definition of clustered though?  Clustered systems can be things like beowulf clusters.  But often a collection of standalone web servers behind a http load balancers is commonly referred to as a web cluster or array.
<br> <br>
IMHO as someone who works in a complex web server / database server environment, there are many interdependancies brought by different software, different platforms and different applications.  Whilst 100% uptime on all servers is a nice to have, it's a complex goal to achieve and requires not just expertise in the operating systems &amp; web / database server software but an indepth understanding of the applications.
<br> <br>
A system such as this fault tolerant shell is actually quite a neat idea.  It allows for flexibility in system performance and availability, without requiring complex (and therefore possibly error prone or difficult to maintain) management jobs.  An example would be server which replicates images using rsync.  If one of the targets is busy serving web pages or running another application, ftsh would allow for that kind of unforeseen error to be catered for relatively easily.
%
Re:You're dealing with the problem too high up
If you can set up a distributed system at a reasonable cost where any program can continue to run without carying about an underlying failure, you would be richer than Bill Gates.
<p>
Resources DO become unavailable in most systems. It simply doesn't pay to ensure everything is duplicated, and set up infrastructures that makes it transparent to the end user - there are almost always cheaper ways of meeting your business goals by looking at what level of fault tolerance you actually need.
<p>
For most people hours, sometimes even days, of outages can be tolerable for many of their systems, and minutes mostly not noticeable if the tools can handle it. The cost difference in providing a system where unavailabilities are treated as a normal, acceptable condition within some parameters, and one where failures are made transparent to the user can be astronomical.
<p>
To this date, I have NEVER seen a computer system that would come close to the transparency you are suggesting, simply beause for most "normal" uses it doesn't make economic sense.
%
Bad Idea
It's a well meaning idea, but it would cause more problems than it would solve. It would just encourage sloppy code; people would rationalize "I don't need to fix errors because it doesn't matter", which is a very bad habit to get into when programming, ignoring errors, or even warnings
%
Re:Bad Idea
I agree. Web browsers were designed to be fault tolerant, and just look at all the horrendously broken crap that passes for HTML out there. Dangerous stuff.
%
Missing the point
This is not about catching scripting errors. It does not fix your code. It is about catching errors in the enviroment that scripts are running in.
<p>Shell scripts should be short and easy to write. I have seen plenty of them fail due to some resource or another being temporarily down. At first people are neat and then send an email to notify the admin. When this then results in a ton of emails everytime some dodo knocks out the DNS they turn it off and forget about it.
<p>Every scripting language has their own special little niche. BASH for simple things, perl for heavy text manipulation, PHP for creating HTML output. This scripting language is pretty much like BASH but takes failure as given. The example shows clearly how it works. Instead of ending up with PERL like scripts to catch all the possible errors you add two lines and you got a wonderfull small script, wich is what shell scripts should be, that is none the less capable of recovering from an error. This script will simply retry when someone knocks out the DNS again.
<p>This new language will not catch your errors. It will catch other peoples errors. Sure a really good programmer can do this himself. A really good programmer can also create his own libraries. Most find of us in admin jobs find it easier to use somebody elses code rather then constantly reinvent the wheel.
%
Re:Missing the point
I think it still will promote bad programming/scripting practices. Many people ( including myself ) started with scripting before moving on to full-fledged programming. What they learned in scripting they carry forward with them into programming, and trust me, I learned to be very meticulous when it comes to interacting with things outside of my scripts control ( such as files ). Every I/O operation should be tested for success. Trying to open a file? Did it work? Ok, try writing to the file...did it work? Open a database connection...did it work? Let the user enter a number...did they enter a valid number? Error handling and input validation is something you just have to learn, like it or not. Something that holds your hand and lets you code while remaining oblivious to the realities of the scripting/programming environment is a bad thing IMHO.<BR><BR>On a side note for Perl, one thing I always hated were the examples that had something like "open( FH, "file/path" ) || die "Could not open file!" . $!; I mean, come one, you don't want your script to just quit if it encounters an error...how about putting in an example of error handling other than the script throwing up its hands and quitting! LOL.<BR><BR>Please excuse any grammatical/other typos above, I was on  4 hrs sleep when I wrote this. Thank You.<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
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Re:Missing the point
So what you are saying is that programming should be hard, and people should be expected to do it right, or it promotes bad practices.
<p>
Yet we are expected to excuse your grammatical and typos. Doesn't that just promote bad practices? Shouldn't we whack you over the head with a baseball bat just to make sure you won't post when you're not prepared to write flawless posts?
<p>
The more work you have to do to check errors, the more likely it is that however vigilant you might be, errors slip past. If you have to check the return values of a 100 commands, that is a 100 chances for forgetting to do the check or for doing the check the wrong way, or for handling the error incorrectly.
<p>
In this case, the shell offers a function that provides a more sensible default handling of errors: If you don't handle them, the shell won't continue executing by "accident" because you didn't catch an error, but will terminate. It also provides an optional feature that let you easily retry commands that are <i>likely</i> to fail sometimes and where the likely error handling would be to stop processing and retry without having to write the logic yourself.
<p>
Each time you have to write logic to handle exponential backoff and to retry according to specific patterns is one more chance of introducing errors.
<p>
No offense, but I would rather trust a SINGLE implementation that I can hammer the hell out of until I trust it and reuse again and again than trust you (or anyone else) to check the return code of every command and every function they call.
<p>
This shell does not remove the responsibility to for handling errors. It a) chooses a default behaviour that reduces the chance of catastrophic errors when an unhandled error occurs, and b) provides a mechanism for automatic recovery from a class of errors that occur frequently in a particular type of systems (distributed systems where network problems DO happen on a regular basis), and by that leave developers free to spend their time on more sensible things (I'd rather have my team doing testing than writing more code than they need to)
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Re:Bad Idea
<i>It's a well meaning idea, but it would cause more problems than it would solve. It would just encourage sloppy code; people would rationalize "I don't need to fix errors because it doesn't matter", which is a very bad habit to get into when programming, ignoring errors, or even warnings</i><BR><BR>The same logic could be applied to any security system, from the automatic door lock on the front of your house to Airbags in your car.  Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell.  Antibiotics prevent the growth of the immune system.  Why have a lock on your trigger, if it will encourage you to leave it in a place where your kids can find it.<BR><BR>The fact of the matter is, if the code works, it's good code.  This is a shell scripting language we're talking about here... Not exactly assembly.  Programmers would be better off spending more time thinking about the higher structure of their applications and less time hunting down trivial mistakes.<BR><BR>Of course, I know that this isn't quite what the article is talking about, but it's the principle of the thing.  Augmentation would be an improvement.<BR><BR>
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Re:Bad Idea
<i>Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell. </i><BR><BR>Done correctly, spellcheckers can be the best spelling-learning tool there is.<BR><BR>"Correctly" here means the spell-checkers that give you red underlines when you've finished typing the word and it's wrong. Right-clicking lets you see suggestions, add it to your personal dict, etc.<BR><BR>"Incorrectly" is when you have to run the spell-checker manually at the "end" of typing. That's when people lean on it.<BR><BR>The reason, of course, is feedback; feedback is absolutely vital to learning and spell-checkers that highlight are the only thing I know of that cuts the feedback loop down to zero seconds. Compared to this, spelling tests in school where the teacher hands back the test three days from now are a complete waste of time. (This is one of many places where <i>out of the box</i> thinking with computers would greatly improve the education process but nobody has the guts to say, "We need to stop 'testing' spelling and start using proper spell-checkers, and come up with some way to <i>encourage</i> kids to use words they don't necessarily know how to spell instead of punishing them." The primary use of computers in education is to cut the feedback loop down to no time at all. But I digress...)<BR><BR>'gaim' is pretty close but it really ticks me off how it always spellchecks a word immediately, so if you're typing along and you're going to send the word "unfortunately", but you've only typed as far as "unfortun", it highlights it as a misspelled word. Bad program! Wait until I've left the word!
%
Oooh!  An idea whose time has come!
<a HREF="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22an+idea+whose+time+has+come%22" TITLE="google.com">More ideas whose time has come</A>, including:<ul>
<li>DRM Helmets</li>
<li>Jack Kemp</li>
<li>Yankee Go Home</li>
<li>Collaborative Dispute Resolution</li>
<li>Microchips for Your Pet Parrot! (see page 2 of Google results)</li>
</ul>
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Wouldn't be much work in Tcl
... or probably Perl or Python, either.<BR><BR>It doesn't actually seem to grok the commands that are being run, so something like<BR><BR>proc try {times script} {<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; if { [catch [uplevel $script] err] } { cleanup ; retry }<BR>}<BR><BR>is all that's needed (of course to do it right you'd need a bit more, but still...).<BR><BR>try {5 times} {<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; commands...<BR>}<BR><BR>Although Tcl is a bit lower level, and would require you to do exec ls, you could of course wrap that too so that all commands in the $script block would just be 'exec'ed by default.<BR><BR>In any case, better to use a flexible tool that can be tweaked to do what you need then write highly specialized tools.
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Worst idea since spell checkers
This will not improve people's skills.  In fact, it willl make them more prone to mistakes, and more likely to get the result that they didn't expect.  It's similat to computer spell checkers.  Ever since people started relying on these, their spelling has gone way downhill simly because they don't bother thinking.  Computer do all the spelling for them.  They don;t need a spell checker.  They need spelling lessons.<BR> <BR>
This si even worse.  Computers will try to second guess what the user means, get get it wrong half tyhe time.<BR> <BR>
A qualified shell scripter will be not make these mistakes in the first place.  Anyone who thinks they need this shell actually just need to learn to spell and to ytype accuratly.
%
Re:Worst idea since spell checkers
<I>just need to learn to spell and to ytype accuratly.
--
QED - Quite Easily Done</I> <BR>
<BR>
&lt;Teal'c&gt; Indeed &lt;/Teal'c&gt;
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It's got the concept backwards
While, yes, you manage distributed systems from the center, you don't *push* updates, changes, modifications because, it doesn't scale. You end up having to write stuff like this fault tolerant shell which is frankly backwards thinking.<BR><BR>Instead, you automate everything and *pull* updates, changes, scripts etc. That way if a system is up, it just works, if it's down, it'll get updated next time it's up.<BR><BR>I won't go into details but I'll point you at http://infrastructures.org/<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
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Re:It's got the concept backwards
I did. Endlessly is good. The network overhead is negligible.<BR><BR>Check once every 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,whatever,mins *all the time anyway* whether it fails or succeeds and you *absolutely don't* want to have to explicitly tell 1000 machines to start again.<BR><BR>You simply generalise the update process, get rid of the special cases. In the case of patches, you know you're going to have to distribute them out to clients at some point anyway so have all the clients check once a day, every day. If the distribution server is down for a couple of days it's pretty much irrelevant.<BR><BR>My error detection code is trivial the network traffic is negligible unless the job's actually being done and I still haven't been given a good case for ftsh. I have a good case for a better randomising algorithm within a shell and a decent distributed cron (which is simple BTW), but not for a specifically fault tolerant shell.<BR><BR>You've got to stop thinking of these things as individual systems. The network is the machine.<BR><BR>
&nbsp;
%
Sounds like good way to do some serious damage
on a loosely configured network, not saying this tool doesn't seem interesting, but it seems prone for use in DOS attacks...
%
This would be nice...
how many times have you hacked something together in perl that ended up being relied on for some pretty important stuff, only to find 6 months down the track that there's some condition (db connects fine, but fails halfway through script execution as an example) you didn't consider and the whole thing just collapses in a heap - a nasty to recover heap cause you didn't write much logging code either.<BR><BR>This would REALLY be useful when you're connecting to services external to yourself - network glitches cause more problems with my code than ANYTHING else, and it's a pain in the arse to write code to deal with it gracefully. i'd really really like to see a universal "try this for 5 minutes" wrapper, which, if it still failed, you'd only have one exit condition to worry about. hey, what the hell, maybe i'll spend a few days and write one myself.
%
One of the few who get it apparently.
This is indeed little more then the wrapper that you describe. Yet most seem to comment on its non-claimed properties of fixing the programmers errors. Wich it really really doesn't. In fact it is worse since this one would happily keep trying to execute a command like "rm -Rf / home/me/tmp".
<p>I have often had to write such wrappers myself.
Sure even easier/better would have been if somebody added this to say BASH as an extension but perhaps that is not possible.
<p>How often have you needed to write horrible bash code just to pull data from an unreliable source and ended up either with a script that worked totally blind "command &amp;&amp; command &amp;&amp; command &amp;&amp;" wich never reported if it failed for days on end or ended up with several pages just to catch all the damn network errors that could occur.
<p>I will definitly be giving this little language a try in the near future. Just another tool for the smart sys-admin. (smart people write as little code as possible. Let others work for you)
%
Let's draw a line in the sand...
<BR>All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side.  All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.<BR><BR>Most of us know where this line is located.<BR>
%
Re:Let's draw a line in the sand...
<BR>java, c++, c#<BR><BR>-------------<BR><BR>asm, c ?<BR>
%
Re:Let's draw a line in the sand...
<i>All the programmers who need the environment to compensate for their inadequacies, step on one side. All the programmers who want to learn from their mistakes and become better at their craft, get on the other side.<BR><BR>Most of us know where this line is located.</i><BR><BR>"In other news, at the local beach today a vicious fight broke out between geeks about where to draw a line. Sand was kicked, noses have been blooded, we have some unconfirmed reports of a wedgie. We will have more on this breaking news as it comes in."<BR><BR>
%
Re:Let's draw a line in the sand...
Too good to pass up...<BR><BR>Redmond city limits?<BR><BR>
%
Nice, which brings me too....
The idea of being to timeout and exception handle in scripts is a great idea......assuming you want to use scripts. I think most people end up resorting to Perl, Python or whatever for anything more complex.

But perhaps with this facility Scripts would be more useful?

But...now I come to a related topic. I build factory wide systems, systems which have eg. Automatic warehouses and whatever in the middle. I do a lot of stuff with VB6 not because it is fault tolerant but because it is 'fix tolerant'.

During the comminssioning phases I can leave a program running in the debugger and, if it freaks out, I can debug, fix, test by iterating forwards and **backwards** in the the function that caused the hitch, and then continue to run were I left off.

Many minor problems get fixed on the fly without users even realizing anything was amiss.

In every other respect (syntax, structure, error trapping etc) VB6 is a disaster and not really suited at all to these types of progects, so the fact that I use it is a measure of how important this feature is.

Like the fault tolerant shell, it is a 'non-pure' extension insofar as purists say it should not be neccessary, but in pratice it is a godsend.

Anybody know an alternative for VB6 in this respect?
%
Building on their first example
They are deleting a number of files on a number of different machines, then downloading an updated version.  The implication is that the fault tolerance means a failure is not fatal.<p>
So what happens if the files are crucial (let's use the toy example of kernel modules being updated): The modules get deleted, then the update fails because the remote host is down.  Presumably the shell can't rollback the changes a la DBMS, as that would involve either hooks into the FS or every file util ever written.<p>
Now I think it's a nice idea, but it could easily lead to such sloppy coding; if your shell automatically tries, backs off and cleans up, why would people bother doing it the 'correct' way and downloading the new files <i>before</i> removing the old ones?
%
How long until...
...people start pronouncing "ftsh" as "fetish".  Actually, I've started already, just ask the girl sitting next to me.&nbsp;;-)
%
login
"Password fairly correct. Root login granted."<BR> <BR>
%
Using wget as an example
It seems like a bad example to me since wget already has
a lot of retrying build in.
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DOS is pretty fault tolerant...
since it cannot really do a lot (of damage) in the first place!<BR><BR>Anyway, a shell is just a shell is just a shell...<BR>
%
this can essentially already be done in /bin/bash
(the concept of fault-tolerant coding encourages sloppy coding.
and it makes it harder to see what's actually happening in the script.
but that's not what they actually mean.)
<p>
what they seem to essentially want is<ul>
<li>a try statement and error catching and
<li>a fortran like syntax for testing and arithmetic
</ul>
I think the authors were a bit misguided.
Instead of creating a whole new shell how about just extending a good existing shell with a new
try statement a described.<p>
it can even be done without extending the shell:<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>( cd&nbsp;/tmp/blabla<BR> &amp;&amp;<BR> rm -rf tmpdir<BR> &amp;&amp;<BR> wget http://some.thing/wome/where<BR>) || echo something went wrong</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> <p>
as for the new syntax of&nbsp;.eq.&nbsp;.ne.&nbsp;.lt.&nbsp;.gt.&nbsp;.to.<br>
certainly looks like fortran-hugging to me , yuck
<p>
as for integer arithmetic, that can be done with by either using backticks or the $[ ] expansion<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>% echo $[ 12 * 12 + 10 ]<BR>% 154</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE>
%
Once again, Babbage was thinking ahead...
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.<BR>Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers<BR>come out?'  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas<BR>that could provoke such a question."<BR>-- Charles Babbage<BR>
%
Why is there a Windows compatible port?
I'm sorry, but I can't understand why a Windows port (even if not native) is even attempted. Seems kind of useless in a totally GUI environment. Of course, maybe it's just me?
%
I don't see why eveyone is complaining...
What do you lose by using something like this?<BR><BR>Well.. besides pipes of course&nbsp;;)<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>Variable redirection looks just like file redirection, except a dash is put in front of the redirector. For example, For example, suppose that we want to capture the output of grep and then run it through sort:<BR>
&nbsp; <BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; grep needle&nbsp;/tmp/haystack -&gt; needles<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; sort -&lt; needles<BR>
&nbsp; <BR>This sort of operation takes the place of a pipeline, which ftsh does not have (yet).</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE>
%
Why there are no pipes
<blockquote>What do you lose by using something like this?
<p>
Well.. besides pipes of course&nbsp;;)

</blockquote>

<p>

Funny you should mention this, because I was going to write something about pipes.  Getting pipes right with good error semantics is hard.  For all the "just use set +e in bash" weenies out there, try running<BLOCKQUOTE> <TT>  #!/bin/sh -e<BR>  cat nosuchfile | echo hello</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE>Where's your error?

<p>

If you think about the unix process and pipe primitives, you will see the difficulty.  To create a pipeline, you normally fork, create the pipe, fork again, and run the two ends of the pipeline in the two sub-processes.  This is scalable to deeply nested pipelines, but has a cost:  Only one of the sub-processes is a child of the shell, so only one exit status can be monitored.  To work around this, you really need to build a mini-OS environment on top of unix.

<p>

This demonstrates that unix was fundamentally not designed with concern for error semantics (consider Erlang as a diametric example).  And this, I'm sure, is why ftsh doesn't have pipes (yet).
%
In Monopolistic America
In monopolistic America, you tolerate faulty shell.
%
Not good
<b>joshua:~#rm -Rf&nbsp;//tmp</b><BR><i>Probable typing error detected. Parsed as <strong>rm -Rf /&nbsp;/tmp</strong> </i><BR><BR>
%
Why don't use screen?
<a HREF="http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/screen.html" TITLE="gnu.org">Screen</A> is a terminal which can survive connection problems. You can start your script, detach terminal, and then came back 10 minutes later and watch what its doing.
I know, that's not "fault tolerant", but, most of the times, its enaugh.
<br>
%
A different kind a fault tolerance
I've always wanted a shell that deletes into a 'garbage' folder, but in a native way so programs calling a delete function would also. I've also wanted a 'file versions' feature to bring safety to accidently overwriting. Then it would really be tolerant of <I>user</I> faults.<BR><BR>While we're at it: a config file library so every config file is the same format; exportable functions so gimp can export gmp.imageResize fileName 800 600 to the shell; and a codecs folder with libraries for image, video, document, and data compression.<BR><BR>Not every might see that last one's benefit, but I think if every app exported its format there (quicktime, realmedia) and let it be universally called, apps would be judged by interface, not filetype support.<BR><BR>Another idea: make every shortcut in X the config file. That way, a simple copy+edit makes two easily created+accessed differently configed programs. (I don't know about network-wide configs, though.)
%
A distributed shell ...
... was mentioned a few months back in one of the magazines I pick up almost monthly (forget which one out of the several it was).<BR><BR>I think the shell was called dsh. I believe this is the project site: http://dsh.sourceforge.net/<BR><BR>Are the aims of this fault tolerant shell and dsh the same? I'm not a programmer, but I'm trying to teach myself *nix system administration.<BR><BR>Eventually I'm hoping to cluster some older x86 systems I'm going to get at auction together for a Beowulf cluster. It sounds to me like one if not both of these two shells might come in handy!
%
OK, wise guys...
I'm working with Grid and ftsh as we speak. I'm a physicist, not a professional coder. I write reasonable code, but I'm no purist. With that said...<BR> <BR> ftsh has great utility in the realm it's written for. Obviously, it's not a basis for installing kernels or doing password authentication. In a Grid (<B>not just distributed</B>) environment, things break for all sorts of reasons all the time. You're dealing with a Friendly Admin on another system, one who may well be unaffiliated with your institution, project or field of study. He doesn't have any particular reason to consult with you about system changes.
<BR> <BR>
Now you find yourself writing a grid diagnostic or submitter or job manager. One does not need strongly typed compiled languages for this. Shell scripts are almost always more efficient to write, and the speed difference is unimportant. Right now, most Grid submitters are being written in bash or Python or some such. Bash sucks for exception handling of the sort we're talking about. Python does better with its try: statements, but there's room for improvement. ftsh is a good choice for a sublayer to these scripts. One writes some of the machinery that actually interacts with the Grid nodes and supervisors in this easy, clear and flexible form.
<BR> <BR>
Now there are a lot of specific points to answer:
<LI> One needs a Windows port to be able to make the Grid software we write in GNAA/Linux available to the poor drones who are stuck with Win boxes.
<LI> This is not a code spellchecker or coding environment. At all.
<LI> This is not a crutch for inadequate programmers. This is a collection of methods to deal with a specific set of recalcitrant problems.
<LI> As I was pointing out before, this <I>is</I>, after all, an unstable system. One is using diverse resources on diverse platforms in many countries at many institutions. I appreciate the comment made by unixbob about operating in heterogeneous environments.
<LI> This isn't a substitute for wget. One uses wget as an example because it's clear.
<LI> The "pull" model breaks down immediately when there is no unified environment, as is described on infrastructures.org. When you're not the admin, and your software has to be wiped out the minute your job is done, "push" is the only way to do it. This is the case with most Grid computing right now (that I know about)
<BR> <BR>
All the woe and doom about the sloppy coding and letting the environment correct your deficiencies is... ill-thought-out. That's what a compiler is, folks. Should we all be coding in machine language?&nbsp;:) Use the right tool for the job and save time.
<BR> <BR>
I do agree, however, that one should indeed hone one's craft. Sloppy coding in projects of importance is inexcusable (M$). There is no reason to stick to strict exception handling, however, in the applications being discussed by ftsh's developers (the same folks who brought you Condor). When code becomes 3/4 exception handling, even when the specific exceptions don't matter, there's a problem, IMHO.&nbsp;:)
%
rm -rf $(TEMPFILE) /dev/null
This was an obscure typo bug I found this morning (after 3 months)<BR><BR>Argh.<BR><BR>Wish the shell would have added the (obvious) ' &gt; '&nbsp;:P<BR>
%
"set -e" will go a long way to helping you
The article says:<BR><blockquote><BR><tt>#!/bin/sh<BR><BR>cd&nbsp;/work/foo<BR>rm -rf bar<BR>cp -r&nbsp;/fresh/data .<BR></tt><BR>Suppose that the&nbsp;/work filesystem is temporarily unavailable, perhaps due to an NFS failure. The cd command will fail and print a message on the console. <b>The shell will ignore this error result</b> -- it is primarily designed as a user interface tool -- and proceed to execute the rm and cp in the directory it happened to be before.<BR></blockquote><BR>That shell script can be improved a lot by using "<b> <tt>set -e</tt> </b>" to exit on failure, as follows:<BR><tt>#!/bin/sh<BR><BR><b>set -e</b>  # exit on failure<BR><BR>cd&nbsp;/work/foo<BR>rm -rf bar<BR>cp -r&nbsp;/fresh/data .<BR></tt><BR><BR><p>This means that, if any command in the script fails, the script will exit immediately, instead of carrying on blindly.<BR><BR><p>The script's exit status will be non-zero, indicating failure.  If it was called by another script, and that had "set -e", then that too will exit immediately.  This is a little bit like exceptions in some other languages.</p><BR>
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I love this...
.. the shell just got the cool error-handling lisp has always had (condition-case in elisp, for example).  From a lisper's perspectice, things will be so much easier now... and I can really try some more scripting..<BR><BR>
%
Code not very tolerant of my machine!
I finished building the shell after I changed the code that uses a non-standard way of printing the usage message, <tt>show_help()</tt> in <tt>src/ftsh.c</tt>.  In emacs, I replaced <tt>^\(.*\)\\$</tt> with <tt>"\1"</tt>, and then went back and changed the lines that did not end in a backslash, removed the beginning and ending quotes.
<p>
Then it compiled (on Fedora Core 1).
<p>
Then it failed the functions test, because my computer does not have the file&nbsp;<tt>/etc/networks</tt>.  For a fault tolerant shell, it does not seem very tolerant of my machine!  After <tt>sudo touch&nbsp;/etc/networks</tt>, <tt>make</tt> succeeded.
<p>
Anyway, those were the only two problems, and now it's installed. Let's see if it's worth building into an RPM package.
%
If you want a fault tolerant scripting language
Erlang (http://www.erlang.org) has it.<BR>You can have multiple linked interpreters and<BR>even fault-tolerant database!<BR>It is a scripting language.<BR>From the FAQ:<BR>1.1. In a nutshell, what is Erlang?<BR>Erlang is a general-purpose programming language and runtime environment. Erlang has built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance. Erlang is used in several large telecommunication systems from Ericsson. The most popular implementation of Erlang is available as open source from the open source erlang site.<BR><BR>
%
ACID Filesystems
For a system like this to be truly effective you would need an operating system which supported a truly transactional filesystem.
<p>
Remounting a filesystem with ACID on, a process  sets a rollback point , executing a series of commands with the operating system keeping a record of the changes to the filesystem made by the process and its children. The process would inform the OS to either commit or rollback the changes.
<p>
This still raises questions on how to deal with  with two or more competing "transactional" processes which rely on read information which another process chooses to rollback to an early state.
%
What's with all the negativity?
I know that if you need a ton of fault tolerance in your shell scripts that you should probably be using a different language but every time I look at any complex systems, not just a signle app but a system, there is always shell script glue.  More importantly, I've never seen a shell script that checked the return codes of <i>everything</i>  at best they look at a few key components and report on their success of failure.  Exceptions would be nice.
<p>
I think perl is where it is because so many people use it as "super script."  To me that says, a) we recode all the Bourne and csh and bash in perl or b) we look at why people do shell scripting in perl or other languages and add that to the shell. I couldn't tell you which is right.   It's a neat idea though and I'm glad they made it.
<p>
A real example I can think of,  I had a test machine that had some kind of ext3 corruption and so it mounted up in read-only mode when it booted.  I spent time diagnosing an application error in our application because nothing caught that; these are redhat type startup scripts.  I noticed that our app couldn't write logs and began to debug the system.  More interestingly,   a dozen or so start-up scripts failed to start up critical components and their failure wasn't noticed. If you can't write to the filesystem, you can't create a socket(AF_UNIX) and all sort's of things go tits up then.  If that's how you debug it's only going to get more difficult as you add more and more complexity, you have to detect the lower level failures and report them.   Perversely, this wouldn't have been noticed had a different partition been read-only.  Turns out that a drive was going bad.  Had it been a different partition, it would have been noticed at catastrophic system failure time when the drive died.
<p>
I've done a fair amount of embedded work and there is always a test for new guys,  you can tell the new guy (new college grad, whatever) because he skips half or more of the error checking in his code. You know printf returns a value?  Funnier still,  if you develop something like a consumer app in embedded space,  you'll eventually see things like printf fail.  We know it never should, but with 20,000+ users in different environments and what not, things like that can and do fail and usually point to a greater problem, like a dead drive or something.  Instead of logging/alerting something to the critical and unusual printf failure, the app fails in a different way because this printf failed.  Heaven forbid that it was sprintf that failed and then you shove bad data in to a database or configuration file and not just fail the system but corrupt the data too.  Inspite of all of that,  even veterans will forget error checking at times, it's a common bug and so having higher level tools to help assist, like exception in the shell can only be a good thing.
%
i get it, but i don't...
given his example:<BR>cd&nbsp;/work/foo<BR>rm -rf bar<BR>cp -r&nbsp;/fresh/data<BR><BR>would this not suffice:<BR>cd&nbsp;/work/foo &amp;&amp; rm -rf bar &amp;&amp; cp -r&nbsp;/fresh/data<BR><BR>my undertanding of &amp;&amp; was that it only executes in the previous command didn't throw some sort of error. i understand its not as powerful as what he's talking about, but there is some degree of fault tolerance there.<BR><BR>secondly, i don't know about you, but i would be very uncomfortable with something that tries a few thousand times or for a particular amount of time - it could really lock up threads or disk IO quite sunstantially if not well considered.
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Cooperation
In order for this to work, it might need changes in the OS level.<BR>Imagine you access a block/char device or an NFS mounted directory and the device driver never returns from the system call. Your script would hang, and a kill would produce a zombie process.<BR>If you want fault tolerance, you'd have to have a timeout mechanism for all device drivers. But if you read from&nbsp;/dev/mt0 and the tape needs rewinding and it takes 6 minutes, you don't want to have your script aborted after 5 minutes.
%
FTSH is an exception system for shell programming
<p>What's with all of the people claiming that FTSH will ruin the world because it makes it easier to be a sloppy programmer.  Did you freaking read the documentation?

<p>To massively oversimplify, FTSH adds exceptions to shell scripting.  Is that really so horrible? Is of line-after-line of "if [$? -eq 0] then" really an improvement?  Welcome to the 1980's, we've discovered that programming languages should try and minimize the amount of time you spent typing the same thing over and over again.  Human beings are bad at repetitive behavior, avoid repetition if you can.

<p>Similarlly FTSH provides looping constructs to simplify the common case of "Try until it works, or until some timer or counter runs out."  Less programmer time wasted coding Yet Another Loop, less opportunities for a stupid slip-up while coding that loop.

<p>If you're so bothered by the possibility of people ignoring return codes it should please you to know that FTSH forces you to appreciate that return codes are very uncertain things.  Did diff return 1 because the files are different, or because the linker failed to find a required library?  Ultimately all you can say is that diff failed.

<p>Christ, did C++ and Java get this sort of reaming early on?  "How horrible, exceptions mean that you don't have to check return codes at every single level."
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Is the FTSH acronym pronounced...
As a side-bar, is the FTSH acronym pronounced... fetish?<BR><BR>All kidding aside, this sounds like a great idea.<BR><BR>As for the comments about encouraging sloppy code, it is clear those posters have never worked in demanding moving-target environments.  The kinds of errors encountered cannot be solved easily in code - this extension would help.<BR><BR>As for the comments on "you can do this in Perl, Python, and ", this is true, but if I know Bash and want tolerance, why should I have to learn a new language to get it?  Likely all I'm doing is copying files, forking off subprocesses, and the like.<BR><BR>For the comments on "why another shell," I would tend to agree that it would be best integrated into Bash - but then, you change the implementation of Bash, create incompatible situations, and have to retest volumes of existing scripts.  It's best to have this as a separate shell with close look/feel semantics to Bash (or Csh).<BR><BR>
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dwim? (Do what I mean)
Something perhaps like <a HREF="http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/D/DWIM.html" TITLE="catb.org">this</A>?
%
Askemos
I spent the better part of three year implementing
a fault tollerant programming environment
and released it under GPL.
Please visit <a HREF="http://www.askemos.org/" TITLE="askemos.org">Askemos</A> to find it.
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Re:Fault Tolerance at its best
yeah rock solid fault tolerance, hehe, it might even "Resume Next" if u show how delete the executable from your file system.
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Re:Been tried
RTFA. You're lightyears away from what it's about.
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Re:First Real Post
Um... no, that doesn't do the same thing. The whole point of ftsh is that the 'try' block encloses a set of statements which must all be executed or it fails. If the 'cd&nbsp;/tmp' fails, bash will blindly run the 'rm -f data' anyway, whereas ftsh will stop and jump to the start of the try block to have another go.
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MOSIX
<i> <BR>
&nbsp; <b> </b> </i> <i> </i>
%
That's okay
Because SQL Server 2000 is pretty much the best database around for the price.<BR><BR>Who needs all that integrated&nbsp;.NET stuff anyway?
%
Re:That's okay
<i>MySQL...is ten times easier to manage and work with then SQL Server 2000.</i><BR><BR>I'm sorry, but what the hell are you talking about?  I've used both these servers extensively (as well as Sybase ASA, PostgreSQL and Oracle), and as much as I respect MySQL, it's certainly no easier to use than SQL Server.  It's at best about the same, with SQL Server being much easier to pick up from 0 knowledge due to a surprisingly good set of help docs.  Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer are really good tools, as well...in fact, until we discovered <a HREF="http://www.xpressapps.com/" TITLE="xpressapps.com">mssqlXpress</A>, Query Analyzer was bar none my favorite IDE for making new statements.  (sqlXpress adds sourcesafe integration, versioning, and historical reporting to a clone of Q.A. with <i>autocomplete</i> and automatic proc generation, it is a pretty clutch tool)<BR><BR>MySQL is very good, but ten times better?  Not really.  In fact, if I had to beg for any SQL Server regardless of price, I'd take SQL Server because it's the easiest to develop for and easiest to port FROM.  This gives you an app that will run on almost any other server with a little effort.  I rewrote a massive app to run on Sybase in three weeks and Postgres in a month (most of which was testing the DB core of our app).
%
Re:That's okay
i think you'll find <a HREF="http://www.postgresql.org/" TITLE="postgresql.org">PostgreSQL</A> is also pretty good value for money!
%
Re:That's okay
As technically inferior MySQL is to Postgres, MySQL has a few major things going for it that ensure it's niche.<BR><BR>1. Easy to install on Windows. The average coder at a Windows-only farm can easily run the executable and have the latest version running on their developer box. Not all companies allow you to have multiple boxes, and many force you (via draconion security measures) to only run windows with certain software installed. Postgres NEEDS a user-friendly Win32 installer, perhaps with a similar info-item like MySQL has. This is a MUST for companies to start to take notice. Then, a PHB can even play with it and like it.<BR><BR>2. Marketing. While open-source, MySQL has a nice marketing engine behind it. A beautiful webpage, online and PRINT adds, and magazine and newspaper articles CONSTANTLY writing about the "little database that could" every few week / months. Postgres needs to start getting the word out, and hype it a little. Just because a product is superior, doesn't mean it will thrive. There are tons of examples out there: Beta vs VHS, Windows vs OS X, etc. For a database to be used, it must be allowed and "signed off" by a manager of some sort. Most will take reputation + support + "ooh, nice webpage" over a product that might be better, but they know nothing about it.<BR><BR>3. More management tools. MySQL has a couple out there that look and run great; very professional looking. This earns respect from PHB's, as they are easily misled by such niceties.<BR><BR>Don't get me wrong.  MySQL is nice, but doesn't have what I need most (Views, triggers, etc).  Postgres may not be perfect, but I think it is superior.  We just need to get the word out to those "not in the know".
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Re:That's okay
SQL Server 2005? is going to be great. However, if I had to choose the *best* database I would go with Oracle without a doubt. Every tool other database manufacturers are trying to mirror generally come from Oracle. Plus they support GNAA/Linux which makes buying very expensive hardware a problem of the past. Hell you can get a license for standard for $799.<BR><BR>Unfortunately my job runs SQL Server 2000. Having cut my teeth on PL/SQL, Transact is a nightmare because it is so limiting.<BR><BR>I'm actually looking forward to Yukon because the marketing ad sheet shows some really cool features. The only question is will they deliver and when will it be?
%
'best database around for the price'?
Really?<BR><BR>Is it the best database for a linux or unix shop?<BR>Is it the best database for large reporting or search applications?<BR>Is it the best database for projects or companies with a small budget?<BR><BR>Ah, the answer to all of the above is 'no':<BR>- zero portability<BR>- parallelism and partitioning is primitive<BR>- licensing costs for a 4-way server can easily hit $100k, and in many configurations are more expensive than other top commercial products (db2 for example).<BR><BR>When it comes to prototyping, sql server is at the top of my list.  However, when it comes to delivering powerful capabilities, automating operations, and scripting changes - then it's at the bottom of my list.<BR><BR>But I will agree with you on the&nbsp;.net stuff - integrating that into the database is a bad idea.
%
Re:BLASPHEMY! BLASPHEMY! YOU WILL EMBRACE MYSQL!
Yep, I was shocked when I first played with MySql, having heard such good things about it, and discovered how many features it lacked that I consider essential to a serious database.<BR><BR>I have since got over my shock and realised that MySql is really good for what it is, but is really a different kind of beast to Oracle, MSSql etc.<BR><BR>Dan.<BR>
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Re:That's okay - Holy cow 40 Million lines of code
<i>Give MS a frickin' break....MS said there is going to be something like <b>40 *million* </b> lines of code...</i><BR><BR>Just out of curiosity, I counted the lines of code (both c &amp; assembler, all processors) of the 2.6.4 kernel. It is less than <b>5.5 million</b>.<BR><BR>40 million lines of code. There's all the reason I ever need to not use it.<BR><BR>With 40 million lines of code, you never fix bugs, the best you can hope for is to relocate them to a really obscure place.<BR><BR>
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Re:BLASPHEMY! BLASPHEMY! YOU WILL EMBRACE MYSQL!
This is a good example of how far behind MySQL really is.  I don't want to degrade the db; I have used it on several PHP/MySQL driven sites.  However, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Sybase and others have had transactions for many years.  I have only been developing professionally for about 7 years (circa 97), but I started out on SQL Server 6.5 which had full support for transactions.  SQL Server 7.0 had support (via MTS) for distrubuted transactions (across multiple databases).

If MS had this back in 1997, you know Oracle had it before then.
%
Yukon's promised features
Not good for MS. A lot of people have been waiting on Yukon. Yukon is finally going to deliver online restoration, database mirroring with automatic failover, and support for mirrored backup sets.<BR><BR>Disappointing. SQL Server had really come a long way, too. Maybe 2005 won't be too late.
%
Re:Yukon's promised features
<I>Yukon is finally going to deliver online restoration, database mirroring with automatic failover, and support for mirrored backup sets.</I><BR><BR>Let's face it, these features isn't something most users need.  If Microsoft sees real trouble, they will simply slash the per-processor license cost by a factor of 50 or 100, and switching suddenly becomes a non-issue for most users.<BR><BR>Per-client licenses and awfully high per-processor licensing costs are the most important factor which motivates most users to attempt other solutions.  Of course, the proprietary databases have important features which look very good on paper, but I've seen quite a few installations which use a multi-thousand dollar database as if it were MySQL (not even using online backup).  You can get away with that if you only need a workgroup server license, but if you need 20,000 client access licenses (or multiple per-processor licenses), licensing becomes a problem and you'll certainly consider other options.
%
What ...
... they postponed yet another piece of software?? See me not being amazed here, I mean, it seems to be the trend at MS currently to announce new software and then postponing it due to "problems"&nbsp;... I wonder why. Would it be because the want to see what OSS has to offer first so they can steal the ideas and then sell 'em off?

On the other side, if developers start saying this "slip" is becoming "a credibility issue", then maybe certain OSS apps will finally be accepted in full as being grown-up pieces of software. At best this will cause MS to loose a few points in goodwill with a large group of people that still (foolishly) place their trust in them.
%
Re:What ...
I saw a couple of Alpha builds of Yukon and the Planning papers (blue badge), but I didn't see much, but I bet I know what's taking so long:<BR><BR>Yukon will allow structs as column types, and will do mapping between&nbsp;.NET types and SQL types automatically, and allow you to run C# SQLDataAdapter-type code natively within Stored procedures.  Plus with the trend starting in SQL 2000, it'll be XML, XML, XML.  I know XML will be a native type and some of the "indexed xml" (red/blue fast-search vs. DOM-search) that they started in the aborted Hailstorm project will be in there.<BR><BR>Longhorn replaces Win32 with&nbsp;.NET; Yukon replaces the SQL you knew with new stuff.  They'll eventually get it right and it will rock, but don't expect to use all this until 2007 (it'll be out before then, but you won't finish your first REAL project till then).<BR><BR>There, I said it.  2007.
%
Re:What ...
Oh Joy <BR> <BR>

Just what you need a new microsoft database that makes refactoring and porting your DB to another platform near impossible. <BR> <BR>
Larry Elison is probably chuckling like a demented monkey over this. I can see his sales people going at this. Microsoft Software assurance = Pay them to take their time to devise ways to achieve complete customer lock in. Or, the ever popular why run your business using techniques with 50 years of validation behind them when you can do things microsofts way. <BR> <BR>
I can allready see the security problems popping up. Run C# code directly, the same code being ever more integrated into yukon. Well seems we will be able to expect worms that make slammer look like a joke. Heck you could have them replicate throughout the entire system and hold entire enterprises data hostage. <BR> <BR>
The sad thing is that the large group of IT director/ Sysadmin lemmings will go along with no one ever got fired for choosing microsoft. After all, look at how they have embraced the ever popular and ever more dangerous office/exchange combo.
%
Re:What ...
<i>Run C# code directly, the same code being ever more integrated into yukon.</i>

<p>Same code, but different security model/sandbox. The CLR in yukon does not have access to the file system, sockets, winforms, services, the registry or anything else a virus is going to need. It's limited to communicating with the SQL process and manipulating data within a database. Nothing more.
%
Re:What ...
I think they are delaying not due to stealing OSS software ideas, but honestly trying to make their software better.  For the first time in many years MS has real competition.  They can't release another insecure trashbag OS or database server.  If they release before it is actually ready, then they will get tons of bad press and their lunch ate by OSS software.<br>
<br>
Lets just hope OSS developers don't sit on their laurels during these delays.  If they do they will be playing major catch up come 2005/2006.  This is the time for OSS to take the lead.  The boys at Redmond may be evil, but they are no fools.
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Re:What ...
MS SQL Server's "corporate" competitor is Oracle 9i.  Oracle will beat a SQL Server hands down in any scenario unless it is a small database system, if that's the case there's no point using SQL Server, you can use MSDE or any freeware product. Postgres (last time when I had a look at it under Windows) runs on top of Cygwin and horrendously slow unlike its Unix-compatible brother. MySQL can be used but what's the point if you have already decided to use a toy database, you shouldn't use SQL Server, go and use MSDE instead, or Access. Most used MySQL is 3.x family and it used to not support lots of features (all changed in 4.x but are we being adventorous today?).<p> Unfortunately, as far as I can see (and my idea will be readily disputed by others) no OSS database is ready for "enterprise" systems (whatever that means, I work in a company who writes software and the backend can be any RDMBS as long as they have a decend JDBC driver). SQL Server 2k has lots of missing features which makes our life very hard and I'm not a fan but at the moment I can't go to any of our customers and say use postgres or mySQL etc.<p>Another big player is DB2 by IBM which claims it has the fastest database on the world but DB2 is cumbersome, hard to manage compared to Oracle and MS SQL2k but it works almost under any platform under the sun.<p>Database world is quite interesting, I can't say any RDMS system out there is perfect.
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OSS Opportunity
I'd be surprised if any company of size would change something as mission critical as their DBMS due to this delay.  To me, it says that they're going to get it right first time around.
<P>
It's also worth the effort on Microsofts' part to get this right.  After all, <a HREF="http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/WinFS/default.aspx" TITLE="microsoft.com">WinFS</A>  is going to be built on the same technology.
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OS RDBMS might profit
If the Open Source Databases implement equeally <a HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/overview/default.asp" TITLE="microsoft.com">features</A> that some applications might need, they can profit from the situation.
<P>
<a HREF="http://www.mysql.com/products/mysqlcc/index.html" TITLE="mysql.com">MySQL Control Center</A> is a step in that direction (client side) if they implement some more features on server side M$ centric customers need, it could get Microsoft into trouble in the future (some years)
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Re:OS RDBMS might profit
How the fuck did this get modded to +5?<BR><BR>Wow, MySQL now has an official front-end tool (instead of one of many third-party ones that it's had for ages), oohh, that'll make ALL the difference.  It's got NOWHERE NEAR the feature set of MS-SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or Firebird.  Christ, we had to wait till version FOUR till they added native transaction support (which wasn't ever written by them), subqueries, replication, etc. and we're still not sure that it even does any of this properly now! (Each point release massively changes and/or extends features, which is stupid for a supposedly stable DB.) Sounds like a "real" DB to me that'll definitely compete with Oracle and MS-SQL, yeah right...<BR><BR>But because Slashdot loves MySQL this gets modded to +5 by people who don't know shit about databases, and certainly not about MS SQL Server.  Great.<BR><BR>The only reason MySQL became popular was because it was free and ran well together with Apache on modest hardware, so ISPs could bundle it as a *simple* website backend DB. It does that pretty well (as long as you don't mind running REPAIR TABLE every now and again), but it's certainly no viable alternative to MS-SQL or Oracle.  Anyone that thinks that and uses the acronym M$ in the same post really doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
%
but
Has any one contemplated the concept that Microsoft might actually be taking the time to make better products? I realise its taboo on slashdot to show any support to Microsoft, but the fact is that they are not stupid! Do you honestly believe they would just decide, hey, lets let linux + competitors get a foothold in our markets whilst we jack about! WRONG!
<br> <br>
One thing anyone in the IT business should learn is to never ever under estimate microsoft.
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except...
Many business customers have recently been coerced into signing ongoing contracts where they receive any upgrades in a particular year in exchange for a yearly fee.<BR><BR>These companies are going to be extremely p155ed off when they realise that all they are going to get for their money is (maybe) XP Reloaded (think ME).<BR><BR>Companies cannot afford to throw money down the microsoft toilet for much longer... especially when all they get is extra bugs that they didnt need in the first place, coupled with a healthy dose of lock-in and increased support costs.
%
Re:but
Get off your high horses people (not just you, all the posters along this vein).<BR><BR>Look, what are you waiting for in the next release of SQLServer? Anything? Nope...didn't think so.<BR>You HAVE a rock-solid DB solution from MS right now, so who cares if the next release from MS is late, especially when it represents a fundamental change, and thus nothing you're doing _right now_ will suffer if it's not out next week will it?<BR><BR>Damned, the only thing I know of that's being worked on that requires this to be released is WinFS, which will be released in Longhorn when? A couple more years you say?<BR><BR>Besides, when was the last time your OSS project of choice went gold on time? And no, not having release deadlines doesn't count.<BR>
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That's too bad...
Perhaps they've decided to locate and fix bugs and security issues BEFORE they release a product...
%
Like what?
What OSS opportunities does this create? Doesn't OSS need to close the gap with SQL 2000 before taking advantage of any slippage?

How about ANSI '92 compliance for MySQL... that would be a good start!
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Re:Like what?
<p> <i>How about ANSI '92 compliance for MySQL... that would be a good start!</i> </p>

<p>No, a good start would be to flush MySQL down the toilet where it belongs and use a real database engine such as PostgreSQL or Firebird.</p>

<p>Seriously!  Why wait for MySQL to add all those missing features when such superior alternatives already exist, and, furthermore, MySQL has a more restrictive license?</p>
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Re:Like what?
<i>No, a good start would be to flush MySQL down the toilet where it belongs and use a real database engine such as PostgreSQL or Firebird.</i>
<p>
As long as you can accept the limitations of MySQL, it's perfectly usable. MySQL is faster and lighter weight than PostgreSQL in my experience. I haven't tried Firebird yet.
<p>
Honestly, I wouldn't want to run a site like Slashdot on MySQL, but for smaller projects it seems useful.
<p>
RDBMSes don't implement Codd's 12 rules anyway, so maybe none of them are "real".  Personally I think it's good to have a range of database options.  At the high end, Oracle and DB2 have loads of features, and are presumably "real" by your definition, but they are also incredibly complex to administrate, which is why most companies have dedicated DBAs for them.
%
maybe
all this slipage is a cover for the fact that ms has been listening to it's customers ( forced by some healthy oss pressure )
1: we don't want to be forced into upgrade cycles every 12 months. enterprise systems don't work that way.
2: take the time and fix the damn bugs. we are paying for this shit lets see it work properly.
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MS slips makes more opportunities?
I hate to disagree with that, but we recently had a project and had the choice of which SQL to use.  Customer pushed back and simply said MS.<BR><BR>Just because the product isn't there doesn't mean they will automatically go to another 'free' alternative- instead it means they'll simply use the older version until it wears out.
%
Obviously you don't know the situation
otherwise you'd realize you build software to specifications, one of which is "we have a site license for MS SQL Server."<BR><BR>That means... they tell us to build the system to operate on it, and we deliver.<BR><BR>Coming back to them and informing them we aren't going to listen to their needs would result in, oh, someone else having been awarded the contract.
%
Actualy kind of sad
As a DBA who deals with MS SQL 2k (and 7 and 6.5) on a day to day basis (hour to hour basis?) I'm actually kind of saddened by this.  I was really looking forward to playing with the TSQL/.Net paradigm shift as far as accessing data.<BR><BR>7.0 was a huge jump from 6.5 and 2k from 7.0 was almost as significant of a jump.  I will call a spade a spade and say that the evolution of the MS SQL server has really impressed me and I was looking for good things from this next version as well.  I know this is the wrong place to say such things, but I've had lots of problems with other MS problems, but this one since 7.0 has been quite good.  Don't even get me started on some of their other products though.&nbsp;:)  <BR><BR>I'll just go hide in my DBA hole until 2005 I guess.
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Re:Actualy kind of sad
I completely agree with you.  The only thing I really HATE about SQL Server is that it only runs on Windows Operating Systems.  As I "only" have about 6 years of experience managing database servers, I find Oracle very frustrating to develop for and maintain.  My databases aren't THAT huge (maybe 75-80 million records) and SQL Server works great.  Of course, my main client is only now switching from v.7 to 2000 so I don't think this delayed release will affect me that much.  I can do all my ColdFusion and Java development and hosting in Mac/GNAA/Linux so SQL Server is the only thing forcing me to keep a Windows box in my closet (which of course was locked up when I tried to use it this morning).
<p>
I do hope they can somehow do a better job with security with the next release, although that may be asking too much.&nbsp;:-(  Last time I had to reinstall SQL Server 2000, the whole subnet was down with the SQL Slammer worm before I even had a chance to configure the server and download the patches from Microsoft.  Ouch.  You have to download the patches ahead of time, pull the server off the internet, install SQL Server and all the patches, change the default port (and obviously make sure your sa password is not blank, duh) and only THEN go back online.  Wow.
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Meanwhile, MySQL does transactions
Meanwhile, <a HREF="http://www.mysql.com/products/mysql/index.html" TITLE="mysql.com">MySQL</A> is now doing transactions, and VIEWs are on their way in 5.1. It's GPL, so it's free (as in speech).<P>
--Mike--
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Re:Meanwhile, MySQL does transactions
<i>Meanwhile, MySQL is now doing transactions, and VIEWs are on their way in 5.1. It's GPL, so it's free (as in speech).</i> <BR>
&nbsp; <br>Why not use Postgres?  That way, you don't have to wait for features that all the other RDBMS products have had for years.  What is it that makes MySQL so much more popular than Postgres?  It sure isn't features.
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Re:Meanwhile, MySQL does transactions
<i>What is it that makes MySQL so much more popular than Postgres?</i><BR><BR>Lower barrier to entry.<BR><BR>Since the vast majority of toy applications don't<BR>need anything more than a hashed flat file (like gdbm), people find it easy<BR>to get things working with MySQL (MySQL abstracts a flat file quite easily)<BR>and suddenly think they're Database GODS. Then, when they attempt a new<BR>db project, they either force MySQL into it because it's what they know, or<BR>they look at a more powerful DB package, realize they're in over their head,<BR>and decide that the DB package is to blame for their inability to use it, thus<BR>reinforcing their idea that MySQL is a better tool.<BR><BR>Now I realize that there are lots of applications where MySQL is perfectly<BR>adequate, but the ease of using MySQL for toy applications has fooled lots<BR>of people who have limited db skills at best into thinking that they're<BR>experts.
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Re:Meanwhile, MySQL does transactions
Wow, views will finally be in version 5.1.<BR><BR>Jeez.  First time I looked at MySQL a couple of years ago for a project I started putting a basic database scheme together an went to construct a view, only for my Jaw to hit the desk when I found out they were not available.  Views are such a basic component of RDBMS databases that it simply hadn't occurred to me (an Oracle, DB2, SQLServer and others veteran) that software could be release that called itself a relational database that didn't have them.<BR><BR>Anyway, just went and used Postgres instead.  It's still beyond me why people even bother giving MySQL the time of day when the incomparably superior Postgres is available under GPL.
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Re:Meanwhile, MySQL does transactions
<i>It's still beyond me why people even bother giving MySQL the time of day when the incomparably superior Postgres is available under GPL.</i><BR><p><BR>I'm with you on that one.  Once I installed Postgres I haven't looked back.  What I admire about the Postgres team is that they focus on standards first and speed second.  Smart, because eventually speed catches up (through code optimization or just over time through hardware); whereas MySQL has to add in features afterwards, and do so without slowing it down (and thus pissing off its following).  Please MySQL fans, no flaming.<BR><p><BR>Postgres vs. MS SQL is sort of a different issue.  MS SQL has all kinds of features Postgres doesn't have, e.g. lots of replication features (I believe, though I've never had to use them) and its optimizer seems more intelligent than Postgres'.  That said, very few dataservers actually use the extended features, and my casual complaints about Postgres' optimizer are quelled by a) fixing my query b) VACUUMing the database as  instructed or c) realizing that it was only a few ms slower anyway.  Cons on the MS SQL Server side are that a) it ties to you one platform, b) tends to have large gaping security holes and c) tends more often to be implemented by those without a clue of DBAing or security.<BR><p><BR>Whoops, I ranted.
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MS helping OSS - Indirectly
If I had any doubts that MS is helping OSS and slowly erasing itself, it is now clearing&nbsp;:-)

Jokes aside, this will seriously affect businesses that have paid for their upgrade licenses, as the licenses will expire before the sql server is released. This will make decision makers view Open Source in a new light. Atleast, in Open Source you don't pay for future vaporware in the present.
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Re:MS helping OSS - Indirectly
<a HREF="http://firebird.sourceforge.net/" TITLE="sourceforge.net">Firebird</A><BR><BR>They all beat MS-SQL consistantly, and postgresql is coming close to toppling oracle!<BR><BR>Mysql isn't the only open source database in the world. It is popular because 90% of users DON'T need all the flashy features.
%
Does this sound familiar?
Microsoft (circa 2001):  "With this new licensing model, you buy "software assurance" so if a new version is released in the next two years, you're entitled to a free upgrade"<BR><BR>Uh huh...I see that's working out nicely...<BR>
%
Just More Validation for OSS Model
Here's a company with many thousands of employees, more money than God, and a dominant position in almost every market segment they're in.  And they STILL can't write secure code OR meet most of their delivery deadlines (deadlines which they set themselves, not ones that were imposed on them).<BR><BR>Meanwhile, the groups that produce products like MySQL and PostgreSQL have had steady releases, a wealth of needed features, and relatively few security incidents.<BR><BR>Unless you're already so heavily bought in to their infrastructure that any change would be prohibitively expensive, I can't see how it makes any sense to base your business on Microsoft's products.  They're expensive, they're insecure, they're performance laggards, and you just can't rely on them for support.<BR><BR>Cheers,<BR>
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Past tense?
<i>"Early adoption of Yukon in enterprises was quite strong due to the functions and features"</i><BR><BR>How can you talk about functions and features of software that has not yet been released? How can companies "early adopt" vaporware?<BR><BR>Yes, they can order in advance, but to me "adoption" means running something as a part of your business. Not "planning to maybe use it once you get it and if it turns out to be as good as you was promised it would be".<BR>
%
Can't screw up
This is one of Microsoft's most important products.  Finacially, there is a huge amount of "positive perception" riding on SQL server.<BR><BR>Businesses may run on one of their OSes, but businesses run <B>IN</B> SQL Server.  This product can make or (more critically) brake businesses.  If rumors of major problems with SQL server screwing up business were to get out, corporate perception of them would tank.<BR><BR>They have no real choice with this product but to try and make sure it is ready (and take more time if needed) rather than push it to market.<BR><BR>-Pete
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Mysql, PosteGres, DB2, Oracle MSSQL
It is really funny the level of fervor behind Mysql.  So funny it makes you wonder if the zealots have ever used anything other to any real extent.<BR><BR>The company I work for software's backend can go Mysql, Postgres, Mssql, Db2, or Oracle.<BR><BR>For massivce connections, queries, reporting, reliability it is in this order.<BR><BR>1.  Mssql, DB2, Oracle, all pretty much equal.<BR>2, Postegres, tricky but holds its own.<BR>3. Mysql, will work in the low end, forget reporting, forget huge db hits.<BR><BR>I like Mysql.  But Mssql 7.0 hands its ass to it.<BR><BR>What happens is some company will be our product.  Hand it over to some 25 year old self proclaimed web genius to install. Conversation is as follows.<BR><BR>1. "Can I have the Source?"  No, it is closed, long discussion about how we suck cause our product isn't open source.<BR>2. "Ewwww, Java, it sucks, you should rewrite in PHP"  I explain it has been continually developed since 96, no way to stop the engine and write in PHP.<BR>4."I decided to save the company some money and install Mysql" We say ok, explain issues, put them in an email and fax(CYA principle).  I then advise to run Postegre, that it is more robust, and is FREE as well.<BR><BR>No one lists.  Junior installs on Mysql, everything runs fine, site gets huge amount of traffic, database gets quirky.  Management starts running huge queries on database reporting tool. Database is very slow to respond, then in a few weeks keels over.<BR><BR>We get called.  Tech is yelling, my guys are smirking(but still polite on phone)  Management, myself, and tech gets on conference.   Tech starts berating me.  Management starts berating me.  I pull out magic email and fax with all my system recquirements, suggestions for optimal use.     Hey, guess what I was write.  Wait a minute, shouldn't I know best since I work for the company that writes and support the product?<BR><BR>Three times a week this happens with Mysql.  We have 14000 customers and I swear 50 percent have some guy that thinks he knows best....  knows our product better, knows computers better...<BR><BR>This is a great example of where our community needs to clean up its act.  And I thought I would never say that.<BR><BR>Mysql is good for what it is, but there are many things it is not.  Learn this.<BR><BR>Puto<BR><BR>
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Slashdot - MySQL?
Isn't <a HREF="http://slashdot.org/faq/tech.shtml#te050" TITLE="slashdot.org"> Slashdot run on MySQL</A>?
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Horrible Name
I really do wish mickysoft would rename their flagship database something else.  Are they that arrogant that they feel the need for such a generic name?  That's about like naming your product "Web Server" or "Network File Server".  When someone mentions SQL server, I always have them clarify whether or not they are talking in general terms for some sort of relational backend, or are they referring to microsoft's product.  Sometimes they don't even know the difference, but perhaps that is microsoft's end goal.
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re
Ha.<BR><BR>Since Microsoft bought Sybase and renamed it SQLServer, it has slowly been emasculating this db.<BR><BR>It's fiasco after fiasco when it comes to SQLServer releases... MS, seems to decide out of the blue, to rollback changes which were stupid in the first place, but, which were prevasive or duct tape 'features' on at the 11th hour.<BR><BR>At least it keeps a legion of monkeys employed mopping up the mess, left in the wake of Ms release to Ms release.
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SQL 2005 &amp; VS.NET 2005
What this article doesn't mention is that Visual Studio 2005 (formly known as Whitby) has also been delayed so that MS can release both products at the same time. (as VS.Net 2005 is supposed to be heavily integrated with the&nbsp;.NET features of SQL 2005)...<BR> <BR>The thing I don't understand is why VS.NET is being delayed like this, the SQL objects should be seperate and not integrated into VS.Net anyway!
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SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005
<p>CNET News reported five days ago on the 10th that both Yukon and Whidbey would be delayed and their final names.  They need that time if they are going to clean up the shit HTML and JS outputed by VS.  Not that they will, that would allow people to use Firefox.</p>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
<p>The company said Wednesday that it has decided to push out to the first half of 2005 the delivery of the next major edition of SQL Server, code-named Yukon, and a closely related update to Visual Studio.Net, called Whidbey. Until recently, the company had said that both products would ship by the end of this year.</p>
<p>
The final product names for Yukon and Whidbey will be SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005, said Tom Rizzo, director of product management for SQL Server.</p>
</BLOCKQUOTE>

<a HREF="http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5172166.html" TITLE="com.com">Microsoft delays database, tools delivery</A>
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Perhaps...
they had to go back and make sure it had enough buffer overflow issues so they could keep the demand for MSCEs high?<p>

Joking aside, I think these delays can be attributed to the whole "Trustworthy Computing" thing and MS discovering just how much junk code was floating around in each new version. They have deep enough pockets to ride out these kind of delays but it does open a great window of opporutnity for OS X and GNAA/Linux along with a raft of other OSS solutions. A break in the constant upgrade cycle is an opening we should all be working to take advantage of, from desktop tech to database admin to kernel devs.
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This product lacks focus
<i>This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then&nbsp;.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said.</i> <br> <br>

This is the paragraph that explains it all.  This product lacks focus.  Why?  Who knows?  But if you cannot give your troops clear, concise goals, then everyone will go in a million different directions.  And nothing will get done!  <br> <br>

When this project first started out, it may have had the clear, concise goals.  But then they started to add extra things to the project as it progressed.  Sometimes adding a new feature or what-not means starting from scratch (if you wanna do it right).  <br> <br>

If MS wants to do this right (and not delay the shipping date), then they should put a freeze on adding new features. Otherwise, it will either slip again, or a critical flaw will be found with the software.<br> <br>

My $0.02<br> <br>
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marketing survey
About 6 months ago I was on the phone to some marketing company who were doing a survey on Yukon and whether or not I was contemplating deploying it.<BR><BR>I said no because:<BR><BR>1) it was too tighly integrated into AD/ windows server and we didn't any of that.<BR>2) I didn't trust it, and wouldn't till it had been in the field for at least a year.<BR><BR>I think they got alot of responses like 2) (going by the marketers comments) and they prob decided to wait till the new windows server is out (2006??) and deploy on the new Trusted Computing Base thing they are wittering on about.<BR><BR>
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Some of that Spit and Polish
<p>Much as I love a good MS Bashing, I'll tell you what I find really lacking (personally) for PostgreSQL and other OSS RDBMSs - a good GUI management tool.</p>

<p>Something that helps you craft medium-complicated joins quickly with a few clicks and drags.</p>

<p>For example, see <a HREF="http://phrogz.net/tmp/sqlEditor2.gif" TITLE="phrogz.net">this screenshot</A> from Visual Interdev working on MSSQL2k, creating a SQL Query for a stored proc. Sure, it's almost trivial to hand-write the SQL code. But it was even easier to just select a few tables, click on the fields I want, right-click on the joins (created automatically from the database structure) to change their type, and be done.</p>

<p>I use PGSQL for all my personal projects now, but I sorely miss the speed that a GUI editor like this allowed me. </p>
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The real problem
The real problem is not so much that the Yukon date has slipped, it's that Whidbey (The next version of Visual Studio.NET and the&nbsp;.NET framework) is slipping with it.  For who knows what reason, Microsoft decided that these products must be released together.  While Yukon promises some very nice features, most people would much rather have Whidbey released now and live with SQL 2000 for awhile longer.<BR><BR>To top it off, MS is not even going to be releasing any service packs for Visual Studio in the meantime.  There are some rather serious issues with the current version of Visual Studio that can only be fixed by calling MS for specific hotfixes.  Needless to say, much of the MS developer community is up in arms.
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Not a great loss.. SQL2000 is a good product
Once they got to that version of their SQL product, they got it pretty much right.<BR><BR>Its one of the few solid things that microsoft puts out. Previous verisons were pretty dismal.<BR><BR>I doubt that most pepole will ever need the 'new' features coming down the pike. They should leave it alone, instead of screwing it up or bloating it out....
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It wasn't...
slated to be released until the last quarter this year. 2005 "sounds bad", but it's only a few months.
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sqlxml
I'm going to guess sqlxml performance blows huge chunks. I ran several dozen benchmarks comparing oledb with sqlxml. sqlxml was at best 10x slower than oledb. With 6 concurrent clients hitting sqlserver on a nice 4CPU box, sqlxml was 100x slower. So yeah, there's going to be performance issues. It's called, dump sqlxml or sell yukon with hardware XML accelerators.
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Please called it MICROSOFT SQL server
Just calling "SQL server" suggests its the only<BR>program that serves SQL.
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Old News
The ship date news had already been reported by Mary Jo Foley, The reporter of Microsoft news, on the 10th.<BR><BR>http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,15<nobr>4<wbr></nobr> 6601,00.asp<BR><BR>Steven<BR>
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Dont understand
We are forced to run SQL 7.0 Standard Edition so I have no Idea what any of these post are talking about.

Sigh...  I digress
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Software Assurance
My question is where does this leave people who bought the 3 year Software Assurance packages from MS.  They have already paid for this update, but it will not be available for them until their contract is up.  This will also happen to those who have also paid for updates to Windows and Visual Studio.  Do they get an extention to their contract to include these products that they have paid for, or are they just screwed?
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Why Analysts Suck.
from the article <i>Some think Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew with Yukon. "This product lacks focus," said Betsy Burton, analyst with the Gartner Group. "They're doing all sorts of stuff with it, first scalability was the issue, then XML support, then&nbsp;.Net activities, and then business intelligence and now security. The gut issue is, what is the purpose of this release? As a team trying to develop a product you have to know where you're going," she said</i><BR><BR>Betsy clearly has no clue regarding the SQL Server product's evolution, capabilites or how these are going to change with Yukon. In fact she seems to have a very limited grasp of significance of the Yukon's release.<BR><BR>Unlike Oracle, SQL Server has basically hovered in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" pattern for the last 5 years. For the most part it has delivered a decent database platform, that was for a while more cost effective than oracle. Those who have used SQL Server extensively know it's limitations. Betsy's arguments about "product lacking focus" are rediculous. That's primarily becuase Yukon seeks to rectify a large number of the problems and limitations of SQL Server 2k. It's really very difficult to provide a "focused" look at a product that is changing so significantly. In fact, her complaint is very similar to those that were uttered as Microsfot was trying to formalize the definition of&nbsp;.NET, which really has not clarified itself much in the last two years.<BR><BR>It would seem that Betsy is looking for are a few jargon sound bytes that can be displayed on a single powerpoint slide. That slide would then be shown to a bunch of people who nod their head and say, "that's a sound strategic driection". Big idea's aren't sound bytes.<BR><BR>Unfortunately for Microsoft, they are attempting to be ambitious with Yukon. A lot of new plumbing is going in, as well as a refinement and crystalization of the current features such as SQL -&gt; XML queries, DTS, Replication, the integration of a first class programming language among others. These are all features that we've needed for a long time.<BR><BR>Yukon represents a significant change in the world of RDMS's on the Windows platform. It's sad to see that influential groups such as Gartner can't recognize or have the vision to see how much (and for the better) things are going to change for SQL Server 2K shops.
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Oh, it's MICROSOFT!
You know, I read the headline, and I honestly could not figure out WHO'S sql server was being delayed.  So I said to myself while opening it; why diden't the author of this specify which SQL server is being affected?  <br> <Br>

On a slightly more seious tone (though I did honestly not know who's server was being delayed; I thought it was some no named server that I'd never heard of!), do not allow microsoft to pull another 'we own the word windows'; never shortern Microsoft SQL server, into SQL server- at the absolute least call it MS SQL, so that this way in 5 years they can't turn around and sue everyone who has SQL in there name! <br> <br>

Don't believe me; look at lindows.
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The real reason why SQL Server 2005
Microsoft were using SQL Server 2000 to track code changes and other information tidbits....the server running this went tits-up over the weekend and the recovery features of SQL Server weren't up to scratch&nbsp;;-)<BR><BR>-psy
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Re:argh! can't wait
SQL7 was only 1.0 if you ignore versions 4.2, 6.0 and 6.5.<BR>
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"keeps getting delayed"
Why do I keep seeing this false meme repeated and repeated and repeated?<BR><BR>Longhorn never got "delayed" because it never had a release date.  They were targetting late 2005.  Then they came out and said late 2005 is possible, but they're targetting early 2006.  They haven't changed a thing since.<BR><BR>So where did this "Longhorn is vaporware, it keeps getting delayed" idea start?
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Re:argh! can't wait
&gt; For those Oracle lovers in the crowd, take a look at the benchmarks - MS SQL rules the lower and middle<BR>&gt; ground. It would rule the high end except lack of platform has held it back.<BR><BR>um, which benchmarks would those be?  www.tpc.org doesn't have many benchmarks for desktop-sized servers (which is where sql server really does beat oracle/db2/etc).  And as far as it being held back by its platform - without any of the parallel features of oracle/db2, and without any of the partitioning features - it has zero chance at the high-end.<BR><BR>It's basically *years* behind either of those two databases.  This has nothing to do with windows, it has everything to do with lack of high-end database features in sql server.  Microsoft has done a good job of improving the database client UI and adding usability features to low-end database functionality.  But it hasn't added the high-end functionality, nor has it really delivered a great UI (for example: the SQL Server GUIs all sort date columns alphabetically rather than cronologically).<BR><BR>&gt; Yukon is going to kill Oracle in the middle space because of development features.<BR>Got news for ya, people pick databases for reasons other than development features.<BR>
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Blazingly high?
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power.
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Re:Blazingly high?
"The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says."

It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
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Re:Blazingly high?
<i>Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.</i> <br>
<br>
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery.  Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery.  Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter).
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Re:Blazingly high?
<i>"It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."</i> <BR> <BR>If you look at the weight of the laptop <i>2 pounds</i> for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours.  That is lighter than a conventional laptop.  Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours.  So this does use less power.  The battery is just smaller.
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Re:Blazingly high?
That's the Crusoe chip. These machines have a new chip, the Efficeon. Quoting from the article:<BR><BR>"The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says."<BR><BR>I don't know if 1.4 times the Crusoe should be considered fast, but at least it's fast<i>er</i>...
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Re:Blazingly high?
No 1.4 times Crusoe is not fast, since the Crusoe was/is kinda slow. Anyway the comment implied that the line was fast, but as stated in the linked article the Crusoe was panned for its performance.
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Not that fast
While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.<BR><BR>From the article: <i>"A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."</i><BR><BR>So we are looking at around 1ghz.
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Re:Not that fast
There's no reference to blazingly high clock speeds, just <em>computing speeds</em>. Remember clock speed!=compute speed.
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Re:Not that fast
Thats not strictly true.. On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best. It also depends on what ur doing.. The VLIW architecture auto optimises, so some things will run very well on efficeons (and they get faster as they run).. Also, unlike the intel and AMD mobile processors, efficeons aren't just some hacked up processor designed for something else.. The 3 hours of computing on even the centrino's isn't great when u consider that the transmeta's last about 12 hours, and chances are u wont use ur laptop to play doom3 either
<br> <br>
He is right though.. the efficeons are fast.. not as fast as the pentium-m's or mobile AMD's, but a very decent speed, gets faster as it runs and awesome battery life make transmeta processors a very good choice..
<br> <br>
Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.
<br> <br>
People should remember that the future of computers is clustered CPU's (like openmosix) and wireless, to share CPU power, so in that point of time u wont need much CPU (cause u will just leech it off other computers on the wireless network if u need it) and when that happens, the only reason why the CPU will matter is for when u aren't connected to a network... still, 1GHZ, or more processing power is definately sufficient (my laptop only has 850 P3, which I'm surviving off easily, even with gentoo). Its no athlon 64 FX, but honestly, if u need that kind of power just buy a workstation...
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Obligatory Dilbert/PC World Quote
"Will you advertise on my website or is your new product you want me to review a piece of junk?"

<p>Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews".
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we'll send for one when it comes with linux
&amp; wi-fi vdo conferencing, etc....
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How will GNAA/Linux do on this, I wonder..
Since Linus Torvalds used to work for Transmeta, I would like to know if GNAA/Linux is well optimized for this processor.
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Re:How will GNAA/Linux do on this, I wonder..
I think the question should rather be...<BR><BR>Whether linux is well optimized for x86 arch.<BR><BR>since these chips use a VLIW core for the actual processing with the x86 instructions being compiled on the fly to the vliw code.<BR><BR>Maybe if the linux kernel was compiled to take better advantage of instruction level parallelism the code morphing engine(the x86 to vliw compiler)  could actually run linux much faster.<BR><BR>But then that would be doing some part of the code morphing engines job at the compiler level... nothing wrong with that except you would have to write an entirely new compiler.<BR><BR>plz correct me if i am wrong. (any comp arch gurus around)<BR>
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This seems like a good idea...
...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.<BR> <BR>And damn, that's a sexy laptop...&nbsp;:)<BR>
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Re:This seems like a good idea...
You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium  line has had for years.

Read <a HREF="http://arstechnica.com/cpu/004/pentium-m/pentium-m-1.html" TITLE="arstechnica.com">this</A> article and you'll realize just how much went into it.
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Zaurus connectivity ?
I first expected it to be some kind of super Zaurus but no...<BR>it just seems to be some bigger Vaio C1xx.<BR>Now, I do not see who they want to sell this to if this at least present no consistency with the rest of their offer.
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Celeron comparison
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?<BR><BR>And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one?
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Re:Celeron comparison
Whoops, I mean the Centrino chip.
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Re:Celeron comparison
Centrino is not a chip.  It is a "system" comprised of three parts:<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Intel(R) Pentium M processor<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection<BR>Basically, Intel repackaged and "branded" some existing technologies in an effort to squeeze out other wireless hardware manufacturers (if it ain't Intel WiFi, you can't call it "Centrino," and a successful branding campign makes people want Centrino whether or not they know what it actually is).<BR><BR>Anyway, your question is stil valid, but to technically nitpick it's really about the Pentium M processor.<BR><BR>More info:<BR>http://intel.com/products/mobiletechnology/demo/w<nobr>o<wbr></nobr> rks.htm?iid=ipp_demworks+tab&amp;
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Re:Celeron comparison
Why not choose a Transmeta powered port-a-box?  What's the difference what's inside as long as you can run you necessary proggies?  Does it really matter if AMD or Intel is inside?  Does it really matter that it's Transmeta?  <i>How could you even tell, provided your software behaves as expected?</i>
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Not what it is all about
The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.<BR><BR>Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.<BR><BR>I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
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Re:Not what it is all about
Ditto, I'd also like to add that I use our home 'pokey' laptop to ssh and remote desktop into much faster/less portable computers. Think of it as a wireless console and it's CPU horsepower doesn't matter AT ALL.
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Re:Not what it is all about
<i>Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.</i>

<p>Common sense would say so, but unfortunately, newer browsers, widget libraries, and window managers use a lot of resources. I used to use Redhat 7.1 with FVWM and Opera 6. Blazingly fast on my P3/450. Then, because of frustration with incompatible libraries for newer RPMs, I upgraded to Fedora/Opera 7. I still run Fvwm, but this new Opera version (with a newer Qt library, I presume) needs about 2 seconds of CPU time just for getting in and out of focus. If I look carefully, I can see that the borders of the windows inside the Opera window change a little bit depending on the focus. Emacs and xterm still run fine, but everything that has Gtk or Qt is slow as hell.
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Don't use KDE do you?
<p>I've used kde since the 1.0 days, upgrading all along on my dual ppro-200.  Even in the slowest 2.0 days, it ran fast enough on my system.   Sure I turned the eye-candy slider way down when I configured KDE the first time, but that is all.   It works, and is fast enough.
<p>The only time I have problems is when I hear the harddrive grinding away, swapping.  Even then I'm running something heavy duty in addition to KDE, something that can take up most of my memory alone.
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Getting errors from site - here's the full text
Sharp Shows Slim, Trim Notebook<BR><BR>New Actius MM20 is first to feature Transmeta's new Efficeon chip.<BR><BR>Tom Krazit, IDG News Service<BR>Monday, March 15, 2004<BR><BR>The first notebook available in the United States with Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will be announced by Sharp Systems of America on Monday.<BR><BR>The new Actius MM20 is an improved version of the MM10, says Terry Hanly, product marketing manager for Sharp Systems, a division of Sharp Electronics.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Advertisement<BR><BR>The MM10 used Transmeta's older Crusoe processor, which was praised for its miserly power consumption but panned for its performance.<BR><BR>The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says.<BR><BR>Sharp also improved performance in the MM20 by adding PC2100 (266-MHz) DDR SDRAM. The notebook now comes with 512MB of memory, up from 256MB in the older MM10.<BR><BR>The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says.<BR><BR>Portable PC<BR><BR>A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April.<BR><BR>The MM20 is designed as a second notebook for corporate executives or frequent business travelers that prefer something lightweight when traveling, Hanly says.<BR><BR>Sharp will include a base station and cable with the MM20 that allows users to connect the notebook to their regular PC through a USB port and use the notebook as an external hard drive.<BR><BR>Specially configured software from Iomega allows users to make changes to documents on their regular PC that will be automatically synchronized with the MM20. Conversely, if a user makes changes to a document on the road, the updated version of that document will automatically replace the older version on the regular PC when the units are connected, Hanly says.<BR><BR>A version of this notebook has been available in Japan, Hanly says. She does not know if a version will ship in Europe.
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US debut
The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed <a HREF="http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/1217/ubiq37.htm" TITLE="impress.co.jp"> (see this Japanese review)</A>. And it is much cheaper.
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Slow Computers
I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips.  THey should really start to look at the trade-offs.  Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower.

I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.
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Re:Slow Computers
<i>I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.</i><BR><BR>I've been tweaking an older PII laptop (400MhZ, 192M) over the past few months. The idea was not to lose any functionality or "new" features (i.e., dropping a 2.2 based distro, the PII's contemporary OS, would be cheating). So far I'm extremely pleased. The machine is very functional, even faster in some respects than a newer Thinkpad T22 (800MhZ, 256M) because the video support is better.<BR><BR>The main changes:<BR>*   2.6 kernel -- huge difference<BR>*   Fluxbox instead of KDE/Gnome<BR>*   NPTL<BR>*   Rebuilt some apps with i686 optimizations<BR>*   Config tweaks (default services, buffer sizes, etc)<BR>*   Application substitutions (Firefox vs Mozilla, etc)<BR><BR>I've been testing other things including:<BR>*   Default fs (reiserfs vs ext3)<BR>*   sshd default configs (blowfish vs des, etc)<BR>*   MP3 vs OGG (about the same CPU, but I hear MP3 is nicer)<BR>*   Adjusting timer resolution in kernel<BR>*   Replacement syslog that batches writes<BR><BR>
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Don't forget heat...
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, Transmeta's tend to run alot cooler then Intel/Amd...<BR><BR>I know personally after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt. Anyways Transmeta has exact stats on the site but its somewhere around 1/4 of the heat output, personally thats why I am considering a Transmeta next round....
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Did You
Compile the "Dell Laptop Extensions" into the kernel? gkrellm has an i8k plugin you can use to spin the fans up to low and high when you hit certain temperature thresholds. There's also a standalone temperature monitoring utility but it's seemed a bit flakey lately.
<p>
Of course both fans spinning will impact your battery performance but it's better than third degree burns on your... lap.
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Speed is by no means
what these processors are known for.  <a HREF="http://www.vanshardware.com/articles/2001/september/010921_Transmeta_v_C3/010921_Transmeta_v_C3.htm" TITLE="vanshardware.com">Benchmarks</A> show that.  That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter.  Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out.  Except the wacky design.
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Re:Speed is by no means
The benchmark is of a TM5600 Crusoe against a VIA. I can tell you that the TM5800 933 MHz is faster than the Via at 1GHz and the Efficeon is even faster than that.<BR>Maybe Transmeta used to be a little slower, but not anymore. The Efficeon can keep up with the Pentium M<BR>and the new 90nm Efficeons will be even faster with higher clock speeds.
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How Sad
Am I really getting so old that the majority of Slashdot readers were in diapers when Transmeta came out of the closet and hence need a "reminder" of what the Crusoe chipset is all about. How depressing.&nbsp;:(
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People don't get how thin these are
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:<BR>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578<BR>While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.<BR><BR>These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.<BR><BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; -Charlie
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Just Because of Linus Torvalds
I think transmeta is loved by <a HREF="http://aittimes.mithuro.com/?action=fullnews&amp;id=12" TITLE="mithuro.com">geek</A> community just because of Linus Torvalds connection.
<P>Their first chip Crusoe, although saving power, <a HREF="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,32723,00.asp" TITLE="pcworld.com">underperformed</A> badly. And the Efficeon doesn't look fast compared to its rivals. The Efficeon TM 8000 can do 1.1GHz consuming 7W. Intel's Pentium M does 1.7GHz for the same power consumption.
<P>I don't think there's anything particularly cool about this news. It is the same as the discovery of the <a HREF="http://aittimes.mithuro.com/?action=fullnews&amp;id=20" TITLE="mithuro.com">new planet</A>. There are better ones already out there.
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Re:Just Because of Linus Torvalds
I very much doubt your Pentium M numbers. Why else would e.g. Samsung need to permanently activate the cooling fan on its Pentium M notebooks when running without battery, whereas the Efficeon doesn't even need a fan.<BR>And saying just because the TM5600 (oldest Crusoe) was slow the Efficeon is also slow, is like saying just because the K-6 was slow the Athlon64 is also slow.
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Re:Just Because of Linus Torvalds
Um. No.<P> <a HREF="http://support.intel.com/support/processors/mobile/pm/sb/CS-007971.htm" TITLE="intel.com">Intel Pentium M Thermal Design Power</A> is listed as 24.5 Watt at 1.7 GHz, a FAR cry from the 7 Watt you claim<P>
The 900 MHz and 1GHz ones are the 7 Watt models, but how those perform compared to an Efficeon I was unable to find.<P>
Cooper<BR>
--<BR>
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!<BR>
- Groo The Wanderer -
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Cool
I have been looking at the MM10 (the older version) as a small GNAA/Linux computer for some months now and the memory was always a hold up.  This things solves that and then some.<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; The older model was small and light, but very usable.  You could confortably hold it in one hand for a long time and it never got warm/hot.  This was the thinnest thing I've ever seen, and the smallest without seeming to sacrifice on usability (close to sacrifice though).<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; I might just have get one and see about running GNAA/Linux on this little guy.<BR>
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Wrong price point
As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta.
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How about compiling natively for the Efficieon?
Wow, it's been quite a while since a Transmeta/Crusoe/Efficieon article was posted.  Since nobody else seems to be up to it, it looks like I'll have to ask the standard question.  Here goes:<p> <i>I understand that the Transmeta family of CPUs use 'code morphing' to translate x86 code into an internal execution format.  But wouldn't it be better to write code which targets the true 'native' instruction set of the Crusoe/Efficieon?  I mean, wouldn't this help solve the fucking awful performance problems of the chip?</i> <p>OK, now that's out of the way, I would also like to ask one more question.  Here goes:<p> <i>Will Transmeta sell more Efficieons in the chip's whole life span than Intel will sell Pentium Ms in one day?</i> <p>I look forward to the community's response!!
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Comparisons with macs?
Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life.
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transmeta
i wouldnt exactly say transmeta chips are blazing.. my friend had a 600mhz tm5600 based laptop that had been marketed as 'gigapro' without any sort of actual note of the clock speed and the performance was not really near that of a comparable 600mhz cpu from amd or intel.. he endedup selling it for the price he bought it for and got an A64 emachines with a radeon m9600.. bit better for games&nbsp;;)
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Transmeta hype
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.<BR><BR>Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see <a HREF="http://www.sandpile.org/" TITLE="sandpile.org">Sandpile</A>.<BR>
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Sharp can't compete with Fujitsu's P-Series.
Fujitsu 'did it right' with the P-Series.<BR>It would be nice to have a faster processor but the flexibility the P-Series (I have the 2120) is unmatched. 8 hours+ battery life and when you add in a 7200rpm drive it is not as sluggish.<BR><BR>Games are best avoided here but I didn't buy it for mobile gaming just mobile working and notes taking in class.
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Because all...
I.T. departments want to support 2 notebooks for every executive user, this is a bad marketing ploy at best. Transmeta makes a nice chip, Sharp marketing clearly doesn't know what to do with it.
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Not fast at all.
<blockquote>In case you don't remember, the processor family is known for its extremely low power consumption and blazingly high computing speeds</blockquote>
<p>Obviously someone who's not used the Transmeta based Compaq Tablet.  About as blazingly fast as a shackled tortoise.  It does have great power consumption stats though&nbsp;:)</p>
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Does it still 'dynamically emulate'
And if so, can i change the emulation to lets say.. a PPC, or even a Z80?<BR><BR>Or is that locked down to a microcode level and not 'user accessable'.<BR><BR>
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cheap version of my dram laptop
the <a HREF="http://www.dynamism.com/x505/specs.shtml" TITLE="dynamism.com">Sony X505 </A>

<p>
Centrino guts, 10.4' 1024x768 screen all under 2 pounds!  Its made of carbon fibre too! too bad it costs between 3-4 grand depending on options.<p>I dont want a big disk and screen in my laptop.  10.4 is fine, 12 is the biggest id want.  I want battery life and light weight.  So i ask you slashdotters, what good slim laptops do you like?
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My Question...
So, the most intruiging feature there was that the laptop/drive could appear as a USB device on the desktop. Anyone know if this is handled through hardware/bios and would be something that you'd still have with a GNAA/Linux/BSD install? That could be a killer feature, and given the prevalence of the generic Mass Storage profile seems actually possible.<BR><BR>I've been burned on the CD/DVD docking stations, or other hardware specific goodies, far too often to just assume this will work.
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wait.....
lemme check the calendar to make sure it aint april 1st.<BR><BR>Indeed, transmetas have an extremely low power-consumption rate, but one can't say they are fast, especially post-Enron; u can't fudge the numbers.  If power consumption was a part of the performance index (let's say for a SpecInt or a SpecFP), then yea...it might be able to compete.  But it's like Via's C3; its low power in more than one way.<BR><BR>Just like you can't have a Lamborgini that gets 60MPG, you ccan't expect to have low power with high power; only some balance of the two in between.
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I have a MM10
I have the older MM10 model, with the transmeta 1GHz. I love the machine though it is not the quickest.

The only problem? They seem to be OVERLY dedicate. I had purchased my original last July. After 3 weeks of minimal usage, the screen went bad. Sharp sent me a refurbished unit (though I had paid full price for a new unit just 3 weeks early). About a month ago, the replacement went bad (battery was bad and possibly the charge circuitry went bad as well). They have since sent me a refurbished unit and battery and I've been ok since then.

It's a great machine, but you really have watch out for it.
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i want one!
I have a Crusoe based Fujitsu P2110 and it's<BR>been great....  fast enough to do video<BR>production even.  But I carry it with me<BR>everywhere and it's starting to wear out.<BR>This looks like the perfect replacement!<BR>
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Other form factors?
When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it?  VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors.  They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors.   Transmeta could get a piece of that market.<BR><BR>Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power.   Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower.
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Blazingly high?
Is it really all that much faster than the Crusoe?  I've got a Sony Vaio C1MW with an 866 MHz Crusoe in it and it's just barely fast enough as it is.<BR><BR>- A.P.
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wrong!
It's known for that Torvalds kid that worked there
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Transmeta CPUs != longer run time
I know it is one of their big selling points but I have yet to have used a Transmeta device that actually had a longer run time than my huge Latitude C series with second battery. Why? Because for some reason manufacturers seem to have a fetish for the 2.5 - 3 hour benchmark. Once they reach it, they concentrate on size instead. Surely I can't be the only one who would be happy with a smallish (12-13") notebook with long battery life. I certainly find that more interesting than devices that are so tiny as to be unusable yet have comparable run time to normal laptops.
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There IS a definite market for this.
First off, I just finished ordering one, with the extended battery.  Now for why:<BR><BR>
&nbsp; I use a Laptop virtually all day, every day.  I currently work on a Thinkpad T23 with a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 14" Screen, etc.  I add a 802.11g card when in office and a T-Mobile wireless WAN card everywhere else.  I love my laptop, but I have three complaints: 1. Weight, 2. Heat (holy crap it gets hot), and 3. battery life.  I also have a Sony Picturebook which address these issues, but it's TOO small and lacks a LOT of connectivity.  I use a Zaurus with Opie and love it.  I have long wished that I could get a "really big Zaurus" with integrated WiFi, good storage, etc.  That's essentially how I view the MM20.  Of course that is predicated on my getting GNAA/Linux on it, but I am confident that given some time, that is quite doable.  A 1GHz proc, half a gig of RAM, acts as a USB2 hard-drive when connected to my desktop, integrated 802.11g, 2 lbs. and a 10" screen...it's PERFECT for my needs.  Anyone want to buy a Thinkpad?
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Does it boot from CDROM?
I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive.  First, I tried a generic CDROM drive.  No go.  I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle).  The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.<BR><BR>I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from.  I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable.  Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing GNAA/Linux through the cradle.  I think it's a problem with initrd.  I'm not too worried about that.  I'll figure it out.  But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.<BR><BR>I absolutely love my laptop.  It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.<BR><BR>Resources for installing GNAA/Linux on this laptop:<BR><BR><a HREF="http://web.mit.edu/jjl/www/mm10/" TITLE="mit.edu">Gentoo GNAA/Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10</A><BR><BR>I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive.  I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous.
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My Crusoe is *anything* but "blazingly" fast...
Transmeta is going to have to show me a *lot* before I ever buy anything with one of their chips in it again.<BR>My Fujitsu 2040 runs at 867mhz, but it "feels" like a P3-500.<BR>Windows + WMP9 on it are basically unusable, as is Mozilla.<BR>The only way I can use it is with FreeBSD + Opera7&nbsp;:)
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Dual NIC controllers
It comes standard with a wlan chip, AND a wired nic!<BR><BR>I'm very impressed by this little bugger!<BR><BR>If its got a DVD drive, I'm sold.  Its still a little pricey for my taste buds, but I'm definately impressed!
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Re:Warm heart
*cough*Linus Torvalds*cough*
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Re:Warm heart
<i>Somehow Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart. Don't know why, but I really like the company and praise them for what they are trying to do.</i> <p>Really, why is this even <b>slightly</b> +5 Interesting?  Fair enough that you love the company...they did employ Linus for a while after all, and this is Slashdot, so I guess that counts for something.  But Transmeta is nothing more than a hyped up dot.com remnant that hasn't realised that it should have crawled away and died somewhere a few years ago.  Transmeta overpromised and underdelivered.  Its CPUs have never really carved out a niche, suffering from terrible performance, and negligible gains in power efficiency over mobile designs from Motorola, Intel and AMD.  Too underpowered for a mainstream notebook, and too power hungry for a PDA or cellphone, Transmeta CPUs linger on in a kind of zombie state, appearing from time to time in strange Japanese systems like this Sharp Actius, itself nothing more than a pale imitation of an Apple 12" G4 PowerBook.<p>You're entitled to your opinion.  It's just -1, Clueless Linus Fanboy, not +5, Interesting.<p>Thank you.
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Re:Warm heart
<I>Somehow Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart.</I><BR><BR>And Intel will always have a warm place in my lap.<BR><BR>Seriously, though....  The new <a HREF="http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?categoryId=2072691&amp;storeId=1&amp;catalogId=-840&amp;langId=-1" TITLE="ibm.com">IBM X40</A> is only 2.7 lbs with approximately the same battery life.  The Transmeta only looks good until one realizes that it has a tiny 10" monitor.
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Huh? I thought Transmeta processors are...
supposed to be cool. If you want warmth buy Intel, and if you want to get hot go for a 12" PowerBook
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Must Be Told
Yes, it does.<BR>Now go back to cowering you insensitive clod!
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Re:Must be asked...
<p>Of course, it runs NetBSD...</p>
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Re:Warm heart
<I>Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart</I>
<P>
At Transmeta's power dissipation, shouldn't that be <I>luke warm</I>?
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Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
Why on earth wouldn't I want windows to play back videos fresh out of the box.<p>
I'm sure the average windows user wouldn't want to have to play around with selecting/installing video playback software when all they want to do is playback a clip they've downloaded.<p>My poor Mum!!!
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
Yeah, but the idea is that the OEM does the video installation. Says that in the article&nbsp;:)
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Re:True
" So can't OEM people install real, etc before selling at the moment? Guess not."<BR><BR>Of course they can do but why would they ? They can't buy a cheaper version of Windows without a media player so there's no point in them shopping around for a cheaper alternative.<BR><BR>Stripping out Media Player from Windows will allow the OEM's to judge Media Player vs it's rivals on a fair footing, e.g. knowing the cost of each application.<BR><BR>In theory anyway, I hope there is some provision that the two versions of windows will need to maintain some kind of sensible price differentiation.
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Re:True
Cheaper version of Windows? I think it will be funny if MS sells the new version for the same price and just tells them the player was a freebie.
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
Want Microsoft DRM, non-compliance to standards, and who-knows-what in the future too? It's to avoid this that these sanctions are being applied.
<br> <br>
Sounds sensible to me
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
In related news Microsoft are forced to remove notepad, calculator and the taskbar clock from Windows, since they compete with similar products on the market.
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
<p> <i>since they compete with similar products on the market</i> </p>.

<p>No, since they do not use some form of lock-in mechanism to prevent the users for using other products.</p>
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
I can, however, use another program to read the <b>text files</b> that I've created with Notepad, use my extremely simple <b>math formulae</b> on another, competing calculator program ( heck, I can even <i>port</i> that sucker over to GNAA/Linux with little trouble ), or set my new taskbar clock to the same time by using the system time, like I always have, but I cannot use that DRM enable&nbsp;.wmp file with just <i>any</i> media player: thus, no lock-in and another troll bites the dust.<br>
And another one's gone, and another one's gone...<br>
Oh, sorry.&nbsp;;(
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
I'm sure many businesses would love to be able to only purchase the parts of windows that they wanted.
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Re:Why wouldn't I want windows to play back videos
Because PCs are very versatile, your DVD player is disigned to do a total of perhaps three things (and you do have to install "software" each time you put in a disc happily it is very standardized).  Your PC can do many many more, and the things you want to do out of the box, may well be very different from the things I want mine to do out of the box.  One of us might want to download music the other rips it.  One of us might play FPS, the other wants to play bejeweled and browse slashdot.  One of us might work in word processors, the other spreadsheets, and another guy might only want to use a text editor and compier.  Each of these tasks requires a special addition to our generic tool, and we might not care about being able to do the things that the other tools allow us to potentially do.  That's why you have to install software on your computer, the alternative is buying a task specific computer (a developer workstation, gamer's box, office machine, network terminal, but each of these would require that the seller know all the software you plan to use for the life of the computer.
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Market for video playing software
<blockquote>I'm sure the average windows user wouldn't want to have to play around with selecting/installing video playback software when all they want to do is playback a clip they've downloaded.</blockquote>

The same could be said for browsers, word processors, graphical tools, video editing software... hell, you could say the same for opererating systems: the average computer buyer doesn 't want the hassle of having to install Windows, just give him Windows right out of the box.  What is that you say?  There are <i>alternatives</i> to Windows?  Well I never...
<br> <br>
Of course it's convenient to get all of that stuff included with your operating system.  But if you remember, there used to be a market for things like browsers and video playback software.  That market is all but gone, thanks to Microsoft including these products with their OS.  I know, there is something called Mozilla for us staunch MS-haters.  But good luck trying to sell (or even give) your alternative browser to the public at large.
<br> <br>
I don't feel too bad about MS including such things with their OS, even though I am sure producers of, say, video editing software are having nightmares about MS including that functionality with Windows in a few years time.  it's hard to draw the line: sure, no one would argue against operating systems needing a decent file manager, for example.  Yet people used to make a living developing and selling separate file managers, a long time ago.
<br> <br>
What I <i>do</i> have a problem with, is that MS sometimes not just includes browsers and video software with the OS, but made sure that it was rather hard to install an alternative product as well.  <i>That</i> is what they should be punished for... but this ruling doesn't really accomplish that.  As far as browsers and video playback software is concerned, it's all water under the bridge, and you correctly note that it will be consumers who will be hurt by removing these from the OS.  MS probably doesn't care a great deal.
<br> <br>
I would have preferred a big fine for MS, to make it clear what is unacceptable behaviour.  It has to <i>hurt</i> if it's to heal.
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Re:Market for video playing software
Yes, but:<BR><BR>1) The ability to use non-Microsoft products is obviously a good thing but that's very different from the absence of the Microsoft products being a good thing.<BR><BR>2)We're not talking about MS selling a base version and an enhanced version. It will be a full version and a crippled version with functionality yanked out. With Microsoft having every reason to make it work as badly as possible.<BR><BR>I want Mozilla and iTunes to work. I couldn't care less about whether the MS functionality on the system remains or not. This thing is such a pointless exercise I can't imagine whom they think it will benefit.<BR>
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I'd fine them a dime for each security problem...
...found within bundled software like IE, OE, Media Player and Movie Maker. M$ would voluntarily unbundle these components or run out of cash quite soon.
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Removing the Player Isn't the Good Part!
"The European Commission draft requires Microsoft to share proprietary information with rival server makers"<BR><BR>That's always my sticking point. I'm not as much bothered that they support video playback in their default system (they also support image playback and text playback, after all) as to their generally incompatible and excessively proprietary methods.
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But who wins in the end?
I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
<br> <br>
I think the 'normal users' will be hit hardest, a lot of them just want their media to play and in my opinion it is the place of the Operating System to provide the functionality. We might install something better, but it doesn't hurt us to have it there even if we don't use it. I think the same is true with IE.. it has helped the new users a great deal even if it is bug ridden and crappy.
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Re:But who wins in the end?
Does nobody RTFA?!!<br> <br>
<i>The aim is to free computer makers to <b>sell Windows bundled with rival audiovisual software</b> such as RealNetworks RealPlayer or Apple's Quicktime, the sources said. </i>
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Re:But who wins in the end?
<i>I personally don't like Microsoft... but you have to ask yourself if Media Player is removed who is affected by this in a negative way?
</i>
<br> <br>
Microsoft. Oh, you meant in the short term? Possibly users. In the long term however this stops Microsoft being able to leverage their desktop monopoly into a format monopoly (where was&nbsp;.wma 3 years ago?) into a media player monopoly (where were&nbsp;.wma players 3 years ago? you can now buy windows only wma only players) into a net-broadcast monopoly (that you can only view with media player on an approved platform).
<br> <br>
In the long run it might be necessary to hurt consumers a little bit today to protect them tomorrow. Ideally the solution will involve forcing them to support a patent unencumbered license unencumbered format alongside (or instead of) wma to ensure they can't use their existing monopoly to destroy interoperability.
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What about linux distributions??
Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?
%
Re:What about linux distributions??
The difference is that neither Mandrake, SuSE, Debian are using a monopoly in one area (OS) to create a monopoly in another area (media), that is what is illegal even in the US.  Don't you recall the AT&amp;T situation?
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Re:What about linux distributions??
<p> <i> Many distributions ship with software such as XMMS, mplayer and the gimp. Should Mandrake, SuSE, Debian and the like be fined for carrying this software?</i> </p>

<p>First: no one of those distributions has a <i>de facto</i> monopoly in the OS market and it's trying to abuse that position to get the monopoly in other markets, such as the media players one.</p>

<p>Second: on the average GNAA/Linux distro, you have twenty different text editors, a dozen media players, and another dozen graphic manipulation programs.</p>

<p>So, your is, indeed, a <i>non sequitur</i>.</p>
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Media player an essential part of the OS???
<i>Microsoft says Windows Media Player is an inherent part of the operating system and cannot be stripped out.</i> <p>
Who are they trying to fool? When they said this about Internet Explorer I could imagine how this could be true, but what parts of Media player might be essential for other applications???
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Re:Media player an essential part of the OS???
<p>IIRC, that's basically what the Commission said - right after RealNetworks demonstrated how to strip WMP from the OS.  I'm amazed MS even bothered claiming it - I can only surmise that (a) they have non-geek lawyers or, (b) "we tried that lie with IE, and the dumb judge bought it, so let's try it again and see if we befuddle those dumb Euros".</p>
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Re:Media player an essential part of the OS???
The other companies *did* have a foothold in the market, or maybe you are too young and brainwashed to remember the glory days.<br> <br>
You're right it *isnt* MS's job to help out other rivals.  But it is their job to keep their monopoly from crushing others.  read: Anti-competitive tactics are a no-no.<br> <br>
Problem is that once MS started bundling IE, WMP, etc. into the OS, it gave users little reason to go out and find another.  They have done it with IE and were convicted of it in the States, albeit weakly.  Once you have a single defacto player/browser/pick your software on the desktop, which a monoploy has created and abused, the end user, ie: mom and pop, have no need to go out and get another, forcing the rivals out of business or out of money.  Don't forget, Microsoft no longer cares about IE.  The only reason they care about WMP is that they are now trying to leverage the dominance into other markets such as digital distribution of movies and whatnot.  That sir, is anti-competitive behaviour.  I'm just glad the EU has the balls to do something about it.
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Re:Media player an essential part of the OS???
If Microsoft designed my car radio/CD player would be essential part of my car!  If I remove the radio, the engine would not run.
%
I thought frivilous lawsuits were illegal.
*EVERY* OS has had/comes with/includes a media player. It is a functional part of the OS to support the playback of audio/video sounds in everything from user-interface, alters, notifications and theme support.<BR><BR>Heck, its even part of the mandated  accessibility/disability acts for people who require audio/visual/tactile feedback.<BR><BR>I for one preferr the free stuff then Real or even Quicktime.. atleast i don't have things popping up telling me useless facts (even after being disabled) or having mime type wars on my pc.<BR><BR>I bought windows because it was easy.<BR><BR>I bought linux and still do because it was powerfull.<BR><BR>Each has there own use, but this has got to be the most retarded lawsuit i've EVER heard of.
%
Re:I thought frivilous lawsuits were illegal.
"Each has there own use, but this has got to be the most retarded lawsuit i've EVER heard of."<BR><BR>I think you've totally missed the point of this. Certainly I'm not arguing that basic sound support shouldn't be a part of an Operaring System but Media Player goes far beyond that, it is a fully featured Application.<BR><BR>Other companies would like to sell these kind of applications to people and make money out of it however with MS giving it away for nothing to 90% of computer users they don't have hope of selling anything.<BR><BR>You cannot buy Windows without Media Player, so you do not have the opportunity to compare it's price and value against other similar products.<BR><BR>From Microsofts point of view the current situation is very nice for them; Media Player is installed on 90% of computer users PC's, Media Player uses it's own proprietry formats, downloading music is becoming big business - suppliers are very tempted to use Media Player formats because of it's market penetration, Microsoft can call the shots.<BR><BR>From everyone else's point of view this is clearly a case of Microsoft using it's monopoly in the O/S system market to influence and gain control of other areas.
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stinks of hypocrisy
Advocates of free software claim to be advocates of freedom.  If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms.  The WMP is not a freedom issue.  If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.<BR><BR>This is just a bunch of government busibodies telling you how to run your lives.
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Re:stinks of hypocrisy
<i> Advocates of free software claim to be advocates of freedom.</i>
<p>
Yes, the freedom to choose what software is most suitable for the job it needs to do and maintaining that choice. If it's a commercial piece of software or even an MS package, so be it as long as the end-user had <b>chosen</b> to use it.
<p>
<i>If this were the case, they would only attack Microsoft on those terms.</i>
<p>
Oh, so we have no right to attack Microsoft on issues of security, instability and price then?
<p>
<i>The WMP is not a freedom issue.</i>
<p>
It's a transport for DRM which means you get to do less with the stuff you rightfully own than you did before. It also means you get to pay an MS "tax" to keep using your stuff. Of course it's about freedom.
<p>
<i>If a customer doesn't like Windows prepackaged with WMP, there's nothing stopping that person from acquiring another OS.</i>
<p>
What about somebody that uses Windows but doesn't like WMP? Are you saying that not liking a single package on an OS justifies reformatting your hard disk and putting a new OS on? What about simply having the choice of slotting in the player you <b>want</b> to use without the fact the concern that WMP is still installed somewhere doing its stuff in the background? If WMP is <b>not</b> that easy to remove then just what <b>is</b> it doing in the background then?
<p>
I see no hypocrisy here...
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What about Apple?
Why doesn't Apple get any heat for including iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, QuickTime, Safari, etc?<BR><BR>(Just wondering other ppl thoughts, plz don't flame me...&nbsp;:)
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Re:What about Apple?
... because Apple is not a monopoly, period.
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Re:What about Apple?
<i>Why doesn't Apple get any heat for including iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, QuickTime, Safari, etc?</i><BR><BR>Because Apple doesn't control 90+ percent of the desktop.  Because Apple isn't trying to leverage an OS monopoly into other market segments.  Because Apple doesn't have a history of trying to "cut off the oxygen supply" to their competitors through use of monopoly.
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If M$ were really smart..
they would start development on their second OS right now.  I don't live in Europe, but from what I read and hear on IRC, I get the feeling that M$ is not going to win any appeals, and eventually will be forced to sell their cut down OS.  It would save them time and money.  Why drag it out in court, when you're probably going to lose anyway?
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DRM
I'm no Microsoft fan but I personally don't see any reason to stop Microsoft bundling WMP with Windows, purely from a player perspective.
<p>
After all, lots of people seem to use it and if there are better (commercial or OSS) alternatives, then it's up to Windows users themselves to go find them and decide.
<p>
However, this is good from a perspective of slowing down DRM. No matter what anyone says, DRM is creeping "in through the back door" and WMP is one of those "Trojan Horses" transporting DRM to the desktop. By the time Longhorn comes out, DRM'ed codecs will be the norm (if MS has their way) and we can say goodbye to MP3s on our portable players and PCs.
<p>
I would hope the EU goes a stage further and makes MS publish clear disclaimers and warnings that on downloading WMP, you will be subject to DRM restrictions on all the media that you play with it.
<p>
In the meantime, it's a good opportunity for makers of "free" (="non-DRM") players to get ready to push their software in the hope that this sanction goes through.
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No reason to force them
It is a good idea.  It happened with IE and should happen with any other Windows endorsed products.  There is no reason to ship them pre-installed.  The argument that GNAA/Linux do that is false because XMMS and The Gimp are seperate entities from the distribtuion.
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"sanctions"?
<i>That would go further than the steps Microsoft had to take when it settled an antitrust case in the United States in late 2001.</i> <p>
Not exactly difficult.  The so called "sanctions" taken against MS in the U.S. were meaningless to the extent that most observers believe there was a secret backroom deal.  Frankly, I cannot see what the Europeans propose having much effect on MS's monopolistic practices either.
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What Microsoft would like to happen.
WMA becomes widely installed, and is the default.<BR><BR>People start recording their music as WMA.<BR>Companies sell in WMA (for the wide user base).<BR>Stations start broadcasting in WMA (ditto).<BR>People buy WMA devices.<BR>People are locked into WMA forever now their media is all in WMA form and they own WMA devices.<BR>WMA works best in Windows (and DRM WMA only works in Windows), and is a barrier to changing platforms.<BR><BR>Profit. Monopoly extended and locked in, and entrenched in a totally new area. Desktop monopoly (and all the other monopolies that perpetuate it and are perpetuated by it) made more secure.<BR><BR>THIS is why a bit of user convenience has to be sacrificed. Made media player (and all the other integrated stuff) come uninstalled on a second CD so that at least the user has to think if they want to use it.<BR><BR>Otherwise they will expand their monopoly one niche at a time - desktop, office, server, media, handhelds, music players, gaming consoles, televisions, cars, watches, the whole world... untill it is too late to back out.
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Kind of sad...
that it takes the EU to reign in our rogue corporation, makes me sad the DoJ didn't go further.<p>

And I'm not sure why anyone would post that this isn't fair, if you can't see MS is once leveraging it's desktop monopoly to control yet another market, you are blind or at least obtuse. Do we really want another Netscape on our hands, it's taken 5 years for the likes of Mozilla, FireFox and Safari to revive browser innovation while IE 6 has remained a stagnant, insecure and non-compliant piece of junk. Killing competition in browsers hurt the web, although it will be years before the useless business analyst get around to acknowledging this. We don't want the same thing to happen in media players/codecs, instant messaging or a raft of other technologies. Time to stop MS now. And vote with your damn wallets, if you don't like what MS does then switch to Mac OS X or GNAA/Linux and put your money where your mouth is!
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Vote With Your Feet
<i>if you don't like what MS does then switch to Mac OS X or GNAA/Linux and put your money where your mouth is!</i>
<p>
If only more people actually <i>did</i> this!  If even 10% of the people who complained about M$ actually did something about it, the software world would be a very different place.  It's amazing the number of people who feel that they are a special case, that they have a particular special reason for not switching to something else.  (Yes, in some cases those reasons are genuine, but I suspect laziness plays a large part in many.)
<p>
I try to act on principle.  I've only ever owned two pieces of M$ software, for example: one was the Psion Series 3 version of AutoRoute (which doesn't really count as it was written by a separate company that got bought out shortly before release; M$ dropped it soon after), and the Mac OS X version of IE (pre-installed; I keep it as a last-resort browser and use it every few months).  It's not hard, really -- it's a pain when people keep sending me Word documents, but there are various workarounds even if people won't take the hint -- and I don't feel I'm making any great sacrifices.  I just don't put following the crowd as my top priority.
<p>
So, to all you people who use M$ software and complain about it: don't complain, STOP USING IT!<br>
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Standard oil
Looking back at history I'm thinking about Rockefeller and Standard oil.  How is that situation any different from Gates and Microsoft?  Standard oil was broken up by the government why shouldn't we do the same now to Microsoft?  Its irrefutable that Microsoft controls software for the personal computer from the operating system, office applications to now digital media/rights.  Even before the SCO/Microsoft fiasco it was obvious that Microsoft devoured its competitors to preserve its stranglehold on the industry.
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Re:Standard oil
The long and the short of it. Rockefeller controlled tangible things: Railroads, oil rigs, distribution centers. Microsoft exists soley as a bunch of really restrictive contracts. It has mind-share going for it, and that is about all.
<p>
Computer can and do run without Microsoft. They are a brand. A company can decide, at will, to no longer purchase Microsoft.
<p>
Now, a good deal of that has more to do with anti-trust tussels between the DOJ and Microsoft in the past than a lack of trying on Microsoft's part.
<p>
The legal puzzle is thus. Microsoft is de-facto standard. People equate their crap with computers. To the mundanes out there Microsoft is to computers what gas is to cars. They have done a tremendous marketing job. You really can't build a case based on consumer buying habits. People do choose to buy Microsoft Products. It may not be a particularly wise choice, or even an informed choice, but the path to destruction is often wide and well paved.
<p>
Courts are loathe to step in and tell the average man how to live their life. Where Microsoft does get into trouble is in their dealings with computer makers. One of the things to come out of the Seatlement was that Microsoft was not longer permitted to have a different pricing structure for each supplier. Nor were they permitted to charge a license fee for every computer produced, whether or not windows ships with it.
<p>
As for Microsoft's stranglehold on industry, at this point it's more like those hitchiking seeds that velcro themselves to your trousers after a walk through the woods. There are a bunch of reasons people cling to them, all annoying, and all easy to pick off one by one.
<p>
Microsoft is the architect of their own destruction. They spend their time polishing shiny things, rather than sitting down and hammering out reliable products. By reliable I mean something that runs for 3 or more years without having to be completely reformatted and re-built.
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opening windows update
<p>Has anyone ever thought about making MS open their windows update functions to their competitors?
<p>Unbundling is useless if you are forced to download eleven and twenty patches after installation and media player looks like one of them.
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fining companies does nothing
<BR>you think MS will reduce margins if they get fined or will they pass that cost to the customer either indirectly (format lockin/upgrades etc) or directly via product price increases ?<BR><BR>doesn't really take a MBA to work out what they will do, fining them will not punish them at all, especially with the worlds richest people at the helm.<BR><BR>
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Lindows...
Perhaps Microsoft's heavy-handed tactics against Lindows in Europe (and everywhere for that matter) will not go unnoticed by the European courts and/or regulators...
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A simple example...
This example was written about Office, but it's relevant to this argument:<BR><BR>Say that Office was a seperate company to Windows.<BR><BR>Office the company would see that making their product available on every platform would make them more money. Thus it would be so. Windows the company would have no incentive to build in special APIs for Office. Office would compete on it's merits and so would Windows, and competition COULD and WOULD exist effectivly in the marketplace.<BR><BR>Now, say that Office and Windows are made by the same company.<BR><BR>Office would by and large see that by making their product only available for Windows they would make less money but it would be worth more because every copy sold would also sell a Windows license. Windows wants to make sure that everyone who buys Windows chooses office so they do what they can to make it seem to run faster, better etc. Consumers get screwed by lack of choice.<BR><BR>(Obviously Office is also available for Mac, but this is due to historic pre-monopoly reasons. The same decision might be made today, but only to dodge having the AntiTrust people looking at them too sharply. If Office had been split off from Windows it would likley be available on IRIX, HPUX, AIX, GNAA/Linux, BSD etc today as well as Windows and OS X.)
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Windows needs 'distributions'!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:<BR><BR>Microsoft should not be allowed to sell Windows with any additional apps whatsoever.<BR><BR>With GNAA/Linux you have different distributions, why can't Windows work on the same principle?<BR><BR>You don't get Mandrake saying "Oh, we're not going to put  into our distro, why should we put other people's apps in our distro's?"<BR><BR>The whole point of distributions is that you get loads of apps from loads of developers, and you get to select exactly what you want from the best available apps.<BR><BR>Having Windows distributions is the only way I see of overcoming Microsoft's anti-competitive monopoly.
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This may not be entirely good
Given that Microsoft is a large American company, this European anti-trust process could certainly be seen as partly political. Just think of the new era of non-cooperation, tit-for-tat, economic retaliation, etc. in the wake of the split over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.<BR><BR>Unfortunately, this means the Bush administration is likely to line up squarely behind Microsoft on this issue ("<i>we</i> can prosecute them for anti-trust, but I'll be damned if those French bastards are gonna get away with it"). Even if the goal of the European action is entirely admirable, say, they want to improve competition and open up standards, the administration will for political reasons end up opposing it.<BR><BR>This will result in them doing spiteful things that tend to favor proprietary software and disfavor Free software.<BR><BR>I guess it's not surprising that powerful people will oppose anything that lessens the control they have over others.
%
Microsoft can easily get out of this.
Whenever you visit the Microsoft webpage (windows update), they will have a video of how to install patches. This video will be only available in media player format. A few other pages on the web like this (through partnership) and it will not dent the "market share" one bit.
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Interoperability more important
I don't understand why antitrust sanctions always focus on the application-bundling issue. I would find it much more useful if MS was forced to play nicely with respect to interoperability. (Yes, it's mentioned in TFA, but only in very specific cases.)
<P>
If I were the dictator, MS would be forced to document the file formats it is using (including all WMV formats, of course), all network protocols, and to provide sufficient NTFS documentation so that I can finally can mount&nbsp;/dev/hda2 with read-write soonish.
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Interoperability is hard to enforce
In theory, that's a great idea.  But it would be hard indeed to force them to reveal enough to be meaningful.
<p>
They'd have to release the formats/protocols at least six months or so before releasing the software, to prevent other developers playing continual catch-up.  (Without changing them in the interim, of course.)  And they'd have to be prevented somehow from hiding details that might allow subtle incompatibilities, later lock-in, or other preferential treatment.  Ideally, they'd be made to release an open-source reference implementation, too.
<p>
And they'd have to show that implementing the protocol or using the format didn't infringe any patents -- not just that a patent-free method was available, but that M$ couldn't use a <i>better</i>, patent-encumbered method unavailable to their competitors.  And that they couldn't file such patents in the future.
<p>
And so on.  Time and time again, companies have learned that you can't play M$ on their own terms and break even, let alone win.  They've learned a whole battery of techniques to steal an unfair advantage.  And blocking them all is no easy task.<br>
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A plea for relief from Microsoft's escalating ...
<a HREF="http://itheresies.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_itheresies_archive.html" TITLE="blogspot.com">A plea for relief from Microsoft's escalating anti-competitive tactics.</A> <p>An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
<p>
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
<p>
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
<p>
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where GNAA/Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
<p>
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
<p>
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
<p>
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards for the production of<P><B><a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100503&amp;threshold=1&amp;commentsort=0&amp;tid=109&amp;tid=187&amp;tid=98&amp;tid=99&amp;mode=thread&amp;cid=8568123">Read the rest of this comment...</A>
</B>
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Who has influnce over venders
Media software makers, or Microsoft?<BR><BR>This is not going to change anything. Microsoft will pressure the manufacturers to install their software. The consumer will never have a choice. Another total win for Microsoft.
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What is to come
I see alot of fellow slashdot posters slamming on "Why only WMP?". Well, the outcome of this sanction is wider than WMP alone, much wider. It will leverage future sanctions on other software bundled with Windows in speed and decision power. By taking this case as an example, it will become much easier to make sanctions against other monopoly misuse. That is what the real power of this decision is all about.
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appeals
<i>Microsoft has an appeals process and will likely get an injunction against enforcement while they pursue said appeal, which may take years.</i>

<p>
So for now just speculate and pretend MS will have to abide by the sanctions. By the time the ruling does take place users will be familiar enough (if they are not already) with WMP that it would be hard for anything to take its place. If a user has purchased any addins for WMP it is unlikely for them to prefer another player. Personally I think this is more of a burden for the users because they will have to find the newest WMP to download then its 4-5 patches.</p>
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this actually is bad if not specified correctly
I think its great that Microsoft includes basic functionality like a media player, word processor, calculator, internet browser, etc.<BR><BR>I hope that we all realize that the PROBLEM lies in preventing the uninstallation of said items without "crippling" the OS.<BR><BR>I think MS should be allowed to include whatever they want, as long as the no-install/uninstall option is there and its real (as in really uninstalls the files, not just "hiding" them).<BR><BR>Why can't Microsoft see how easy it would be to fix this?  But then again, that sort of tunnel vision is what has gotten them into the hot water they are in.
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Why stop with Media Player and MS
I think the EU is going in the wrong direction, saying MS has to unbundle Media Player is the stupidest thing I have heard of.  If thats the case all OS's should unbundle Media Players, Mac's, GNAA/Linux, whatever.  Why play favorites, aren't they trying to make things equal.  Maybe they should unbundle notepad and calculator as well, their are 3rd party applications out there.  Hell I don't even use the newest media player, I use media player classic.  But I have to say its nice to have common apps installed as soon as the OS is installed, so you don't have to go searching and downloading all this stuff.  What if you don't have access to the internet what are you going to do then?  Their is a reason MS bundles these, to make it easy for users.  by removing any applications they just make it really really hard for consumers.

Yes they should have an option to uninstall anything you don't want.  *sarcasim* --&gt; But I say why stop with MS and Media Player, I say NO OS's should bundle any Apps, No quicktime on Mac's, no Notepad in Windows, no OS's can't have any application pre-installed if their is a 3rd party version out there. *end sarcasim*  What the hell is wrong with people, this won't hurt MS at all, only hurts us and fellow consumers.
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lame
This is just how European countries practice protectionism without technically violating world trade rulings. How come they've never done anything about the diamond cartel even though people are actually dying over that?? At a time when GNAA/Linux is doing just fine on its own I can't see why we need this over the top MS conspiracy nonsense.
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API availability
<i>The advisory committee is expected to approve a remedy requiring the U.S. firm to share more of its protocols with rivals, <b>charging a reasonable royalty</b>. It will be left to Microsoft to work out the precise solution, with close oversight by the Commission, the sources said.</i>
<BR> <BR>
If Microsoft is still allowed to demand royalties for sharing API's and protocols (no matter how 'reasonable'), the sanctions will still be useless to Open Source and Free Software developers. What good is this to the SAMBA team? And you can forget about Red Hat finally adding NTFS-compatibility to its distributions! &gt;:(
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fines not a problem for a monopoly
What exactly is the purpose of a fine for a monopoly such as Microsoft?  Does the EU think that the money is going to come out of the pay of top MS executives?<BR>Of course not.  Any financial penalties will just be passed along to the customer, as usual, who in this case does not have a choice due to the monopoly situation.<BR><BR>More interesting is what the EU will plan to do with the penalty money?  Invest it in open source, require open file formats and standards?
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Double Standards
One more duality in the GNAA/Linux vs. Microsoft war.<BR><BR>Hard-core GNAA/Linux advocates won't waste a second telling you how GNAA/Linux is superior to Microsoft in EVERY way.  They say GNAA/Linux will beat Microsoft in the end because of its superiority.<BR><BR>Then you have some (probably the same people) influencing litigation against Microsoft, trying to tear them down.<BR><BR>So which is it?  Is GNAA/Linux going to win by superiority of product or superiority of political/legal influence?<BR><BR>It is detrimental to the GNAA/Linux world if the focus is on Microsoft.  The focus should be on GNAA/Linux!  Why would we want those choosing GNAA/Linux doing so because they dislike Microsoft.<BR><BR>This way of thinking could get us in trouble in the current election campaign here in the U.S., where people hate Bush so they embrace Kerry.  Why would someone want to endorse a product on the basis of a negative relationship with some other product?  This way of thinking just doesn't make sense.  Actually, I would say this isn't thinking at all, but pure emotional reaction.  If this is the case with GNAA/Linux, then those responsible need to reevaluate their direction.
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Choice...
MS Windows XP with WMP.....Euro 139.99<br>
MS Windows XP without WMP..Euro 159.99<p>erm, GNAA/Linux please...<br>
Hey, just noticed something. For a site that likes to be open, why can I NOT use the  Great British pound sign OR the  EURO sign (both are in there now, but don't show on the comment), only the DOLLAR? Is this a consipiracy? Whether text, HTML or Extrans...What's wrong with that?<p>You can say Micro$oft but not Microoft or Microoft for examples...see, the pound AND Euro don't come out...?
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Once again for luck
<p>Option 1: Windows XP with Media Player, 99 Euros.<br>
Option 2: Windows XP without Media Player, 99 Euros.

<p>Retail purchasers and OEM licensees will be <em>completely</em> free to choose either version.

<p>No, this is not a joke.  If the EUC think this is too obvious to mention and prohibit, they are in for a rude awakening.
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A Healthy Alternative for MS and Its Users
<p>How about requring MicroSoft to install third-party players as well as its own media player? That would provide more choices to users and the users will be able to choose whatever they like.  In my opinion, this is way better than completely removing useful software from the system.
<p>Let the end users decide what they want.  Personally, I think that Windows Media Player is a lot better than Winamp or other alternatives; however, I would not mind if everybody had  a chance to compare and decide.
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I for one would appreciate this
I'm a typical geek who builds custom computers for people preinstalled and preconfigured with their choice of software, and most of my clients opt for Media Player Classic rather than WMP as their default video playback thing, as far as video goes. I'm not an OEM by any means (I've only built about a dozen computers), but I'd love if customisable installs would filter down to the end users.<BR><BR>For those of you who don't know, Media Player Classic is an open source clone of Media Player 6.4 (the default media player shipped with Win2k), and (with the right codec libs installed) will play DVD's, avi's, wmv's, ogm's, Real and QT streams. Very nice clean and easy to use interface, and hooks into standard DirectShow codecs, none of the irritations of WMP/Real/QT, and completely free (thanks Gabest!), although donations are always welcom I imagine.<BR><BR>Being able to completely replace WMP with MPC would be a dream come true for me, and my clients. The only thing that worried me is that MS would take their ball home, and if made to remove Media Player they would probably cripple DirectShow to such an extent that I'd have to install WMP in order to get my codec libraries to work.
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As the Man in Black would say:
Get used to disappointment.<BR><BR>As in the US antitrust case, these sanctions are remedies based on a false set of assumptions so the end result will not make anti-MS zealots happy.<BR><BR>In both cases, the legal efforts were driven by competitors who wanted to rub something, anything in Bill's face. They were hoping that they'd be able to break MS up, but failing that, they were left with remedies that don't mean much.<BR><BR>In the US case, for example, were Sun or Oracle really held up in their competition against MS because of secret API's? Have they added any new functionality to their products based on the new information?<BR><BR>In the EU case, forcing MS to provide a Media-Player-free version of Windows is unlikely to have a substantial impact on MS's market share in Europe. Just as the claim that IE was going to allow MS to take over the Internet turned out to be specious, so will similar claims for Media Player.<BR><BR>
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I see this as a MS win
seriously what is the real issue here?  Closed, proprietary formats.  None of the unbundling will change the fact that people with Windows will have a system hostile to interoperability.
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Trolls R' Us
Yow.  I've never seen so many obvious MS posts on any story here before.  They must have been rousing people from bed in Redmond today to get the word out.  <br> <br>How are these obvious trolls and flamebait getting modded up?  Every single MS monopoly story has some bonehead saying <i>"how come Apple doesn't get in trouble for bundling iTunes..."</i>  This has been definitively answered dozens of times, but here it is again, and modded up too.  Likewise, every story has someone saying <i>"what's wrong with bundling things people find useful..."</i>(apart from anti-trust law, nothing) or <i>"who gets hurt by forcing MS to stop breaking the law?  Joe Sixpack, that's who..."</i> (I agree, let's ignore laws that restrain Microsft's freedom to innovate) Both are here as well, and modded up.  <br> <br>What's going on?  The low number of comments on the story seem to have revealed a distinct pattern that would normally go unnoticed.
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Re:No wonder everyone's getting outsourced!
80 percent of the world couldn't install windows.<BR><BR>70 percent of the world could get around GNAA/Linux if it were a decent distro (SuSE, Ark).<BR><BR>And, most importantly, I'm not part of those percentages, so why the fuck would that affect what I use?
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Re:No wonder everyone's getting outsourced!
<blockquote>Mozilla renders more accurately and has better features than IE, <em>but runs slower...</em> </blockquote>
<p> <strong>MOZILLA IS NOT SLOWER THAN IE!!!</strong> </p>
<p>Mozilla startup takes more time than IE, IF and only if you don't consider the time it takes to start IE at system startup. Other than that, Mozilla, and Firefox especially, literally kick the pants off of IE. There was a wonderful page I found that simply drew images and removed them repeatedly that demonstrated this, IIRC IE took about 10 times as long as Mozilla.</p>
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Re:On top of existing EU sanctions
I can't believe this is marked as insightful. For the record:<BR><BR>The EU decided to impose sanctions on the U.S. for giving tax preferences to exporters after the World Trade Organization repeatedly ruled this out of bounds.<BR><BR>The tax breaks, now known as the extraterritorial income exclusion, were designed to offset the perverse effects of U.S. high tax rates and system of world-wide taxation. This system handicaps U.S. firms competing against foreign counterparts whose governments tax only their home income.<BR><BR><b>Even though the Europeans themselves rebate value-added taxes on their exports, they decried the U.S. tax breaks as unfair and won their case at the WTO.</b><BR><BR>That decision was disturbing on several levels, not least because it is part and parcel of a wider European effort to stifle tax competition..
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Re:No wonder everyone's getting outsourced!
<I>MPlayer plays back more video types than Windows Media Player, and also is more fault-tolerant, uses less resources, is easier to use, and is more stable.</I>&nbsp;... and is more illegal, as it uses pirated software that they don't have permission to redistribute to do so.
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Re:Dupe!
How is this a dupe?  This article says that the commission <b>is</b> going to impose sancations.  The one you referenced said they <b>might</b> impose sancations.
<p>I would call this new news.  Your post is informative?  Please.
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Re:What about Apple?
Yes, it can. Unlike Windows, everything in Mac OS X can be removed with very little fuss. There are no programs which latch onto others, or system files, save for the system files themselves (of which Quicktime is not).
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You may be opposed to bundled media players...
... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?<BR><BR>Sean
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How long until...
...they're putting them into condoms to build up a database for "virtual sex"?
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Excellent idea
Now I can make the electro-stimulation Condom!<p>Thrills for you and for her - with the optional audio input, you too cam throb to the music of lurrrve gods such as Barry White or Motorhead!<p>
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Re:Excellent idea
Oh, c'mon, we could have condoms that bestow immortality on the women we use them with, and we still ain't gettin' any.<BR><BR>The best we can hope for is sell those condoms to guys with waistbands under 48 inches and use the money to buy porn.<BR><BR>
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Rubbery Behavior
As soon as they said Rubbery Behavior, I am thinking of this ultra advanced underwear.<BR><BR>What a change since the medievil days when knights used to wear potato-sack-material like underwear.
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Use in sports?
"Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance."<br> <br>

With the tight restriction on performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and now mainstream sports, how will this possibly be allowed?<br> <br>
And even if it was legalized, how much stretching can the body take before succumbing to injury?
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Re:Use in sports?
Ummm how about we use this to monitor all the athleets to see if any are using "performance enhancing drugs".

it's a monitoring not enhancing thing
%
Prior art
Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue.
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Whoa...
"The wires can stretch to over half their original length."<BR><BR>Is it me, or does this violate some law of grammar, physics, or both?
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IC
I wonder if this could help patients with I.C.  It's rather painful and if the "new nerves" can be made to ignore certain impulses...that'd be very beneficial.  Very intriguing, anyway
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Excersize control?
Excersize control: imagine your DVD playing the workout tape, and a machine monitoring your muscles as you work out.  The DVD says "You need to work harder on your abs, the muscles aren't working hard enough".  THAT would be cool.  I know I could use it.
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Reporters can use over half their minds!
Caption from Graphic:<i>The wires can stretch to over half their original length.</i>
<br> <br>
Elsewhere, cars were noticed to speed up to over half their original speed! Proof readers were able to increase their accuracy to over half their original accuracy! I increased my IQ to over half it's original size!
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Um...
This sounds more like artificial <b>muscles</b>.
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Re:Um...
We've had them for many years.  It's called NiTiNOL.  Nitinol is a metal alloy that, when used in wires, constricts when current is passed through it (heating phase) and stretches when it is idle (cooling phase).  This is also the same material that those bend-proof wire glasses frames are made of.  See http://www.dynalloy.com/AboutNitinol.html for just one manufacturer's info page.
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Amazing..
Science discovery: Springs are spring-like, also some metal conducts electricity.  Quick someone grab a patent!
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Polymer confusion
As another example of the article being poorly put together:

The article states
"The usual way to make stretchable conductors is to embed metal particles in a rubbery polymer. But the particles tend to separate when the material is stretched, causing the electrical conductivity to plummet."
<br> <br>

But the research in the end use a polymer which I assume would have to be rubbery in order to strech with the spring. <br>
" Instead of fashioning the gold wires into helical springs, however, they gave them a flat, oscillating shape, like a meandering river, since this is easier to make. They manufactured them by electroplating gold onto a sheet of silver, surrounding the wires with polymer and then stripping the silver away."

<br> <br>
Admittedly metal particles and metal wires are slightly different but a wire is simply a structure made up of particles.
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I already have battery powered thermals....
Now, I can have real power suits to go with them.... 8-)<BR><p>InnerWeb
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A step ahead
I, for one, am waiting for the day when we will not require hardware to be made from metals and other hard substances.
<p>
Most devices/machines today depend heavily on a motors/engines/circuits that are not usually flexible and need to maintain a rigid structure. Sure, we try to cover/encapsulate these devices in a pleasing exterior (car bodies, plastic casings etc) in order to protect the hardware and us from the dangerous interiors.
<p>
Imagine cars made up of soft cushiony/rubbery material, which bounces back to absorb a collision...the metal body can dent in and absorb the force of the impact, but it works only against collisions against other cars/hard objects -- not against collisions with humans/animals and other "soft" substances.
<p>
Ofcourse, we could have a soft covering for cars, made of a cushiony substance, but the problem has been embedding circuits/machinery in the soft exteriors, because they tend to bend and damage the interiors.
<p>
Nature has found the perfect way to create organs/pumps/filters/wires which are made out of soft tissue, and is malleable enough to survive severe tension/distortion and bending.
<p>
Here's to hoping that one day we will be able to create soft fuzzy machines which won't be so hard on our water-bag bodies.
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Finally!
Wires that bend! Great job on the breakthrough, guys.

<P>Seriously though, this sounds fine for integrating electronics into fabrics, but the "artificial nerve" idea conjures images on Christopher Reeve leaping up and tap dancing.  This invention doesn't sound like it has any therapeutic uses that a normal wire doesn't.  Perhaps users of vagus nerve stimulators or other devices requiring in vivo wiring could be a little more physically vigorous without worrying about things pulling or breaking... but I have my doubts about even that.
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If my Slinky taught me anything . . .
One kink and it's trash can city.
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Advance BION research?
This might be the breakthrough the BION folks could use to <a HREF="http://www.vard.org/jour/02/39/3/sup/Loeb.htm" TITLE="vard.org">advance their research</A>.
%
Oh, yay.  Finally we can get rid of all that gold.
<i>The flexible circuits, built by using gold springs...</i>
<P>
Wow.  Just what we needed.  Yet another use for Gold.  You know, it being so damn plentiful and all.  I was just saying to myself, as I threw away another gold can of soda, "I sure how they find a use for this stuff, because if not, Gold doesn't oxidize or break down very easily, and it will burst our landfills if we don't start a recycling program!"  Maybe all those out-of-work gold miners can finally feel useful again, and not be he butt of environmentalist hate.
<P>
Why don't they ever find a great new way to use garbage?
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Gold hmm..
Of course they couldn't be made out of anything else than Gold could they?<p>

I do realise Gold has special properties such as conductivity and hypoallergenic properties, but come on!
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Wow...
I'm feeling like I could be the 6 trillion dollar man any year now...  between this, <a HREF="http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/04/1357212&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=126" TITLE="slashdot.org">powered exoskeletal legs</A>, I'll be a super sapper in no time.  I wonder how much of this my beloved US Army has actually looked into.
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Potential Privacy Issue
<em>There are lots of applications that can be imagined. "We joke about making electrical devices that you can throw against a wall: instead of breaking they would bounce back at you", says Chen. "But we have no idea if that is possible."</em>
<P>Maximum points for humour. Now for my rant:
<P>This creates serious privacy issues. One day the US government will make it law for every US citizen to wear clothes made out of these bendy wires, working as sensors. This way the government can monitor your every action.
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Re:Potential Privacy Issue
Hmm, I could see this as a BIG thing for social studies, however.  Sure, from a required standpoint it's horrible, but it'd never fly.  From a science standpoint.<BR><BR>I'd love to see experiments done where volunteers wear clothing (shoes, hats, socks, pants, underwear, shirts) with this type of thing embedded to collect data.  This could be SO useful...<BR><BR>* Wear and tear points in clothing.  Wear do different clothing styles rub against someone, potentially uncomfortably, depending on the body shape and size.<BR><BR>* hot/cold comfort...  Where does the wearer get hotter, colder based on wear of certain overcoats, garments and standard clothing<BR><BR>* posture studies...  how do people really sit, stand, skip and run?  once again, by body shape, age, race, culture, locale<BR><BR>* interaction studies...  check for nervousness and pulse rate and the like based on social interaction.  This could be done with wires and straps and such, but those things also impose tehmselves on wearers.  THis could be done "on the sly" like the driving studies about how much people pay attention, when they THINK it's about seeing how they react to traffic and road conditions. (can't find a link... if someone knows of one, post it... interesting read).<BR><BR>I'm sure there are many other ideas out there for such things in the study of human nature.  This is a tpoic that gets overlooked far too often.
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that isn't how it works
are they going to coat them in extensible insulator, too?<BR><BR>and every crush-injury will destroy them<BR><BR>these guys need ome more requirements analysis
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Great
How long till I have to upgrade/patch the OS on my underwear?
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Extra-durable nerves
Maybe they can develop nerves strong enough to let me survive my mother asking for computer help.
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Not ready for the real world
From the article:<BR><BR>"the researchers estimate that the wires should be able to withstand several thousand cycles of extension and contraction."<BR><BR>That's no where NEAR what would be needed for any of the applications they mention.  For example, at 70 beats per minute your heart beats 100,800 times per day.  Assuming each step a runner takes covers 3 feet (very approximate here), then a "cycle" (back to starting configuration) is 6 ft.  That's 880 "cycles" per mile.  A single 6 mile run is therefore over 5000 cycles.<BR><BR>Several thousand "cycles of extension and contraction" is not even close to enough for any real world app.  Who wants to have that internal heart monitor replaced several times each day?  How about that high-tech single use "smart" sweatshirt?<BR><BR>These will need to be in the 100's of thousands to millions of cycles for their lifespan before they have any real utility.<BR>
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Re:Not ready for the real world
The expected lifetime of these wires will be heavily dependent upon the total strain they encounter in the duty cycle.  Basically, it depends upon whether the deformation of the gold is in the elastic or plastic portion of the deformation curve.<BR><BR>Small deformations just cause the atoms in the gold (or any other material) to get closer or further apart.  This is elastic deformation and can be done about infinity + 1 times before the metal breaks.  eg: you can slightly flex a paper clip until doomsday and it is largely unaffected.<BR><BR>Larger deformations actually cause the atoms to start moving around, changing places in the atomic lattice structure to accomodate the strain.  This is primarily accomplished by the movement of defects and dislocations through the material.  This is plastic deformation and each plastic deformation lowers the lifetime of the material.  eg: if you take a paper clip and start seriously bending it, in a few cycles, the part you're bending breaks off.<BR><BR>I have no idea what the threshhold is between plastic and elastic deformation in these wires is but it should be possible to design devices where the flex wires are in the elastic deformation regime most of the time.  Eg: a smart shirt would have flex wires designed to be in the elastic regime when you're skipping around, swinging your arms, whistling show tunes.  However, when you trip over a comatose mime and fall into an open storm serwer, the wires would be plastically deformed but won't break like conventional electrodes would in the same situation.  Thus giving us essential data to force passage of the mime prevention act of 2008.
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Muscle Wire
Sounds related to "Muscle Wire" special wires used in a field of robotics called "BEAM" to cause movement without motors.  Basically they are wires made of different metals fused together so that they react to electrical charge by contracting.  Some really cool insect bots made from them can be found here: http://www.solarbotics.net/bestiary/2502_walker_2<nobr>m<wbr></nobr> ot_gal.html

Muscle Wire: Muscle Wires are thin, highly processed strands of a nickel-titanium alloy called Nitinol - a type of Shape Memory Alloy that can assume radically different forms or "phases" at distinct temperatures.
However, when conducting an electric current, the wire heats and changes to a much harder form that returns to the "unstretched" shape - the wire shortens in length with a usable amount of force.
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Sounds like inferior cephalopod nerves to me
Your nervier (brainier) mullosks have amazing nerve fibers. They get used for experiments all the time because they're just huge, big enough to place electrodes in the axons and measure voltage changes.

<p>Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result.
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Re:Sounds like inferior cephalopod nerves to me
Actually, cephalopod nerves aren't that amazing.  They're no faster that than the nerves in your body.  It's just that cephalopods never developed myelinated nerves.  Myselin insulates the nerve and allows for much faster signal propogation.  The large size of cephalopod nerves is simply an alternate way to get higher transmission speeds.<BR><BR>Either way, nerves only transmit at a few hundred miles an hour.  Even assuming these flex wires aren't as conductive as a bulk gold wire, you're still looking at a transmission speed at a significant fraction of c.<BR><BR>Silicon and metal wiring operates at speeds millions of times higher than biological nervous systems.
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Brilliant!  And on the patent app, call it...!
It's the cord from a telephone handset.<BR>Now why didn't they think of that decades ago?<BR>Oh, wait, they did.<BR>Nevermind.<BR><BR>Yeah, yeah, I know.  It's FLAT.  So maybe they've reinvented ramen noodles?<BR>
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yeah.. anyone else..
Anyone else horrified by the thought of this? i mean the first thing i thought of was the jack to my headphones, how every pair maybe lasts 2 weeks before either channel starts going out, or gets huge static.<BR><BR>just happily walking down the street someday with your new artificial leg, and all of a sudden the "nerves" give out and you take a face dive.. or in the case of the static, you could have the physical equivalent to tourettes; standing in line at the bank when all of a sudden your arm goes and punches the guy in front of you in the back of the head, and then yourself in the face a few times.. gives a new meaning to frayed nerves..<BR><BR>most metals just dont last long with a large amount of torsion. (for lack of a better word)
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Wired And Ready To Go!
I'm feeling so wired today.
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Useful for electronics too
This kind of thing could be used to create more resilient ribbon cables than we have now. If these things can tolerate repeated 180 degree bends and being pinch off at weird angles frequently over a long period of time, laptop designers may have finally met their new best friend!
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Leave the clothes alone
WHY is it, that the first real-world reference used when there's any kind of biotech advance is that it's going to be WEARABLE?
<p>
The last thing I want geeks designing is my clothes.  I'm not fond of the short-sleeve-polo-with-company-logo, okay!
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About clothing with this
To all of those who responded with something about putting this technology in clothes:
What is to stop this from happening now? for the most part clothing doesn't stretch as much as these wires do. The technology is here today for wiring up your clothes, just not for processing it in the fabric.  Maybe before you think of wild uses for new technology, you should think about current ways that it could already be done.
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I can see it now....
"Boy, you've got some nerve!"

"You like it? I just had it grafted in this morning"
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Re:The way to a better dance pad!
OT but...  Get a hard pad, or a RedOctane 2.0

I weigh 240lbs, and that RedOctane keeps taking a beating without fail on 9 footers.
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Re:like going to a auto shop
<i> Now we will have to go to a certified mechanic to get our bodies checked out.</i><BR><BR>That's basically what doctors are. Human mechanics.<BR><BR><i>Soon we will have doctors hooking us up to machines to see what wrong.</i><BR><BR>Like EKGs, for example?<BR><BR>Douchebag.
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Re:questions...
Most law requires context.

Port scanning has plenty of legit purposes. If I port scan my home network, or the network of a system that I own, operate, or maintain - you'd think it would be legal. If not, enter the hazy grey area.

Spoofing email addresses can go either way as well, depending on the content and the recipients.
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Intellectual Property...
I've heard from time to time (albeit prety sparsely) of companies threatening legal action for using their images on a website/forum/etc.<BR> <BR>Is there any written law that backs it up, or is it just baseless threats?
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Gotta ask
Internet piracy, peer-to-peer, 'sharing mp3s'... is there any chance any of this can and will be legal?  It just seems like so many geeks want it to be legal, but it requires a lawyer with a good understanding of technology to deliver the odds.  So whats it gonna be?  Slim to none?
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Re:Gotta ask
please.<BR><BR>You're connecting "piracy", something inherantly illegal by definition, with peer-to-peer. p2p is a technology that can be used for so many different things, that lumping them together is naive.<BR><BR>so many geeks want what to be legal? piracy? sharing mp3's? p2p? they are 3 separate things, only one of which I care about, as a geek, and that is p2p. Which I don't even use. Once i tried bit torrent to d/l slackware, but it didn't work.<BR><BR>please, for the sake of reality, don't lump 3 vastly different things into one thing that the general public sees as illegal. p2p != sharing mp3s. p2p != piracy. sharing mp3's is not always even equal to piracy.<BR><BR>generalizations are like premature optimizations... the root of all evil.
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Re:Gotta ask
<i>Just because it CAN be used for something else doesn't mean it is.</i><BR><BR>which doesn't mean it won't be in the near future. if you want to regulate or in some way crack down on the software implementations of p2p that are used for violating copyrights, that is fine as long as it is done in a respnosible manner. But if you want to make it illegal for me to write a p2p software system that is not in any way related to unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, then that is absolutely wrong.<BR><BR><i>No, this statement is naive.</i><BR><BR>explain why, i'm listening...
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IP lawsuit frenzy.
In your experience, have you found most lawsuits involving IP issues to be a waste of time/resources, or possessing merit?
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No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997
What do you think of the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997 and do you think it is fair to make not profit motive copyright infringement a criminal offense?
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My question
Don't you think that some of today's Internet laws are suspiciously reminiscent of the laws the Nazis used to have?

What? What did I say? Why are you looking at me like that?
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This is scary...
I'm halfway through Len Deighton's "Blitzkrieg" in which he explains Hitler's rise to power and how it was used.  I was going to attempt to write a humourous response to the parent, stating that Hitler took away many of the rights of his own citizens, wrongly imprisioned and tried citizens of other countries, manipulated England and France into supporting his attacking other countries when I realized that the parent wasn't all that fallacious.<BR><BR>We live in scary times,<BR><BR>myke<BR>
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IP laws in the internet age
It has become clear to me that we probably need new IP laws for an age where copying is so easy. The current set were drafted when widespread copying was difficult, and accepted that certain infringements would happen. We can now copy so much so easily, <b>and prevent copying so easily</b>, that I think we should look again at the law, and see whether some small rights should accrue to the user. What's your view on this?
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Re:IP laws in the internet age
I think you missed the thrust of the grandparent's comments.  A better way to put it would be that the DMCA makes it trivial to prevent all <I>legal</i> copying.    Do we threrefore need specific legal rights to restore the ability to create "fair use" copies?  It may be impossible to prevent most forms of copying from a technical stand-point, but doing so makes you a criminal, even if what you're doing falls easily under "fair use" provisions.
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Fair Use
How long do you predict it will be before all rights to fair use are vanquished from the Internet?
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Re:Fair Use
Almost good. How about,<BR><BR>What do you think needs to be done to ensure that our rights of Fair Use are preserved in this digital age?
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Re:Fair Use
And the other side of the coin:<BR><BR>What do you think needs to be done to ensure that the rights of creators and artists are preserved in the digital age?<BR><BR>Suppose it is determined that a solution that both protects the producer's copyrights and the consumer's fair-use rights is not possible. Which side's rights deserve more protection?
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Sedition and Internet free speach
Sedition is defined as speach which advocates the immedate and violent overthrow of the government in a fashion as to provide a clear and present danger, if my memory serves me correctly.<BR>My question is, would an internet website fall into that catigory, as it does not have the same force as say, Hitler in the Haufbrauhause with like, 2,000 SA going to storm the Bavarian capital building.  It does have a wider audience, but due to the decentralized nature I doubt that a website can provide a clear and present danger or <i>immediate</i> action at all.  Am I wrong?  Does the PATRIOT Act redefine it in such a way as to make it "terrorism?"
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Personal Usage
Do you have a right to make your own personal copies of media that you have purchased as backups?
<p>
If so, how does this impact the manufacturers of copy protected audio and data CDs?
<p>
If a copy-protected audio or data CD goes faulty, is the manufacturer liable to provide a new copy free of charge? If so, in what time-frame?
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Re:Personal Usage
*translation*<BR><BR>Should BioWare/Atari pay for the new CD Rom I had to buy after upgrading Neverwinter Nights to v1.31, and subsequently making it impossible for my old CD Rom to read the disc because of advanced "SafeDisc"?<BR><BR>*corollary*<BR><BR>I own Neverwinter Nights, all 5 glorious discs of it.  If, for some reason, my old and/or busted CD Rom refuses to give the executable what it wants because of SafeDisc, is it legal to bypass the "Do you have a legit disc" check?  Is it legal to download a crack that does this for you because I can't speak hex?<BR><BR>(On the Neverwinter Nights message boards, Atari says "no", BioWare says "We can't condone that action, but we're happy you purchased the disc (hint), but you can't link to cracks sites here")<BR><BR>~Will<BR>
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Re: what, exactly, is being licensed?
More to the point, does changing the medium in which content is delivered constitute a derivative work and therefore require a seperate copyright license? E.G., ripping a muic track from a CD to play on a computer, copying a track from a vinyl album to a CD or audio cassette to play in a car, etc.
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Re:Questions about content
In a related question - do you think the Google cache is open to legal challenges the way it is currently implemented?
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Individuals vs. Major ISPs
Often, I find my network and servers I use for my small business come under attack by script kiddies. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack, but more often than not, it's just getting hammered by one machine. When I contact the ISP involved, generally one of the large US ISPs, I am told that they will look into it. Nothing ever happens, however, and ISPs are generally unwilling to provide assistance in tracking down attacks. This means my complaint ends up in the circular file. The ISPs are protecting criminals because they don't want to lose business, and I have no way of making sure my complaint doesn't end up lost in this black hole. As an individual representing a small business, what recourse do I have in dealing with ISPs to make sure my complaints are heard and taken seriously?
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Re:Individuals vs. Major ISPs
Think about this one for just a minute.  If some gang banger breaks into your house and steals a gun, and then uses it to rob a bank, and it the process kills a police officer, with whom does the fault lie?  Is it with you for not having your gun properly secured against all possible kinds of break-ins?  Is it with the manufacturer of the house or the manufacturer of your gun safe for not building a system immune to all types of breaches?  Or is it with the guy who broke into your house, breached whatever security you had in place, stole your gun, and used it to commit capital murder?  I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure many Slashdotters would read your post and think, "That's right, make those stupid Windows lusers responsible for not keeping their machines patched, and while we're at it, let's send Bill Gates to prison for his crap OS too!"  That same line of thinking, applied to the scenario above, would land you strapped to a gurney in recompense for somebody else's crime.  Let's be a little more realistic.
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Interoperability
<p>The DMCA contains an obscure clause about interoperability, what does this mean?  That is could I break encryption to allow DVD player to work, so long as I maintained the spirit of the encryption (not allowing copies)?   Can I break the encryption on various games to allow them to run under Wine?
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Is there any hope?
By the time your daughter grows up, do you think there will be any of our cherished freedoms on the Internet left, or will everything be wrapped in legalese and DRM?  With the passage of laws from the DMCA to the PATRIOT act, I've been increasingly pessimistic about the US's ability to pass any sane legislation that interfaces with the Internet...
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Lesser-known cases that have a big impact on law.
Mr. Godwin - Lots of&nbsp;/.ers follow the SCO case, followed the DeCSS, Napster, IP, CIPA, etc.  What are some lesser known cases/laws that you forsee as having a large potential impact on 'cyberlaw' as we know it?
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Internet "Piracy"
A freind of mine was preaching to the choir (me) about how inappropriate it is that the RIAA is calling mass copyright infringement "piracy", and how it is an inappropriately biased term given the evils of Blackbeard and the like. Since I agreed, but like my rants to be backed up by better facts, I did some research on piracy of the "Argh, me hearties" kind. To my surprise, it almost fits, if you grant that copyright is "property", Cyberspace is a "place outside the jurisdiction of any State", and that mass copyright infringement falls within "act of depredation". (See <a HREF="http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/hseas.htm" TITLE="un.org">what the UN has to say</A> about the Jolly Roger type stuff.)<br> <br>
Skimming the web for some history on this, it seems that the idea of the laws against piracy arose slowly to deal with the problem of crimes committed outside of any national jurisdiction. I was wondering if Mike has any thoughts on this parallel, and what it may imply about how cyberlaw may evolve.
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Evolution
As a legal professional, how do you see the evolution of the laws surrounding the internet progressing? We have heard much talk of losing our online liberties - what do you think the real threats to a reasonable internet are?
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Same Question....
If I may, I would like to ask you the <a HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24694&amp;cid=2688056" TITLE="slashdot.org">same basic question</A> I asked of Lawrence Lessig three years ago: what form do you think that copyright law (and licencing) should take on the Internet?
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Internet law, International law? 3 for one...
How far do you think that the internet will be responsible for creating a de-facto international legal system?  Property rights, shared criminal databases, shared economic systems,... it seems that the influence of TCP/IP packets has no limits on our society.  Will we one day see a world government to enforce international law?  And lastly, will this be the US?
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ISPs vs. FBI
Several years ago the company I work for was the target of a denial of service attack. We contacted the FBI and, after an hour of deliberation, in not so many words they said there really wasn't much they could do. Our ISP was actually much more helpful, both legally and technically, than the FBI. Basically, as I understood the situation, they won't lift a finger unless you can prove $5,000 in damage was caused. The damages were easy to account for, but even then it seemed like they had very little power. I know most internet crimes involve violation of FCC regulations, making them federal issues, but does the FBI have any more power now than they did 3 years ago on this particular issue? If so, is the Patriot Act the source of additional power?
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Berne Convention and copyright lengths online
Copyright law in individual countries is usually relatively clear. However, the interactions of the copyright laws of different jurisdictions are often a legal minefield.<BR><BR>What is the best general rule for dealing with 'odd' copyright lengths such as Crown copyright, 50 years from date of publication in general, in countries like the US which have not adopted the Berne Convention rule of shorter term?
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Internet Pollution
It seems to me that most (if not all) spaming and advertising done on the Internet is simply polluting the lines of communication. Like any pollution, it reduces the stuff you want, by increasing the ratio of stuff you don't want, thereby making the whole environment unusable.<BR><BR>Is it possible that this view can be used in any legal way to go after Internet polluters?<BR><BR>
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Legality of...
What's the legality of <a HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/10/2022217&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=126&amp;tid=172&amp;tid=95" TITLE="slashdot.org">An Anti-DoS Tool That Returns Fire</A>?  It sounds pretty vigilante to me, but what sort of laws would be applicable to it?
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What we say in Cyberspace
I have always considered comments that are said on newsgroups and forums to be personal opinions of the sort one might overhear in a bar, so if you say "Apple nicked all thier ideas from PARC" you would not suddenly expect a summons from Apples legal department.
<P>
On the contary, if a site passes itself as an "eNewspaper" site, an eMag or whatever, and it publishes mistruths, then I would expect it to be sued as any pulp publication would be.
<p>
Are there any legal precedents or specific laws on this?
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Whose laws govern the Internet?
<p>Different countries/governments/political systems have different laws concerning freedom of expression, privacy, property rights, etc.</p>
<p>How can it be possible to create one set of rules that can apply to all nations with regards to Internet access?</p>
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Re:lawmakers break into computer
i think this is pretty interesting. It's similar to saying, "I didn't break in to that persons house to aquire their property, the door was wide open." Pardon my law knowledge.. terminology may be incorrect, but this is sort of like Breaking and Entering (plus theft) versus Trespassing (plus theft).<BR><BR>Is there a difference between trespassing a "wide open" system which you aren't supposed to be in, and "cracking" ones way into a secured system which you aren't supposd to be in?
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Network Searching Programs
I have a question about the recent litigation by the RIAA against a handful of university students for running supposedly illegal P2P services.  I'm a student at Rensselaer, so I'm more familiar with the service that was being run there, but as far as I figure it was the same deal at all the other universities as well.  At RPI, the Phynd server searched all the computers that were sharing files on the network and indexed them so you could do a keyword search for files, similar to the way google works.  From what I read of the case, the major point in the case was that the RIAA said that the service provided illegal access to copyrighted material because you could use the service to directly download material, via a hyperlink in the search results window; even though the service and the files were restricted only to students at Rensselaer.  My question is how would their case have changed if all the service returned was just the address of the computer hosting the files?  Thus after a person ran a search and decided on his own to manually type the address of the hosting computer to access it, would the owners of the phynd server have been held accountable since it would have been the miscosoft transfer protocols transfering the files.  This seemed to be the big point in going after the students that it was their program that was directly facilitating the illegal downloads, and it seems like if the service merely indexed the files without providing direct access the case would have been significantly weakened.
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what is the point?
Q: Can You see any way the net can be regulated? I have read the other suggestions/queries here and quite frankly it seems that most people(american that is) just dont understand that the net is global. How can we make a set of rules that all users of the net is forced to follow? Do we really want to?
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DMCA
Do you see the DMCA as a law that can truly benefit the world as a whole, or just a tool of the big corporations (MPAA, I'm looking at you) or whatever?
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Battle of the giants
Sometimes I feel that eventually MS and IBM will come to legal blows (more than likely due to SCO being a puppet of MS) - Do you think that this will eventually happen, and if so, who do you feel will win based on a) legal prowess and b) technology patents.<BR>Also, what's your take on the SCO brouhaha?
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Future Lawyers
<p>As a computer science student graduating college and hoping to head to law school, I wonder if you have any particular advice about wha training, if any, will help to prepare me for "cyber-law". Many schools seem to have programs focusing on this aspect of the law, but I've often thought that the generalist approach to a field yielded better results.
</p> <p>
Are there any experiences you'd advise a young prospective attorney interested in this field to seek out?</p>
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Spyware and its legal status
While I find spam as annoying as the next person, I'm more interested in the legal status of spyware.  What are the rights of the individual when he visits a site?  What rights to the individual's machine does the site have?  Is permanently altering a user's browser a legal operation?  What constitutes permission with regard to this type of manipulation?
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Making DVD Copies
<br>Is it legal to make <i>and edit</i> copies of commercial DVDs for personal use?  What about loaning out the edited copies to friends?<br>
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Why do we need copyright protection?
<p>It used to be hard to make intellectual property that was compelling enough to justify the enormous cost of distribution. Since the distribution costs and production costs forced each other up, there was a lot of sunk-cost to deal with before any customers even had the option of paying for the product. Now, distribution costs are so low that you can do as little or as much production as you want, and you can distribute it nearly for free if you use peer-to-peer distribution networks. Software like Apple's iLife suite lowers the ante on production costs to within reach of nearly any high school or college student, let alone professionals moonlighting as film or recording artists.</p>

<p>Maybe most of the product will not be that good, but there is still no reason to involve the massive and massive expense of a full-blown 1980s style music or film production. For example, people routinely pay for concert tickets (guaranteed delivery) of a performance--sight unseen. If too few tickets are sold, the show is cancelled, and the ticket holders are refunded. Why not sell download tickets for yet unfinished films and albums? Then the fan base can directly fund proven popular artists' productions.
</p>
<p>I recognise that some artists and a lot of middlemen enjoy lots of residual income from past production work. Why is it so hard to recognise that this is not the only way to pay artists for their work, and there may be better ways if we think about it? The way I see it, copyrights only protect residual income, which pays artists and middlemen to NOT produce new material. Why do people think this is good?
</p>
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what make's the net so special?
Why is it that there "have to be" laws specific to the internet? If a spammer sends an e-mail using forged headers, why doesn't the law go after him (or her) with good old-fashioned anti-fraud laws? Does the main failing of these kinds of old laws lie in ingorance that makes law enforcement unable or unwilling to enforce the laws without further clarification, or is something else going on here?
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How much for the senator?
It seems that the best way to influence legislation is to buy yourself a government official.  Based on your experience can you ballpark how much the following type of decision makers cost (in USD)?

<OL>
<LI>President</LI>
<LI>Cabinet Member</LI>
<LI>Other Executive Branch Member</LI>
<LI>Supreme Court Justice</LI>
<LI>Circuit Court Judge</LI>
<LI>State's Attorney General</LI>
<LI>Senator</LI>
<LI>Congressman</LI>
<LI>Governor</LI>
<LI>Mayor</LI>
<LI>Local Councilman</LI>
<LI>Cop</LI>
<LI>IT Administrator</LI>
</OL>
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sharing your book
How do you feel about people sharing your book?
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Copyright
<p>
Do you think that the widespread use of the Internet and practical anonymity will force copyright back into its original, more reasonable form of limited restrictions on copying as business models adapt to the unenforcability of existing law?  Or do you think it will force law the other way, to ever-more draconian measures that can't be enforced effectively without making examples of people?
</p>
<p>
Do you think a new form of Intellectual Property will arise that is based around creators' rights to control their work that goes beyond mere copying and into the realm of restrictions on use?  Or have we already gotten to that point?
</p>
<p>
Are EULAs legal?  If they aren't now, will they ever be?
</p>
<p>
What would you suggest people in countries do to avoid capitulating to the USA and adopting its twisted notion of copyright?  It's not always practical to "just say no" to the USA.
</p>
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GNU General Public Licence
<P>I have written some software and have decided to distribute it under the GNU General Public License. I then find out some established/incorporated company has modified the software without redistributing their modified version freely, that they are making a profit out of the modified undistributed version, or that they are redistributing the software without pointing out that what they are giving is not the original version of the software. What exactly are my rights? Is it worth taking the company to court, or is this too risky? To come to the point, is the GPL actually a licence which has some value in the courts of justice?
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Groklaw
What effects, positive or negative, do you think sites like the popular <a HREF="http://groklaw.net/" TITLE="groklaw.net">Groklaw</A> have/will have on corporate technology litigation?  Do lawyers pay any attention to the research and opinions of amateurs and the general public?
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Global Question
How do you plan on managing laws and constitutions that stretch beyond U.S territories.<BR><BR>If the Internet started with the U.S and expanded to some parts of Antarctica.  U.S. rules are probably useless once it gets to the new continent.<BR><BR>Vice versa if someone in Antarctica created a P2P application and it became extremely popular in the U.S.  U.S lawyers probably can never get a grip on it.<BR><BR>Isn't geography the greatest challenge out there for any lawyers.  In fact it's so difficult to deal with it's rendering the law useless.
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Corporate cave-ins
I am currently in tepid water. A police officer who has no jurisdiction whatsoever where I live is currently investigating me for allegedly promoting violence against a particular spammer and criminal proxy-abuser (proxy hijacking is specifically a crime here).<p>
That police officer has repeatedly attempted to contact me (as a rule, I never volunteer any information to law enforcement), and has gone so far as to obtain some personal information about me. Turns-out that the ISP caved-in to his demands and provided some information about me, in clear violation of legal procedure and current privacy laws.<p>
This is no different from a cracker obtaining passwords/access through social engineering.<p>
Furthermore, the officer has repeatedly attempted to have me contact him tough threatening e-mail messages.<p>
My question is: <b>should there be stiff penalties towards law-enforcement officers who manage to illegally and without due process of law get information about ISP subscribers, especially if they are well outside their police department jurisdiction?</b>
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Free Tommy Chong
Tommy Chong is in jail for selling water-pipes over the Internet.  I can go a couple miles from here to the local head shop ( which happens to be across the street from the police station ) and pick up a bong legally.<BR><p>Before his arrest, I would have just ASSUMED selling bongs over the Internet was legal.  What is the best way for an entrepreneur ( like an individual selling something on eBay ) to avoid tripping over any stupid and obscure laws?
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WarDriving and Wireless networks.
While wardriving one day I happened to stumble onto an open wireless network for a lawyer, a doctor, and a securities trading firm in the same parking lot. All networks were open and C drives for many computers were shared. I connected to the networks for the doctor and checked my email. I connected to the lawyer's office and plundered around in their shared drives and copied a folder called Client Files onto my computer. And I connected to the securities firm and started up a packet monitor for an hour to capture and analyze their network traffic. This information reveled several bank account numbers, email usernames and passwords,  and sensitive customer information.<BR><BR>All 3 networks had no encryption in place and no passwords were cracked to access any of the data.<BR><BR>How many, and which laws, have I broken?<BR>
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Activism sans Whack Job Factor?
Mike:<BR>As privacy advocates, what can we do to impress the importance of privacy without coming off as tinfoil-hatted whack jobs?<BR><BR>An example was a presentation I prepared for co-workers a while back regarding grocery store "loyalty" cards. In it, even after detailing the California case of a store that in a slip and fall case in their store, tried to introduce the customer's purchases, tracked via a card, saying he may have been drunk at the time because of frequent alcohol purchases. Afterwards, I was hit with several questions about being paranoid. I used the standard "this is why we have envelopes and blinds instead of postcards and open windows" argument, and while most seemed to understand, some were obviously unimpressed. What can we do to convince people of the need for privacy without being over the top?
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Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
Bill has been tinkering with computers since the age of two.  He has been playing with DVD drives on his computer since 1999.  Recently he has been unable to watch any movies on his computer running GNAA/Linux because of the codes that the MPAA has used to encrypt the disc.<BR><BR>"I think it's an illegal monopoly.  If you don't have the codes you can't watch the disc."<BR><BR>Yet there's a law that protects the MPAA from having to give this code to the rest of the world.  It's called the DMCA.  It stops you from circumventing copy-protection.<BR><BR>Why aren't there any lawmakers backing the public on DVD encryption?  See <a HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/15/141236&amp;mode=thread&amp;tid=123&amp;tid=188&amp;tid=97&amp;tid=99" TITLE="slashdot.org">here</A>.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
The difference lies in the fact that with codes to your car, it can be serviced independently.<BR><BR>With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.<BR><BR>Try doing that to your car when you get it's codes.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
But its a bit more complex that just that.<BR><BR>From the article;<BR>&gt;Automakers are fighting the legislation; they believe the real goal is to obtain proprietary "calibration codes" that are the blueprints for how parts are made. With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing.<BR><BR>So maybe its the same issue.  A group wants to control their property by using technology which locks things up.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
"With that information, Territo said, independent mechanics and parts manufacturers could duplicate major components such as fuel injectors that automakers have spent millions of dollars developing."<BR><BR>If the manufacturers spent millions of dollars designing parts and *didn't* get patents on those parts, then it's their own damn fault...and they have also failed their shareholders.<BR><BR>If they had patented their expensively-designed parts, they would have zero problems with opening the specs for third-party repair shops and could still prevent third-party replica parts.<BR><BR>
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
But it is probably not patentable. It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing. Exact timings for injectors at all speeds and load conditions, while allowing reasonable margins so that performance does not fall off with wear. This data - just a huge look-up table - costs millions of dollars to obtain, because it required many hours of running. But you cannot patent it. You can copyright it, of course, but if a copier made a number of minor, not very significant, changes in the tables, it would be very difficult to prove they had copied the original tables. "Of course we got the same results - they are the right results for this engine".
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<i>I don't see why companies don't like the idea of getting help from CUSTOMERS.&nbsp;:D</i><BR><BR>Simple:  Maybe they would get help from customers, maybe not.  If they got help from customers, then their cars would be a little bit better (though probably not much), and their customers would be a little bit happier.<BR><BR>But by keeping all this stuff secret, they create a monopoly on service and their dealerships can charge $200 for something that Joe Smith at your local garage would charge $120 for.<BR><BR>
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<i>It is not an invention, it is precise settings which have to be worked out over hours and hours of testing. </i> <br>
<Br>
But it's not.<br>
<Br>
This is about <b>ERROR CODES</b> not ignition and fuel maps.  This about being able to plug something into my car and have it tell me that there's a problem with XXXXX.<br>
<br>
That doesn't say shit about the design of that part.  They just want access to the same diagnostic codes as the dealer.  Right now manufactuers are only required to make a tiny subset of these codes availible.<br>
<br>
The automakers are just whining about their  "intellectual property" because they think they can get away with it since the vast majority of the public doesn't know the difference between a diagnostic code, and the actual program code itself.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
This is not exactly true... modern cars have a "closed loop" system where various sensors feed data into the computer which it uses to tune engine parameters.  Thus, the computer is "self learning"... about a decade ago, Ford recalled a number of Tempo's.  They replaced the injector and <i>downloaded the engine calibration data</i> -- they used a federally mandated recall to collect this "millions of dollars" worth of data.<BR><BR>In fact, it actually takes a mere afternoon to build the calibration data.  It takes a fair bit of equipment (diag station, dynamo, etc.), but the process is rather simple. (that is, for those that know how to do it.)<BR><BR>Ironic side discussion... the only real difference between the VW 1.8T engines (150hp and 180hp anyway) is the ECU programming.  I can "upgrade" my engine with a serial cable&nbsp;:-)
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Re:I really miss....
I generally love anything new and techie...but, I really miss the days of simpler cars. I miss minimal computer control....large engines with tons of horsepower. Where if something went wrong..it was mostly mechanical...and you could work on many things yourself. I miss when you could drive a stock car off the showroom floor...and it had enough power to smoke the tires for a couple of blocks....and they weren't all 'designed by computers'...the cars looked good and had individual personality. And...even a pretty powerful one was reasonably affordable to the majority of people....<P>
I often think that if you could get one car executive to take a 'chance'...and try the old idea behind the original GTO's and later other muscle cars...throw a monster engine into a decent body of a car...keep the interior minimalist...with real perfomance, and keep the price reasonable. I gotta think these things would sell like hotcakes...<P>
Oh well...as long as we're dreaming here...I'd also like a pony...
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Re:I really miss....
You also handle the point that <i>allowing</i> users to get into the inner workings of their cars is not inherently evil.<br>
I foresee some argument along the lines of "If we do this, &lt;insert terrrorist/criminal organization here&gt; will be able to soup-up the performance of their cars, and escape capture.<br>
People working on their cars at low level resembles people working on GNAA/Linux From Scratch, with the difference being that a core dump is only embarrassing, whereas an engine becoming several hundred flying sub-engines at the I95/I495 interchange, known with affection as 'the mixing bowl', could have substantial costs...<br>
I hope the safety gestapo doesn't win the argument.<br>
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Re:I really miss....
<blockquote>allowing<i> users to get into the inner workings of their cars is not inherently evil.</i> </blockquote>Since the late 1970's this <i>has</i> been considered evil in the USA. The EPA mandated caps on the idle screws back then, and it's been downhill ever since. You really can't adjust anything under the hood anymore -- not like you used to. All in the name of keeping the air clean, which is a reasonable goal. And cars are better for it -- they don't <i>need</i> those adjustments anymore.<blockquote> <i>I hope the safety gestapo doesn't win the argument.</i> </blockquote>It's not the safety gestapo, it's the environmental gestapo, and they won the arguement 30 years ago.
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Re:I really miss....
I'm not sure it's that simple.  There are tons more regulations that manufacrurers must meet today - from safety regulations to pollution measures.  Throwing a 440ci engine with a four barrel carb into a light car simply isn't possible anymore.
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Re:I really miss....
You can get cars today with as much horsepower as ever. The main difference is that they produce far less pollution and get considerably better fuel economy as 60s muscle cars of similar proportions. They are also much safer, more reliable, easier to start, require less regular maintenence, and they automatically keep themselves in tune.
<p>
To achieve all of this, computers had to be put in the cars. A car without computers wouldn't be competitive in today's market, and it wouldn't be able to produce high power outputs while staying within today's mandated pollution limits.
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Re:I really miss....
I think that you're looking back with rose-tinted glasses. I had a Camaro in the 70s, and compared to today's cars it was a total piece of garbage. It had dangerous handling, it broke down constantly, it was shoddily constructed, and chunks were falling off of it when it was only 8 years old.
<p>
Maybe a few cars from back then claimed more horsepower than what you can get today. (I kind of doubt it with cars like the Dodge Viper on the market). Keep in mind that horsepower numbers were inflated back then, and the drivetrains and suspensions were not capable of utilizing the horsepower that they had.
<p>
If you read any car magazine, there are plenty of aftermarket shops that do modify today's cars, and they manage to keep them legal as well.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
I have news for you, you don't need to obtain diddly to figure out how the part is made. You just take it apart and you figure out how it's shaped, build it in the cad package of your choice (say solidworks, no reason you couldn't use it) and then you can send off the drawings for quotes and have the parts made, assembled, packed, and shipped, all without leaving the comfort of your computer chair. All you need is some good measuring equipment, a decent computer, and the part.
<P>
Fuel injectors, by the way, are not developed by automakers any more. Automakers go to someone and say hey, we need an injector with these dimensions that flows this much fuel and runs off this voltage, and they get a part back, they sign a contract agreeing to buy so many of them and to put however many of them into cars, and that's it. Furthermore a fuel injector is a dog-simple item which can be made better simply by throwing more money at it for better materials - it's just a solenoid valve. They usually run on 12 volts and they open and close in response to an electrical signal which is pulsed once for each opening. They are usually run at a single given pressure by the OEM and you can "trick" them (and your computer) by using a rising rate fuel pressure regulator, which is a popular way of doing a cheap turbo installation. As the boost rises, the fuel pressure rises, and more fuel is delivered. The next step up is to use a box that takes over fuel management for the computer, and/or tweaks the signal from the computer, and the final step is to replace the car's computer entirely. All of this stuff is done outside of the injector. The injector, as I have previously stated, is a simple device and high-rate injectors can be had for little more than OEM parts. Rebuilt OEM (270cc/min, I think, maybe it was 230?) for my car were $69, you can get new 370cc/min injectors for about $100 each. So Territo is full of horse shit, whoever he is. (Too lazy to RTFA, sorry, I'd rather spend my time ranting.)
<P>
Also most of these parts are not complicated. No one owns the facts, so you just stick a thread pitch gauge in the hole, and measure the diameter, and you know what size the thing should be; You can hook up the part and test it using calibration equipment, another (known) sensor (which is calibration equipment of course), or you can build a new one from the specifications. Data sheets are available for automotive sensors, and factory service manuals will tell you the expected range of response from a sensor, most of which are resistance-based.
<P>
Automakers quite simply want to hang onto the lucrative service market. Dealers charge more for service than practically anyone else, except for very high end establishments that specialize on working on exotic cars. For example there's a joint called Canepa's in Santa Cruz that bought, sold, and serviced rolls, lamborghini, ferrari and so on. But if you go to a dealer for your ordinary vehicle you generally pay 10-50% over the average service station for both parts and labor, and you don't necessarily get better service unless you bring in a really special car, which they tend to take seriously.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<em>...the difference between the "turbo" and the "standard" engine is a software patch and $20 in parts.</em> <br> <br>
Gee, and here I thought it would be the presense of a _turbocharger_.  Second post already that thinks a turbo is a piece of software rather than hardware.  I don't know of anyone marketing a car as being turbocharged who isn't using a physical device called a <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger" TITLE="wikipedia.org">turbocharger.</A>
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<blockquote>"A calibration code is what makes that part work, and that's the part that's proprietary," Territo said. <b>"It's like the difference between an Apple microprocessor and an IBM microprocessor.</b> </blockquote><BR><BR>Someone needs to let them in on <a HREF="http://www.apple.com/g5processor/" TITLE="apple.com">a little IBM/Apple secret</A>&nbsp;:)<BR><BR>
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
You can make bit-for-bit copies of any DVD now, complete with all the encryption on it.  And the laws preventing the distribution of those DVDs (normal copyright law) has been on the books for a long, long time.  If you follow the money, the bottom line is that the CSS and region codes on a DVD only help to support cartel price-fixing profits.<BR>
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WRONG!
Some of you people just don't get it:  DVD CSS has NOTHING to do with COPYING or the prevention thereof!  You can make as many copies of a CSS'ed DVD as you want.  CSS is all about who can play the DVD and where.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<blockquote> <i>The difference lies in the fact that with codes to your car, it can be serviced independently.
<p>
With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.
</i> </blockquote>

<p>Not correct. I can make unlimited copies of DVDs without any access to codes - just as I can make copies of a text written in German without being able to read that language. Mass bootlegging of DVDs happens this way already.

<p>CSS is all about controlling who gets to make DVD players. It does <b> <i>nothing</i> </b> to prevent copying.
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
<I>With the codes to your DVD, you can make unlimited copies, and do anything and everything with them.</I><BR><BR>I can't speak a word of Polish, but given enough time I could make an exact copy of a book written in Polish.<BR><BR>DVD encryption does not prevent copying, it prevents people from watching them with players that the DVDCA hasn't made any money off of.<BR><BR>LK
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Re:Cars, DVDs, what's the difference?
I think the fact that the DVD is pure information and a car is a physical object, not subject to casual duplication, <i>might</i> be a difference, but who knows?
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I don't get Congress.
When the MPAA comes a callin' with their CSS encryption, the answer is the DMCA.<BR><BR>But when it comes to open-standards for automobiles,  they're all for it.<BR><BR>Why won't they make up their minds?
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Re:I don't get Congress.
Govt. is typically illogical....  IMHO, let them pass this one as law, and THEN hit them with the questioning about their logic on cars vs. DVD's.<BR><BR>It's more leverage for us if it's already written into law.<BR>
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Re:I don't get Congress.
Because in this case, politicians were actually able to make the mental leap necessary to understand the analogy "Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?"<p>
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Re:I don't get Congress.
There's an important difference you're overlooking: Nobody's getting shut out of the DVD player business.
<p>
Seriously, how many legal car repair shops do you think there are? A million is most likely a conservative figure. The car computer legislation is happening because there are a lot of people in the car repair business, and have been in the car repair business for generations. But, suddenly (last few years) they've been unable to fix cars because they don't know the secret codes for the cars' computers.
<p>
This isn't "I want everything, like MP3s and DVDs, for free". This is "I want to fsck-ing <i>survive</i> here.
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Re:I don't get Congress.
<blockquote> <i>Nobody's getting shut out of the DVD player business.</i> </blockquote>

<p>Perhaps you missed the whole <a HREF="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/" TITLE="harvard.edu">DeCSS</A> issue? "Without licensed DVD players for GNAA/Linux and other operating systems, an entire class of computer users is completely cut off from viewing DVDs."
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This has been done before
I used to work for GE Medical Systems, and there was a similar case there.  There is (or was?) a company out there doing third-party servicing of CAT and MRI  scanners, place called "R-Squared".  They took GE to court saying that we should share with them our service tools, because by not doing so it was unfairly excluding them from competing with us.<br> <br>Ended up having to make it possible for the competition to get our service tools, but I don't remember that we were required to make them available cheaply or quickly.  Not sure how things are there today; knowing GE they probably would solve the problem by buying out the competitor.<br> <br>This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
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Re:This has been done before
<i>This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.</i><BR><BR>#:apt-get install camaro<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; No package by that name.<BR>#:apt-get install thunderbird<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Try "apt-get install firefox"<BR>#:apt-get install mini<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos<BR>Ctrl-C<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Process interrupted<BR><BR>#:apt-get install pinto<BR>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?<BR><BR>Ctrl-C<BR><BR>
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woo
<br>Congress to Automakers: <b>"G1bb0rz u5 j00r l337 c0d3x0r5555!"</b> <br>
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a few cars have been reverse engineered
and posted on the web - like <a HREF="http://www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html" TITLE="allpar.com">this site</A>
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Competition, lower prices, better service.
The simple reasoning behind this is to encourage competition in the belief that competion results in better products and/or lower prices.<BR><BR>Cars are something that are easily understood by most people. You buy a car and you want to get it fixed but the place that fixed your old car can't fix this car because the car manufacturer won't let the mechanic read the computer information in YOUR car.<BR><BR>So, you'll have to pay the prices that the car manufacturer wants you to pay to get your car fixed.<BR><BR>I think will be an easy bill to pass. The average person will see it as a way of saving money.
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I'm sorry, Dave...
...I'm afraid I can't do that.
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Preach on,
had to take my car to the dealership this weekend because the shop down the block didn't know what the codes meant. Turns out it was a misaligned break caliper, cost me $225 at the dealership, would have been about $130 down the street.
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Solution
Just tell them you need a quote... that you need to ensure that you have the money right now to be able to repair it.
<p>
It's perfectly reasonable to, once they've given you the quote, to also tell you what all is wrong with your car.   Tell them you'd need to think about it, as if this is going to put a bit of crimp in your budget for this month, and say you'll get back to them as soon as you've worked out the details.
<p>
Trot down to your favorite small shop mechanic and ask him how much he'd charge to do exactly the job that the other guys said needed to get done.  You tell him that the dealership has already given you a quote for $X, and the problem has been diagnosed by them.  Odds are he'll undercut them.  If not, just go back to the dealership... you're SOL.
<p>
If your mechanic guy has offered to do the repairs, then you go back to the dealership and tell them that you just can't swing that kind of money this month.   Then you take your car to little guy's shop and have it repaired there.
<p>
Funny thing is, if enough people did this, the little guys would learn what the diagnosis codes meant because they'd get customers coming in telling them what was already wrong, and the mechanics could start matching up codes to real problems.
<p>
Now the question is, is the above method, using strictly social engineering, still considered a violation of the DMCA?
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Re:Solution
Problem with that theory is that the Dealership will usually charge you $75 to hook up the computer - when all they are doing is plugging in a damn cable and firing up the reader.  Only then will you know what is wrong, after paying $75.  Seems like extorition....
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Re:Solution
AutoZone in most locations (not California, though, last I heard) will plug in an OBD-II scanner and read &amp; translate your codes for free.
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About 10 years too late
<p>They should have always required opening up of these interfaces. The owner pretty much has to take the word of a very small select group of "in the know" mechanics on what condition their car is in. And we all know how trustworthy the average local mechanic/dealer mechanic is (do a google for Jiffy Lube, Sears, etc, and auto mechanics and lawsuits)</p>
<p>Then I recall my own wonderful personal experience. I had engine fluctuation issues in a turbo charged car. 15 trips to the dealer (under warranty) and replacement of virtually ever sensor and the car's computer failed to rectify the sporadic condition. The car had a computer interface, and it was telling them... well, I don't know what it was telling them - I couldn't access the interface....</p>
<p>Long story short though, one day, the engine started having RPM fluctuations while idling, so I popped open the hood and, since I hadn't been running long nor very hard, decided to take a quick look at the intercooler fluid level. I just happened to notice as I pulled out the intercooler cap that the float bob sensor attached to said cap was sunk to the bottom, even though the intercooler level was fine. I bypassed this sensor and all was fine for the next 100K miles. Odds are I'd have found this more quickly if I could have hooked up a computer to the interface to diagnose the problem while it was happening.</p>
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Re:Small car repair shops - and my car
And I'm glad you're not making the laws<p>
It has little to do with quality. A old-school mechanic with 30+ years of tinkering has considerably more knowledge of automotive systems than some 19 year old fresh out of Lincon Tech. I'd trust my car to the old-timer before the new guy. Fact is, while the interface may be computer controlled, the engine itself is the same basic hardware that it was 100 years ago. The car computer can't "hear" bearing wrap like a human can. Sure, it'll turn the check-engine light on and give you an error code. <p>My point: putting the old-timers and the grease monkeys out of business by restricting their ability to solve the simple problems (like having to reset a computer-controlled a/c system, they need the codes), you take out the segement of population most able to solve the really hard problems.
<p>
As for your point about the range of cars on the road....I've never worked on a Dell before. But I have worked on an IBM, a Gateway, an HP, a Tandy, a Mac, a Swan, a Compaq, and a Digital. Does that mean I'm not qualified to work on a Dell?
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Point here has more to do with than just cars.
The proposed law can only be a good thing. With more and more of everyday life becoming computerized, such codes could be used to shut people out from everything from their cars to their washing machines.<BR><BR>The principle point here is: Does the public have the right to access and repair of their own violation property they have paid for? This can readily be applied to almost any manufactured good in the future. Let's face it, how many things do you buy anymore that aren't controlled by computer code?
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Where the profit is ...
The car industry provides two areas of profit (and one of loss)

1.  Making and selling the car - a loss
2.  Financing the sale of a car - a profit
3.  Servicing and repairing the car - a profit

Finance is a competitive industry, so the profits are small.  Servicing can be turned into a monopoly, so is it any surprise the car makers are doing so?

Politicians know how to shakedown an industry - threatening to regulate it and forcing competition is not uncommon.  For some as yet unknown reason, the threats are not always carried out.
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Election Year
This sounds like an election year doggy treat. Pass it in the House and kill it in the Senate.
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Apple ./. IBM Microprocessor
<i>... Territo said. "It's like the difference between an Apple microprocessor and an IBM microprocessor."</i><BR><BR>Hmmh, and I thought Apples G5 Microprocessors come from IBM...<BR><BR>
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Good For Me
If this works for previous model years instead of just new models, I'll be really happy.  There's a small but loyal group of people like me that are trying to get a supercharger for our car.  A company has quoted if they could produce it, the supercharger could conservatively raise the car from 174hp to ~260hp (300 lb-ft torque) thanks to a solid engine.  The physical supercharger is the same as any others, but the problem is that no one has been able to crack the Hitachi (I think) computer so the programming knows about a supercharger and doesn't compensate for it negatively.
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Re:Lies, I tell you.
Virtyally none of the diagnosic capabilities in modern cars are accessible via OBD-II.<BR><BR>Every manufacturer has proprietary networks built into the car of which OBD-II is a tiny emulation layer. Its designed for emissions testing and emissions related codes, nothing else.<BR><BR>You can't diagnose why your power locks aren't working with it, you can't diagnose why your HVAC controls aren't working. You can't read exhaust gas temperatures, or any other direct sensor outputs. You can't bleed ABS pumps with it, etc, etc, etc.<BR><BR>There are VERY few models you can get that sort of information about. Volkswagen/Audi group cars have some diagnostic software available, but virtually 100% of the information about what you can access and what sort of tests you can run have been reverse engineered, and is very incomplete. VAG also recently changed their protocols for newer cars to block those systems from working.<BR><BR>You may have watched mechanics sweat this stuff, but some of us sweat this stuff directly. This is coming from the direct experience of someone who both repairs cars and works for a internationally ranked professional racing team.
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Obvious Answer?
People are diliberately confusing 'codes' and 'code'.  Mechanics need the _codes_ that the computer spits out indicating what is wrong.  Nobody needs the _code_ for the computer software.<BR><BR>As for the whole complaint about the recent complexity of cars; it is government mandated and consumer demanded.  There are requirements for fuel efficiency and emissions.  A simple 4 stroke engine can only be so effecient and so clean.  To meet regulations, cars need to incorporate exhaust gas recirculation, variable cam timing, complex variable spark timing, catylitic converters, and a host of other complexities.  Consumers want climate control, adaptive suspension, 17 way power adjustable seats, power cupholders, remote buttons for everything, heated everything, and performance, but they expect their cars to have the simplicity of an air cooled VW?
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Change two words...
If you take this quote from the article:<BR><BR>"You don't want technology to destroy competitiveness," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who offered one of the bills. "There's no reason&nbsp;... you shouldn't be able to take your car to anyone you want rather than there being only one option."<BR><BR>and change two words, you get:<BR><BR>"You don't want technology to destroy competitiveness," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who offered one of the bills. "There's no reason&nbsp;... you shouldn't be able to take your music to any player you want rather than there being only one option."<BR><BR>I wonder how Sen. Graham voted on some other issue?<BR>
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These codes aren't secret...
I used to work for Sun Electric (now Snap-On), designing engine and emission diagnostic analyzers.<BR><BR>The "secret" diagnostic codes are published.  The Chilton's repair guides for cars list the error codes for each car and manufacturer.  Also, the factory service manuals for those cars have the codes and their meanings listed.<BR><BR>I love Cadillacs, though, because you can press "OFF" and "WARMER" on the Climate Control panel and it will list the codes on the display there!  Then you can do the repairs at home yourself!<BR><BR>You can also go buy a $500.00 Snap-on ALDL analyzer (Assembly Line Diagnostic Link) and it will list the codes too.  The newer vehicles call this OBD-2 (Onboard Diagnostics, V2).<BR><BR>Finally, there is some software out there (Payware, IIRC) that will list the codes on a PC or laptop, but you need to build an RS-232 to ALDL level converter for it (or buy the software with the appropriate dongle).<BR>
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Too slow...
Heh - I was about to submit this story. I can add a link to the actual bill, though: <a HREF="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.2735:" TITLE="loc.gov">H.R. 2735</A> could be in order. Just a thought.
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This isn't that close to copy protections
You can't directly compare this to the DMCA because when you're talking about music, movies, and software, you're talking about 1's and 0's that can be copied over and over.  They're talking about codes to ensure fairness in repairing automobiles so the dealers don't steal all the business.  The reason congress is stepping in is because no one is going to put their 2004 Explorer on kazaa and share it.  They're not talking about opening up all the software.  This isn't about open source at all, it's about knowing what is wrong with the care based on the error code the computer spits out.
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Problem Solution existed in the 80's
...it was called Knight Rider.  Just have all the automakers create autos that can talk and tell you the diagnostic/problem information.  Take it a step further....sell advertising in the information.<BR><BR>"Michael, the left tire is running low and I've already told you 10 times.  Why do you ignore me Michael?  I let you into my hood on the first date.  Oh look Michael, a Discount Tire shop; that would hit he spot, plus the tire tech has a nice big wrench...can we stop?"<BR><BR>
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Check Engine light
Hmm Check Engine. OK.&nbsp;:opens hood: Yep, got an engine, Check!<BR><BR>Cant remember the comedian, but oh well. Seriously though, certain brands of cars(cough cough Ford) are known for having the check engine light come on when a sensor in the car is being pissy, maybe cause it was cold or your wheel was slipping, even if there is nothing wrong with your engine. Once it comes on, the only way to turn it off is to take it to a mechanic who will charge you 60$ to reset the light and tell you he doesnt see any problems. Or you can just disconnect the battery for minute, but you lose your radio station presets. I don't see why this is such a big deal though. Seems like its pretty easy to get a <a HREF="http://patriot.net/~bmcgin/scanner.html" TITLE="patriot.net">code reader</A> to diagnose problems with your car based on the codes, and be updated on service and recall bulletins. Interesting note at the bottom though: <i>Note: Currently, information is available for Model Years 1982 to 2002. 2003 Model Year information is scheduled to be released this winter. Unfortunately, information for Honda, Acura and BMW is not available to consumers through ALLDATA DIY by request of the manufacturers. </i>
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This great!
As someone who's part-way through the 100+ hour task of reverse engineering the computer in his '86 Mazda RX-7, I can say this truely is a great thing.<Br>
<br>
The are all kind of problems that are extremly difficult or impossible to diagnose and solve without the ability to REALLY talk to a car's computer.<br>
<Br>
I think most people don't realize just how much is coming under control of the car's computer these days.  It used to be the computer just controlled the injectors, then it was spark.  Now the computer might also control your ABS, traction control, regulator-less fuel system, electric power steering.  <b>In many modern cars (A 2000 Corvette would be an example) there isn't even a direct link between the throttle body and the gas pedal anymore.</b>  The gas pedal has a sensor and the TB has an actuator.<Br>
<br>
The government needs to junk ODBII and come up with a totally new approach.  They allowed too many manufacturer-specfic exceptions, and made it require too much special hardware.<br>
<Br>
<b>ODBII deliberately uses a nonstandard baud rate, to make it difficult to interface with a PC.</b>  The result of this is that an application (with cable) to read codes with your laptop will cost you $100+ instead of the $40 it should.<br>
It's damn frustrating to have to buy a $160 computer to tell you that you car needs a $5 set of spark plugs.  (It would have cost $70 just to get a shop to tell me the same thing).
<Br>
<br>
A new interface should be designed that is a standard serial port, and allows for VERY few "undocumented" codes.
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Value of the "secret data" is overrated
The usefulness of the proprietary data stream is overstated. I think it was in 94 that the first on-board diagnistic spec (OBD) appeared in mass production. Everyone was crying about it at the time. Amazingly, independent repair shops are still in business. Since then there have been refinements, but it basically defines a standard interface and subset data stream required on all production cars in the US. With an OBD capable scan tool and the proper manuals, any tech can diagnose any problem with any car. There might be a more robust data stream available to the dealer mechanic, but the true value of that extra data is trivial IMO.<BR><BR>I left a 10 year career in auto repair (part of that post-OBD), where my specialty was driveability and electrical. The truly skilled technicians understand the system and don't necessarily depend on a particular tool to get their work done. An old-style analog oscilloscope is more valuable to a tech than any proprietary scan tool. The challenge is the diminishing number of techs that would know what to do with one.
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WTF!?!?
What are they talking about!?!?<p>I'm a gear head.  I know lots of geeks who are gear heads.  I, however, have never encountered a problem due to inability to access 'calibration codes'.<p>I know that you can hook your laptop up to your OBDI/II based vehicle.  What can ya do?<br>
-monitor telemetry in real time<br>
-read error codes stored in computer [terse format]<br>
-reprogram the computer[really the data on which decisions are made, not the heuristics themselves]*</p> <p>*You can't change stuff on earlier computers! Must be that we don't have the 'calibration code' to make a PROM into an EEPROM?!</p>
<p>Seriously though! What you need to 'know' to  fix a car is:<li>Interface specification</li> <li>Table of error/condition codes and triggering  parameters.</li> <li>Wiring diagrams, mechanical diagrams, parts lists, etc.</li> <li>how modern cars work</li> </p> <p>From what I understand,  the Interfaces are standardized [think ISO,IEEE, not RFC].   The error codes, and at least short descriptions, are available.  The diagrams, etc. are available via repair manuals/KB Systems.  I know that at least some  manufacturers publish/authorize official such products.  As  for knowledge, can't legislate that:)</p> <p>What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?</p>And what are 'calibration codes'?
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Re:WTF!?!?
<i>What information is being withheld that makes non-dealer repair impossible?</i> <br>
<br>
The issue is that ODBII is a pathetic subset of the real information avaible.  In some cases it's useless (diagnosing climate controls, etc), in other cases it just a LOT less information than the dealer-specfic compter would provide.<br>
<br>
Obviously not having it doesn't make non-dealer repair impossible, but it does make it a lot harder.  <b>If you knew nothing about cars you could just replace parts until you find the right thing but it this the right way to do it?</b> <br>
<br>
The point here is that independent shops are being put at a severe disadvantage by being provided only a minimal subset of the availible data.
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Re:It's more than just the engine
<P>I had a problem with my '99 cavalier; the engine would drop it's RPMs by several hundred every once in a while; almost, but not quite, enough to stall.</P>

<P>Took it in to the dealer, they said 'is the check engine light on?'</P>

<P>'Nope,' I replied, 'but here's what it's doing...'</P>

<P>'Sorry,' came the reply.  'If the check light's not on, there's no diagnostic codes for us to look up.  We can't fix it unless we know what's wrong.'</P>
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Did history teach us nothing?
This should be more obvious what is going on here..  There is no stronger lobby (maybe tobacco) than the American tradition of the automobile, if Congress passes anything it will be with their approval.   These are the same people that passed DMCA &amp; Patriot, don't be fooled into thinking they are EVER going to do anything that large, rich corporations wouldn't approve of.
<BR> <BR>
<B>US Airline industry </B>
<LI>failing miserably&nbsp;.. <LI>terrorists&nbsp;.. <LI>Congress bails out whole industry&nbsp;.. <LI>Industry still hasn't fixed business model
<BR>
<BR>
<B>MPAA / RIAA </B>
<LI>financially in trouble&nbsp;.. <LI>blame pirates, hackers, p2p.. <LI>Lawmakers pass all sorts of laws, Judges pass all sorts of sentences.. <LI>Industry still hasn't fixed business model
<BR>
<BR>
<B>US Automakers</B>
<LI>future seems uncertain&nbsp;... floating 0% financing schemes
<LI>blame the forced opening of proprietary interfaces, blame car-computer hackers
<LI>Congress soon to bail out troubling industry ?? (or at least the retirement funds)??
<LI>Industry still hasn't fixed business model
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Amen!
I agree!  It used to be that the average mom &amp; pop or even home enthusiast could purchase the "decoding" machines or the books that translated the engine light codes.  Those days ended around 1992, I believe.

As a car enthusiast and do-it-yourselfer, it's irritating as hell to have to pay an exorbitant fee to some dealer just to tell me what the computer THINKS is wrong with my car.

9 times out of 10, it's just some sensor somewhere that is malfunctioning and needs replacing.  Usually, if the sensor weren't there, the car would run fine, too.  I'll take my good-old v8 any day over cars with 50 million sensors that go bad.
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shade tree mech
This is good news for those of us who like to tinker with our cars, too.  A while back I looked into available OSS interfaces to various models.  It was a moot search.  You ought to be able to plug your friggin' car into the serial port of your laptop and run diagnostics on emissions, compression, etc., as a matter of course.<br> <br>
It should also be noted that legislation addressing this issue was originally championed by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of MN.<br> <br>
It should also remind us how close we are to similarly prescribed access to the internals of a general purpose computer.  Wouldn't some interests like to see a *No user serviceable parts inside. Opening case voids any warranties or EULAs associated with this machine.* sticker on your next box.<br>
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Re:Very cool, but..
Well in all fairness, the US does have 2 autonomous robots exploring the surface of another planet.  Though I agree a Trumpet playing robot would make a cooler party gimmick
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Re:Very cool, but..
AFAIK, they are semi-autonomous in that they can navigate over and around obstacles from point A to point B without being explicitly told to do so.
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Re:Very cool, but..
That kind of culture explains why Toyota was first to market with a profitable hybrid car, and why they're so far ahead that Ford's licensing hybrid technology from them.<BR><BR>Here's the missing link that doesn't get publicized: automakers are ahead of the curve on robots because they use robotics extensively in assembly.  The more accurately their robots move, the more accurately they assemble cars.  Next time you wonder why Japanese cars have a reputation for being so well-built, think of projects like these.
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Re:Very cool, but..
Here's another one: IBM. Big Blue has been behind so much of the scientific grunt work, a great deal of which has consisted of conceiving of and building experimental scientific <a HREF="http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blstm.htm" TITLE="about.com">equipment</A>.
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Re:Very cool, but..
<I>"Come on, could you see Ford or GM doing this?"</I> <P>
I can see GM doing a robotic nose flute or kazoo.
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Re:Very cool, but..
Something to consider about Japan and their rise in technology, is that since the end of WWII, they haven't had a military to take up financing, (or resources, or R&amp;D, etc..) thus leaving the government, and the culture as a whole, to focus on something else...like business and technology.
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Re:Very cool, but..
| Japan and their rise in technology, is that<BR>| since the end of WWII, they haven't had a<BR>| military to take up financing, (or resources, or<BR>| R&amp;D, etc..)<BR><BR>True, but the huge amount that the US spends on Military is largely by choice.<BR><BR>Is it really necessary to have sufficient armaments to destroy the planet seven times over? Is it really necessary to have sufficient firepower to independantly forcibly take over any other country/contitent on the planet?<BR><BR>And are these things more important than education, health care etc etc.<BR><BR>Every country sets its own agenda. The US wants to be the untouchable goliath of military power. If the US wanted to be the world leader in non-military research and development, they could be.<BR><BR>
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Re:Very cool, but..
<i>Every country sets its own agenda. The US wants to be the untouchable goliath of military power. If the US wanted to be the world leader in non-military research and development, they could be.</i><BR><BR>Very, very true.  But, it just wouldn't be <i>The American Way</i> if we didn't have the ability to police the world.  However, if you pay close attention to the history of how the US became involved in various wars,[read: WWI, WWII] you'll see we re-acted to outside influences.  Had those not come along, the US may never have invested so heavily in a war machine.  (Just my $0.02.)
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Re:Very cool, but..
And they had an advantage that Europe also got after WW2: Their manufacturing infrastructure was completely destroyed, so they had a chance to start from scratch with cutting-edge (at the time_) technology throughout the entire process. The US was (and is) still trying to maintain their much older and less capable facilities, since that was still less expensive than starting over and there was no carpet-bombing to force them into it.
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Re:Very cool, but..
<I>It pisses me off that no American company today would ever do something like this.</I><BR><BR>That is because Wall Street is so concerned with short-term profits.  Gasoline is at an all-time high while Toyota/Honda are the only companies that had the patience to develop a <a HREF="http://www.ljworld.com/section/toplikar/story/164342" TITLE="ljworld.com">profitable solution</A>.<BR><BR>Now, Ford isn't buying Toyota technology because it makes environmental sense.  Rather, they are doing it because it makes sense for short-term profits - the same mindset that got them into this situation in the first place.  This mentality will catch up to the US sooner or later.  And where is solar energy?
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Re:Very cool, but..
Ford and GM don't have to innovate because the prices of Japanese cars are artifically high in the U.S. due to taxes on imports designed to "level the playing field."<BR><BR>We don't need to have all these tariffs on products imported from countries that have the same standard of living that we do.  The Japanese work hard, yes, but they are paid first world salaries so if the prices of their automobiles is low, it is because they are damn good at building cars and if they want to work a little harder than us to do it, more power to them.<BR><BR>On the other hand cars imported from Mexico (like the VW I drive) are produced at the expense of some Mexican making 70 cents an hour.  We can't have free trade in this scenerio or we'll all be living in cardboard lean-tos just like our counterparts south of the border.
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Re:Very cool, but..
<BLOCKQUOTE> <i>Come on, could you see Ford or GM doing this?</i> </BLOCKQUOTE>

<p>Sure, if you wanted the robot to play a half-tone flat for half an hour and then fall on its face...</p>

Ben
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Re:Look at IBM
IBM is a US company, who has invested billions into technology that is not in use.  They were the 1rst company to arrange individual atoms (spelling IBM).  They made a processor that uses atoms as transistors.  They don't use any of it in production, but probably will some day.  I think that you underestimate many US companies with your statement.
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Re:Very cool, but..
It sounds as if it may be cool, but I wonder if these robotic lips are really as advanced as the article suggests, or if instead some kind of shortcut was taken. I was a music major and I played a brass instrument (french horn). Brass instruments do not have a reed or any other artificial source of vibrations. Instead, the performer's own lips are the source of the vibrations. The performer essentially generates a highly-controlled "raspberry" by constricting the muscles that surround the mouth and buzzing the lips while pressed against the mouthpiece (so the sound of a brass instrument is really just an amplified raspberry, artfully done). This is hard enough to do by itself, but it's made even harder by the fact that brass instruments embody the open harmonic series, which means that the peformer can play many notes without changing the valve settings just by adjusting the tension in the mouth (think of a bugle). One of the things that makes a brass player competent is the ability to hit the correct harmonic without cracking the note (also known as a "clam"). It's very hard to get it right consistently. If this robot is really doing all of this, plus pressing the valves, plus articulating the correct attacks and rhythm, and doing all of it well enough to play "Trumpeter's Holiday," I'm impressed!<BR>
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Lots of them are...
...it's called R&amp;D.  What won't make money today, will be "necessity" tomorrow, and then that's when you get people to pay.<BR><BR>Furthermore, even if the technology itself doesn't automatically pan out (ie, humanoid robots), it may still have profitable applications in other areas (ie, prosthetics).
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Re:Lots of them are...
"it may still have profitable applications in other areas (ie, prosthetics)."<BR><BR>YES! At last I will be able to get new artificial lips and be able to play the trumpet again!<BR>--
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Alternative Article
<a HREF="http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm" TITLE="iafrica.com">http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/309033.htm</A> <br>
<br>
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Re:Alternative Article
"Artificial lips as subtle as human lips
<br>
The 35kg as yet unnamed robot has artificial lips which can alter their position as subtly as human lips as air is forced through them, enabling it to play a trumpet as it presses the stops with its hands."
<br> <br>

Am I the only one wondering...
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Boring ... ZZZzzzzzz.....
When are the goddamn SexBots going to be released?!  My lifeless real doll ain't cutting it!
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Google it baby...
Here you go <a HREF="http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&amp;oi=news&amp;start=0&amp;num=1&amp;q=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/technology/15robotic.html" TITLE="google.com">link</A><BR><BR>
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One answer.
"How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?" <br> <br>

The kind that is already doing very well financially and wants to solidify a reputation of innovation. Similar to Microsoft's $1 billion donation to Africa.
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A heckler from the 18th Century
Presenters of the music-playing machine found themselves being unmercifully heckled by a man calling himself Mssr. Jacques de Vaucanson, who proclaimed loudly that he had accomplished robotic music more than two hundred years prior to this demonstration.<BR><BR>When the presenters pointed out that Mssr. Vaucanson would have to be long dead as of this late date, the suddenly horrified heckler collapsed into a pile of dust, and the remainder of the presentation was conducted without further interruption.
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Re:A heckler from the 18th Century
seriously MOD PARENT UP!, that guy made a <a HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Vaucanson" TITLE="wikipedia.org">flute playing "automaton" </A>that had about 12 songs back in 1737
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Reg-Free Link
<a HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/technology/15robotic.html?ex=1079931600&amp;en=286d864283f19a15&amp;ei=5062&amp;partner=GOOGLE" TITLE="nytimes.com">Registration free link</A><BR><BR>I wish article authors would at least put up some effort to find and use reg-free links when possible.
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Long-term investing
<i>How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?"</i> <p>
How about most drug companies.
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Re:Long-term investing
But of course if a drug company spends 7 years developing a drug and starts trying to recoup some of that cost over the next few years everyone will forget the R&amp;D and point out how the drug costs nothing to make and so the company is ripping everyone off. When I worked at a pharmaceutical company there were cases when it took so long to develop a drug that it wasn't worth bringing it to market because the patent would almost have expired by time it was ready for release. (The patent needs to be filed right at the beginning of the testing process.)
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Re:Long-term investing
The cost of advertising of a newly approved drug is a VERY SMALL drop in the bucket compared to the cost to develop and push a drug through clinical trials and all the red tape the FDA has constructed.<BR><BR>Your typical drug, say Viagria, starts as a base compund. Normally there are over 100,000 or more base compounds that are tested and researched before even one compound is found that would be useful to market (and this is before the inital FDA filing, AKA Pre-EDC). Once the compound is registered with the FDA and goes under intensive developemnt there is much more money spent.<BR><BR>On average development costs for a single drug can esclate into billions of dollars. Of course, if successful, a single good drug can bring enough profit to keep a drug company operating for years before the patent protection goes away.<BR><BR>The reason drugs outside of the US are much cheaper is mainly thanks to the FDA. The FDA has massive amounts of regulations even after the drug is approved that regulate how a drug is manufactured and handled. These regulations even dictate how the drug company manages and runs its production computer networks and client systems. This of course adds A LOT of overhead when making a drug.<BR><BR>Drugs coming from non FDA regulated sites (this is the kinda stuff you buy super cheap on the net) are much cheaper however knowing what the FDA regulations are and why they are there I feel much safer paying more money for an FDA approved drug which I know will be safe as opposed to a drug made at a non-FDA regulated site which may not meet the standards of saftey we have here in the states.
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Our end is near...
...dear god, think of the possibilities.  A robot with the ability to play a trumpet constantly...endlessly.  The annoyance will be legendary.
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Re:Our end is near...
<blockquote> <i>The annoyance will be legendary.</i> </blockquote>
<p>
I hear the bagpipe playing robot is still in development.
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Hmmm, flexible humanoid lips?
I for one can see several applications that might directly appeal to this crowd.<BR><BR>
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Do it like Fark
Good News! Toyota announces a robot that can play the trumpet!<BR><BR>Still working on the cure for the common cold, world peace, and an end to poverty.<BR><BR>
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sound clips?
I am a trumpet player and I really want to hear this thing!<BR><BR>Imagine if typing was so challenging that you spent 90% of your computer time refining and keeping your typing skills adequate, so you could spend 10% of the time programming...<BR><BR>Anyone have any sound clips?
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I for one......
Welcome our new, jazzier, robot overlords....<BR><BR>(sorry someone had to)
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It would...
It would behoove many companies to invest more in R&amp;D and less in padding executives pocketbooks with $100's.  HP, for example, has gutted their engineering ranks while simultaneously buying jets for the higher-ups.  Closer to my region of the country, Caterpillar has outsourced waves of R&amp;D people...and their executives are getting ever-higher bonuses.
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which companies?
&gt; How many companies these days are willing to drop money into some technology that may not turn a profit for many years?"<BR><BR>Aerospace, for one. Working at one of the companies that makes commercial (and military) aircraft engines, it is jokingly quoted that: "A decision to launch a new engine program is a calculated risk to go into the hole for about 20 years" (Meaning it takes about that long to "turn profit" off all the years of design, development, testing, and certication processes.) Imagine how many times the market flops around responding to other market pressures in that length of time.<BR><BR>As an interesting aside for many of you, aircraft engines have historically been sold on the razor/blades business model, so its an interesting business balance between a quality engine that airline customers will buy and the need to sell spares to eventually make money on FAR down the road.<BR>
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Imagine the future uses of this robot...
"This one time, at band camp... I got a BJ from a trumpet playing robot!"<BR><BR>sorry...
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Re:Why automotive companies?
Don't you know? In Japan all cars transform into <b>fighting robots!</b> Being able to pilot a fighting robot is required of <b>everyone</b> who gets a drivers licence. My friend Mark once saw this giant moth just think about attacking his town and Fighting Robots <b>chopped it head off</b> just like that! I mean, with the restrictions on their official military, it's either that or have you country taken over <b>giant monsters</b>. It's an easy choice in my opinion.<BR>
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US Army Needs This Robot
As I recall, the US Army was suffering from a shortage of bugle players to play taps for the passing generation of soldiers.  They developed a <a HREF="http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Oct/gee20021028016989.htm" TITLE="geek.com">digital bugle</A> that can play taps even if the bugler is incompetent, drunk, or both.<BR><BR>Since Toyota has now developed a vastly more complicated technology that can be used to solve the same problem as the slightly complicated one above, I look forward to future Pentagon procurement hearings.<BR><BR>Note to self: Sarcasm in this post often results in massive retribution.<BR>
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