Old News

Ooh, you thought MS couldn't get worse?	June 7 2000, 10:41 am
I just saw a very interesting article over on Advogato. MS has stooped to new lows of patenting file formats. I didn't even think you could patent file formats. Would someone please boot the patent office in the head?
Posted by: Zuvembi

Transmeta's newest niftiest chip!	June 6 2000, 01:06 am
Head on over to this link to see the newest in Hardware/Software combinations. It slices, it dices, it julienne fries! It will wind the cat, spank the clock, and put of the baby!
Posted by: Zuvembi

NVidia driver developers interviewed	May 26 2000, 05:47 pm
In this audio interview over on PlanetGeforce Tony Tamasi talks about why NVidia can't/won't open-source their GL drivers in Question 7. The basic response comes down to two points 1. Their implementation is going to awesome, so why would you want it open source? According to them, you only want the driver to be open sourced if the company is going to do a crappy job on the drivers. How about if I don't trust you to keep supporting my card in a adequate manner? I'm sure you're drivers for your newest generation of card will be great (though we've seem very little evidence for this), but how about people with a slightly older card like the TNT2. Errrr. 2. They can't release the code because of intellectual property concerns. Evidently it's being co-developed with VA Linux & SGI. Oh yeah, VA & SGI are known for never releasing anything GPL... This doesn't even vaguely sound right. I have a feeling any balking is NVidia's side and they just don't want to admit it.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Judge vs Microsoft	May 24 2000, 02:27 pm
The Washington Post has an article talking about a possible 3 way breakup of Microsoft. It is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62187-2000May24.html , it is interesting for the linux world and the larger computer world. This is interesting to pay attention to.
Posted by: rbi

BYTE: Interesting article on HA clustering	May 24 2000, 10:53 am
Byte has an pretty good article about clustering, mostly with a focus on HA clustering. Most of the article is focused on Linux clustering, and yes they do talk about Beowulf (for a little bit).
Posted by: Zuvembi

Interesting article on Transmeta	May 16 2000, 08:18 pm
An interesting article over at IEEE Spectrum about the development of the Transmeta chips. One of the things they talk about is how different their experiences were for getting UNIX and Windows running on it. (From the article) "Looking back, Laird said a problem might have been expected with Windows95 applications. `Most of us came from a Unix background, we knew how Unix applications behaved. But we didn't really understand Windows95' he said. Apparently Windows95 still had a lot of old 16-bit code in it, whereas Unix (as well as Windows NT) used a flat memory model with pure 32-bit code. Supporting 16-bit code was something that Transmeta had decided to offload into software. Now if we could just get a hold of one here at the Unixbigots Ranchero...
Posted by: Zuvembi

Whinux	May 14 2000, 11:24 am
A fairly amusing comic was seen over at Overclocked.org. Though I think you could replace the word Linux with Windows and end up with about the same strip...
Posted by: Zuvembi

Oooohh! Here's a nasty email Trojan.	May 12 2000, 06:47 pm
Over on CNN I ran into a story about the KAK email trojan. This thing is quite a bit worse than ILOVEYOU. It does it's work just by looking at the message. It exploits a hole in the scriptlet.typelib in ActiveX to effect it's job of spreading. It works on any computer with IE5 or MS Office 2000. While it doesn't have any malicious code attached to it, I imagine it won't be long before someone adds an awful payload to it. How long will it be until Microsoft adds some security features to their mail clients? I would imagine on UNIX you could make a fairly safe client by judicious use of a chroot jail and maybe when you're executing, executing the program as nobody.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Another Copyright Bill to screw over musicians	May 10 2000, 10:16 am
Oh my Don Henley is pissed. Well it sounds like congress is preparing to pass an amendment to copyright law, this one is seriously bad mojo. The bill says that all musical works done by an artist signed to a label would be works for hire. This would mean an artists would not own any of their work. And it might even be able to be applied retroactively. It sounds like other than Don and a few others, most artists are clueless or complacent. Read about the article at Wall Of Sound. Another article about it can be found on Addicted To Noise. You can talk about it in the forums here.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Nicholas Petreley on the ILOVEYOU trojan.	May 9 2000, 02:07 pm
If you aren't already tired of the hearing about the ILOVEYOU trojan and the multitude of mutations that are out there, this is a good article by Nicholas Petreley. He does not engage in a unseemly amount of gloating or other badinage, instead it talks about why this happened on Windows, and and why it probably cannot happen on Linux. Personally I had about fifteen copies of this in my mailbox, including at least one from a person who should have known better. Fairly ugly, but other people on the Unixbigots staff had many, many more than I.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Red Hat sets up investment division	May 9 2000, 01:00 pm
Red Hat is setting up a division to invest in small open source companies. They've already invested in Sendmail and techies.com. Read about it here on yahoo.
Posted by: otto

More Metallica related hi-jinks	May 9 2000, 09:09 am
Well it looks like Metallica is formalizing what we have been thinking lately. Take a look at what they are selling here.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Wonder what happened to Takedown?	May 8 2000, 11:33 pm
You know, Takedown, the very controversial movie about Kevin Mitnick? Well, it opened in March in France, and only France, as Cybertr@que. If that's not strange enough, the page is (if my comprehention of French is not way off) very pro Mitnick. It even has a interview with him. Break out babble fish for this one, it's entirely in French.
Posted by: otto

Update: Metallica Delivers Users Names to Napster	May 2 2000, 01:41 pm
Metallica has given Napster a list of names of Napster users to be blocked for distributing their music. While I agree with this approach much more than litigation, I just wonder how this will effect Metallica's fan base. In the past, bands who fight against their fans have a habit to end up in cut out bins. No comment from Napster, yet. Let's just hope that if Napster complies with Metallica that this whole thing will be dropped for good.
Posted by: otto

Opinion: Metallica (Easy listening band, or just corporate whores?)	May 1 2000, 06:09 pm
Otto has written up some of her feellings about Metallica. This is about Metallica's legal maneuvering against Napster Take a look at it here.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Feature: The Text Based Internet	May 1 2000, 06:04 pm
Otto has written up an article series on using the internet without graphics. For those of you who didn't grow up teething on Lynx, it could be very useful. It also has some information about the obtaining of and use of free unix shells. Take a look at it here.
Posted by: Zuvembi

Microsoft Uses Unix For Virus Protection	April 28 2000, 02:57 pm
Read all about it on Microsoft's site. I got it right this time... yeah... need an "edit" feature.
Posted by: captious

Limp Bizkit Rocks	April 25 2000, 04:41 pm
The band Limp Bizkit not only announced it's support for Napster today, but is going on a FREE tour sponsered by Napster. You can read the story here.
Posted by: otto