http://pennsun.essc.psu.edu/satan/sata n_doc/

http://urth.acsu.buffalo.edu/security/

Soon there's gonna be a super corporation ruling the world, and everything will be too late.

I see fusions everywhere.. but hopefully the absolute need of quality will return.

Big corporations makes richer less and less people, and the caveat between the rich and the poor is only going worse.

Big corporations also mean less and less innovation, less creativity. Bad. Very, very bad.

Can someone explain to me why stuff like this shouldn't be clear evidence to the FCC or trust-busters that there's a problem with this merger? This is the kind of behavior that should trigger an immediate response.

What's the point if it doesn't?

Source code for GPL'd programs is most certainly available to "people who don't want to make their source code available" -- they are included in "everyone". Name me one person on earth to whom the GNU Emacs source code is not available. Bill Gates doesn't want to make his source code available. Yet, the GNU Emacs source is still available to him. So name one person.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

Since when does a company advocating openness only when they stand to gain == antitrust violations.

AOL itself said that the lack of openness was an anti-trust issue. It is ALWAYS fair to apply a person's arguments to their own behaviour. The real test is to see if Time-Warner customers can request a new ISP now or if they remain stuck with what they've got. Perhaps AOL's aquisition of TW should be made contingent on opening access.

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slashdot: I miss my free time, Rob.

Do unto others what has been done to you

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Poor Nazi GRITS petrified by Jesus!
Hot naked Natalie Portman down my pants!

So, basically, what you are saying, is that a DSL provider can oversubscribe thier DSL connection easily, but a cable modem provider is very different because a cable provider can also oversubscribe thier connections. Therefore, you claim that cable modems are better.

Umm...

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-Everything has a cause
-Nothing can cause itself
-You cannot have an infinite string of causes
Therefore, the universe doesn't exist

The Institute of Official Cheer

And the same would hold true for VA, RedHat, and soon Caldera, LinuxCare, and any other public open-source companies. Once a company goes public, their rules have to change. Just because their mission may be something that *you* happen agree with, it doesn't mean they're not crapping on someone's plate in order to maximize profits.

Where I live (Sprint, Time-Warner) they're fiercely competing to let the other one stick its neck out on this first. Maybe once they see the cable company gettting that extra $20 per subscriber each month, they'll finally get around to letting those of us using local ISP's to get DSL. On second thought, they'll probably tie it to using them as my ISP, put all the locals out of business, and then jack up the rates.

Honest, officer, my sig file was *right* here, really!

1) Internet time. The regulators and government are moving too slow (to make open access), and hence AOL had to buy their cable access.
2) The Portland open access case is in the courts. We all know how long this is going to take to be resolved.
3) The FCC is involved. The commissioners are not appointed for life, and a lot of politics is involved in their selection. Kennard has been lukewarm to open access. Congress has been beating down on the FCC. Conclusion: don't build your business plan on the actions of the FCC. Cover all your options. For AOL, they have cable access, and if open access is mandated, AOL also wins.
4) Virginia and Maryland, while close to AOL headquarters, have only local interest as far as AOL is concerned. While the old saying is that all politics is local, the internet is not.
5) AOL decided that fighting for open access is too unpredictable.
6) Time Warner does not want open access. Why? I don't know, but there maya reason.
7) Another acquisition is in the works (e.g., another cable company).
8) It is late, I'm going to bed. Do you know where you cookies are?

I'm just grateful they have decided not to go with Netscape 2001...

I didn't know MS Word went down the tubes so many years ago. I thought it was just a recent thing...

The Institute of Official Cheer

They're going to WHAT?

Okay, so Netscrape 4.7 is a horrendous creeping horror. Why? Six years of crappy hacks, rushed half-ass W3C standard implementations, and instability. It didn't take mozilla long to realize that continuing to sink resources into the beast was much less humane than simple euthanasia. So the project, which has something like autonomy, decides to pretty much start from scratch. Smart move for the browser, but AOL is left with a twelve-month road plan before expecting even beta-quality code.

AOL now is losing ever more ground to IE. It can't get its name in front of enough of the new Internet eyeballs, so it decides to farm out the old tired beast to providers and even allows them to give it a new skin. If they're going to produce by spring, the "new" product will basically be Netscape 4.71 with AIM and ICQ integrated (gee, big improvement to the browsing experience there, guys). AOL is going to screw over customers with this code, but we expect no less of them.

HOWEVER, the threat here is to mozilla. How does AOL justify mozilla's development now? This developing a "Netscape 6.0" sounds like nothing else than an admission that mozilla is a failure. (Which it's not, of course, but from their perspective, they may just want to abandon it.) Why would they fund two development efforts? I sure hope it won't happen, but the lizard might get a salt bath real soon... :(

Anybody have a more positive take on this?
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."

But, has anyone picked up any gossip on how this is likely to effect the overall security of the final product?

ICQ is just as famous as Java/Javascript for it's security holes/lack of privacy control ( which is the main reason why I avoid ICQ ).

It seems to me that this is more of the same kind of "seamless integration" that has Micro$oft internet products ( browser, email, etc ) an open invitation to the script kiddies to tap dance on your hard drive.

Even without specific details, the added bloat will inevitably add plenty of possibilities for buffer overflow exploits for anyone with a decent dis-assembler and basic assembler knowledge.

Has anyone picked up any gossip on the matter?

I'm only saying this because I've got my nose buried in 19th century history, but I still feel it's a valid point: AOL is acting exactly like the white settlers in the Wild West, circa 1850's and such. How, you ask? Well, AOL is doing exactly what the white settlers did to the Indians: they had a conflict, they made like they were going to do The Right Thing(tm), then they just dropped everything for a better opportunity.

For white settlers this meant ignoring all treaties with the Indians and just taking their land anyway. For AOL, this meant ignoring their campaign for open access and just bought a cable company instead.

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

There's got to be some historical reason why the mediocre always come out on top, but I just can't think of it...

To understand this, you have to ask "What was AOL's goal?". The answer is "To get themselves cable internet.". So, why the heck would they push for some "Open Standard" when it could turn around and bite them later on down the road? Better just to own the cable company outright.

There's got to be some historical reason why the mediocre always come out on top, but I just can't think of it...

Hmmm... I don't think that the "mediocre" ever come out "on top" by definition (unless you're holding a mediocrity contest).

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Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.

No, some of the rest of us have noticed as well.

In addition to that, there have been rather a lot of general screw ups lately - postings that I have made to a posting have wound up being attached to a completely different posting.

In other cases, attempting to post a reply means sitting and waiting a ridiculous long period of time so that the request times out ( even though the response time can be lightning quick when you try to post a response a couple of minutes later.

These kinds of problems may have a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I'm begining to suspect that Rob has a "rodent" problem that he will need to deal with, so it could be that everyone is busy trying to find the hole that the little dip-shits have been using.

:>>--

P.S.: Until now I alsways used to come in anonymoux coward mode, but if this kind of thing keeps up I will finally be forced to create an account, so that my tresholds are automatically set high enough to avoid wasting my time with this kinda of crap.

It's PPP over Ethernet (I think) or PPPoE. Search freshmeat for patches.

I would bet dollars to pesos it is so they can track usage, monitor for warez, and a host of wonderful other features.

Of course they could do that anyway with plain IP. Use ssh, pgp, or some vpn if you don't want them to keep track of the pr0n you download.

If my cable company spent $100 million laying cables in my state so that I can have 1.5 MBit for $40/month, why should we (cable company and I) get penalized and have Joe company who spent $0 laying cable and other infrastructure have access to our bandwith?

Oh, it only hurts that big conglomerate company. They don't deserve their "cable monopoly"

It hurts all of us. With open access there the incentive to provide high bandwidth solutions to your doorstep drop to near zero.

Instead of attacking those wonderful cable and phone companies for providing us cable modems and DSL, we should be thanking them for freeing us from the world of 56.6

-Snoot

Now that AOL owns such a large cable network, why should they advocate open access? After all, that would help their competitors now that *they're* on top.

Now, now! Didn't you read the article? AOL is still in favor of open access, they just feel the market can best make it happen. It's a complete coincidence that this happens a month after "they get theirs".

Seriously, I do believe that AOL will provide open access now. If you have a cable modem, you can choose from AOL version X or Roadrunner. Take your pick.

"We have both kinds of music here...Country _and_ Western." ---Blues Brothers