Looks like interesting times if it is confirmed..
Monthly Archives: October 2006
Microsoft Promised to Guarantee BayStars Investment in SCO ?
The thlot pickens! Groklaw has “IBM’s Memo in Support of its Motion for SJ on SCO’s Interference Claims” (SJ is summary judgement I believe) and has the interesting quote from Lawrence Goldfarb, a BayStar Capital’s managing partner, about what happened when BayStar invested in SCO after Microsoft introduced them:
“Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”
Apparently Mr Emerson was Microsoft’s “senior VP of corporate development and strategy“, but when BayStar invested things changed:
“Microsoft stopped returning my phone calls and emails, and to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Emerson was fired from Microsoft.”
Richard P. Emerson is on the MSFT’s 2002 list of directors, but is absent from the 2003 list..
SpamHaus Lawsuit (Updated)
There’s been a lot written about a spammer listed by SpamHaus sueing them in the US, but this lawyers account is worth a read. Basically it looks like SpamHaus made a legal mistake in the way they dealt with the US court:
3. That said, Spamhaus had a likely winner of an argument if they’d made it from the beginning: the U.S. court does not properly have jurisdiction over the U.K.-based company. […] it would have been possible for an attorney to make what is known as a “special appearance†before the court without acknowledging the court’s jurisdiction in the case. Reading the record, I’m puzzled that this wasn’t the strategy Spamhaus’s counsel chose.
4. Unfortunately, since that’s not what happened, Spamhaus may have waived personal jurisdiction as a defense early on in the case when they not only appeared, but then asked for the case to be removed from state court (where it was originally filed) and moved to federal district court (where it is today).
Most importantly, he says:
9. Finally, one last point: anyone who has a chance to talk publicly about this, if you are a friend to Spamhaus I would strongly urge you to refrain from making derogatory statements about the judge or the legal system in the U.S. Talk all you want about the evidence that you believe demonstrates e360 is a spammer. Talk about how important Spamhaus is to the functioning of email. But calling the judge stupid doesn’t help the case. Given the record, the judge had little choice other than to do what he did. So far as I can tell, Spamhaus presented no argument that would let him get out of this case, even withdrawing the answer that had been filed from the proceedings.
Anyway, he says a lot more than that so please go and read.
Update: The spammer who is suing SpamHaus is now being sued themselves in California on 87 counts of spamming.
MRO Images Opportunity Rover
This is an excellent demonstration of the power of the MRO’s HiRISE camera, it has managed to return a beautiful full colour image of Victoria Crater and capture a view of the Opportunity rover from orbit.
Click on the thumbnail below to see the sub-image of the rover:
Prescient Spam Subject
Someone tried to spam me with the subject “bearded civilize“. How did they know ? Us bearded people are the only true way to civilisation!
LUV (Melbourne Chapter) October General Meeting: Intel Architecture and Hacked Slugs
Paraphrased from the original.
Start: Oct 3 2006 – 19:00
End: Oct 3 2006 – 21:00
Location: The Buzzard Lecture Theatre. Evan Burge Building. Trinity College Main Campus. The University of Melbourne. Parkville. Melways Map: 2B C5.
Intel’s Core Architecture by David Jones
David Jones is a Solutions Specialist with Intel Australia specialising in Server Architecture, working directly with end users such as Westpac Bank, Ludwig Cancer Research, VPAC and others advising on latest technologies available from Intel. David has been with Intel for 10 years and in IT for 20 years, coming from a UNIX background. Today David will introduce Intel’s latest Architecture (Core Architecture) and explain the differences between Hyperthreading and Dual Core technologies.
Hacked slugs, solving all your problems with little NAS boxes by Michael Still
This talk will discuss how to get your own version of Linux running on a Linksys NSLU2, known to the Linux community as a slug. This is a consumer grade network attached storage (NAS) system. These devices are quite inexpensive, are physically small, and run on low voltage DC power. I also discuss how to handle having your firmware flash go bad, and provide some thoughts on projects made possible by these devices. The presentation will also include extra demonstrations of the process of flashing and setting up one of these devices.
Ed: as usual there will be a pre-meeting curry at 6pm
Default ATM Passwords
Dear gods, it’s the 80’s all over again, only this time with ATM’s..
In the operator manual freely available on the Web site of a Canadian reseller, a section titled “Programming” provides the specific key sequence that will pop up a screen on the ATM that asks for the master password. It then lists three default passwords – master, service and operator – that could be used to hijack and possibly rig a machine. (emphasis added)
Lets try this again – default passwords are bad, OK ? Sheesh…
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE Camera Returns First Low-Level Image
Yay! After months of waiting NASA’s MRO has reached its science orbit and taken its first snap with its HiRISE camera. NASA has a press release with a link to the gallery page of the image which has a scale of about 1 foot per pixel. They also have an 8MB TIFF “sub-image” available for download from the MRO’s calibration gallery.
But for the very latest you’ve got to check out the HiRISE team blog where they already have the fact that the second image is down, of layered deposits at the Martian North Pole.
Below is the first image!
Update: the page with the full image from which the above sub-image was taken is also available, but be warned, the full size JPEG is 23444 x 23377 pixels and ways in at a hefty 111.8 MBytes!