Capitalist Pissing Contest, Round 1

alternateorg on April 18, 2000

According to this article at wired, It seems that Bill Gates is a mere 4.6 Billion Dollars richer than Larry Ellison from Oracle… though 4.6 Billion seems like alot consider the fact that Bill lost 30 Billion this week alone and that Larry made 8 Billion in one 24 hour period yesterday. With the stockmarket as nervous as it is now and the DOJ closing in on MS … I am starting to think we will be hearing more (BS) from Larry as he becomes the high supreme lord of capitalism. Here is some juice on Larry and his wonderfull attitude, quoted from that story:

“His attitude is, ‘I’ll do what I want to do, and I don’t give a s**t about you. I can buy anything and do anything — I can s**t on the floor and hire someone to clean it up.'”

[ imitating the church lady from SNL ] … Well, isn’t that special!

Discuss this in our Forum!

Now where did I leave those highly-classified US government secrets?

alternateorg on April 18, 2000

DOH! The FBI just realized that they are missing a laptop that happened to be chock full of “highly classified information.” What, you mean they didn’t have somebody walking around with it handcuffed to them? Like in “Spies Like Us?” Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about 128-bit encryption and start buying those tags they have at department stores that set off an alarm and spray ink on you.

Bad ass new web format

alternateorg on April 18, 2000

Adobe is pushing a new XML-based web graphics format (sponsored by the W3C) called SVG, or “Scalable Vector Graphics.” They claim that it can offer PDF-quality printability, as well as color management, server-independent image mapping, and improved quality, interactivity, and database connectivity all around. Basically, the idea is that the browser actually creates 2-D vector graphics on the fly based on plain text instruction. It also works with CSS for positioning and other visual elements. There is a nice article about it on WebMonkey as well.

Check out Adobe’s commitment to the new format…their beta development tool already has support for both major browsers on Mac and PC. Definitely worth keeping an eye on…

invest-in-a-real-company.com

alternateorg on April 18, 2000

Holy IPO Batman! Apparently people are starting to give some thought to things like “value” and “earnings” when deciding on a dot-com to invest in. Amazing what a little 1500 point drop in the NASDAQ will do…

Just because you're paranoid…

alternateorg on April 17, 2000

WTF? Has Metallica finally turned into the pussies we knew they would become? A band that was sued in the 80’s over a teen suicide because of one of their emotional songs, Metallica is suing Napster because they “encouraged users of Napster software to trade copyrighted material without the bandÂ’s permission. ” Whatever. They’re bitching about their “art” being traded like a commodity rather than the “art that it is.” Maybe if they spent more time on their music and less time in the courthouse, they might make a decent record.

AOL SUCKS, PERIOD.

alternateorg on April 15, 2000

AOL is so big now that today someone who works there (only because AOL bought Nullsoft [the makers of winamp]) got “caught” working on his “unauthorized” side project at work and AOL had to pull the file and make the apologetic press releases… LAF.

Take a look:


“The Gnutella software was an unauthorized freelance project and the Web site that allowed access to the software has been taken down,” said Josh Felser, general manager for AOL’s Spinner and Winamp projects.

The Gnutella authors said they could not comment further.

Anyone interested in the incredible software they managed to hack out can find out more right here.

Engineers are smart…

alternateorg on April 14, 2000

Aparently the crack programming staff at Microsoft embedded some “renegade” code into an unnamed 3-year-old server software that allows you access to the admin stuff on the server. Their “we didn’t do it on purpose” defense went out the window when a comment was found in the midst of the rebel code that reads, “Netscape engineers are weenies!”

No, I’m not making this up.

[updated by trk]

… in some software [the passphrase] could be used to
gain illicit access to hundreds of thousands of Internet sites worldwide,
according to reports.

It goes on to say that it works through FrontPage Extensions!

YeeeHaw… what a bunch of name calling children.

Hackers are STILL alive and well.

alternateorg on April 12, 2000

You may have noticed our site was down for about a week… This down time has been due to a hacker trying to use our server as his own private home. After ehancing our unix security skills and procedures in a couple days we slowly managed to lock this individual out. At least we thought we did… This goes as a warning to anyone with stuff on a server… BE CAREFULL AND BACK UP YOUR DATA ALL THE TIME!!!!