VeriSign, Segway, JPEGs, lava lamps

Letters No flame of the week, this week. But a glorious howitzer aimed in the direction of the .com monopoly kicks off this week's eclectic postbag:-

Re:
VeriSign lied in ICANN race caseEx-ICANN chief spotted in low earth orbit
ICANN director to see accounts

Andrew,

Am I alone in saying: "Fuck Verisign in ways only legal in Haiti"? These mind numbingly obtuse cocksuckers deserve individually celebrated polyp reamings with rusty howitzers.

Then, once they have been been suitable punished, we can move in to Esther Dyson.

Cheers,

Scott Paddock

And Freeman Dyson was British, as several readers have pointed out.

Now let's go back, way back in time - to the scooter/truck hybrid that time forgot. Drew Cullen's story Segway joins the Arms Racelinking the innocent toy to the military-industrial complex drew some these responses:-

From: "Jerry Mead"
Subject: BAE & Segway

"The ability to move quicker, travel farther and carry more is critical to military operations."

Of course!! Like, yomping up mountains after Osama. So *that's* why we missed him.

Only some very minor logistical problems to solve: "fifteen miles on a single charge" ... "it weighs 65 lbs, making it a real monster to drag home on an empty battery" ... "this application is total bollocks" [ this last is not a Reg quote].

Isn't anyone in BAE old enough to remember the C5 fiasco? Hang on, though ... didn't that go further and faster on a single charge ?

Come back Uncle Clive, you might still be able to get away with it.

Jerry

---

Actually, the connection between Segway and BAE is much closer than you might think – BAE makes the sensors that keep the thing upright. I think it they are the ones that normally go in the nosecones of guided missiles. So perhaps they could be programmed to take our boys direct to Osama…

Chris Partridge

Er, hang on. Let's get existentialist for a moment…

From: Jcaloudres@aol.com
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 20:56:47 EDT
Subject: (no subject)
To: andrew.orlowski@theregister.co.uk

what kind of newsmen are you fag

Honestly, Jcaloudres - I've no idea.

NTK's Danny O'Brien has the perfect reply to this kind of self-righteous request, which invariably asks "do you call this journalism?"

To which the only sensible answer is, "Er, no. This is much better!".

I'm so glad you all there at The Register have decided to follow these issues with Apple.

With the press being the user voice it does have more of an impact. Apple has a history of not listening to the customers when they know the results of their actions are at odds.

Another interesting tidbit is that every major developer always provides their registered users of the current product an upgrade pricing generally half the price of the retail cost.

Can you imagine if Adobe and Macromedia would have charged full price for their OS X ports of their main stream applications? I don't think there would be this much adoption of the OS had that been the case. Heck, even Microsoft knew better, albeit their pricing structure is still way excessive for an office productivity tool, but they still offered a half off deal to upgrade. Imagine that, Microsoft doing something right and even now they are reconsidering their pricing structure due to slow sales.

I always look forward to all your articles, because of your direct- no holds barred approach to reporting the truth. Something Fox News proclaims, yet you folks practice.

And even though Apple doesn't have the market share like the Redmond characters, they still behave as if they do.

Please don't give up on these issues, we need your voice.

Lani Shuck

Thanks, Lani.

Here's an unusual take on the mania the precedes Apple launches. Not many of you spotted a blatant reference to Lester Bangs' finest hour - the review of Tangerine Dream where he decided to get fucked-up on cough syrup.

(This we recommend for any journalist attending a storage launch)

I refer to your article on those naughty Mac fanboy sites publishing pictures of the next groundbreaking aesthetic statement from Apple.

I went to that page showing the dancing cough drops and managed to produce what my parents might call a "far-out" effect. Simply by scrolling back and forth one notch on my wheel mouse, the circles in the vent holes stayed where they were, while the vent holes moved. I don't know if it's a reproducible effect (my screen res is 1024x768 and the scroll is set to 3 lines), but my mind was certainly well and truly blown.

Whether this leads to me ever remotely considering buying a Mac remains to be seen.

Regards,

Ben Letham

So perhaps PCBs are the new Lava Lamps?

Except in Texas:-

Please don't say "Forgent Networks, a small Texan company" [No More JPEGs = ISO to withdraw image standard] in US The Register.

To say small Texan implies that the personnel are all Texans and not just people who happen to be located in Texas. A small difference yes, but to a native Texan very important.

Alan [Full name, spouse's name, cat's name supplied]

But we haven't only offended Texans. Equally inadvertently, this reader thinks we've offended the French too, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Subject: French break with 802.11 standard

Trust me, you Brits have more grudges/ prejudice against us Froggies and continental European at large than we have against you. The humorous tone
of your posting saves it all but it reflects the permeating anti-French stance in the UK.

Cheers.
Robert Montante

A French guy not suspicious of the English folks 'cept for their love for baked beans. BTW Orlowski sounds suspiciously not English. Oh well, Vuong is not very French ringing either.

Let's call the whole thing off.

Although why the French can't do the decent thing, like everybody else and become a huge American shopping mall (and occasional USAF landing strip), we really don't know.

Who wants 'em? Next shootin' war, they'll just get overrun by the Germans/Serbs/Turks/Andorrans again, and we're right back to using England as motionless aircraft carrier.

And they couldn't make a decent shopping mall --- not enough parking for my 9-foot-wide SUV (exCUSE ME! my 2.743200-meter-wide SUV...).

- Bigger Living Through Bigotry

[name supplied]

'See? Irony abounds in the US.

Now let's go out on the same theme as where we came in. Veteran gadfly Jim Fleming forwarded us this post he made to Dave Farber's "Interesting People" list in response to intergalactic traveller, and 80s icon Esther Dyson. But because most of the interesting people you or I know don't go near the "Interesting People" list, we're happy to reproduce it here:-

From: "Jim Fleming"
Subject: "The American at-large community..."

From: "Esther Dyson"<edyson@edventure.com>

"The American at-large community despises me but think I'm doing more good for At Large by working with ICANN than I would if I were out there simply criticizing them, not trying to improve them."

Could it be that you are just **using** ICANN to advertise "Esther Dyson", and your seminars ?

Do you really care anything about freedom and the Internet ?

Can you point to any inventions, software, intellectual property, etc. that you have produced?

What is the "good for At Large" that you think you are doing ?....or have done ?

What do you think ICANN will accomplish in the future ?...if anything...?

Are you aware of how much time, energy and money people and companies are spending to route around the I* society and to keep the freedom of the press available to people on planet Earth ?

Jim Fleming
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt

May we live in interesting times. And none so more interesting (thanks to Serge) where you can find a way to patent a way to ride on a swing.®