Forbes.com reports that Microsoft’s Chief
Executive Steve Ballmer said on Friday the future of the Internet was in
making the Net’s various websites, services and hardware devices work
seamlessly together.

Trade-show keynote speeches are a sure soapbox for vendors to
dis their competitors. But not since the days of OS/2 versus
Windows have barbs been flying as they have recently in the
database space. From
ZDCOUK.

Wired.com reports that heady topics will swirl at this weekend’s Camden Technology Conference. How heady? “The definition of what it means to be human is going to become even more slippery over the next 20 years,” suggests one organizer.

From Linux.com: After deploying the basics of LDAP from the first part, now you dive into practical usage
of LDAP in the wild. Some of the biggest ISPs authenticate everything they can against
their LDAP trees, starting with RADIUS (Remote Authentication DIalin User Service),
going over to the complete employee index, up the authentication of the firewalls and
SecureID cards. Each of these LDAP trees are big. Searches take time before matches
are returned. A service like RADIUS runs fast into a timeout, so think about this before
you plan your LDAP tree.

dotcomma has an interesting contest to create a program that converts standard English to the Slavic-accented language used by Pitr in the User Friendly comic strip. The winner gets a User Friendly “Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell” book, signed by author Illiad. For more information, visit the challenge information page. –atom

“Did you hear about the grand new scheme from Gemstar, the makers of the Rocket eBook? They’re dumping the old device, where you pulled books off the Internet, and swapping it for a dial-in system, so that the only way you can really get books from the web is by using Gemstar’s servers. The new ebook, called the REB 1200, though coming with a USB cable, also comes with a convenient auto-dial feature that’ll connect a built-in 33.6 analog to the Gemstar center, where the public can pay for many things.” –Kelly McNeill

Is Redmond being forced to go Open Source? OK, guys, fess up. Who did it? From MSNBC.

“I find the latest news, of the SDMI watermarking scheme being circumvented to be quite amusing. It’s ridiculous that the RIAA and MPAA haven’t figured out that if you can see or hear it, then you can pirate it. They have to create mass economies by offering the content free of charge with advertising, or on a subscription basis. When they offer these services in a convenient manner, only then can they hope to control the flow of their products.” –Kelly McNeill

Expect 2GHz Pentium IV’s next year, says ZDNet. With the cancelling of the 1.13GHz Pentium III though, the company may be facing an uphill battle to accomplish this goal.

The Associated Press (on Excite News) reports that Microsoft’s main computer systems have been compromised for as much as three months, and that Windows source code may have been taken.