From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Mon, 1 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/1/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - New Ender Sequel A articles article from the "wiggin-out" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/30/1018246 CMU_Nort writes "Orson Scott Card is at it again. Hot on the tail of Ender's Shadow, he's writing another sequel to the Ender's Game story. This one seems to cover the story of the immediate history following the original story when all of the children return home. Called Shadow of the Hegemon, it should give us some of the story of what happened to Peter. The first five chapters are already available online." The rest of his website looks interesting too. -------------------- Credit-card sized Linux system A articles article from the "smarter-card" department sent by CowboyNeal http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/30/1248200 FnH writes "Swiss startup Smartdata unveiled a credit-card sized embedded Linux computer called µ-computer Chipslice. The tiny device, which runs uClinux, is intended to be used in a wide range of mobile, portable, and wearable computing applications. Read more about it here " I can already dream of several possibilities of one of these combined with wireless internet access. -------------------- The Eroded Self A yro article from the "clearcutting-of-privacy" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/30/1723212 The New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy story today titled The Eroded Self. The author chronicles a wide assortment of privacy abuses, and has a very thoughtful treatment of the harm that is caused when every move you make is scanned, analyzed and permanently recorded. -------------------- Who Owns Dmoz? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/24/1352259 C. Adam Kuether asks: "I like the concept of the open directory project and am considering joining the effort and contributing my bit to organizing the Web. I am concerned about the ownership rights to this compilation. The useage agreements seem reasonable enough now, but what assurance is there that this work will not become just another asset of the Time/Warner/AOL (read Netscape) media empire? Could this project convert to a legally enforceable open and free use license? Are the existing open content licenses practical? " -------------------- Linux Game Tome Returns! A articles article from the "ka-pow" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/30/2020225 amccall writes: "After a long outage, The Linux Game Tome has been updated and is now back in action!" Congratulations to Bob for getting the Tome back up, and mad props to Tony Guntharp and the crew at SourceForge for hosting the new site. -------------------- GPL Violation - Nvidia A features article from the "miss-manners-saves-the-world" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/0047219 The General Public License is a powerful license with a powerful ideology. The GPL forbids use of GPL'ed code in closed-source, proprietary software. The model has already proven itself, but sometimes mistakes happen. GPL'ed code found its way into a closed-source kernel module; NVIDIA's proprietary beta Xfree86 driver. This is the story about how mistakes happen, and how they can be fixed with polite communication. Ralph Metzler is just another one of those 'thousands of developers' you hear about developing software for Linux. Ralph was checking out the sources for the Linux 2.3 kernel, and he noticed that a chunk of memory conversion routines were copied line for line out of his bttv.c video driver source into NVIDIA's code. Tony Bennett at NVIDIA grabbed a small amount of bttv.c and integrated it into the Xfree86 driver, without realizing that the code was GPL'ed. Nvidia was contacted about this oversight, and politely responded in a positive way to Ralph. I got to talk to Ralph to see how it all worked out. Ralph Metzler: I received E-mail by Tony Bennett, and he also said he would fix it and they apologized for any possible infringement or any violations, and it was an oversight and they would remove it as soon as possible. Slashdot: Are you happy with that? Ralph Metzler: Yes, of course. Of course, it would have been better if it had never happened. I wasn't especially happy about seeing that they released binary-only drivers now, and I just wanted to try them out, and then I see that they re-used GPL'ed code. Slashdot: ... and then they threw in a credit for someone else who wasn't even you. Ralph Metzler: All right, I think that was David M[iller] or something. He made some patches to this code, and while he was mentioned in the bttv code before those routines, they probably thought it was all his code, but it was originally mine. He made some patches so it works with newer kernels. They probably thought it was all his original code. It was also probably just a mistake. I learned from Rich Black, PR manager for NVIDIA, that they are currently changing the code for the next revision of the Xfree86 driver, and the GPL'ed code will be removed from the driver within the next one to two weeks. I got to talk to him, too. Slashdot: The way it stands right now on the Web site, people are able to download [the driver], and it's not GPL'ed. Rich Black: I think it's one of those things where our corporate rule is that we do not open up our code, and we do not have open code, and we will not do that. Slashdot: That's fine, and that's understandable, but you're in the position that you're either going to have to open it up completely, or not use it at all. Waiting until next revision and then saying, 'Oh, well, it's fixed now' is a bit of a problem, because right now you're in violation. Rich Black: Right, which we understand, and it will be taken care of within the next one to two weeks. I understand we're in violation of that now, and it was something that was done strictly as a mistake on our part, and somebody was going through writing some code, and it was completely done on accident. It was not a known violation at the time, it was something that he is aware of now, and is seeking to alleviate the situation and take care of it. I guess I can't change anything about how we are in violation of the GPL right now, but it's something we are going to take care of as soon as possible. With the next version of the software, we'll take care of that, and we'll no longer be in violation. Slashdot: Would you be willing to open source the one kernel module that uses that code? Rich Black: From what I understand, that is something that might be opened, but I cannot state as 100% fact that I know for sure that that it is the direction, because it is our general rule that none of it is going to be open sourced, but from what I understand is that one [module] might be made available. So, that's the story. Big company makes a mistake, developer notices mistake and politely informs big company, big company recognizes mistake, apologizes and makes efforts to correct the problem. Wouldn't it be great if it were always this easy? The open nature of the GPL makes 'borrowing' source code extremely easy, and sometimes mistakes do happen. With any luck, polite messages and open communication will save the -------------------- 50 Dollar Hackable "WebSurfer" A articles article from the "but-it-doesn't-travel-through-time" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/0935221 evilviper pointed us to a new hack on LinuxHacker. Last time it was the i-opener, but this time its the WebSurfer. It's 50 bucks and can be had at CompUSA. They show it booting Linux among other things. Has a wireless keyboard, a real (non win) modem, and a Cyrix CPU. Looks perfect for voiding warranties. -------------------- Will This Genie Ever Go Back In The Bottle? A features article from the "analysis:-the-music-industry-wins-a-whopper" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/28/177215 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Tue, 2 May 2000 11:00:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 11:00:07 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/2/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Thus Spake Stallman A interviews article from the "prophets-don't-mince-words" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/1052216 -------------------- Supreme Court Rules ISPs Not Liable for E-mail Content A articles article from the "well-duh" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/1154225 dan of the north was the first to write in with the Supreme Court Ruling outcome that ruled that ISPs (in this case, Prodigy), are not liable for the content of e-mail messages sent through them. The details of the circumstance are availible in the above link. Yes, this was a big "duh", but it's good to see this stand. -------------------- GPS Civilian Signal Degradation Turned Off A articles article from the "good-news-for-location-buffs" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/130250 Brian Demsky wrote to us regarding the release from the White House stating that the United States government will no longer purposely degrade civilian-use GPS signals. This mean more accurate data for people working with GPS, as "national defense concerns" had kept civilian results less accurate for years. -------------------- Compaq's PJB-100 MP3 Player Open-Sourced A articles article from the "more-music-for-the-ears" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/104223 spludge writes: "Remember the PJB-100? The portable 4.6 gig hard-drive MP3 player -- the one that did not have support for Linux? Compaq just released all the code to communicate and control it under the GPL! All the code and documentation is available for linux and for windows. Read about the details and what you'll need online. Lots of information about how the PJB works and how to communicate with it via USB." -------------------- Turtle Beach Network Audio Appliance A articles article from the "devices-I-could-happily-live-with" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/0053228 Polo writes: "I always though it would be cool to create something like this. Here is a look at the 'Audiotron,' a standalone device you hook to your stereo system and that networks with your PC to play MP3 files. This version uses that strange HPNA network standard (sends network data over copper phone wiring without interfering with the phone calls). Future versions will support ethernet and USB. Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams. Obsolesence nears for my 200-disk CD changers ... " Hmm. What happens if you already have HPNA networking? That aside, this looks like a good toy for the MPAA as well. -------------------- Forget the Pentium. Hack the 68k. A articles article from the "why-upgrade-when-you-can-go-retro?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/209248 Mr. Groove writes: "Hey foo, think your PIII is killer? Imagine running Photoshop on one of these!" Frugal or insane -- only you can decide. -------------------- Physicists Find More Precise Gravity Number A articles article from the "this-is-the-pants" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/2232209 -------------------- Your (Australian) Criminal Record Online A articles article from the "time-to-start-a-penal-colony?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/0319254 An unknown assailant submitted the following: "A new web site calling itself CrimeNet is causing a bit of a controversy in Australia. For as little as $6, you can look up anyone's criminal record and perhaps even become your very own vigilante. The Age had an interesting story on the topic. Now where did I put those pitchforks and flaming torches?" And what if you happen to share the name of a heinous criminal? This sort of site seems inevitable, but ripe for abuse. -------------------- Attacking Open Source A articles article from the "must-read-clue-train" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/0752211 -------------------- Konqueror.org Launched - KDE2 Web Browser A articles article from the "cool-new-browser-technology" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/0753232 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Wed, 3 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/3/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Metallica Wants To Ban 335,435 Napster Users A articles article from the "we're-gonna-get-those-listeners" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/0948200 charper writes: "News.com is reporting that a firm hired by Metallica has fingered more than 335,000 Napster users (who were allegedly) trading their music. They're seeking to have them banned from Napster. " Check out our original piece, and remember - you can always PayLars! -------------------- Ask Douglas Adams About...Everything A interviews article from the "decks-of-the-Starship-Titanic" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/099243 Who could possibly know more about Life, the Universe, and Everything than Douglas Adams? Who, despite being Mostly Harmless, could give a better anwer to almost any question you could ask? Could you please post your questions -- one per post -- below? Could we pick 10 of the highest-moderated ones and send them to Mr. Adams by e-mail? Might we allow Mr. Adams a week or more to answer, since he's as busy as RMS but has kindly consented to talk with us anyway? -------------------- Can XML Replace Proprietary Document Formats? A askslashdot article from the "buhbye-.doc!" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/26/1155222 Pauly asks: "My former profession of Technical Writer was made very painful by my customers' requirement to have their documents delivered in MS Office formats. PDF/FrameMaker was not acceptable, as they needed to be able to edit the documents as well. Let me tell you, it is painful watching a 3,000+ page Word97 manuscript, the fruit of weeks of hard labor, rendered into rubbish by my customer's Word95. I've missed deadlines, lost money, and will never forgive Microsoft for their abuse of me and my kind. My question: is it possible that XML-based standard file formats suitable for word processor, spreadsheets, etc. could be created that forever do away with proprietary binary formats and inadequate file conversion routines? This notion seems to be working for the graphics crowd in the form of SVG. The benefits are obvious, what are the drawbacks?" -------------------- Kerberos, PAC's, and Microsoft's Dirty Tricks A articles article from the "read-more-about-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/158204 Chris DiBona wrote to us with something that Ted and Jeremy (Samba Boys) wrote: "Microsoft, after getting beat up in the press for making propietary extensions to the Kerberos protocol, has released the specifications on the web -- but in order to get it, you have to run a Windows .exe file which forces you agree to a click-through license agreement where you agree to treat it as a trade secret, before it will give you the .pdf file. Who would have thought that you could publish a trade secret on the web?" Read more from the Samba Team below. -------------------- Forget The Pentium, Hack The 68K A articles article from the "why-upgrade-when-you-can-go-retro?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/209248 Mr. Groove writes: "Hey foo, think your PIII is killer? Imagine running Photoshop on one of these!" Frugal or insane -- only you can decide. -------------------- Kerberos, PACs And Microsoft's Dirty Tricks A articles article from the "read-more-about-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/158204 Chris DiBona wrote to us with something that Ted and Jeremy (Samba Boys) wrote: "Microsoft, after getting beat up in the press for making propietary extensions to the Kerberos protocol, has released the specifications on the web -- but in order to get it, you have to run a Windows .exe file which forces you agree to a click-through license agreement where you agree to treat it as a trade secret, before it will give you the .pdf file. Who would have thought that you could publish a trade secret on the web?" Read more from the Samba Team below. -------------------- Motif's Not Dead A articles article from the "i'm-not-dead-yet" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/175206 Kailden writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Antony Fountain, co-author of Volume 6B: Motif Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, in which he claims that both QT for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME don't compare to Motif (and mentions that Java is the only thing that comes close). " The interview's old -- but the response from user comments adds more to it. Yeah, I know the article's a couple of weeks old -- but it's a good one. -------------------- Quickies Rock! A articles article from the "i'm-afraid-you're-just-too-darn-loud" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/1913252 Phexro extended our congratulations to Bruce and Valerie on the birth of Bruce 2.0, otherwise known as Stanley Charles Perens. this is jimmy asked us all to compete in the great Beltsander Races. Need to send crazy Aunt JoAnne some E-mail? Try something from the Great Spam Archive, sent in by Jones. Nezumi-chan wasn't the only one to write in with this one, but all I can say is Oh, yes. ahaning wrote in to tell us about the Obsolete Computer Museum. Want something to plug them into? blizzard shared Electricity from Giant Artichokes. Also, check out the Ultracade, which is cool unless you're a video game purist like me. Dropkick wrote in about a cyber-riffic washing machine. Last but not least, Penguin_99 writes in about cool photos from Galileo. That's it, folks. Thanks to AfterY2K for the title inspiration. -------------------- Software Carpentry Project's First-Round Winners A articles article from the "forging-better-hammers,-brewing-better-glue" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/1740213 GenericBoy writes: "The four first round winners for each category of the Software Carpentry competition have been announced. It's really exciting to see all these potential replacements for tools that are in such wide-spread use. If you haven't heard of Software Carpentry yet, they're hosting a competition (for BIG $$$) for developing Free tools in the Configure, Build, Bug-tracking and Testing categories." As source code becomes less and less an obscure concept, it's good to see that some people are working to make its construction less obscure as well. -------------------- Horribly Bad Game Designs A articles article from the "really-really-bad-ideas" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/1536240 A reader writes: "WomenGamers.Com takes a stab at coming up with some horribly bad game designs. Check out their latest editorial, "What if? ... No Scratch That..." This article made me laugh -- the driving game inebriation was a great idea. What's your worst game design idea? -------------------- 20th Century's Greatest Engineering Achievements A articles article from the "what-have-we-learned-charlie-brown" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/0839206 dgw1 writes "The National Academy of Engineering has produced an ordered list of the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. I thought the articles about all of the entries were very interesting, even if I didn't agree with the order that some of the achievements were placed in. " -------------------- Advertising in Your Boot Sequence? A articles article from the "that's-a-little-odd" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/0843228 negaPLuCK writes: "i just mounted my first reiserfs partition. When the reiserfs.o module loaded into the kernel what popped out but ads for SuSE, MP3.com and Ecila.com." I've attached the exact text in the read more: it's more like sponsorship than ads, which on one hand is a cool way to finance development, but where is this gonna end? -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Thu, 4 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/4/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bob Young Blasts Recent Anti-Open Source Article A articles article from the "response-==-good" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/0911241 buzzcutbuddha writes "Bob Young from Red Hat issued his rebuttal to John Taschek's Anti-Open Source Article on ZDNet. Well written and articulate, and to the point ... He shoots, he scores!" Check out the original article blasting the open-source idea. Good rebuttal, Bob. -------------------- Linux Core Kernel Commentary A books article from the "even-Alan-Cox-had-to-start-somewhere" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/17/1037249 -------------------- ArsTechnica Espresso PC Review A articles article from the "super-sweet" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/0941205 Hannibal from ArsTechnica gave the head's-up of their review of the Espresso PC. We had an article on this super-sweet little machine recently. This little machine weighs .99 pounds, has USB, Celeron, 3D Sound, built in touchpad - and Hannibal covers putting Linux on the puppy as well. /me wants. -------------------- Shut Down Metallica, Not Napster A features article from the "time-to-fight-back" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/1110232 -------------------- ICMP_HOST_BELOW_HORIZON - TCP/IP Into Orbit A articles article from the "packets-in-spaaacceee!" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/0935219 Christopher Neufeld writes "As reported on ScienceDaily today, on April 10 of this year, some standard IP modules were uploaded to UoSAT-12, and got it answering pings. " -------------------- Interfaces For The Handicapped? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-read" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/26/1231212 heller asks: "I'm wondering about ideas for different methods intefacing with the computer for the physically handicapped. I've got a family friend that has very limited motor control, and while he can peck away at a computer, it really is hard and time consuming. Plus, he can't control almost anything else around his house, TV, front door, phone, microwave. My current thoughts are that if we can get him to interface with the computer, we can make it so he can control everything else he needs to." We have basic voice recognition, and technologies like X10: could these technologies and others help make living for the handicapped any easier without costing lots of money? (Read on...) "Pete, a long time family friend and founder of Pedal with Pete, was born with cerebral palsy (check the Web site for more information). This greatly inhibits his motor control. He enjoys bike riding but last June, was in serious bike accident (once again, more info on the Web site) and this only reduced his motor control. The man has incredible spirit and wants to live on his own, though he has to have home care nurses stop by every day to help him perform most of his daily activities. He used to do lots of work on his computer pecking away with sticks strapped to both hands. Since his accident he has virtually lost control of one side of his body and has seriously reduced control on the other side, so this is no longer possible. My current line of thinking is that if we can get him to be able to control a computer, we might be able to automate many of the other parts of his life so he doesn't have to rely on so much help from other people. While I definitely have several ideas on how to go about this, I'ld really like some other input. Does anyone have any ideas or new products they can point me to?" -------------------- IBM JDK 1.3 For Linux A articles article from the "it's-new-it's-fast" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/118248 -------------------- Handmade Encryption Challenge A articles article from the "ifye-kunk-raek-itye-rsma-ert" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/1843215 -------------------- Silicon Hell A articles article from the "how-capitalism-protects-the-environment" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/2155236 ferlatte writes: "There's a great piece on the effects of the tech industry in Silicon Valley on the environment and their workers. Pretty scary stuff, and sort of unsettling to think about how many toxic substances went into that shiny new laptop. The story is available at http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/30/siliconhell.html." Maybe the industry needs to set up "PolluteE", a "watchdog" agency to make sure companies post their pollution policies prominently on their Web sites...Update: 05/04 11:08 by michael: A good link from the comments: the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. -------------------- Linux 2.2.15 Released A articles article from the "waiting-for-2.4" department sent by CowboyNeal http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/2248255 Fluid Donkey was the first of many to let us know that kernel 2.2.15 has come down the wire. It's a fairly large patch (just over a meg), but it contains many updates, including support for Intelligent Input/Output (I20) devices. You can find it in the usual places. (ftp..kernel.org if you forgot) -------------------- KDevelop 1.2 is out A articles article from the "excellent-program-if-I-may-say-so" department sent by HeUnique http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0458238 As the title says - KDevelop 1.2 is out. From the announcement: This version contains many new translations, support for GNOME application development, several improvements in the doc browser and integrated debugger and many bugfixes. You might want to check also the KDE Development Kit if you're using C/C++ (and QT Libs) to write KDE Applications. Great work guys! -------------------- Ensuring Permanence Of Online Scientific Journals A articles article from the "honey-have-you-seen-my-SciAm-collection?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/03/1434247 wtpooh writes: "Many librarians and archivists are concerned about the impermanence of online scientific journals. They are accustomed to saving the paper journals for decades and do not have faith that the online versions will still be accessible in the future (What happens when a publisher goes out of business and shuts down its Web site, for example)." (Read more.) -------------------- Meeting with Netpliance A articles article from the "Big-Gay-Al's-Big-Gay-Animal-Farm" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0453208 Kalin Harvey writes: A while ago I posted an announcement on Slashdot asking for feedback to take to Netpliance regarding the i-opener and their relationship with the hacker community.  Since then I have met with Netpliance and basically concluded that a lot of the dialogue we were having about the company was missing the mark. Netpliance is a different company than many of us thought and basically don't have the ability to sell vast quantities of i-openers to the hacker community; their whole focus is the service, on many devices, not just the i-opener hardware. However, they also are big fans of open standards, and would love help to contribute to an open development model and see the embedded linux appliance market grow. They are also already making commitments to working with the open source community. You can read my full account on linuxpower.org -------------------- The Village Voice on The DVD Wars A articles article from the "when-johnny-comes-marchin'-home" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0810236 Phantom writes: "The Village Voice has great story (here) about DeCSS, 2600.com, and the legal battle about to ensue. Looks like the MPAA may be in some trouble. " Well written piece - things have been quiet here for a while, but I think both sides have been lining up necessary support. The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is going to be defending Eric Corley aka Emmanuel Goldstein, and is a /very sharp/ cookie. -------------------- Linuxcare Withdraws IPO, Cuts Staff A articles article from the "getting-back-to-basics" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0856253 Eupolis writes "Reuters reports that Linuxcare has withdrawn its IPO filings, and is now cutting staff to try to keep from running out of money. " As well as the report from Reuters, News.com has an analysis of the situation as well. -------------------- I Love You "Virus" Hates Everyone A articles article from the "just-when-the-last-rash-cleared-up" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0938227 Loquis was the first of seven billion readers to submit this story about the I Love You Virus and the UK. Its not really a virus: its a trojan that proclaims its love for the recipient and requests that you open its attachment. On a first date even! It then loves you so much that it sends copies of itself to everyone in your addressbook (slut!) and starts destorying files on your drive. Course they estimate that it's infected 10% of the UK. Pine/Elm/Mutt users as always laugh maniacally as the trojan shuffles countless wasted packets over saturated backbones filling overworked SMTP servers everywhere. Sysadmins are seen weeping in the alleys. Update: 05/04 03:12 by CT: My Roommate Kurt "The Pope" DeMaagd has written a better summary of the trojan and more importantly a HOWTO fix it. Windows users only ;) Requires registry hacking, so its not for everyone. -------------------- Controlling Your Computer with Your Brain A science article from the "not-sure-how-to-title-this" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0816244 -------------------- The Corporate Republic A features article from the "birth-of-a-nation" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/26/108242 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Fri, 5 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/5/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ask Metallica About Napster A interviews article from the "feeling-misunderstood" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0821200 Members of the band Metallica have agreed, through their publicist, to answer questions from Slashdot readers about their recent legal actions against Napster and Napster users. They did a live chat interview Tuesday on the subject with a crowd rounded up by artistdirect.com and Yahoo!. Now it's our turn, so let's give them a fine, thorough, Slashdot-style grilling. (more) -------------------- Employers Logging Keystrokes-What Can You Do? A askslashdot article from the "what-rights-do-employees-really-have?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/24/1028251 daqman asks: "I work for a 'national lab' which is code for, 'we are funded by the Department of Energy'. Recently there was a big scare over a DoE employee at a weapons lab who has been accused of spying. Now we are very far from weapons research. If were any closer I would quit right away. Anyway, as part of the security flap we have been asked to put a notice on all of our machines. A part of the message is: 'By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of authorized site or Department of Energy personnel. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the conditions stated in this warning.' What is the legality of this statement?" (There's more...) -------------------- Gnutella's Wall Of Shame? A articles article from the "ah-yes-a-distributed-system" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1130215 Sleen pointed us to a ZD story about ZeroPaid.com's Wall of Shame. Its pretty amusing actually: since gnutella is truly distributed, you know the IP of people who download things from you. ZeroPaid is posting the IPs of people who try to download their faked kiddie porn. This is an obvious side effect of using a totally distributed application to distribute information: the information can be distributed like wildfire, but the privacy concerns are significant. -------------------- MassMultiples LCD Screen A articles article from the "this-will-be-great-in-my-batcave" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/100220 Rackemup writes: "For those days when you're thinking to yourself, 'Y'know, one monitor just doesn't cut it anymore... I wish there was a way to hook up a bunch of LCD screens to my computer. Check out the MassMultiples website. Now you can hook up two, three, four or more 18" lcd screens to your pc! Custom configurations, low footprint, and not a price to be found anywhere on the web site. Like anyone cares how much they would cost ..." Update: 05/04 02:17 by H: I actually saw their quad system last week -- it looks really, really good -- quality work. -------------------- Hyperlinks In The Meat World A articles article from the "i-wanna-click-on-my-eye-ball" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1327208 Once&FutureRocketman writes "The New York Times has this article (no login required) about a technology that allows publishers of paper media to embed hyperlinks directly in the article in machine-readable format. The system is a little clumsy at this point, but the intent is clear: a seamless integration of the Internet and Real Life." -------------------- Sega Supports Emulation A articles article from the "going-old-school" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0940245 rapett0 writes "Sega of Japan has decided to take a much welcomed step and support downloading and playing of Genesis/Mega Drive and PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 games on the Dreamcast via a service called DreamLibrary. Apparently they will cost $1.50 per download/per day and you lose the game after you turn off your system, but can redownload if you still have rental time left on the game that day. The same article makes mention that Bleem! might be released for Dreamcast as well. " Granted, this is only for Japan right now - but it's a cool step. -------------------- Hubble Spots Long-Sought Intergalactic Gas A articles article from the "left-over-hindenburg" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/0946250 hubie writes: "NASA is announcing that Hubble has indirectly detected the long-expected existence of intergalactic hydrogen gas. This is important because it confirms some of the Big Bang models that predict how much hydrogen should have been created. Hubble used a quasar as a light source for spectroscopic measurements. " -------------------- First Ever Radar Images Of Main-Belt Asteroid A articles article from the "looks-like-a-scooby-snack" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/2154242 Phrogman writes: "NASA and astronomers at Cornell have collected the first ever radar images of a main-belt asteroid, a metallic, dog-bone shaped rock the size of New Jersey named Asteroid 216 Kleopatra. There is an article here with more information and a small image." -------------------- Minibosses Rock Nostalgic A articles article from the "insert-coin-to-continue" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1943244 skia writes "Chock full of yummie old-school NES goodness and metal guitar/drum beats, The Minibosses play your favorite songs from Metroid, Castlevania, and even Contra!" I've been listening to this for the past hour or so, and it's very cool. They've been around for a while. My friend Erik says he heard of them on Zophar's Domain. -------------------- More News On Dune Miniseries A articles article from the "i-will-not-fear" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/200242 Yodel_Spoogenshortz write:s "Here is an update on the Dune Miniseries being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment to be shown in December of this year on the Sci-Fi Channel. The site has more photos and press releases. Earlier Slashdot articles on the upcoming series can be found here and here. For information on the Dune book series look at the Official Dune Web Site." Dune is an absolute classic, and probably my favorite book of all time. I'm hoping they don't screw it up. -------------------- Why Not MySQL? A articles article from the "interesting-discussion" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0920247 Deepak Jagannath wrote to us with a piece that talks about why a Web site shouldn't use MySQL for critical RDBMS. Do people agree or disagree? -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sat, 6 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 6 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/6/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Microsoft Patents Package Management A articles article from the "you-gotta-be-kidding-me" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/1033208 Lionfire writes "Recently, Microsoft aquired a patent for a "Method and system for installing and updating program module components"." Read the description and replace a few key words, and you have a very nice description of *cough* Debian's apt. Neat! -------------------- SCO Answers Questions About Linux A interviews article from the "we-may-be-slow-but-we-get-there" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0713234 Our original interview with two SCO Presidents somehow turned into responses from just one, returned long after they were promised. Anyway, here are answers to your questions about SCO from David McCrabb, President of their Server Division. -------------------- Judge Rakoff Explains MP3.com Ruling A articles article from the "finally-something-to-post" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/148228 Saint Aardvark writes "Wired News reports here that Judge Rakoff explained his ruling on MP3.com. According to him, MP3.com was "simply repackaging" the recordings, adding nothing, and therefore unable to claim fair use. " -------------------- Which CGI Language For Which Purpose? A askslashdot article from the "share-your-experiences" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0137201 zpengo asks: "The blessing and curse of CGI is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to accomplish any given task. All languages have certain strengths and weaknesses, and there is no "best" CGI scripting language. I'm wondering what the community has learned about CGI languages through their experiences. Which languages go best with which tasks? (Also, are there any less-known languages that work well for particular circumstances?)" -------------------- Philips VCR Records MPEG On (D-)VHS tape A articles article from the "twisty-little-standards-all-different" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/1817209 wfberg writes: "This Philips VCR records and reads normal VHS tapes, but also records MPEG 2 video digitally on tape. You need 'special' tape for this though (presumably to boost philips tape sales). It sports digital-input and since it's RW and digital, this should piss off the DVD people. Since Philips owns a stake in TiVo, maybe TiVos will make tape-backups in the future? ;-)" The flip-down edit panel looks cool. I wonder how hard it would be to get FireWire out as well as in ... -------------------- Washington Supreme Court Upholds Shrinkwrap Licensing A yro article from the "teeny-tiny-print" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/2031212 rudedog writes: "According to this Seattle Times article, the Washington Supreme Court has upheld a shrinkwrap license limiting recovery of damages due to buggy software. Apparently, the software manufacturer agreed that there was a bug that cost the plaintiff $1.95 million, but asked the court to dismiss the claim based on the license agreement [which disclaimed all liability]. Kinda answers the old open source FUD question 'who you gonna sue if something goes wrong?'. According to the WA courts, nobody." The opinion is available here, and a dissenting opinion by two of the judges is also available. -------------------- Get Your Palm On The Network A articles article from the "feel-the-pulse-of-the-planet-prescribe-aspirin" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/0218256 Anonymous Coward writes: "There's a cool article over on O'Reilly network showing how to set up a network connection between a Linux box and Palm Pilot, and then run a Web server on the Palm to access the documents. There's also a VNC client which I'm downloading now. Wild!" -------------------- Quantum Project A articles article from the "ziggy-says-you're-a-kernel-hacker" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0835256 Percible writes: "BBC News is reporting that John Cleese, star of Monty Python's Flying Circus, is starring alongside Stephen Dorff in the first major film produced exclusively for downloading over the Internet. The film cost $3 million to make, and lasts 32 minutes. Cost to you: $3.95 to purchase the file for download from sightsound.com." There have been quite a few films produced for Internet distribution, but this looks like the first professional approach with known actors. -------------------- Smuggling Open Source Past The Boss A articles article from the "how-*dare*-you-extend-my-budget?" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/0713223 Saint Aardvark writes: "CNN has an article on software engineers sneaking open source software past the boss -- and how the smart boss doesn't look too closely." A nicely balanced article (originally from Computer World). -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sun, 7 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 7 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/7/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Slashback: Feathers, Worms, Happy Returns A articles article from the "hit-me-again-sir-but-harder" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/006250 Welcome to the 2nd edition of Slashback, upgrading your Slashdot experience with another week's worth of additions, updates, new links and new thoughts, all for the same low cost. (Read more.) Like the end credits on a short, short film. gi_wrighty pointed out that "the winners from the 5K web page contest (announced a while back ) have now been announced." Here are the welterweight web winners. A different kind of Apache Con From Slashdot's own jimjag: "Are you interested in the details concerning how www.apache.org was defaced, as reported right here? Here's how it was done from the definitive source. It just goes to remind all of us that sometimes the obvious things are the ones we don't see, and the ones that come back and bite us in the arse. I can imagine quite a few SysAdmins making some changes over the last 36 hours." ... because the old ones were invidious. Remember the flap over GPL code in non-GPL drivers released by NVidia? Well, happily, the company kept its promises. Kheldar_522 writes "LinuxGames.com is reporting that the new NVIDIA XFree86 4.0 drivers released tonight have had all the GPL code removed." May the circle be unbroken. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, instead of subtracting code, Samsung is hoping to make sure some gets added. iKev contributed the news that "Last Sunday, Gmate, the creators of the [Linux-based PDA]Yopy, released a very preliminary SDK for the Yopy. You can check it out here (click on the Developer image). I haven't had a chance to try it (it's only for x86 linux)." iKev wondered whether the terms of the download violate the GPL, which is used for some parts of the SDK. Any takers? You are near area 51. Leave. BenTheDewpendent wrote: "I was at gpspilot.com and found instructions on how to connect almost any GPS to a Pilot [including the construction of a null-modem cable if you need one - t] and I thought it could be handy for things like a nav system in a car or bike ... especially now that Clinton has ordered down selective avalability." Coupled with some decent mapping software, this might even help me get less lost, more often. Be warned, though -- this is not the only purveyor of Palm maps, and they do want to sell you some. We han Cardly wait! For those who read paper books, this should be good news, contributed by Anonymous Coward after reading about the new Ender's Game sequel: "In a recent interview on otherview.com, OSC mentioned that he is also working on two more sequels to Ender's Game. Shadow of Death, the "final volume about Bean," and an unnamed Petra-and-Peter book. He mentions this on the third page of this article. Also interesting, OSC apparently is all in favor of e-books, though his publisher won't let him do it." "Biting into some software and finding half a worm!" It's been a quiet couple of days for the administrators of Windows networks -- unless they have MS Outlook e-mail, in which case they don't feel Loved and it isn't Very Funny. Řstergaard writes with "this piece, mainly as a reflection on the current worm mania filling the news (and mail-servers ;) around the world. I'd like to see what you people think." It's good reading, and very sobering if you're running the user agents at fault, or ones that could be, next time -------------------- Classic Arcade Games Online A articles article from the "but-ya-gotta-play-shockwave" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1147217 Ant writes "Midway Games and shockwave.com announced today that ten classic Midway arcade games are now available for free on the internet. " The games released include Defender, Joust, Spy Hunter and Rampage, but as you might expect, you need Shockwave in order to play them. -------------------- Alpha 21264 And Athlon 850 Review A articles article from the "zoom" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/05/0837251 Arg! writes: "Hi. There's a comparison review of an Alpha DS10 with a 466 MHz chip running AlphaLinux up at this link on Ace's Hardware. The system is compared against an 850 MHz Athlon box (also running Linux) and there are a lot of different benchmarks also showing some memory comparisons with some other PC chips, like the Celerons, as well as some Sun Ultra benchmarks. The config tested was $5500, but a base DS10 is supposed to be around $3500 ... maybe not too bad for a nice 64-bit box. ;)" -------------------- Aiwa car CD-MP3 player A articles article from the "now-we're-getting-somewhere" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1149231 conraduno writes "Looks like Aiwa is releasing a car stereo MP3 player which loads tracks from a CD. Called the CDC-MP3, it plays CD's, CD-R's, and CD-RW's. Now all I need is a burner. " Here's a few more details from mp3.com. -------------------- Intel FDIV bug vs ILUVYOU A articles article from the "stuff-to-read" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/127214 geophile sent us a really interesting comparison of the similarities and differences between Intel's notorious FDIV bug of ages past (well, at least it seems like ages) and the recent ILUVYOU macro virus. Its amusing, but at the same time it really gives an interesting perspective on the whole deal. Hit the link to read it -------------------- Portable Translator Devices? A askslashdot article from the "the-universal-translators-of-tomorrow?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1221233 Roger Binns asks: "I've been looking for an electronic language translator device (like a personal organiser form factor) that can do English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Unfortunately, they are extremely difficult to find on the Web, and the ones I have seen at airports are very expensive and tend to only do one non-English language." Cool idea. Where can one buy something like this? If I ever get the time to go to Europe, I would love to take along something like this. The potential for such a device is staggering. -------------------- 24/7 Sues DoubleClick Over Patent A articles article from the "isn't-it-ironic" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1456231 whitefox writes "Another ZDNet article states that advertising network 24/7 has sued Double -------------------- NASA Snake-Bots A articles article from the "please-don't-gain-consciousness" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/200224 faqBastard writes: "NASA's been working on some pretty cool snake-bots for exploring outer space. All kinds of neat features and capabilities ... " Robotic snakes certainly seem to be slithering into our future. OK, they look practical and intriguing -- but they give me the willies. -------------------- Windows Source Code Proposal Confirmed A articles article from the "note-the-source-please" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/0129230 ChipX86 writes: "We've all heard the rumors about Microsoft proposing to open source Windows. Now it appears to be confirmed. This article on MSNBC says that Microsoft would '... provide open, timely and complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software applications to run on Windows.'" From the sound of it, this seems like more of a delay tactic than a straight proposal, but interesting nonetheless. (How open is "open," by the way? What about "Timely"?) -------------------- Effectiveness of Online User Databases Questioned A articles article from the "information-wants-to-be-cheap" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/0733245 Aleatoric writes: "According to this article from the NY Times, advertisers aren't exactly buying into the claimed effectiveness of targeted online user databases. Not to get complacent, though, it also includes comments from many sites that gather user information concerning their efforts to try and change this attitude." Amusing. It seems Web advertisers are just now learning lessons direct mail and print advertisers learned long ago. -------------------- Effectiveness Of Online User Databases Questioned A articles article from the "information-wants-to-be-cheap" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/0733245 Aleatoric writes: "According to this article from the NY Times, advertisers aren't exactly buying into the claimed effectiveness of targeted online user databases. Not to get complacent, though, it also includes comments from many sites that gather user information concerning their efforts to try and change this attitude." Amusing. It seems Web advertisers are just now learning lessons direct mail and print advertisers learned long ago. -------------------- iMovie For Free A articles article from the "go-and-grab-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/1011200 Graymalkin writes: "Apple has finally released iMovie (the really easy video editor) for the non-iMac DV customers; the best part is that it's free. You can get it over at iMovie's Web site. I've used demos of this package and compared to professional packages like Premiere it really packs a punch. You need OS 9 and at least 64 megs of RAM (unless you want to do Web quality video, then 64 is fine). It's nice to see Apple responding to their customers (like myself) who wanted iMovie but didn't want to go out and buy an iMac to get it. fnord. " -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Mon, 8 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/8/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Open-Sourcing Discontinued Hardware A askslashdot article from the "immortality-through-free-software" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/28/1910214 LinuxWhore asks: "I work for a company that recently accquired two 3Com/USR TOTALswitch units. It seemed as though we had I nice product by the price that they were going for online ($1500-$3000). However, further research had revealed to me that 3Com had decided to discontinue all work on the line shortly after their merger. All updates to the product have thus ceased. Now I am left in a situation where the product has little documentation and no chance of future security/bugfixes. If companies like 3Com were petitioned to release the souce and hardware specs to their dicontinued products, how much interest would there be in the community to write updates to code for these types of products so that they remain useful, instead of becoming a $3000 doorstop?" It's a good idea. Convincing the hardware makers will be the difficult part. -------------------- More Fun With "For Dummies" Trademarks A articles article from the "jeez-lousie" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/1019231 tonescope wrote to us with a fun narrative from Oz about Corporate Standover Tactics for Dummies in which Octapod, a small non-profit arts group has done a fun job of cataloging the dialogue between them and IDG Books. In the same vein, check out our first story about this as well. -------------------- 101 Keys Soaking Wet: The Flexboard A articles article from the "yes-I-was-actually-*in*-the-tub" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/2247209 What's 19.5 inches long, bright yellow, flexible, and rubber? Wait, don't answer that. To be be more precise, let me rephrase: what's 19.5 inches long, bright yellow, flexible, rubber, and equipped with a 7-foot PS/2 cable? (Read more.) There may be other answers to that eternal, burning question, but the only one of which I am aware is the strange and intriguing keyboard (hooked to an Amnet laptop on loan from Roblimo) on which I type ths review. It's called the Flexboard, available in the U.S. from Man & Machine. And yes, it works fine with Linux -- in this case, with a semi-functional installation of Corel Linux 2.4. Nothing unusual about it, in fact, except that it's banana yellow, has no moving parts, can be rolled to the approximate dimensions of a stromboli, smells a bit like a paint store, and can droop becomingly around a user's naked thighs. Other than that, just your run-of-the-mill PS/2 keyboard. With a design straight out of '70s Sweden, or perhaps the personal computer division of Fisher-Price (but actually manufactured in Germany by a company called Kota Technologies, this is not a keyboard you're likely to to find around the office. First of all, most offices do not need keyboards that cost as much as a passable 15" monitor -- and at $129 for the standard Home / Office version (the one I'm bumping away at), it's pretty close. (In case you're wondering, it is available in other colors, including neutral grey.) Your $129, though, gets you an interesting, very specialized piece of equipment. This keyboard can withstand treatment that standard mechanical ones cannot, to put it lightly. (Turns on spigot -- not too hot, but not too cold.) Add $100 for the even tougher "Industrial" version, and you can happily drench your keyboard in oil and many chemicals; the Industrial version also features a 2-year warranty vs. the standard edition's single year, and will withstand a wider range of storage and operating temperatures. For factories, laboratories, workshops and such it seems like just the ticket. Even the standard one, though, shrugs off both water and hot chocolate at point-blank range just fine. Rinse off, towel dry -- no need to wring. The sensors which enable the keys are hidden beneath flat-topped projections in the one-molded-piece-of-rubber which is the keyboard. The letters, numbers and functon keys are perfectly round, while space bar, enter, and other special characters are elongated ovals. (Lower drain plug.) The keys are adequately labeled; the printing is a little lighter than I would expect -- grey-brown rather than black -- but in practical use provides plenty of contrast. (Adjusts water.) Not that I'm giving it any practical use right now. How well does it work? In short, a) better than I expected and, b) not bad. It takes some getting used to the feel of a rubber keyboard (and adjusting your typing style to its response), but it's not the awful, toothgrinding experience of "typing" on the flat-membrane surface of the old family Sinclair Z-80; it's really possible to type at a decent clip on this thing. Slower than my regular keyboard, but OK. Even combination keystrokes (shift-plus, alt-plus) work fine. However, if you're used to clacking along on a mechanical keyboard, especially if you crave the audio and tactile feedback of an IBM desk-dominator, the feel of this one will come as a surprise, though not necessarily a rude one. The loudest you can make this keyboard roar, in fact, is closer to a Sunday School whisper than to, say, normal conversation. Unless you really want to swing your fingers, it is utterly silent. (A little more Hot, please.) A gentle squeezing motion is all it takes to actuate the keys. Even after acclimating myself to it for a few days, though, I find that a few keys (F, J, and a few others in the bottom row) simply do not work as well as others. Disconcertingly, the key which causes me the most trouble is the spacebar. I am generally a right-thumb spacebar thumper; I find that by switching to my left thumb my success is much improved. Overall, the engineers did an admirable job balancing sensitivity with oversensivity. I end up hitting backspace more than I'd like, but less than I feared I would have to. So who would want one of these? With not a sharp angle or hard surface to be found, I can think of various institutions which might order it for those characteristics alone, and of which I know only by thorough reading. (Ouch! Too hot!) Any environment that could be wetter or messier than you'd subject an ordinary keyboard to (anyone who's gotten cat hair or soda in their keyboard will know what I mean) might be well-served with the Flexboard. Office klutzes everywhere -- we know who we are -- still would have to go through quite a few $30 keyboards from the local office supply before one of these makes sense for that reason alone. It does seem like this would be a great keyboard for children, since not only are there no pieces to break off and chew on or swallow, but more importantly it cannot be used as a bludgeon against other children. And for anyone in a situtation which truly requires a spillproof, particle-proof keyboard, the generous cable allows you to better protect the PC itself, placing it in a cabinet, say, or otherwise out of your particular "splash zone." For situations where quiet is more important than input speed, this board would shine. Having typed this review from the comfort of my bathtub, I can also attest to the Flexboard's resistance to Freeman Botanicals Apple Nectar shampoo as well as Dove moisturizing soap. Better close before I find out what it can't shrug off and get myself into even more hot water. -------------------- Product Placement A radio article from the "sponsored-in-part-by" department sent by CowboyNeal http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/1328257 In this week's show we talk about mp3.com's legal losses, Metallica vs. Napster, bad games, and, and more. If you think you can stand it, give it a listen. -------------------- Tampered Athlons Hit Oz A articles article from the "intensive-purposes-down-under" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/1731227 Lucien Wells writes "I have some bad news to spoil your weekend -- it seems like fake Athlons have hit Australia, and at least one of TechWatch's readers has personally recieved a fake. More worrying is the fact that the reader only very recently purchased their Athlon." (Read more below.) "This is some very bad news -- thanks to Tim for alerting us. Rather than paraphrase, I will just quote his email: 'Well it looks like they [fake Athlons] have hit Australia I just recieved my K700 from [an undisclosed source] in perth and have opened it up to put the cold plate on it and to my horror the cpu is a 650 ... the resistor has been changed and serial numbers do not match ...' We managed to get some pictures of the Athlon in question, and all the pictures are posted, including a summary with each picture, and help for those interested in finding out if their CPU has been tampered with. More details are available on our frontpage. We are working on finding an easy way (ie, for 'general' consumption) for those possibly affected to test their processor, and any updates will be posted, again, on our main page :) Kind Regards, Lucien Wells. --- Lucien Wells Editor/Assistant Reviewer & HTML Developer, TechWatch" The well-labeled pictures also serve as a primer to understanding the cryptic labels on the side of your processor. But as Lucien points out, checking this out will void your -------------------- A New Rendering Model For X A articles article from the "heart-renderin-soul-barin'" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/07/2316257 horst writes: "I found this proposal by Keith Packard at mosfet.org. a good article, very interesting." Although it's more than a month old, if you are interested in the state of X, how it got to be that way, and where it's likely to head next, this is essential reading. In fact, you'll practically have to read it to find out why Packard concludes that "[a] new rendering model, designed to solve specific performance and network transparency issues of these new toolkits, has the promise of significantly increasing the power of the X desktop environment." -------------------- Black Hole Search Begins In Austrailian Outback A articles article from the "they-are-looking-up-not-around" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/0831239 Sandeater writes: "BBC news is reporting that an new telescope has just been completed to search out black holes from the Australian outback. The astronomers using the telescope will be looking for huge black holes at the centres of galaxies, as well as seeing how they evolve. The Cangaroo II will be offically opened tomorrow. The BBC link can be found here." -------------------- Black Hole Search Begins In Australian Outback A articles article from the "they-are-looking-up-not-around" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/0831239 Sandeater writes: "BBC news is reporting that an new telescope has just been completed to search out black holes from the Australian outback. The astronomers using the telescope will be looking for huge black holes at the centres of galaxies, as well as seeing how they evolve. The Cangaroo II will be offically opened tomorrow. The BBC link can be found here." -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Tue, 9 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/9/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Irrational Exuberance A features article from the "Is-technology-driving-economic-markets-nuts?" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/01/1151240 -------------------- On Usage of "Hacker vs. Cracker" A articles article from the "po'-white-folks-that-hack" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/110225 rcp writes "The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for those of you not from The Great White North) has an article on why the media use the term hacker versus cracker. " Well, at least it's an understanding of why they use the terms incorrectly. -------------------- Arrest In The ILOVEYOU Case A articles article from the "make-macro-virus-and-do-time" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1037205 jacobm writes "All the news sources- CNN, ABC News, Security Focus, CNET news, and everyone else on the planet- are reporting that a man in the Phillipines has been arrested in the ILOVEYOU virus case. It appears that the virus had identifying information all over it, which makes me a bit suspicious that this could be a set-up, but on the other hand, you should never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." Update: 05/08 12:50 by J: Because you haven't yet read enough about ILOVEYOU, read this (Gates opines that breaking up MS will lead to more viruses). -------------------- Why Should I Sign Copyrights To The FSF? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-discuss" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/28/0140207 Honza Jirousek asks: "The issue of signing copyright for patches to GNU software or even whole new GPL-ed programs to the FSF came up several times in various dicussions, last time in recent cphack threads and in this Wired article on the same topic. Some indicate this may even be a requirement for accepting larger patches for some GNU programs, such as emacs. I never managed to find more specific information on that. Can someone explain this practice and point to more information? I understand the positive effects of this (FSF being better positioned to defend the copyleft, possibility to change the licence to newer versions of GPL etc), but I can also see an interesting side-effect - in some cases it effectively puts the FSF in the privileged position of sole copyright holder, who can re-license the code. This is similar to special provisions of 'original author' in licences such as NPL, often criticized exactly for this. Or am I getting it wrong? Contrast this to programs such as Linux kernel, where the copyright is so distributed, that re-licensing will never be possible." (Read on...) -------------------- Company Claims To Have Workable Draft of Human Genome A science article from the "possibly-" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1325246 cybaea writes "The BBC reports that the human genome is now completely mapped. A largely unknown company beat all the others to it. " The company in question isn't Celera, or any of the other companies everyone's been talking about. It's a company called Doubletwist (Get it?) that claims to have a first "working draft" of the genes in question. Details are still sketchy - if you see more, please post links in the story below. -------------------- RIAA Claims Intial Legal Win vs. Napster A articles article from the "things-don't-look-good-for-our-hero" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1354255 A number of people have written in with the initial news blurb that the RIAA[?] has won the initial battle against Napster. The US District Court in San Fransico has ruled that Napster is not just a "mere conduit" for files, but that it is actually liable for material transfered by the program. This comes on the heels of MP3.com's recent loss to the RIAA as well. Ouch. -------------------- The Linux I18N and Standard Base Merge A articles article from the "standardization-consolidation" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1311257 Leo Comitale writes "According to this press release the Linux Standard Base and the Linux Internationalization (I18N) project have merged and are calling themselves the Free Standards Group. I think it is really important for Linux to have a basic, low level standard for file system layout and support for international languages. These areas are critical to keeping Linux from splintering into a bunch of incompatible variants, and it seems these efforts are not getting as much support as they probably should be." -------------------- NetPD, Metallica's Mysterious Tracker A articles article from the "how'd-they-do-that?" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/107227 Akilesh Rajan writes: "An article at Forbes talks about the firm that supplied Metallica with the software it needed to capture 335,000 users. It 'works like 5,000 humans sitting in a room doing Web searches' to identify user names. Demand for their services is enormous, especially since they also plan to expand into the videogame and movie protection businesses." This NetPD company is unrelated to the shareware program NetPD, which, ironically, helps protect user privacy. -------------------- AOL & NSI To Team Up A articles article from the "scary-stuff" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1314226 kettch wrote to us with a recent story on CNet about AOL and NSI teaming-up to offer "co-branded service". If I remember correctly, at one point AOL was going to compete with NSI in offering domain registrations, so it's interesting to note that they have decided to play nice with each other. -------------------- Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying! A articles article from the "with-sufficient-thrust-naturally" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1726248 Maktoo writes: "Well, this has been a favorite rumour in the Mac world for quite some time, but with the approach of WWDC (next Monday) things are starting to heat up. MacOSRumors, AppleInsider, and Go2Mac are all predicting MP G4s soon ... with Go2Mac actually claiming that CompUSA has SKUs for the systems. The keynote on Monday should be interesting. I don't see why Apple would release MP machines before MacOS X ... but we might get a demo at least. I'm excited enough that I'll be getting a copy of MacOS X Beta when I walk in the door ... but an MP G4 would be nice too." -------------------- Print From Your TV Set, Says HP A articles article from the "imagine-the-new-face-of-spam" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/2029230 futile.com writes: "Looks like the fine folks at HP are working on getting a printing system developed for your TV set. Seems like they're joining forces with AT&T to do so. I could see some interesting uses with this and Bay Watch." I can think of a few situations where this would be handy, but it looks like Idiot Box-printing (bane of WebTV users) may soon be the bane of everyone with a television. Think "solicitation." -------------------- DivX Codec Port Contest A articles article from the "ka'ching-sosumi" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0827225 mr.e@home.com writes: "Flashingyellow.com has started up a contest to port the DivX MPEG-4 codec to the Macintosh platform. The goal is a completely open-sourced, cross-platform codec for use with Quicktime (hoping the Linux port of Quicktime ever gets completed). Prize is $5000 and an iMac DV Special Edition." -------------------- SourceForge Fails To Forge Source? A articles article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0853201 I've attached a rather feisty rant from an anonymous coward criticizing the SourceForge project for releasing a tarball, but failing to be much of an open source project. 'Course since it took me a year between Slashcode releases, I'm a tad more forgiving on the subject, but the guy makes a lot of good points. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Wed, 10 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/10/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PostgreSQL - Oracle/DB2 Killer? A articles article from the "open-source-rising-up" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0927203 dagnabit writes "At Yahoo News, there's a story about a company which is investing in/supporting the PostgreSQL crew. Ultimate goals include "a planned expansion to 120 employees and the ultimate possibility of going public." So that enterprise-class open-source RDBMS may not be too far off after all... " -------------------- Samba Administrator's Handbook A books article from the "airport-best-seller" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/12/1634237 chromatic returns with a book tuned for anyone whose answer to heterogeneous networks is SAMBA, and wants 500 pages of practical advice (and answers to common problems) distilled from the fountain of SAMBA knowlege. [TABLE NOT SHOWN] -------------------- On Leading vs. Following In The NOS World A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/25/1415230 This Anonymous Coward wishes to put this question before you all: "All of us know how well the Linux community can follow other technologies, case in point, Samba. I have to wonder when Linux will reach the point where it begins to lead the way vs. follow. A technology such as Linux Directory Services could be such a opportunity. Could Linux developers create a client/server based NOS that does not have to be bent, twisted, patched, or hacked to work with the leading OS's? Could we develop a new set of server processes which communicate with workstations through a custom built client?" -------------------- IPv6 Over OpenBSD A bsd article from the "Is-Mr-Freely-there?" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/053244 darkuncle writes: "While doing some research into setting up an OpenBSD box as a firewall/NAT box/DHCP server for my home network, I ran across a cool writeup at 2600 Australia about how to implement IPv6 on OpenBSD. For anybody that's been thinking about exploring IPv6, this article (along with the FAQ linked above) provides some good starting points. " -------------------- Red Hat Ventures To Fund Open Source A articles article from the "putting-more-money-into-the-world" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1357221 joel_archer writes "According to this article on C|Net Red Hat Ventures division will take $500,000 to $2 million stakes in new companies specializing in open-source software and Internet infrastructure technology. Red Hat said it hopes to identify new business opportunities through the funding of start-ups. " -------------------- Dreadling Released A articles article from the "rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0837204 halxd2 writes: "Dreadling has finally been released. It's like Quake for Palm. The site says Handspring is not working yet, but they promise to work on it. This is really fun. The shareware version plays very well on my Palm III. I think I'll be buying more batteries." -------------------- Statistics On Free Software projects A articles article from the "cool-bunch-of-stats" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0941256 GenericBoy writes: "The first edition of The Orbiten Free Software Survey is out online. Some of the stats are number of authors and projects, the top 10 contributing authors, how many MB are in all of the free software projects put together (!) and a bunch more. " Now, as they themselves point out in the their Scope and Method, the methodology is crude, and I don't think Orbiten could quite submit it to Nature yet or anything, but it's an interesting bunch of stats. -------------------- Slashdot Prepares for a Server Move A articles article from the "everything-goes-better-with-whiskey" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1720204 At about 10pm Eastern Time tonight, the overworked and mentally deranged Slashdot crew will make the transition from our current overburdened setup to our brand spanking new hardware over at Exodus. It'll take a few minutes for us to dump the existing data over there, and a second story will announce when this actually occurs, but at that moment, any comments posted here will be lost. We've tested the new metal pretty extensively, but none of us are planning on sleeping much. Bug reports can go to CowboyNeal (who plans to not sleep until friday anyway ;) Don't say we didn't warn ya ;) Update: 05/09 09:48 by CN: You can also post bugs at our SourceForge bugs page so that you can see what's already been filed, and make the transition that much smoother. -------------------- Larry Ellison's Next NC -- But Not Yet For You A articles article from the "can-I-have-one-if-I-home-school?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1342225 An Anonymous Coward (and numerous others -- thanks) have written with news of Larry Ellison's (not Oracle's) new venture. "$199 for Network PC (w/o monitor). Local storage in flash memory, operating system on CD only. (No HD). 64M ram, 266Mhz Pentium-Class. Small Footprint." Added to which, cr@ckwhore added this link to ZDNet coverage of the device and pointed out " This thing costs $199, and has more power than the i-opener or that other websurfer thing ... get the tools back out ... this one is coming apart soon!!" The gimmick is that for now, no one can buy one for personal use (must wait till later in the year) -- but you can pay to contribute a NIC machine to a public school. -------------------- John Cash Leaves id Software for Blizzard A articles article from the "but-I-still-can't-play-diablo-2" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1811213 Jacek Fedorynski writes "John Cash has left id Software to work on a yet unannounced project at Blizzard. Here's Graeme Devine's .plan update on the subject." -------------------- Mozilla Junkbuster-like Feature Removed A articles article from the "at-whose-request?" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1410222 The source code for this news story is the bugzilla report, so read the source if you really want to know what's going on. Mozilla's M15 build has a feature to block webpage images that come from another site: it blocks banner ads. The feature's a little buggy, but it could probably be worked out. Four weeks ago, the feature was removed: "it went the way of management decree" says a Netscape employee. It sounds like AOL-Time-Warner-Netscape didn't want an ad-unfriendly feature in the web browser they're financing. But Mozilla contributors say this has been misinterpreted. What's the real story? "Please don't jump to conclusions." That's the advice from the developer whose bugzilla postings got people concerned in the first place. OK, so let's take this slow. Oh, and - this is the second story on Slashdot today that puts generous, overworked open-source contributors under the microscope, and I feel a little bad about that. I hope they understand we're not denigrating their efforts, and that we are grateful for their work. The feature at issue here lets you block images from a webpage if they come from a foreign site. If you're reading www.slashdot.org, any images from www.foreignsite.net will simply not be loaded. Say, hypothetically, www.doubleclick.net. That would be one example. Is this the most important feature in the world? Not really. But is it important? Yes. Not just because it blocks most ad banners. It also eliminates what Richard Smith calls web bugs: a technique which can track you across the net without your knowing. The extra privacy is probably a good thing. (On the bright side, the feature that blocks foreign-site cookies is still in place; this is a very good idea.) One thing that complicates the issue is that the image-blocking feature was having a few problems. The example given was that, on AltaVista's homepage, the "submit" button graphic comes from a domain owned by the same parent company - but because the domain name is different, the button does not appear. There was concern that users might not understand this. A proposed alternative was to add a dialog warning of such unexpected behavior, and/or to give users more options for how graphics would be blocked. My thinking is that the problems could have been solved. The person in charge of UI design issues suggested a design workaround that probably would have made the feature quite usable. I should point out that just because this bug has been marked as WONTFIX, that doesn't mean it won't be reopened; this has happened thousands of times. Actually, now the bug has been marked INVALID, indicating the removal of the feature from the menu is not considered a bug but ... a feature. Well, OK, so its removal was intentional; will the feature be re-added later? Possibly. But why was this feature removed? In mid-April, shortly after it had disappeared from the current build, one volunteer spoke to a Netscape employee and summarized events as "management had told them to strip the feature." This sounded uncomfortably like AOL influencing the browser design to suit their needs. I suspect that the Time-Warner media empire might take in a few dollars from banner ads. I suspect they might not like giving users a way to block almost all banner ads with just a few clicks. They don't mind a small percentage of us using a squid proxy, Junkbusters, or creative /etc/hostsing. But to turn that power over to everyone would seriously threaten their revenue stream. As one might expect, the preview release of Netscape 6, the "AOL version" of the browser that was spun off of the Mozilla project, has a preferences dialog that looks a lot like Mozilla's except when it comes to this feature. The foreign-cookie blocker is in place; the foreign-image blocker is not. (But they spun it off an earlier release - maybe the feature wasn't written then; I don't know.) One of the volunteer developers, at least, has been loudly protesting the implication that anything is wrong. On kuro5hin.org, they are free to state their case and there's some good discussion. And this morning, the same volunteer who originally logged the "went the way of management decree" message appended another log entry, worth reading in full: "This has gotten a little out of control. The only thing Steve Morse informed me was that as of now, the image blocking prefs have been *publicly* removed from the build. This means that though you CAN still retrieve the feature if you so desire, the menu options and interface are not -- by default -- accessible. This is done often for testing purposes; if something you're working on seems to be conflicting with the image blocking module, you can simply opt to turn it off to complete your work. Who the heck said anything about it being removed permanently? Admittedly, my note wasn't clear, but I think blaming AOL for the supposed 'removal' of this feature is absurd and a little conspiracist, don't you think? To the news sites carrying this: I'm sorry, but what we have here is a nonissue. [...] "To clarify: the ONLY piece of information Steve gave me was that the feature, as of now, did not appear to be in the latest builds, but really was. His words that the feature 'went the way of management' decree simply refer to the fact that 'management' (NOT AOL management or even AOL-related, mind you) told him to turn the image blocking preference off by default in the latest nightly builds (probably so some technical issues that the feature's causing can be ironed out). That's it - I apologize for the ambiguity of my original words, but they never meant to imply the removal of this feature. Nor did Steve's." I'm a little skeptical of what would be accomplished by removing this feature from the menu and dialog, but then I'm not the one who's working on the source, am I? I'm less skeptical about all this now than I was this morning. Part of what worried me was this same volunteer's earlier comment on kuro5hin.org: "...there's still quite a easy way to get the image blocking preferences back (IMHO, I believe they were removed in the first place because it is ads that heavily supports Netcenter), by adding a certain line in your prefs.js file." But in email today, he said that this was just a guess and he no longer believes it's true. Fair enough. Getting any developers to talk about this bug has been like pulling teeth. Only one of the developers I contacted (repeatedly) even bothered to return my email. What's important to understand is that having to restore the preferences by editing a Javascript preferences text file isn't the same as having it in the right-click menu. If people could block ads with a right-click and just a little poking around, the nature of the web would change drastically. Finally, here's the same volunteer, again on kuro5hin.org: "This has been blown way out of proportion. "I am now hearing from other NSCP employees that this feature has only been taken out temporarily due to complications with the PSM module. "Furthermore, can you all _please_ stop assuming things from Steve's statement? Steve said it went the way of management decree. This means whatever happened to the image prefs, it came by way of a couple people labeled 'management' (not AOL management, nor AOL-related in any way, mind you). _I_ was the one who suggested the feature was stripped. In reality, this feature may be being improved on, may have been removed temporarily (this happens often to many commonly used features in testing), or a number of other things that would explain its current disappearance. "Please don't jump to conclusions." OK. And those are nice hypotheticals for what could be something perfectly ordinary. If the explanation is that simple, though, I wish that someone else had just answered my email to say so. The nice thing about an open-source web browser is that, even if M16 comes out with a NoPrivacy(tm) feature that uploads everything you do directly to whitehouse.gov, we're all free to fork our own project with the M15 source. We can include this feature or any other. Conversely, Mozilla is not Netscape 6; AOL is free to add or remove whatever features they like when they release 6.0.1. But, the official release of Mozilla will be widely distributed. I hope its functionality will be all it could be. If you want the Mozilla development team to make this feature work, and keep it in the next builds, post a comment below to let them know it's important to you. And be nice. They work hard. -------------------- Welcome to the New Slashdot Server A articles article from the "HELLO-MY-NAME-IS-BRAK" department sent by CmdrTaco /articles/00/05/10/0345206.shtml -------------------- Does Open Source Separate Business from Technology? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/05/02/2357247.shtml hornerj asks: "I've noticed quite a few pundits commenting on how the Open Source movement goes against the standard business model. I've come to believe that it not only goes against it, it rewrites it. Could it be possible that, with the shift from marketing software to marketing services, the business suits are being forced out of the technology pipeline? If IT businesses shift to providing services, will the suits, which historically make software releases buggy, bloated, and premature, be taken out of the decision process? Without a suit forcing an unready software release, it only makes sense that software will get better and better." -------------------- Intel Open Sources Itanium A articles article from the "open-the-spec-brudda" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/10/1224222.shtml Quite a number of people have recognized the power of open source development - Intel definitely has by opening the specs for Itanium. They've got major blueprints up on the Web. Good sign of the success of open development - but I wonder if AMD's resurgence has anything to do with this. -------------------- Napster Bans Metallica Fans A articles article from the "i-never-got-my-nick-anyway" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/10/1246256.shtml W00dDuCK noted that Napster has banned the 300,000 users that Metallica reported were pirating copyrighted music. Moments later, all 300,000 created new accounts. This isn't over yet. -------------------- ESA Scans SF Books For Ideas A science article from the "recognize-the-skillz" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/science/00/05/10/1227245.shtml cyberm writes: "The European Space Agency has started a project to scan science fiction books for new ideas and technologies. " I like this idea - and not just because I have a massive science fiction book collection. If you look at the past, science fiction authors have routinely come up with the inventions of tomorrow - Jules Verne is a great example of classical science fiction that did so, but today's hard science fiction authors, like Kim Stanley Robinson, or David Brin are building tomorrow, IMHO. -------------------- BSDCon 2000: Oct. 14-20 A bsd article from the "NP:-When-doves-cry" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/10/108215 Should you be anywhere near the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, Calif. in mid-October then you'll be perfectly placed to attend this year's BSD Conference. More details can be had from the Conference Web site, or from the precis you'll see if you read on. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Fri, 12 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 11:00:04 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/12/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Playstation Emulation On The Dreamcast A articles article from the "now-that's-a-trick" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/10/179207 -------------------- EU Ministers Approve ".eu" Top-Level Domain A articles article from the "eh-tu-eh-yoo" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/10/228219 -------------------- FreshPorts A bsd article from the "I-love-the-smell-of-fresh-ports-in-the-morning" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/10/1014226 -------------------- Sony Playstation 2 North America Launch A articles article from the "that's-a-base-price-ma'am-" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/0519234 -------------------- FTC Settles With Big CD Makers-Cheaper CDs Coming? A articles article from the "could-be-maybe" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/1322231 -------------------- Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts A features article from the "DMCA-is-about-more-than-music-and-video-" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/0153247 -------------------- The Perl Black Book A books article from the "not-that-kind-of-black-book" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/17/1310207 -------------------- An MP3 Update A articles article from the "too-legit-to-quit!" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/1346241 -------------------- A For-Profit Trip To The Moon A science article from the "where's-jules-verne?" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/1325230 -------------------- MSIE's Cookies Are Public A articles article from the "who-else-has-known-about-this?" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/173257 -------------------- Is HTML Copyrightable? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0131249 -------------------- Co-Evolving Robots At Brandeis A articles article from the "nutty-nutty-neato-nutty" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/0316230 -------------------- Preview Helix Code's "Evolution" A articles article from the "getting-it-rolled-out" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/2223203 -------------------- Material From Solar System's Earliest Moments? A articles article from the "why-the-last-time-I-saw-*that*-chunk-of-metal" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/031234 -------------------- How Much Manpower Is Behind Your Help Desk? A askslashdot article from the "how-much-support-is-enough?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/06/1512219 -------------------- KDE 1.90 (2.0 Beta) A articles article from the "I-got-GUI-all-over-my-CLI" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/1248244 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sat, 13 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/13/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Information As A Global Public Good A articles article from the "freedom" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/1246239 -------------------- Media On MS Asking Slashdot To Remove Comments A articles article from the "other-opinions" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/136223 -------------------- China Mountain Zhang A books article from the "no-pollyanna-story" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1455204 -------------------- Censorship != Innovation A features article from the "angry-young-man" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/1421258 -------------------- ACLU Launches Privacy Lawsuit Against Yahoo! A articles article from the "going-after-the-big-ones" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/130215 -------------------- Mirsky Makes "Open Business Plans" A articles article from the "i-love-this-idea" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/138233 -------------------- Network Solutions "Owns" Your Domain Name! A articles article from the "you-gotta-be-kidding-me" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/2141250 -------------------- Cisco's IP Phones - Seven Digits And Cat5 A articles article from the "what-took-you-guys-so-long?!" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/005203 -------------------- Gun Sales Halted By FBI Computer Glitch A articles article from the "errrr-can-we-redact-this-"shall-not"-business-yet?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/0314204 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sun, 14 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/14/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Playstation2 Low-Down A articles article from the "get-ready-to-tekken" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1120249 Boofo writes "The skinny on what will be in the playstation 2 Firewire, USB, PCMCIA, a fill rate of 2.4 billion pixels a second and draw 20 million polygons a second....blows the doors off a pentium III with a Voodoo III." -------------------- Redhat's New Web Site A articles article from the "hey-look-at-that" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1128220 Jonathan Ocab wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has redone their site. You'll notice a summary of both Freshmeat and Slashdot stories on the page, linkage to User Friendly, as well as lots of javascript mouseovers to consume bandwidth. -------------------- IBM and Dell Announce $16 billion Technology Pact A articles article from the "not-so-strange-bedfellows" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1133218 Jason Spangler writes "IBM and Dell announced a technology pact in which Dell will buy storage, microelectronics, networking, and display technology from IBM. The deal also includes patent cross-licensing and collaboration in future product development." -------------------- 70,000 copies of Linux hit India A articles article from the "flood-the-country" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1145229 Tom writes "Just saw this on Linux Weekly News: A magazine in India (called "PC Quest") apparently just carried RedHat 5.2++ on their March cover CD. Claims the focus of the issue is corporate (whatever that means), and that the articles would be available on their website RSN. Apparently they do it every year - accompanying press release claims quarter of a million Linux CDs so far." -------------------- Mozilla-dot-party 2.0 A articles article from the "shake-your-groove-thang" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1149238 Ludvig A. Norin writes "Mozilla.org is throwing the one year anniversary party at the Sound Factory in San Francisco. If it gets even remotely as fun as last year, I'll be happy to travel from Sweden, like I did last year! " Gotta wait until April, but they're gonna have EBN live. -------------------- Feature:A Brave New World A features article from the "from-grand-master-hackers" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/121242 Alan Cox has once again given us an essay that is worth your time to read. he talks about something that is all to often on the front of my mind- especially here at LinuxWorld. He writes about "The Suits", money, Linux, why you should care, and what to do about it. -------------------- Slashdot LinuxWorld Awards A articles article from the "and-the-award-goes-to" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/143225 You've been waiting all week for the most hotly contested Slashdot/LinuxWorld Awards (which we created this morning while nate was in the shower). The nominees were submitted by anyone who happened to pass our booth this morning, and the winners were selected by our impartial (cough) judges. Hit the link to see what you missed at LWCE. -------------------- Perfect tie knot mathematically found A articles article from the "what-geek-wears-a-suit?" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/1518245 An anonymous reader writes "Thomas Fink and Yong Mao of Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory have discovered six new "aesthetically pleasing" tie knots. Now that the perfect tie knot has been mathematically proven, will geeks everywhere flock to ties?" No. -------------------- Microsoft claims Linux provides weak value A articles article from the "NT-total-cost-of-ownership-lower???" department sent by sengan http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/236243 Microsoft's Ed Muth (him again) is claiming that Linux offers little value since it has fewer off-the-shelf apps, and no long term development road map. Moreover it suffers from a lack of integration between the OS and the apps, which is needed so that users can drag barcharts between Excel and Word. (Heard of Corba? No I guess not). Indeed Ed claims Linux usage figures are inflated. Finally, it must be obvious that good programmers won't code for free so they can't be good -- just like Van Gogh could not have been a good artist. If nothing else, Ed's good at rhetoric -- "Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable" implies nicely that NT is obviously more scalable. But his outburst is somewhat odd given that Microsoft's trial is not over, and the SIIA is recomending it be broken up. Thanks Alex Prestin for this link. -------------------- JDK 1.2, Toshiba-IRDA, LJ, Fast Math libs, A articles article from the "nice-stuff" department sent by sengan http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/04/2332246 jdesbonnet writes "Java 2 SDK preview is available". There is a bzipped file on his site, but I did not download it. edgy writes "According to LinuxHQ, Toshiba has relented and has released specifications for IrDA so that Toshiba laptops can use their built-in infrared ports." 3fer writes " The site interactive.linuxjournal.com is now open. Anybody who subscribes to LJ can now search all previous issues via the site. " It's really worth a visit. Tramm Hudson writes "After quite a long time, Digital (now Compaq) has released fast math libraries for Linux. Many people have been using DU's (now Tru-64) compilers to take advantage of the faster routines, but this runs afoul of the rather restrictive licensing on the output of the compiler. The hope is that this signals a possible first step towards releasing the DU compilers for Linux. Possibly one of the most discussed topics on comp.os.linux.alpha is the lack of high performance compilers for Alpha Linux. There is so much computational horsepower in these chips, but egcs just isn't harnessing it... " Finally ASUGeek writes "Reuters has retracted the satellite crack story." Update: 03/05 05:55 by S: Now AntiOnline says Reuters did not retract the story, and NASA's records indicate the satellite drifted by an abnormally high amount. Thanks to Kythe. -------------------- What GUIs Came Before X11? A askslashdot article from the "knowing-your-history" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/04/1321234 Avi Bercovich asks: "We all know the base facts about X11. Built by Scheifler and Gettys et al at MIT and DEC, for look 'n feel impaired, networked bitmap displays. But what about the details? Now it would seem from what I've read that it has roots in X10 and something called W. But I've had a hard time finding out anything online about these ancestral systems. Where are there articles published on these systems? So who's got the lowdown, URL-pointers or juicy personal stories on our GUI/Windowing pre-history?" (There's more...) -------------------- Slashback: Taxes, Fraudulence, Woodland Creatures A articles article from the "dritte-mal" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/0557259 Skipping, hopping (and bumbling amd wheezing) toward inevitable perfection, we're pleased to bring you another handful of updates, re-instatements, "that is no longer the operative statement" disclaimers and at least one general thought provoker. After francokleptomania, restoring GNOME dignity. Bob Smith writes: "KDE beta was anounced but GNOME beta wasn't." Well, GNOME's latest freeze stage on the way to 1.2 was announced back in January, and Miguel answered questions about the state of GNOME in March, but point taken. With all the developments in GNOME, neither Miguel or his programs are likely to hurt for Slashdot coverage. You can grab the beta Bob mentions here. Now, gentlemen, is there a way to perhaps merely maim this Golden Goose? Misch writes to point out this item on "ABCNews [which]reports that the House of Representatives has passed an extension of the Internet Tax Moratorium. Looks like it's tax free time on the Internet (depending on where you shop)." Barely enough for a coven ... nullstar writes: "The NTIA has posted its report to Congress concerning the comments it received in regard to section 1201(g) of the DMCA, which deals with exceptions to the prohibition on circumventing encryption techniques intended to protect access to copyrighted materials. They basically claim, 'it's too soon to tell what effects the restriction will have on encryption research, etc., as the exception doesn't go into effect until October, so we're not yet recommending changes in the wording of the law.' Only 13 people submitted comments. " Conflict of interest is an interesting term here ... full_tide writes "2600 has posted some news about how the MPAA is trying to get Martin Garbus (2600's hot-shot defense attorney) disqualified for a conflict of interest. Cryptome has posted a very long, but equally interesting, reply brief Mr. Garbus has writting in response to the injunction (damn, he's good). Also, the MPAA's web site is back up after a DDOS attack a few weeks back, and much downtime since. They appear to have added some fresh, juicy propaganda concerning the case." Yessir, the gen-yoo-ine article, you betcha, mate. Jai From Insane Hardware writes: "Well, you may have heard all the rumours and whatnot about the Australian Fake Athlon deal and I confirm that it is true. But we have more info on the subject like on how they came about arriving in Oz and how they leaked thru the channel. This issue is very "close to home" for me so it's worthwhile reading for all the Aussies that go to your site. We also have exactly how the chips were modded. link " Meanwhile, Netsnipe wrote to point out that "Lucien Wells has updated his Web site Techwatch's coverage of the AMD Athlon tampering scandal. "Techwatch has now received press releases from two distributors involved, DMA and RTV Computers which claim that 'Neither RTV Computers Pty Ltd nor DMA (Direct Memory Access Pty Ltd) whom have their stickers on the CPU's knowingly at fault in this situation. At present legal action is underway to find the source of this problem.' At this stage AMD has not yet responded to Techwatch's requests for more information, says Lucien." -------------------- SpamRecycle.com Prosecutes Spammers A articles article from the "hey-thats-a-great-idea" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/1847242 relyt writes "If you get spam, check out Spam Recycle. Forward them your spam, and they will prosecute the spammers for you, giving you time to do other things. It is also is supported by CAUCE! Send them your spam, and their trained monkeys will poke it, prod it, and kill it. " Somehow I'm skeptical, but hey, I get spammed every 48 hours to buy toner and I don't even own a printer. Sure would be nice if it would stop ;) -------------------- Cable Industry backs Mpeg-4 for Streaming Video A articles article from the "standardization-time" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/1856207 Greyfox writes "This techweb story informs us that the Cable Industry has thrown their chips in with Mpeg4 and will probably want to tweak the codec for streaming video. I'm all for it, I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for. " -------------------- Microsoft vs. Slashdot Update A features article from the "headaches-and-more-headaches" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/2038233 I spent some of yesterday and part of today (Saturday) on the phone with our law firm's intellectual property specialist dicussing Microsoft's attempt to get us to remove reader posts about Kerberos. We're lucky to have a lawyer who "gets it." We're also lucky to have gotten some very favorable press about all of this. -------------------- Black And White: Open Source? A articles article from the "woudn't-it-be-nice" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/2055243 RP writes "It will be if Peter Molyneux (the designer) has his way. I noted this link over on thecitadel.net where he is quoted as saying: "The first thing is my ambition to make the whole of Black & White, the AI engine, the 3D engine, the physics engine, open-source. Then anybody can download and use that stuff. To use it in a commercial product, you have to pay us a royalty, but, you know, absolutely free for enthusiasts to use." If you've seen any screenshots of Black and White, you know this could be exciting. " Very impressive looking stuff. -------------------- Las Alamos Lab: We're OK, You're OK A articles article from the "sir-please-step-*away*-from-the-plutonium-bin" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/0143228 The fires which have been burning as a result of what was intended to be a controlled burn hit Los Alamos, site of the renowned National Laboratory, especially hard. Some have questioned the safety of the lab after this trauma; In addition to being the research site for the first atomic bomb, Los Alamos has remained an important lab for top-secret technology. It's also the site of the nation's 'only active plutonium facility.' According to an AP story, the lab thought that letting reporters tour the facility was the best way to defuse fears that the fires had brought a risk to public health. Hope they're right. -------------------- Los Alamos Lab: We're OK, You're OK A articles article from the "sir-please-step-*away*-from-the-plutonium-bin" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/0143228 The fires which have been burning as a result of what was intended to be a controlled burn hit Los Alamos, site of the renowned National Laboratory, especially hard. Some have questioned the safety of the lab after this trauma; In addition to being the research site for the first atomic bomb, Los Alamos has remained an important lab for top-secret technology. It's also the site of the nation's 'only active plutonium facility.' According to an AP story, the lab thought that letting reporters tour the facility was the best way to defuse fears that the fires had brought a risk to public health. Hope they're right. -------------------- Black Holes Don't Exist??? A articles article from the "pop-science-can-be-fun" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/1339252 OldSoldier writes: "Here is an article that was first published in the April issue of a small SciFi magazine called Analog. The author, John Cramer, is one of two columnists for the Alternate View column and his columns are very thoughtful and more grounded in science than most. In particular, this article states that there is a small but growing group of physicists who have come up with an alternate formulation to Einstein's General Relativity equations that do two rather stunning things. One is that they allow super massive non-black hole objects and the other is that they are able to be quantized. If you like this article, I suggest you go to his index and read some of his previous articles." -------------------- What Happens When Open Source And Work Collide? A askslashdot article from the "sticky-situations" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/016208 Rob Kaper asks: "When being assigned to make changes to the Web site statistics program for one of the sites our company hosts, I was suprised to find that the site was using my own (open source and GPL-ed) program, which I had written long before I started to work at the company. Between my employment and the assignment to update the program for work I have been working on a new, improved version in my spare time. Many of the changes I am implementing or have planned to implement are the same as the ones the company would like as well. I am kind of puzzled and not sure how to continue. What will happen to the copyrights when I start working on the program during work time? Could I include those changes into my open source project? Would I have to reimplement them in my spare time?" (Read on ...) -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Mon, 15 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/15/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - QuakeForge And QuakeWorld Forever Merge A articles article from the "and-then-there-was-one" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/1447248 knghtbrd writes: "QuakeForge and QuakeWorld Forever, two of the largest projects based on Id Software's GPL'd Quake source, are teaming up to bring the world what we believe is the best Quake1 engine on the planet. The result for die-hard Quake players? QWF's cryptographic cheat prevention (which stop speed cheaters and auto-aimers cold) combined with QF's support for a zillion different operating systems. Here's a look at what can be expected along with press release. " -------------------- Pioneer Introduces 1st DVD Recorder (In Japan) A articles article from the "steam-rising-from-the-riaas-forhead" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/152210 sanemind noted that Pioneer has announced the world's first consumer level DVD Recorder. Although they are only available in Japan, and the blanks will cost 30-plus bucks, it's still pretty sweet. -------------------- No More Unreal Ports For Linux? A articles article from the "one-web-one-program-happy-mothers-day" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/1439224 Ant was among the first to write with a link to this article on Blue's News claiming that Epic's new game engine is Direct 3D only, based on statements made at an E3 demo yesterday. Check that link to read the full article, but consider this excerpt: "A major side effect of this is that any future ports of Unreal-engine titles that use the new technology will need to have a completely rewritten rendering system, making Mac and Linux ports significantly more difficult." DoenerMord also wrote, saying "This kind of puts some perspective on recent comments from Tim Sweeney (the man behind the Unreal engine) on Microsoft's breakup ..." -------------------- Google Releases WAP Search Tool A articles article from the "wireless" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/1240252 ChrisUK writes "Google seem to have single-handedly brought html to WAP devices. WAP/Palm users can log on to www.google.com on their devices, and search through Google's web database. Furthermore, the pages that are linked to can be jumped to, and will be converted to wml on the fly. More details can be found here." -------------------- New Internet VCR Service A articles article from the "this-is-cool-but-can-they-do-that?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/2048217 owillis writes: "Recordtv.com allows you to choose what TV shows you want it to record, then come back and play them in realplayer. Legally, they're probably screwed ... but it's cool regardless." The site isn't very slick, but claims to have 50,000 regular users. Their FAQ also says they have a grand total of eight (8) "VCRS" (video-capturing PCs), so that's the limit on what can be recorded at one time right now. This seems even more primed for a lawsuit than iCrave TV. -------------------- Linuxcare Responds To Tim O'Reilly's Article A articles article from the "consider-source-horses-mouth-grain-of-salt" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/0254252 Dave Sifry writes: "I wanted to let you guys know that my response to Tim O'Reilly's recent column about Linuxcare. Things really aren't as bad as some in the press have made it appear. I feel it is important to get a dose of facts into the conversation -- now that we're out of our quiet period and we can talk about what's going on, and all of the neat stuff we've been working on." After all that's been said about LinuxCare, it's good to hear info straight from the top, and that Tim O'Reilly is an active listener. Just remember who's speaking. -------------------- NASA Proposes Launch Solar Sail Vehicle For 2010 A articles article from the "ralph-nader-will-have-to-hire-a-chase-car" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/058238 outcast341 writes: "Apparently, NASA plans to launch a solar sail spacecraft in the year 2010, according to this press release. The the first trip will take about 15 years, traveling about 58 miles per second. The sail will be 440 yards in width, and will be constructed of a reflective carbon-fiber material. 'This will be humankind's first planned venture outside our solar system,' said Les Johnson, manager of Interstellar Propulsion Research at the Marshall Center. 'This is a stretch goal that is among the most audacious things we've ever undertaken.'" (Read more.) -------------------- Motif Released to the Open Source Community A articles article from the "open-group-starts-being-open" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1229207 Mark Hatch writes: "The Open Group has released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community. The Open Group Public license will allow the release of the Motif source code for use, reproduction and distribution on Open Source platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD, without the payment of royalties. The source of Open Motif is available now now available." -------------------- Unreal Engine Linux Ports Not Dead? A articles article from the "i'm-not-dead-yet" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1246201 CookieMnstr|PuF writes: "Brandon Reinhart, programmer at Epic, has updated his .plan file in response to the fear that no more Unreal Engine-based games will be ported to Linux. He faults the Linux community for jumping to the conclusion that Unreal Engine games will not be a reality for the Mac and Linux. Maybe he should read beyond the headlines. " -------------------- The US Had Plan To Nuke The Moon A articles article from the "stupid-use-of-technology" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1238219 Jeffy was one several people this weekend who writes: "According to this article, The U.S. planned on detonating a nuclear bomb on the moon in the fifties to 'one up' the USSR and sway public opinion on the States' military might. An interesting twist to the story is that Carl Sagan was hired to help do the math to make sure the explosion was big enough to see from earth." Well, this isn't really news for nerds, but the whole idea behind nuking the moon strikes me as such a sad commentary on the Cold War that I had to post. The thinking behind this was such a pissing match it astounds me -- but here it is. -------------------- Pioneer Introduces 1st DVD Recorder (In Japan) A articles article from the "steam-rising-from-the-riaas-forehead" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/152210 sanemind noted that Pioneer has announced the world's first consumer level DVD Recorder. Although they are only available in Japan, and the blanks will cost 30-plus bucks, it's still pretty sweet. -------------------- Linuxcare Responds To Tim O'Reilly's Article A articles article from the "consider-source-horse's-mouth-grain-of-salt" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/0254252 Dave Sifry writes: "I wanted to let you guys know that my response to Tim O'Reilly's recent column about Linuxcare. Things really aren't as bad as some in the press have made it appear. I feel it is important to get a dose of facts into the conversation -- now that we're out of our quiet period and we can talk about what's going on, and all of the neat stuff we've been working on." After all that's been said about LinuxCare, it's good to hear info straight from the top, and that Tim O'Reilly is an active listener. Just remember who's speaking. -------------------- NASA Proposes Launch Of Solar Sail Vehicle For 2010 A articles article from the "ralph-nader-will-have-to-hire-a-chase-car" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/058238 outcast341 writes: "Apparently, NASA plans to launch a solar sail spacecraft in the year 2010, according to this press release. The the first trip will take about 15 years, traveling about 58 miles per second. The sail will be 440 yards in width, and will be constructed of a reflective carbon-fiber material. 'This will be humankind's first planned venture outside our solar system,' said Les Johnson, manager of Interstellar Propulsion Research at the Marshall Center. 'This is a stretch goal that is among the most audacious things we've ever undertaken.'" (Read more.) -------------------- Motif Released To The Open Source Community A articles article from the "open-group-starts-being-open" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1229207 Mark Hatch writes: "The Open Group has released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community. The Open Group Public license will allow the release of the Motif source code for use, reproduction and distribution on Open Source platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD, without the payment of royalties. The source of Open Motif is available now now available." -------------------- U.S. Had Plan To Nuke The Moon A articles article from the "stupid-use-of-technology" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1238219 Jeffy was one several people this weekend who writes: "According to this article, The U.S. planned on detonating a nuclear bomb on the moon in the fifties to 'one up' the USSR and sway public opinion on the States' military might. An interesting twist to the story is that Carl Sagan was hired to help do the math to make sure the explosion was big enough to see from earth." Well, this isn't really news for nerds, but the whole idea behind nuking the moon strikes me as such a sad commentary on the Cold War that I had to post. The thinking behind this was such a pissing match it astounds me -- but here it is. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Tue, 16 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 11:00:03 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/16/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Self-Timed ARM Provides Low Power Consumption A articles article from the "making-chips-better" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1314252 hardcorebit writes: "The Amulet Group at the University of Manchester is working on a 'self-timed' or 'asynchronous logic' chip which uses the ARM architecture and instruction set. The benefits? Much lower power consumption, lower EMF emissions, and it works with everything written for the ARM. Their latest effort is 'broadly equivalent' to an ARM9. Anyone had a chance to get their hands on one of these beasts?" -------------------- Web Design Luminary Jeff Zeldman A interviews article from the "too-many-awards-to-count" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1438249 While we're waiting for Metallica and Douglas Adams to get back to us, we might as well go back to interviewing "normal" people. This week's (first) guest is Jeff Zeldman, Web designer extraordinaire. Some people in the design business say the best way to learn what the WWW will look like in six months is to keep up with Jeff's famous www.zeldman.com site. Whether or not this is true, he's certainly written one of the best Web design tutorials ever, and is also one of the prime movers behind the Web Standards Project. There is simply no one better to answer any Web design question you care to post below (hopefully confining yourself to one question per post). -------------------- 19 Patents Given To GPL Community A articles article from the "great-but" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1350207 Justin Mason writes "Raph Levien, Advogato builder, GNOME and Gimp hacker, and general graphics guru, has made 19 patents available for free use by GPLed programs." Raph adds: "I hope to see the dithering code used in free inkjet drivers soon." It's great to see that kind of commitment; if a few hundred more people did that, think where we'd be. On behalf of my BSD-lovin' friends, I asked Raph why the GPL specifically and how he felt about about other licenses; for his reply, "read more"... -------------------- SGIs New Linux Boxes A articles article from the "2x-the-sexxy-for-3x-the-price" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1612239 An anonymous reader noted that SGI has announced their latest Linux Workstation. It ships with the new VPro graphics board... you can also look at some specific configurations for the boxes. As always, it's SGI so it's priced in the stratosphere, but at least it's purple and oh-so-lustworthy. -------------------- Update on "Voices from the Hellmouth" A articles article from the "voices-to-be-heard" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/018222 Our announcement about our intent to publish a book based on the "Hellmouth" series met with more controversy than we expected. In our haste to do something that we felt would help parents, school officials and kids understand something, we neglected to consider the copyright problem presented by using this content. Read on to learn what this means. -------------------- Surviving In The Corporate Republic A features article from the "swimming-against-the-tide" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1358200 -------------------- SGI's New Linux Boxes A articles article from the "2x-the-sexxy-for-3x-the-price" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1612239 An anonymous reader noted that SGI has announced their latest Linux Workstation. It ships with the new VPro graphics board... you can also look at some specific configurations for the boxes. As always, it's SGI so it's priced in the stratosphere, but at least it's purple and oh-so-lustworthy. -------------------- Update On "Voices From The Hellmouth" A articles article from the "voices-to-be-heard" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/14/018222 Our announcement about our intent to publish a book based on the "Hellmouth" series met with more controversy than we expected. In our haste to do something that we felt would help parents, school officials and kids understand something, we neglected to consider the copyright problem presented by using this content. Read on to learn what this means. -------------------- Apple Delays Mac OS X A articles article from the "big-shock" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/1814249 Mad Browser writes:"MacNN is reporting that Apple has delayed MacOS X again until January 2001. They are also reporting that a public beta of OS X will be available this summer. Jobs also said that WebObjects deployment licenses would go from $50,000 to $700. " QuickTime 5 is also tentatively going to be out this summer, as well. -------------------- Transferring Domains From NSI? A askslashdot article from the "abandon-ship!" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/13/2117259 Dr.Doom asks: "So, the latest change to the service agreement by NSI is the last straw. I want to switch registrars, but I've heard some people say that NSI makes it very difficult to do so. My question is how can I do this with the least amount of trouble (and least amount of risk of losing my domains)?" There is some mention of the fact that NSI reserves the right to revoke a domain if it is to be transferred. Does anyone know how likely NSI is to do something like this? Is there any way to prevent it? -------------------- Making Linux Easy With Eazel's Andy Hertzfield A articles article from the "making-things-easy-is-hard" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/176254 Make no mistake. Andy Hertzfeld, Eazel developer and Macintosh forefather, is an Open Source zealot. Forged in the fires of Steve Jobs and Bandley 3, Andy's leading the team to build a kinder, gentler interface for our favorite operating system. I got the opportunity to speak to Andy last week, and I learned a lot about the challenges and victories of thinking different with Linux. -------------------- Making Linux Easy With Eazel's Andy Hertzfeld A articles article from the "making-things-easy-is-hard" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/176254 Make no mistake. Andy Hertzfeld, Eazel developer and Macintosh forefather, is an Open Source zealot. Forged in the fires of Steve Jobs and Bandley 3, Andy's leading the team to build a kinder, gentler interface for our favorite operating system. I got the opportunity to speak to Andy last week, and I learned a lot about the challenges and victories of thinking different with Linux. -------------------- Caltech DNA Sequencer Patent Question A articles article from the "finger-in-every-pot" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/2244200 brusk writes: "An article from this Sunday's Los Angeles Times is a fascinating investigation of the background to the Caltech spinoff company that produced and sells the DNA sequencer that will be responsible for a complete draft of the human genome within a month or two. It appears that despite denials by the developers and Caltech, millions in NSF and other federal grants went into the development of the sequencer. This is supposed to give federal agencies large discounts on their purchases of sequencers and input into how the devices are marketed. This has interesting implications for the future of these for-profit spinoffs from academe. Perhaps even more significantly, the article raises questions about whether the patent application misrepresented the development process, which could invalidate the company's patent on the sequencing technology. This could shake up biotech world." -------------------- Interview/Article on John "maddog" Hall A articles article from the "reigning-king-of-Linux-advocates" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0232234 mister_nate sent us a really cool interview with Jon "Maddog" Hall. I've said this before, but Maddog is the perfect Linux advocate. A lot of Slashdot readers (and I definitely include myself in this statement) can learn a lot by watching the way Jon handles Linux Advocacy. It's amazing. -------------------- Qwest Achieves 100-Mile IP Round-Trip At 40GB/sec A articles article from the "my-that-*is*-fast" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/020211 TheShrike writes: "As reported in the Denver Rocky Mountain News: 'Almost without fanfare, a joint venture of Denver-based Qwest Communications and Dutch telecommunications company KPN has smashed the cyber speed record for transmission of data over the Internet. The joint venture, called KPNQwest, transmitted 40 gigabits of data per second in a 100-mile round-trip connection between Frankfurt and Gernsheim, Germany, last week.'" Add Napster, stir. [16th May, 4:50GMT: Updated headline to read "Gb" not "GB." Thanks, all. -t.] -------------------- Interview/Article On John "maddog" Hall A articles article from the "reigning-king-of-Linux-advocates" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0232234 mister_nate sent us a really cool interview with Jon "Maddog" Hall. I've said this before, but Maddog is the perfect Linux advocate. A lot of Slashdot readers (and I definitely include myself in this statement) can learn a lot by watching the way Jon handles Linux Advocacy. It's amazing. -------------------- Qwest Achieves 100-Mile IP Round-Trip At 40Gb/sec A articles article from the "my-that-*is*-fast" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/020211 TheShrike writes: "As reported in the Denver Rocky Mountain News: 'Almost without fanfare, a joint venture of Denver-based Qwest Communications and Dutch telecommunications company KPN has smashed the cyber speed record for transmission of data over the Internet. The joint venture, called KPNQwest, transmitted 40 gigabits of data per second in a 100-mile round-trip connection between Frankfurt and Gernsheim, Germany, last week.'" Add Napster, stir. [16th May, 4:50GMT: Updated headline to read "Gb" not "GB." Thanks, all. -t.] -------------------- Failure Is Not An Option A articles article from the "houston" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0511255 Bolero writes: "Gene Kranz, the hardboiled flight director during the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle eras now has his own Web site here. He recently wrote a book and Mr. Kranz has included a lot of stuff on his site that didn't make it into the book because it was considered too technical." Failure is not an option. Cool. -------------------- Will Billions Of Nodes Need Biologic Networking? A articles article from the "irvine-so-fine-sounds-like-buddy-holly" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0548213 Stephen Bamattre writes: "There is an interesting research project at the University of California, Irvine, that attempts to create a new concept of networking and distributed architecture, using biological concepts. Interesting, it may a more viable network design for rapid growth. Maybe, some day, we can really kill processes. Check out the paper here." From their overview: "We believe that large scale biological systems, such as the bee or ant colony, have already developed many of the mechanisms needed to satisfy these requirements. We have identified several key principles and mechanisms in these biological systems, and we are now applying them to the design of network services and applications." Surely not a new idea, but a little more concrete as described here than the usual "network is alive" metaphors. The paper is in compressed PostScript and as a Word file. -------------------- Bow Tie Theory: Researchers Map the Web A articles article from the "the-logo-looks-neat" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1228217 Paula Wirth, Web Tinker writes "Scientists from IBM Research, Altavista and Compaq collaborated to conduct the most intensive research study of the Web. The result is the development of the "Bow Tie" Theory. One of the initial discoveries of this ongoing study shatters the number one myth about the Web ... in truth, the Web is less connected than previously thought. You can read more about it " -------------------- Apple's Darwin Runs XFree4 A articles article from the "cool-demonstrations" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1325237 Mneme writes "Looks like Apple finally has the open source core of MacOS X up and running on Intel boxen. We'll have to wait until the WWDC is over before we'll get our hands on it, but it's still a very pleasing development. Check out a story about the demonstration, or click below to read the message from the Darwin Developer's list. -------------------- Microsoft Develops Security-Path for Outlook A articles article from the "well-duh" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1232220 Reemi writes "On Microsoft's Office update-site they write: The Outlook® E-mail Security Update is in development... Since access to certain file attachments in Outlook is restricted by the update, users will need an alternate method for distributing files... For a list of file types impacted by this update, read File Types Impacted by the Outlook 98/2000 E-mail Security Update. It seems Microsoft is setting a new standard: Emails without attachments. " -------------------- Object Oriented Perl A books article from the "all-those-oysters-cringe" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/17/105226 chromatic has brought us yet another pithy programming-book review, this time of Damien Conway's Object Oriented Perl. This sounds like a good book for those interested in not only an overview, but a book that pushes them into at least a few practical applications -- but not one too intimidating to learn from. [TABLE NOT SHOWN] -------------------- Corel - Inprise/Borland Merger Off A articles article from the "too-bad-so-sad" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1412245 hwestiii was the first to e-mail with the word that the oft-troubled merger between Corel and Inprise/Borland has been called off. The press release has made its way onto Yahoo! so far, with the given reason being the decline of Corel's stock price making the deal impossible to close. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Wed, 17 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/17/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AMD's Duron Slated For June A articles article from the "rolling-out-the-competition" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1238228 Devil Ducky writes: "AMD announced that they will release the Duron sometime in mid June, instead of last April. The Duron is intended to compete on price with the fabled Intel Celeron. Duron will include 128KB of primary and 64KB of integrated cache, meanwhile Athlons contain 128KB primary and no integrated cache. When released it will be available in 600, 650, and 700MHz with plans for 750MHz soon. The story even makes some quick comments on the names Celeron and Duron." -------------------- What AI Elements Could Improve the Web? A askslashdot article from the "stuff-to-think-about" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/025224 DavidpFitz asks: "I'm entering my final year of my Artificial Intellgience/Computer Science degree at Birmingham Uni. (UK). The trouble is that I can't decide what to do for my final project. I'd like to do something of practical value delivered over the web (things like an intelligent Slashdot filter spring to mind :-), but I always come up with reasons against everything I think of. Can anybody think of ways they would like a web site to react more intelligently that they currently do. Clever shopping carts? More targeted news? Both of these are rubbish, I think - so more interesting and complex ideas are welcome! The main thing, is that it has to have a strong AI element in it, not just appearing to be clever." -------------------- Michael Chaney asks Microsoft to Open Kerberos A features article from the "get-with-the-program" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1321225 Remember Michael Chaney? He's the Nashville-based Linux consultant who saved Microsoft's Hotmail service from a Christmas 1999 outage by kindly paying a $35 NSI registration fee for them. Michael has always humbly maintained that this little act of bacon-saving was more of a Slashdot thing than a personal act on his part. Now, in the same spirit of generosity, Michael has some suggestions for the World's Largest Software Company about how to back gracefully away from its most recent attempt to keep its proprietary Kerberos Protocol extensions secret while still appearing to "publish" them. -------------------- New Mega Alphas A articles article from the "big-honkin'-hardware-to-lust-after" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1655212 GoNINzo writes: "Compaq has just announced the new Alpha servers. The have between 8 and 32 CPUs, run with a 64-bit 731 MHz Alpha chip, and current are distributed with Digital Unix or VMS. How soon before these machines are shipping with Linux preinstalled?" -------------------- The Roots of BSD A bsd article from the "NP:-Tunnel-of-love" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0823216 drix was the first to write in with this "Standard fare roots of the BSD/hacker movement piece over at Salon. The picture of the FreeBSD devil guy is pretty cool." This is actually another chapter in Andrew Leonard's Free Software Project online book. Well written, but occasional errors (FreeBSD and BSDI have not merged, for example) cast doubt on some of the facts. Informed comment from people who were there would be appreciated. -------------------- The Roots Of BSD A bsd article from the "NP:-Tunnel-of-love" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0823216 drix was the first to write in with this "Standard fare roots of the BSD/hacker movement piece over at Salon. The picture of the FreeBSD devil guy is pretty cool." This is actually another chapter in Andrew Leonard's Free Software Project online book. Well written, but occasional errors (FreeBSD and BSDI have not merged, for example) cast doubt on some of the facts. Informed comment from people who were there would be appreciated. -------------------- Abandonware, or 'Allaire Forums Open Sourced' A articles article from the "verbifying-adjectives" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1512238 xtra sends news that Allaire has "open sourced" its Forums software (web-based threaded discussion groups). You can either rush off to check it out or read a bit of commentary below about abandoned software. -------------------- Totally 31337 Quickies A articles article from the "and-it-fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/1713224 bigstripes sent us a couple of websites that game chairs: The RocknRide and the Simcraft for people for whom strapping a subwoofer to your chest just isn't enough. Curious what the MST3k guys are doing? bill notes that most of the guys are working on a website Timmy Bighands, although Joel is doing his own thing. QuasEye sent us a link to a review of The Matrix: The Musical. I need footage of this, but it sounds frightening beyond measure. Frank Martini pointed us to a VinylVideo who are hawking a kit that lets your old record player play video. Sun Tzu pointed us to a list of milestones in a programmers life, while jamesoutlaw sent in a site that caricatures common discussion group personalities in Usenet ... and surprisingly enough Many of the stereotypes apply just as well to Slashdot. Schmam notes that Stevie Case, one of the designers for Quake II, now working with Ion Storm, famous for being Romero's GF, and for beating him at Quake, as well as being hot ... well she's in playboy, but you're only allowed to read the article or else I'm telling your mom. Hey, its nice to note that Slashdot took 2 People's Voice Webby Awards one in the Print & Zines and the other in Community. I'm not exactly sure what it proves tho (besides the fact that you guys like us enough to fill out a form) but thanks to those who voted us. May peace and prosperity follow you (and may the Webbies not sell your e-mail address to people bent on selling you toner). And now for the strang(er) part of the quickies, HelLfiRe leads us towards The Stinkymeat Project which is, well, a photo documentary of a plate of rotting meat. Read only on a settled stomach. Richard Stevens sent us an Amazingly Strange cartoon strip: This guy draws inane pictures based on the idiotic titles people send him. If you want something slightly better drawn, mkoscica sent us plif which is really twisted, but funny. -------------------- Apple Demonstrates A Dual-G4 Power Mac A articles article from the "toldja-so-toldja-so-did-not-did-not" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/2130211 caligula writes: "Just saw this [macnn.com report]: 'Tuesday, May 17 updated 2:30 pm, top stories. During the hardware keynote of WWDC, which ended just minutes ago, Apple demonstrated a dual-processor G4 Power Mac running Mac OS X. Of note to developers is that Cocoa/Carbon applications do not need to be changed in any way to take advantage of multi-processors. Benchmark demonstrations ran roughly twice as fast on the dual-G4 system compared to the single-G4 Power Mac that was on stage. No mention was given as to when these multiprocessor G4s would ship, although it was stressed that it would not be happening any time soon but that they would definitely be out by next year's WWDC.'" JonahLee pointed out a related link on macosrumors.com, and migooch noted this slightly more informative ZDne t story. Mortals still must wait at least 'til January. -------------------- Today's Helping Of The DMCA A yro article from the "thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/233208 El pointed us to this nice DMCA story in UpsideToday. Time Warner says that it needs "effective protection, both technological and legal, against unauthorized uses of copyrighted works," showing that even AOL-TW agrees that the DMCA is intended to restrain personal use of copyrighted works rather than copying. For anyone around Stanford University, note that a protest is being organized for May 18 and 19. -------------------- Act Like A Real Star Trek Captain: Talk A articles article from the "Hab-SoSlI'-Quch!-qoSraj-botIvjaj" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/053217 Snaller writes: "Partnering up with Game Commander developers Mindmaker, Interplay is promising the world that when their space sim Star Trek: Klingon Academy is released, Trekker happy players will be able to order the crews around simply by speaking to the game - the press release does not specify if it has to be in Klingonese." And if Loki ports it, perhaps they will also come up with a robust, generalized voice recognition system for Linux! :) -------------------- Canadian Gov't Keeps Detailed Citizen Database A articles article from the "don't-worry-we're-from-the-government" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/0427253 Byron Sonne wrote with word that Canada's Privacy Commissioner Bruce Phillips, in his annual report to Parliament, today criticized a national database kept by the Human Resources Department, calling it "tantamount to a citizen profile." -------------------- 'The X-Files' Returns For 8th Season A articles article from the "we-won't-get-fooled-again" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1226257 Shturmovik[KGB] writes "It's official - Scully and her assistant, what's his name, that guy, umm, Mulder, that's right, are back for another season, though it looks as if Agent Mulder will appear in only 6-9 episodes: but then, as long as we have Agent Scully, who cares...? Check out the official announcement here at the FOX XF Web site. " -------------------- John Romero Makes idOS? A articles article from the "yet-another-distro" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1233221 Ant was the first to write in about the potential of John Romero's idOS. That's right - Carmack is apparently considering developing and releasing an open-source, gaming OS. The article goes on to say that he's been interested in the fundamentals of things, poking around in the guys of Linux for a while - but I would be interested to see this piece of news confirmed elsewhere as well. -------------------- Goodbye, Number Nine A articles article from the "thanks-for-the-memory" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1136254 homerj79 writes: "Just got word from Ace's Hardware that Number Nine Visual Technology has shut its doors forever. This is sad news to hear about an old schooler in the graphics business. #9 was a pioneer in the graphics industry, introducing the first 128-bit chip, and the first 256-color and 16.7 millon-color cards. #9 was on a downward spiral as of late, with the company selling all of its technology and assets to S3 last year. This is the saddest news I've heard since Hercules announced it was going under. EBNews has a nice article on the company here." -------------------- The Slashdot DDoS: What Happened? A articles article from the "from-the-horses-mouth" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1318233 What follows this introduction is a rough summary of the crazy hell that we endured with the intermittant DDoS[?] attacks we experienced last Thursday through Saturday. I'm sorry it took this long to put this together and tell you what happened, but as these things go, we were too busy trying to solve the problem to waste time talking about it. Big thanks to Andover.Net's Netops PatL, Martin and Liz, as well as Slashcode-wranglers PatG, Chris, Marc, Kurt and CowboyNeal, plus scoop (from freshmeat) and others who chimed in along the way. Tomorrow is part2: A good description of how the new Slashdot @ Exodus works. -------------------- U.S. Wants Large Cyberpolicing Powers A articles article from the "bad-idea" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1411239 LindaAthena writes "Thus were the words from a French report on a meeting of the G8 nations and 150 representatives of companies from the communications and information technology sectors. A summit on cyber crime was held in Paris with the U.S. pushing for total police power to bypass due process and other countries' laws to catch cyber-criminals (as defined, of course, by the U.S.). Note that public images of nudity in France are rated "G" while U.S. protected "racial hatred speech" is a crime there. The article from Le Monde can be found in the original French or viewed in Babelfish. " A number of people have submitted this recently from the recent G8 meeting. The U.S. apparently pushed very hard for major cyberpolicing actions, while France was one of the few nations in the group that adopted a more intelligent long-term view. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Thu, 18 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/18/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Office Assistant: Yet Another Security Hole A articles article from the "just-so-damn-fitting" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1529247 A lot of people have been submitting the news from ZD-Net concerning the security hole found in the Microsoft Office Assistant, Satan the Paper-Clip. Er...rather, "Clippy". Dildog, of @Stake, found the hole, which is quite similar to the recent Outlook security that allows for automatic scripting. -------------------- Borland C++ Can No Longer Be Used To Make Free Software? A askslashdot article from the "now-this-can't-be-good" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/16/0215259 Craig Miskell asks: "Bought a magazine today (PC Authority - Australian magazine). It contained Borland C++ Builder 3, and the licence contained the following, which I read to mean that you can't release the source code to your programs that you create using C++Builder: 'GENERAL TERMS THAT APPLY TO COMPILED PROGRAMS AND REDISTRIBUTABLES You may write and compile (including byte-code compile) your own application programs using the Software, including any libraries and source code included for such purpose with the Software. You may reproduce and distribute, in executable form only, programs which you create using the Software without additional license or fees, subject to all of the conditions in this statement.' What dya think about that? Seems odd to me." Me, too. Borland better bandage that foot before it stains the carpet... Updated Sorry. There seems to nothing to worry about. Read on for a statement direct from Inprise. -------------------- Dialectizer Shut Down A articles article from the "this-is-sad-bork-bork-bork" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/1240227 endisnigh writes: "Another fun, interesting and innovative online resource goes the way of corporate ignorance - due to threats of legal action, the author of the dialectizer, a Web page that dynamically translates another Web page's text into an alternate 'dialect' such as 'redneck' or 'Swedish Chef' and displays the result, has packed up his dialectizer and gone home - see the notice here." -------------------- E3: Linux Still Waiting In The Wings A articles article from the "how-much-for-a-critical-mass?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/189220 James Hills sent us the following report from the E3 Expo. Not exactly read-em-and weep, but James has pinpointed some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the current position of Linux in the gaming world. (Read more.) -------------------- Court Rules For Connectix, Against Sony A articles article from the "good-news-for-reverse-engineering" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/216207 Robotech_Master writes "According to this article in Wired News, a court has just dismissed many of Sony's charges against Connectix in the Virtual Game Station emulation case, noting that 'both copyright and trademark law favor broad consumer choice.'" -------------------- H.R. 3113: Spam Bounty Hunters Wanted A articles article from the "what-state-eats-the-most?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/2136258 belgin writes: "According to this ZDNet article, the U.S. House Commerce Committee is considering a law that places a bounty on illegal spammers. These bounties would be paid to ISPs and individuals who track down and turn in spammers. Specific types of spam mentioned by the article include fraudulent spam and spam that attempts to falsify its origin. Fun to think about if you've landed on one too many spam lists, but a little scary in 'leads to ...' department." The bill, called H.R. 3113, or the Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 2000, would impose Federal law in the form of what seem to be common-sense restrictions on electronic junk. But belgin is right -- what consequences might laws like this have that we don't want to trade for, even in spam? Would private solutions be better in the long term?[updated 18th May 2000 13:45GMT by timothy] Not to be confused with last year's H.R. 3113. -------------------- Government Gives Microsoft Offer Thumbs Down A articles article from the "dragging-on-and-on" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/0222239 Robotech_Master writes: "This Wired News article has the details: the government thinks very little of Microsoft's own planned remedy, and in fact claims all its proposed meaures amount to 'nothing.' Hardly a surprise, but interesting all the same. " Today was the day that Judge Jackson, the DOJ, and MS were having a hearing to discuss "remedies." Not suprisingly, the government and Microsoft see things differently. Amazing. Hey, who's looking forward to several more years of incessant appeals and hearings? I thought so. -------------------- Online Book About Nano/AI A science article from the "cool-ideas" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/200231 Jonathan Desp writes: "The book is available here, written by Frank Wayne Poley, in the same line as Bill Joy's article, "Why the future don't need us." Here you will learn about "Robo sapiens" vs. "Homo sapiens", Robot as president, Nanotechnology, Nanosystem,Internet robots, Cyborgs, the neurochip, Microsoft, Biomechanics and computing history as well. The book raises some important questions such as: Technology, is it always good? " -------------------- Alpha Release Of Red Hat's Itanium Distro A articles article from the "cart-horse-chicken-egg" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/0325253 nicktook writes: "ZDNet has this story that RedHat has released a full alpha distribution for the 64-bit Itanium processor. Can Itanium hardware even be bought yet?" Not by jes folks, that's for sure. cnoe also sent a link to the official announcement from Red Hat as well. Coupled with SGI's release of Pro64 compilers for Itanium, it seems like Intel's Next Big Chip keeps whispering "penguins." Stunning news from MS on this front is long overdue. -------------------- OpenBSD, Reductionist Design A bsd article from the "NP:-Blind-man" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/2117221 Duke of URL writes: "Sam Williams, of Upside Today has an article discussing OpenBSD's overall design philosophy, with good quotes from Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD project leader. Williams also covers how the OpenBSD project goes about supporting their financial needs (by selling t-shirts, CDs, and posters) and briefly covers their lack of desire to receive venture capital despite offers. " -------------------- Main Linux distibutions port their Linux to IBM's S/390 A articles article from the "looks-pretty-big" department sent by HeUnique http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1218234 SuSE has announced that they are going to release a beta SuSE Linux for IBM's S/390. A beta version will be out in late June. TurboLinux has signed an agreement to port their Linux distribution to S/390 as well. The only major distributor that is missing here is Redhat. What do you think about Linux distributions and the S/390?? -------------------- Boo No More A articles article from the "radley" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1132240 morn writes: "Boo.com, European 'flagship' e-commerce sportswear store (maker of the distinctive 'geek in sportswear' TV and cinema ads) and largest Internet retail funding ever in Europe has financially collapsed, causing 300 job losses, according to this story by BBC News. The boo.com site is still up, and there are hopes that the firm will be taken over by a more established company. Nevertheless, it begs the asking of this year's favourite question - is this the beginning of the ecommerce bubble bursting?" -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Fri, 19 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/19/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Introducing The New Slashdot Setup A articles article from the "its-been-a-long-time-coming" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1427203 At the request of countless users, we're happy to finally present a summary of the new setup over at Exodus. It's the result of over 6 months of work from a lot of people, so shadouts to Adam, Kurt, and Scoop, Team P:Pudge, PatG & Pater for the code, and Martin BSD-Pat and Liz for getting the hardware and co-loc taken care of. Now hit the link below and see what these guys did: -------------------- Jeffrey Zeldman Bites Back A interviews article from the "gives-as-good-as-he-gets" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1433233 We got a lot of (shall we say) slightly impertinent questions for Web Standards Project co-founder Jeffrey Zeldman, but that's okay. He reads Slashdot and knows the nature of the beast, and he's hard-core enough to give as good as he gets. So set your humor module to high, then sit back and enjoy Mr. Zeldman's (appropriately impertinent) answers to the 12 questions we forwarded to him. -------------------- Looking For Wireless Handheld E-Mail And Web? A askslashdot article from the "office-liberating-geek-toys" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1232217 dspyder asks: "I'm currently looking for a good solution for wireless email and minimal Web surfing (stock quotes, weather, traffic, movie showtimes, driving directions?). Since it seems WAP is a ways off, I'm looking at other solutions. What other options are they for very small, portable and cheap wireless Internet and e-mail access from a pager-like device?? Or should I just wait for more WAP products and services to come out?? I really like the RIM device, and something along the lines of $50/mo for the GoAmerica service including rental (or lease or rent to buy) of the box would be an instant sale. Anyone know of anything?" There's a bunch of information in here on the subject. If your idea of networking is -not- sitting at your desk and twiddling thumbs while the mailer reloads...this topic may be for you. -------------------- Another Peep From Transmeta A articles article from the "exposing-a-little-bit-more-skin" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/1525206 Robrt writes: "According to this news.com article, the first Crusoe based products will be released at PC Expo. The article doesn't give much other information. " They comment that they're not sure if we'll see laptops or webpads, but we might see something. I'd love one of those webpads with the Lucent wireless, and say, 8-12 hours of battery life. -------------------- Metallica Remains Silent A articles article from the "tired-of-napster" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/197226 As you may already know, 30,000 Napster users have appealed to Napster on the basis that they feel they've done nothing wrong in the recent Metallica-inspired crackdown on accounts. Rap artist Dr. Dre has turned in his list to Napster, and we can only assume that there will be appeals there, too. Also, after numerous attempts and promises from Metallica's publicist, we still haven't gotten Metallica to answer the questions that our readers asked on May 4th. We have made several good-faith efforts to work with Metallica and their publicist, but it looks like they're never going to respond. On the lighter side, The Onion has posted the sad news about Kid Rock, and someone sent this image to us. [Updated 18 May 2000 7:40 GMT by timothy] Metallica's publicists have promised to try to get our questions answered "early next week," and that would be both more fun and more satisfying for all involved, I'm sure, than stony silence and accusations. Attn: Lars: The real debate is online :) -------------------- Our Attorney's Response To Microsoft A features article from the "glad-this-guy's-on-*our*-side" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/2015251 -------------------- .god Domain Names: Another "Pioneer" Registrar A articles article from the ""JENJIELI.GOD-was-not-found-and-is-available"" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/2346226 commodoresloat writes: "According to this article, the top-level domain (TLD) .god will soon be available. Most interesting is that Joe Baptista, who will be selling domain names under the TLD, says outright that he will not respect trademarks or even court decisions ordering him to respect trademarks. Does this mean anyone can register microsoft.god?" Available, maybe, but not very useful if ICANN doesn't care to ever recognize them. Note, though, the site is only semi-functional. "The registry will allow you to look up dot.god names for availability but it will not allow you to register at this time." Pity. I hope CmdrTaco gets credit. -------------------- Surface Mapping Athlons For Fun And Knowledge A articles article from the "does-meticulous-have-a-suprelative?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/18/2313216 ryemax writes: "'Surface Mapped Athlon - Is Lapping Required?' is the title of today's bit of insight from FrostyTech. Basically we took an Athlon and measured to within 0.0005" how out-of-whack the surface of the aluminum plate is. With that knowledge and a few hundred values we made a nifty image map of the surface features. With that done, the picture was overlaid atop an image of the processor so all can see where surface flatness may be a problem. Why, you ask? Because I get really annoyed when expensive heatsinks/cold plates get suck on unflat surfaces - and thermal performance gets kicked in the arse. So, rather then just say "it's unflat", I decided to quantitatively prove it using a dial micrometer. Bottom line -- lap that Althon plate." Wow. -------------------- Space Shuttle Software: Not For hacks A articles article from the "nothing-too-much" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/050258 Jeff Evarts writes: " This article in Fast Company talks about the process the Shuttle Group uses to make software. At first it seems too predictable: a very cool project but no hacks, no pizza-and-coke all-nighters, etc. Then, however, it goes on to talk about why: They have an informed customer, they talk to that customer until they have a very clear idea of what is wanted, they have a budget focused on prevention, and they focus on fixing the process and not blaming the individual." As someone who's done more than his share of late-nighters, it was an interesting view into the mission-critical environment. Maybe there are a few software firms out there that would rather spend some of their money on better processes rather than technical support engineers. Maybe a little more market research and a little less marketing, too. A good read." These guys are "pretty thorough" the way Vlad the Impaler was "a little unbalanced." Still, you have to wonder how they can claim single-digit errors among thousands of lines of code, but I guess the proof is in the rocket-powered pudding. And lucky for them, their target platform was recently upgraded. -------------------- LSDVD Starts Cooking A articles article from the "moving-on-up" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1148249 A reader writes: "The guys at LSDVD, now funded, are going to pay the powers that be the licensing fee and the per program royalties for the rights to make and sell a DVD player for Linux. This means that a free, give-em-hell, fight-the-power, Linux DVD player is a long ways off" - you can read the news on the homepage. Remember, LinDVD is also moving and shaking as well. -------------------- Real Networks and More Privacy Concerns A yro article from the "what-a-bunch-of-schmucks" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1155207 Arrogant-Bastard writes: "Lauren Weinstein's Privacy Forum Digest V09 #15 reports that RealNetworks' "Download Demon" forwards the details of any download (i.e. URLs, filenames) to RealNetworks. See The Digest for details. " Now, granted, this time the program, if you read the fine print, says that it will do this - but c'mon people - how many bone-headed moves do you have to make? -------------------- Space Shuttle Software: Not For Hacks A articles article from the "nothing-too-much" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/050258 Jeff Evarts writes: " This article in Fast Company talks about the process the Shuttle Group uses to make software. At first it seems too predictable: a very cool project but no hacks, no pizza-and-coke all-nighters, etc. Then, however, it goes on to talk about why: They have an informed customer, they talk to that customer until they have a very clear idea of what is wanted, they have a budget focused on prevention, and they focus on fixing the process and not blaming the individual." As someone who's done more than his share of late-nighters, it was an interesting view into the mission-critical environment. Maybe there are a few software firms out there that would rather spend some of their money on better processes rather than technical support engineers. Maybe a little more market research and a little less marketing, too. A good read." These guys are "pretty thorough" the way Vlad the Impaler was "a little unbalanced." Still, you have to wonder how they can claim single-digit errors among thousands of lines of code, but I guess the proof is in the rocket-powered pudding. And lucky for them, their target platform was recently upgraded. -------------------- Real Networks And More Privacy Concerns A yro article from the "what-a-bunch-of-schmucks" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1155207 Arrogant-Bastard writes: "Lauren Weinstein's Privacy Forum Digest V09 #15 reports that RealNetworks' "Download Demon" forwards the details of any download (i.e. URLs, filenames) to RealNetworks. See The Digest for details. " Now, granted, this time the program, if you read the fine print, says that it will do this - but c'mon people - how many bone-headed moves do you have to make? -------------------- Terminus Has Gone Gold A articles article from the "bruce-locke" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1133211 michaelsimms writes "According to Vicarious Visions, Terminus has gone gold. CEO Karthik Bala posted the announcement this morning on the fansite Station Terminus. According to the latest news from Gonegold.com, Terminus will begin shipping to suppliers on June 10th! You can pre-order Terminus from the Tux Games Web site." The 'persistent universe' in this game is causing a lot of buzz and interest. I can't wait to play it. -------------------- New, More Destructive Love Bug Variant A articles article from the "brace-yourself" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1326219 Everyone and their brother wrote in to say that a new and more destructive version of the ILOVEYOU virus has hit the net. Instead of deleting on a few files, this one deletes every file not in use. And even more amusing, rather then using a hardcoded subject line, it uses the host's email archive to cause the subject to change while it propogates. Intelligent mail client users continue to be unaffected (although the ILOVEYOU sympathy virus has been annoying the heck out of us for days now... it works on the honor system: Please delete some files and mail to all your friends). -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sat, 20 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/20/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Aqua DP4 Review And Screenshots A articles article from the "stuff-to-drool-over" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1314219 firewort writes: "Someone sure got back from WWDC quick, and posted a review of Aqua, MacOSX DP4. Nice screenshots, too! " Fairly detailed overview of the UI changes. And with the BSD kernel, it looks like I may finally have an OS that my gf and I could agree on. -------------------- Acts Of The Apostles A books article from the "if-you-loved-cloak-and-dagger" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/1543222 Back from his stint in juvenile detention, it's hemos with a review of John F. Sundman's technothriller Acts of the Apostles. And you don't even have to buy it until you're hooked. (Read more to find out why.) [TABLE NOT SHOWN] -------------------- AMD Thunderbird and Duron Set For June Launch A articles article from the "here's-some-details" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1822234 Chris Tom writes: "Mark Hachman has an article up on EBNS discussing the AMD Thunderbird and Duron. Topics include release date, die size, performance, and positioning against Intel's CPU offerings. The Thunderbird and Duron will both include on-die L2 cache. " -------------------- AMD Thunderbird And Duron Set For June Launch A articles article from the "here's-some-details" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1822234 Chris Tom writes: "Mark Hachman has an article up on EBNS discussing the AMD Thunderbird and Duron. Topics include release date, die size, performance, and positioning against Intel's CPU offerings. The Thunderbird and Duron will both include on-die L2 cache. " -------------------- 3-D Monitor From Deep Video Imaging A articles article from the "that's-U.S.-dollars" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/190219 Silver A writes: "Deep Video Imaging Ltd. has available monitors with real, physical depth, and touchscreen capability. Unfortunately, it's only 800 x 600 x 2 so far. The base model is only $8765.00 for US and Canadian customers. This looks really cool, but I'd like to know if they plan to go to more than 2 planes, and if they support X." Or, on the other hand, if X will support them. These may have limited utility as is, but undeniably cool. -------------------- Web-Based Helpdesks? A askslashdot article from the "tech-support-of-the-21st-century?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1750256 Vanbo asks: "My job requires that I be in the field all day, and I don't have the ability to check my voicemail regularly, so I ask people to email me with problems, then I check my mail with Webmail. Lately, I have been thinking it would be much easier if people could post their problems (ala ask slashdot) to a webpage on our mailserver. I don't need something as powerful as slashcode, but just maybe something that allows them to select from pull downs of common problems, and then when they submit it, it could be emailed to me. Anyone, implimented a support system like this? Any draw backs to this approach?" Seems like a novel approach. Does this seem like a good idea to you? -------------------- IBM Cranks OS/2 Curtain, Compaq Revives OpenVMS A articles article from the "there-will-still-be-OS/2-in-2050" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1938247 Freshly Exhumed writes "This site has a couple of divergent OS sagas ... IBM is basically saying "Bring out your dead" to OS/2 fans. Compaq has listened to the faint cries of "I'm not dead yet" and announced a reprieve for OpenVMS." OS/2 has repeatedly refused to die before, though. One interesting snippet from the article on VMS: "The Wildfire version of the Alpha processor will allow users to run OpenVMS in the same box as Compaq's Tru64 Unix operating system, using hard partitioning techniques." IBM 390, upcoming Alphas ... when will mainstream chips do this? :) -------------------- New PIII: SMP In, Serial Number Out A articles article from the "ah-sweet-validation" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/0128218 florin writes: "This article from GamePC talks about the new cB0 stepping of the Intel Pentium III processor. The FC-PGA format has finally been validated for use in multiprocessor systems. After much confusion about this issue, it is good to see 'Now Dual Processor Capable' clearly marked on the retail box. Another item of interest is that Intel has gone ahead and stripped the controversial processor serial number feature from this new PIII, like they announced they would do on their upcoming Willamette CPU. " -------------------- Oxford Yanks Student Page Over Spoof DeCSS A yro article from the "down-with-cascading-style-sheets" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/045253 eval writes "A student at Oxford had his page pulled by the computer services group there because he had a spoof DeCSS on his page, and linked to opendvd.org." Once again, the organizations like the MPAA (though Oxford administration did not officially confirm this) get their way simply by sending an official-looking letter. Where are we when universities - the last stronghold of intellectual freedom - excuse their censor-first, ask-questions-later behavior by saying: "We were here to further the aims of the University in Education and Research, not to fight other people's copyright actions"? (more) The day following the Web page's removal, the school administrator was surprised to learn that the DeCSS his staff yanked had nothing to do with DVDs... From: Alan Gay Newsgroups: ox.talk Subject: Re: Deep linking Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 13:14:54 +0100 Organization: Oxford University, England So, you are saying that all this fuss is because you wanted to wave a red rag at the bull by *pretending* you were offering decss software. The result of this is that the University has spent, and is still spending, a vast amount of administrative effort and lawyers' fees over something that has nothing to do with it, and is just a game to you. I'll leave others to discuss the sense of that. -------------------- Should We Be Wary Of Free-Beer Software? A askslashdot article from the "could-this-happen?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/005255 semis asks: "It's interesting to see the number of free-beer (free for non-profit) software that is popping up. From StarOffice to the recently reported CAD software Cycas, the number of free-beer software packages is rapidly increasing. Sure -- this is good, until/if the OSs get market share, then happy hour finishes and the free-beer becomes expensive-beer. Is this trend a Good Thing (tm) or will it see our beloved OSs lose their open-source vision and simply become the new medium for commercial software?" -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sun, 21 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/21/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Kerberos Loophole May Be Closed/Apple Getting Kerberos A articles article from the "should-do-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1523229 Paul Boutin writes "The Industry Standard talked to Kerberos' principal author and all-around ubergeek Clifford Neuman about his proposed rewrite of the IETF Kerberos standard (RFC 1510) to close the loophole Microsoft has been using to create a non-interoperable version. " It also looks like Apple will be bringing Kerberos to OSX, in partnership with MIT. -------------------- Mozilla M16 gets Alpha Channels A articles article from the "now-can-I-have-font-aliasing" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1523257 Snorfle writes: "In the recent Mozilla status update, there's a mention that real 8-bit alpha-channel support went quietly into Mozilla last week. Web-publishing types have been crying for this feature, provided principally through (royalty free!) PNG, though other alpha-capable formats will work too." All I want now is anti-aliased fonts for christmas. -------------------- Mozilla M16 Gets Alpha Channels A articles article from the "now-can-I-have-font-aliasing" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1523257 Snorfle writes: "In the recent Mozilla status update, there's a mention that real 8-bit alpha-channel support went quietly into Mozilla last week. Web-publishing types have been crying for this feature, provided principally through (royalty free!) PNG, though other alpha-capable formats will work too." All I want now is anti-aliased fonts for christmas. -------------------- Slashback: cubans, crises, code-dependency A articles article from the "historical-revisionism" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1532209 -------------------- Royal daVinci Linux Project A articles article from the "is-this-thing-real?" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1556209 jsinnema writes: "According to Andy Surber (CompanionLink) at PDA Buzz Royal, Royal is trying to put as much into the Linux powered Royal daVinci as possible and still reach the target price range of $199-249. As memory prices change on a regular basis, so does the final specs. As it sits now, they are heading towards a product with 16 ROM and 32RAM (subject to change). The device should also have a compact flash slot, which could also provide additional memory. The product will be based on the Tosiba MIPS processor." Looks very vaporous right now, but if its real, it looks sweet. Kurt the Pope just got WinCE based HP Jornada 548, and now I'm super impressed with PDAs again (although it is only 12-bit color and was until recently advertised as 16). Between this DaVinci or maybe the Yopy, hopefully we'll have a Linux PDA soon too. -------------------- Bertrand Meyer's "The Ethics of Free Software" A articles article from the "interesting-ideas" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1533253 Jarle Stabell writes: "An interesting article titled "The Ethics of Free Software" by OO guru Bertrand Meyer is available online at Software Development (Meyer has IMHO written one of the best OO books. " Warning: Meyer questions some assumptions of open source, so if that's going to offend you, don't read it. *grin* -------------------- Lineo Plans IPO A articles article from the "what's-the-burn-rate" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/20/1824206 A reader writes: "According to the following Cnet news article, it looks like Lineo is planning to go public, despite the recent downturn in Linux stocks. I wish them luck." -------------------- Io Has Geysers, Lakes And Snow A articles article from the "neither-yosemite-nor-endor" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/0122245 An article this week in the journal Science, as reported in this CNN story, reveals that in addition to volcanos, Io is also home to vast mountain ranges, lakes of lava and sulfuric geysers up to 50 miles high. Photographs and thermal measurements from the keep-on-chuggin' Galileo enabled the discoveries. See the NASA press release for slightly more detail, as well as for newly released images (May 18th) from Galileo. (You can read the full Science article here, but it requires either a subscription or a fee.) -------------------- Flywheel Energy Storage: Steel Yourself For Carbon A articles article from the "makes-your-head-spin-*really*-fast" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/0531241 Red Leader. writes: "Hey. Here's an interesting article on flywheels and the future of batteries from Wired Magazine (8.05). Nothing super-promising yet (as always; vapourware) -- but down the road, these could make your laptop 'spin' a little longer." I'm a big fan of simple machines, and flywheels are one of my favorites. The mention of carbon nanotubes is especially interesting -- it'd be neat to see that technology enter the mainstream. -------------------- Mac OS Mach/BSD Kernel Inseparable A bsd article from the "NP:-Sheriff-Fatman" department sent by nik http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1030223 Anonymous Coward writes: "One of the more significant statements of the session [at Apple's WorldWide Developer's Conference] came when Magee told the audience that the Mach kernel and the BSD layer which lays upon it are inseparable. "Every application [that runs in Mac OS X] is a BSD application," said Magee. "You can't keep the system running without the Mach kernel and the BSD layer." This quashes the public rumour that Apple will be able to ship a "lite" version of Mac OS X which will contain only the smallest possible bit of BSD, or another that questions Apple reluctance to move its tools to Linux." -------------------- FTC Asks To Regulate Privacy; Doubleclick Hires PR Team A yro article from the "double-take" department sent by michael http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/0029228 Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have stories about the FTC's decision to ask Congress for the authority to regulate online privacy. The FTC had recently completed yet another privacy survey that showed companies were doing little to protect privacy on the Internet, even after several years of dire warnings. In other news, Doubleclick named a "No-Privacy Board" -- errr, a "Privacy Board." Its members are listed below, along with my notes on their backgrounds. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Mon, 22 May 2000 11:00:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 11:00:07 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/22/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Web Servers To Handle Java Servlets And WAP? A askslashdot article from the "getting-it-working" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/17/2032259 Yousef asks: "We're trying to develop a WAP enabled Webserver, that can work with Java (Servlets). Currently the only working option is M$ IIS running the New Atlanta plugin. Now I'd rather NOT run IIS, so if anyone else has a solution to this, it would be much appreciated. We've tried Inprise IAS and Apache JServ (We're deploying to a Sun Solaris box). Any help would be nice. Getting the servlets to run is quite easy -- The problem is getting them to work with WAP!" -------------------- Potato-powered web server A articles article from the "someone-find-me-a-one-hundred-ton-spud" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1947222 chazR writes "The guys at Temple of Thee Lemur have done it again. A genuine potato-powered web server. That's potato as in vegetable, not debian distro. This is even cooler than Project EUNUCH. Be gentle with it." -------------------- Potato-Powered Web Server A articles article from the "someone-find-me-a-one-hundred-ton-spud" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1947222 chazR writes "The guys at Temple of Thee Lemur have done it again. A genuine potato-powered web server. That's potato as in vegetable, not debian distro. This is even cooler than Project EUNUCH. Be gentle with it." -------------------- Red Hat Helps Fund EFF A articles article from the "cool-move-guys" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1956252 DAldredge sent us linkage to a ZD Net article that talks about Red Hat announcing that it would be sending the EFF[?] $70k to help with the defense in fair use and reverse engineering cases, specifically like the recent DeCSS hoopla. Update: 05/22 12:30 by CT: Marc Ewing wrote in to tell us that this $ actually came from the Red Hat Center, started by him and Bob Young. -------------------- Sony's New Personal Fingerprint Scanner A articles article from the "but-daddy-I-wanna-*iris*-scanner!" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/0015227 MelloDawg writes: "This article at SecurityWatch.com describes Sony's new fingerprint verfication device that fits in your wallet and uses public key infrastructure." Of course, if the prints are never transmitted and the scanner is personalized for each user, it seems like Sony'd like everyone to have his own scanner -- how convenient. -------------------- Jor-not-a Pocket PC? A articles article from the "busted" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/020206 Bool writes: "HP was wrong when they claimed that the Jornada 540 series has a 16-bit color display. It was Jason Cluts who pointed out that the supposed 16-bit display was actually a 12-bit display. HP has issued an erratum on the subject that you can read here. You can find more details at this Web site." Apparently, the USB is slower than it should be, too. Has anyone else played with one of these things? -------------------- Mozilla M16 Up For Grabbing A articles article from the "this-is-my-browser-there-are-many-like-it" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/0824243 Cioby writes: "No news on the homepage (yet), but on [the mozilla.org nightly builds page] M16 builds started to appear. Go Mozilla, GO! :)" True enough -- though M15 is the latest milestone listed, M16 has been available from the nightly builds for over a month. M16 rocks pretty well, too, though I haven't tried out its transparent gif feature yet. Hard to complain about a nightly release schedule ... [Updated 8:50GMT by timothy] (Sigh) -- Yes, that ought to say "transparent png," not gif. Guess I haven't tried that either. -------------------- FreeBSD For The iMac And Other Eye-Openers A articles article from the "time-budgets-grownups-and-pitchforks" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/0846251 Anonymous Coward writes: "In this interview, part III, over at GNULinux.com you can read what Jordan Hubbard, CEO of FreeBSD Inc., has to say about the future of FreeBSD. '[...] Finally, the notion of the PC is changing. One could even argue that the PC has widened to encompass the PowerPC, because there are all these iMacs on peoples' desks, and according to the original mandate we should be looking at those iMacs, too, which is what we're doing,' sounds pretty sweet." This article provides a positive (but sober) overview of recent and anticipated progress from the devil-suit side of free software. You might also be interested in Jordan's answer to the question, "Can FreeBSD scale to the PDA?" -------------------- Can Web Sites Go Offshore For Free Speech? A askslashdot article from the "when-the-'land-of-the-free'-isn't-free-enough" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1729248 invoke asks: "All the recent stories about Web pages being yanked for various supposed violations of DMCA make me worry that I may inadvertently irritate some large corporation. What I am seeing now in America and the EU suggests that I would most likely find my Internet connection terminated with no real recourse, causing me no end of hassle. I can't afford to lose my connectivity, as I run several domains off my static IP. Therefore, I'm looking for a safe-harbor solution for hosting a 'vanilla' free speech site. I'm not intending to host warez or serialz, just stuff that might irritate people-with-money. Any suggestions?" -------------------- In Depth Look At Red Hat Certification A articles article from the "dont-know-much-about-" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/1255236 Matthew Miller recently went through the RH300 training course, as well as the RHCE Certification Exam. He was kind enough to write an overview and give us his opinions on both of them, as well as his opinions on the relevance and quality of the training and the exam. Certification has been discussed extensively with regards to Linux, and here's a big scoop of food for thought. -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Tue, 23 May 2000 11:00:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 11:00:08 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/23/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - House To Hold Hearing On Napster A articles article from the "tells-us-how-it-is-chuck" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/1333214 ptbrown writes: "On Wednesday the House Small Business Committee will be holding a hearing on Internet music technologies. (That is, Napster.) Chuck D, of Public Enemy and Rapstation.com, will be testifying on behalf of the good-side of MP3. For the opposition, the Progressive Policy Institute has written a report that recommends extending the DMCA to explicitly outlaw technologies like Napster." Yeah, we should definitely ban peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet, and NFS pisses me off, too. And Web pages: Ban Port 80! Does anyone out there understand what they're saying? -------------------- Intel Releasing PIII Xeon Today A articles article from the "bigger-faster-better" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/1338256 BMIComp writes "Yahoo! news is reporting that Intel is going to introduce their Pentium III Xeon Chip, today. " .18 microns, 700 Mhz, and integrated cache. The article talks quite a bit about how the new Xeons are going straight for Sun's throat. -------------------- New Front In The Copyright-War: Abandon-Ware A articles article from the "can-I-emulate-joust-please?" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/1345215 Ventilator writes: "The New York Times (free login required) features an interesting story about out-of-print games and the copyright issues for dedicated Web sites. It also discusses the benefits for game developers if they would make those old games available to the public. " -------------------- PHP-4.0.O Release Candidate A apache article from the "sig-new-version" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/1858206 Rock-n-Rolf writes " Another PHP 4.0.0 has been released. The web site doesn´t show it yet but php-4.0.0.tar.gz can be grabbed from the ftp server here. " Update: 05/22 07:46 by H:Folks, I've been told by the PHP folks that this is *NOT* the final release - so I've changed the title. I'll be updating this story with more information as it comes in.Update 05/22 3:30 by jimjag: The actual 4.0.0 version is out and has been released. The PHP site now reflects the news. If you're still running PHP 3, PHP 4 provides a substantial improvement! -------------------- Open Source Leaders Speak About Napster A articles article from the "read-the-whole-thing" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/22/199255 A huge number of people have been submitting the story on ZDNet (originally from the WSJ) regarding folks like Linus and others about Napster. Many of the submissions have been along the lines of "Linus Bashes Napster." He doesn't -- he's merely saying that copyrights aren't necessarily a bad thing, and that piracy is a bad thing. As well, there's some good points about the Napster/Open Source relationship -- the article is worth reading in depth. -------------------- IBM To Produce Copper Alphas For Compaq A articles article from the "Cu-you-see" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/001254 LinuxGeek writes: "IBM will be producing copper interconnect Alpha CPUs. The samples are already running 1.2GHz. Hopefully they can make them cheap and plentiful." Similarly, sokoban writes: "News.com is reporting that IBM is planning to manufacture Copper Alpha CPU's. Now that is a fast piece of equipment. Here is the link." And nobody ever got fired for buying ... err, Alphas. Soon, 32-bit will seem so quaint, eh? -------------------- French Court To Yahoo!: Dump Nazi-Related Auctions A articles article from the "fragmentationville" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/0136220 frinsore, John Leeming and several other readers passed on word of the decision of a French court that Yahoo is responsible for making it impossible for French citizens to access auctions featuring Nazi-related items. As John writes, "It appears France is now defining censorship on U.S. Web sites; in particular, Yahoo! and its auction sites. For all those who have in the past believed immunity of action exists because you live in a different country or under different laws, this CNN/Reuters article is an interesting glimpse into future international jurisdiction problems for the Internet, and why we need to watch for the manner in which governments decide to deal with it." Here's NewsBytes' coverage of the same story. -------------------- IBM Announces New AS/400s With SOI Chips A articles article from the "a-policy-of-insulationism" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/0427224 Chris Brewer writes: "IBM announced today a new line of AS/400e servers powered by the world's first production chips made of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistors and copper wiring. They say the addition of SOI adds a further 20-30% to performance beyond copper. They have a new high-end server that's 3.6x faster than before, entry level servers for running Domino (and presumably Linux), and all support XML. Further details can be found at IBM's AS/400 site. " -------------------- Penthouse.com Goes After Usenet Posters A articles article from the "protecting-the-pr0n" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1227235 Shibumi writes: " Penthouse.com is starting to pursue legal action against persons who post material to Usenet from their pay site." At least they're going after the poster and not the usenet servers. -------------------- MP3Player/Cell Phone in One A articles article from the "but-can-it-make-toast" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1235215 Kanasta writes: "LG has a cell phone an MP3 decoder in one, but only in Korea. It has a slot of a MultiMediaCard, which apparently is used in various other mp3 players. Includes a built in remote, and there are speakers on the charging unit! It says 'You can download MP3 music to the phone', but what exactly they mean isn't clear. " -------------------- The Downward Spiral Of Linuxcare? A articles article from the "stuff-to-read" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1250226 starvo pointed us to a ZD Net story about the recent trouble at LinuxCare. It's got a fair amount of details about all the problems that led of to the CEO & CIO jumping. Linuxcare has been pretty mysterious about the whole thing, so it's nice to finally get some meat to chew on... the article is relatively fair. -------------------- IBM To Add Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) To PowerPC A articles article from the "insulation-is-good" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1255211 hypos writes: "According to this ZDNet article, IBM is going to add an insulating layer of oxide between the transistor and its silicon bed, which IBM claims can increase a processor's performance by 20 to 30%. Best of all, it's supposed to come to new Macs soon. " -------------------- Universal Access A features article from the "wiring-the-planet-selling-tons-of-stuff" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/09/0915202 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Wed, 24 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/24/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ask the Man Behind the NOAA's New Beowulf Cluster A interviews article from the "don't-you-wish-you-had-his-job?" department sent by Roblimo http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/007214 Greg Lindahl sent in this story last September about a massive Alpha Linux cluster that's being built by HPTi for the NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratories. What Greg forgot to mention when he submitted the original story is that he's the project's chief designer. What with all the Beowulf (and Alpha) interest around here, we figured he'd make a great interview guest, especially now that the project is well under way. Please post your questions below. Answers to 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones should appear within the next week. -------------------- Net Access From your TI-85 A articles article from the "and-you-thought-it-was-just-for-cheating-at-stats" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1311203 BlueCalx- writes "Affinix has just recently released an interesting program called Wireless TI - a set of utilities that lets you access a UNIX shell, IRC, or chat with another computer: all from your Texas Instruments-brand graphing calculator. You can download the utilities from ticalc.org. " -------------------- Fahrenheit 451 A books article from the "not-really-the-burning-temperature" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/08/1323233 Greetings, all. I thought I'd let things settle down a little bit after my Cluetrain review, and try something slightly safer. :-) It never ceases to amaze me how, in an age where we use the phrase "that's so yesterday!" without flinching, the best lessons are those from "long ago." Book burning has been a hallmark of our century, although we certainly did not invent it. From the blatant actions of the Nazis to the self-censorship of the post-WWII age to today's filtering fights, the struggle to express ourselves has never ended. Come the middle of this century, at a time when the status quo was as strong as it has been in recent memory, a man with a story reminded us of something that Thomas Jefferson expressed two centuries before, that a little revolution now and then is a good thing. That revolution may generate some uncomfortable instability, but in the end we as a society are better for it. [TABLE NOT SHOWN] -------------------- Europe Sets Encryption free, USA Protests A articles article from the "?uoy-rof-hguone-terces-siht-si" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1313206 Jor writes "This (english) article on Telepolis (german site) says that the European ministers of Foreign Affairs are expected to decide next monday (27th) to drop all export regulations regarding encryption software to countries outside the European Union. The article also points out that the USA are pretty pissed off by this decision. " -------------------- What are Your Programming Goals? A askslashdot article from the "introspectives-galore" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1746206 Crutcher asks: "I've been walking the murky path to one day becoming a Systems Programmer, and I was wondering what other not-yet-gurus like myself saw as their ultimate goals, and why they choose those fields? Do we all want to hack kernels, or do more want to be UI Gurus, or Deamonic Masters? It would help if we (the proto-gurus) had clearer understandings of where we could go, and what it takes to get there." This is an interesting question. I've discovered however, that the more I learn about coding (including new paradigms and languages), the more my goals have changed. What are your thoughts on this? -------------------- JPL releases 20000 Mars Images A science article from the "eyecandy" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/155248 Barbarian writes "The Jet Propulsion Lab has released 20000 new unprocessed Mars image to the public (both processed and unprocessed images may be found at the link). You can also read the press release. The importance of this is that previously images were not released in this quantity or without pre-processing and captioning. Stories also available online: MSNBC, Associated Press. " -------------------- The Next Generation of ILOVEYOU:The Porn Worm A articles article from the "beware-of-the-neverending-popups" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/2022208 Erik Green writes "I've been sent a new semi-benign ILOVEYOU variant - it's got a subject line of "Check this" and consists of a one-line message and an attachment named LINKS.VBS. Its only purpose other than self replication is to add a link to a XXX site to your desktop. The attachment is a self-replicating script that copies itself to all network drives and sends itself to everyone listed in outlook's address book. This variant is interesting since it's partially encrypted to obscure it's purpose. It's nice enough to ask if you want the shortcut added to your desktop, but it doesn't ask about replicating itself. It's basically a trojan advertisement. Fortunately, it doesn't delete any files. Needless to say, only machines that run outlook and have visual basic scripting available are vulnerable. " -------------------- Mac OS 9 Versus Corel GNU/Linux At CNet A articles article from the "all-in-the-name-of-fairness" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1717228 petard writes: "CNet is holding an OS death match between Corel GNU/Linux and Mac OS 9. An advocate of each is invited to answer the question of which is better on the desktop in the areas of Installation, Interface, Applications, Hardware Compatiblility and Internet Support. At first I thought it was flamebait, but the article is reasonably well done and highlights genuine strengths and weakness of each OS." It's really easy to say, 'Yeah, well, wait for Eazel,' but this comparison is a hard reminder that people think about the here and now, not just the soon. -------------------- Windows vs Linux on 3D Performance A articles article from the "lt's-coming" department sent by HeUnique http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/2224211 Linux Games have posted this article about Windows VS Linux on 3D performace. They tested Quake III with Matrox G400, NVidia GeForce 256 DDR, and 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 -- all with their latest drivers (both Linux drivers and Windows drivers). There are some interesting results, and even a few surprises. What do you think about the results? -------------------- AtheOS A articles article from the "lotsa-submission" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/1716212 garethwi writes "A new OS has been released, called AtheOS. It has been designed from the ground up for Intel architecture, and already has a lot of software for it. The screenshots aren't too bad either. " Quite a lot of people have been submitting this over the last few days - what does everyone think about it? -------------------- Ham Radio Repeater On The Moon? A articles article from the "buzz-crackle-pop-there's-the-aliens!" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/2021213 kd5biv writes "QRZ.com has an interesting article on Martin Reeves' project to put a small amateur radio repeater on the surface of the Moon. The project includes a Surveyor-style lander with a UHF translator, a directional antenna aimed at Earth, remote controllable cameras, and some other interesting features. If they can solve the basic problem of putting a package that size on the lunar surface, it will make moonbounce operations much easier and cheaper. Then again, a satellite about that size is still waiting for a ride on an Ariane-5 out of Kourou and it's only going to a sun-synchronous orbit .. we shall see how it works out .. " -------------------- Robotic Short Order Cook A articles article from the "cheeseburger-cheeseburger-cheeseburger" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/1324206 MAXOMENOS writes "I found this in the Chicago Tribune: A robotic short-order cook. So far it makes burgers and pancakes to order, as long as you want them only one way." At least it's more useful than Twiki. -------------------- Linux Failover? A askslashdot article from the "is-this-a-real-problem?" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1853216 Anton asks: "This is a question about Linux failover in business situations. We are a growing B2B company; our product runs on Apache/Linux. We contracted professional services to properly set up our network. After all the hellishly expensive CISCO hardware had been set up it turns out that for our servers to be configured for failover, each one needs two dual-port NICs configured for one IP connected to two different switches, furthermore the driver needs to intelligently switch the ports when the active port fails ... We've never heard of such beasts for Linux and a net search revealed nothing. Our consultant however claims that 'Linux is biting itself in the foot' for not supporting that, and that other industrial strength OS's like solaris in fact do support this. Has anyone run into this before or have other ideas? " [nik suggests]: Take a look at Polyserve Understudy, which might be an alternative. FreeBSD and Linux versions are available (and bundled with FreeBSD 4.0). -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Thu, 25 May 2000 11:00:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 11:00:08 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/25/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Censorship In China A articles article from the "some-places-worse-than-others" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/1338225 An Anonymous Coward writes: "Have a look at this Businessweek article: a site was partly censored for 15 days because of a post uncomfortable to the Chinese government, and this Mercury Center article that proposes a more global view of the China/Taiwan issue. Surprisingly, both articles suggest that things are going better and better." Very topical; the U.S. vote on permanent normalized trade relations is scheduled for today. -------------------- IP And Genetics: Genetic Copyleft? A articles article from the "guns-germs-and-steel" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/1352203 "Suddenly, the free exchange of plant resources is in question as discoveries representing millions of dollars in profits are patented, potentially keeping poor farmers from using them." uncadonna writes "Here's a story (NYT; free reg. req.) about genetic scientists who want to maintain natural genetic diversity in food crops, resorting to defensive patents. Sounds like kindred spirits to me. Wonder if they've ever heard of copyleft." -------------------- Will The DOJ Split Microsoft In Three? A articles article from the "parlez-vous-menage-a-tois?-" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/1754209 cbull writes: "Yahoo! has an article that indicates the judge in the Microsoft case thinks splitting Microsoft into three companies is attractive to him. This is based on a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Software and Information Industry Association." And mfinke wrote: "Just saw the CNN article here about Judge Jackson's ruling that DOJ's proposal to split the company will still be considered when he rules. " Finally, mizhi pointed out this ZDNet coverage of the proceedings, saying "Basically, the government says that instead of splitting Microsoft into an operating system company and applications company, it should also split it into a third independent company for Internet Explorer." -------------------- IBM unveils 64-way NUMA server; Promises Linux support A articles article from the "Linux-is-getting-bigger" department sent by HeUnique http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/2026219 I just found this article at Info World which talks about IBM releasing a 64-way NUMA-Q server. The interesting part is that IBM promise to release a version of Linux optimized for NUMA servers. What do you think about it? -------------------- NASA To Deal With Disney For Commercial Use Of ISS A articles article from the "m-i-c-k-e-y-s-p-a-c-e-" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/24/1338220 spiralx writes "According to this story on MSNBC, NASA is preparing to announce its first deal for 'commercial use' of the International Space Station. It is expected to be some kind of multimedia broadcasting deal, most likely to be with a Disney-led consortium." I'm presuming that liftoff is an E-ticket ride. -------------------- New RAM Based On CD-RW Film On Horizon A articles article from the "now-now-now-*NOW*-please" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/029214 SiliconShaman writes: "Ovonyx Corporation is reporting initial success at producing a very cheap non-volatile RAM. Supposed to be cheaper, faster, etc. than conventional Flash memory. Applications include satellite and aerospace, cell phones, the list goes on. Details can be found here: Short Technical Presentation in HTML." "OUM memory technology," says Ovonics' Web site, "is similar to DRAM and many orders of magnitude faster than Flash write." The proliferation of devices which will need copious nonvolatile memory should mean a healthy market if this technology reaches the production line. I know my camera could use some more storage ... -------------------- Researchers Witness Birth Of Volcanic Island A articles article from the "I-get-dibs-on-real-estate!" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/045257 chazR writes: "Researchers from CSIRO were present at the creation of a new volcanic island Once the molten lava stops being thrown 70m into the air, I reckon this would make an ideal offshore site for a server farm. Who's going to hassle you on top of a volcano miles from the nearest land. Getting the OC-192 link in could be a problem though ... " Well, that's only if Australia (not me) actually has dibs on the real estate. -------------------- Melbourne Trial Aborted Due To Crime Web Site A articles article from the "collect-your-get-out-of-trial-free-card-" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/0339240 Chatz writes: "The jury in a murder trial in Melbourne was dismissed because the details about a previous trial of the accused are available on CrimeNet (www.crimenet.com.au). There was no evidence that any of the jurors had seen the information and the information is publicly available in newspaper archives. Here is a link to the story." This sets an odd precedent, to say the least. Perhaps criminals would benefit by describing their crimes in excruciating detail as soon as they're apprehended. What do y'all think down under? -------------------- Q3A Editor for Linux A articles article from the "loki-makes-the-release" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/1157207 A number of folks, including LokiSoft, have pointed out that Loki has released a beta version of the tools needed to develop Q3A mods and levels under Linux. You can get the SDK here, as well as get more news and such from their Q3A page. -------------------- Helix Gnome 1.2.0 A articles article from the "from-the-dynamic-duo" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/122235 Well, those wacky Gnome boys have gone and done it again - you can grab Gnome 1.2.0 from the FTP site. Nat e-mailed me last night to say that it was coming out. As well as the above distro-friendly link, we've got a link for the stable sources ftp site.Update: 05/25 12:25 by H:Hey, I got e-mail from the Gnome folks again - they're going to update the mirrors and everything in half an hour (9 a.m. EDT), so hold off until then on downloading.Update: 05/25 02:12 by H: Check out HelixCode for an update on the release. -------------------- Linux 2.4.0-test1 Released A articles article from the "almost-2.4" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/1215247 Chris Cheney writes: "Linux 2.4.0-test1 is out with a note from Linus for more details. Why does all the cool stuff come out after potato is frozen? " With Linus being gone for three weeks, Alan is likely to maintain a 2.4.0-ac series. It's getting closer... -------------------- At The Crossroads A features article from the "defining-freedom-online-in-the-Corporate-Republic" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/15/2140250 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Fri, 26 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/26/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mathematical Problems For The New Age A articles article from the "mega-cash-prizes" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/1211237 Thanks to David A. Madore who wrote to us regarding seven math problems that have rewards of one million dollars. The project is being done by the Clay Mathematics Institute, and is modeled after Hilbert's list for the 20th century which was announced also in Paris, but in 1900. Read more for more information from David. "The Clay Mathematics Institute has just (May 24-25, 2000) organized a big meeting in the Collčge de France in Paris, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the International Congress of Mathematicians meeting in August 1900 (also in Paris) during which the great David Hilbert (a serious candidate for the greatest mathematician of all times, perhaps after Gauss and Euler) announced his list of 23 celebrated problems for the XXth century. First the Clay Mathematics Awards were given, one two Laurent Lafforgue for his proof of the local Langlands correspondence, and one to Alain Connes for his work on von Neumann factors and noncommutative geometry. Then a list of seven problems for the third millennium was revealed by John Tate and Sir Michael Atiyah. If you solve any of the following problems, you win $1,000,000. The problems are: * The Riemann hypothesis: prove (or disprove!) that all the non-trivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function lie on the critical axis (real part of s = one half). * The conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer: prove (or disprove!) that the algebraic rank of an elliptic curve over Q (the rank of the group of its rational points) equals its analytic rank (the order of cancellation at 1 of its L function). * Is P=NP? In other words, is it possible for a deterministic Turing machine to solve in polynomial time problems which are solved by a nondeterministic Turing machine in polynomial time, or, on the contrary, is the traveling salesman problem truly "hard" in the sense that no polynomial-time algorithm exists to solve it? * The Poincaré Conjecture: prove (or disprove!) that any simply connected topological manifold of dimension 3 is homeomorphic to the three-sphere. * The Hodge Conjecture: prove (or disprove!) that on projective algebraic varieties, all Hodge cycles are rational combinations of algebraic cycles. * Yang-Mills theory: develop a mathematical foundation for the quantum theory of Yang-Mills fields; specifically, account for the "mass gap" hypothesis. * Navier-Stokes equations: prove (or disprove!) that the Navier-Stokes equations have smooth solutions for all positive times, given reasonable initial conditions. Naturally, if you solve any of these, you get to be famous, too. During the meeting we even got to hear a recording of Hilbert's voice speaking his famous "Wir müssen wissen; wir werden wissen" ("We must know; we shall know") just a hundred years before. It's also engraved on his tomb in Göttingen. Cool. " -------------------- Big Step in Quantum Searching A articles article from the "bleeding-edge" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/1428220 Penguin_99 writes "Wired.com has an article about a Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs researcher (Lov Grover) who came up with a quantum algorithm that is able to instantly search a massive database (of websites or whatever you might have) and return amazingly precise results even if the input is vague or incomplete. This particular algorithm can be used for other things besides searching for instance solving equations. Apperently this algorithm is only one of a handful of quantum algorithms in existance. The down side is that it requires a quantum computer so you are not likely to see Yahoo! using it anytime soon. Imagine a day when you do not have to wade through pages of usless websites after performing a search. " -------------------- Napster Hurts Album Sales? A articles article from the "survey-says" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/156227 Sax Maniac writes "There is a story on Yahoo! that reports on a new study that says Napster cuts into record sales. " It'd be a more informative study if the study also included the fact that a huge number of college students buy their music online now, which would also drive down sales in the local area - looks like a piece of FUD in MP3 War. -------------------- Ars Technica Reviews MacOS X DP4 A articles article from the "this-ain't-CNET" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/059250 Mad Browser writes: "Ars Technica has posted a review of the recently released-to-developers MacOS X DP4. Check it out." Rather than concentrating on Aqua, this article is typical Ars -- it gets beneath the surface to consider the mechanisms for printing, screen display and more. As the writer points out, DP4 is not itself OS X, but only a snapshot of OS X as it matures. -------------------- Looking Glass Studios Closes A articles article from the "boot-to-the-head" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/031255 Warrior writes: "Looking Glass Studios, makers of the System Shock series and Thief series, has closed it doors according to sources. GameSpy is reporting that the company plans to cease operations immediately. Despite strong sales of Thief II, the company was rumored to have financial problems. The story says there is no word on who will retain rights to the Thief and System Shock franchises." -------------------- Interview with DeCSS Lawyer A articles article from the "very-very-smart" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/136228 Feed Mag currently is running an interview with Martin Garbus. Garbus is going to be the lead litigator in the attempt to stop the gag order on 2600 regarding the dicussion of DeCSS. Garbus is one extremely intelligent man, and the interview really shows that. -------------------- 3dfx Delays Voodoo5 Schedule A articles article from the "go-do-that-voodoo-that-you-do-so-well" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/1310249 Ant writes: "Yahoo posted the press release that 3dfx Interactive® Inc. has temporarily delayed the release of its Voodoo5(TM) 5500 AGP. The press release states that the company is taking this action to ensure that it meets its own high standards for product quality." -------------------- Has Anyone Played With Gateway Micro Server? A askslashdot article from the "hardware-that's-cool" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/21/1756208 alexhmit01 asks: "So my friend's father bought a new set of machines for his office from Gateway, and they included with it this little cube called a Micro Server, which he gave to his son. Naturally, the first thing that we did was crack it open, and saw that it includes a PCI slot (some expandability, currently has a modem that we'll yank), and 10 GB hard drive. We're flipping through the manual, assuming that it is an NT machine when I notice they talk about SMB shares, so I'm assuming SAMBA. I get to the back and see two documents, the BSD license and the GPL. We check out the specs, it runs a 64-bit RISC processor (I'm assuming Arm), and Linux 2.0! So how many IT people have gotten one of these and decided to actually put it to use? Any suggestions? " -------------------- Mozilla X Perl + Python = New IDE A articles article from the "and-the-walls-came-a-tumbalin'-down" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0047216 WhyteRabbyt writes: "ActiveState have announced Komodo, an open-source IDE for Perl, Python and Javascript. The application framework is to be based on Mozilla. The press release is here." tenchiken contributed a bit more information about the project, writing: "More information is here , including the announcement a few days ago that they would be writing python and perl bindings to XPCOM. Like Perl? How 'bout client side perl!" No, it's not out yet -- but it's cool to see Mozilla as the engine behind yet another project. -------------------- Mozilla x Perl + Python = New IDE A articles article from the "and-the-walls-came-a-tumbalin'-down" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0047216 WhyteRabbyt writes: "ActiveState have announced Komodo, an open-source IDE for Perl, Python and Javascript. The application framework is to be based on Mozilla. The press release is here." tenchiken contributed a bit more information about the project, writing: "More information is here , including the announcement a few days ago that they would be writing python and perl bindings to XPCOM. Like Perl? How 'bout client side perl!" No, it's not out yet -- but it's cool to see Mozilla as the engine behind yet another project. -------------------- Mozilla x (Perl + Python) = New IDE A articles article from the "and-the-walls-came-a-tumbalin'-down" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0047216 WhyteRabbyt writes: "ActiveState have announced Komodo, an open-source IDE for Perl, Python and Javascript. The application framework is to be based on Mozilla. The press release is here." tenchiken contributed a bit more information about the project, writing: "More information is here , including the announcement a few days ago that they would be writing python and perl bindings to XPCOM. Like Perl? How 'bout client side perl!" No, it's not out yet -- but it's cool to see Mozilla as the engine behind yet another project. -------------------- Judge Bars eBay Crawler A articles article from the "bad-precedent!-no-cookie-tonight" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0542208 matty writes: "A judge has said that Bidder's Edge could no longer use its crawler to gather information from eBay. 'Even if its searches use only a small amount of eBay's computer system capacity, Bidder's Edge has nonetheless deprived eBay of the ability to use that portion of its personal property for its own purposes.' So what about Yahoo! and all the other search engines? Don't they use similar technology? Read the article and see for yourself." Or maybe it's not such a bad precedent; it'd be interesting if such a ruling helped discourage hard-drive searching by software which searches for "undesirable" content without your consent or knowledge. -------------------- Firewall + Censorware = Trouble A articles article from the "security-is-a-process" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/2229218 Is your company thinking of buying a firewall that comes bundled with blocking software? Think twice. SecurityFocus ran this story earlier this week: "Censorware gaffe turns 'World's Most Secure Firewall' into an open door." Turns out that bundling Cyber Patrol with Network Associates' Gauntlet meant creating a custom server that "contains a buffer overflow bug, and, further, mistakenly accepts connections from the outside world" - so intruders could get root on the firewall. Makes sense to me: firewall designers keep security uppermost in mind; censorware designers don't. Update 8:55 AM: BusinessWeek is calling it "The Breach That's Shocking the Firewall Industry." -------------------- Add-On Shows DVD As It Should Be A articles article from the "i-got-yer-serial-digital-interface-right-here-pal" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/1158220 pgrote writes "The New Scientist is reporting about a pretty cool device you can add to your DVD for digital output to a Serial Digital Interface. As someone who didn't know the ins and outs of DVD signals and how restricted they were, this article opened my eyes." -------------------- New Slash Version v1.0.3 A articles article from the "squashing-da-bugs" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/1244222 pudge writes "Yo. We released slash-1.0.3. Bug reports and CVS and file downloads are on SourceForge. Slashcode is now hosted at Exodus with Slashdot and Freshmeat. " The scary part is that now Slashdot and Slashcode are totally synched up... which means programmers can e-mail diffs instead of bug reports and feature suggestions (hint hint hint!) -------------------- Linux IA-64 Resource Portal A articles article from the "vintage-port" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/1251258 djmagic writes "SourceForge has opened it's IA-64 portal for porting projects to Linux running on (surprise) IA-64. " It's still a tad sparse, but you should be able to compile on the Compilefarm if you're interested in porting something. There's also a news.com story on the thing. -------------------- Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell A books article from the "funny-"ha-ha"-not-funny-"lithium-time"" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/0339220 Following the success of last year's User Friendly, O'Reilly strikes back. This time, it's a collection of 1999's comics (3 January through 11 December). Slightly oversized, with three daily strips or one daily and one Sunday strip to a page, this happy little collection will spruce up your coffee table and bring a smile to your guests. (If you have a coffee table, that is.) [TABLE NOT SHOWN] -------------------- Smell Of Fresh Cut Grass Trademarked A articles article from the "dear-lord" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/1240257 outlier writes: "One of the few things that couldn't be trademarked or patented has been scents. This has allowed companies to produce inexpensive perfumes that smell like expensive ones. That may change soon, as this article in The Times of London points out. A company just received a trademark for the "smell of fresh cut grass." They're making smelly tennis balls... " -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Sun, 28 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 11:00:06 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/28/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Few, The Proud, The Geeks A features article from the "i-blessed-the-rains-down-in-africa" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/25/2259239 You may have read about Geekcorps before on Slashdot. They're a bunch of good people doing a bunch of cool things, and it was high time we wrote something about them so that everyone can know what's going on. -------------------- Sony MiniDisc DV Cam does Java, Ethernet A articles article from the "but-does-it-do-windows" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1533231 Lifewolf writes: "Sony's new DCM-M1 digital video camcorder stores up to 20 minutes of MPEG2 video, 4,500 still images, or 260 minutes of ATRAC encoded audio onto a MiniDisc. Even more interesting, the camcorder features a Java 2.0 GUI and an Ethernet port so you can download your files from the built-in web server." Now all you need is a hot chick or two, a lot of bandwidth, and a macro virus and you're in business! -------------------- What Will The Internet Of The Future Be Like? A askslashdot article from the "peering-into-the-next-century" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/23/2035207 kayser_soze asks: "I am curious as to what you guys at Slashdot think of the way the Internet as a whole will develop in the near, and not-so-near future. Personally, I always imagine something akin to the ideas William Gibson has written about in his books: a global matrix of information to which all have access. How do other people envision the Internet to come? What technologies do you guys see becoming prevalent, what things will become obsolete, and what are the most far-fetched things you can imagine will happen?" -------------------- Sony MiniDisc DV Cam Does Java, Ethernet A articles article from the "but-does-it-do-windows" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1533231 Lifewolf writes: "Sony's new DCM-M1 digital video camcorder stores up to 20 minutes of MPEG2 video, 4,500 still images, or 260 minutes of ATRAC encoded audio onto a MiniDisc. Even more interesting, the camcorder features a Java 2.0 GUI and an Ethernet port so you can download your files from the built-in web server." Now all you need is a hot chick or two, a lot of bandwidth, and a macro virus and you're in business! -------------------- Slashback V: espionage, midwifery, intrusion A articles article from the "five-is-mystical-for-a-reason" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/059218 Welcome again to Slashdot's continuing education program. Take a seat, say hello to your neighbor (using #slashdot might help), pretend we never said that other stuff. Here's another smidgeon of truth, clarification and equivocation we've spritzed over the usual mishmash of lies, intentional misstatements and strained obfuscation that is the Slashdot home page. Enjoy! First, a word from our sponsor: We heard from the tireless Richard M. Stallman, nothing if not consistent in his argument, who wrote: " Would you please post this? It is in response to the discussion of congressional hearings on Napster, but please post it however you think best. I ask people to think twice before using the term "piracy" to describe sharing published information with other people. That word is a propaganda term used by the owners of information to convey the idea that sharing is wrong; when you use it, you aid their campaign. Unless you believe that sharing information is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship and kidnaping the people on it, please don't use the term 'piracy' to describe sharing." Thanks for the note, Richard. Now tell Lars ... Birth of an island. Regarding the story posted this week about the ongoing study of an emerging island in the South Pacific, Bobity writes "Additional photos are posted at this site." Why can't we embed some networking cable before it cools completely? So maybe 730 days from now ... In the ongoing battle for hearts, minds and desktops, fingers and livers of free software users, Helixcode and Eazel aren't the only ones to make cool strides lately. Per Wigren writes: "Kaiwal Software (Shane) Co., Ltd. and theKompany.com have just signed an agreement to sponsor two developers for 2 years in order to focus on developing KWord, the free word processor for the KDE office suite. " And since at this moment, KWord is probably the closest thing to DTP for Linux (excepting demo-only FrameMaker), that news makes me smile. But two years?! That's long term thinking. Red wine? White Wine. Hot towel? Your hard drive, please, sir? Red wine? With all the intrusions of modern life, it's good to know that at least the computer on your desk at home can't be used by your employer to check who you've been writing e-mail to, and about what. Unless they can. tregoweth writes "MSNBC has a story about one of the Northwest Airlines employees whose hard drives were searched by Northwest's lawyers, as previously mentioned on Slashdot. The last paragraph of the article is chilling. " It also makes you think about the significance of all those "give employees free computer" programs from Ford, et al. Book larnin' on the cheap: carlos_benj writes "I ran across this site today and thought slashdotters who'd had their interests piqued by the ArsDigita free university subject might want to take a look. Their educational philosophy is interesting but may not appeal to those more interested in accreditation than the acquisition of knowledge. The concept would be a definite boon to those with little money but access to the net. The fact that they will be partnering with industry could lend weight to their degree programs to help offset the lack of accreditation. " From the Mixed Up Files of James Bond And John LeCarre: SEWilco writes "Over at HNN they noticed that the latest UK military laptop theft included non-classified details of how the next generation of fighter aircraft can be controlled from the ground. Oops. Meanwhile, the US State Department says 16 laptops are missing, although only one had classified information -- but that's only one -------------------- Movie Reviews:Mission Impossible 2 A articles article from the "daa-da-daa-daa-da-daa-daa-daa-da-daa" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1625213 Seeing's how the gf essentially implied that we would either see Mission Impossible 2, or I would die a slow painful death, it was off to the local movie-googleplex to catch the latest Tom Cruise action flick. Hit the link below to read my review of it. The short, spoiler free review is that its a fun movie, but its no Gladiator (which rocked my lame ass into a whole new world). Its directed by Jon Woo, so that already is either a big strike against it, or for it depending on how you swing. I've enjoyed Woo's brand of action for some time... I like the wierd slow mo, the replays etc etc. It all really should work for Mission Impossible. -------------------- Crack a "Numbers" Station A articles article from the "cool-insight" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1735225 boss soul writes: "On Friday, NPR did an excellent story on those infamous 'Numbers Stations' that broadcast on shortwave radio. Since the 1950s, these stations have been broadcasting nothing but an unidentified human voice reading a string of numbers. Though most people believe that these broadcasts are used by intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents abroad, there has never been any way to confirm this ... until now! The makers of "The Conet Project" (a four-CD set of numbers-station recordings) have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and announced a series of "cryptographic challenges" -- the object of which is to crack an actual numbers station broadcast. Dust off your Crypto caps, everyone -- I want to see a slashdotter win this one! " -------------------- Seagram Declares War On Napster A articles article from the "join-the-fray" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1736245 GrokSoup writes: "Seagram Chairman Edward Bronfman declared war on online piracy in a speech in San Jose on Friday. While many of his arguments are hard to dispute -- Napster-like music-sharing services have turned a blind eye to theft -- he makes others that are tougher to support. For example, Bronfman said that anonymity isn't privacy, arguing that we have a right to the latter, but not the former: '[online anonymity] is nothing more than the digital equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank.'"Apparently some folks have a hard time figuring out that the stuff in quotes and italisced is a quote from the submittor. That's not me writing above - that's GrokSoup. -------------------- Play MPEG Movies Under LinuxPPC A articles article from the "thanks-to-linuxppc.org-and-loki" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/2319208 Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on. -------------------- JPEG2000: Is It The Future Of Imaging? A articles article from the "yes-but-what-*kind*-of-'movie-stars'?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/0323247 LISNews writes: "EE Times has a cool story on the pending JPEG2000 standard and how it will change what we see on the Web. They are already thinking wireless: 'The killer app for JPEG2000 is a handheld device combining both Internet applications and wireless access.'" They're also thinking about migration from current formats, smooth degradeability and -- nice to hear -- Open Source acceptance. Try JPEG's own JPEG2000 page for more information and links. -------------------- New Molecule With Switchable Chirality A articles article from the "diamond-age-here-we-come" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1014215 Nanotechnology writes: "Available here, The molecule was developed by adding copper ions to a derivative of the amino acid methionine. The investigators were then able to switch the molecule's chirality by the addition or removal of an electron. Furthermore, they found that the molecule's chirality could be switched repeatedly, and that the two forms of the molecules polarized light in opposite directions." Especially interesting is this line from The Canary Lab's home page ("Research"): "We are also scrutinizing other aspects of signal detection technology. We prepared a new polymer very similar in structure to polyaniline ... The new polymer was designed to serve as a molecular wire for attaching electrochemical sensor molecules to electrodes." -------------------- RAM Prices Expected To Skyrocket This Week A articles article from the "do-you-suffer-from-long-term-memory-loss" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1247244 CitizenC writes: "ACK! According to this C|Net story, RAM prices are expected to go up again this week, due to the low supply and high demand. Buy your RAM now!" -------------------- Proving General Relativity with Crystal Balls A science article from the "schmatlzy-name" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1428216 Gonzo, the Pirate King of the Underworld writes "It sounds like something out of one of those magazines that you might find at a grocery story checkout stand, but as is typical with news sensationalism, it is a play on words for what is really going on. Researchers at Stanford University, in cooperation with NASA, are preparing an experiment consisting of four extremely precise gyroscopes in the form of quartz crystal spheres. The Relativity Mission will last a year in an attept to measure the effects of frame-dragging and geodetic precession, and give scientists a means of testing General Relativity. " -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Mon, 29 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/29/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Free Software Voice Over IP Solutions? A askslashdot article from the "your-computer-as-phone-booth" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/26/1543242 Shisha asks: "I'm looking for some Voice over IP solution for Unix (Linux, and Solaris in particular). I want to call friends in Prague from the UK. Is there any way how to make the phone call go over the net?" I know there are programs like CCFAudio, Ethernet Phone, FreeWebFone and Speak Freely, however I haven't used any of these programs so I can't say to how well they perform. Have any readers out there tried any of these or have other VoIP solutions that they use that deserve mention? -------------------- Federal Trade Commission Wants More Online Privacy A articles article from the "pushing-for-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1433208 orpheus writes: "According to this article, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has completed a review of Web site privacy policies, and voted 3-2 to seek Congressional legislation to improve user privacy on the Web. According to Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp, the grading was "very easy", but most Web sites flunked anyway. " -------------------- Compaq Hints At "Opening" Parts of Tru64 A articles article from the "could-be-maybe" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1633235 There've been more rumblings from Compaq concerning the potential to "open" parts of the Tru64 source code. Spokesfolks for Compaq talk a bit about Linux, and working with the Community. However, no word about a license, what will be opened, or anything substantial. -------------------- Why Dr. Tom Dislikes Rambus, Inc. A articles article from the "ka-ching" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1253233 homerj79 writes: "The good Dr. Thomas Pabst has posted his feelings towards Rambus, Inc. and why he, and his site, are so critical of the company. Here's a bit from the article I found interesting: 'When Intel 'decided' to go for Rambus technology some three years ago, it wasn't out of pure believe into technology and certainly not just 'for the good of its customers', but simply because they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Back then Rambus authorized a contingency warrant for 1 million shares of its stock to Intel, exercisable at only $10 a share, in case Chipzilla ships at least 20% of its chipsets with RDRAM-support in back-to-back quarters. As of today Intel could make some nifty 158 million dollars once it fulfills the goal.' It's a good read for people thinking about investing in RMBS. Something seemed fishy over at Rambus, and now I know what it is." -------------------- Tim O'Reilly Debates Patent Office Director A articles article from the "don't-want-to-be-Jerry-Springer-but" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1435241 jbc writes "The O'Reilly Network is running a debate between Tim O'Reilly and Patent Office Director Q. Todd Dickinson. Among the highlights is Tim's call for a Slashdot-like forum to serve as a means of identifying prior art." A bare-knuckled debate, not as in-depth as I'd have liked, but it's good to know Dickinson's perspective. Someone else mentioned a list of educational patents on computer assisted instruction techniques some of which go back to the 1960s. -------------------- Portable Desktop Computer Case HOWTO A articles article from the "would-you-sell-your-soul-for-one-of-*these*?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/016213 Louziffer writes: "I've just upgraded the case on my computer with a modified IBM P70/P75 Traveling Case with solid rubber wheels, a steel retractable luggage handle, and a combination lock. The project page includes a tools and materials list, a full set of instructions, and other ideas for making your own. These instructions could easily be adapted to making a case out of nearly anything similar. (The RF debate is addressed in the pages, for those who want to rant.) I'd like to see what other cool projects people are working on in this capacity. Computer cases can go far beyond the neat-but-overdone realm of clear cases." This one looks ready for a beating, or to arouse the suspicions of airport security. Lucid directions let you join the fun, too. -------------------- Open-Source != Security; PGP Provides Example A articles article from the "no-silver-bullet" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1838201 Porthop points out this "interesting developer.com story regarding the security of open source software, in regards to theories that many eyes looking at the source will alleviate security problems." It ain't necessarily so, emphasis on necessarily. Last week it was discovered that, in some (uncommon) cases, a really stupid brainfart bug makes PGP 5 key generation not very random. The bug lived for a year in open-source code before being found. If you generated a key pair non-interactively with PGP 5 on a unix machine, don't panic and read carefully; you may want to invalidate your key. -------------------- U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz A articles article from the "good-news-for-aussies" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/0432222 T J Quoll pointed us to this story from Australia's The Age announcing an agreement reached this weekend among telecommunications officials from Australia, the U.S. and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. The officials, says the article, "agreed to scrap arrangements under which non-U.S. Internet carriers had to pay for the cost of links to and from the U.S., while U.S. carriers paid nothing." Sounds only fair to me. The article concentrates on Australia; can anyone enlighten us on how it will affect connections to other countries? -------------------- Wine Works Towards 1.0 A articles article from the "over-the-river-and-thru-the-woods" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/1253255 Sukru Tikves writes "Today on Wine Weekly News' future issue I read from that ' The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release, but there's still some way to go, and many usability issues to clean up before even a public beta release is possible. While the wizards churn out the machine-readable source code, the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read. ' " -------------------- Federal Trade Commission Wants More Online Privacy A articles article from the "pushing-for-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1433208 orpheus writes: "According to this article, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has completed a review of Web site privacy policies, and voted 3-2 to seek Congressional legislation to improve user privacy on the Web. According to Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp, the grading was "very easy", but most Web sites flunked anyway. " -------------------- Compaq Hints At "Opening" Parts of Tru64 A articles article from the "could-be-maybe" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1633235 There've been more rumblings from Compaq concerning the potential to "open" parts of the Tru64 source code. Spokesfolks for Compaq talk a bit about Linux, and working with the Community. However, no word about a license, what will be opened, or anything substantial. -------------------- Why Dr. Tom Dislikes Rambus, Inc. A articles article from the "ka-ching" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/1253233 homerj79 writes: "The good Dr. Thomas Pabst has posted his feelings towards Rambus, Inc. and why he, and his site, are so critical of the company. Here's a bit from the article I found interesting: 'When Intel 'decided' to go for Rambus technology some three years ago, it wasn't out of pure believe into technology and certainly not just 'for the good of its customers', but simply because they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Back then Rambus authorized a contingency warrant for 1 million shares of its stock to Intel, exercisable at only $10 a share, in case Chipzilla ships at least 20% of its chipsets with RDRAM-support in back-to-back quarters. As of today Intel could make some nifty 158 million dollars once it fulfills the goal.' It's a good read for people thinking about investing in RMBS. Something seemed fishy over at Rambus, and now I know what it is." -------------------- Tim O'Reilly Debates Patent Office Director A articles article from the "don't-want-to-be-Jerry-Springer-but" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1435241 jbc writes "The O'Reilly Network is running a debate between Tim O'Reilly and Patent Office Director Q. Todd Dickinson. Among the highlights is Tim's call for a Slashdot-like forum to serve as a means of identifying prior art." A bare-knuckled debate, not as in-depth as I'd have liked, but it's good to know Dickinson's perspective. Someone else mentioned a list of educational patents on computer assisted instruction techniques some of which go back to the 1960s. -------------------- Portable Desktop Computer Case HOWTO A articles article from the "would-you-sell-your-soul-for-one-of-*these*?" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/016213 Louziffer writes: "I've just upgraded the case on my computer with a modified IBM P70/P75 Traveling Case with solid rubber wheels, a steel retractable luggage handle, and a combination lock. The project page includes a tools and materials list, a full set of instructions, and other ideas for making your own. These instructions could easily be adapted to making a case out of nearly anything similar. (The RF debate is addressed in the pages, for those who want to rant.) I'd like to see what other cool projects people are working on in this capacity. Computer cases can go far beyond the neat-but-overdone realm of clear cases." This one looks ready for a beating, or to arouse the suspicions of airport security. Lucid directions let you join the fun, too. -------------------- Open-Source != Security; PGP Provides Example A articles article from the "no-silver-bullet" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/28/1838201 Porthop points out this "interesting developer.com story regarding the security of open source software, in regards to theories that many eyes looking at the source will alleviate security problems." It ain't necessarily so, emphasis on necessarily. Last week it was discovered that, in some (uncommon) cases, a really stupid brainfart bug makes PGP 5 key generation not very random. The bug lived for a year in open-source code before being found. If you generated a key pair non-interactively with PGP 5 on a unix machine, don't panic and read carefully; you may want to invalidate your key. -------------------- U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz A articles article from the "good-news-for-aussies" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/0432222 T J Quoll pointed us to this story from Australia's The Age announcing an agreement reached this weekend among telecommunications officials from Australia, the U.S. and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. The officials, says the article, "agreed to scrap arrangements under which non-U.S. Internet carriers had to pay for the cost of links to and from the U.S., while U.S. carriers paid nothing." Sounds only fair to me. The article concentrates on Australia; can anyone enlighten us on how it will affect connections to other countries? -------------------- Wine Works Towards 1.0 A articles article from the "over-the-river-and-thru-the-woods" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/1253255 Sukru Tikves writes "Today on Wine Weekly News' future issue I read from that ' The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release, but there's still some way to go, and many usability issues to clean up before even a public beta release is possible. While the wizards churn out the machine-readable source code, the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read. ' " -------------------- Inside Transmeta A articles article from the "take-a-look-inside" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/1257245 Quite a number of people have written about this story - here, ContinuousPark writes: "IEEE's Spectrum magazine has an interesting article with a step-by-step account on Crusoe's design process. It also talks about how they got the venture capital by creating the term 'code morphing,' how they hired their staff and how is it to work there, among other details." -------------------- Is the POST Method Patented? A askslashdot article from the "yet-another-wacky-patent-story" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/2125222 echodave asks: "So, I happened to architect a fairly large website for one of the big three a while back, and I've recently been notified that they're in the midst of a patent infringement lawsuit regarding method="post". It seems that according to this patent, a certain Allan Konrad claims ownership of any model wherein a database is accessed via a client, whether it be web based, client/server based, etc. What's up with that? Through informal discussions, it's been identified that he's essentially claiming ownership of both "POST" and "GET" methods...which are not only used in database related applications, but even something as simple as this form on Slashdot that I'm using to submit this story. Any hints, comments, advice or ideas will be appreciated." Is there anyone in the USPTO checking these things, or can anything get in? -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever! From jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Tue, 30 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) From: David Jacoby jacoby@ecn.purdue.edu Subject: [Slashdot-mailer] Slashdot Daily Report (5/30/2000) Slashdot Daily Report ( http://slashdot.org/ ) News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - EBay Pulls MS Auctions, Neutralizes Complaints A articles article from the "I-would-like-to-neutrally-despise-you-please" department sent by jamie http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/1542223 melaniemad writes: "I haven't seen this story anywhere else but kuro5hin. Microsoft has set up a user account on eBay: msoft@buddy.ebay.com. They apparently use this account to shut down auctions of Microsoft software. This has resulted in a lot of negative feedback, which has been changed to 'neutral' by eBay. This does not coincide with their policy about removing feedback. But then, do the rules ever apply to Microsoft?" (read more...) (Boy, a ten-day-old story. I need to start reading kuro5hin more often.) Anyway, I know from experience that my chances of getting through to a real eBay person are approximately nil, especially on Memorial Day, so I'm not even going to try. Here are the questions I'd like to ask, and if some eBay staffer would like to answer them, feel free. 1. Regarding "VeRO," the Verified Rights Owner Program. Comments from sellers who have had their auctions yanked include: * "I own this software. It is mine to sell." * "Ended my perfectly legit sale." * "I was forced to buy it from Dell, I should be able to sell it. www.linux.org" * "I have the right to sell the Windows 98 I BOUGHT.. this is BULL SHIT....." * "ended 2 of my legit auctions. won't respond to emails." * "Legit auction canceled." * "MS & Ebay Cancelled my perfectly legit auction." * "copyright violation - on unopened retail box!" These are not spurious complaints; they come from over a hundred eBay sellers with positive feedback ratings like 40, 253, even 476! Clearly these people are not scammers, they are legitimate and frequent eBay sellers who know the rules and who feel angry that they've been ripped off. It is already apparent that eBay is ending perfectly legal auctions of E-Meters based on illogical and unfounded claims of copyright violation from the Church of Scientology. So "Verified Rights" doesn't mean much. Can anyone at eBay confirm that each and every software auction terminated by Microsoft was illegal? And if not, shouldn't VeRO be renamed the "Unverified Rights Owner Program"? 2. EBay claims that, upon receiving VeRO complaints, it "reviews the reported items and, unless there is an obvious error, ends the auction." Were any of Microsoft's reports so reviewed, or were the auctions just immediately terminated? 3. Where on Questionable Items: Software is it indicated that software, unopened in the box, purchased at retail, cannot be resold? 4. Has Microsoft invoked a particular law - UCITA would be an obvious guess - in terminating these auctions? Or has it pointed to its license agreements (which for many of these auctions, apparently, would not apply)? 5. EBay's page about removing feedback doesn't mention cancelling rating of feedback, which is obviously a very important part. Isn't that misleading? 6. What did Microsoft do to get this special favor done for them - neutralization of their negative feedback? Does eBay do this for all their VeRO program members, or just Microsoft? Update, 25 minutes later: gehrehmee pointed out Microsoft's internet piracy webpage (the URL got chopped, but deserves to be seen). Scroll to the bottom to read (emphasis added): Microsoft and eBay have initiated an aggressive program to stop auction sites that Microsoft believes may be distributing infringing product. Microsoft monitors all auction sites and conducts daily searches to identify auctions suspected of offering counterfeit or infringing software. The company notifies eBay of suspect auctions and asks them to terminate the auctions within 24 hours. Phrases like "due process" and "guilty until proven innocent" are coming to mind. -------------------- Compaq Itsy Usability movies A articles article from the "toys-to-lust-after" department sent by CmdrTaco http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/1514258 Jón Ragnarsson writes "Compaq Western Research Lab has put some movies of the Itsy running Doom, Java, X and other stuff... The ARM CPU still amazes me after all those years... " My love affair with the itsy goes way back to stories that we posted years ago. I even saw one at the 98 LinuxExpo. This is the box that we always wish would be mass produced, but just doesn't seem to ever get any closer. Its still cool tho. -------------------- Microsoft Releases First X-Box Screens A articles article from the "eye-candy" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/135211 -------------------- GNOME 1.2 - What's In It For You? A articles article from the "gnomatter-what-happens" department sent by timothy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/29/141259 Ur@eus writes: "We have just posted an article at Linuxpower.org desribing what's new in the GNOME 1.2 release. Since the GNOME press release was kinda thin I think this will be of interest to many people. You'll find the article here. " A nice overview, for non-Gnomers especially. You'll find even more beautiful screenshots, as well as more general information, on the Helixcode site. -------------------- Too Old To Code? A articles article from the "social-security" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/30/029234 Weyoun writes: "Mercury News has an interesting article up about age discrimination in the Valley. As a 23-year old software engineer, I'm doing great right now, but I'm terrified about what will happen when I hit 40 or 50. Software is the only industry I know of where one's marketability is highest right after college and decreases geometrically thereafter. Any ideas for a second career?" Better yet, is this only in Silicon Valley? Only in the United States? Talk amongst yourselves. -------------------- They Don't Make Them Like They Used To A articles article from the "scirocco" department sent by emmett http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/30/0214203 `Sean writes: "Sosik-Hamor Projects has posted an article entitled 'They Don't Make Them Like They Used To' that, with the help of some semiautomatic weapons, documents the durability of old school hardware versus the flimsy cases being used in newer peripherals. The Sun 3/50 came out victorious and was stolen from the trash the next day, probably to be turned into body armor!" -------------------- Thoughts On Third-Party DSL Providers? A askslashdot article from the "looking-for-experiences" department sent by Cliff http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/27/194232 drut asks: "Due to a power surge last week, I lost my link at home. As a result of this, I've learned the frustrating truth of how my DSL provider processes its work orders that have to deal when the actual DSL line is involved. My provider, Flashcom, works with Covad and Bell Atlantic to give me Internet access. Due to legal issues involved in the ownership of the physical phone lines, I spent a week just having them go through the red tape of contacting one company, having them issue a work order with another company, then having the second company issue a work order with the third company, making me three times removed from the problem. Because of this system, no one at the first (Flashcom) or second (Covad) companies have any idea of the status of the problem, and don't have any contact information for the third company (Bell Atlantic). With all this hassle, next time I sign up for DSL (maybe I'll switch to cable), I'll probably sign up directly with the phone company, if they offer the service. This seems like an unfair advantage to the other companies. " Has anyone else had problems like this? -------------------- Canadian "Big Brother" Database Scrapped A articles article from the "taking-it-down" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/30/1214212 Pig Hogger writes: "Jane Stewart, the minister responsible for Human resources development Canada has announced today that the "longitudinal labour force file databank" will be dismantled. You can read the official ministry press release, or the CBC story. Amusingly, the minister said that they 'cannot take chances in the age of Mafiaboy'... " -------------------- AOL/Gateway/Transmeta Team for Internet Appliance A articles article from the "looks-very-interesting" department sent by HeUnique http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/30/1217242 OK, so now it seems almost official. According to this story in the New York Times (free registration required) - AOL/Gateway will announce their Transmeta/Linux based Web appliances today. The article is particularly interesting since it details the motive behind AOLs going counter Wintel, And Transmeta's Ditzel says it best: "The truth is that the phrase Internet appliance has become a code word in the industry meaning 'no Windows.'" And dare I say: no Intel too... But only time can tell if this is going to be as big as AOL/Transmeta hope. Thanks Eitan for the Link. -------------------- Pushing Microwaves Faster Then Light A science article from the "move-it-move-it-move-it" department sent by Hemos http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/30/1223244 ContinuousPark writes: "According to this NY Times piece, Lijun Wang of the NEC Research Institute in Princeton has reported an experiment where "a pulse of light that enters a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas is pushed to speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light". A second experiment by three scientists for the Italian National Research Council is reporting also superluminal speeds. And yet, this seems to be consistent with Einstein's theories. " -------------------- Virtual War A books article from the "precision-violence-in-a-risk-averse-culture" department sent by JonKatz http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/12/1418257 -------------------- The info is Rob Malda's The code is mine MOTD: ----------------------------------- Open Source Forever!