Slashdot Mirror

usermilk writes "Now that the X-Files has finally ended, I recommend you all check out The X-Files Timeline. It has a list of all the episodes, chronologically, and what happened when. A very good utility in figuring out what the heck happened, and when." If it hasn't shown in your timezone yet, obviously, don't click through.

Ustaad asks: "We are running some sort of a club in our University which has members who are interested in programming and related stuff. With many sites like TopCoder and Valladolid Online Judge providing heavy machinery practice equipments to programmers, the level of competition in programming contests like ACM ICPC have gone really high. However, we are finding it really difficult to motivate new entries to join our club. There are few key questions that we face from our members. Firstly, how important are these programming contest techniques for solving the real-world industrial problems? Secondly, Do employers really care about the achievements in programming contests while recruiting? And thirdly, what other advantages does one gain by venturing into these contests?"

Dork King writes "The New York Time's Review of AOTC (free reg, yada yada) notes that Attack of the Clones doesn't look good for fans. Thankfully, I'm not a fan." Also, dw5000 writes "The BBC has a favorable review of Attack of the Clones on its news website, as well as an executive summary of what the UK papers are saying about AotC. The populist tabloids love it, while the broadsheets are giving cautious approval. Hmm. Maybe I won't wait for DVD ..." I also noticed Variety has a review up as well. Also, for those who have lost all hope for Star Wars, I submit to you the date of the Spider-Man sequel: May 7th, 2004. You should know that spoilers exist in one or more of these stories. Beware!

phoneboy writes "From Wireless Consumers Alliance: A class-action lawsuit was filed on April 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of wireless consumers seeking to end the control of the handset market by wireless carriers. Read the Antitrust Complaint. While the complaint is fairly short and easy to understand, a summary is in order: The carriers basically dictate required features to handset manufacturers. Phones are tied to specific carriers and cannot be moved between carriers. Carriers refuse to allow handsets on their network they didn't approve. Handset manufacturers thus cannot sell handsets that aren't approved by carriers because carriers will not allow them to be used. All of this rises costs for the consumer, making it difficult and more expensive to switch carriers, and unfairly restrains trade for both handsets and cellular services. As someone who recently tried subscribing to AT&T's new GSM service with an unlocked GSM phone (they didn't allow me to "activate" the service unless I bought one of their phones), I'll be watching this case very closely."

John Mearns writes "It looks like before long all caffeine junkies will be able to ditch the bottle of Mountain Dew or cup of coffee in favor of pill. Its not a true stimulant so you don't get the "caffeine crash," just countless hours of alert attentiveness. " It's also still in testing so it'll probably make you grow horns or something, and is supposed to only be used for people who are sleepy during the day, but it raises several interesting ethical questions.

Sivar writes: "Cray, a well known vendor of extremely fast supercomputing hardware, has introduced a storage system with a 224 GB capacity. The large size seems impressive, but the device can also transfer an unprecedented 80GB(!!) every second. That's more bandwidth than the main memory of most servers, and it's just for storage. For comparison's sake, a typical dual channel DDR motherboard has a bandwidth capacity of barely 4.2GB/sec." Yow.

Vegeta99 writes "An Italian researcher is claiming ground-breaking progress, and has successfully cloned a human, and the mother is now 8 weeks pregnant, according to this article. Now how long until I can buy my own clone?" It's worth noting that the Roman medical associations bioethicists denied Dr. Antinori permission to proceed with these experiments last month. So doing the math, Rome was a little late... If the pregnancy continues without miscarriage, the tyke may share a birthday with Marie Curie

Em Emalb and other readers sent in follow-ups to our earlier story about yet more bundled crapware with Kazaa. Kazaa says they didn't do anything wrong; and so does Brilliant's CEO. I don't understand why anyone is still installing Kazaa, given their track record. Brilliant's brilliant plan is to use your computer to distribute their advertising, and give out Altnet resource dollars in exchange.

palpatine asks: "I'm looking around for an Internet brokerage that offers a programming interface. Instead of using the Web and forms to make and track orders, I'd like to be able to have some sort of library with functions for making and tracking orders as well as getting real-time quotes, securely over the Internet. Does anyone know of such a place?" Is there such a beast?

Slashback tonight with more on Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers, specifically), various ongoing court battles, the true color of the universe, and more. Read on for the details.

All I'm certain of is my true love's hair. CompaniaHill writes: "As previously reported on /., first they though it was turquoise. Then they found an error in their early calculations, and announced it was really beige. But doubts lingered, and color experts pointed out that an objective color as viewed from the theoretical blackness of space would appear different when viewed on Earth in typical daylight. So adjustments were made, and calculations were revised and rechecked by color scientists Michael Brill of McClendon Automation Inc. and Mark Fairchild of the Munsell Color Science Laboratories. And now, at last, Ivan Baldry and Karl Glazebrook, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, using spectral data from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, have announced the final result: The universe is decidedly salmon. Really."

The milestones are getting closer together. Dare Obasanjo writes: "Xindice (http://xml.apache.org/xindice), the Apache native XML database has finally reached version 1.0. Xindice used to be called dbXML and was mentioned in my article on XML and databases."

Three From the Courts TheFrood writes: "It looks as though the battle between Blizzard and bnetd (as reported in previous stories here(1), here(2), and here(3))is heating up. Vivendi has sent another letter to the EFF, which has wasted no time responding."

ElitusPrime writes with an update in the strange case of Ken Hamidi, the Intel employee whose mass-mail to Intel employees brought charges of trespassing. Now the California Supreme Court may take another look at the case. Says ElitusPrime: "If this guy is put in jail, I can think of more then a few other spammers that need to go up the creek with him..."

In a very different case, pagan26 writes: "It seem that DMCA will have its day in court. With ElmcoSoft."

Well, at least you can trust their word, right? Masem writes: "According to MSNBC, the developers of the spyware program WinWhatWhere will no longer have their install program trample the bits of anti-spyware programs, after word broke that this behavior was occurring. However, no word has been made by a similar spyware program developed by SpectreSoft that does similar damage."

I will fork out to see this, happily. Pingsmoth writes "It looks like the faithful fans of Peter Jackson and Tolkien will be able to catch a glimpse of The Two Towers this Saturday. Lordoftherings.net is reporting, through a video of Peter Jackson, that a preview (read: not a trailer) of The Two Towers will be shown in theatres this Saturday, presumably attached to The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe at the end? At any rate, it looks like I'll be seeing the film at least seven times now, and it's a good thing I got a morning shift tomorrow." For a more colorful description of this 4-minute tease, check out Ain't it Cool News' version.

Johnny Mnemonic writes "Apple is asking for feedback specifically from PC users about why you might be considering a Mac purchase, or if you recently purchased a Mac for the first time, why you made the switch. A good opportunity to sound off about your Apple peeves, but also a chance to let Apple know what you think they're doing right. The Mac OS X feedback page, originally from the Public Beta, is still up and accepting feedback, also."

saridder writes "In an increasing attempt to regulate the Internet like the current PSTN, the US Government has asked the IETF to come up with a system to prioritize government and emergency worker traffic in the event of another disaster, much like the GETS system already in place for the PSTN. It's interesting to follow, because it's only an RFC, so you don't have to follow it. I probably won't be prioritizing government traffic on any of my routers." The story has a link to the ieprep working group if you want to get involved or comment. Perhaps this is a better way than GOVNET.

mach-5 writes "I recently had an Iomega Jaz disk fragged by the drive (the data is corrupt from simply using the disk in another drive). I know that I can easily get a free (beer) replacement from Iomega, but what I really want is my data back, which is far from free. This is a little unfair considering their drive corrupted my disk. Has anyone had any success in having their data recovered by a drive company. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this particular company?"

Voivod writes: "Inspired by the recent Slashdot and Evolt discussions about Blocking Bad Spiders, we set out to write an Apache module that solves this problem. The result is Robotcop and it's ready for action. We believe that it's the best solution to protecting Apache webservers from spiders currently available. Install it and help us make life hell for e-mail harvesting software!"

Dynedain writes: "ZDNet reports that Mission Critical Linux who specialized in server clustering, is laying off 90% of their work force of 60 after failing to secure a buyer of the company. :("

the_rev_matt writes: "eSchool News has a great piece about the religious influence present in filtering software. Not that this will be a surprise to most /. regulars, but the research behind it is interesting. Now if only eSchool News could change their name to something less horrible..."

evil_one writes: "Shortly after the article on ReplayTV mods, comes this story about TiVo cost increases." A 30% increase in the cost of TiVo service will probably affect a lot of readers -- and might just make the hassle of a homebrewed PVR a little more attractive. Of course, TiVo service is what makes a TiVo more attractive than a plain recorder anyhow.

evil_one writes: "Debian Planet is reporting that the official announcement has gone out regarding Debconf 2002. It's going to be held July 6-8th , making it rather convenient for anyone who wants to attend the Ottawa Linux symposium this year."

krugdm writes "Remember about five years ago when Apple announced their deal with Microsoft where Apple agreed to bundle IE with new Macs and drop a patent lawsuit, and the guys from Redmond were to continue to develop Office for the Mac as well as purchase $150 million in Apple stock? Well, that deal expires this summer. describing the love-hate relationship the two companies have had in the time since 1997 and wonders whether the pact will be renewed."

evil_one writes: "The end is finally here for Corel, who released a Debian based linux distro a couple years ago (now owned by Xandros) Has announced that they are shutting down their Open Source Development web site as of March 1st. As many readers already know, Corel has helped the community on a huge scale, providing the Linux world with versions of Corel Draw and Corel WordPerfect. It's sad to see this, especially with the amount of work that Corel has put into Wine and their other projects, which include add-ons to KDE." Guess I can retire this topic icon ;)

Stone Rhino writes: "Yet another marvel has been created in the quest to create minature machines: a thermometer of liquid gallium within a carbon nanotube. The New York Times has an article on this. The thermometer is 10 microns long and measures temperatures from 120-950 degrees farenheit. Of course, the part I find most impractical about it is the fact that you need a scanning electron microscope to read it."

Bruce Perens writes: "He'll have to change its name, but Tom Lord's arch revision control system is revolutionary. Where CVS is a cathedral, 'arch' is a bazaar, with the ability for branches to live on separate servers from the main trunk of the project's development. Thus, you can create a branch without the authority, or even the cooperation, of the managers of the main tree. A global name-space makes all revision archives worldwide appear as if they are the same repository. Using this system, most of what we do using 'patch' today would go away -- we'd just choose, or merge, branches. Much of the synchronization problem we have with patches is handled by tools that eliminate and/or manage conflicts -- they solve some of the thorny graph topology issues around patch management. Arch also poses its own answer to the 'Linus Doesn't Scale' problem. This is well worth checking out." If you're asking "What about subversion?", well, so is Tom.

spike hay writes: "According to this article at Space.com, we may send a sample-return probe to Mars in 2005 that will drill a few hundred feet into the Martian surface to look for liquid water. Scientists believe that great quantities of briny water could exist under the surface permafrost, warmed by volcanism. Finding liquid water on Mars would help sustain future colonists, and it even may open up the possibility that life might still exist on Mars."

alanpage asks: "My ISP got out of the dial-up business and sold my account to Earthlink. They do not allow me to send e-mail (via port 25) on behalf of the web sites that I maintain. Are any of the major players in broadband or dial-up port 25 friendly?"

ImaLamer writes: "The BBC News is reporting that researchers have found some interesting things in one of the 'least explored' areas of the Earth. From the article: 'For good reason, the Gakkel Ridge is one of the least explored places on our world. It extends over 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) through the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean, from north of Greenland to the Laptev Sea off Siberia.' It seems they eclipsed past work by 20 years and are very excited [and suprised] by the amount of new organisims found. They also hope to answer whether lifeforms evolving in the Arctic area is the same or related to lifeforms in the other oceans."

usermilk writes "Linux Journal just posted a pretty cool article, A Penguin Angle on the Ox: Day One at Macworld. It features a Linux user's perspective on MacWorld, OS X, Darwin, and how all these things play together. Most interestingly, he comments on the large number of open-source-Unix bigwigs who are now on Apple's payroll. There's also a pretty concise description of the difference between Apple building off of BSD compared to Microsoft trying to also reap the benefits of open source." Doc Searls' perspective makes a great companion to the report from the floor (and part II) that chrisd posted.

DeadBugs writes: "With all the hype surrounding the new Athlon XP and P4 2.2 GHz, the more affordable processors have been ignored. Tech-Report has a great article comparing the new AMD Duron and Intel Celeron. Both are now running at 1.2 GHz and have upgraded cache. The new Duron contains XP technology, while the Celeron is a PIII Tulatin with a 100MHz bus and built on the .13 micron process."

llamalicious writes: "And you thought a Nobel Prize for the discovery of Bose-Einstein Condensates was nifty, SciAm's reporting that scientists are taking this new discovery one step further, and have once more proven that we don't really know anything about quantum physics. This new state is being called a patterned fluid, which could supposedly move the field of quantum computing ahead."

Pauly asks: "Here I am again setting up a new workgroup of UNIX workstations and servers in the traditional office arrangement. By traditional I mean many clients being authenticated by a naming service and mounting homedirs and other shares handled by centralized file servers. I can't help thinking there has to be a better way to do this. Even though this particular LAN is behind a reasonable firewall, I don't feel that NIS/NFS (and their derivatives) are designed securely enough for today's world. Even though I have gone to great lengths to secure the dmz, it just feels wrong to ignore the internal network. I don't have any legacy application or system requirements to keep me tied to NIS/NFS. All the clients will be OpenBSD, FreeBSD or Linux machine. Therefore, I am free to use the best-of-breed tools available today. So I ask: How would you implement the traditional UNIX workgroup today and which of the latest and greatest tools available would you use?"

saridder writes: "There's a saying that behind every fortune is a crime, and as we have learned with Apple, Microsoft, and others, Cisco is no different. The SJ Mercury has an article outlining and debunking the myth of Cisco's founding."

Remote writes: "As of next year, Brazilians will be able to obtain notary-authenticated digital documents and have them sent over the Internet (English) . You can also obtain a CD or floppy from a notary office, containing your document encrypted with an assymetric key. The key generation, though, demands that one shows up in person at the notary office for ID verification. This was made possible by legislation that recognises public-key encrypted documents and signatures as legally valid. This is one first step, and I don't see why this wouldn't be applied to things like contracts, invoices, wills, etc. Brazilian Notary and Register Association claims that one can even print as many copies of, say, your driver license as desired, though I don't see how this part would work..."

Slashback with more on Wesley Crusher; overclocking new Athlons the kindler, gentler way; building silent PCs for the more ambitious; software that stinks; and more -- just read on for the details.

That fetid odor continues to rise. cconnell writes "In September, Slashdot and Developer.com were kind enough to publish an article I wrote titled Most Software Stinks!. The article generated 748 comments on slashdot, making it one of the most active stories in recent months. Here is a follow up piece I wrote which responds to some of the comments."

Silence, fool! The Panther! writes "Here's an article I wrote that shows step by step how to achieve some measure of silence in my home office. It's different from most in that it approaches damping existing hardware rather than buying new. Some ideas were suggestions of Slashdot readers from a previous article. Lots of photos for the reading-impaired." Hemos may have been going for a rather normal-looking but quiet PC, but The Panther sure isn't.

Step 39: With your dremel strapped to the hamster, gently nudge the billiard ball ... Now that the famous pencil trick isn't an option for would-be AMD overclockers, more complicated means have been found to unlock and reclock. Carlos writes: "I saw that you have a scoopage on the unlocking of the Athlon XP by Tom's Hardware and there is a better and more reversible way by VR-Zone."

200 years is a long time even for a Congressman. Michael H. writes "Woohoo! Congress has given a $30 million shot in the arm to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission, previously feared canceled. CNN story here. There's still no guarantee that it won't be canceled later, but at least Congress is listening to the fact that it would take ~200 years for the next window if we missed this one."

Hey, that guy's too old to be a kernel maintainer -- we'll make him an actor. bahamat wrote yesterday: "I'm hanging out in Wil Wheaton's chat room (#rfb on undernet) and he's just announced that he's going to be making a cameo as Wesley Crusher in the new Star Trek X." Apparently, the news hit quite a few readers, too -- and for those who haven't, check out our interview with Wil. Maybe he'll get to be on The Tick, too.

Angry Black Man writes: "November 7, 2001 marks a new historic event in domain name suffixes. Neulevel's press release is reporting that the .biz domains went live last night at 12:00." And if you can follow that link, I guess they're live for you too. Anyone going to buy a .biz domain? .info might be used, but .biz just sounds silly/sleazy to me.

nicsterrr asks: "Since returning to education and discovering the delights of signal processing and numerical computation, I have become increasingly unhappy with Matlab. Mathworks refuse to release the Linux student version of Matlab in Europe (their official reason is that apparently us Europeans would pirate it frantically if they did), and hence I have had to run the windows version with Wine (with moderate success). I (and many others) would love to use Octave as our primary numerical computation package, but it is limited in areas such as signal processing, control systems, and especially graphical functions. Their homepage does not give much insight into Octave's current development and likely future. How many people are involved in Octave, or would like to be? Am I one of many that feel a new, concerted effort should be taken to transform Octave into a complete replacement for Matlab? This is a critical piece of open source software for universities and the lack of a Matlab replacement is one of the reasons my department frowns on our requests for Linux based PCs."

Contributed by readers FooBard and Scrymarch, the pair of reviews below ought to either bring back memories or spark some curiosity. Stranger In a Strange Land may not be everyone's favorite book -- even among Heinlein fans -- but it certainly strikes a chord. If you haven't read it, these reviews should give you a good idea of whether you'd like to.

Stranger in a Strange Land author Robert A. Heinlein pages 438 publisher Ace Books rating n/a reviewer FooBard, Scrymarch ISBN 0441790348 summary Undeniably intriguing, by turns illuminating and infuriating story of life on earth as viewed by a visitor with a special interest.

FooBard writes: "Review of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land, unabridged version.

I have read a lot, although not all, of Heinlein's work. Stranger is clearly his crown jewel, and for reasons that transcend science fiction. All great art transcends its genre, and this book is no exception. The story is not merely "robots and rocketships", but uses science fiction for a truly creative look at the human condition: religion, love, sex, money, power, government, relationships... what more could you want?

Footnote: This book is also the origin of the term "grok" (loosely meaning: to have a very deep understanding of), which is used so frequently in computer circles.

The Scenario

The story is based on Valentine Michael Smith (no relation), usually called Mike, or the Man From Mars. Mike is the son of two crewmembers of the first manned flight to Mars, and was born on Mars after that flight crash-landed. His parents died shortly after his birth, and he was raised by Martians.

"Martians?" you might say. "How quaint." Keep in mind that this was written a while ago (when Martians were still trendy), and suspend your disbelief. Just as in all good "classic" sci-fi, Heinlein's methods and situation aren't as important as his goals and ideas. Sci-fi isn't about the "sci" or the "fi", but about what it means to be human.

Mike struggles in adapting to life on Earth, first physically, then mentally. He grapples with his integration into the human race in his own unique way. His journey is sort of a coming of age, yet he really is of age in another society -- a society whose values are often polar opposites to those value that define our humanness. Throughout Mike's process, Heinlein reflects on what it means to be human, which is one of the best and richest themes used in literature.

In a historical context, the book itself also has an interesting history. Back when it was originally published, Heinlein was forced to cut quite a bit of the book, especially the racier parts. This version reflects the manuscript that Heinlein originally wanted. I have previously read the abridged version, although I must admit that I don't remember all the finer points. This version does seem to have a bit more sex and more material that makes fun of the Fosterite church, etc., so it packs more of a punch than I remember from the abridged version.

What's Good

Heinlein makes very interesting choices in his portrayal of Martian society, and specifically contrasts them to what is most human. Religion, love, sex, money, etc. are all missing in Martian society, and this contrast allows for wonderful parody and analysis. We watch Mike stumble through learning such basics as male vs. female, love, communication, why we have religion, how we use humor, death and how we fear it, money, privacy... Each time, Mike's character forces us to question the "why" behind those ideas in society that we take for granted. Religion (in our form) doesn't seem natural to him. He doesn't laugh. He doesn't understand the wonder of sex, nor why we have property. Heinlein deconstructs those ideas through his plot and the character of Mike, and creates a consistent philosophical view of the world. (Whether you agree with Heinlein's ideas and philosophies is a different matter. I happen to agree with most.)

To watch a character struggle through this discovery for an entire book would be painful; no one wants to see that much struggle without a bit of redemption. So Heinlein makes Mike into a very powerful figure, showing the strengths of Martian society: no money, complete power of mind over body (Mike grows muscles by "thinking them", and has strong telepathic and telekenetic abilities), and he has an unquestioning belief and tangible proof of the afterlife. His human friends learn as much from him as he does from them, and, by the end of the book, Mike seeks to remake Earth society with his new viewpoint.

Religion plays a central role in this book. Organized religion is roasted (especially through the device of the Fosterite church), while religion itself is held as uniquely human -- an answer to our mortality and a reflection of our need to understand our world. Towards the end of the book, Mike creates his own religion (in a sense) and actually follows through, in true literary fashion, to his logical ending: Mike is a clear Christ allegory. Mike is the human- who- is- more- than- and- not- quite- human, and comes to Earth to redeem our society, to challenge how we see ourselves in the universe, and eventually to die for our redemption.

Other characters also are mouthpieces for Heinlein. Jubal Harshaw (strikingly and too blatantly similar to Lazarus Long, from "Time Enough for Love") is the older, yet very open-minded mentor to Mike. Jill helps him explore the male/female relationships, and Ben Caxton works to act as a foil to both Jubal and Mike, allowing Heinlein to use those characters to clarify his points. Several other characters interplay with the main character to strengthen Heinlein's philosophical arguments.

What's Bad

I have only a few issues with the book. The story ends in a typically Heinleinian fashion, with all the characters in some kind of group marriage, where free love amongst highly intellectual people conquers all. Nuh-uh. I'm not buying it again -- especially after rereading "Time Enough for Love" not too long ago. His exploration of such a life is just a bit too drawn-out and idyllic.

Also, in Stranger, Heinlein tries to examine almost all of what it means to be human. Few books, even the classics, attempt such a grandiose exploration of the human condition and all that it encompasses. It's a bit too large of an undertaking, even for the unabridged version. At the end of the book, you feel like you've explored a lot of territory, but you don't quite "grok" it all.

What's In it for me?

Heinlein does a wonderful job in giving himself the situations in which to explore those themes, however, and he must be commended in his success in surpassing the "robots and rocketships" so prevalent among his peers. Heinlein is a master of taking sci-fi beyond the plots, and his character of Mike was his best medium for his talent. This book changed science fiction forever, and it's still among the best. Even if you have read this book before (as I had), this book forces an examination of what it means to be human, especially in a world where technology itself -- not the humanity behind it -- drives much of literature, not to mention the very fundamentals of our lives."

Another point of view, from Scrymarch: Thou art God - I mean Hi. If someone had said that phrase once more to me by the time I finished this book, I think I would have struck them. It is bandied about with a smug bantering style that characterizes the problems I have with the novel and I suspect the author himself.

It is the story of a human raised on Mars by Martians. He then comes to Earth and experiences American society, and the resultant culture-shock on the part of both the main character and the reader is the main point of book. Indeed, by the accounts of the cover it is supposed to upset every background assumption that underlies my existence. Why it fails, and the way it fails, I think is a peculiar result of the interaction between when it was written, the ?60s, and R.A. Heinlen.

The 21st or 22nd century, when the book is set, bears a remarkable resemblance to a certain decade in the 20th century. Some extra gizmos like flying cars are about; there is an obligatory world government; but Western society is essentially the same when it comes to things like the sexism that permeates every printed word on every page.

Sexism is in fact one of the themes of the book. Humanity is blessed with our division into opposite and complementary genders apparently, and we should get on with doin? what our sex does best. Sex is another major theme. It?s enjoyable, you see, and by allowing us to "grow closer" to one another all human tragedy and hunger will be able to be solved.

Martian culture, a meditative one which interacts with spirits as its main leaders, is not much of a shock. It is essentially a convenient mix of Eastern cultures and religions, with some interesting embellishments, such as cannibalism (the only idea which really gave me much of a start). The Martians are at least not humanoid in shape. It revolves around a concept of "grokking" which roughly translates as completely interacting or understanding something. After one has grokked, one can act, and waiting for the right moment to act is also fundamental. This approach to existence makes Martians unbelievably wise, of course, and so they have in turn gained tremendous psychic powers. One of these powers includes routinely making objects (usually clothes) disappear completely, which explains where all those Martian cities got to.

Anyway, the grand revelation Mars-boy receives drives him to found a cult (the rise of specious alien cults is one of the few prophetic aspects of the book). The cult hangs around and has sex with one another a lot, while telling each other they art God. Perhaps this was the appeal of the novel 40-ish years ago. It was a little too flippant for me.

Stranger in a Strange Land is a silly, dated book and the first I have ever seriously considered throwing against a wall.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

SmackDown asks: "I am having trouble with my brand new Palm IIIc. After installing the OS 3.5.2 upgrade, it no longer correctly recognizes graffiti. The graffiti app displays my pen strokes as being jerky and nearly random. I have performed several soft/warm/hard resets each, and nothing works. Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do?"

hubie writes "The NEAR spacecraft flew by the asteroid Eros at a closest approach of only 3 miles! Despite what the story says, that is much less than the altitude of a commuter aircraft. Stay tuned for some expected cool closeup shots."

bridgette asks: "I'd like to have a good 'javadocs-like' documentation generator for my C/C++ project. I've been looking into Doc++ but I haven't seen any 3rd party reviews. Anyone out there want to share their experiences with Doc++, good bad or otherwise? Anyone know of any alternatives?"

nilrake writes "A bit on NY Times talks about new homes are that being built Internet-Ready. " Hmm...I always figured a good drill, several hundred feet of cable and I had an Internet-ready house *grin*.

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.

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. "

hubie asks: "We all know that Linux runs well on older hardware, and with the rate hardware becomes outdated there must be a lot of it out there. However I have a hard time finding older hardware to fill out an old 486 or Pentium system. I find local computer shops are very hit-and-miss in terms of what they have, and contrary to what some people suggest in articles, businesses in my area are not just putting these older systems out on the curb for junk. Are there any good on-line sources for new or used hardware people are happy with? Where are all those 500MB or 1.2GB drives or ISA cards of yesteryear?" (Read on...)

I've always looked to Computer Surplus Outlet for this kind of stuff, but I'm sure some of you have found other online sources for older hardware that you would like to share.

Scrymarch writes "Wyse has switched to Windows from Linux on its thin-client devices because of lack of driver support, etc. Story is on CNET." I feel like a bitter boyfriend. 'You'll be back! You'll be back here on your hands and knees, begging me to take you back!' Maybe I can play 'Mom,' too. 'When you get nailed by stupid licensing schemes, don't come crying to me! It's all fun and games until someone loses stock value!'

Rob Cebollero submits an interesting theory on how to deal with patents in a world of patents-gone-wrong. It's an interesting theory, whether it is or is not pratical or possible, and something I think might be worthy of discussion. Hit the link below to read the whole text.

"Dear /.,

There has been quite a tide of discussion lately regarding the inadequacy of the U.S. patent system when it is faced with technical intellectual property issues. Much of the controversy surrounds the ability of large corporations to patent what are apparently basic or obvious implementations of Internet technology (The Amazon one-click shopping patent, the AskJeeves use-a-question-to-search patent, etc.). The main gripe seems to be that much of the underlying technology which was produced in a communal, open, free-exchange computing culture is being seized, caged, and milked in patent form by mere opportunists looking for a way to insure the wealth of their family line for the next several centuries. Of course, this wealth is extracted from the hard work of the people who developed these technologies, whom in large share come from the general open-source community.

The corporate types and their lawyers will object thus: "Well, if *we* don't patent this stuff, *someone* will, so why should we be the ones to get screwed?" This is the basic argument for the defensive patenting that is going on all over the industry.

How about this idea: We can't fight the patent system, and it's not going to simply disappear, so why not try to make use of it? How, you ask?

Open Defensive Patents.

The geist of this is that obvious technologies are patented, but these patents are granted to a class of people, or to a community, or (what the heck) to everyone, thus rendering their legal power useless. You can think of them as Public Domain patents if you like. Well, I Am Not A Lawyer, much less an expert on patents, but I did think this was an angle to the issue that hasn't been addressed, so I though I'd toss it into the collective /. mind for comments or ideas. It does make a good prima facie case, but there are certainly going to be subtleties to patent law or licensing that I cannot see.

-Rob "

bridgette writes "The Mayor has declared a state of civil emergency, there is a curfew at 7 p.m. and the police have been using pepper spray and allegedly tear gas, paintball guns and rubber bullets." Stories are at KOMO-TV, MSNBC, Seattle Times, CNN, and probably almost anywhere else you look.

jd writes "Scientists have decoded the mitochondrial DNA of the Woolly Mammoth. According to the article: 'the Mammoth was most closely related to the Asian elephant rather than the African Elephant. The three groups split from a common ancestor about six million years ago, with Asian elephants and mammoths diverging about half a million years later.' This work is tied into efforts by researchers to use DNA to analyze other extinct species, such as the cave bear, the Haast eagle and the American lion. The novel aspect of this latest work is that it involved stitching together almost 50 fragments of mtDNA in order to obtain the sequence as a whole."