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Brian Hudson asks: "My friend and I volunteer at our local church in creating and coordinating multimedia presentations used for various activities, including services. The needs we have for our multimedia system are not intimately tied to the fact that this is a church. However, the only programs that we have found so far that allow us to use one monitor as a control screen and the other as a display screen (as in hooked up to our distribution amp and then to the projectors some 100 feet away) are designed solely for worship services. Does anyone know of any well done presentation software?"

"To be frank with everyone, aside from the fact that nonsequential display of slides is possible, these programs are hardly better than Powerpoint (Gotta love the fancy gradient and the way the letters 'shoot' onto the screen). Furthermore, it doesn't help when poorly written drivers, and an unstable platform in general, cause our computer to go down right in the middle of a presentation!

I am running a Matrox G400 TV Dual Head video card and have seen support listed for Linux, although have yet to see whether or not that includes dual display support. Despite my current config, I am perfectly willing to run two more supported video cards if necessary. As of now, our Windows program (called MediaShout) has the capability of sequencing a variety of slides using primitive loops in addition to having the capability to click on any desired slide to display it. Media types include all 'standard' image and audio types as well as support for MPEG-1. Any suggestions on a comparable solution would be great as we are getting extremely irritated with our trouble in finding flexible solutions that don't cost an arm and a leg. (MediaShout itself cost us around $500)"

David writes "I took a look at the new developerWorks Wireless resources section and found this very cool article that shows you how to design a JavaBean that works with SAX, reads in XML data, and puts WBMP (Wireless BitMap) drawing on mobile devices. It uses JSP to generates WML cards that displays WBMP graphs on the screen of a WAP device."

JoeB writes "This article claims if you follow a few simple guidelines you can easily port your Lotus Domino apps that run on Windows to Linux and Solaris. Here is a more focused article about what you need to know about Domino on Linux."

supermancan writes: "Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center's Scheie Eye Institute used gene therapy to restore sight to three dogs that were born blind, and report that the process will very likely work for humans, as well. Yahoo has the story."

Sean writes "Take a look at this comparison of Server-side scripting languages. The article explains how PHP scripts, Perl CGIs, and Java servlets work. It can help you decide whether to use PHP scripts, Perl CGIs, or Java servlets for your next Web development project. It also covers the issues that separate the three languages and provides all the source to test their differences." Right tool, right situation. That's all I have to say.

issachar asks: "While it seems that almost everyone at Slashdot believes that the ICANN / Verisign monopoly on TLD's is a bad thing, there doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement on which is the best alternate root server. While it might be impossible to give a simple answer to this question, perhaps some sort of unity would be a good thing. The recent story on Name.Space, doesn't do anything to clear up the confusion for people who are trying to pick an alternate root server. Furthermore, it seems that co-operation isn't working very well as OpenNIC doesn't recognise the ORSC yet. The frequent suggestion to get one of the major ISP's such as AOL on board won't fly until we have a leader (or at least a group of leading root servers that agree on basic principles). Any thoughts?"

theodp writes: "SiliconValley.com has a report today on the strange saga of the Amazon.com 1-Click Bounty contest. BountyQuest president Charles Cella is refusing to answer questions on the contest. Tim O'Reilly admits he's not clear how BountyQuest officials researched and judged the entries, but still lashes out against charges of possible shenanigans raised by a contestant who BountyQuest tried to "buy off" with a T-shirt. In the meantime, Jeff Bezos still has no comment on the contest's odd outcome. "

aaronhaley writes "Reuters is reporting that Vicom will be bringing Robot wars stateside to air on several of their networks. Let's hope it's closer to the real thing that BattleBots is." And lets hope they keep the sportscaster crap to a minimum, and give us more mechanical bits.

Alert (or at least awake) reader deran9ed points out this article covering AOL Time-Warner's acquisition of BSDi. Sounds like AOL has been busy with acquisitions lately; best of luck any software engineers displaced by the move. Hopefully we'll see an integration of OpenSSH and AIM as well.

ravedaddy writes: "AMD is again upping the ante in the processor war with two new high-performance products: the Athlon 1.33GHz, designed to operate on the 133MHz DDR EV6 bus, and the Athlon 1.3GHz, which runs on the 100MHz DDR bus. There are a couple of reviews pitting the 1.33 Athlon versus the Pentium 4 1.3 and 1.5GHz at Sharky's and at Hardware Central." I'm still happy with last-year's Athlon -- does anyone harbor any lingering thoughts that AMD is a second-class citizen in the chipmaking world?

yellow writes "SMT, or Simultaneous Multithreading, is a concept that is rapidly gaining adherence in the microprocessor area. It essentially allows for a single processor with multi-processor capabilities in both ILP (Instruction Level Parallelism) and TLP (Thread Level Parallelism). When comparing SMT vs. dual or multiprocessor performance data, it is important to compare apples to apples, and understand why under an OS such as Win 98 or ME, even a single Pentium III 1 GHz will handily outperform a dual-Pentium III 500 MHz setup. This is the discussion topic of a new feature on HWC."

Shadowhawk writes "According to this story on ZDNN, AOL filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that defamation lawsuits against anonymous posters to the Internet are 'an illegitimate use of the courts to silence and retaliate against speakers whose statements, while unpleasant from the standpoint of the [plaintiff], were not unlawful.'" AOL's web page about the case has the brief they filed. AOL is making an important argument about abuses of the legal system to identify ISP subscribers.

Kumba writes: "Found this news story while browsing NASA's webpage. Before the NEAR Satellite arrived at Eros, scientists wondered what Eros was, be it a piece of a planet that broke up billions of years ago or a jumble of boulders held together by weak gravity. Now NASA believes Eros to be one of the building blocks of our solar system, what astronomers call planetesimals. It's a very interesting article to read, briefly explaining how our solar system came to be through the formation of these planetesimals and proto planets, and other such neat stuff."

carpediem55 writes "Reuters is reporting that The Planetary Society (founded by Carl Sagan) is bringing science fiction to life, with a Solar Sail powered by light." But get how they plan to launch it: on a Russian submarine ICBM. The sponsors have a site with more information.

Atomic Snarl writes "For those of you breathing fast and hard about user rights after the purchase, what would you think if your TV/VCR/Cellphone/Dishwasher would die if you moved it out of an "authorized usage area?" Got a great boom box bargan on your last visit to Hong Kong, but now it won't work in Cleveland? Yuk! Read the New Scientist article to find out about a GPS chip design intended to kill your unit if it isn't supposed to be marketed in your area!" The implications are wide-ranging and unpleasant.

About twenty million - alright, slight exaggeration, but a whole bunch of people sent the story about Microsoft, Dell and Unisys to build a new voting system. Microsoft will do the software, Dell the hardware, and Unisys will assemble the systems.

Kierthos writes: "In a true sign of survival of the biggest, astronomers and scientists now believe that the Milky Way 'ate' a smaller galaxy billions of years ago. They believe that this could shed some light on the origin of the universe, although their search only included 1500 "sun-like" stars (far short of the 10,000 stars they want to search). Check out the article here."

Kierthos writes "Another great picture from the Chandra X-ray observatory shows us this Cat's Eye Nebula, which scientists believe may be what our Sun will look like in billions of years. While you don't have to pack any time soon, the nebula (images created from the Chandra observatory and the Hubble telescope) offers some insights into what happens to stars as they age into planetary nebula and white dwarfs. And much like articles on /. there are a few typos. Check out the article here. (And if anyone can find a better picture, post the link.)"

Kumba writes "Found this while perusing NASA's Web site. It's an audio clip produced from radio waves detected near Jupiter by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and converted to audible sound by some scientists at the University of Iowa. A clip that they had last week was described by the Los Angeles Times as sounding "like a troop of howler monkeys battling underwater." The new audio clip is....difficult to describe in my opinion. I guess it's best left to each listener to determine what it sounds like, but if you've ever wondered what it sounds like out there, this is it." I had a set of five CDs a while back that had collections of sounds made from one of the NASA missions - it was called Sounds of Space or the Universe. Pretty interesting set - but then, of course, like most of my possessions it burned in a house fire and I've been unable to find it since then.

ravedaddy and quite a number of other folks wrote in with the news that Sharky's looks at the processor which benchmarks very well in comparison to Intel's 800MHz Celeron - the AMD Duron 850. Last week, with the release of the Celeron with a 100 Mhz FSB ^[?] , Intel jumped forward - while AMD's Duron has an equivalent 200 Mhz bus (100 Mhz buses). It looks like AMD is keeping the crown in the "Value" category.

Xpresso85 writes "Just a few weeks ago, Sprint started offering Broadband Direct in my area , it's a $44/month wireless Internet service. Their Terms Of Service is one of the worst yet. You can not portscan, probe, run game or Webservers of any kind, upload or download viruses, use anonymous e-mail, view porno, post anything vulgar or hateful, you cant even encourage anything illegal. They also reserve the right to enter your home or property, monitor your activities, and "share" your personal info with other companies. Lastly, they restrict you from sending out spam, I guess they don't like competition. That's one service I won't be getting anytime in the near future!"

matth writes: "This article talks about how Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, may have a salt water ocean on it. Kind of interesting in light of all we have been talking about with water on planets and what not. If NASA does find water on a planet, the implications could be outstanding, on the other hand, they have yet to find any water on any planet for sure.. yet.... More on Ganymede here."

ravedaddy writes: "The Pentium 4 has been out for a few weeks now but with only Intel's own motherboard having come out upon release of the P4, the choice was limited. SE has reviewed of the first Intel 850 based motherboard from ASUS the P4T, which is actually faster than Intel's own. With features including the i850 chipset, a 400MHz FSB, four RIMM slots, ATA/100, five PCI slots and AGP Pro 4x, the ASUS P4T looks formidable. Using this new board, the authors were able to overclock the Pentium 4 1.5GHz easily up to 1.68GHz." Does it seem like the 2nd GHz mark is approaching a lot faster than the first one did?

rubbadubdub writes: "OK, so the cat's outta the bag with the PS2 but SEGames is continuing their coverage and for those of you that were able to actually get a Playstation2, they've done a complete round-up of all the current games, which might be worth an Xmas list placement or not. It seems as though the launch titles, bar a couple of exceptions, aren't all that."

TheGeneration writes: "Power shortages in San Francisco, and Silicon Valley have caused power providers to demand that Intel and other tech industry biggies to use less power. Things may get bad enough that rolling blackouts have been warned. The story is reported by the AP. "

pippa writes: "There's a technical piece [at Sharky Extreme] on Intel's Itanium, which is a new processor family and architecture, designed by Intel and Hewlett Packard, with the future of high-end server and workstation computing in mind. EPIC processors are capable of addressing a 64-bit memory space. In comparison, 32-bit x86 processors access a relatively small 32-bit address space, or up to 4GB of memory."

ravedaddy writes: "We've all seen the hype over the Sony PS2 and Microsoft X-box but things have been fairly quiet on Nintendo's front. So will Nintendo's GameCube pack a punch powerful enough to pound its competitors in overall sales and immersing game play? We won't know for another six months, but the authors of this preview piece were able to sit down with one of Nintendo's partners, ATI Technologies, to discuss some of the specifications of the GameCube and how its architecture is designed to compete. There is quite a bit of info on the 'flipper' 3D chip from ATI in there."

Let's start this off with some violence! BigBlockMopar answered the age-old question: what happens when a tank runs over a hard drive. NeoCode sent the The Illustrated Guide To Breaking Your Computer, and finally, matticus discovered The Overclockerz Store is selling burnt-up athlons/durons made into keychains. Now that we've got that out of our system, lets get some schoolin' by learning about the facts of life: spankweasel sent in the invisible condom. Now math: Jonathan Hayward sent us A four-dimensional maze. And some history: John Willemin sent us a nostalgia inducing Microsoft Ad from the days of yore. After a hard day of education, why not travel home on your lawn mower powered hoverboard at a cool 15mph? (thanks LenZ) Then we can play some dot-com monopoly (thanks to gmag3) and see what's on TV. MTO sent us Trailers for the Dune miniseries, and David Hume sent an abc article about Vinyl Video which attempts to generate images from your records. Finally, we better check the weather channel to find out what the weather is gonna be like ... on Mars (thanks noctis).

A reader writes "America Online and Gateway are launching their Linux/Transmeta internet appliance today. The webcast can be seen here." The webcast is in Real Audio - you can also find our original coverage of this, back in late May 2000.

The ongoing Slashback assault on previous stories here reveals that (among other things) 1) Maybe Compaq's Transmeta plans are at least slightly more up in the air than previously claimed; 2) Hasbro has again been unable to nab a clue(.com); 3) Hope still springs eternal that you won't have to give your address and DNA sample to RadioShack in order to use some nice (but high-ping) satellite bandwidth. Read on.

It's not that we're abandoning Crusoe -- oh, no! Gorilla_Man writes: "ZDNet's e-week has posted "this story about Compaq denying recent reports that it ditched Transmeta's chips." In truth, the claims of the Compaq spokesbeings here still don't sound like an endorsement of Transmeta, more like a clarification of where in the process of designing the upcoming Armadas thoughts of Transmeta stopped manifesting themselves.

Perhaps the larger player can wake up Mr. Brayne? biggaloot writes: "Just heard from the attorney for Clue Computing that the U.S. District Court in Boston upheld the earlier Clue victory against toy giant Hasbro in the dispute over clue.com. A victory for the small domain name owner... if you can get to court with these cases and hang in there, I think your chances of success are much better than with the problematic Universal Dispute Resolution Policy."

See Clue Computing site's rundown of events to see court documents, including the latest swat from the appeals court. There may be some truly exploitive domain-name grabs in the world (and Yes, "I'll know it when I see it") but this case isn't one of them. Trying to claim proprietary rights to common words like "table," "childhood" or "clue" is too absurd to consider seriously -- thanks to their four years of bullying, I'm willing to concede that Hasbro may have some minor claim to "clueless.com," though. Just don't sue anyone over it.

Oh, and you can find Hasbro's toll-free consumer line number on that site as well; I just spoke (politely, I hope) to "Veronica," who'd never heard of this dispute, but promised to pass on my objections to the right Hasbroids.

You can roll at least part of your own. As the possibility for full-time satellite wireless coverage gets closer, the niggly details start to get more important. dBle writes in with word that the Starband-provided coverage under the joint RadioShack/MSN flag will not actually require purchasing a Compaq from RadioShack.

He writes: "Turns out that there is a external USB version. This will support Win98/98SE/2000/ME. Furthermore, users may use their own PC (not having to purchase the RatShack model). ... StarBand's site lists speeds as 500kb up and 150kb down, though they don't hesitate to point out their goal of providing service of 1500/50Kb during peak usage hours. Still, this continental US-wide service is an interesting possibility for those of us who would like more speed than 56k/ISDN can provide. Also, this could be a viable solution for rural businesses/schools."

If Starband wants to sell to the famous "early adopters," shouldn't they release enough specs at least to make this a kernel rev or two from Linux support?

Ah, that's better. Galvatron writes: "After writing to AOL's customer service complaining about the lack of a homepage feature in 6.0, as reported earlier. This is the letter I recieved from AOL in response, which calls the CNET article "an hoax" (sic). After downloading the new version, I confirmed that AOL 6.0 in fact does allow changing one's homepage. So was it misinformation, or deliberate slandering on CNET's part?"

Well, here is the heart of the email sent to him by an AOL customer representative, and it sounds like some misinterpretations were presented as fact:

The article on the C-net is only an hoax. Please be reminded that AOL Member Services is collecting the data about the service and I assure you the feelings and input of every member are being used to help AOL make the best possible online experience only.

Don't believe that article it's just a matter of advertisement on their part to gather member for their service.

[This headline has been censored in the name of good taste.] schlach announces: "There is a group collecting our purchasing power to acquire WebPlayer units on the cheap from the boneyard. If anyone wishes they had gotten on the band wagon before the sweet deal expired, now's your chance."

For the hoped-for 50 or so dollars, this sounds like a fun toy, not to mention a weird momento. Perhaps eBay will see a flurry of suddenly-unsupported WebPlayers as well. Why would anyone send them back to Virgin?

After arduous Antarctic trials, back on feet. limbostar writes "Pokey The Penguin really is back. Personally I think the strip is pretty funny, I know a lot of other people agree with me." Evidently, slashdot readers can just barely get enough Pokey;)

ravedaddy writes: "With the Pentium 4 in mail order stores now (before Intel's release date), [Sharky Extreme] felt it was time to give an update on the status of Intel's next generation chip as well as a look at some more information on Intel's upcoming SDR and DDR chipsets (Brookdale) for the Pentium 4." Key words: "Don't be foolish and buy now. You can't actually buy a Pentium 4 motherboard yet, so you won't be able to use a Pentium 4 right away, anyway."

rubyred writes: "With all the fuss surrounding the launch, SEGames has some PS2 coverage by several of the editors who had vastly different experiences on the launch night ranging from actually getting a PS2 to standing outside of a Wal-Mart in the pouring rain with a blow-up Shark and not getting one. Other features include "the first 24 hours with it""

risotto writes "There's always that dilemma of whether to upgrade your CPU or your video card first. There's a useful piece that shows some of today's fastest 3D accelerators but on lower end systems like an Intel Celeron 700 and a AMD Duron 700. There's some pretty big performance jumps to be had by throwing a T&L capable Geforce 2 GTS into a low end system in Quake III and the like."

The Cunctator writes: "The Open Directory Project Guidelines (also known as dmoz.org, purchased by Netscape and then AOL) have recently (10/18/2000) been changed, in a few dangerous ways. The two things of interest are: The newly censorious Illegal Sites description ('Sites with unlawful content should not be listed in the directory. Examples of unlawful content include child pornography; material that infringes any intellectual property right; material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence); and material that is libelous.') which would eliminate such categories as Culture Jamming (a category I edit) and Suicide and Hacking; And the new copyright notice, which now gives Netscape (aka AOL) full copyright, which before remained in the editors' hands." DMoz has pissed off a lot of editors in the past for screwing with their content, but so far not enough to actually hurt themselves.

slashdoter writes: "EFF has some info on a new bill before Congress. The Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000 says that you can use the internet to move music as long as you own the CD. You can read the story at the EFF website." The 360-word bill would have cut the my.mp3.com lawsuit off at the knees, so naturally mp3.com likes it; if it passes, mp3.com might even discover its missing backbone. So check to see whether your Congressperson is on the House Judiciary Committee; if so, since that's where the bill is, your opinion can have some real leverage. Send email!

slashdoter continues: "And on a side note, I just received my welcome letter from the EFF and was angered to find I was only member #11420. After 10 years that's all they have. Come on, as a student it only cost me $20(US). Words are nice but money speaks."

On another side note: civil-rights-wise, it's ironic that this bill's author also introduced H.R. 1081, a silly thing that died in committee. A hate-crime law with stiff penalties for flag-bashing.

slashdoter writes: "EFF has some info on a new bill before Congress. The Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000 says that you can use the internet to move music as long as you own the CD. You can read the story at the EFF website." The 360-word bill would have cut the my.mp3.com lawsuit off at the knees, so naturally mp3.com likes it; if it passes, mp3.com might even discover its missing backbone. So check to see whether your Congressperson is on the House Judiciary Committee; if so, since that's where the bill is, your opinion can have some real leverage. Send email!

slashdoter continues: "And on a side note, I just received my welcome letter from the EFF and was angered to find I was only member #11420. After 10 years that's all they have. Come on, as a student it only cost me $20(US). Words are nice but money speaks."

On another side note: civil-rights-wise, it's ironic that this bill's author also introduced H.R. 1081, a silly thing that died in committee. A hate-crime law with stiff penalties for flag-bashing.

FurBurger writes: "Another interesting article from Discover.com on NeuroComputers . 'Although scientists have developed software that attempts to mimic the brain's learning process using only the yes-no binary logic of digital computers, all the connections in a personal computer are wired back at the factory. Breaking a single one of these connections usually crashes the computer.' (a la Windows =))" The promise of neuron-based computers is greater flexibility and fault tolerance, with components that require very little power. Or, as FurBurger puts, it, "Watch out, Transmeta!" Mike also points to a June article on the BBC about the same group and their "leech-ulator."

The European Union appears ready to shrug and say "OK" to the AOL / Time-Warner merger, while a reader brings us sad and totally unrelated news for game fans. A (plausible, but complete?) explanation of the upcoming PS/2 Crisis, if you view it as such. Also, didja ever wonder how big a trophy it takes to fit 15 syllables? Read on, read on -- it's Slashback.

"Heck, gentleman, what right have we got to approve anyhow?" WPL510 writes: "Just saw this article on Yahoo! about the AOL-TW merger. Apparently all the begging and pleading did something because the EU is about to approve their mega-merger. One concession they didn't mention was opening up AIM, of course. Great -- all we need is a bigger monopoly."

This too shall pass. Lord_Macblaster writes "The GameFan Network is no longer hosting sites. Many sites, including VoodooExtreme and my own site, Monolithic Illusions are nothing but dead links now. It's a real shame. Plenty of top notch sites were shut down. Not major news yet, but info is available here on PlanetCrap, and here on Lum The Mad."

This is the kind of thing that could get me into gaming. nomadic writes: " Electronic News reports that the PS2 shortage (mentioned before on Slashdot) may actually be DVD-related. Some analysts point to a shortage in DVD drive parts that has been affecting the notebook industry as well, but others suggest that it might be their lax CSS security.

Guess the MPAA leaning on them wouldn't be too implausible, but it's interesting if you consider that Sony's a member of that august body. Wonder how much flak they got from their brethren over the DVD copy protection workaround that Japanese gamers found earlier this year."

Another thing that could get me into gaming -- TheMyth writes: "It appears the Vivid Entertainment Group, is trying to release interactive adult movies for the Playstation 2. Read the article here that tells it all. -- I can't wait to see the field day that our government reps are gonna have with this one. Is this another "targeting adult content to kids case" or is it "targeting adult content to adults that play video games"? Censorship here we come ..."

Giving competition a good name again. An unnamed correspondent points to the results of the century's last ICFP programming contest. ICFP stands for a real mouthful: "International Conference on Functional Programming." "This year, functional languages take all the prizes; OCAML gets 1st and 2nd place, Haskell 3rd, Mercury 4th, and the judges' prize (for best image) goes to a SML/NJ team."

Battling giants has its rewards. GoldSkin writes: "The Digital Divas have reached an out-of-court settlement against Microsoft and their Digital Diva site. You may recall this article from way back in May." From their site: "In the simplest terms, Microsoft's Stacy Elliot will no longer be known as the 'Digital Diva' and Microsoft will no longer use digitaldiva.com in connection with content like that formerly available at that site. Also, in accordance with our settlement agreement, Microsoft has posted a notice at digitaldiva.com. Please visit and see for yourself."

Trinition writes "Justin Frankel from Nullsoft, the creators of WinAmp, as gone and hacked away at his new Parent Company's popular AIM service. He's remove the ads. Read the ZDNet article for details." Apparently AOL yanked it from the firehose page, but it's on Zeropaid.Update: 09/22 02:40 AM by H :Thanks to a couple people who pointed out that it is still on firehose.

Donavan writes "Yahoo Finance is reporting that the merger between AOL and Time Warner has been reccomended for approval."

Tony Stanco writes: "The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee's "Recommendations of the Panel on Open Source Software For High End Computing" has issued its report and recommendations concerning OSS/Free Software. " Very postive -- says that the government should help develop more free software/open source software.

Captain Pooh writes "Nicholas Petreley expresses his opinion about how "Information Doesn't Want To Be Free--People Want It To Be". " Pretty provocative piece - although his reasoning is sound.

soapy writes "Europe's biggest computer gaming trade show, ECTS, took place in London this week. There's a pretty good show report that summerizes all the games coming out later next year such as Violition's Red Faction by Volition which uses the Quake 3 engine and No One Lives Forever, that James Bond first person shooter. There's also some details on some the console stuff going on such as Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, The Sony PlayStation2 and the PSOne. " If you're got more links, post 'em below.

rubyred writes "AMD is at it again today and has added to their Duron line-up and released the 750MHz, which performed well against the Celerons from Intel. There are reviews on Sharky's and Anand's. Also Matrox, who we've not heard from in while has let loose a new .18micron based G450 chip, which is set for the corporate world. The 2D performance looks really good but the gaming... well it's another Matrox product. Still their Linux drivers might get better this time around. Again the same two sites have previews of the card."

Andrew writes "I work for a medium to large sized software company. I am working on a project to put one of our best products in the Open Source market. (It is a product that many people would love to see open sourced) I need help. I have to give a presentation to the Board to convince them that Open Source is the only way to suceed. Keep in mind that this is an established company that has been around for a long time. It will take a convincing, fact-filled argument to convince them. I am a believer that Open Source is the answer, but I am having a hard time finding concrete proof of this belief. I cannot convince them on theory alone."

Glowbead asks: "I run a web design company, and recently I've started stuggling with AOL. A client wants to use AOL as her service provider, which is fine, except that I can't get a submission form with 'type=mulipart/form-data' to go through. The form need to be multipart because they need to be able to upload images. I also can't get any info whatsoever out of AOL as to what the problem might be, other than this useless page. Does anyone know a way around this? Are there other standard problems you guys see when a client is using AOL to access your site? Can/How do you get around them?" This is not the first time I've heard of problems using AOL. What other gotchas have you all found when trying to use or access AOL's web-based services?

zuluwarrior writes "That Beatdown Reporter braved the sea of smelly geeks and visited this year's Gen Con in Milwaukee WI. for the latest computer game news, RPG and board game info and to see if he rolls a natural 20. Top stuff."

pezpunk sent in a link to an ABC News story about Prince putting his two cents in about Napster. Prince has actually been on the cutting edge of distribution technology for years. Say what you want about his style, but Prince knows where it's at. He's been running his own label, Paisley Park, for a while, and he features artists like George Clinton.

topdown writes "I just noticed that AOL released Instant Messenger Beta for Linux (rpm format for RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake). Don't know about you, but I'll be sticking with gaim for now." Wow, this is fantastic news. Way to be on the cutting edge, AOL. Sorry, but this release doesn't even warrant a copy of our home game. I still don't forgive you for using the Jetsons theme music in your commercials.

"AOL wants your children to be safe online," using their Parental Controls. There's just one problem with their censorware. You can see any site you want by appending a "." to the hostname - and this has been true since at least 1997, when Mike Sklut of newriot.com discovered the simple exploit. At the time, he was 11 years old. Despite his having told a few thousand of his closest friends, AOL didn't wise up to the fact until yesterday morning. Mike's out of town at a baseball tournament, but we managed to trade e-mail with him about his early hacking years. Update: 07/17 02:59 PM by J : Other censorware suffers from the same vulnerability. Sheesh.

Slashdot:

What does Parental Controls do?

Mike Sklut:

Parental controls block certain Web sites that AOL lists on their system. When you type in a URL, tokens are sent through your client to the AOL proxy requesting a site. The screen name is verified, and if you are on any three of four settings, the proxy may or may not send you the information.

These settings not only block certain Web sites that AOL lists, but also certain features of AOL. For example: kids only can't access most main features of AOL such as instant messages, and many e-mails are blocked unless the controls are set further.

Also note that if you are not set on 18+ (the very highest setting), then no sockets applications are allowed to connect to anything. It does not give your computer any connection to the Internet except through the AOL client.

Can you describe the hole?

This hole affects all AOL users who are set on mature teen (16-17). This exploit (or trick if you will) is simply done by adding a "." at the end of the second level domain extension. For example: if you're trying to get into 'newriot.com' and it gives you the classic "Web restricted error," just type in 'newriot.com.'

How'd you learn about it?

Just over three years ago (I must have been in fifth grade at the time), a friend and I were trying to get into altavista.com to do research for a project. I was set on young teens at the time, and I believe he was on mature teens. (Note: this trick used to work on young teens as well as mature, but it now seems to only work on mature).

Anyway, we couln't get in, each of us, because altavista was believed by AOL to have adult ads or something, so it was blocked by AOL. We were just messing around with the URL, adding characters here, port numbers there, and all of a sudden I got into it. It happened unknowingly and it took me a minute to figure out how I actually did it.

A small thing, but it proved to be a popular trick for a time with my friends.

Is this useful for anything besides looking at porn?

I knew this question would come along. =] Research projects? Well, seriously, if you needed something that AOL didn't like (other than porn); warez, pages with cussing or swear words on them.

I never used it much at all; soon after that research project, I got into Web design and my parents had to change me to 18+ to use sockets applications for publishing to my site. It worked great for me though; I told all my friends (and more) who tried to take credit for it, and that really made me mad.

If you just needed to do research, why didn't you just talk to your parents about turning the controls off?

They had already gotten mad at me before. I had gone on my dad's screen name and changed my controls (back and forth multiple times) to do other stuff that required an Internet connection that was external from the AOL client. Once or twice he caught me and got mad, and he had refused to change them before because I had done it without his permission; he really didn't care if I had other stuff that I wanted to do (IRC, FTP, and I think that was all I did that required a connection at the time).

How many kids did you tell about this?

In the last three years I would guess I would have told at least 5000 people about it. Since I learned about the trick I have lived in three different states (IL, MA, and MI). I usually told a ton of my friends.

And, you have to add me publicly talking about it on my old Web site (emall2.com, which I am currently battling out with the owners of emall.com over trademark infringments). I posted it on there on a sub site (some AOL tricks thing) just about a month before it was taken down; I got about 500 "THANK YOU SO MUCH" e-mails about it, and my hit counters showed thousands of hits to that one page.

Did you know when you posted it on your site what would happen? (Are you sorry you tipped off the media, or are your friends ticked off at you for revealing the secret?)

I rushed into getting the site up, and I needed pretty quick publicity. The site is not 1/4 done yet, and the our first major staff meeting isn't until next Monday. I had to post about some big news that someone might be interested in and come to the site to look at, and this seemed to be the thing. It was horrible timing, and I wish I would have done this in two weeks from today, when most of the site is up. I got a ton of e-mail telling me about how good the site will be, and wondering where all the content was. I absolutely knew this would happen, and I'm very glad that I did it (but the timing was off, as you can see), and I'm very glad of the results.

I'm very happy I tipped off the media. I hate America Online, as I have for years (various reasons), and this just makes them look bad (bad in some people's eyes, horrible in others).

My friends (about 15 so far) e-mailed me screaming about how happy they were to see me on news.com, yet very mad at me for this is their only source for getting out of AOL's controls. Next week I'll post how to use proxies, so they can get around it once again.

I'm also working on getting a new NPH wrapper (if you can help I'd love it because I can't figure out how to do this) for the server so it can understand some of the commands in my cgi-based proxy app.

Has AOL patched it up yet?

Last night [Thursday, July 13] I called them (as a very concerned parent) asking them if my son (who I said was set on mature teen) was at risk.

The man I spoke with "absolutely assured" me that he was safe and AOLs parental control system was "100% fullproof". I told him about newriot.com and news.com's articles on it, and he tried it out. He was very suprised to see that he could get into a restricted site with the account he had made set on mature teens. He told me this was the first he had seen of this, and that he would tell his supervisor of the incident. He then told me that he was very sorry about the problem and he was sure something would happen fast. I thanked him.

Today [Friday], around 10:38 AM EDT, I tried it, and was suprised to see that it was fixed. I never knew AOL was quick with anything these days.

Your site mentions "several other methods" but doesn't give details yet. Can you give us a hint?

Yea sure. =P

1 - proxies

2 - using staff tools to force certain tokens through the proxy. This gives you access to any Web site (and many staff areas on AOL that aren't on stratus)

3 - once again using staff tools to create hybrid forms that will go through other proxies that can be searched for

Proxies will always work and always be around for the rest of history; AOL won't get a work around these for many years. Even when they do get something to decode pictures and sites through proxies, there will still be encryption. Staff tools will let us get through easily on the 'younger' settings, but the kids that use them would be breaking the law by using the tools themselves (I think), and might not be technical enough to use them.

Your site also says you're going to put up a tutorial on forging e-mail. Do you like poking around computer security, do you think you'll keep doing it?

The tutorial for forging e-mail was already put up on the old design for newriot.com. I recently gave her a facelift, and deleted all the old stuff to put into the new template for the site. I have had it all ready to go for a while, I just can't upload it until I get to my house and out of this baseball tournament.

I've been messing with AOL's security for a while now, and about a year ago I got a little out of AOL and more into the main Internet thing. The first hackers conference I went to was this summer (rubi-con) and I hope to get to go to some others (the problem is my parents and transportion).

Poking around at online security is a blast. It just infuriates me all of the Internet users that think of themselves as "elite" just because they can scam a password from some staff AOL account, or the people that go around causing havok online and think they are the best. These are the idiots that ruin it for the all of us, and I'm also very sorry to see all the newbies looking to them, who will one day become one of them.

Anything you'd like to say to parents who have trusted Parental Controls to keep their teens safe on the Internet?

If your kid is half-way smart and is a quarter computer literate -- he'll get around it. There are plenty of sites that will show you how to use proxies that are very easy to understand.

What's the best (and only) way to make sure your teen (or kid) isn't looking at stuff online you wouldn't want him/her to be looking at? -- Don't have kids. In today's world many kids have external access to the Web; off-home surfing. Their friends have it, their school has it, their public library has it. So much access to this. If any or all of these are using filtering there are always ways around it.

Are your parents going to get mad when they see this interview?

My parents wouldn't ever see it without me telling them about it, and even if they did they wouldn't read it. And even if they read it, they wouldn't get mad. So all in all; no, they'll be fine. Thanks.