Slashdot Mirror

AG writes: "In this week's Village Voice, Jeff Howe continues his coverage of the legal battle the MPAA and Hollywood film studios are waging over DVD decryption. The current article finds MPAA president Jack Valenti not quite sure who or why he's suing." We've already gone over this on Slashdot, but it's nice to see the Voice covering this whole issue with truth in mind (the other NYC papers are either printing Valenti's Op-Ed piece or writing their own about all the Internet DVD pirates). This article does contain one interesting bit: Valenti saying playing DVDs on Linux is illegal was supposed to have been redacted from the transcripts.

Some useful stuff: An anonymous reader noted that AltaVista has opened Raging.Com which is a super fast minimal search engine without all that bloated portal crap. gi_wrighty noted that the winneers of the 5k HTML Contest have Been announced. Impressive minimalism. Soeren Staun-Pedersen noted that a new The Gimp User Group has come along. j1mmy pointed us to pictures of the new Lara Croft Model from E3. Yaruar sent us a story about Lego Filmsets that come with cameras for you do-it-yourselfers. If you don't want to make your own films, how about your own Mars Polar Lander Site? (Thanks Biff Studly). antiwesley sent us interesting insight into a typical geek cube. Speaking of things found in geek Cubes, BenTheDewpendent sent us a page that tracks tons of info on Mountain Dew and bob_jordan found pictures of upcoming Futurama Bender Action Figures (Not as cool as Nate's Picolo tho) Baloo Ursidae sent us a story about electricity generating shoes. Gorphrim sent us some Duron Parodies Finally some Slashdot references: DrFun (one of the original net comics) mentioned us in a recent strip, Someone noted that Geek Culture is selling First Post T-Shirts. QuasEye noted that someone registered hotgrits.org and ironically enough, is running Slashcode. And the WashPost ran an article on us which is mostly accurate. And to wrap things up, maxxon showed us the way to Crank Dot Net, which has stuff on all sorts of conspiracy theories and urban myths and other crazy stuffs on the net. Stuff like UFOs, the face on mars, Creationism, Scientology, antigravity, and perpetual motion and more.

Sjsop writes, "CANOE reports that a German state court has ruled that America Online (AOL Germany, at any rate) is liable for the content of its servers, even where it has no control over that content. (The story is here.) Hit Box Software sued because AOL-G users were trading some of its copyrighted music files and won the case, even though AOL shut down the forums where the trading occurred as soon as they found out about it. This sounds like Bad News to me, especially if (as is likely to happen) it's applied to smaller ISP as well as AOL." I read a great comment the other day: What next, suing Home Depot for selling the lead pipe that killed Professor Plumb?

Several friends turned us on to this article at the Online Journalism Review [OJR] that says the combination of AOL and Time-Warner may lead to an information monopoly more dangerous than Microsoft's desktop OS monopoly. The article focuses on political power, but I believe another big danger of the AOL/Time-Warner merger is that it will stifle development of innovative, non-mainstream Web sites. (continued)

A quote from the OJR article: "Never in the history of news publishing has one company held such extensive power over what we see and hear as does AOL in the wake of the Time-Warner deal."

Have you looked at AOL's main page lately? I don't mean the one at aol.com, but the one AOL members see when they log on. If you're a Linux user, the answer is obviously "no" unless you borrow a friend's computer (and AOL account), because AOL doesn't allow Linux folks to access their system. Like blind people, we're pariahs in AOL-land. Remember that AOL boasts about their "exclusive content" constantly; I saw yet another TV commercial last night that told me this. Like it or not, AOL has become as vital a part of modern American culture as Judge Judy, and it might be nice to check in now and then to see what kind of online experience AOL's (claimed) 22 million users are getting. It's sad that I can't do this unless I choose to use a proprietary operating system, which I don't.

But I'm far more worried about the Time-Warner side of the business than I am about AOL's willingness to exclude Linux users, handicapped people, and others who don't fit into their mass-market mold. Talk about a machine to influence public opinion! Movies, books, CNN, music, a bunch of influential magazines, cable TV systems all over the country! In his day, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst was considered by many to be more powerful than the U.S. president, and he didn't have a fraction of the information control Time-Warner has now.

It's easy to forget that Slashdot is a niche Web site with comparatively few readers by AOL/Time-Warner standards. Wired, Salon, Slate, and CNN.com all claim more readers than Slashdot. So do The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USAToday, and every single one of Time-Warner's magazines. More people are interested in celebrity gossip (People magazine's stock in trade) than in news about Open Source Software and ever-faster microprocessors. Time covers events that are interesting to more people than new game releases for Linux. An interview with someone like Leon Lederman or Steve Wozniak may be hot stuff to you and me, but the overwhelming majority of the world's population would rather read about Bill Clinton or Leonardo DiCaprio. Indeed, I doubt that a statistically significant percentage of Americans -- let alone citizens of other countries -- have even heard of most of the people we mention on Slashdot. And this is why Slashdot would never have grown and prospered under Time-Warner's thumb.

The section of Time-Warner's online empire for which I used to write was Netly News, the company's attempt to put out a WWW publication aimed at "hip" Internet users instead of at the general public. It got about 100,000 steady readers, which was not bad back in the "old" 'net-days of 1996 and 1997. But 100,000 readers was a tiny number in Time-Warner's eyes. Josh Quittner and Noah Robischon, who ran Netly News back then, never could get Time's marketing and ad sales people interested in promoting their little publication because Time's business people were used to readerships measured in round millions, not in thousands or hundreds of thousands. So Time decided Netly was a failure and let it die a quiet death in early 1998, not out of ideological concerns but because it simply wasn't popular enough to meet their "success" criteria.

My personal fear of giant corporate voices controlling the Internet as a news medium is based not only on their potential political influence, but also on their ability to stifle innovation online. Do you think Rob Malda and Jeff Bates would ever have been allowed to do their schtick on AOL or through Time-Warner? Would Time-Warner have tolerated -- let alone supported -- freshmeat? What about other sites that cover Linux and Open Source news, like Linux Today, Linux Weekly News, Linux.com, and all the rest? What about even smaller, more "niche" sites like osOpinion, Technocrat.net, and 32bitsonline.com?

All of these sites, put together, don't attract enough readers to get a Time ad salesperson interested in actively marketing them. In Time's world, ad campaigns start at the $100,000 level and go up from there, and it really takes $1 million or more to get Time's corporate ears to perk up in any significant way. Web publishing, on the AOL/Time-Warner level, is like music or movies; they are interested in producing big hits and only big hits, and anything they don't feel they can make into a million-seller is going to be ignored.

It is true that AOL and Time-Warner will probably never be able to control the Web's content as tightly as Microsoft controls the desktop operating system market. But by making "their" information easier to find and access than information "they" don't control, and adding in the cross-promotion potential available to a company that has interests in everything from movie production to chat servers, within the next few years we could easily see a world where 95% of all Web users only access 5% of everything that's potentially available online. And if that 5% is controlled by a single giant, mass-market media conglomerate -- or even by two or three like-thinking, mass-market conglomerates -- the next generation of bright youngsters who have innovative Web site ideas will never get a chance to build a Slashdot-style following, no matter what operating system they use.

Thanks to VerucaDave (and goatbert) for passing on this NOAA advisory. Seems that the people of Earth are experiencing the effects of a little solar action. And kevlar wrote with the news "There are sightings, as we speak of the Aurora Borealis, as far south as Washington DC. ... This is a rare anomaly to be seen so far south. To see it, look north right now (best time is around/after midnight). See if you can spy some fast moving particles! If your latitude is anywhere north of DC, then you should see something with a little effort!" So if you are anywhere on Earth where it still matters, run -- do not walk -- to the nearest spot from which you can scan the sky. May you have clear skies and no light-polluting neighbors. [Updated 14:40GMT by timothy.]

On a related note, periscope sent in some information about some new satellites that are going up to study this summer's expected solar storms. They're also looking for names for the satellites: here's your chance to put your name in the sky, so to speak. I vote for Andre, Libe, Setsuko and Golfball.

Anonymous Coward writes, "I saw this site today: 'The Gravitational Spacecraft from Fran De Aquino Warping to the deep space...' A researcher in Brazil says that it can be done. What do you think? Anyone working in this area care to comment? The site can be found here." Slashdot has no official editorial position on the feasibility of gravitationally shielded spacecraft, but if anyone wants to send us a review unit, we'll gladly put it through its paces and do a writeup about it.

If you're a regular Slashdot reader, you've heard about UCITA by now. You have probably also gathered that many prominent spokespeople for the open source and free software communities, most notably Richard Stallman, don't like it. UCITA already passed in Virginia, but the governor hasn't yet signed it into law. Here in Maryland, where I live, UCITA is still under consideration. I'm working hard to block it, and I'm not alone. But this story is not as much about Virginia and Maryland as it is about the way UCITA is being "sold" to state legislatures all over the U.S. and how you can work effectively in your state to keep it from becoming the Law of the Land.

Let's start with Virginia. There, UCITA has been passed by the Legislature and is awaiting signature by Governor Jim Gilmore. But all is not yet lost. Skip Lockwood of 4cite.org says, "It is very important that the Governor, the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate all hear from dissatisfied consumers. Virginia has really put the 'horse before the cart' with the passage of this law. Call, e-mail and fax so that legislators know what a mistake they have made." And UCITA isn't scheduled to go into force in Virginia until next year, so there may be time to undo the damage. It's worth a try, certainly, even though UCITA is backed heavily both by Microsoft and Virginia's own "star" online business, AOL.

In Maryland, UCITA is is by no means a done deal. As House Bill #19 and Senate Bill #142, it is still being considered by legislative committees. This means UCITA could conceivably still be stopped in Maryland even before it came to a vote, although the forces working to push it through are both mighty and well-financed. One state senator told me this was the first time he'd ever seen actual lobbyists from Microsoft, in person, in Annapolis (Maryland's state capital). Many highly-paid "local" lobbyists are also cruising the legislative halls, busily telling the politicians why UCITA is a must-pass piece of legislation.

But apparently the lobbyists and their masters never told Maryland legislators exactly what UCITA was all about. I called the offices of all 13 members of the House of Delegates who are co-sponsoring Maryland UCITA, House Bill 19, and not one of them or any of their staff members to whom I spoke could tell me honestly that they had read the whole thing. All most of them seem to have read was this synopsis:

Adopting the Maryland Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; establishing provisions of law applicable to agreements to create, modify, transfer, or distribute computer software, computer data and databases, Internet and online information, and computer information and products; establishing provisions of law applicable to licensing of computer information; etc.

But the bill goes just a little bit beyond this. If you have time (it's about 85 printed pages), here's the entire UCITA text.

Quite a difference, eh? If you actually read all the way through the document, you now know more than most of the Maryland legislators who are tasked with deciding whether or not it should be made into law.

The way things work here in Maryland - and in many other states - is that the heaviest political leaders call lesser politicians to whose campaigns they have donated or for whom they have done other favors and say, "I'm sending you a bill I want passed." If the lesser politician knows what's good for him or her, he or she salutes and follows orders, especially on somthing like UCITA, which is not an issue most ordinary citizens either understand or care about.

In my opinion, the single most politically powerful elected official in the State of Maryland is Casper R. Taylor, Jr., speaker of the House of Delegates. He consistently has one of the largest campaign fund "war chests" in the state and freely shares lucre from it with other legislators who support him. Mr. Taylor has personally assured me that the large sums of money he solicits - and gets - from assorted industry groups and other big donors do not influence his votes or buy his support. (I did not laugh out loud when he said this only because I am a professional journalist and have developed the ability to listen to almost any kind of outrageous statement without showing emotion. Please don't try this at home.)

Wherever you live in the U.S. (or almost anywhere else) there is a primary power broker like Taylor, and it is this person upon whom the Microsofts and AOLs and the Business Software Alliance and the rest of the big-money crowd will concentrate their efforts (and lavish funds). But don't think that people like Taylor are evil. They usually aren't, down deep inside, and if they get enough reasonable citizen input that opposes the lobbyists' desires, they can often be persuaded to do the right thing.

Guys like Casper Taylor actually like hearing from citizens; if they weren't basically gregarious and outgoing they wouldn't have gone into politics in the first place. If you don't believe me, give Casper a friendly call. His office phone number is 410-841-3800. If you don't live in Maryland, consider this a practice call for the UCITA fight that is likely to take place in your state sometime in the next year or two.

There are several things to bear in mind when calling a politician to express your opinion. The first is that yelling and acting nutsy gets you nowhere. Be sane and have *real reasons* handy for your opinion - and no, "because Richard Stallman doesn't like it" is not a good reason, because RMS is not widely-known in political circles. You need facts like the ones on this page. The second is to make sure you don't just say "UCITA." You need to refer to the correct bill number, in this case House Bill 19. Even if you speak to the lowest of Casper's underlings, and they only give you the chance to say, "I just want to ask Speaker Taylor to please withdraw his support for House Bill 19 because it is bad for consumers and will inhibit open source software development," you have done a good and valuable thing. A hundred brief calls can be worth more than $1000 in Microsoft lobbying money even if you feel like you haven't done much or that you were barely listened to.

Note that I mention phone calls, not e-mail. Politicians are generally more receptive to calls than to e-mails. They also like faxes (Taylor's fax number is 410-841-1138), but e-mail is still valid, as long as you only send one or two polite ones to each elected official you want to reach. (If you want to use Casper for a practice e-mail, send it to casper_taylor@house.state.md.us.)

So we've contacted the most powerful guy. Fine. But there are other leaders who should also hear from you. In Maryland, in this case, some of the most important are Governor Parris Glendening, Senate President Mike Miller (to whom you should mention Senate Bill 142, not House Bill 19), and Comptroller William Donald Schaefer. All of them have complete contact information on their Web pages, as do almost all public officials everywhere.

If you live in Maryland, besides these people, you'll want to contact the representatives from your district. Find them here. If you live in another state and want to find out if UCITA is about to become a burning issue there, check this page. And, no matter where you live in the U.S., here's a list of state and local government Web sites that can not only help you fight UCITA, but help you find out what your elected officials are up to in general, and who to contact if you have a beef or want to get something done.

Dealing with politics and politicians can often make you feel like you're pushing into a wall of warm fuzz, especially if you spend most of your time dealing with machine-style logic where each specific cause has a specific effect. And I don't know about you, but reading the lawyer jargon in which most proposed laws are written gives me a headache.

But if you and I and a bunch of other people don't take the trouble to go through this headache over UCITA and other legislative actions that directly affect our lives and livings, rest assured that Microsoft and the other companies and industry groups on "the other side" will keep slogging along, making sure their views get heard as loudly and strongly and often as possible.

And when your legislators hear from the industry groups and lobbyists over and over, and hear nothing from you, they will not only pass UCITA and other laws you don't like, but they'll be perfectly justified when they smugly say, afterwards, "Almost everyone I heard from about this matter was in favor of it!"

Tom Bailey writes "It appears that a UFO cult is creating a company for cloning people. It costs only $200,000. They believe that humans are clones of aliens. You can check it out at www.clonaid.com. You have to wonder if these guys are really serious. I'm going to ask my parents to get me a clone for my birthday." Very strange. Is this science, humor or pure wackiness?

JonahC writes "dotcomma has an interesting programming challenge for people to create IRC bots with artificial intelligence and carry on conversations. With some development, good programmers and some luck, the bots should eventually interact with each other as if they are humans. "

Almost everybody sent this one in: "AOL and Time Warner merge!" See stories at cnnfn.com, Yahoo! News or almost any other online news outlet. Or go straight to the source(s); the Time Warner and AOL press releases, which make this sound like the greatest thing since the first two 'net nodes were connected together. Now you'll be able to get all your Internet needs, from connectivity to content to shopping, delivered by a single experienced company. No more need to deal with Web sites that stray from the party line, take risks (and screw up now and then), or any of that other messy old-fashioned "Internet as anarchy" stuff. To get online in the future, all you'll need to do is plug in your computer, turn off your brain, and enjoy!

farfisa sent us linkage to Songboy which is a $99 addon for a gameboy which allows it to play MP3s. I just used my to play B mode tetris (Start at level 9 with the blocks all the way up and try to get 25 lines: total adrenaline). Its pretty amazing how general purpose these ancient little devices have turned out to be.

inbred writes "Don Martin, longtime Mad magazine cartoonist who drew an assortment of wild-haired characters, punctuating the grotesque action with wacky words like SPLOP! and POIT!, has died. He was 68."

WhiskeyJack writes "At the cutting edge of body art, student Erik Sprague of Albany New York has turned himself into a human lizard. His parents must be awfully proud. :) " Surgically split tongue. Ridge implants in his forehead. Green scales. And then there's me: scared to put on a rub-on tatoo ;)Update: 12/21 08:26 by H : For the not-so-squeamish, Zorro sent us some shots and pictures of the lizardman. Forked tongue, indeed.

WhiskeyJack writes "At the cutting edge of body art, student Erik Sprague of Albany New York has turned himself into a human lizard. His parents must be awfully proud. :) " Surgically split tongue. Ridge implants in his forehead. Green scales. And then there's me: scared to put on a rub-on tatoo ;)Update: 12/21 08:26 by H : For the not-so-squeamish, Zorro sent us some shots and pictures of the lizardman. Forked tongue, indeed.

twitter writes "According to this NYT article , Uncle Sam wants to help his anxious (14.9%), mood swinging (7.1%), and even schizophrenic (1.3%) subjects. Dr. Satcher, the surgeon general of the United States, claims "22 percent of the population has a diagnosable mental disorder," and goes on to say that the US needs more and more freely available shrinks. Young people are a higher priority. Is mega - profiling on the way? Is the future tagged drugged and released under surveillance?" Free reg. req. to read - and twitter, who submitted this, assures us that he's not one of the crazy ones, just so you know. *grin*

NIVRAM writes "After six months of waiting, Distributed Net has finally released beta clients for CSC and OGR cracking. They can be found here. (Looks like 'a few weeks' took a bit longer, eh?). For those of you who don't know, distributed.net is a non-profit group which uses the power of many computers to crack large encryption algorythms such as RC5 and the U.S. Government's DES. "

kcarnold wrote to us with a discussion piece about the digital television standards, covering both what the government is trying, the Sinclair effort as well as some of the technical aspects. Click below to read more or just add your voice to the debate.

I wanted to know what Slashdotters thought about the COFDM vs. 8VSB digital television transmission standard issue. However, I was suprised to find nothing related to this topic in a Slashdot search. This is an important issue, and it's a big one: almost half of the broadcast television stations in the US support the movement, lead by Sinclair Broadcast Group, to change the standard.

Here's the issue (another NY Times article talks about this -- search for DTV). Digital television, or DTV, is projected to replace America's current NTSC transmission system sometime in the earle 21st century. Stations have already begun to move to the new trasmission format. It promises better picture quality, no ghosting, and (here's the big one for "nerds") 19.2 megabits per second of raw binary data. One of the major forseen applications is delivering data like the data on the PointCast Network to mobile devices. Of course, however, the main application is television. Broadcasters have a choice: either they can transmit one channel of amazingly high-resolution, stunningly detailed high-quality video (HDTV), or several channels (4, I think) of standard-quality video, which is better than the video of the current system because there is no ghosting and fading up until a point where it doesn't come in at all. The issue centers over that point.

The current system is known as 8VSB, and it passed advanced laboratory testing and even some basic field testing almost ten years ago. However, last year, when Sinclair did actual, in-home, average-viewer's-setup testing of this system, it didn't work as well as the NTSC system. They could not receive HDTV signals from a station near an NTSC station whose picture came in clear. Then Sinclair did more, and more detailed, tests at home in Baltimore. This time they brought for comparison a sample modulator for the European transmission system called COFDM, and a demodulator / decoder box to receive it. They tried it in streets with tall buildings, parking garages, and apartments, all places where multipath, which causes ghosting, is prevalent. Each time they tested the two systems--European COFDM and American 8VSB, the COFDM receiver picked out its signal without fail--"It was hard to find a place where it didn't work," says my dad, who was part of the testing--but it was hard to find a spot where 8VSB would work. Continued testing convinced Sinclair officials that the current system would not be able to work in the real world, and are pushing for a change to COFDM, a system that has been proven in Europe. They wrote up a petition to the FCC, and almost half of the television stations of the US have signed it.

Anonymous Coward writes "M.A.M.E., the arcade game emulator, has been Ported to a Kodak DC265 Digita Camera by James Surine. A great new way to run down those batteries. " It's true. Download the binaries or check out the readme. The is online as well.

Anonymous Coward writes "M.A.M.E., the arcade game emulator, has been Ported to a Kodak DC265 Digita Camera by James Surine. A great new way to run down those batteries. " It's true. Download the binaries or check out the readme. The is online as well.

Anonymous Coward writes "M.A.M.E., the arcade game emulator, has been Ported to a Kodak DC265 Digita Camera by James Surine. A great new way to run down those batteries. " It's true. Download the binaries or check out the readme. The is online as well.

Anonymous Coward writes "M.A.M.E., the arcade game emulator, has been Ported to a Kodak DC265 Digita Camera by James Surine. A great new way to run down those batteries. " It's true. Download the binaries or check out the readme. The is online as well.

Christopher Sypal writes "I just found out that MTV is going to have a special this Wednesday (10pm eastern) called 'True Life: I'm a Hacker'. Looks exactly like what you would expect from an MTV show with 'hacker' in the title." If MTV wants to put *real* (and funny) hackers on the air, they ought to send a camera crew to the (highly photogenic) Geek Compound and do a show on Cmdr Taco and Hemos. Perhaps we should all write to mtvdart@aol.com and tell them so, eh?

xTg writes "News.com is reporting that Excite@HOME is restructuring its divisions to facilitate a merger with AOL. The most important question in my mind: Does this mean I have to pay more for my cable modem now in exchange for AOL "premium" content? Does AOL like linux? blah." I don't care whether it's AOL or @home, as long as I can keep using Linux with my cable modem and they don't jack the price too hard. Whatever. We customers are nothing but pawns in all of this until the cable monopolies either get some solid competition or are forced to open their lines to outside ISPs. I second xTg's "blah."Update: 10/01 10:48 by H : Apparently, the deal is being denied by AT&T.

mrwiz writes "According to this article at Appleinsider, it looks like Apple may be removing the upgradability of processors even further with their next generation logicboards, codenamed "Shark", by moving the boot ROM off of the logicboard and onto their processor daughter cards. " Update: 09/07 07:56 by CT : The Happy Blues Man writes "MacOS Rumors has an update on the "trojan" firmware upgrade for Blue & White G3s. It seems that even in Apple itself, the issue was hotly contested and the proponents' reason was to stop 3rd parties from shipping G4 upgrades before Apple's G4s were shipping. Apple sources have confirmed a fix will be available. " Update: 09/07 08:54 by H :I've been told by numerous people that this is NOT true-more to follow.

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

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Anguirel writes "Wired has a few stories from the Hill. First up, ICANN gets a hearing before the House to answer questions about proposed fees. Next, House Majority leader Dick Armey denounced the UN e-mail tax saying it's just the UN being greedy and trying to profit from the Internet. Finally, Y2K conspiracy theories gained some credibility as a conference on the President declaring martial law was held by the US Reserve Officers Association. "

ethereal writes, "Business Week Online has a really humorous article about how we're all going to end up running Win2K. There's a small pro-Linux wrap-up at the bottom, however. " The surprising thing about this article is that it was written by Sam Jaffe, who is a stock market writer, not a tech guy. I had one nit-pick with the story (that I'm sure many of you will pick up on), but it was minor. This was such a blatant Linux plug that I almost (but not quite) felt sorry for Microsoft after reading it.

Kevie-poo writes "According to LinuxPPC Inc - LinuxPPC R5 started shipping June 10th to CD-ROM customers. LinuxPPC says that they are in the process of upgrading their FTP servers for the download rush expected next week. Check it out at LinuxPPC "

Wonko42 writes "Microsoft and AOL have put aside their bickering for a moment and teamed up to fund a research project that will examine the effects of the Internet on modern society. " The results of will be quite interesting-they are looking at not only the effects of usage, but also non-usage, which is equally important, IMHO. It looks like UCLA will be the key institution, and the time span is "at least a generation".

Billy_Ray writes "A study came out that states that 2/5 of all installed software is pirated. Check it out: The Story " Since the loki guys gave me a copy of Civ CTP, I no longer have any pirated software on my box. So I'm in the majority. Yippee.

pluteus_larva writes "Speaking of the media and government's war on hackers, CNN is reporting that "hackers" (why can't *anyone* get this right?) are attacking Federal Web sites. " The press is covering this in a variety of areas. In related news, CobaltQ sent us the story about how "non-sanctioned" Chinese crackers have taken aim at NATO sites since the Chinese embassy bombing.

A number of people wrote in with the CNN report about the film reel that had been stolen, is now returned. As well, you can take the Jedi Eliteness test, to see how elite you are-Elyjah also sent us the Star Wars Cantina. Copacabana has never been the same.

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

tomaasz@iol.cz writes "there is now full opengl on the newton PDA! cool. will q3a work on that thing? no? so what is it good for? aaah, I see, screensavers... read all about it on opengl.org"

GPS Pilot tracked down some info on PPC Motherboards. "An article on eeNN describes some motherboards that Motorola recently released. They'll fit in a standard PC case thanks to the ATX form factor. They are CHRP- and PReP-compliant. The MTX604-070 has dual 333 MHz processors, dual 100 base-T ethernet, and fast&wide SCSI. More info can be found here. They can be purchased from Avnet Electronics Marketing, (800) 332-8638 (specify "Motorola Computer" as the manufacturer, not just "Motorola"). Or buy direct from Motorola here." Who needs Apple?

EngrBohn writes "A number of the HOWTOs at the Linux Documentation Project have been updated. Linux Today has compiled a table of which ones have changed. "

Alexey Nogin writes "Many people fear that AOL would kill Mozilla. To give them some hope, I wanted to mention that AOL has its own Open Source project - TIK - AOL Instant Messenger Tcl/Tk client. "

EngrBohn writes "I ran across an (ahem) article about Operation Desert Slash which describes how Pentagon planners want to use the Slashdot Effect to disable the Iraqi defense systems in preparation for the anticipated air strikes against Iraq." All this time I thought I was just running a web site.

Rob Kaper sent us a link to something you might have missed on Freshmeat. It's a nifty site that is tracking Server uptimes. El wrote in to send us a link to "Penguin Lust" which I found silly enough to post. Josh Baugher sent us a link to the so called Christmas Document that you might find amusing. Quazi sent us a link to a ZDNet IE5 Review that normally wouldn't deserve a glance. But apparently a Slashdot fan was involved. Or just as likely, they wanted some hits and figured that this publicity might send some clicks their way *grin*. iota wrote in to send us a link about Mexico using Linux in schools and saving themselves over a hundred million bucks in the process. Mark Woon sent us a link to a funny BMW ad poking fun of MS. Lastly, worth noting (and based on the submissions box, and my msglog, a lot of you did) Red Hat has updated their website with a cleaner, and frameless design. Joy!

Frédéric writes "distributed.net will introduce in some weeks the Optimal Golomb Rulers effort, for info distributed.net are people who are doing the RC5-64 and DESII (desii-3 in about 100 days) contest. it can have a lot of applications, you can have more info at distributed.net and here (original ogr) " FWIW the Slashdot RC5 team has been doing pretty well, 5th overall, 2nd yesterday. We'll need a lot of muscle to take number one though.

Phillip Brown writes "Ever had an overwhelming urge to just KILL your computer? Bashing the keyboard and yelling at the screen just not doing it for you anymore? Visit this web site to get the step-by-step guide to really taking out on that box. "

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of AOL today, and for once, a victory for AOL means good things for the rest of us. The lawsuit was about defamatory material on-line. In effect, the Court ruled that Internet service providers can not be held responsible for material posted on their systems. This upholds a prior federal court decision stemming from the CDA of 1996. This is very good news-meaning that the 1st Amendment can live another day.

Rumors are afoot that AOL reject a buyout offer by Ol Ma Bell, aka AT&T. These rumors said that AOL turned down the offer, but also said that the reported offer may have been a tenative move by AT&T, trying to get AOL shareholders to cozy up to the idea, but that may backfire by drawing other rival bidders into the fracas.

JammerJJ sent in this update to our recent story about PCQuest. The May issue dedicated to Linux has come out, and hopefully it will continue to spread Linux to the Indian sub-continent. It's always nice to wake-up to good press.