Slashdot Mirror

Burton Max writes "There's an interesting article here at Ars about the POWER5, UltraSparc IV, and Efficeon CPUs. It's a self-styled "overview of three specific upcoming processors: IBM's POWER5, Sun's UltraSparc IV, and Transmeta's Efficeon. " I found the insights as to Efficeon (successor to Crusoe) to be particularly good (although it paints a sad picture of Transmeta, methinks)."

Nexum writes "Today Ars released their latest Mac OS X review, this time for Max OS X 10.3 Panther. It's great to see another tour de force from the Ars guys. They have, as usual, an excellent insight into the new OS release, and they also cover that burning question 'is it worth $129?,' and Panther seems to come out rather well. Certainly worth a read."

Habitual submits this tidbit: "Ars Technica has a guide on how to essentially re-align your busted PS2 laser. The fix is meant to eliminate the Disc Read Error that tends to appear as our beloved PS2s age. The procedure isn't for the faint of heart, but it does work."

Habitual submits this tidbit: "Ars Technica has a guide on how to essentially re-align your busted PS2 laser. The fix is meant to eliminate the Disc Read Error that tends to appear as our beloved PS2s age. The procedure isn't for the faint of heart, but it does work."

aurum42 writes "MIT's LAMP music-over-cable initiative has been shut down due to licensing concerns, as reported on The Boston Globe. Ars Technica has a good summary of the story. It appears that Loudeye did not have the rights to sell music to MIT for distribution over cable, although they apparently assured MIT that they did in fact have those rights. Murky, unexplored legal quagmire or RIAA influenced revisionism?"

aurum42 writes "MIT's LAMP music-over-cable initiative has been shut down due to licensing concerns, as reported on The Boston Globe. Ars Technica has a good summary of the story. It appears that Loudeye did not have the rights to sell music to MIT for distribution over cable, although they apparently assured MIT that they did in fact have those rights. Murky, unexplored legal quagmire or RIAA influenced revisionism?"

JoeBuck writes "According to this message from Ian Murdock on the Debian developer's mailing list, the Progeny folks have ported Red Hat's Anaconda installer to Debian. They have also written a tool that "facilitates the creation of Anaconda-based Debian installation CD sets". They are also engaged in other interesting unification work, and hope to be able to allow collections of managed RPM and .deb packages to coexist side-by-side." uberkludge points out an article with more details at Ars Technica.

coolmacdude writes "Well it seems that the early estimates were a bit overzealous. According to preliminary test results (in postscript format) on the full range of CPUs at Virginia Tech, the Rmax score on Linpack comes in at around 7.4 TFlops. This puts it at number four on the Top 500 List. It also represents an efficiency of about 44 percent, down from the previous result of 80 achieved on a subset of the computers. Perhaps in light of this, apparantly VT is now planning to devote an additional two months to improve the stability and efficiency of the system before any research can begin. While these numbers will no doubt come as a disappointment for Mac zealots who wanted to blow away all the Intel machines, it should still be noted that this is the best price/performance ratio ever achieved on a supercomputer. In addition, the project was successful at meeting VT's goal of developing an inexpensive top 5 machine. The results have also been posted at Ars Technica's openforum."

joshv writes ""Hell has frozen over" proclaims the front page of Apple.com. iTunes for Windows was released this week. iTunes has been around for awhile as a Mac only product, receiving rave reviews. It's the Windows availability of the iTunes Music Store that is garnering the real interest. It has been eagerly awaited on the PC, ever since Apple launched it as a Mac only service in the spring of 2003." Read on for the rest of joshv's review; Ars Technica also has a review of the service.

The iTunes stores provides one of the most liberal usage policies of any of the Internet music download services, matched by some of the best prices. Most individual tracks are 99 cents, most albums under $10. There is no subscription fee, so once you've downloaded it, you can listen to it forever. You can also burn CDs with the music you've purchases, provided you don't burn the same playlist more than 10 times.

These terms are a testament to the weight Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, pulls in the media industry. The fact that he was able to single-handedly negotiate such liberal licensing terms is simply amazing given the comparatively restrictive policies we've seen from other online music download services. Jobs clearly gets it, and he's dragging the music industry, kicking and screaming, into an entirely new way of thinking about online music distribution.

And now it's all available on the lowly Windows PC. We'll talk about the implications of Apple writing Windows software later, but for now, on to the review.

Installation

You start at apple.com and click the download link for the Windows version of iTunes. I thought perhaps I'd experience some sort of clunky installation experience - after all, Apple has never written any Windows software, let alone had to deal with the vagries of the Windows installation process. But the installation went off without a hitch, requiring one reboot.

Atfer the reboot, you launch iTunes, it asks you a few questions, and you are ready to go.

The iTunes Music Store

To download music, you must first create a user account. This is a fairly simple process. You provide an email address, credit card number and verification information. It's quick and painless, and when complete you are immediately logged onto the iTunes Music Store (iTMS from now on).

First, a little bit about the interface layout in iTunes. iTMS is presented as a browser pane within the iTunes software. A hierarchical "Source" sidebar on the left hand side of the screen allows you to switch between the Music Store, your own music libraries, shared libaries, CDs, Internet radio, and the iPod (though I don't have one, so I can't test this).

All of the various content choices are displayed in some way in the main browser pane. Along the top of the iTunes window you'll find a search box that works as well for the iTMS as it does for your own music libraries.

The iTMS is attractively laid out with quicklinks on the home page to top songs, top albums, featured artists, and celebrity play lists (what does Shaq listen to?). A drop down allows you to browse a particular genre (what, no separate genre for Heavy Metal?)

Click on an album you like and you are taken to an album details page. Here Apple takes advantage of the fact that iTunes is more than a simple web browser. The top of the browser pane shows cover artwork, top downloads from the album, and a "People who liked this, also bought" list (didn't Amazon patent that?).

The bottom of the browser pane shows a sortable list of all the tracks in a grid format. You can add and remove columns, chosing from Album, Artist, Comment, Composer, Disk Number, Genre, Time, Track Number, and Year. Double clicking on the track plays a short, 20 second sample of the music. The Artist and Genre columns provide little arrow icons that serve as links to display more music from that artist or genre.

At the top of the page you click "Add Album" to purchase all of the tracks, or click "Add Song" in the grid to purchase a single track. Some album's don't allow you to purchase the entire album, you have to buy all the tracks individually. Some tracks are available only when purchasing the entire album (these are marked "Album Only" and are usually longer tracks).

Buying and downloading music

Apple provides two options for purchasing music, a "1-click" option, and the traditional Shopping cart/checkout. I prefer the shopping cart. It helps keep down the impulse buys and the cart itself is pretty slick. When you select the shopping cart, the main browser pane shows a list of all the tracks you've selected for purchase. Tracks from a whole album purchase are nested under their album title. Almost all of the same functions (preview, links to other works/genres) are available in the shopping cart. At the top of the pane a list of "Recommendations based on the items in your cart" is shown. Ah, blessed be the up-sell...

After you click "Buy Now" you will be asked to provide your iTunes password. You can optionally tell iTunes to remember you password for music downloads, and you will not be prompted. After a final confirmation, the download begins. You can continue to browse the music store, listen to other music in your library, or rip CDs while the download continues. The status window at the top of the screen continues to show the download progress. You can also check up on the status of a download by looking on your "Purchased Music" folder, a sub folder of the Music Store folder.

iTMS Music Selection

I found plenty of variety in just about every genre I like. Apple claims 400,000 tracks from 5 major labels are available. If you like audio books, they've got 5,000 online. And no, Metallica, that fun loving band of music sharing nay-sayers, isn't available.

Burning CDs

The easiest way to burn a CD is to create a playlist with the tracks you want to burn. If the playlist contains any music you've purchased from the iTMS, you will only be able to burn that particular playlist 10 times. Not much of a restriction in my book.

Burning is as simple as selecting the play list, selecting the songs in the playlist you want to burn, then clicking the "burn disk" icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This confused me at first, because the icon is grayish before activation, it looks disabled to this long-time Windows user. But once clicked, it comes to life, turning into a little radioactivity icon that throbs and spins as the burn progresses.

The progress of the burn is displayed in the same place that the download status is displayed, the oval status window at the top of the screen. A little icon in the status window allows you to switch between "Now playing", download status, an equalizer, ripping status, and burning status. Another little 'X' icon in the status window allows you to cancel a download, rip, or burn.

I have to say that this layout is a marvelously efficient use of screen real-estate, and avoids the dialog box hell many similar programs suffer, but at first I found it a bit confusing, especially since it's not immediately obvious how to get the status window to display the status of the various tasks iTunes has initiated.

I burned several CDs and had no problem playing them on other PCs. There are only a few options to set for burning. You can explicitly specify the burn speed, and the format, picking between Audio CD, MP3 CD, and Data CD (I am assuming this is just a direct burn of the music files, in whatever format).

Music burning just works, and works well. In fact I burned a disc at the same time I was ripping another, and playing some downloaded music. Everything worked without a hitch, though CPU utilization was high enough that it slowed down other things on my machine.

iTunes also supports burning to DVDs but I believe this is still available on the Mac only. As I don't have a DVD burner handy, I can't test this.

Organizing your music

Even without the iTMS, Windows users should want iTunes for it music library management/jukebox features alone. iTunes blows away the competition in so many ways it's hard to catalogue them all.

Playlists

Let's start with the play lists. Playlists are added to the Source pane, along the left hand side of the screen. You can create a play list and add songs manually. You also have the ability to check and uncheck songs within a playlist, to disable and enable their playing after you've created the list.

The "Smart Playlist" feature allows you to build dynamic song selection criteria based on the meta tags (song attributes - artist, album, rating, genre etc...) For example I created an "Ella" play list for Ella Fitzgerald. This included three rules: "Album contains 'Ella'", "Artist contains 'Ella'", and "Song Name contains 'Ella'". These playlists can optionally update dynamically as new music is added.

You can tell the Smart Playlist to match 'Any' or 'All' of your criteria. Criteria include "contains", "does not contain", "is", "is not", "starts with" and "ends with". Criteria can be applied to any of the meta tags. The number of songs in the playlist can be limited to a specific number of songs, minutes, hours, or total file size.

The Library

Selecting the "Library" icon from the Source pane displays your entire music library in all of its glory. The bottom of the screen shows the total number of songs, number of days of music, and total size in Gigabytes. The default view is a sortable grid displaying all of the meta tags as columns. You can sort on each column. The columns can also be rearranged. Every column but the "Song Name" can be enabled and disabled.

All of the usual meta tags are present, along with some new ones (at least to me) "My Rating", "Play count" and "Last Played", and "Equalizer". That last one lets you specify an equalizer preset for that track only. You can also specify a volume preset when you view the track's Info page (this is not available in the grid view).

Most of the fields are editable in the grid display, just click on the text and wait a second, an edit box will appear, allowing you to type over the information. You can also perform bulk updates by selecting multiple songs then viewing the "Info" page for those songs. A "Multiple Song Information" dialog appears that allows you to update selected tag fields for all of those songs.

I found this to be very handy for my ratty old MP3 library. It was poorly catagorized, with many fields missing. The bulk update feature made for quick cleanup.

As in the music store, double clicking the track in the grid plays it. By default, when finished with a track, the player plays the next track in the list, based on the current sort order. You can select a "Shuffle" mode that plays random tracks. Repeat options include "Repeat Playlist", and "Repeat song". I'd like to have seen a "Repeat album" feature.

The Browse feature

When viewing the Library, or any playlist, you can click the "Browse" button in the upper right hand of the screen (minor nit, the "Browse" button looks like a large, poorly rendered eye). This toggles the browse pane, taking some real-estate away from the song list grid at the top of the screen.

The browse pane itself is broken into three panes, Genre, Artist, Album. Selecting a genre limits the artist pane to only those artists in that genre. Selecting an artist limits the album pane to only that artist's albums. As you are doing this selecting, the grid below dynamically updates to show only those tracks that meet the catagories selected above. It's a very quick way to see what you have at a glance, and to find a particular track, album or performer in a large library. Very cool.

Overall iTunes does an excellent job of allowing you to flexibly organize and find your music. The interface is clean and simple, but powerful.

Ripping

Simple. Stick a CD in, select it from the "Source" sidebar on the left hand side of the screen, and the click the "Import" icon. I was not impressed with the ripping speed, which seemed to vary between 2x and 4x. There doesn't appear to be anywhere to set or tune the ripping speed.

There are only a few configuration options for importing. You can set the import format, choosing between AAC (MPEG-4), AIFF (mac uncompressed), MP3, and WAV. For each of the formats you can pick the sample rate and stereo/mono. For AAC and MP3 you can select the bit rate (VBR is an option for MP3s).

iTunes uses CDDB to look-up album and track information. In my usage this performed flawlessly, recognizing all the albums I threw at it.

More on the AAC format

AAC is the default music encoding format (codec) for the iTunes player. Apple claims that 128kbps AAC encoding provides quality almost indistiguishable from the original, much better than a 128kbps MP3. To my ears it all sounds great. The AAC files I downloaded at 128kbps sound great. I rarely encode MP3s at that low a bit rate, so I really can't do a comparison.

The full name for the AAC standard is actually MPEG-4 AAC. Music purchased from the iTMS is downloaded in an encrypted version of this format (.m4p) which is presumedly proprietary to Apple. However, you can rip music into an unencrypted AAC format (.m4a).

AAC is not an open standard, but was developed by the MPEG group, which includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia. As a result any software or hardware that uses AAC has to pay a license fee. As AAC is realtively new, support may be sporadic for the format in other players.

As a test I ripped some CD tracks to AAC format and then tried them out in other players. The Real One player didn't recognize the .m4a file extension. After renaming the files with .mp4 file extension, Real One downloaded a decoder, but then failed to import the ripped tracks. Note that these should not be encrypted tracks, as I ripped them, they weren't purchased from iTMS.

Windows Media Player didn't know what to do with either file extension (and I have the fully up to date version 9). There supposedly exists a winamp plugin for MP4/AAC, but I did not test it. There also appears to be a burgeoning gray market in unlicensed MP4/ACC de/encoders.

Even if your other audio players can read the audio format, they may not be able to read the meta tags you've created in the iTunes software, as Apple apparently uses its own tag format. So, if you rip to AAC, expect that iTunes will be the only platform that is going to provide full access to your music, until other players fully support the format. Also, don't expect to play the purchased music in native AAC format anywhere but in the iTunes player because of the built in encryption/DRM (though you can certainly burn a disc, then rip to MP3 format, you will lose some of the native quality).

If any of this is a problem for you, just rip directly to MP3 format and be done with it.

Importing your existing library

When you install iTunes, it will ask you if you want to search for existing music. I passed on this option, preferring to tell it exactly where to look. Importing older libraries of MP3s is simple. Just use the "Add Folder to Library" feature in the "File" menu.

I pointed iTunes to the root folder of my entire MP3 collection, and it figured everything out, flawlessly importing all of the albums, along with all of the meta tags. By default it leaves the tracks in their current location (which is what I wanted). You can choose to consolidate your music library at a later point. This copies everything into you iTunes music directory.

The iTunes music library directory is configurable. By default in Windows it's under My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music. If you want to change it (as will many with large secondary drives used for music storage), make sure you do so before you start downloading, otherwise you might end up with music files in multiple locations.

Sharing your music

No, iTunes won't let you get in trouble with the Recording Industry by sharing your music with everyone else on the Internet. What it will do is allow you to export your full music library, or various playlists, to up to five other people on your local network. I didn't test this feature extensively, but it worked flawlessly between my desktop machine and my laptop over a Wi-Fi network. Apple calls this feature "Rendezvous", and it's been available on the Mac for a while now.

It just works. I fired up iTunes on the laptop, and the shared library, with all its playlist was immediately available in the Source pane. I'd suggest Microsoft take a page from this playbook. Anyone who has ever messed around with Microsoft's supposedly 'plug and play' home networking knows what I am talking about.

You can't do much with a remote music library, other than play it, and it's play lists. You cannot edit the meta tags, or create/edit play lists. Not a biggie, I am not sure I'd want that much flexibility anyway.

Sharing between users on the same machine

iTunes makes sharing music with other PCs on the network a snap, but it's a bit harder to share music between users of the same PC. At home I've set up my computer with an account for myself, and one for my fiancee. I installed iTunes in my account, and downloaded some music.

We wanted to see if my fiancee could use this music as well. The iTunes icon was on her desktop, but when we launched it, there was no music available in her Library. We changed her music libary to point to the music library iTunes had created for my user account, but still, nothing showed up in the play list.

We did mange to get it to work by exporting my Library using the "Export Library" option on the "File" menu. This allows you to save all of your playlists and track information to a massive XML file. We then imported this into iTunes when logged into her user account. It worked. This is a bit clunky though, and I doubt any meta tag updates she does will be reflected in my Library, and vice versa.

I imagine we could have manually added the music to her iTunes Library using the import functionality. The larger problem is that as we buy or rip more music we will constantly have to worry about keeping both account's Libraries and playlists in sync.

One cool way to work around this would be to use Windows XP's fast user switching. I haven't tried this (I run Windows 2000), but in theory with fast user switching you should be able to use Rendezvous between two users on the same machine.

Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, has become a dirty word in some technology circles. Many other music download services use DRM to lock you into their music player, force you to pay a subscription to keep listening to your music, and to tightly control what you can do with the music once you've downloaded it.

With iTunes, what's most noticable is how unobtrusive Apple has made the DRM. In fact, it's almost not present. Here are a list of things you can't do:

• Burn a play list with purchased music more than ten times
• Share music with more than 5 other computers on your local network
• Share music over the Internet
• Access your purchased music at full quality outside of iTunes
• Re-download music once you've successfully downloaded it once (remember to make backups!)

Pretty much everything else is allowed. The first day I used iTunes, I downloaded an album, burned it, took it to work, and ripped it. This is as close to unrestricted usage of downloaded music as it gets. Granted, it's a little more restrictive than what you can do with a CD you've purchased - but CDs are more expensive, and to my mind, less flexible.

Internet Radio

iTunes provides a comprehensive list of Internet radio stations. I don't believe that Apple provides the content for any of these stations, but it does dynamically update the lists for each genre when you access them to ensure that the list remains fresh and defunct stations are removed.

I didn't exercise this feature too extensively, as I quickly found one of my favorite di.fm trance stations and spent the entire day at work listening to it - so I can't vouch for the quality or availability of the other stations. But there appears to be a wide selection, within a good variety of genres.

User Interface

If there is one thing I don't like about iTunes is the way it plays fast and loose with the various user interface metaphors. The iTunes player is a strange mixture between a "Brushed Metal" look, the native Mac OS X "Aqua" interface, and the boring old Windows native interface. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to what's used where.

The menus and most drop down lists are windows native, even if the controls that access them are the Aqua look alikes. For example, in the iTMS there is a drop down list labeled "Select Genre". It's rendered with the translucent Aqua look and feel, but clicking it displays a drab Windows native drop down list. Just weird.

Also, what's up with this brushed metal obsession of Apple's? Why should computer software look and feel like a 1970's stereo component? I don't know. Do you?

The interface overall is sluggish. Presumably because of whatever software Apple used to port the Aqua eye candy to Windows. I'd prefer to give up some of the eye candy for a bit more speed.

All things considered, the interface potpourri doesn't get in the way too much, and though sluggish it's still usable. So these are all minor quibbles. Apple did such an outstanding job in making iTunes a simple yet powerful way to organize your music, that a few minor interface issues can easily be overlooked. At least until the next release.

Stability

One might think that as a first attempt at Windows software that iTunes might be buggy or prone to crashes. It didn't crash once in my usage, and handled some heavy workloads without incident. In fact I had it burning, ripping, and playing all at once. I'll bet you could add downloading to that list without a hiccough. There have been some reports of iTunes locking up after install - Apple is currently investigating. I did not experienced that particular issue.

I did find some minor display issues where sometimes the screen didn't update properly. Particularly when ripping, the little check mark sometimes didn't appear next to the track after it was ripped. This didn't seem to affect functionality in any way, and the songs played fine after the entire CD was ripped.

Wider implications for Apple

For years, Apple has been writing superior software, but only for the Mac. This has been a way for Apple to draw users to the Mac platform. Apple's tight control of the both the software and hardware environment allowed them to provide a superior user experience. For Apple to produce Windows software represents a sea-change in this philosophy.

First of all it represents a huge risk to the Apple brand. If it doesn't work well, or crashes due to the weird hardware/OS combinations that are all too prevalent in the Windows world, they will tarnish that hard won reputation for quaility and ease of use.

Secondly, they are giving up one of the drivers that pushes people to purchase that high margin Mac hardware - the superior software, that used to be available only on the Mac. There are people who bought Macs simply because of the media software that came bundled. Now, there is one less reason to get a Mac. Will Apple port more of these goodies to the PC? Is Steve Jobs crazy?

Like a fox. Note that Jobs has no plans to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, nor has he made any moves to port any of the other software in his suite of media productivity tools to the PC. The reason he ported iTunes is because it's the best way to access the iTunes Music Store. Apple makes money selling music on the iTunes music store. Probably not much money yet, but certainly they will make considerably more money if they don't restrict users to the Mac platform. With the advent of iTunes for Windows, the iTunes Music Store became the largest distributor of online music overnight.

Remember also that Steve jobs is in the process of re-conceptualizing the Mac as a media hub, de-emphasizing the computer itself, for media accessories. The iPod is an outgrowth of this process. With iTunes on my PC, guess what's now on my Christmas list? An iPod. I've played with other MP3 players and they software they use to manage MP3 libraries. They sucked - hard. iTunes shows me that it can be easy - it should be easy. In a single stroke Jobs has vastly increased the market for the iPod.

So what Jobs has done is managed to increase the market for two of his newest alternative revenue streams (iPod and iTMS) without singificantly compromising the revenue stream that's funding everything (Mac sales). Brilliant, and very pragmatic, so unlike Jobs.

Summary

Steve Jobs claims that iTunes is the best software ever written for Windows. It's certainly the best music player/Jukebox ever written for Windows. I don't know that any of the others can match it, feature for feature.

With iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, I honestly can't see myself returning to buying CDs. It's just so much more convenient, and significantly cheaper to download and burn - and I don't care about the minor quality differences or the lack of cover art. This is what I've been waiting for. YMMV of course, but it's definitely worth a try.

john82 writes "In an interesting and insightful article, NetworkWorld Fusion discusses how lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting the RIAA's attempts to monitor their customers. As we've heard before, RIAA wants the telcos to report when users download any copyrighted material. Lawyers for SBC and Verizon are fighting back. They also claim that the RIAA is trying to grant themselves powers that are outside of even the Patriot Act. Now where have heard that before? NWFusion also points out that RIAAs handwaving, threats, tantrums have less to do with protecting the rights of musicians, than with protecting the revenue stream created by an out-of-date distribution system." In other RIAA news, taped2thedesk writes "According to the Washington Post and Ars Technica, the RIAA will now contact P2P users before suing them." The RIAA's not so bad, they'll settle out of court over the phone, if you don't mind paying up instead of getting a lawyer.

weileong writes "Ars Technica highlights an interview at ACM Queue with Jim Gray, a winner of the ACM Turing award *(among other things) by one of the pioneers of RAID (among other things). Many issues touched upon, including: "programmers have to start thinking of the disk as a sequential device rather than a random access device." "So disks are not random access any more?" "That's one of the things that more or less everybody is gravitating toward. The idea of a log-structured file system is much more attractive. There are many other architectural changes that we'll have to consider in disks with huge capacity and limited bandwidth." Actual interview has MUCH detail, definitely worth reading."

chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"

NetCurl writes "Ars Technica is running a Macintosh Browser Smackdown feature. We've come a long way in the OS X browser experience, and the article delves into the details like only Ars can. This is a great breakdown of nine browsers in all. Let the browser war reignite..."

NetCurl writes "Ars Technica is running a Macintosh Browser Smackdown feature. We've come a long way in the OS X browser experience, and the article delves into the details like only Ars can. This is a great breakdown of nine browsers in all. Let the browser war reignite..."

An anonymous reader writes "This Nigerian/SCO spam email (courtesy of Ars Technica) has been doing the rounds recently." With all the SCO news lately, it's nice to see something with a bit of humor in it.

An anonymous reader writes "This Nigerian/SCO spam email (courtesy of Ars Technica) has been doing the rounds recently." With all the SCO news lately, it's nice to see something with a bit of humor in it.

Slashback tonight brings you updates on low-power hardware, unauthorized music distribution by buymusic.com, and more, including a reminder of the upcoming (now annual) Linux picnic at the conclusion of LWCE. (If you're not there, start your own local chapter ;)) Read on for more!

MenuetOS progresses. For those with a taste for esoteric tiny operating systems for low-power systems, the x86 release of Contiki wasn't the only news this week. Lgd writes "Menuet, the 100 % assembly OS, has made quite a few improvements since it was last reported at Slashdot. Menuet has now a simple tcp/ip stack with tiny http, mp3 and email servers, FASM 1.48 assembler and demo applications like the 3d maze."

Perhaps this will lead to a finer toothed comb overall. Jody Whitesides writes "Hello, I want to take a moment to update you about my situation that you posted recently... As of right now, I won my fight with BuyMusic and the Orchard. I have been promptly let out of a contract that was already terminated February 1st of 2001. It seems they had kept me in their catalog on a contract clause that had been overlooked when the contract was signed back in 1999.

As of 5 p.m. pst 07/31/2003 I was given notice that I was removed from the Orchard's distribution. In turn I have since checked with BuyMusic's website and have been swiftly removed from the website and now all has been set right in the world. It seems that even the big corporations don't wish to face copyright infringement.

I want to thank you for running the story as I have no doubt that it helped bring a swift decision in getting my music under my control so that I can best determine how fans will get it into their hands.

I harbor no ill will towards BuyMusic or the Orchard."

MandrakeSoft still not dead (wants to go for a walk). LinuxGeek8 writes "In their latest shareholder newsletter MandrakeSoft made a few statements about their financial position. Their retail sales decreased, while their high-margin sales (oem, club, online sales, etc.) increased. In total their revenue decreased somewhat, while the operating loss decreased. Since January they have been cash-flow positive.

Quoting about their "Chapter 11": "On January 27th, 2003, the Commercial Court granted MandrakeSoft a six month observation and protection period (similar to a U.S. Chapter 11 procedure). This period will end on July 27th, 2003. The company is pursuing an opportunity to be granted an additional six month observation and protection period. In the upcoming months, the company's objective is to exit the Observation Period with a 'Continuation Plan'."
Things seem to be looking good on the radar."

This is good news for those of us who like all the work that Mandrake has put into making Free software easy to install.

Video Capturing Part 2 at Ars Technica miskatonic alumnus writes "Recently, slashdot reported on an excellent article -- Part I: Video Capture -- of the 3-part series 'Guide to Capturing, Cleaning & Compressing Video' at Ars Technica. At last, Part II: Video Cleaning is now available."

The largest gathering, of a sort. Linda Denison links to these "several articles about GenCon, handily linked to one place!"

From the article: 'GenCon: Freaks & Geeks,' she excerpts: 'My wife wrinkled her nose in response. Computer geeks tend to be clean. They wear clean clothes, and bathe regularly. Usually this is because they live in their mother's house. Probably in their old room. Tabletop geeks tend to wear the same clothes they bought in their early twenties, roughly three belt sizes ago, and aren't well versed in the bathing arts. This is because they live in their mother's basement. The heat sort of exacerbated this problem.'

(We've run a couple of articles originating at this year's GenCon already.)

Sci-Fi Auction Followup... cjustus writes "The live auction mentioned earlier in the week is over... Here are the prices that items went for. The big item? Original George Reeves Superman Costume for $110K ... Harrison Ford's pistol from Blade Runner went for $17K... Any slashdotters bid / win?"

Matching hardware to actual needs is not crazytalk. Michael C. Barnes writes with a followup to the recent mention of his company's low-power MicroServer, which, it turns out, has a larger sibling. "One of the people reading your post did a review of the Microserver HP. ... The person doing the review benchmarked our Microserver High Performance and thought it did a reasonably good job with My SQL."

"Penguin dip" is just an expression. Bill Kendrick writes "This Saturday, August 9th (after the Linux World Expo) San Francisco Bay Area Linux lovers and the people who love them will be gathering at the Baylands Park in Sunnyvale for Picn*x12, the third annual Linux anniversary picnic. Organized by several local LUGs and sponsored by Oracle, this barbecue is a free event for the entire family."

Whether or not you can get to the picnic, FeeDBaCK writes "It has been almost 2 years since the Linux Counter has been mentioned on Slashdot. It was last mentioned in October of 2001 and brought on an impressive number of registrations. Accounts are deleted after 2 years of inactivity, so now is a good time for everyone to freshen up their account, or create a new one if they don't have one already."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on low-power hardware, unauthorized music distribution by buymusic.com, and more, including a reminder of the upcoming (now annual) Linux picnic at the conclusion of LWCE. (If you're not there, start your own local chapter ;)) Read on for more!

MenuetOS progresses. For those with a taste for esoteric tiny operating systems for low-power systems, the x86 release of Contiki wasn't the only news this week. Lgd writes "Menuet, the 100 % assembly OS, has made quite a few improvements since it was last reported at Slashdot. Menuet has now a simple tcp/ip stack with tiny http, mp3 and email servers, FASM 1.48 assembler and demo applications like the 3d maze."

Perhaps this will lead to a finer toothed comb overall. Jody Whitesides writes "Hello, I want to take a moment to update you about my situation that you posted recently... As of right now, I won my fight with BuyMusic and the Orchard. I have been promptly let out of a contract that was already terminated February 1st of 2001. It seems they had kept me in their catalog on a contract clause that had been overlooked when the contract was signed back in 1999.

As of 5 p.m. pst 07/31/2003 I was given notice that I was removed from the Orchard's distribution. In turn I have since checked with BuyMusic's website and have been swiftly removed from the website and now all has been set right in the world. It seems that even the big corporations don't wish to face copyright infringement.

I want to thank you for running the story as I have no doubt that it helped bring a swift decision in getting my music under my control so that I can best determine how fans will get it into their hands.

I harbor no ill will towards BuyMusic or the Orchard."

MandrakeSoft still not dead (wants to go for a walk). LinuxGeek8 writes "In their latest shareholder newsletter MandrakeSoft made a few statements about their financial position. Their retail sales decreased, while their high-margin sales (oem, club, online sales, etc.) increased. In total their revenue decreased somewhat, while the operating loss decreased. Since January they have been cash-flow positive.

Quoting about their "Chapter 11": "On January 27th, 2003, the Commercial Court granted MandrakeSoft a six month observation and protection period (similar to a U.S. Chapter 11 procedure). This period will end on July 27th, 2003. The company is pursuing an opportunity to be granted an additional six month observation and protection period. In the upcoming months, the company's objective is to exit the Observation Period with a 'Continuation Plan'."
Things seem to be looking good on the radar."

This is good news for those of us who like all the work that Mandrake has put into making Free software easy to install.

Video Capturing Part 2 at Ars Technica miskatonic alumnus writes "Recently, slashdot reported on an excellent article -- Part I: Video Capture -- of the 3-part series 'Guide to Capturing, Cleaning & Compressing Video' at Ars Technica. At last, Part II: Video Cleaning is now available."

The largest gathering, of a sort. Linda Denison links to these "several articles about GenCon, handily linked to one place!"

From the article: 'GenCon: Freaks & Geeks,' she excerpts: 'My wife wrinkled her nose in response. Computer geeks tend to be clean. They wear clean clothes, and bathe regularly. Usually this is because they live in their mother's house. Probably in their old room. Tabletop geeks tend to wear the same clothes they bought in their early twenties, roughly three belt sizes ago, and aren't well versed in the bathing arts. This is because they live in their mother's basement. The heat sort of exacerbated this problem.'

(We've run a couple of articles originating at this year's GenCon already.)

Sci-Fi Auction Followup... cjustus writes "The live auction mentioned earlier in the week is over... Here are the prices that items went for. The big item? Original George Reeves Superman Costume for $110K ... Harrison Ford's pistol from Blade Runner went for $17K... Any slashdotters bid / win?"

Matching hardware to actual needs is not crazytalk. Michael C. Barnes writes with a followup to the recent mention of his company's low-power MicroServer, which, it turns out, has a larger sibling. "One of the people reading your post did a review of the Microserver HP. ... The person doing the review benchmarked our Microserver High Performance and thought it did a reasonably good job with My SQL."

"Penguin dip" is just an expression. Bill Kendrick writes "This Saturday, August 9th (after the Linux World Expo) San Francisco Bay Area Linux lovers and the people who love them will be gathering at the Baylands Park in Sunnyvale for Picn*x12, the third annual Linux anniversary picnic. Organized by several local LUGs and sponsored by Oracle, this barbecue is a free event for the entire family."

Whether or not you can get to the picnic, FeeDBaCK writes "It has been almost 2 years since the Linux Counter has been mentioned on Slashdot. It was last mentioned in October of 2001 and brought on an impressive number of registrations. Accounts are deleted after 2 years of inactivity, so now is a good time for everyone to freshen up their account, or create a new one if they don't have one already."

Slashback tonight brings you updates on low-power hardware, unauthorized music distribution by buymusic.com, and more, including a reminder of the upcoming (now annual) Linux picnic at the conclusion of LWCE. (If you're not there, start your own local chapter ;)) Read on for more!

MenuetOS progresses. For those with a taste for esoteric tiny operating systems for low-power systems, the x86 release of Contiki wasn't the only news this week. Lgd writes "Menuet, the 100 % assembly OS, has made quite a few improvements since it was last reported at Slashdot. Menuet has now a simple tcp/ip stack with tiny http, mp3 and email servers, FASM 1.48 assembler and demo applications like the 3d maze."

Perhaps this will lead to a finer toothed comb overall. Jody Whitesides writes "Hello, I want to take a moment to update you about my situation that you posted recently... As of right now, I won my fight with BuyMusic and the Orchard. I have been promptly let out of a contract that was already terminated February 1st of 2001. It seems they had kept me in their catalog on a contract clause that had been overlooked when the contract was signed back in 1999.

As of 5 p.m. pst 07/31/2003 I was given notice that I was removed from the Orchard's distribution. In turn I have since checked with BuyMusic's website and have been swiftly removed from the website and now all has been set right in the world. It seems that even the big corporations don't wish to face copyright infringement.

I want to thank you for running the story as I have no doubt that it helped bring a swift decision in getting my music under my control so that I can best determine how fans will get it into their hands.

I harbor no ill will towards BuyMusic or the Orchard."

MandrakeSoft still not dead (wants to go for a walk). LinuxGeek8 writes "In their latest shareholder newsletter MandrakeSoft made a few statements about their financial position. Their retail sales decreased, while their high-margin sales (oem, club, online sales, etc.) increased. In total their revenue decreased somewhat, while the operating loss decreased. Since January they have been cash-flow positive.

Quoting about their "Chapter 11": "On January 27th, 2003, the Commercial Court granted MandrakeSoft a six month observation and protection period (similar to a U.S. Chapter 11 procedure). This period will end on July 27th, 2003. The company is pursuing an opportunity to be granted an additional six month observation and protection period. In the upcoming months, the company's objective is to exit the Observation Period with a 'Continuation Plan'."
Things seem to be looking good on the radar."

This is good news for those of us who like all the work that Mandrake has put into making Free software easy to install.

Video Capturing Part 2 at Ars Technica miskatonic alumnus writes "Recently, slashdot reported on an excellent article -- Part I: Video Capture -- of the 3-part series 'Guide to Capturing, Cleaning & Compressing Video' at Ars Technica. At last, Part II: Video Cleaning is now available."

The largest gathering, of a sort. Linda Denison links to these "several articles about GenCon, handily linked to one place!"

From the article: 'GenCon: Freaks & Geeks,' she excerpts: 'My wife wrinkled her nose in response. Computer geeks tend to be clean. They wear clean clothes, and bathe regularly. Usually this is because they live in their mother's house. Probably in their old room. Tabletop geeks tend to wear the same clothes they bought in their early twenties, roughly three belt sizes ago, and aren't well versed in the bathing arts. This is because they live in their mother's basement. The heat sort of exacerbated this problem.'

(We've run a couple of articles originating at this year's GenCon already.)

Sci-Fi Auction Followup... cjustus writes "The live auction mentioned earlier in the week is over... Here are the prices that items went for. The big item? Original George Reeves Superman Costume for $110K ... Harrison Ford's pistol from Blade Runner went for $17K... Any slashdotters bid / win?"

Matching hardware to actual needs is not crazytalk. Michael C. Barnes writes with a followup to the recent mention of his company's low-power MicroServer, which, it turns out, has a larger sibling. "One of the people reading your post did a review of the Microserver HP. ... The person doing the review benchmarked our Microserver High Performance and thought it did a reasonably good job with My SQL."

"Penguin dip" is just an expression. Bill Kendrick writes "This Saturday, August 9th (after the Linux World Expo) San Francisco Bay Area Linux lovers and the people who love them will be gathering at the Baylands Park in Sunnyvale for Picn*x12, the third annual Linux anniversary picnic. Organized by several local LUGs and sponsored by Oracle, this barbecue is a free event for the entire family."

Whether or not you can get to the picnic, FeeDBaCK writes "It has been almost 2 years since the Linux Counter has been mentioned on Slashdot. It was last mentioned in October of 2001 and brought on an impressive number of registrations. Accounts are deleted after 2 years of inactivity, so now is a good time for everyone to freshen up their account, or create a new one if they don't have one already."

Steve Cowan writes "A new Apple column by Eric Bangeman, called Mac.Ars, debuted at Ars Technica. The first edition is an insightful, unbiased take on the current state of Apple and its offerings. The author discusses Panther, the G5, consumer hardware offerings, Premiere, Microsoft Office, the 'Switch' campaign, the effects of Apple's relatively recent purchases of products like Logic and Shake, Apple's position in the server market, and lots more." What's the fun of being a Mac pundit unless you are biased?

Steve Cowan writes "A new Apple column by Eric Bangeman, called Mac.Ars, debuted at Ars Technica. The first edition is an insightful, unbiased take on the current state of Apple and its offerings. The author discusses Panther, the G5, consumer hardware offerings, Premiere, Microsoft Office, the 'Switch' campaign, the effects of Apple's relatively recent purchases of products like Logic and Shake, Apple's position in the server market, and lots more." What's the fun of being a Mac pundit unless you are biased?

Steve Cowan writes "A new Apple column by Eric Bangeman, called Mac.Ars, debuted at Ars Technica. The first edition is an insightful, unbiased take on the current state of Apple and its offerings. The author discusses Panther, the G5, consumer hardware offerings, Premiere, Microsoft Office, the 'Switch' campaign, the effects of Apple's relatively recent purchases of products like Logic and Shake, Apple's position in the server market, and lots more." What's the fun of being a Mac pundit unless you are biased?

11223 writes "John "Hannibal" Stokes has interviewed Pete Sandon, the PowerPC 970's main designer, and David Edelsohn, a compiler writer from IBM, and clarified several points about the 970 regarding group formation, vector issue queues and performance, and more. The interview is a very interesting read for anyone who has been following his earlier articles on the processor that Apple calls the G5."

11223 writes "John "Hannibal" Stokes has interviewed Pete Sandon, the PowerPC 970's main designer, and David Edelsohn, a compiler writer from IBM, and clarified several points about the 970 regarding group formation, vector issue queues and performance, and more. The interview is a very interesting read for anyone who has been following his earlier articles on the processor that Apple calls the G5."

big writes "NEC has developed the world's first slim sized water-cooling module for notebooks. It uses a piezoelectric pump driving method. This water cooling-module enables a highly advanced, slim sized, notebook PC with minimal operating noise." Toshiba has been working on water cooling in laptops at least as far back as the year 2000.

Lawrence Person writes "This article on Low End Mac talks about why the PowerPC 970 is so fast, covering its superiority to Intel chips in Multiply Accumulate, double precision arithmetic, and Fast Fourier Transforms, among other operations. A short, clear article for those who don't have the time to wade through Parts 1 and 2 of Ars Technica's exceptionally detailed dissection of the 970/G5." Trollaxor writes "IBM has a neat two-page history of the PowerPC architecture, detailing its evolution from the first RS/6000 chipsets in 1990, through the POWER ISA, and into the processors that we know and use today. A very interesting read."

Lawrence Person writes "This article on Low End Mac talks about why the PowerPC 970 is so fast, covering its superiority to Intel chips in Multiply Accumulate, double precision arithmetic, and Fast Fourier Transforms, among other operations. A short, clear article for those who don't have the time to wade through Parts 1 and 2 of Ars Technica's exceptionally detailed dissection of the 970/G5." Trollaxor writes "IBM has a neat two-page history of the PowerPC architecture, detailing its evolution from the first RS/6000 chipsets in 1990, through the POWER ISA, and into the processors that we know and use today. A very interesting read."

macrealist writes "CNET is reporting that Apple will discuss the use of HyperTransport in Macs at the Developer's conference. The interesting thing is that the article claims that Apple is not likely to use hypertransport to link the CPU to the memory, but instead to link chipsets together because IBM would have to 'to adapt it to the Power architecture.' But according to arstechnica, the 970 does have a frontside bus that operates at similar speeds to Hypertransport."

kinema writes "Ars Technica has an interesting little article about Microsoft's alleged "dumping" of Windows XP. It seems that Microsoft is selling XP through TigerDirect for only US$50 to customers who have purchased a Lindows computer." Note that Tiger says nothing like this on their site (No, you can't buy WinXP for $50 there); Lindows CEO Michael Robertson says (in the linked column) that "Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook." PR ploy or reality, you decide.

kinema writes "Ars Technica has an interesting little article about Microsoft's alleged "dumping" of Windows XP. It seems that Microsoft is selling XP through TigerDirect for only US$50 to customers who have purchased a Lindows computer." Note that Tiger says nothing like this on their site (No, you can't buy WinXP for $50 there); Lindows CEO Michael Robertson says (in the linked column) that "Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook." PR ploy or reality, you decide.

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has an indepth guide on the Ten Tec RX-320, a shortwave radio receiver that connects to the PC and is controlled by software (both Linux and Windows). The article goes into depth on different high frequency modes, broadcast shortwave, and even a bit on ham radio and new digital modes."

daveschroeder writes "Jon "Hannibal" Stokes has posted a long-awaited, very detailed analysis of the IBM PowerPC 970 at Ars Technica. Notable quote: 'The 970 was made for Apple'."

daveschroeder writes "Jon "Hannibal" Stokes has posted a long-awaited, very detailed analysis of the IBM PowerPC 970 at Ars Technica. Notable quote: 'The 970 was made for Apple'."

daveschroeder writes "Jon "Hannibal" Stokes has posted a long-awaited, very detailed analysis of the IBM PowerPC 970 at Ars Technica. Notable quote: 'The 970 was made for Apple'."

functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''

functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''

functor writes "Ars Technica's Jon Stokes has a treatise up covering the microarchitecture of the high-performance 64-bit PowerPC 970 microprocessor, due to be released by the end of the year, that goes over in detail how this chip is put together, and how we can expect it to perform. This is the follow-up to Stokes' article detailing the PPC 970's design philosophy. 'It appears to hold quite a bit of promise in bolstering Apple's currently almost obsolescent product line, and it appears to have been designed explictly to fulfil Apple's requirements. To say the least, the second half of this year looks to be pretty interesting as Apple's product line promises to become competitive performance-wise with IA-32 and x86-64-based PCs again.''

DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.

Pharmboy writes "I haven't seen enough info on the new IBM PowerPC 970 CPU expected shortly. I found some info direct from IBM here plus more info in a couple other places. For those of us wanting to get away from Windows, but feel Linux is still not ready for the desktop yet, this might make Apple a more viable alternative. This also raises issues about the potential partnership with Apple and AMD. Will we see Mac OS X running on two different platforms/CPUs? Could we be that lucky?"

Slashback tonight has followups and clarifications on glitch-delayed Pentium IV shipments, Free software for chainware operating systems, the real distinction between 3G and 2.5G phone systems and more -- read on below for the details.

More RAM than I can afford. RyanT5000 writes "The article referenced in "Getting Rid of the Disks" incorrectly states that the maximum RAM for a 32-bit Intel compatible system is 4 GB. This was true up to and including the original Pentium processor, and it makes a lot of sense (after all, 2^32 = 4 294 967 296). However, with the Pentium Pro, Intel added 4 pins to the address bus, expanding the maximum physical address space to 64 GB (using paging, since it still uses 32 bit addressing). I would assume AMD has a similar feature. If you're on Windows, you'll need a server version to get above 4 GB, but most major Linux/BSD/etc. OSes support it. This would probably be cheaper (and definitely faster) than SCSI SSDs. If you need more than 64 GB of solid state storage, you probably shouldn't be running on an Intel."

"Free" always makes people suspicious. imevil writes "A while ago slashdotters asked some questions to the GNUWin II team. Well, here are the answers. In the meantime, more people joined the team, and more languages were added (this one looks pretty cool)." There's also a short article about GNUWin running at NewsForge.

On a related note, cos(0) writes "According to this(1), this(2), and other stories, many people are interested in running open source, high-quality software on MS Windows. The author of this site provides an up-to-date CD image of the latest versions of numerous high-quality OSS applications (complete list on the site), updated monthly, downloadable via BitTorrent. (The same site also offers a web-based Code Beautifier.)"

Cool distribution method! (And if you're on dialup, $5 seems like a great bargain -- Are you listening, Cheapbytes?)

Toys are so tempting to the wallet ... OrenWolf writes "Ars Technica Has a review up of BroadQ's QCast Tuner software. Unlike the earlier /. review, this article goes into great detail about the technical capabilities of the software. A must read for PS2 owners looking for a PC-PVR-esque solution."

Yeah, but does this review include any original software? ;) And david_adams writes "Slashdot linked to an article I wrote last month about my experience with a CDMA2000 1x wireless network from SprintPCS. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, but not for the reasons I expected. Because I called Sprint's service 3G in the title, but admitted it was 2.5G in the first paragraph, I heard from people on both sides, chiding me on the one hand for calling it 3G, and on the other for calling it 2.5G. I decided to research and write a new article to get to the bottom of it. What is truly 3G? Where is the line between 2.5G and 3G?"

The time to wait is now! ThunderDawg writes "Intel resumed Canterwood Pentium 4 3 GHz 800FSB shipments yesterday. TAFKAEFKAF (The Anomaly Formerly Known as Errata Formerly Known as Flaw) was corrected with a software patch.

Intel is again shipping its new 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, a week after it halted shipments due to the discovery of an "anomaly," an Intel spokesman said Monday. PC makers that use the chip in their systems have been supplied with a software update to fix the issue, George Alfs, an Intel spokesman said. Vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer, and Gateway introduced desktop systems based on the chip when it was released on Monday last week. The issue with the 3GHz Pentium 4 with support for an 800MHz system bus occurs only in rare circumstances and users are unlikely to be affected, according to Alfs."

I'd take google and a strong AI any day. hondo77 writes "A bit of a followup to this article from back in February, LexisNexis has been named the publisher of official reports by the California Supreme Court, according to this press release. "The public will have free access to the official text of the opinions at a Web site hosted by LexisNexis linked to the court's Web site." IANAL but it doesn't sound ominous to me."

Slashback tonight has followups and clarifications on glitch-delayed Pentium IV shipments, Free software for chainware operating systems, the real distinction between 3G and 2.5G phone systems and more -- read on below for the details.

More RAM than I can afford. RyanT5000 writes "The article referenced in "Getting Rid of the Disks" incorrectly states that the maximum RAM for a 32-bit Intel compatible system is 4 GB. This was true up to and including the original Pentium processor, and it makes a lot of sense (after all, 2^32 = 4 294 967 296). However, with the Pentium Pro, Intel added 4 pins to the address bus, expanding the maximum physical address space to 64 GB (using paging, since it still uses 32 bit addressing). I would assume AMD has a similar feature. If you're on Windows, you'll need a server version to get above 4 GB, but most major Linux/BSD/etc. OSes support it. This would probably be cheaper (and definitely faster) than SCSI SSDs. If you need more than 64 GB of solid state storage, you probably shouldn't be running on an Intel."

"Free" always makes people suspicious. imevil writes "A while ago slashdotters asked some questions to the GNUWin II team. Well, here are the answers. In the meantime, more people joined the team, and more languages were added (this one looks pretty cool)." There's also a short article about GNUWin running at NewsForge.

On a related note, cos(0) writes "According to this(1), this(2), and other stories, many people are interested in running open source, high-quality software on MS Windows. The author of this site provides an up-to-date CD image of the latest versions of numerous high-quality OSS applications (complete list on the site), updated monthly, downloadable via BitTorrent. (The same site also offers a web-based Code Beautifier.)"

Cool distribution method! (And if you're on dialup, $5 seems like a great bargain -- Are you listening, Cheapbytes?)

Toys are so tempting to the wallet ... OrenWolf writes "Ars Technica Has a review up of BroadQ's QCast Tuner software. Unlike the earlier /. review, this article goes into great detail about the technical capabilities of the software. A must read for PS2 owners looking for a PC-PVR-esque solution."

Yeah, but does this review include any original software? ;) And david_adams writes "Slashdot linked to an article I wrote last month about my experience with a CDMA2000 1x wireless network from SprintPCS. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, but not for the reasons I expected. Because I called Sprint's service 3G in the title, but admitted it was 2.5G in the first paragraph, I heard from people on both sides, chiding me on the one hand for calling it 3G, and on the other for calling it 2.5G. I decided to research and write a new article to get to the bottom of it. What is truly 3G? Where is the line between 2.5G and 3G?"

The time to wait is now! ThunderDawg writes "Intel resumed Canterwood Pentium 4 3 GHz 800FSB shipments yesterday. TAFKAEFKAF (The Anomaly Formerly Known as Errata Formerly Known as Flaw) was corrected with a software patch.

Intel is again shipping its new 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, a week after it halted shipments due to the discovery of an "anomaly," an Intel spokesman said Monday. PC makers that use the chip in their systems have been supplied with a software update to fix the issue, George Alfs, an Intel spokesman said. Vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computer, and Gateway introduced desktop systems based on the chip when it was released on Monday last week. The issue with the 3GHz Pentium 4 with support for an 800MHz system bus occurs only in rare circumstances and users are unlikely to be affected, according to Alfs."

I'd take google and a strong AI any day. hondo77 writes "A bit of a followup to this article from back in February, LexisNexis has been named the publisher of official reports by the California Supreme Court, according to this press release. "The public will have free access to the official text of the opinions at a Web site hosted by LexisNexis linked to the court's Web site." IANAL but it doesn't sound ominous to me."

Deepak Jois writes "Arstechnica is reporting that EA and NVIDIA have entered into a pact to promote each other. Among other things it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware. Also check this link to the press release."

Deepak Jois writes "Arstechnica is reporting that EA and NVIDIA have entered into a pact to promote each other. Among other things it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware. Also check this link to the press release."

Build6 writes "Ars Technica opens today with another one of their deeply-thought-out articles relating to MacOS X issues, pointing out another thing which the old MacOS had and the current one doesn't."

oniony writes "Ars Technica has a link to a story on new goggles being developed for/by the military. The new device uses satellite imaging and land profiling to build a 3D representation of the world in a soldier's goggles in real-time. This would enable troops to see through sand storms and oil smoke of the kind currently hampering operations in the Gulf. I imagine one could also remove mountains to allow remote viewing of approaching territory."

Deffexor writes "For those of you who read Ars Technica, but do not visit our forum, we have an active Audio/Visual Club where we talk shop about everything ranging from TVs to Stereos to Speakers to Videocards and everything in between. Lately, there has been a lot of interest in capturing broadcast television and converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD. As more and more people become interested, it becomes increasingly difficult to educate everyone on how to do this properly. Tapping the collective consciousness of the Ars A/V forum, we bring you the 1st part of the Ars Technica Guide to Video Capturing, Cleaning, and Compression."

Deffexor writes "For those of you who read Ars Technica, but do not visit our forum, we have an active Audio/Visual Club where we talk shop about everything ranging from TVs to Stereos to Speakers to Videocards and everything in between. Lately, there has been a lot of interest in capturing broadcast television and converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD. As more and more people become interested, it becomes increasingly difficult to educate everyone on how to do this properly. Tapping the collective consciousness of the Ars A/V forum, we bring you the 1st part of the Ars Technica Guide to Video Capturing, Cleaning, and Compression."

Deffexor writes "For those of you who read Ars Technica, but do not visit our forum, we have an active Audio/Visual Club where we talk shop about everything ranging from TVs to Stereos to Speakers to Videocards and everything in between. Lately, there has been a lot of interest in capturing broadcast television and converting old VHS home movies to a more timeless digital format, such as VCD, SVCD, and DVD. As more and more people become interested, it becomes increasingly difficult to educate everyone on how to do this properly. Tapping the collective consciousness of the Ars A/V forum, we bring you the 1st part of the Ars Technica Guide to Video Capturing, Cleaning, and Compression."

Slashback with more on open code in government, Intel's new low-power mobile chips, the nature of the engineers, craftsmen or whatchamacallims who spend their days forging software, the CD price-fixing settlement, and more -- read on for the details.

Formalization schmormalization. kaisyain's review today of Software Craftsmanship raised a spirited conversation about the nature of software, software engineering, and related disciplines. cconnell conveniently submits a great companion piece: "I wrote this article a couple years ago but it has continued to get good readership within the software engineering community. Should provoke some interesting discussion..."

The bleeding edge costs money. JeffyVernon writes with an followup to CNET's early review of Centrino laptops: "AnandTech published two articles on Centrino today, an overview of the CPU architecture (including some interesting history behind the chip) and a roundup of four notebooks including the new Dell that wasn't in CNet's roundup. It looks like the 4.9lbs IBM T40p ended up winning the roundup, it lasted over 6 hours on battery!"

What scarcity was this exactly? RadBlock writes "Lawrence Lessig is addressing the issue of radio spectrum on CIO Insight... something that was talked about on Slashdot the other day. Lessig states that the spectrum has been defined too generally as if there can only be one message per frequency, when better equipment will vastly increase the amount of 'spectrum' that is usable."

I like that phrase "general welfare." We've mentioned eGovOS several times before -- now, here's a last-minute announcement that may be of interest: free registration is still open for next week's (March 17-19) eGovOS conference in Washington D.C., "Open Standards/Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU." Perhaps some folks there ought to consider the question eugene ts wong raised the other day, namely, Which North American government offices won't move to Linux? Someone needs to set up a big map with different colored countries and states!

Who's laughing and where is his bank? deelowe writes "From ars. Back in September we reported on a class action suit leveled at a number of Music industry players that accused them of anti-competitive price-fixing. Back in January, we reported that victims of said price fixing could hit this website and sign up (too late now), and eventually receive up to $20 in the settlement, provided of course that you had actually purchased a CD between January 1 1995 and December 22, 2000. 3.5 million Americans made their way to the on-line form, and it appears that victims will receive $12.60 apiece, should a judge approve it."

They still have a while to go ... sp1nl0ck writes CNet News.com.com.com are reporting that The Neo Project guys have restarted the attempt to crack the 2048-bit XBox key following advice from their lawyers. CNet are citing a link to Operation Project X, but it was a bit temperamental in loading earlier. Maybe it's been CNetted..."

I'll still think of it as the GIMP for a few years ;) Agermain writes "CinePaint has just released its first Windows build. From their website: "CinePaint is an open source painting program used by motion picture studios to retouch images in 35mm films. It was formerly called Film Gimp. It has been used in a dozen feature films including Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, and the Fast & the Furious... This first Windows beta release is mainly intended for developers and testers.""

Slashback with more on open code in government, Intel's new low-power mobile chips, the nature of the engineers, craftsmen or whatchamacallims who spend their days forging software, the CD price-fixing settlement, and more -- read on for the details.

Formalization schmormalization. kaisyain's review today of Software Craftsmanship raised a spirited conversation about the nature of software, software engineering, and related disciplines. cconnell conveniently submits a great companion piece: "I wrote this article a couple years ago but it has continued to get good readership within the software engineering community. Should provoke some interesting discussion..."

The bleeding edge costs money. JeffyVernon writes with an followup to CNET's early review of Centrino laptops: "AnandTech published two articles on Centrino today, an overview of the CPU architecture (including some interesting history behind the chip) and a roundup of four notebooks including the new Dell that wasn't in CNet's roundup. It looks like the 4.9lbs IBM T40p ended up winning the roundup, it lasted over 6 hours on battery!"

What scarcity was this exactly? RadBlock writes "Lawrence Lessig is addressing the issue of radio spectrum on CIO Insight... something that was talked about on Slashdot the other day. Lessig states that the spectrum has been defined too generally as if there can only be one message per frequency, when better equipment will vastly increase the amount of 'spectrum' that is usable."

I like that phrase "general welfare." We've mentioned eGovOS several times before -- now, here's a last-minute announcement that may be of interest: free registration is still open for next week's (March 17-19) eGovOS conference in Washington D.C., "Open Standards/Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU." Perhaps some folks there ought to consider the question eugene ts wong raised the other day, namely, Which North American government offices won't move to Linux? Someone needs to set up a big map with different colored countries and states!

Who's laughing and where is his bank? deelowe writes "From ars. Back in September we reported on a class action suit leveled at a number of Music industry players that accused them of anti-competitive price-fixing. Back in January, we reported that victims of said price fixing could hit this website and sign up (too late now), and eventually receive up to $20 in the settlement, provided of course that you had actually purchased a CD between January 1 1995 and December 22, 2000. 3.5 million Americans made their way to the on-line form, and it appears that victims will receive $12.60 apiece, should a judge approve it."

They still have a while to go ... sp1nl0ck writes CNet News.com.com.com are reporting that The Neo Project guys have restarted the attempt to crack the 2048-bit XBox key following advice from their lawyers. CNet are citing a link to Operation Project X, but it was a bit temperamental in loading earlier. Maybe it's been CNetted..."

I'll still think of it as the GIMP for a few years ;) Agermain writes "CinePaint has just released its first Windows build. From their website: "CinePaint is an open source painting program used by motion picture studios to retouch images in 35mm films. It was formerly called Film Gimp. It has been used in a dozen feature films including Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, and the Fast & the Furious... This first Windows beta release is mainly intended for developers and testers.""